Army

Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan said today the Pentagon fully understands the "downsides" to overturning decades of precedent to reprogram $1 billion in Army personnel funding to construct 57 miles of fencing on the southern border without the approval of Congress, especially since lawmakers have warned that could lead them to eliminating the Pentagon's funding flexibility altogether.

The U.S. military, in a major test of the Ballistic Missile Defense System, destroyed an intercontinental ballistic missile target with a pair of Ground-based Interceptors in the first-ever salvo launch of the homeland defense guided-missile fleet, an event likely to bolster confidence in the current fielded system and the exoatmospheric kill vehicle in particular.

The Pentagon has sent Congress a $600 million reprogramming request for near-term hurricane recovery, but will need supplemental funding to cover $9 billion in damage across multiple fiscal years, according to an internal memo from acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan.

The Pentagon has sent Congress a $4 billion list of unfunded military lab construction priorities that were not approved for the fiscal year 2020 budget submission, but that Pentagon technology chief Mike Griffin would like to see completed anyway, according to documents obtained by Inside Defense.

The Army's former Rapid Capabilities Office, now called the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, will be heading up new projects in line with the service's modernization priorities, including hypersonic weapons, directed energy and space.

The Army has mapped out a five-year, $1.1 billion new-start program to develop a Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, a planned road-mobile system that will adapt a two-stage booster to launch a common hypersonic glide body to execute deep-strikes against enemy anti-access, area-denial capabilities. (UPDATED)

Lockheed Martin is poised to effectively nab a third major hypersonic booster contract, locking in a pivotal role on all three legs of the Defense Department's conventionally armed, hypersonic boost-glide programs after the Navy today announced plans to adapt its in-development submarine-launched rocket for Army use.

Northrop Grumman has designed what it says is a blueprint for the U.S. military to quash the Russian and Chinese hypersonic threat, unveiling a "Defeat Invincible" marketing campaign that aims to stake out a leadership position in the hypersonic defense business by proposing an "end-to-end" approach that would utilize new space sensors and interceptors as well as cyber, laser, and electronic weapons.