This Friday INSIDER Daily Digest has news on Russian and Chinese activities in the Arctic, the Air Force's mobility fleet receiving a fresh connectivity suite and more.
Iris Ferguson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience, spoke this week at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event:
Hybrid activity 'hot spot': Russia and China's affair in the Arctic is cause for concern, senior official says
Russia and China's mounting Arctic partnership has led to a rise in joint military operations between the two nations and transformed the region into a hybrid activity "hot spot" in need of investment, a senior Defense Department official said Thursday.
Air Mobility Command at the end of September finalized a yearlong contract with an unnamed manufacturer to provide a "one-stop-shop" for "peer-to-peer communication at the tactical edge" by enabling real-time access to commercial, unclassified and secret networks even when forward deployed:
Air Mobility Command slowly but surely taking on connectivity, starting with GTPaaS
Part of the Air Force's mobility fleet will be tapped to receive a fresh connectivity suite, dubbed the Global Transport Platform-as-a-Service, as early as the end of calendar year 2024 or spring 2025, Inside Defense has learned.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party held a hearing this week:
House lawmaker says Chinese mineral export bans threaten U.S. defense supply chain
China's recent ban on rare mineral exports to the U.S. is the latest warning sign the U.S. military could be left without the necessary tools to deter or defeat adversaries if the domestic supply chain isn’t shored up, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) argued during a House panel Thursday.
The Next Generation Air Dominance way-ahead decision will be deferred to the next administration:
Trump administration tapped to make final NGAD decision
The fate of the Air Force's embattled Next Generation Air Dominance platform will now be determined by the Trump administration, the service indicated this week.
In June, the Navy proposed a shift of $49 million from aircraft procurement accounts into research and development accounts for the service's Stingray UAS program, which was approved months later in September:
Revised acquisition program baseline approved for Navy's MQ-25 Stingray
The Navy is making progress on the MQ-25 Stingray's development with the recent approval of a revised acquisition program baseline and $50 million in recently reprogrammed money, following redesign efforts and a slash in procurement funding from appropriators.
Document: DOD modernized SAR on the Navy's MQ-25 Stingray program