Pentagon

The Justice Department today said it is requiring Harris to divest its night-vision business for its merger with L3 Technologies to proceed.

President Trump has said he will "most likely" nominate Army Secretary Mark Esper to take over permanently for acting Defense Secretary Pat Shananan, whose nomination collapsed this week amid media reports of past violent incidents involving his family.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has issued for public comment draft guidelines for securing sensitive data relied on by weapon systems from attack by foreign adversaries, in response to a request for tougher requirements from the Defense Department.

Gen. Paul Selva, the second-highest-ranking U.S. military officer, weighed in on a controversial proposal to fold the Strategic Capabilities Office into the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, arguing combatant commands are concerned the change would add a layer of bureaucracy and impede a pipeline now effectively fostering new ideas and rapid delivery of innovative combat capabilities.

The Senate Armed Services Committee remains concerned the Pentagon does not have a process in place to prioritize what it needs to implement the National Defense Strategy and its new focus on China and Russia, according to a report accompanying the committee's version of the fiscal year 2020 defense authorization bill.

Raytheon -- after securing permission to begin production in late 2017 of the Standard Missile-3 Block IB after years of engineering challenges, repeated technical setbacks and schedule delays -- stumbled right out of the gate last year, delivering only a third of the new guided missile interceptors the U.S. government planned to buy in fiscal year 2018.

Just eight months ago, the Pentagon was planning for two defense budgets -- and both were lower than the $750 billion now being advocated by congressional Republicans.

The March flight test of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system -- a developmental assessment that marked the first salvo launch of Ground-based Interceptors hailed as a landmark achievement by program boosters -- was 13 years behind schedule and was built on a record of GMD tests that have achieved less than 50 percent operational realism, according to congressional investigators.

Senate lawmakers are proposing legislation that could chart an expansion of the Ground-based Interceptor fleet in Alaska to as many as 100 guided missiles, a push to enhance the Ground-based Midcourse Defense segment of the Ballistic Missile Defense System that comes as the Missile Defense Agency is facing significant delays in expanding the current 44-interceptor fleet to 64.