Missile Defense

Senior Pentagon leaders are defending their "very robust" processes for ensuring officials who previously worked in industry comply with ethics arrangements, as acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan is being investigated for allegedly favoring Boeing, his former employer.

The Defense Department is considering whether both providers of solid-rocket motors should be involved in the development of the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, a senior Air Force official told a House subcommittee today.

The Pentagon will nearly double its planned investments in hypersonic capabilities over the next five years, from $6 billion to $11.2 billion, a sum that is higher than one of the Defense Department's top hypersonics officials recently cited.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is seeking a $65 million funding boost in fiscal year 2020 for its main portfolio of artificial intelligence development efforts, as well as an array of other increases and new-start projects related to AI and machine learning.

The Army has formalized plans with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to wind down by September the original Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) program of record, a key part of the service's pivot toward a new approach to accelerate the fielding of a Patriot radar replacement by 2022 through a “Sense-Off” competition beginning in May.

The Missile Defense Agency has provided Congress a $1.9 billion wish list to finance 11 projects above and beyond the agency's $9.4 billion fiscal year 2020 budget request, including bolstering spending for a new space sensor to track hypersonic and ballistic missiles, additional THAAD interceptors and additional investments for lasers and new warhead development.

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 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 $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.