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.
An off-budget proposal to accelerate improved capability development of a northern-facing Over the Horizon Radar remains a possibility after House lawmakers authorized a $20 million increase to the Air Force’s fiscal year 2024 budget to buy an additional testbed in support of a U.S. Northern Command unfunded priority.
The Army has confirmed full operational capability for the Mid-Range Capability after launching a Tomahawk cruise missile, capping a nearly three-year project to mitigate an “extremely high-risk capability gap” by fielding a prototype, land-based system armed with Navy precision-strike weapons to give the ground force formidable ship-sinking capability.
House lawmakers want the Pentagon to explore the potential for short pulse lasers to counter maneuvering hypersonic missiles, proposing a $6 million addition in fiscal year 2024 for the Missile Defense Agency to expand its work on the novel directed-energy technology.
The Defense Department would like to field a string of passive radars in remote locations well north of the Arctic Circle as part of an effort -- details of which were previously classified -- to extend the sensor reach of North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command to feed alerts as well as actionable information to U.S. and Canadian military leaders.
House lawmakers are recommending a 25% cut in the Navy's initial hypersonic strike missile procurement plan, citing concerns with increasing risk in the project caused by test failures and schedule delays, imposing a reduction that appears to decrease the Pentagon's proposed fiscal year 2024 acquisition of eight Conventional Prompt Strike rounds to six.
The project to explore expanding the mission of Aegis Ashore sites in Europe to defend against Russian threats would inch forward if legislation proposed by a House panel -- which calls for the Pentagon to report on feasibility and advisability of such a change -- becomes law.
Lawmakers are skeptical of the Pentagon's latest radar plan to help protect Hawaii from missile attack, noting the fiscal year 2024 budget plan would halt funding for the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii project while also seeking permission to start a new sensor project that doesn't integrate into the U.S. military's wider missile defense sensor architecture.
The United States, Japan and potentially other nations could formally begin collaborative development on the Glide Phase Interceptor as soon as the fiscal year 2024 defense policy bill is enacted if a proposed single-sentence provision in that legislation becomes law, a sign of support in Congress for a joint effort to develop a next-generation Aegis guided missile.
Lawmakers want a formal exploration of extending the Next Generation Interceptor competition, delaying any source selection from 2025 until Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman fly prototypes -- a move that could add at least two years to the contest and set the stage for tandem production of a much larger NGI acquisition than the program of record.
Lawmakers are exploring the potential for arming the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer fleet -- and possibly new frigates -- with offensive hypersonic missiles, a move that could dramatically extend the striking range of the Navy's surface combatant force to hold at risk a larger set of inland targets by modifying current vertical launch systems to accommodate larger-diameter rockets.
House lawmakers are proposing legislation that would require an initial fleet of a dozen Glide Phase Interceptors be operational by 2029 -- mandating a six-year acceleration of the Pentagon hypersonic defense program -- a move that, if enacted, could require billions of dollars be added to the project's near-term development plans.
The Defense Department "lacks comprehensive guidance" for sustaining and maintaining the Missile Defense System -- a sprawling collection of radars, launchers and command and control systems -- that, if not corrected, places at risk the readiness of the nation to defend against long-range missile threats.
The Missile Defense Agency is working on a new advanced target to mimic long-range Chinese and Russian hypersonic missiles as part of a project to ready the Defense Department for a high-stakes, live-fire test in 2025 that will feature the first-ever attempt to defeat an ultra-fast maneuvering threat in a simulated attack on a U.S. aircraft carrier.
The Defense Department has awarded Raytheon Technologies a new deal as part of the project to break up the former Ground-based Midcourse Defense system continuing sustainment and development contract -- executing a potential $621 million, five-year package to keep modern and operational exoatmospheric kill vehicles in the deployed homeland defense interceptor fleet.
The Defense Department is proposing to launch a $475 million, five-year project in fiscal year 2024 to begin transitioning quantum technologies for military application to press the U.S. technological advantage against all competitors across a wide range of capabilities including precision strike, space, cyber and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
The Defense Department is taking steps to improve the Missile Defense System flight test program -- a $1 billion annual project that aims to demonstrate new capabilities, identify limitations, provide combatant commanders confidence in these tools as well as deter North Korea and Iran -- which has suffered a decade of failures.
Congressional auditors have provided a first-ever public accounting of key systems that will be part of a new Defense of Guam capability -- details the Pentagon has kept under wraps since providing lawmakers a September 2021 classified report on the matter -- revealing previously unreported elements of the planned 360-degree air and missile defense system.
The Pentagon is seeking authorization in fiscal year 2024 to begin prototyping a new homeland defense Over-the-Horizon Radar -- with one each planned in the Northeast, Northwest, Alaska and a Southern-facing array -- for improved long-range sensor coverage of aircraft, cruise missiles, maneuvering hypersonic missiles and maritime surface vehicle threats.
Northrop Grumman's proposed blueprint for a pair of polar-orbiting satellites intended to provide next-generation ballistic and maneuvering hypersonic missile detection over Arctic regions passed muster with U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command, clearing the project to proceed toward the next planned milestone: critical design review.
Lockheed Martin is offering the most advanced variant of the Patriot interceptor -- the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement -- to bolster ship defense in the wake of a newly revealed lack of "capability and capacity" to defeat complex raids of hypersonic and cruise missiles.