The US military’s future: waves of killer drone swarms. (1945) “300-Plus Swarm Drones Just Flew In This DARPA Test: One drone armed with a missile or a bomb can take out a tank or a building…. You can get a glimpse of this in a video of the latest test (see below) of DARPA’s Offensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) project, the Pentagon’s bid to use develop autonomous robots that operate in hordes. The video includes footage of about 10 quadcopters circling a target, a hobby-sized model airplane weaving through urban streets, and columns of little four-wheel ground robots lined up on a road… “The swarm systems consist of an extensible game-based architecture that enables the design and integration of swarm tactics.”” [Raytheon and Northrop are the two selected integrators.]
Pacific Deterrence Initiative: A look at funding in the new defense bill, and what must happen now. (Defense News) “By pulling that information together in a consolidated budget display, PDI was meant to increase transparency, identify key Indo-Pacific investments… its first attempt to craft PDI, the Pentagon floundered — doubling down on platform investments at the expense of joint and enabling capabilities. Funding for one destroyer, one fleet oiler and F-35 upgrades accounted for nearly three quarters of the initiative… Top Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees said the Pentagon had “entirely missed the point” of the PDI.”
Biden taps former NRO official Frank Calvelli to run Space Force acquisitions. (Space News) “Calvelli worked for 30 years at the National Reconnaissance Office and in September joined the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to lead the company’s space and intelligence programs… From July 2012 to October 2020, he was the principal deputy director of the NRO.”
Navy starts building hub for surface, subsurface drones. (Breaking Defense) “The Navy has announced new plans for a “purpose-built” facility at its warfare center in Port Hueneme, Calif., dedicated to testing its latest unmanned surface and subsurface vehicles… [Capt. Pete] Small’s office is also spearheading the Rapid Autonomy Integration Lab, a software factory that will be responsible for ensuring the various technologies and capabilities intertwined in the unmanned fleet will operate together seamlessly.
US Marine commandant: fund ‘force design 2030’ or leave the corps in a ‘lurch’. (Defense News) ““I think this is the deciding point where, in the [Pentagon] and in Congress, are they willing to back an organization … that is willing to accept risk, willing to move at speed, willing to discard legacy things, learn as fast as we can — are they going to support and enable that to occur or not… Amphibious lift is chief among these issues, he said… Berger said he’d go as far as sacrificing manpower to get the light amphibious warships… LAW was supposed to move from research and development into acquisition in FY22, but the project was bumped from the budget — not because of development delays but simply as a budgetary decision.” [In Force Design 2030, the Marines want to] shed capabilities like tanks, bridging companies, artillery and more, and instead used that money to pay for mobile anti-ship missiles, unmanned vehicles, sensors and electronic warfare tools for a scouting/counter-scouting competition, and more.”
USS Portland tests high energy laser weapon system in Gulf of Aden. (DVIDS) “During the demonstration, the Solid State Laser – Technology Maturation Laser Weapons System Demonstrator (LWSD) Mark 2 MOD 0 aboard Portland successfully engaged a static surface training target. Portland previously tested the LWSD in May 2020 when it successfully disabled a small unmanned aerial system while operating in the Pacific Ocean.”
First warp bubble accidentally opened by DARPA. (Stealth Optional) “Creating a real-life Warp Drive has technically been possible with known physics for a while. In 1994, Mexican mathematician Miguel Alcubierre devised a method that could allow for space travel without shattering physics. However, the proposed Alcubierre Drive was far too energy intensive to even be properly tested. White’s recent bubble has accidentally been formed in a method similar to that of Alcubierre’s proposal. As it stands, the bubble’s negative energy density distribution matches the mathematicians written requirements… As the manifested bubble is incredibly small, White has proposed attempting to create a nano-sized craft that can move they the bubble.
SpinLaunch: company hurls satellites into space using giant, spinning machine. (Big Think) “I find that the more audacious and crazy the project is, the better off you are just working on it — rather than being out there talking about it,” he told CNBC. “We had to prove to ourselves that we could actually pull this off.”… On October 22, SpinLaunch used a vacuum-sealed “suborbital accelerator” taller than the Statue of Liberty to spin a 10-foot-long projectile on a rotating arm until it reached a speed in the “many thousands of miles an hour.”… SpinLaunch says its approach will be 10 times cheaper and require 4 times less fuel than what’s currently used to put payloads of its size into orbit. It also produces “zero emissions in the most critical layers of the atmosphere.””
