The Navy's LHA-8 amphibious assault ship design includes a redesigned flight deck with a smaller island, allowing for the well deck reintroduction without sacrificing aviation capability for the Marine Air-Ground Task Force, a Marine official said earlier this month. 664 words

The Joint Strike Fighter program office is mindful of the potential risks in shifting test points within its planned test program and believes it is making progress on a number of troublesome F-35 items, including the carrier variant's tailhook, the program's logistics system, future software blocks and the next-generation helmet to be used on all three versions of the jet.1326 words

The Navy and its industry partners are implementing more operations and support cost-saving measures into the Virginia-class submarine Block IV buy through a reduction in total ownership cost study, according to a service official. 723 words

While the Defense Department's next Quadrennial Defense Review has not yet started, possible topics for the Marine Corps may include executing the national strategy under budgetary reductions, force structure and force sizing, according to the service's QDR representative. 437 words

The Guardian (MCM-5) may have run aground on the Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines' Sulu Sea on Jan. 17 due to inaccurate navigation charts, the Navy announced last week. Personnel evacuated the ship and left it on the reef due to bad weather, and the Navy is still determining how to free the ship without harming the reef, which is a World Heritage Site. The day after the grounding, "the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency provided the Navy preliminary findings of a review on Digital Nautical Charts that contain inaccurate navigation data and may have been a factor," though the Navy is still investigating to more fully understand what took place, according to the Navy statement.117 words

The Marine Corps continues to take its time to define requirements for its Amphibious Combat Vehicle program because the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle left a "scar" and the service wants to get it right, according to a top official. 460 words

BAE Systems and Boeing are pushing their Mark 38 Tactical Laser System through intense internally funded testing, hoping to get onto a ship for at-sea testing as soon as one is available, company officials said earlier this month. 951 words

Despite the prevalent fear that future budget cuts will always mean that funding for surface ship maintenance will be the first to go, a panel of surface ship maintenance leaders said earlier this month that several initiatives are making the most of limited resources and finding innovative ways to keep costs down and sailors properly trained. 1065 words

LINTHICUM, MD -- If affordability is the name of the game in Navy contracting right now, then modularity is the key to winning awards, particularly the Air and Missile Defense Radar around which the next generation of destroyers is centered, a Northrop Grumman official said last week.827 words

Getting away from single-mission ships and moving toward modularly-constructed ones with common hull parts and separately-built combat systems is the only way the Navy will be able to afford to sustain its fleet going forward, two Navy admirals said earlier this month at the Surface Navy Association's annual national symposium in Arlington, VA. 784 words

The Marine Corps is working closely with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in an effort to revolutionize the way ground vehicles are designed and built for the services, according to a service official. 779 words

The Defense Department's cost assessment and program evaluation office will soon launch an analysis of alternatives for the LX(R), the replacement to the LSD amphibious dock landing ship, according to Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Timothy Hanifen, the Navy's expeditionary warfare requirements director.515 words

The Pentagon is canceling major conferences, including a missile defense gathering, following Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter's recent guidance to curtail the events amid federal fiscal woes.653 words

The Pentagon's list of technologies that cannot be exported is outdated and does not do what it was designed to do, the Government Accountability Office says in a Jan. 23 report.411 words

The Marine Corps variant of the Joint Strike Fighter is likely to remain grounded for "several weeks" until program officials are confident they have explained and corrected an issue with the F-35B's fueldraulic system, according to a senior program official.326 words

Senior officials from the Joint Strike Fighter program office and lead F-35 contractor Lockheed Martin said last week they expect to have a definitized contract in place for the aircraft's sixth and seventh production lots by the summer, which would represent a major improvement over the year-long negotiations required for Lot 5.929 words

The F-35 program's recent grounding of its Marine Corps variant due to a fuel-line failure comes amid continuing concern in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill about the reliability of all three versions of the fighter jet.668 words

Pentagon officials must ensure that they do not take steps to harm acquisition workforce improvements or hinder critical hiring efforts in light of potential confusion over sequestration guidance, according to Defense Department guidance.386 words