With a presidential veto hanging in the air, Congress charges ahead on huge federal spending votes.
By Paul McLearyA major overhaul is coming in software for missile warning
Space Systems Command’s FORGE program is the first, major missile-warning software modernization effort in 20 years.
“You don’t have to be a doctor or a four-star general to understand that spending billions on new helicopters, combat vehicles, and fighter jets is not the solution” to the COIVD problem, said Rep. Adam Smith, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
By Paul McLeary
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says that if the House can pass all 12 appropriations bills by the end of June, it will be a “historic step.” But lawmakers have little time before the November elections.
By Theresa Hitchens
“Once the US companies come on line,” Gen. Milley said, “the intent is to outfit the entire heavy force — the Bradleys, the tanks, any future combat vehicles — with active protective systems.”
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Eight senators sent a letter Friday to Defense Secretary James Mattis, urging him to request all three Littoral Combat Ships originally planned for the 2018 budget. While eight percent of the Senate may seem small, the bipartisan co-signers — four Republicans, four Democrats — include five members of the appropriating and authorizing and committees for…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: The Senate battle over Russian rockets keeps rocking. Senators Dick Durbin and Richard Shelby sent most of this morning’s defense appropriations hearing defending the Pentagon’s plan to keep using the cheap and technologically reliable but politically toxic RD-180 until an American-made replacement is ready, sometime around 2020-2021. Durbin and Shelby denounced the effort…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
CAPITOL HILL: The war ground on today between San. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and his colleague Sen. Richard Shelby on the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. Shelby, knowing he had a policy friend in Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, asked her about the Russian-made RD-180 rocket engine essential to US satellite launches…
By Colin Clark
Why cloud modernization is critical to multi-domain operations
JADC2 is a forcing function, driving digital transformation of network infrastructure.
WASHINGTON: Sen. John McCain continued his crusade to stop the Pentagon from using Russia’s highly reliable and cheap RD-180 rocket engines to launch American military satellites during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today. The Arizona senator and the House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, introduced a bill today designed to overturn language in…
By Colin Clark
WASHINGTON: John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, believes fervently in the importance of the authorizing committees, those bodies charged with making congressional policy and placing restrictions on weapons program spending. Today, McCain lost a battle against the appropriators, that small group of powerful legislative leaders who decide how much money the executive branch…
By Colin Clark WASHINGTON: Sen. John McCain has fired another salvo at the United Launch Alliance over its use of Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines, telling Defense Secretary Ash Carter he wants an audit of ULA’s “business systems” and he wants that and more information by Dec. 21. This latest kerfuffle arose after ULA’s decided to refrain from bidding for the Air Force’s…
By Colin Clark
CAPITOL HILL: Syria and sequestration dominated today’s Senate Appropriations Committee’s mark-up of the $594 billion defense spending bill for fiscal year 2014, but there was little actual progress on either. Appropriators are historically the most hard-nosed legislators; they’re the committees that have to match congressional rhetoric with actual money. But today, the appropriators approved a…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.“Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle” is arguably the most awesome name on record for a Pentagon program. Technologically, the Raytheon-built EKV is pretty impressive, able to hit an incoming missile head-on at over 15,000 miles per hour. Some background: The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle is the business end of the missile defense system now based in Alaska and…
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
