Pentagon

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.

Congressional staffers say they expect the Defense Department to begin fiscal year 2020 on a stopgap continuing resolution, despite lawmakers having already agreed to a broader bipartisan budget deal.

In a watershed development in the race to field a new triad of long-range, hypersonic strike weapons, the Defense Department is selecting defense contractor teams to manufacture prototype common-hypersonic glide bodies -- a key step toward scaling production of new ultra-fast warheads by moving manufacturing from a national laboratory to industry.

The Missile Defense Agency notched a significant achievement in the effort to bolster defenses against North Korea's medium-range ballistic missile threats during a test today, assessing a new government designed launcher for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system that promises to extend THAAD's defensive reach.

The head of the newly established U.S. Space Command said he recently reached a “new agreement” with the National Reconnaissance Office stipulating that both organizations will collaborate equally until the “higher stages of conflict,” at which point NRO will answer to SPACECOM.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper was sidelined in recent weeks as Pentagon leaders decided the fate of the Redesigned Kill Vehicle program, an intentional recusal from the eventual decision to terminate the failed $1.2 billion project in which Esper's former employer Raytheon played a major role.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper today heralded a new internal budget review as a chance for the Pentagon to "make tough decisions" that better align resources with the National Defense Strategy, which calls for greater focus on China and Russia.

The Pentagon's Defense Information Systems Agency has issued blanket approval for contractors to handle certain data on cloud computing services approved by the government-wide FedRAMP security system, a move that has attracted the support of a former federal chief information security officer as a way for the Defense Department to leverage civilian agency cybersecurity services.