Lack of USAF tanker, airlift capacity causes concern over potential conflict in Pacific. A slice: “The USAF has had a shortage of cargo aircraft and tankers for the last 20 years and is specifically lacking capacity of the Boeing KC-135R Stratotankers and McDonnell-Douglas KC-10A Extender tankers.” Certainly the KC-46 schedule slips are not helping. USAF tanker aircraft are on average over 54 years old.
NASA gives SpaceX a challenge with the moon as a prize.
The head of the Senate Armed Service Committee today charged Navy leadership with “a level of arrogance” in dealing with the failures of its new $13 billion USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, saying the lack of planning for key new technologies that have struggled to perform “oughta be criminal.” The link is here.
Related: Report to Congress on Gerald R. Ford-class Aircraft Carrier Program. “To help cover cost growth on the ship [CVN-78], the ship received an additional $1,394.9 million in FY2014-FY2016 and FY2018 cost-to-complete procurement funding.” Also, note the long timelines… “CVN-79 (John F. Kennedy) was procured in FY2013… The ship is scheduled for delivery to the Navy in September 2024.”
The DoD released plans for blockchain tech in its four-year roadmap on July 12, entitled “DoD Digital Modernization Strategy: DoD Information Resource Management Strategic Plan FY19–23.” Link is here. A bit more: “Technologies for distributed consensus protocols have been revolutionized by their prominent role in cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies. These technologies have dramatic implications for the security and resilience of critical data storage and computation tasks, including for the Department of Defense.”
“The counter-hypersonic mission, however, received surprisingly short shrift in recent defense budgets, with progress on hypersonic defense thus far piecemeal and halting.”
JEDI Contract on Hold for Defense Secretary Review. And, After Trump cites Amazon concerns, Pentagon reexamines $10 billion JEDI cloud contract process. “I’m getting tremendous complaints about the contract with the Pentagon and with Amazon. … They’re saying it wasn’t competitively bid,” Trump said.
More on that: Oracle vs. Pentagon: Why Judge Approved A Single Vendor For JEDI Cloud.
3 questions with the Israel Aerospace Industries chief. “There’s more interest I would say, in Israel technology, especially in the radar scheme, than we see anywhere else from the United States.”
Fracturing of defense space: Army looks at cadets to bolster Army space force. “The Army currently has approximately 3,000 billets in its force of space-qualified professionals, including 285 active component FA40 space operations officers.”
Should we be worried about the lowered status of so-called experts? Inside a Trump-era purge of military scientists.
Everything We Know About the Air Force’s Secret X-37B Spaceplane. “The story of the X-37B starts in the 1990s, when NASA was studying cheaper alternatives to the Space Shuttle orbiter…”
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