Lockheed Martin's Expertise In Hypersonic Flight Wins New Army Work

On the same subject

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  September 1, 2022 | International, Naval

  Marinette Marine to begin building first Constellation frigate

  The Wisconsin shipyard will begin building the first Constellation-class frigate following two years of maturing the design to mitigate risk.

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  October 5, 2020 | International, Land, C4ISR, Security

  US Army discontinues Rapid Equipping Force

  Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has discontinued its Rapid Equipping Force stood up during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to get urgently needed capabilities into the field in 180 days or less. As the Army shifts from a focus on counterinsurgency operations to going up against near-peer adversaries like Russia and China across air, land, sea, cyberspace and space domains in large-scale operations, the REF's utility and mission has been in question. The service is also disbanding its Asymmetric Warfare Group. “As our focus changes to great power competition and large-scale combat operations, Army analysis indicated that the personnel and resources could best be utilized in building the operational fighting force,” an Oct. 2 Army statement read. “To ensure the value of organization's work over the past 14 years is not lost, all lessons learned will be maintained by the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, via the Center for Army Lessons Learned, Centers of Excellence and other [Training and Doctrine Command] enterprise stakeholders.” The discontinuation won't happen overnight. Both organizations will be fully deactivated by the end of fiscal 2021 “and will transition the mission of providing immediate support to other organizations,” the statement noted. Over the past several years, the REF hung on to certain missions and continued to advocate for its relevancy. A year ago, Defense News sat down with the REF's director in a new, smaller office space at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in a conference room surrounded by small counter-unmanned aircraft systems that it was rapidly fielded to units and considered one of its success stories. In 2017, the REF was focused on counter-drone technologies; dismounted electronic warfare equipment; tethered intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities; and urban operations equipment including up-armored commercial vehicles. But many of those technologies have found other homes within the Army. As the service stood up its new security force assistance brigades, the REF expected a surge in work to support the needs of those units in the field as they deployed. The REF played a small role at the time, providing the first SFAB with a few items it needed ahead of deployment such as communications gear and an item that assisted the unit with indirect fires. Last year, the REF was highlighting its nearly 10-year-old Expeditionary Lab, a 3D-printing trailer that can be deployed downrange to solve problems for units operating in austere environments. Col. Joe Bookard, who is still the REF's director, told Defense News at the time that the REF would continue to fill the niche of urgently supplying soldiers with capabilities to meet immediate needs while they are deployed. He said that, in a way, the REF has been doing what Army Futures Command is doing now, but on a smaller scale: providing capabilities that are rapidly procured to a small number of soldiers for evaluation, and then refining those capabilities as needed. In 2019, the REF addressed 400 requirements sent from combatant commanders to address operational capability gaps, Bookard said. Among some of the recent success stories is the tiny Black Hornet, an unmanned aircraft system that is now a program of record and was fielded as the Soldier Borne Sensor. The REF was also working to transition two hand-held counter-UAS capabilities — the DroneBuster and the Drone Defender — to the larger force as official programs. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/10/02/army-discontinues-rapid-equipping-force/

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  July 10, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  House panel isn’t giving defense industry all the COVID aid it wants

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon would have $758 million to help mid-tier defense firms weather the financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic as part of the annual defense spending bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday. But the aid, which was part of the panel's proposed $694.6 billion bill, falls short of the “lower double-digit billions” Pentagon officials say defense firms will claim under the stimulus bill Congress passed in March. As Congress debates the next stimulus, the defense industry has been urging lawmakers to appropriate enough to reimburse the Pentagon's suppliers for pandemic-related disruptions. Under Section 3610 of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, contractors can seek to recover such costs, but Congress has yet to appropriate money for it. “While helpful and our industry appreciates the recognition of the need in the HAC mark and all the support we have received from the Pentagon and Congress to date, this level is insufficient to provide the support indicated previously by [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] and also by company leaders who have been communicating with the Pentagon, the Congress and the White House, including [the Office of Management and Budget],” said National Defense Industrial Association Vice Chairman Arnold Punaro. “We are urging that the next stimulus bill provide the needed funds particularly to support section 3610, the reasonable adjustments due to disruptions, and the added costs of protecting the workforces and doing business in a COVID-19 environment,” he added. Not all of the details of the defense bill were available Wednesday, but a committee summary says it provides “$758 million to mitigate the impacts of COVID on second, third, and fourth tier suppliers in the Defense Industrial Base.” Such support would supplement $688 million for the defense-industrial base that the Department of Defense previously set aside as part of the $10.5 billion it got from the coronavirus relief fund created under the CARES Act. Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord warned Congress last month that the DoD's pandemic-related costs, which include 3,610 claims, may nonetheless force it to dip into modernization and readiness accounts if Congress doesn't backfill the money. “The department does not have the funding to cover these costs,” she said. The House Appropriations Committee's bill is not the last word, and Republicans, who control the Senate and the White House, will negotiate over the final numbers. “FY21 appropriations bills must be changed before they have any chance of becoming law,” the panel's top Republican, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, said Tuesday. This week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., began to outline a forthcoming GOP-drafted coronavirus relief package, but it was not immediately revealed what the Pentagon's share might be. House Democrats are reportedly seeking $250 billion in emergency spending for an array of issues, to include rural broadband and transportation infrastructure to health care and global coronavirus relief. As lawmakers reconcile these many priorities, at least one one influential lawmaker on defense ― House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash. ― has said repeatedly that the Defense Department should draw from its existing budget. The Project on Government Oversight's Mandy Smithberger said the Pentagon has yet to make the case that payments to the defense industry will be the best means to stimulate the economy. “Even though they often don't act like it, resources are still limited to a degree and Congress has to consider fairness as part of that distribution, including who needs the government's help most, and which sectors are going to do the most to help the country,” Smithberger said. “These companies have much better access to capital than a number of other industries and individuals. Even from a reviving-the-economy perspective, this sector has always been one of the poorer performers per dollar for job creation.” The health care and education sectors create more than twice as many jobs per $1 million than the military, and the energy and infrastructure sectors create 40 percent more, according a 2019 analysis by the Costs of War project at Brown University. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/07/08/house-panel-isnt-giving-defense-industry-all-the-covid-aid-it-wants/