The Navy today awarded a $21 million low-rate initial production contract modification to Textron Systems for three unmanned surface vehicles focused on mine countermeasures, two days after the service announced the program achieved its acquisition milestone C.
Daily News
February 28, 2020
ORLANDO, FL -- The 16th Air Force has begun supporting combatant commanders' cyber operations since opening in October and is now seeking stronger integration of information warfare units across the globe while also beefing up electromagnetic spectrum and artificial intelligence capabilities.
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Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy has commissioned an advisory panel to provide an independent assessment of the service's information assurance capabilities, a matter central to plans for semi-autonomous weapon systems and future combat.
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Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly today forecasted details of the service's forthcoming force structure assessment, despite a temporary hold on the document from Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
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ORLANDO, FL -- As planners in the Pentagon develop the Advanced Battle Management System, the head of Pacific Air Forces says they need to prioritize communication with foreign partners and ensure warfighters disconnected from the cloud can still operate.
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The Pentagon is reviewing its bedrock policy governing how the U.S. military approaches autonomy in weapon systems, as defense officials say the directive may be outdated due to advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
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February 27, 2020
Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said today he plans to send Congress the service's long-term shipbuilding plan in a few months.
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The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said today he has plans to "claw back" billions of defense dollars the Trump administration has slated for modernizing nuclear weapons and building a southern border wall.
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ORLANDO, FL -- The Air Force is preparing to defend its fiscal year 2021 budget realignments to Congress, holding classified briefings with lawmakers and staffers ahead of hearings likely to expose the service's proposals to heavy scrutiny.
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Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) appeared to throw the Navy's top officer a curveball this week when the lawmaker raised the prospect of the Army taking responsibility for any land-based variant of the Aegis ballistic missile system the Pentagon might acquire to bolster homeland defense against North Korean threats.
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PROMONTORY, UT -- Northrop Grumman today conducted a static-fire test of the second stage of the company's Omega launch vehicle -- a significant step toward meeting the Defense Department's launch certification requirements.
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A key House missile-defense proponent this week challenged the Defense Department's proposal to realign funding in fiscal year 2021 for the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor from the Missile Defense Agency to the Space Development Agency.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Pentagon acquisition Chief Information Security Officer Katie Arrington this week vigorously defended the ban on government purchases of Huawei and other Chinese-made telecom products while arguing that pieces of a more comprehensive supply-chain security policy are being put into place.
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The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner (VA), is calling for passage of bipartisan legislation on securing Internet of Things devices in the wake of media reports about a malware attack on a Defense Department system which was discovered and revealed by a third-party researcher.
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February 26, 2020
Defense Secretary Mark Esper has endorsed the Defense Department sharing portions of the "mid-band" electromagnetic spectrum with the commercial wireless industry in order to better compete with China on fifth-generation telecommunications technology.
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Pentagon leaders appeared before skeptical lawmakers today to pitch them a budget plan that would cut legacy weapons in favor of new technologies -- a tall task given Congress' traditional resistance to ambitious change and the Defense Department's checkered modernization record.
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The Government Accountability Office this week released an advisory opinion indicating it would have objected to the Army's price reasonableness evaluation for the U.S. European Command theater under the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program V.
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Army Gen. Stephen Lyons, chief of U.S. Transportation Command, today quantified the surge sealift crisis he is facing, stating the fleet will lose between 1 million and 2 million square feet of capacity each year starting around 2025.
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The Army's Program Executive Office for Aviation is looking for capabilities to support multidomain operations for future force modernization, including the future vertical lift modernization priority.
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The Air Force has established an "innovative capabilities opening" to assess the transformative vertical flight market with the goal of accelerating certification and evaluating the potential for early adoption and fielding.
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