US Navy wirelessly beams 1.6 kW of power a kilometer using microwaves. (New Atlas) “1.6 kilowatts of power was beamed over a kilometer using a ten gigahertz microwave beam (3,280 feet) as part of the Safe and Continuous Power Beaming – Microwave (SCOPE-M) project…. “Although SCOPE-M was a terrestrial power beaming link, it was a good proof of concept for a space power beaming link. The main benefit of space to Earth power beaming for the DOD is to mitigate the reliance on the fuel supply for troops, which can be vulnerable to attack.”
Industry still faces a lot of ambiguity around CMMC implementation. (Fed Scoop) ““The requirements are in the early stages of the rulemaking process. And so we anticipate a revised Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement to … come out. We’ve heard various estimates that it could be as early as late this spring or as late as a year from now,” [said] David Berteau… He continued: “What we don’t know is, what’s the next standard we’re gonna have to comply with? What’s the timeline in which the flag will go down and you’ve got to be in compliance? And what can you do now to be ready for that when you don’t know … what standards you’re gonna have to meet? So, there’s still a lot of ambiguity there.””
NGAD price per tail will more than double that of F-35. (Air Force Magazine) “Kendall specified that the main NGAD fighter would cost “multiple hundreds of millions of dollars … on an individual basis,” acknowledging that such a price tag “is a number that’s going to get your attention.”… “It’s going to be an expensive airplane; F-22 was an expensive airplane. It was one of my aircraft in one of my earlier positions, but it’s also an incredibly effective aircraft. It’s been dominant in the air for decades now. And we expect NGAD to be the same,” Kendall said… Kendall, however, sounded optimistic that NGAD could avoid a similar fate [as F-35], using new practices such as modular design and common interfaces… On top of that, the broader NGAD program will include aircraft that are “much less expensive, autonomous, uncrewed … employing a distributed, tailorable mix of sensors, weapons, and other mission equipment.”“
Navy’s F/A-XX fighter will be the ‘quarterback’ for unmanned aircraft. (USNI News) “The NGAD [family of systems] will replace the F/A-18E/F Block II aircraft as they begin to reach end of service life in the 2030s and leverage Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) in order to provide increased lethality and survivability,” reads joint testimony from Department of Navy acquisition officials. “F/A-XX is the strike fighter component of the NGAD FoS that will be the ‘Quarterback’ of the MUM-T concept, directing multiple tactical platforms at the leading edge of the battlespace.”… While the Navy is currently putting more research and development dollars into the NGAD program, the service has kept those costs classified for three consecutive budget cycles. During the March rollout of the FY 2023 budget proposal, Navy deputy assistant secretary for budget Rear Adm. John Gumbleton acknowledge that the research and development spending for NGAD increase “somewhat dramatically” across the Pentagon’s five-year spending plan.”
The F-15EX program is in trouble. (The Warzone) “Officials within the U.S. Air Force are examining options for canceling the service’s new F-15EX Eagle II fighter, a type that was only accepted into the inventory a little over a year ago… the Air Force has reduced its expected overall F-15EX purchase to 80 aircraft, after originally saying it would buy at least 144… “two sources with knowledge of the matter” had confirmed that Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall had tasked the service’s budget corps to consider canceling the F-15EX… according to the sources, Eagle II acquisition numbers will be ramped up in the short term, before ending prematurely in favor of buying more F-35As in the more capable and deeply updated Block 4 configuration.”
Air Force chooses Boeing E-7 Wedgetail to replace old AWACS planes. (Breaking Defense) “The service intends to ink a contract with Boeing sometime in FY23 and will begin funding the acquisition of the first “rapid prototype aircraft” using the $227 million in development funding requested as part of the FY23 budget. A second prototype aircraft is planned to be funded in FY24, followed by a production decision in FY25… The Air Force’s use of the phrase “rapid prototype” seems to be stretching the meaning of both words. The first aircraft won’t deliver to the US Air Force until FY27, despite already being in production for the UK’s Royal Air Force, a five year gap that doesn’t quite seem rapid… it’s possible the US-specific version of the Wedgetail could include various new or developmental capabilities including and advanced air moving target indication radar, battle management command and control (BMC2) system, self-defense systems and key communications systems like Link 16 and Mobile User Objective System.”
Pentagon wants at least $377 million over five years for new rapid experimentation fund. (Defense News) “The defense-wide request includes $70 million for the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve in fiscal 2023, $48.5 million of which would support JWC experiments in the areas of command and control, information advantage, contested logistics and advanced fires… Along with the defense-wide request, RDER projects are embedded within the services’ funding plans. It’s not immediately clear how much funding each service has received through RDER, but it’s likely the overall number is significantly higher than what is laid out in the defense-wide request…. The request also includes $10 million to establish a RDER coordination and execution cell. The cell will include planners embedded within the combatant commands to report on results and lessons learned.”