US military looking to build lasting relationships with commercial space industry. (Space News) “The U.S. government is not the only government around the world that sees the explosion in innovation that is possible to leverage.” …“Traditionally we’ve augmented bespoke custom solutions with commercial capability when we needed to,” he said. “We’re trying to flip that a little bit for certain missions, where we look at the commercial landscape that’s out there and see how much of the requirement we can meet with that first.” … Aerospace, a federally funded research and development firm that advises U.S. government agencies, created an organization inside the company initiative called Commercial Space Futures to serve as a bridge between the government and new commercial entrants… As a nonprofit, Aerospace can operate as a gatekeeper on behalf of the government.”
Pentagon watchdog: US should insist TransDigm refund $20 million in ‘excess profit’. (Defense News) “The latest IG report, publicly released Monday, found TransDigm made $20.8 million in excess profit on 105 spare parts on 150 contracts. Multiple audit reports over the past 23 years have highlighted the problem of the DoD paying excess profits on sole‑source contracts where cost analysis was not used to determine fair and reasonable prices and this problem continues to occur,” the report said.”
Skyrocketing shipbuilding costs continue as estimate puts icebreaker price at $7.25 billion (MSN) [For two icebreakers]… “That represents a dramatic increase over the government’s most recent estimate, released back in 2013, that it would cost $1.3 billion to build one such vessel…. he plan to have the two ships built at different shipyards — Seaspan Shipyards in Vancouver and Quebec-based Chantier Davie — will add between $600 million and $800 million to the overall cost… the first icebreaker could be ready in 2030 while the second could be delivered the following year.”
The tyranny of low price of other challenges. (Federal News Network) “The tyranny of low price (TLP), that is, the obsessive focus on the price over the solution delivered, is a direct threat to the PMA’s [presidential management agenda] goals. TLP ignores the value of delivering to the government solutions that are responsive and enhance mission performance and overall capabilities. By so doing, it limits access to the spectrum of commercial innovation from the private sector.”
A to-do list for the Pentagon’s new AI chief. (Defense One) “Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks’ office announced on Dec. 8 that all three organizations [DDS, CDO, and JAIC] will be collapsed under a new position called the Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer… The move also reduces the personnel and strategic deconfliction burden on the DepSec. Perhaps most importantly, it also reduces bureaucratic confusion on who “owns” the execution of the department’s artificial intelligence vision.”
DISA is ending milCloud 2.0 in June. (Fed Scoop) “Lead contractor General Dynamics IT and DISA confirmed to FedScoop that the agency has decided not to renew the contract when it expires in June 2022… While GDIT led the operations under the contract, it managed a range of cloud service and tech providers including AWS, Red Hat and others… Meanwhile, DOD is looking to acquire commercial-based enterprise cloud capabilities, developing a multi-cloud, multi-vendor contract under the new Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability (JWCC) program.“
GAO: NSA erred in technical evaluations of $10 billion cloud contract. (NextGov) “The NSA awarded the contract, code-named “WildandStormy,” on July 7 to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft subsequently challenged the award on numerous grounds… Specifically, the protester contends that the agency’s evaluation was based on a flawed and unreasonable reading of the proposal,” GAO said… the NSA erred in reviewing Microsoft’s proposal due in part to agency evaluators’ “unreasonable interpretation” for how the company proposed to onboard top secret commercial services and features.”
As 2022 NDAA is on its way to becoming law, here are some details on what’s in it. (Federal News Network) “The bill authorizes nearly $770 billion for the military… The White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director gets a boost in the defense authorization bill… Inglis said he wants the office to grow to about 75 staff by fall of 2022.”
Ajax acquisition debacle prompts legal probe at UK Defence Ministry. (Defense News) “the contract to build 589 across six variants of the Ajax, at a cost of no more than £5.5 billion ($7.3 billion), has been dogged with delays [and noise/vibration problems]. The deal was signed as far back as 2010, with the vehicle it was planned to replace, the CRV(T), beginning to go out of service starting 2014. That out-of-service date is, some would say optimistically, now set at 2023… “We are commissioning a senior legal figure to look more deeply at Ajax, and not just health and safety; to examine the cultural and process flaws that it has highlighted.”
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