Dan Schere

The House version of the fiscal year 2027 defense authorization bill would put a limitation on how much money the Army would have to “retire, deactivate, schedule to deactivate” or take any other action to divest from equipment and resources that are part of the service’s expeditionary combat aviation brigades, according to a copy of the bill report obtained by Inside Defense.

The Army has awarded Lockheed Martin an $8.4 billion contract modification to “increase the ceiling and extend the ordering period” for increased production capacity of the Precision Strike Missile, according to a Defense Department

Soldiers in the Army’s 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division conducted a “robotic breach” during a recent rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Johnson, LA -- a tactic in which robotics are sent in front of riflemen to either defeat or disrupt an enemy force. During the rotation, held in April, Col. Ryan Bell, the commander of the 3rd MBCT, instructed one company commander to make a breach uncontested when his riflemen entered, he told...

TOBYHANNA ARMY DEPOT, PA -- More than a year into Army Materiel Command's push to drastically increase its output of 3D-printed small unmanned aerial systems, one of the main production sites involved in the effort plans to scale up its output of circuit cards to a maximum of 1 million per year by the end of fiscal year 2027. Before Tobyhanna Army Depot opened its new microelectronics manufacturing facility last year, the facility was already producing circuit cards...

TOBYHANNA ARMY DEPOT, PA -- Army Materiel Command for the past six months has been working to align a series of "strategic focus areas" as part of a larger advanced manufacturing strategy, service leaders told reporters this week. Staff from both AMC and the Army acquisition office have been reviewing the strategy over the last couple of weeks, and it’s expected to be signed by Under Secretary Michael Obadal in the next two weeks, Carolyn Farmer, the principal technical adviser...

The Army's inability to adequately incorporate user feedback into various iterations of what was formerly the Integrated Visual Augmentation System is among the reasons the service now has 10,000 units of the night-vision system that will not be fielded, according to the Government Accountability Office. For seven years, the Army developed three different versions of the system. Soldiers reported a host of problems with versions 1.0 and 1.1 such as poor performance in low-light conditions and excess weight, GAO noted...

The Pentagon's Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) has awarded AeroVironment a $500 million indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract to support its Domestic Shield program, the company announced this morning.

Delays continue to plague the Army's multibillion-dollar Long Range Hypersonic Weapon program, with the fielding of the second battery having been delayed at least six months until the second quarter of fiscal year 2027, according to the Government Accountability Office. Officials from the program told the government watchdog that delays in the missile deliveries are responsible for the later-than-planned fielding, GAO stated in its 2026 annual weapon systems report released last week. The Army’s ongoing LRHW efforts include...

The Army is establishing a new governance structure that elevates decisions about where weapons production and sustainment work is performed to senior leadership in addition to Army Materiel Command's input -- part of a broader effort to better align acquisition priorities with modernization of the organic industrial base and prepare government arsenals and depots for wartime production surges. A 90-day study the Army conducted last fall determined the service must better integrate its planning for future weapon systems with its...

The Defense Department would need to spend as much as $74 million to procure and install a layered counter-small unmanned aerial system to protect one military base, and as much as another $5 million each year in maintenance costs, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office. While not specific to any of the services, CBO’s analysis used a “benchmark scenario” in which it examined the key parts of a base, such as family housing and...