Collins set for top GOP spot on defense appropriations panel. (Military.com) “Defense issues have long been a major concern for Collins…That is not least because General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, a builder of Navy warships, has been a fixture among Maine’s top employers, and the state is also home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a government facility where workers maintain and repair America’s attack submarines.”
- As the top Republican on the full committee and the Defense panel, Collins would fill two roles performed simultaneously in the current Congress by Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, who is retiring after this year.
- In fiscal 2022 spending law (PL 117-103), Congress added approximately $4 billion to the Navy’s budget for warships that the service did not request in those years. In the Senate Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2023 Defense spending bill (S 4663), which the chamber has yet to take up, another unrequested $4 billion for warships is penciled in.
Cannibalizing the arsenal of democracy in turbulent times. (Military Times) “The United States is a capitalist country where buying items is the demand signal that stimulates investment in both industrial capacity and innovation. During the 20-year period from 1970-1989, often referred to as the Reagan buildup, the ratio of procurement to research & development, or R&D, funding was 2.5 to 1.”
- Remarkably, in 2023, the Pentagon proposed that it be further reduced to about 1.1 to 1.
- Getting to the ratio of the Reagan buildup is probably not feasible, but a ratio of 2.25 can be achieved by moving $45 billion each year for the next five years from R&D into procurement.
Cybersecurity regulation: It’s not performance-based if outcomes can’t be measured. (Lawfare) “After Colonial Pipeline suffered a ransomware attack in May 2021 and took its 5,500-mile system offline for nearly a week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) issued a set of first-ever directives imposing mandatory cybersecurity requirements on pipeline operators.”
- But the revised TSA directive is not, strictly speaking, performance-based… Instead, the revised rule fits mainly within a regulatory approach often called “management-based,” meaning that it requires regulated entities to adopt certain management practices.”
Boston Dynamics and five other robot makers pledge not to weaponize their robots. (Interesting Engineering) “The other firms were Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree.”
- “However, the firms were clear that they did not take issue with existing technologies that nations and their government agencies use to defend themselves and uphold their laws.”
US-led drone fleet starting to come together in middle east. (Defense One) “A proposed fleet of 100 unmanned craft in Middle East waters is starting to come together, with the U.S. Navy on track to provide 20 surface drones by next month and two other countries promising to chip in, the 5th Fleet commander said Wednesday… The 100 surface drones in the fleet will mostly be of two types: long-duration monitors like the Saildrones and fast response vessels like the Devil Ray. “The two in combination work well for persistent ISR.”
- Check out the Devil Ray link if you weren’t aware of it like I was.
Starlink’s market dominance affecting DoD’s hybrid network plans. (Space News) “Without mentioning Starlink by name, Shimmin said “there is a particular commercial satellite provider in low Earth orbit, for example, that is several years ahead of the rest of the field. They do tend to try to establish interfaces, proprietary interfaces, that don’t necessarily want to play well with others.”
- The ever-growing constellation has now more than 3,400 satellites in orbit and has approval to launch up to 12,000.
- Starlink was used to connect drones operated by U.S. and allies forces in a recent NATO exercise off the coast of Portugal.
- During the exercise, approximately 120 unmanned aircraft, vessels and underwater vehicles were integrated into a common network.”
Lockheed Martin space leader aims to speed things up. (Space News) Business model change: “Today, our model is we get a big procurement, we go in and we build that. The question becomes, can we build it ourselves and then offer the data, the intelligence?”
Switchblade kamikaze drone production to ramp up following Ukraine use. (Defense News) “Today, AeroVironment can produce more than 2,000 Switchblade 600 systems annually; within a few months, he said, the company hopes to roughly triple that to about 6,000… Right now, he explained, AeroVironment only has one shift building the 600 systems, but could add a second shift if necessary.”
- Production rate for the smaller 300 model not provided.
Ukraine makes it obvious DoD has to change how it buys weapons. (Defense News) “A top Ukrainian military official was quoted as saying the country is firing between 5,000 to 6,000 shells per day; Russian expenditures are even higher. Meanwhile, the annual U.S. production of 155mm artillery shells is approximately 80,000 shells, or enough for two weeks of fighting.”
- Here’s one of several recommendations: “Perhaps counterintuitively, the Pentagon should avoid awarding research and development contracts or grants and only start sharing lessons learned once the product is in field trials.”
US Air Force reveals Hellfire missile with threefold range. (Defense Post) “The R-4 boasts three times the range of its predecessor, the AGM-114 R, which can hit targets from around 7 miles (11 kilometers) under optimal conditions, the developers claim.”
- “[This] comes months after another Hellfire derivative, the AGM-179A Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM), achieved initial operational capability in March.”
Acquisition revamp needed to meet demand surges, defense industry says. (Defense News) “… A more consistent and long-term schedule for orders, these industry executives said, could help going forward as the war in Ukraine continues and potential conflict emerge elsewhere.”
- “We need insight into the demand, and once we understand the insight into the demand and we understand the willingness of the government to pay for additional capacity … that then helps us go plan for what it will take for us to actually increase production.”
Army launches several new initiatives to incorporate small firms’ technologies into its systems. (Federal News Network) “Camarillo said no changes are needed to legislation or DoD acquisition regulations in order to implement the program: procurement officials will just need to make clear ahead of time that they’re going to assign higher technical ratings to bidders whose proposals include specific technologies that have already piqued the government’s interest as part of the SBIR, STTR, and other outreach programs.”
Project Convergence exercise has new gateway to test emerging tech. (Defense News) “In many cases last year, industry showed up with new technology too close to the start of the experimentation process, so the Army has partnered with industry and created the “Gateway” experimentation event.”
- “It currently takes 10-15 days for the U.S. and its partners to integrate networks ahead of an exercise, Jones said. The U.S. military wants to be able to integrate networks within four to six hours. “I would still think that’s several years away.””
Wormuth: US Army to invest in larger, high-tech formations. (Defense News) “The Army has learned through extensive study and analysis of recent conflicts, exercises, simulations and training, she said, that brigade commanders give their attention to the close fight. To facilitate that, “division and corps commanders will have the responsibility and the capability to visualize the larger picture,” Wormuth said.”
US army eyes new ways to evaluate autonomous vehicles. (Defense News) “By separating out the software acquisition pathway, the service aims to develop software-centric capabilities that can support any future robotic combat vehicle configuration”
How we fight: Army issues all new handbook for multi-domain war. (Breaking Defense) “So in addition to the five domains defined by Defense Department-wide doctrine — land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace — the new Army field manual describes three dimensions: physical, information, and human.”
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