Air Force

The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center wants to triple the funding ceiling for the Space Enterprise Consortium -- bringing the total value to $1.5 billion and giving more Defense Department space programs access to a growing pool of traditional and non-traditional vendors.

An investigation by the Pentagon's internal watchdog found NATO's efforts to train Afghan forces for airdrops and airstrikes have failed to meet certain deadlines and objectives.

Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, is canceling plans to produce detailed spending justifications for high-priority projects sought by combatant commanders -- jeopardizing more than a dozen new projects proposed this spring for the U.S. military's fiscal year 2021 budget request.

The Pentagon's top information technology official says the Defense Department continues to evaluate proposals from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract as new Defense Secretary Mark Esper reviews the overall JEDI program.

The Pentagon is struggling to implement policy for addressing cybersecurity risks in critical infrastructure and weapon systems, as the Defense Department lacks the personnel with the skills necessary to address flaws in operational technology, according to defense officials.

The Missile Defense Agency has completed a proposal for a new multibillion-dollar project to develop and field a defense against hypersonic weapons, that -- if included in the Defense Department's fiscal year 2021 budget request -- would expand the agency's focus to a new class of maneuvering, ultra-fast threats.

The Defense Department has awarded Lockheed Martin a $405 million contract to re-purpose a Navy rocket designed for submarine launch for use by the Army to give ground forces the means to fire a hypersonic glide body, marking a major development by the Pentagon to ready a new class of ultra-fast conventional weapons to strike high-priority targets in the open salvos of a major fight.

The estimated price tag for the Defense Department's roster of big-ticket weapons projects has grown to more than $2 trillion, an increase of $101 million compared to last year as the U.S. military prepares for great power competition with China and Russia, laying plans for more missiles, ships and aircraft.

The Presidential Aircraft Replacement program will cost $5.2 billion, the Pentagon revealed last week, roughly $500 million more than the $4.6 billion Air Force estimate for the pair of new highly modified Boeing 747-8s presented to Congress in March -- and a year after President Trump claimed White House negotiations saved more than $1.4 billion on the VC-25B development contract.