Air Force

Pentagon acquisition chief Ellen Lord said today the defense industrial base is making an "enormous recovery" after a three-month slowdown caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, but she stressed the continued need for supplemental funding in the "lower double-digit" billions to reimburse contractors for pandemic-related disruptions.

The Defense Department has established a Joint Hypersonic Transition Office and charged the new shop with overseeing creation of a university-led consortium to expand cooperation between academia, industry and government as part of the U.S. military's goal to eventually scale production of a new class of high-speed, maneuvering weapons.

The Air Force needs to partner closely with Congress and other stakeholders as it works to make a case for using digital engineering for future space development programs, according to the service's deputy under secretary for space acquisition and integration.

The Defense Department is on the cusp of seizing the lead in maneuvering hypersonic technology development from China and Russia and is poised next year to ramp up flight tests to as many 40 over the next four years, according to a senior Pentagon official.

Senior Pentagon officials for months have publicly touted an internal budget review said to have "harvested" $5.7 billion in "savings" that can be reinvested in military modernization and readiness, but the process, along with newly surfaced documents breaking down the cost cutting, is generating heartburn on Capitol Hill.

The Air Force expects to restart Small Diameter Bomb production next month after previously undisclosed safety deficiencies with the Small Diameter Bomb II led prime contractor Raytheon to halt production last July.

After completing a critical design review in March for its next-generation GPS satellites, the Space and Missile Systems Center expects the program to achieve milestone C and a production decision by June 30.

The Missile Defense Agency's partnership with commercial space companies to develop and set in orbit nearly two-dozen sensors, a prototype project called the Space-based Kill Assessment, allowed the government to avoid spending $700 million to develop the same capability using traditional acquisition practices, according to a senior MDA official.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s fiscal year 2021 defense policy bill largely rejects the Air Force's divest-to-invest budget strategy, calling on the service to maintain certain legacy fleets it had wanted to retire and sustain a minimum wartime aircraft capacity level for each of its mission sets.