Inside Missile Defense

The Space Development Agency is preparing for Tranche 3 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture by seeking comment on its draft request for proposals for program integration posted last week.

Following lessons learned with GPS disruption in the Ukraine battlespace, the Navy will seek to test capabilities to guard against these interferences on combatant ships and unmanned surface vessels in an exercise planned for March off the shores of Virginia. The Navy is asking research and development organizations and academia to submit potential Assured-Positioning, Navigation and Timing technologies that can be integrated onto unmanned surface vessels. A-PNT should be able to step in for GPS during an operation if jamming...

The Army is drafting a new requirement for micro balloons that can loft sophisticated sensors after recent experiments validated the potential to add a new dimension of resilience to space-based capabilities -- complicating an adversary's ability to disrupt terrestrial connections to orbiting systems. Gen. James Rainey, Army Futures Command chief, told Inside Defense last month that the service is drafting a directed requirement to quickly acquire technology first used by French forces in 1794 during the Battle of Fleurus...

The Collaborative Combat Aircraft designs created by Anduril Industries and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems have completed their critical design reviews, a top Air Force official said today. “We just finished up, basically, critical design review,” Col. Timothy Helfrich, a senior materiel leader in the program executive office for fighters and advanced aircraft in the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, said during the Mitchell Institute’s Airpower Futures Forum. “Both industry teammates are on the path to get to first flight...

Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante said the U.S. defense industrial base and that of its allies needs more money to produce weapons at much higher rates if it wants to compete with China and Russia and exit a "vicious circle" of cost cutting and reduced capacity. “The issue we have is fundamentally a resourcing issue right now, both here and internationally,” he said at an event hosted by Axios. “We have found that if you have the resources, sometimes...

The Navy is "finishing up contract negotiations" for Block V Virginia-class submarines Baltimore (SSN-812) and Atlanta (SSN-813), service officials said today, despite Congress'refusal to provide an additional $1.95 billion to cover cost growth in the program. The Navy was unable to fully pay for the two boats with the $9.4 billion appropriated for their procurement in fiscal year 2024 and prior years. In September, the Pentagon sought a $1.95 billion " anomaly " in Congress’ stopgap spending package...

The Navy expects to complete an initial review of all the suspected faulty welds on aircraft carriers and submarines by the end of December, according to service officials, who said they have already inspected over 90% of these suspicious welds. In September, HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding notified the Justice Department that faulty welds may have been made on non-critical components on new construction and in-service vessels. HII has subsequently said an internal investigation of the issue found no evidence of...

The possible ascendance of Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) to the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee could be a turning point in Air Force modernization efforts as the ranking member has pushed for boosting the existing topline for national defense spending by billions of dollars to ensure legacy and new platforms can rule the air domain. The service has its sights set on building an expensive Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, including several increments of unmanned jets...

The Defense Innovation Unit is pushing to rapidly expand the Pentagon's domestic supply chain to better deter China, according to senior DIU officials, who highlighted ongoing work with the Replicator drone program and other efforts. Aditi Kumar, deputy director for strategy, policy and national security partnerships at DIU, said Replicator should show China at the United States is serious about building the capacity and agility the military industrial base. “And so, we are creating that capacity, and that capacity will...

The Navy plans to build an eighth block of its Virginia-class submarine program before transitioning to the next-generation SSN(X) vessel in the early 2040s, according to Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program Director Adm. William Houston. “If you look at us as a Navy, we have said that we're going to continue to build Virginia, [that’s] currently the plan. We're looking to go to a block VIII. We are proceeding on with SSN(X) after that,” Houston said Wednesday at the Naval Submarine...