Air Force officials plan to start negotiating a Miniature Air Launched Decoy Jammer variant Lot 5 production contract next spring and the entire process is expected to take six months, according to a service spokeswoman.

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The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence plans to complete a comprehensive review of the nuclear detonation detection sensors architecture by early 2012, according to a Defense Department spokeswoman.

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The Defense Department's acquisition directorate is launching a pilot program to expedite the review of strategy documents by the Defense Acquisition Board and influence decisions about whether to launch major programs or allow those in development to proceed toward production.

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An Air National Guard intelligence system tasked with supporting a U.S. Special Operations Command mission lacks the full-motion video capability to adequately support that mission, according to the Guard's Mod Book.921 words

House and Senate appropriators boosted Israeli missile defense programs by $129 million in the final version of the Pentagon's fiscal year 2012 spending bill, allocating a total of $235.7 million for a trio of technology-development programs designed to improve Israel's defenses against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

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Raytheon has established a new test site for the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Elevated Netted Sensor System and the Navy's Aegis Weapon System, according to Mark Rose, Raytheon's JLENS program director.

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In a sign that Congress plans to vigilantly monitor government costs in the Boeing-led effort to develop the Air Force's KC-46A aerial refueling tanker, House and Senate lawmakers have agreed to a provision in the fiscal year 2012 defense appropriations bill requiring the Pentagon to regularly report all contract modifications exceeding $5 million.

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A recent deal to "bundle" the purchase of 100 Stryker Nuclear Biological Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicles with 292 double-V hull variants already under contract will save the Army nearly $50 million, according to an acquisition decision memorandum obtained by InsideDefense.com.

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Japan's decision to purchase the F-35A will allow the country's industry to be involved in the construction and final assembly of its new stealth fighters, according to a Japanese statement and comments from a Lockheed Martin executive issued last night.

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The Marine Personnel Carrier's schedule has shifted from a milestone B decision in fiscal year 2014 to the first quarter of FY-15, which will allow the program to examine requirements and reduce risk, Marc Paquette, MPC program manager, told Inside the Navy during a Dec. 14 interview.

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House and Senate defense appropriators have taken the unusual step of setting aside $100 million to help finance anticipated modifications of yet-to-be-built Joint Strike Fighter aircraft to resolve design problems expected to be uncovered during future F-35 flight tests.

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The Department of Homeland Security plans to acquire a Wide Area Aerial Surveillance System to patrol U.S. borders, leveraging a capability rapidly developed by the Air Force to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan by giving operators the ability to monitor an area the size of a small town with an "unblinking eye."

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Congressional appropriators have brought the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle back from the brink, approving $134 million for the Army and Marine Corps to allow the program to proceed, according a statement from the appropriations conference committee.

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The director of the Missile Defense Agency has taken issue with the findings of a Defense Science Board task force on early intercept technologies, claiming the panel -- chaired by a predecessor and a former head of U.S. Central Command -- deviated from its original charter and mischaracterized DOD plans in its October report.

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The Pentagon would be required to establish an airship czar, whose responsibilities the defense secretary has some latitude to define, under legislation key House and Senate lawmakers agreed to this week, a development that comes as the military's renewed interest in using lighter-than-air vehicles for both intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as well as airlift missions grows.

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The Army's Ground Combat Vehicle is funded at nearly $450 million in the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill, well below the Army's request of $884 million, according to a House and Senate conference committee report.

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The arresting hook system on the carrier variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is too short to reliably grab the cable on carrier decks upon landing and will require extensive modifications to fix -- and the aircraft may need a structural redesign if those don't work, according to an internal report on JSF concurrency dated Nov. 29 and provided to InsideDefense.com by a non-Defense Department source.

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An internal Defense Department report detailing major, unresolved design problems with the Joint Strike Fighter, which recommends that DOD reconsider its F-35 procurement and production plans, was triggered by U.S. and British operational testers who, the report states, had "significant concerns" about the F-35's lethality, survivability and air performance characteristics.

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A Defense Department report analyzing the concurrency-related risks to the Joint Strike Fighter program concludes that the aircraft's next-generation helmet display continues to suffer from deficiencies that make it less functional than legacy equipment, and a proper corrective action has yet to be identified.

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LightSquared executives have asked the Pentagon and Transportation Department to investigate a leak of information suggesting that the company's new communications network interfered with 75 percent of certain Global Positioning System receivers that were recently tested.

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