Monday, May 20, 2024
Key Issues GAO on F-35 SLCM-N program office PrSM funding
Jason Sherman is a reporter for Inside Defense. For more than two decades -- including stints with Defense News and Armed Forces Journal -- he has covered the Pentagon, defense industry, the military budget, weapon system acquisition and defense policy formulation as well as reporting on technology, business, and global arms trade. Jason has traveled to more than 40 countries, studied medieval history at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and lives in Brooklyn.
The Missile Defense Agency is not slated to publicly explain its expected $11 billion fiscal year 2025 request next week, breaking an annual practice that reaches back uninterrupted to at least 2000 that provides Pentagon reporters a once-a-year, carte blanche opportunity to ask agency leaders about program status, policies and more.
The head of the U.S. military's nuclear strike forces believes the time has come to consider re-outfitting Minuteman III missiles with more than one warhead, a move that could roll back arms control measures that removed two of the three multiple independent targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) that were originally emplaced across the ICBM fleet.
Lockheed Martin today announced its Next Generation Interceptor prototype has formally cleared the first of six major acquisition hurdles established for the homeland defense guided missile program, the culmination of more than two years' work that a company executive said was marked by "unprecedented" technical rigor.
The Defense Department has improved the Patriot lower-tier air and missile shield, boosting the system's ability to search, discriminate and destroy tactical ballistic missiles as well as demonstrating a new capability to fend off electronic attack while hunting down enemy threats.
The Defense Department confirmed the successful launch of new, low-orbit missile tracking satellites on the same day the public learned U.S. intelligence assesses Russia is developing a space-based nuclear weapon to destroy America's satellite network, highlighting the risk to Pentagon plans for proliferating new capabilities in low-earth orbit.
The Defense Department today plans to put in orbit new space capabilities -- including a pair of competing prototype satellites built by L3Harris Technologies and Northrop Grumman -- that aim to solve one of the U.S. military's most vexing and pressing technical challenges: how to detect and track hypersonic glide vehicles that exploit blind spots in today's radar networks.
The U.S. military executed one of the "most complex" ballistic missile defense tests to date, pairing for the first time the most advanced Aegis guided missile interceptor with its next-generation Air and Missile Defense Radar to shoot down a medium-range ballistic missile target over the Pacific Ocean.
The presumptive new U.S. Indo-Pacific Command boss is concerned about the adequacy of the United States' refueling capability in the event of a regional conflict, presumably against China, vowing -- if confirmed -- to work with lawmakers to "close the gaps" to keep bombers, destroyers, cargo trucks and more in the fight.
China's naval forces -- the largest in the world, including a battle force of more than 370 ships and submarines -- cannot "overmatch" the U.S. Navy's 292-ship fleet, the presumptive new head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command assessed, while also cautioning the pace of Beijing's warship buildup is on a "concerning trajectory."
The presumptive new head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command -- whose tenure, if confirmed, could extend to the cusp of a 2027 centennial celebration of the founding of China’s armed forces and a potential move by Beijing to take Taiwan by force -- today outlined for Congress new capabilities needed for decision superiority to "blind, see and kill" adversary forces.
The Defense Department last week completed the second of two major technical reviews for the Next Generation Interceptor, wrapping up an assessment of Northrop Grumman's design and select components for a homeland defense guided-missile prototype -- an event that potentially could form the basis of a source selection if funding for the project is curtailed.
The Defense Department this summer must produce a strategy for ground-based, theater-range, conventional missiles in the Indo-Pacific, explaining to Congress how billions of dollars in planned new offensive strike capabilities -- cruise, ballistic and hypersonic -- will be deployed across the region to counter China.
The Defense Department this spring must re-write its seminal missile defense governance policy to replace a controversial memorandum advanced during the Trump administration that curtailed the Missile Defense Agency's autonomy by elevating approval authority for key activities to senior Pentagon officials.
The Missile Defense Agency must extend a statutory accountability checklist for the Next Generation Interceptor program that was originally designed to end with the technology development phase after Congress lengthened the mandated reporting regime through production.
The Pentagon has a new missile defense assignment: craft a comprehensive strategy for developing, acquiring and operationally establishing an integrated air and missile defense architecture for select locations across U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, a 100-million-square-mile region that constitutes more than 50% of the earth's surface.
The Pentagon must think anew about missile defense in Europe, including how to defend against air and missile strikes from not only the east -- but also north, south and west -- and provide Congress a report this summer on options for adopting a 360-degree approach to address Russian threats emerging from all strategic directions.
A pair of U.S. and Japanese defense contractors announced a new teaming agreement to "collaborate" on integrated and missile defense capabilities for Japan's ground-based systems, in a move that could be a first step toward exporting to a Pacific ally the U.S. Army's new "game changing" Integrated Battle Command System.
The Defense Department is looking for help thinking through the complexities of deterrence and escalation dynamics in a world with more than two major nuclear-armed powers, fulfilling a statutory mandate to seek outside expertise in thinking anew about strategic deterrence with the advent of China as a second near-peer strategic competitor.
Space has emerged as the U.S. military's "most essential" warfighting domain, integral to all other aspects of combat power, according to the Pentagon's top requirements officer.
The Missile Defense Agency, which limped along last year without a Senate-confirmed three-star director for an extended period during which some of its top projects were nominated for budget cuts, is reinstating a post eliminated as part of a 2020 organizational overhaul: a deputy director who must be a two-star general or flag officer.