The Department of Defense releases the President’s FY 2022 Defense Budget. (DoD) And don’t forget the Acquisition Costs by Weapon System.
New DOD budget seeks modernization boost, cuts procurement and divests ‘outdated’ systems. (Inside Defense) “The Air Force wants to divest 42 A-10 aircraft, 48 F-15C/Ds, 20 RQ-4 Block 30 Global Hawks, 18 KC-135s, 14 KC-10s, eight CH-130Hs and four E-8 aircraft for a total of $1.4 billion saved in FY-22, with additional savings expected in the future once the systems are gone… The Navy is proposing to decommission four Littoral Combat Ships, two cruisers, one landing dock vessel, and accelerate its divestment of all F/A-18A/D aircraft for total of $1.2 billion saved in FY-22.” Army request is down $1.4B, Navy up $4.6B, and Air Force up $8.8B.
Biden seeks $2 billion funding boost for US Space Force. (Space News) “The $17.4 billion request for the Space Force does not include $930 million for personnel costs that are funded in the Air Force’s budget. The Space Force would grow by about 2,000 people in 2022… Launch services are a major winner in the Space Force’s procurement budget.”
Biden requests less than 1% boost to Pentagon R&D, despite hyping new defense tech. (Defense One) “If inflation stays around 4 percent, the Defense Department’s 2022 request for $112 billion for research, development, test, and engineering would be about 0.6 percent more than the $107 billion requested for the current fiscal year. That follows several years of larger increases in research dollars.”
Biden’s budget cuts ships, planes, but huge boost to R&D. (Breaking Defense) “$5.5 billion increase in research and development accounts and an $8 billion cut in procurement… “Critically, we reallocate resources to fund research and development in advanced technologies such as micro-electronics. This will provide the foundation for fielding a full range of capabilities, such as hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, and 5G.” [DepSecDef Hicks said.]”
Pentagon tech chief nominee wants more upfront funding for programs. (Fed Scoop) “”Today, sustainment makes up 70% of total weapon system cost, with development and procurement making up 30%. DOD should strive to flip this ratio”… The two-year budgeting cycle has hit software acquisition especially hard, as code needs frequent updates to patch security flaws and bugs.”
ABMS grows up: Air Force shifts focus to delivering kit. (Breaking Defense) “The first “package” of ABMS capabilities to be fielded will be a new pod-based communications system for the KC-46, enabling the tanker to serve as a kind of flying cell tower between the incompatible radio systems of the F-22 and F-35 fighters. That system will be fielded sometime in the last quarter of fiscal year 2022… Nor will the RCO’s future “Capabilities Release” packages necessarily map the list of “products” — such as cloudONE or gatewayONE — the Air Force previously identified as part of ABMS.”
US Navy conducts first live-first test of hypersonic missile motor. (Defense News) “The first stage SRM [solid rocket motor] will be part of a new missile booster for the services, and will be combined with a Common Hypersonic Glide Body (CHGB) to create the common hypersonic missile. Each service will use the common hypersonic missile, while developing individual weapon systems and launchers tailored for launch from sea or land,” a Navy news release said.
Air Force DevStar: Agile software development and innovation for the B-21 bomber. (Breaking Defense) “Last year, the former [SAF/AQ] praised our independent research and development demonstration where we ran cloud-native open mission-systems software with Kubernetes on flight-ready hardware. In addition, we recently completed a major mission system suite demonstration on the B-21 where we flew real hardware and software in an operationally representative environment.” [The “Star” in DevStar refers to unique aspects like security, airworthiness, and nuclear weapons certification.]
Air Force fighters’ mission capable rates rise in 2020. (Air Force Magazine) “The F-35A’s mission capable rate leaped from 61.6 percent in fiscal ’19 to 76.07 percent in FY ’20… The F-22A scored only a slight improvement in fiscal 2020 over the previous year, with a rate of 51.98 percent versus 50.57 percent in FY’19. The Air Force recently signaled that it will begin phasing out the F-22 circa 2030 due to the small size.”
Ramjet shells could triple artillery range. (Breaking Defense) “The new XM1113 Rocket Assisted Projectile goes… 70 km (44 miles) from the XM1299 Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) now in development. But to break triple digits – 100 kilometers (62 miles) and more – you can’t rely on rockets: You need something much more powerful, like a ramjet.”
