Missile Defense

The Air Force today formally released its Arctic strategy -- which calls for enhanced missile defense, space and polar mobility capabilities, greater collaboration with allies and partners in the Arctic region and improved and expanded readiness and training exercises.

The House voted 241-173 today against an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would have removed an existing law requiring the Pentagon to send Congress an annual list of unfunded priorities.

The Defense Department is conducting a precursor assessment for a potential new capability that aims to provide senior leaders with accurate, timely, unambiguous warning and attack assessment of air, missile and space threats -- a next-generation, command-and-control system referred to as the Integrated Tactical Warning Attack Assessment.

House lawmakers are recommending $90 million in fiscal year 2021 for the Joint Hypersonics Transition Office, looking to bankroll the newly established shop with additional funds to extend a host of research and development projects the Pentagon recently asked academia to propose.

Powerful House appropriators want to eliminate the Pentagon's controversial Overseas Contingency Operations account and return the department to annual supplemental funding requests, potentially sending defense officials scrambling to fill multibillion-dollar budget holes, according to documents obtained by Inside Defense.

House appropriators are pushing the Air Force to move quickly to create a separate acquisition executive for space -- direction that comes as the Air Force in recent months has slowed down those plans, opting to focus on crafting a new acquisition system before committing to an organizational structure.

The Navy is considering tasking its new unmanned surface vessels with the ballistic missile defense mission, a move that could free up guided-missile destroyers and push the service toward the more distributed fleet it is seeking.

Pentagon acquisition chief Ellen Lord says the United States should "re-shore" the production of key capabilities like microelectronics after the COVID-19 crisis exposed weaknesses in the Defense Department's supply chain.

The Missile Defense Agency is mandating a single specific milestone only for the Next Generation Interceptor program -- emplacement of a new ballistic missile defense interceptor in the ground at Ft. Greely, AK, in 2028 -- and is otherwise allowing bidders to propose developmental milestones on the way to initial fielding.