Turkish company makes 1st export of domestic cargo UAV to UK. (Daily Sabah) “Named “Jackal,” the UAV was developed by Bvlos Technology in cooperation with Maxwell Innovations. With the agreement signed with British Flyby Technology, the U.K. will be the first country to acquire this particular drone from Turkey. A total of five UAVs with a carrying capacity of 15 kilograms (33 pounds) and a range of 130 kilometers (80.8 miles) will be exported to the U.K. under the scope of the deal…. it was not easy to achieve this success in four months and that it was important to sell the UAV to a European country.”
The US needs a new approach to producing weapons. Just look at Ukraine. (Defense News) “Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Congress the West has delivered 60,000 antitank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to Kyiv… U.S. allies’ stocks of precision weapons are limited, and they may have an urgent need for these munitions in a future coalition conflict…It is thus imperative for the United States and its allies to both increase their munitions capacity and adopt innovative approaches to munitions production… or example, it reportedly takes 18-24 months to manufacture a production run of Stinger missiles. Too often, the capacity of the industrial base rests on second-tier suppliers with even more limited capacity and supply chains that are vulnerable to disruption.”
Data visibility, granularity, accuracy are keys to better PPBE. (Federal News Network) ““The modern world as it is, has really brought us into a phase where that long term plan is an ever-evolving series of short, iterative plans,” said Kevin Connor… With accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date data, coupled with analytic tools, Connor said, planning becomes less of a once-a-year exercise and more of a continuous process. “Planning has always been thought of as sort of this annual event,” he said. “We’re really trying to move organizations that, despite those structural and procedural elements, to be thinking about the plan itself, and a bit more dynamically, and with more adaptability.””
US Army plan to replace Patriot interceptors gets a jolt in FY23 budget request. (Defense News) “While the service planned to make a contract award to a single vendor through a competitive process in the third quarter of FY26, according to last year’s budget justification documents, it now plans to conduct a down-select to a single vendor through a process that begins in the second quarter of FY23 and ends in the fourth quarter of FY25. [It will use MTA authorities.] The Future Interceptor program will be designed to target air, missile, and hypersonic threats within the “lower-tier portion of the ballistic missile defense battlespace,” the documents add… The Army plans to use the Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium Other Transaction Authority – which is a contracting mechanism that enables rapid prototyping – to execute a competitive “initial concept definition” with two contractors. “
AFRL QUICISINK successfully destroys a surface vessel. (Naval News) “The Air Force Research Laboratory and Eglin’s Integrated Test Team demonstrated a new low-cost, air-delivered capability for defeating maritime threats April 28, 2022, that successfully destroyed a full-scale surface vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. An F-15E Strike Eagle released one modified GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, as part of this test, the second experiment in the QUICKSINK Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, or JCTD, funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering… AFRL scientists and engineers are developing a weapon open systems architecture, or WOSA, seeker to enable precise placement of the weapon.
Investing in Hadrian. (Andreessen Horowitz) “The better critique of innovation is that financialization causes abstraction from the real problems, as the movement of atoms is often diametrically opposed to a spreadsheet economy that shifts numbers around cells but can’t actually ship a rocket. That we’ve convinced ourselves that creative finance can be a cure-all for real-world problems is a dangerous myth… The defense industrial base is served by a network of thousands of small machine shops across the country, often run by very talented machinists who have spent a lifetime honing their craft. The average age of a lead machinist in America is now hovering around the mid 50s, and like other skilled trades, the coming retirement of the Boomers is leading to a dangerous labor shortage in an important industry. .. Hadrian’s primary mission is an obvious definition of dynamism: shoring up American manufacturing for aerospace and defense industries. Automating and reshoring manufacturing is among the most critical national security issues facing the country”
Lyft exec Craig Martell tapped as Pentagon’s AI chief. (Breaking Defense) “The hiring of a Silicon Valley persona for the CDAO role is likely to be cheered by those in the defense community who have been calling for more technically-minded individuals to take leadership roles in the department. At the same time, Martell’s lack of Pentagon experience — he was a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School for over a decade studying AI for the military, but has never worked in the department’s bureaucracy — may pose challenges as he works to lead an office only months old… DoD announced last month that Margaret Palmieri, who founded and directed the Navy’s Digital Warfare Office, will be deputy CDAO. Palmieri most recently served as Special Assistant to the Vice Chief of Naval Operations and Director of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Action — in other words, she’s very much an inside-the-department person to pair with someone coming in fresh from the outside… His first order of business? Figuring out what needs to be done, and how to best use the $600 million in fiscal year 2023 dollars the CDAO’s office.”
