SpaceX and US Army sign deal to test Starlink broadband for military use. “… the Army and SpaceX signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), an Army source told the news organization. This will allow the Army to use Starlink broadband in order to determine whether it should be rolled out for wider use.” They’re also discussing Starship… perhaps putting Army boots on the Moon?
Nuclear missile contractor hacked in Maze ransomeware attack. “… the land-based LGM-30 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) – has been kicked by hackers who’ve inflicted Maze ransomware on the computer network of a Northrup Grumman contractor.” The hackers are threatening to publish all the files.
US Army’s new drone swarm may be a weapon of mass destruction. “… a battery of nine launch vehicles would deliver a thousand killer drones over the target area, enough in theory to stop an entire armored division in its tracks.” See more on that here.
Navy Lacks ‘Clear Theory of Victory’ Needed to Build New Fleet, Experts Tell House Panel. Umm, someone needs to read their Luttwak, etc. A complete theory tells the enemy how to win. Need to hold many potentially conflicting theories. Operating concepts require experimentation. Navy needs to take a serious look at the interwar General Board for guidance on how it should experiment and build new systems.
Britain’s tempest fighter is going to leave the F-35 far behind. UK seeded “Team Tempest” with $2.6bn through 2020 for a sixth-gen fighter (optionally-manned, mounting hypersonics/lasers, and deploy drone swarms). Target to enter service in 2030s, but UK may not be able to bare the financial burden.
Pentagon’s coronavirus plan includes millions for missile tubes and body armor. “The department also received $10.5 billion in Cares Act funding to address the crisis, and had spent about $2.65 billion as of Wednesday afternoon… “The fact that this spending is happening now, five months after this crisis started, suggests the Defense Department is woefully unprepared for real biological warfare,” said Bill Greenwalt.”
GAO: Defense acquisition annual assessment: drive to deliver capabilities faster increases importance of program knowledge and consistent data for oversight. — In other words, if you want to go fast then you have to use waterfall processes, which stops you from going fast… just don’t go fast…
Combat drone to compete against piloted plane. Not clear which drone vs. which manned fighter. Perhaps Valkyrie. I doubt the Air Force would let it go up against an F-35 or F-22, even though that’s exactly what needs to happen. This was at the insistence of the JAIC’s director. One would think that military leaders would be eager to do fly-offs at every chance, because the worst thing that could happen is getting into a real combat scenario and discovering then what could happen.
Why the Pentagon Limited the F-35s supersonic flight. “The F-35C can fly at a top speed of Mach 1.3 for 50 cumulative seconds, while the F-35B is limited to 40 seconds at Mach 1.3. The version of the F-35 used by the U.S. Air Force, the F-35A, can fly without restriction on speed.”
Watchdog discovers problems with Navy jammers. The jammer pod for the mid-band of EM spectrum entered development in 2016 and is now 1 year and $400mn over. Software is a major problem (no surprise) as is finding qualified personnel (also, no surprise). Considering all this, shouldn’t the government pay premium wages to small teams to draw in such expertise? Complex software/hardware engineers should make more than Congressmen or senior bureaucrats, otherwise the taxpayers will end up paying far more for the same thing.
To compete with China, an internal Pentagon study looks to pour money into robot submarines. “… the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office recommended the Navy invest in as many as 50 extra-large unmanned underwater vehicles, or XLUUV… The Navy awarded a $43 million contract to Boeing for the first four Orca XLUUVs in February 2019.” I like that name: Orca. We’ll see how it goes. But this is definitely a sign that the major primes are horizontally integrating… Boeing as a shipbuilder!
Space Force thinking about NASA-style partnership with private companies. Interesting… ” talking about setting up a “space commodities exchange,” for example, where space services could be traded like commodities.”
Oh, by the way, DoD announces two defense production act Title 3 COVID-19 projects to support the Space Defense Industrial Base. $12.5mn for semiconductor production and $6mn for satellite solar array panels.
The Air Force’s goal: turn cargo planes into makeshift bombers. Reminds me of the Navy’s distributed lethality, putting missiles on anything that floats.
Team SPY-6: building the US Navy’s most advanced radar. “… more than 125 supply partners from 25 states contribute critical hardware components.”
What progress has the Navy made on IT modernization? Not much from the looks of it. NGEN-R bogged down in bid protest since last year — perhaps best that they rethink that effort.
New cyber office will unify NAVSEA’s Digital Efforts. A slice: “Moore explained that he as NAVSEA commander has to re-certify every system every three years, and that thousands of systems end up operating under interim approvals because they can’t get through the process in a timely manner.”
PEO C3T welcomes new leader, Brigadier General Robert M Collins.
LTG Deptula: US Space Force: Challenges and Opportunties. “… what needs to be resolved is the irony of the fact that while space-related intelligence agencies fought against their integration into the Space Force as part of its initial foundation, they are funded by the Air Force budget.”
Adaptive Acquisition Framework–Ready, Set, Contract? “The real gains may be seen in a closer coupling of the acquisition team functional communities. In today’s continuously changing environment, requirements can no longer be developed in a vacuum only to be thrown over the fence to the next team.”
Bell unveils manufacturing team for US Army FARA. Great, but can the Army afford the program to go into production?
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