DoD developing new ways to fund agile software development. ““What I want to see is tangible output,” she said. “And what I think our new software pathway allows us to do is to get going quickly and not, sort of, admire the problem for long amounts of time.”
Hillary Clinton takes shot at F-35 program, urges retirement of old Air Force planes. Here’s her article: A national security reckoning. “Among the highest priorities must be to modernize the United States’ defense capabilities. In particular, moving away from costly legacy weapons systems built for a world that no longer exists.” She favors B-21s over F-35s.
Army tripled OTA prototyping to $4.8B in just 3 years: GAO. “But GAO is an auditing organization, and there’s a strong strain of caution in its culture that often conflicts with Congress and the military’s desire to move faster. When in doubt, GAO studies always call for more study.”
Perhaps a canary in the coal mine, Congress may push back on OTAs: Call for administration’s Covid-19 vaccine contracts to be disclosed. “Trump administration’s crash coronavirus vaccine program awarded more than $6 billion in vaccine contracts through a third party called Advanced Technology International. The contracts executed this way aren’t required to include taxpayer protections found in traditional government contracts.”
New document reveals scope and structure of operation warp speed and underscores vast military involvement. “Under Slaoui are two major pillars, “Vaccine” and “Therapeutics.” Under Perna are three pillars, for “Plans, Ops and Analysis,” “Security and Assurance,” and “Supply, Production and [Distribution].””
Unfavorable views of China reach historic highs in many countries. Check out the charts, disapproval of China rapidly increasing across advanced nations. Sweden, Australia, and Japan are the most suspicious. I’d like to see the results for nations like Vietnam, Phillipines, India, and so forth.
New book — Adaptation under fire: how militaries change in wartime. “In stark contrast to the Germans, in the French army there was “no large-scale examination of the lessons of the last war by a significant portion of the officers corps.”
Air Force’s secret new fighter jet could pack this highly classified tech. “One wildcard could be optical stealth, or the ability to essentially make NGAD aircraft invisible to the human eye.” And here’s more on that: Introduction to the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance Program. “There appears little reason to assume that NGAD is going to yield a plane the size that one person sits in, and that goes out and dogfights kinetically, trying to outturn another plane—or that sensors and weapons have to be on the same aircraft.”
DARPA moves ahead with futuristic “sea train” convoy system. “… intended to demonstrate long range deployment capabilities for a fleet of tactical unmanned surface vessels.”
How a small group of Marines is advancing modernization with coding. “The group was modeled after a similar organization in the Air Force, Airmen Coders. The Marine Corps’ iteration was founded after Chew and Hutcheon spent time with the Air Force’s Platform One DevSecOps team.”
Making Bones: Air Force to develop digital twin of B-1 for damage protection. “Right now we are in a very reactive state when the B-1 has an issue,” said Lt. Col. Joseph Lay, Material Leader, B-1 Engineering Branch. “For example, if we find a crack on the [B-1] fleet, we then have to go and develop the repair, which isn’t the way you want to be. You want to already have the repair on the shelf, so that when you need it, it’s there. The digital twin will help us get to that point.”
Pentagon announces $600M in 5G experiments. “We’re basically trying to make our forces more survivable by taking command and control functions that have long been housed in single buildings and spread them out and make them mobile.”
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