Russia’s increasing military flights around Alaska are ‘a strain on our units,’ top US commander says. (Business Insider) “As a matter of fact, the highest activity we’ve had since the fall of the Soviet Union occurred last year.. We intercepted over 60 aircraft last year in and around the Alaska ADIZ. We monitor more than that,” Krumm said Wednesday, adding that F-22 fighter jets, E-3 early warning and control aircraft, and KC-135 tankers are typically involved.
FVL: Don’t pick the tiltrotor, V-22 test pilot tells Army. (Breaking Defense) “While tiltrotors offer superior high-altitude cruise performance, that’s less relevant to future high-intensity warfare where Army aircraft will have to stay low to avoid advanced anti-aircraft defenses. Also ,the compound helicopter is more agile at low altitude, hovers better at high altitudes in hot weather, and can maintain tighter formations.”
Blue Origin protests NASA human landing system award. (Space News) “Blue Origin filed a protest… arguing the agency “moved the goalposts” of the competition [and] claimed that in addition to not giving companies the opportunity to change their proposals to reflect the agency’s reduced budget for HLS, NASA improperly evaluated aspects of its proposal as well as the one by SpaceX… NASA requested $3.3 billion for HLS in its fiscal year 2021 budget proposal but received only $850 million.”
Point Blank throws hat in ring to design US Army’s Bradley replacement. (Defense News) “Companies like Mettle Ops and Point Blank are the underdogs, but there’s room for them to play as the service plans to choose up to five teams to produce preliminary designs… The service plans to spend $4.6 billion from FY22 through FY26 on OMFV, so it is turning to industry input earlier and more than ever.”
Here’s the tech that will define the Air Force’s secret new fighter jet. (Popular Mechanics) “In a recent webinar, engineers at Raytheon Intelligence & Space revealed they believe the next generation of fighters will be defined by several new technologies, including just one large transmitter that acts as an air-to-air radar, air-to-ground radar, radio, and electronic warfare platform. A single system controlled by software would replace several different systems, switching between tasks as needed… sixth-gen fighters will also include self-landing systems.”
Biden nominee for Pentagon weapons buyer under investigation. (Defense One) “In a formal complaint to the Pentagon’s inspector general, Bob Ingegneri, who resigned as DIU’s chief financial officer in May 2020, identified a half-dozen employees, including himself, who he said had received special treatment, such as having job descriptions specifically tailored to their skillset to eliminate other applicants… Ingegneri also alleges other potential violations.”
Biden to nominate Frank Kendall as Air Force secretary. (Defense News) “Kendall is best known as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official during the Obama administration from 2012 to 2016. As undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, he wrote a series of “Better Buying Power” initiatives aimed at reforming the acquisition process to make it more agile.”
Higher speed could lead to more protests on defense contracts, says former Defense Department official. (Government Matters) “Frank Kendall said an urge to go faster with acquisition could cause sloppiness and increase the chances of protests. Developing a good request for proposal, acquisition strategy and evaluation rules from the start can reduce the possibility of protests, Kendall advised.”
Here’s our first look at the USMC’s NMESIS: NSM being launched from an unmanned JLTV. (Naval News) “NSM is a multi-mission cruise missile designed to destroy heavily defended maritime and land targets; it is the U.S. Navy’s over-the-horizon weapon system for littoral combat ships and future frigate… The Marines will use NMESIS to support the U.S. Navy from the shore against enemy ships. NSM has an operational range of 185 Km (100 nautical miles) and a high subsonic speed. It uses Inertial, GPS and terrain-reference navigation and imaging infrared homing (with a target database aboard the missile).”
The Marines are already ditching their young RQ-21 Blackjack drones. (The Drive) “At present, the Marines have around 21 complete RQ-21 “systems,” which typically consist of five drones, as well as various supporting equipment on the ground… “We need to transition from our current UAS platforms to capabilities that can operate from ship, from shore, and able to employ both collection and lethal payloads,” Berger had added in the Force Design 2030 document last year.”
A Navy destroyer teamed up with drones to hit a ship 250 miles away. (Popular Mechanics) “The John Finn, acting on targeting data provided by uncrewed air and sea platforms, struck a simulated target at more than 250 miles. The use of drones for targeting purposes will allow the Navy to detect, track, and destroy enemy targets at long distance without exposing friendly ships to enemy sensors.”
How cloud computing makes joint all-domain command and control possible. (C4ISRNET) “So, you know, whatever happens with JEDI will happen. [It’s] clearly not within our control here. … But make no mistake for the capacity argument, we’re going to need an enterprise-level capability to get after this for the war fight we need…. But there’s laws of physics in terms of what you can actually process on the SWaP [size, weight and power] of those different sensors, bandwidth, latency, so tactical cloud is going to be that real important piece of bridge… Remotely accessible tools would also reduce that amount of clunky hardware that war fighters have to lug to the battlefield.”
The B-21 Raider is on time and on budget. That’s a miracle. (Popular Mechanics) Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, recently said the B-21 is “on time, on budget, and they’re making it work in a very intelligent way”… While the B-21 has slipped a tiny bit—the first Raider was supposed to fly in December 2021, and it’s now scheduled for sometime in 2022… The Air Force plans to buy 100 B-21s, but would really like 220 of the bombers.”
China simultaneously commissions three warships on Navy anniversary. (Defense News) “… putting into service a new nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, a guided-missile cruiser and an amphibious helicopter carrier on the 72nd anniversary of its Navy… Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the ceremony.”
Biden budget delay blows up Hill defense schedule. (Defense News) “Adam Smith, D-Wash., warned that the White House’s sluggish release of its budget plans are endangering Congress’ ability to finish budget work before the start of the new fiscal year, Oct. 1, 2021. That suggests Washington will have to deploy a stopgap continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown… Data over the last three decades shows a ripple effect: When the budget has been more than a week late, defense appropriations have been an average of 110 days late.”
Army briefs industry on future air and ground standards. (Breaking Defense) “The Common Modular Open Architecture will establish unified standards for a wide range of future air and ground vehicles, allowing them to share components…The goal is a single set of meta-standards linking all these different types of components and vehicles… But it is likely to be a crushing blow for manufacturers that rely on “vendor lock,” selling tightly integrated proprietary tech that competitors can’t upgrade.”
What focus areas are key to America’s future space capabilities? (Defense News) “The [SDA’s] Tranche 1 satellites will be part of what will eventually become a 300-500 satellite LEO transport layer that will move data across the architecture. Once finalized, the transport layer will provide “low latency data connectivity; data directly to weapons; and data disseminated to the theatre.” It will serve as the backbone of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control program and future concepts of all-domain operations.”
Army fields first anti-aircraft Strykers in just 3 years. (Breaking Defense) “The Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (MSHORAD) Strykers are armored 8×8 vehicles fitted with an autocannon and a missile launcher capable of firing Hellfires or Stingers… But after witnessing the deadly impact of Russian drones in the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, the Army realized it needed to urgently rebuild its Short-Range Air Defense (SHORAD) units, particularly in Europe.”
The Pentagon reportedly hired a small company to manage its IP addresses to find security issues. (KTLA) “The military hopes to “assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space,” said a statement issued Friday by Brett Goldstein, chief of the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service, which is running the project… Some cybersecurity experts have speculated that the Pentagon may be using the newly advertised space to create “honeypots,” machines set up with vulnerabilities to draw hackers… “It’s deeply suspicious,””
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