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 U.S. military is at risk of taking ownership of the Long Range Discrimination Radar -- a massive new sensor in the middle of Alaska intended to strengthen defenses against a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile strike -- before fully validating its detection capabilities with target flight tests over the Pacific Ocean.
The Missile Defense Agency has raised the bar in the $17 billion Next Generation Interceptor competition, requiring Lockheed Martin and a Northrop Grumman-Raytheon team to demonstrate critical technologies in their respective guided-missile designs at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 or higher, a change from the initial requirement of TRL 5 or higher.
The U.S. military has delayed by two years the planned first test of a naval counter-hypersonic capability, pushing from 2023 to 2025 an intercept attempt by a Standard Missile-6 against an ultra-fast maneuvering target to validate a new version of the Aegis Sea Based Terminal capability designed to protect aircraft carrier strike groups from the new class of threats.
President Biden has codified changes to the U.S. military's command structure in an update of the Pentagon's Unified Command Plan that includes a major shift: moving global missile defense operational support responsibilities from U.S. Strategic Command to U.S. Space Command.
The Army is exploring whether to compete the planned production of Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc. 2) beginning in fiscal year 2024 after the service receives the 16 systems and 60 interceptors Leidos subsidiary Dynetics and Raytheon Technologies developed under a short-term prototype agreement.
The Missile Defense Agency -- created nearly 20 years ago -- is beginning to think about the next 20 by launching a new initiative to explore future technologies and associated architectures that could be needed in 2045, asking industry to propose "new, innovative and potentially disruptive" concepts to protect the nation from anticipated future threats.
The Missile Defense Agency is publicly calling on the Army to collaborate on improving Patriot to give land forces protection from maneuvering hypersonic weapons after Ukraine -- to the evident surprise of Defense Department leaders -- debuted the U.S.-developed air and missile defense system by intercepting a Russian hypersonic missile.
The Defense Department has awarded Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Technologies new funding to begin Glide Phase Interceptor technology development in a pair of contract actions that extends funding for the competition to design a new hypersonic glide vehicle-killing guided missile through March 2024.
The Defense Department is eyeing 20 candidate locations across Guam -- including a few in areas not controlled by the military -- for a new 360-degree air and missile defense system, sites required to disperse sensors, missile launchers and command-and-control systems to defend the U.S. territory against advanced Chinese threats in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.
U.S. and European naval forces next week will kick off the 2023 iteration of Formidable Shield, a U.S. 6th Fleet and NATO integrated air and missile defense exercise that will fold in F-35 fighter aircraft from the United States and Norway as well as ground units with advanced air defense and long-range strike capabilities.
The Defense Department is planning a new-start project in fiscal year 2024 to develop select technologies needed for a prototype X-band domestic cruise missile defense radar -- a sensor needed to provide point defense of a limited number of critical targets.
The Defense Department will explore the possibility of accelerating the Glide Phase Interceptor program schedule -- currently slated for fielding in 2034 -- if contractors developing competing designs for a hypersonic-killing guided missile provide compelling evidence that yet-to-be-developed technology is sufficiently mature to achieve earlier deployment.
The Army Integrated Air and Missile Defense program has passed muster with the Army's top air defender and head of Forces Command, clearing the way for the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) -- which began in 2009 and fought termination after major developmental failures -- to begin operational fielding.
Defense Department leaders last week approved the Glide Phase Interceptor program to proceed into technology development, signaling support for the Missile Defense Agency's proposed acquisition strategy and plan to mature technologies essential to producing a guided missile designed to hunt down and destroy enemy hypersonic glide vehicles.
The Pentagon has set a goal to increase the size of the Air Force bomber force by 20% -- growing the fleet from 143 today to 173 by 2037, according to the first major recalibration of the U.S. military's long-term aviation inventory in five years, a previously unreported expansion that reflects the importance of long-range strike in war plans for a potential fight against China.
The U.S. military plans to steadily shrink the total number of aircraft it operates over the next 15 years from 13,749 to 12,721 -- a 7% reduction -- with the bomber force, aerial refueling and Special Operations Forces slated for growth, according to the most detailed public forecast of the Defense Department's aircraft inventory to date.
The Defense Department this year plans to break the "strategic pause" imposed on the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program after the 2019 termination of the Redesigned Kill Vehicle project with the maiden flight of a guided missile against a target using a booster that utilizes only two of three available rocket stages.
Defense Department and NATO policymakers are considering expanding the mission of Aegis Ashore sites in Europe -- originally established to counter Iranian ballistic missile threats -- to also defend the continent from Russian air attacks in the wake of Moscow's blistering ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missile attacks against Ukraine over the last year.
The Pentagon is seeking a new Missile Defense Agency director after Vice Adm. Jon Hill recently requested permission to retire this summer -- marking the second consecutive MDA director to vacate the post prior to completing a six-year term that Congress created to help foster management stability over the agency's complex projects portfolio.
The Defense Department is scrapping plans for a notional three-way competition to develop a new intercontinental ballistic missile target -- needed to test the $17 billion Next Generation Interceptor program -- and is selecting incumbent Northrop Grumman for the project after determining the new target is needed sooner than originally planned.