F-15s clear the way for F-35s during USAF coordinated electronic attack tests. (Auto Evolution) “During the tests, the EPAWSS on the F-15 was used to create clutter and extra jamming (signal interference), so that the F-35 operating around the same time would be able to get even closer to the enemy, without being detected by sensors and without having to use its own radars.”
Space Force warned to avoid past mistakes as it pursues new satellite acquisitions. (Space News) “While I have optimism, I also am faced with the reality that some recent decisions look to be ‘more of the same’ and across the space acquisition community there is reticence to any change,” [Representative Jim] Cooper said.
A warning to DoD: Russia advances quicker than expected on AI, battlefield tech. (C4ISRNET) ““This is a different military than the ones that existed prior to 2009 and going forward it’s going to become more high tech [and] more integrated”… It’s a different approach than tactics of the past for Russia, which struggled to “see” the battlefield and rather relied on “brute force” with its arsenal of tanks and artillery, said Jeffrey Edmonds.
Sikorsky’s new president readies for next-gen vertical lift competition. (Defense News) “Certainly we had this vision of scalability so that while the exact part may not be common, the technology is absolutely common. If you have Raider at 12,000 pounds versus Defiant at 33,000 pounds, you fly them the same way, you maintain them very similarly, and you get that commonality.” [In Army’s FVL: Raider is competing for the Future Attack Recon. Aircraft and the Defiant, built with Boeing, is for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program.]
Falcon Heavy’s first national security launch slips to October. (Spaceflight Now) [Slips by three months.] “The Falcon Heavy will deliver multiple military payloads to a high-altitude geosynchronous orbit on the USSF-44 mission. The rocket’s upper stage will fire several times to place the satellites into position more than 22,000 miles above the equator.”
Navy says it’s charting a new course after rash of problems. (AP News) “The Navy’s problem, as Thompson sees it, is that leaders rushed ambitious new ship classes to production and started construction before designs were finalized and technology fully tested… aging ships — 60% of today’s fleet was commissioned in 2001 or before — has caused maintenance and operation costs to grow at a time when the Navy wants to spend on new ships and research. It would take 4.1% in annual funding growth to boost the fleet to 355 ships within about a decade.”
Aevum announces all-in-one drone for satellite launches, cargo delivery and surveillance. (C4ISRNET) “Skylus noted that Ravn X can carry 15,000 pounds of payload. A Global Hawk can carry 3,000 pounds. Aevum doesn’t expect Ravn X to replace the dedicated mission drones the U.S. currently relies on, but to provide a new modular option that can overcome several logistics challenges.”
Reativity Space: 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50. (CNBC) “Relativity Space uses enormous 3D printers and an in-house metal-making process to build 95% of the parts that go into its next-generation rockets… Eventually, Relativity says its simpler process will be able to turn raw materials into a rocket on the launchpad in under 60 days… Relativity’s first rocket, Terran 1, is expected to launch for the first time later this year. Terran 1 is priced at $12 million per launch and is designed to carry about 1,250 kilograms to low Earth orbit.”
How users drove GSA’s design of new acquisition platform. (Federal News Network) “GSA received more than 35,000 pieces of feedback already from customers, and the landing pages have gone through 50 different iterations to improve design and functionality through user experience and feedback mechanisms… Another big change GSA is getting industry and agencies ready for is the move away from the DUNS number and to the Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), which will be the standards starting in April 2022.”
DoD inspector general: Air Force mismanagement led to $100M KC-46 boom redesign. (Defense News) “In the years leading up to 2018… Air Force program officials continuously reduced flight testing requirements, the Department of Defense IG wrote in a May 21 report… the KC-46 boom had trouble refueling C-17s during tests.”
GAO report identifies technical and management risks with Artemis. (Space News) “Given that NASA has chosen not to designate Artemis as a formal program, which would follow NASA’s program management policy, the agency lacks a finalized roadmap for how it plans to manage the effort… contractors proposed only four mature technologies out of a total of 11 critical technologies at the time of the base contract award,” the GAO stated.
The cost of cloud, a trillion dollar paradox. (a16z) “In 2017, Dropbox detailed in its S-1 a whopping $75M in cumulative savings over the two years prior to IPO due to their infrastructure optimization overhaul, the majority of which entailed repatriating workloads from public cloud.”
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