JADC2 strategy to hit Milley’s desk in days. (Breaking Defense) “Just as important as the strategy itself, Crall and members of his J6 team explained during our hour-long discussion, is the Joint Cross-Functional Team (CFT) that will serve as kind of a broker between the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) and the services in implementing the strategy. Under a revised charter just approved last week, the officials said, the CFT will have a first-of-a kind role in ensuring that both requirements and acquisition plans align with the JADC2 strategy — including a say in de-conflicting competing service efforts and funding decisions.” No decision-making authority, but seems to be intended as a way of lighting a fire under the JROC to think differently.
Air Force buys streaming data warehouse for pathfinder, JADC2 concepts. (Nextgov) This looks like a huge win for crossing the so-called valley of death. The company, Kinetica, won a contract worth up to $100M over five years after a yearlong prototyping effort with DIU. The company will “pull together information from independent systems covering the air, land, sea, space and cyber domains to create models and visualizations that will improve situational awareness and allow operators to pinpoint threats to the homeland quickly.”
Northrop CEO forecasts ‘more consolidation’ for defense sector. (Defense News) “There will also be more new entrants, and so it’s hard to say there will be fewer players, but the ones that exist today will likely continue to consolidate as we have seen in recent years and we’ve seen in other cycles.” New entrants of course is a valid argument for consolidation of older firms if it doesn’t represent overall consolidation. But the new entrants aren’t a real threat yet if you look at total obligations, so that justification is premature.
Culture, not tech, is obstacle to JADC2: JAIC. (Breaking Defense) “You can’t just sprinkle AI on all these legacy systems and expect them to work and talk together….That’s not how it works.”
A sharper approach to China’s military-civil fusion strategy begins by dispelling myths. (Defense One) “Only a limited (but gradually growing) proportion of China’s high-tech enterprises are actively or openly engaged in supporting the military. The success or failure of MCF will turn on Beijing’s ability to entice Chinese company participation. Those who would seek “decoupling” entirely or indiscriminately should recognize such a response is likely to make Beijing’s task easier.”
Center for Government Contracting to produce acquisition playbook. (Inside Defense) “George Mason University’s Center for Government Contracting announced earlier this year it has undertaken a new research project to produce an acquisition playbook identifying best practices.”
The connected battlespace, part two: The fault in our (joint) stars. (Ars Technica) Hard to excerpt, but a nice background. “The Army has spent $2.7 billion to develop IBCS and is expected to start deploying it in 2023. Like ABMS, IBCS has evolved from a single purpose to a broader platform play. Originally intended to be for air and missile defenses only (and integrated into the Patriot missile system for that purpose), IBCS is now intended to be the basis for what the Army refers to as “integrated fires”—putting missiles, rockets, and artillery shells on targets.”
An engine shortage is the newest problem to hit the F-35 enterprise. (Defense News) Two problems, first maintenance is taking longer than scheduled, and second, “maintainers are discovering “premature distress of rotor blade coatings” in a “small number” of engine power modules, creating more repair work and contributing to the backlog… By 2022, roughly 5 to 6 percent of the F-35 fleet could be without engines.”
Senators reintroduce bipartisan bill to increase transparency of federal spending. (Government Executive) “If enacted, the legislation would require all federal agencies to post their congressional budget justifications on their websites. The Office of Management and Budget would have to create a public website to house all links to budget justifications and the Treasury Department would be required to post the agencies’ budget documents on USAspending.gov.”
‘The system worked as designed’ is bad news. (Defense News) “It took a full year for the service to design, approve and distribute a face mask — called a Combat Cloth Face Covering, or CCFC — for its soldiers, an effort that required an additional $43.5 million in contracts to provide temporary solutions. That comes out to about $45 per mask, if you assume every active-duty, National Guard and Reserve soldier received one. A pack of 20 N95 masks at Home Depot costs about $20.” The article makes a hard turn into strategy after that.
Design gets underway on DARPA’s ‘LongShot’ Drone. (Air Force Magazine) “The objective is to develop a novel [unmanned air vehicle] that can significantly extend engagement ranges, increase mission effectiveness, and reduce the risk to manned aircraft,” DARPA said in a release. “It is envisioned that LongShot will increase the survivability of manned platforms by allowing them to be at standoff ranges far away from enemy threats, while an air-launched LongShot UAV efficiently closes the gap to take more effective missile shots.” GA, LM, and NG are designing the first phase.
More on that: DARPA is developing aircraft launched missile-like drones that fire their own air-to-air missiles. (The Warzone) “It’s not clear whether DARPA intends for the LongShot vehicle to be recoverable and/or reusable in any way under any circumstances… Plans for LongShot had emerged last year in the Pentagon’s budget request for the 2021 Fiscal Year, which asked for $22 million, in total… That same request also included $13.27 million for a proposed gun-armed air-launched drone effort called Gunslinger.”
Oshkosh hits 10,000 JLTVs. (Breaking Defense) 10K in 5 years under the government’s cost estimate as a plea to the Army to continue the full 50K+ program despite budget pressures. According to the FY19 SAR, the current estimate PAUC and APUC decreased 12.6% since the 2012 baseline. That’s down from $418K per JLTV to $365. Army is threatening to recompete the JLTV using Oshkosh’s IP data.
Pentagon science office launches program to develop manufacturing in space… and on the moon. (C4ISRNET) “With NOM4D, DARPA will work with participants over three 18-month phases to develop precise, mass efficient structures that could be used for on-orbit construction. Each phase will focus on one of three applications: large solar arrays, large radio frequency reflector antennas, and segmented infrared reflective optics.”
Secretive new skunk works UAS set for ground testing soon. (Aviation Week) “A secretive new unmanned aircraft system (UAS) designed by the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is poised to enter ground testing “imminently,” a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman said on Feb. 11. The UAS known only as “Speed Racer” is awaiting the pending delivery of engines supplied by Technical Directions Inc. (TDI).”
Flight Test Safety Channel podcast. EP13 – Focus on Flight Testing Autonomous Vehicles and AI (Part 1). “This month we talk to a panel of testers from Edwards AFB who are testing autonomy, autonomous vehicles and AI today.”
DoD space agency launching experiments in preparation for 2022 satellite deployments. (Space News) “Tournear said he persuaded the Pentagon leadership that SDA could get satellites under $20 million apiece. Prices in fact are getting lower than that, he said. The contracts awarded last year for Transport Layer satellites were priced at just over $14 million each. “So it really shows that, yes, in fact, this is believable. This can be done at an affordable cost.””
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