Pentagon

The Justice Department is defending the authority of Congress to ban the government and its contractors from purchasing tech products by China-based companies including Huawei, in urging a federal court to dismiss the company's lawsuit claiming the prohibition to be unconstitutional.

The Missile Defense Agency has secured a de facto authorization from a key Senate panel for an eleventh-hour launch of the Next-Generation Interceptor, winning $222 million in fiscal year 2020 for a major new-start program to follow the recently terminated Redesigned Kill Vehicle program.

The White House objects to a provision in the Senate Armed Services Committee's fiscal year 2020 defense policy bill that would give the Missile Defense Agency responsibility for a new hypersonic and ballistic space-based sensor constellation, saying the move could "restrict DOD's ability to design the most cost-effective solution."

A partisan battle over President Trump’s efforts to divert Defense Department money to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border is poised to snarl House and Senate negotiations over upcoming defense policy and spending bills, despite lawmakers having already reached a broad budget agreement.

The National Security Agency's new cybersecurity directorate will prioritize collaboration to create threat intelligence products that provide more context in an unclassified setting, as well as feature a special focus on the Defense Department's industrial base, according to the director of the office.

The Missile Defense Agency is winnowing industry proposals for a Hypersonic Defense Weapon System, identifying four projects so far -- from a batch of 21-- to be fleshed out during a nine-month concept development phase, with the winning projects to date each featuring a new kinetic interceptor.

The White House has sent a 21-page list of "anomalies" to Congress seeking exemptions for a variety of federal spending priorities -- including the establishment of a Space Development Agency, continued development of hypersonic weapons and new background investigations -- in the likely event lawmakers pass a stopgap continuing resolution.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper will order the Pentagon to defer military construction projects so $3.6 billion can be diverted to build barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a letter he sent Tuesday to the House Armed Services Committee.

The Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is launching a new, marquee program in fiscal year 2020 to use AI for "maneuver and fires," as the organization seeks to bring the quickly evolving technology to the Defense Department's warfighting functions.