US Army cancels current effort to replace Bradley vehicle. Is Congess purposefully underfunding Section 804 MTA programs? “Last month, Congress hacked funding for the OMFV prototyping program, providing $205.6 million in fiscal 2020, a reduction of $172.8 million, which would have made it impossible to conduct a competitive prototyping effort.” Next-Gen OPIR was cut from about $1.4 billion request in FY2020 down to near $900 million. At any rate, only one contractor bid on OMFV, so there were greater problems afoot.
Navy CNO Fires First Budget Salvo: ‘We Need More Money’ Than Army, Air Force. It’s interesting that the Marines share of Navy budget climbed a lot in recent years after the drawdown and pivot to the Pacific. Perhaps internal budget battles between the CNO and Commandant are spilling over.
Army responds: Hey, We Already Get Less $$ Than You. David Deptula responding for Air Force: IC Costs Mean Air Force Gets Short Straw.”While service in-fighting for budget share is a perennial fact of political life, this year’s version resembles the fictional, to-the-death “Hunger Games.””
CMMC Commentary: Does the Defense Department’s New Approach to Industrial Base Cybersecurity Create More Problems Than It Solves?
The Case Against Huawei. Recommended. Its founder was a high ranking PLA officer. The company is 99% owned by the state. Huawei may not be the technological leader in 5G, but it still is a national security risk.
Space Force organization chart, courtesy of Timothy Cox on LinkedIn.
F-35 logistics system to be reinvented and renamed, official says. It’s OK again to start naming your daughter Alice. A slice: “One Air Force unit estimated that it spent the equivalent of more than 45,000 hours per year performing additional tasks and manual workarounds because ALIS was not functioning as needed,” the GAO said in a November report.
Northrop Grumman gets a new logo.
SpaceX continues to blast satellites into orbit as the space community worries. Too many satellites, perhaps?
Five Things You Should Know about Cost Overrun. One of the authors is Bent Flyvbjerg, so definitely recommended.
Army pitch day: Austin-Based Futures Command Seeks Techies To Help Modernize.
What Have You Delivered? Point: “Every PEO and SAE should publish an annual report that specifies what systems and solutions were delivered.” Agree, more needs to be done in after-the-fact accountability. But should be balanced with more freedom to divert budgets to alternative uses. So fewer before-the-fact controls, more after-the-fact check ups on who delivered what.
Chinese navy commissions first fourth generation destroyer. It was launched 3.5 years ago. Key features: “Having a displacement of more than 10,000 tons, the Type 055 is a 180-meter-long, 20-meter-wide guided missile destroyer with 112 vertical launch missile cells capable of launching a combination of surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, land-attack missiles and anti-submarine missiles.”
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