Pentagon

The Pentagon official slated to become chief of cost assessment and program evaluation said today the Defense Department scrapped the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan earlier this year because it did not offer a "credible pathway" to 355 ships, one of President Trump's key campaign promises.

Members of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission are urging Congress to consider expanding the Pentagon's Defend Forward strategy to review the current state of military cyber capabilities and incorporate new ways to engage with the defense industrial base.

The Standard Missile-3 Block IIA interceptor suffered a previously unreported fault during a key flight test in December 2018, a glitch serious enough to give senior Pentagon leaders pause about pivoting from development to production despite the fact the weapon intercepted its intended target, a congressional audit revealed.

The chief executive of Northrop Grumman said today she chose not to sign recent letters sent to Capitol Hill urging funding for coronavirus relief because her company has seen a reduced impact and she wants to focus on continuing to limit the damage.

The head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is lobbying senior Defense Department leaders to include a new project in the fiscal year 2022 budget currently being developed to establish a vast new test and training complex to support large-scale experimentation of advanced warfighting concepts.

The Pentagon will start repositioning 11,900 military personnel from Germany in the coming weeks, as part of a strategic shift expected to cost at least "single digit" billions of dollars over the next several years, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

The White House is objecting to three missile defense provisions in the House version of the fiscal year 2021 authorization bill, including legislation that would reinstate funding for the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii, mandate an analysis of alternatives for a homeland defense architecture, and the panel's recommendations regarding the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor.

Senate Republicans have released their proposal for a fourth round of COVID-19 legislation that includes $11 billion for defense contractor reimbursements, as well as billions more for the Defense Department to purchase new weapon systems.

Congressional auditors are recommending an independent review of the Missile Defense Agency's process for developing and executing its annual Missile Defense System flight test plan after finding the agency has delayed, merged with a future test or canceled more than 60% of its assessments over the last decade due to developmental delays, range and target availability, or modifying test objectives.