Air Force moving project maven into advanced battle management system portfolio. That’s nearly doubling ABMS’s FY21 request, with Maven’s Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Team at over $250M. Not clear if they are merging the program elements or just aligning them in another way. Perhaps the Air Force wants to pull some excess Maven funds into ABMS work, which the HAC-D is planning to cut.
AI slays top F-16 pilot in DARPA dogfight simulation. Elon Musk is partially vindicated for what he said at the Air Warfare Symposium. “In a 5 to 0 sweep, an AI ‘pilot’ developed by Heron Systems beat one of the Air Force’s top F-16 fighter pilots.”
US-Australia bid for China Fee rare earth faces challenges. “Australian rare-earth mining company Lynas announced that it has signed a first-phase contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to build a Texas processing facility.”
Navy quietly starts development of next-generation carrier fighter; plans call for manned long-range aircraft. “The Navy plans to seek a wholly new design… the Navy said it would save $4.5 billion across its five-year budget plan and put the funds toward the NGAD effort.”
Palantir to relocate headquarters from silicon valley to colorado. “Karp said he was against the “increasing intolerance and monoculture of Silicon Valley.”
Palantir reportedly lost $580 million in 2019 and plans lockup after direct listing. “… its 2019 loss was on a par with 2018, even though it earned 25% more for a total of $724.5 million in revenue for the year… TechCrunch said its biggest expense was the $450 million it spent on sales and marketing.” No doubt, they had a sweet booth at A-USA last year. But I think all in on marketing is what they’ll have to do to get traction in DoD, and they can’t expense all that to contracts yet.
US Army wants to transform soldiers into walking radar detectors. “The system should be able to determine the angle from which the radar beam is coming, as well as the location of the emitter.”
How F-35 Middle East deployments are shaping future ops. Not exactly what the F-35 was built for… or is it? “Iranian and Russian officials claimed after the attack, six U.S. F-35s were tracked flying near its borders.”
The Minuteman III, designed for 10 years of use, celebrates its 50th anniversary. “The ICBMs, weighing in at 79,000 pounds and capable of speeds over 15,000 mph, are the nation’s “ace in the hole.” Requires over 10K airmen to stand watch.
The Battle for Mon Cala: Getting the Miltiary to Deliver its own Tech Solutions. Love to see more of this, and not just for software. “The Defense Department’s first instinct is to pay a vendor to “transfer” current software to the cloud, rather than redirecting talent internally to build applications in a cloud-based environment.”
The Pentagon is failing to scale emerging technology, senior leaders say. “The overarching story is a pretty bad one, and is heading in a worse direction,” said Chris Brose.
Geurts: Navy modernization at risk without COVID-19 acquisition relief funds. “… with the Navy asking for nearly $4.7 billion in relief funding and the Pentagon requesting approximately $10.8 billion.”
Flournoy: Next defense secretary needs ‘big bets’ to boost ‘eroding’ deterrence. “… you probably need to buy fewer legacy forces in order to invest in the technologies that will actually make the force that you keep more relevant.”
DARPA wants a new way to upgrade old code and decouple it from hardware. The program “is focused on “(re)engineering” legacy software instead of “clean-slate introduction.””
Navy information warfare project received $400 million funding boost. Went from $100M to now $500M. “In the last 18 months, the IWRP has released more than 800 prototyping opportunities, according to the NAVWAR press release. The consortium has more than 580 partners.”
Hungarian armed forces establish joint venture with Rheinmetall to produce Lynx infantry fighting vehicle. “… worth over two billion euros to modernize the country’s defence industry and military capabilities.”
Procurement & KPIs: the risk of putting all eggs in one basket. “Big question is whether virus will lead to real change in supply chain strategies or will prove to be just a blip in business as usual.”
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