The Big Money is Here: The arms race to quantum computing. (Haaretz) “In 2021, $3.2 billion was invested in quantum firms around the world, according to The Quantum Insider – compared to $900 million in 2020. And in the first quarter of this year, about $700 million was invested – a sum similar to the investments in the field between 2015 and 2019 combined… “There are two concurrent arms races happening now,” says Nir Minerbi, co founder and CEO of Classiq. “One is to build the world’s first fully functional quantum computer. And many startups and tech giants are working on that and that market is now peaking. The second race is the one for creating applications and software that runs on quantum and can serve these firms. This is a field that is now only making its first steps.”
Competitor to Chinese J-16D, US Navy could scrap its electronic attack squadron of EA-18G growlers. (EurAsian Times) “The US Navy has recently revealed its intention to decommission all non-carrier-based five Growler squadrons, totaling 25 aircraft. This represents almost a third of the department’s tactical jet electronic attack force… The service wants to deactivate its whole expeditionary VAQ (electronic attack squadron), which is responsible for supporting US Air Force and Navy shore-based missions. This comes at a time when China is beefing up its electronic assault capacity, with two J-16D aircraft, the electronic-warfare variant of the J-16 multirole strike fighter, making their maiden appearance in a group that flew into Taiwan’s air defense zone in January… Following the retirement of the United States Air Force’s EF-111 Ravens in the mid-1990s, the expeditionary EW mission was transferred to the Navy and Marine Corps, which used the EA-6B Prowler. The Prowler has now been retired by both forces, with the last Marine EA-6B squadron closing operations in 2019…The decision to send 25 of these highly potent jets to the vault puzzled many, especially because the Growler fleet will grow even more powerful with the addition of Next Generation Jammer pods. These pods will be used in place of the ALQ-99 tactical jamming pod system, which requires a lot of upkeep. These new pods outperform previous models in terms of performance… the US Air Force is also seeking to resurrect its small fleet of Compass Call electronic warfare planes, which are mostly used to disrupt communications.”
Army to launch light robotic combat vehicle competition in FY23. (Defense News) “The Army will continue a phased surrogate prototype program for Robotic Combat Vehicle-Light (RCV-L) with QinetiQ North America, which won a contract in early 2020. The service plans to flow data and lessons learned into its full-system prototype competition. From FY23 through FY27, the Army plans to spend $698.2 million on both the surrogate and full-system prototype efforts and a software acquisition pathway integral to the functionality of the robotic combat vehicles. The Army on Feb. 10 approved the rapid prototyping program for RCV-L… The surrogate prototype — a diesel-electric hybrid — to be built by QinetiQ will include an integrated camera and radar perception sensors and payloads such as the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station-Javelin and tethered unmanned aircraft systems. The vehicle has a gross weight of no more than 8,500 pounds and a maximum payload of no more than 7,000 pounds with a top speed of about 40 miles per hour, according to the Army. In the fourth quarter of FY24, the Army plans to choose a single vendor to build the full-system prototype. Testing on that prototype will begin in the first quarter of FY26 and wrap up in the final quarter of that fiscal year.”
Report to Congress on sea-launched nuclear cruise missile. (USNI News) “The United States first deployed a nuclear-armed version of the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile (TLAM-N) in the mid-1980s… In 2010, the Obama Administration’s NPR recommended that the Navy retire the TLAM-N missiles. It indicated that “this system serves a redundant purpose in the U.S. nuclear stockpile”… The Trump Administration, in effect, reversed this decision, noting in the 2018 NPR that a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (now known as SLCM-N) would provide the United States with “a needed non-strategic regional presence”… The Navy conducted an Analysis of Alternatives in support of the SLCM-N from 2019-2021, and expected to begin the development of the missile in 2022 and achieve operational capability late in the 2020s… the Navy eliminated funding for SLCM-N in its FY2023 budget request.”
Gilday: I don’t know if Navy’s future fleet will include medium USVs. (Breaking Defense) ““Flight III DDGs [destroyers] will pave the way” for surface fleet capabilities, he said. “2030 is when we’re looking at DDG(X)… By that time, I think we’ll be in a better place with [the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel]. I don’t know if we’ll have a medium unmanned or not.”… work done by Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, US 5th Fleet chief, has led him to believe the service may be able to “close capability gaps with small expendable unmanned” vessels off of any platform… The service’s FY23 budget request for MUSV includes $104 million in research and development funding.”
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