Pentagon

The Missile Defense Agency has formally lifted a restraint imposed last year on production of the newest Aegis ballistic missile interceptor following an early 2018 flight test failure, awarding Raytheon a $267 million option to proceed with building 24 Standard Missile-3 Block IIA rounds.

House lawmakers are launching an investigation into the August decision to terminate the Redesigned Kill Vehicle, directing the Defense Department to provide key documents associated with the ballistic missile defense warhead project as well as outline options for clawing back from contractors some of the $1.2 billion invested in it between 2015 and 2019.

The Defense Innovation Board is recommending the Pentagon commit to developing and using artificial intelligence systems in a responsible, equitable, traceable, reliable and governable manner.

The Pentagon's top policy official in the Obama administration is raising warnings about the cyber threats from foreign adversaries such as Russia and China, as conflicts move to a "grey zone" of electronic warfare and advance outages.

The Defense Department officials who decided to award a multibillion-dollar cloud contract to Microsoft Azure were not influenced by anyone from the White House, including President Trump, according to DOD's top IT official.

The National Defense Industrial Association has issued a report that emphasizes the important role that insurance companies can play in helping smaller businesses get certified -- and stave off potential supply shortages -- under an emerging Defense Department program that would establish baseline cybersecurity requirements for vendors and service providers.

Congress, despite having agreed to a broad budget deal, has begun looking for stopgaps and schedule extensions for the defense spending and policy bills, which are already overdue and remain stalled amid partisan fighting over President Trump's use of military construction funds to build a southern border wall.

The White House Office of Management and Budget is balking at Defense Department plans for a Next Generation Interceptor, exposing a rift inside the Trump administration over how to modernize the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system just weeks after Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's top technology officer, sold Senate appropriators on plans for the new-start program.

One of the Senate's most vocal missile defense proponents said he was blindsided by the Pentagon's decision in August to terminate the Redesigned Kill Vehicle and raised concern the replacement program -- the new-start Next Generation Interceptor -- could take so long to develop and field it will leave the United States vulnerable to North Korean threats.