The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies
In episode 190 of the Aerospace Advantage, Heather Penney chats with Lt Col Jessica “Thumper” Getrost, Commander of the 57th Space Aggressor Squadron; Lt Col Matt “BC” Bejcek, former Commander of the 98th Space Range Squadron; and Mitchell Institute Senior Fellow Charles Galbreath about threats facing our satellites and the importance of preparing Guardians for warfighting.
NBC Montana
A vehicle accident on the Malmstrom Air Force Base has killed one Airmen and injured five more, according to a report from the base. According to the report, the accident happened June 29, where three Airmen were injured directly related to the accident while two additional first responder Airmen received injuries while responding to the accident.
The Associated Press
Russia’s defense minister ordered officials to prepare a “response” to U.S. drone flights over the Black Sea, the ministry said June 28, in an apparent warning that Moscow may take forceful action to ward off the American reconnaissance aircraft. The Russian Defense Ministry noted a recent “increased intensity” of U.S. drones over the Black Sea, saying they “conduct intelligence and targeting for precision weapons supplied to the Ukrainian military by Western countries for strikes on Russian facilities.”
The New York Times
President Vladimir V. Putin declared on June 28 that Russia would produce new intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles and then decide whether to deploy them within range of NATO nations in Europe and American allies in Asia. Mr. Putin’s threat was vaguely worded: He said nothing about timetables for deploying the weapons, and by blaming the United States for bringing similar missiles into training exercises in Europe and Asia, he seemed to be signaling he was open to negotiations.
Defense One
Troops in the field may soon have supercomputers at their fingertips, thanks to a Pentagon project that’s set to move from prototype to product. For 18 months, software companies Rescale and Parallel Works have worked to show that they can mix Defense Department supercomputers with cloud services to add capacity and the ability to remotely access high-performance computers. Now the Defense Innovation Unit has announced plans to make these services generally available through the Pentagon’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program.
DefenseScoop
The Department of Defense’s main network defense arm is taking a leading role in the cybersecurity of global logistics for Transportation Command. Last year, Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Network—a subordinate headquarters under U.S. Cyber Command responsible for protecting and defending the Pentagon’s network globally—became the coordinating authority for TRANSCOM.
Defense News
The U.S. Department of Defense’s zero-trust program office says it’s working on establishing independent, in-house certification of the tools that come through its doors to ensure they’re actually as cyber-secure as they claim. Randy Resnick, director of the Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office at the Pentagon, said there’s a need to independently validate whether vendor products and services are, in fact, up to snuff.
Military.com
A Pentagon spending bill that includes $2.5 billion to pay for a major hike in junior enlisted troops’ salaries has passed the House, but the White House is contending that amount falls short of what would actually be needed to cover the raises. The House approved its version of the fiscal 2025 Defense Department appropriations bill on June 28 in a 217-198 largely party-line vote.
C4ISRNET
U.S. Central Command is planning a set of exercises aimed at filling key gaps in its ability to detect and track drone threats in the Middle East. Amid a sharp increase in one-way drone attacks on U.S. and allied forces by Iraq, Syria and Houthi rebels, CENTCOM is working with the Pentagon’s chief digital and AI office to identify sensors that can detect adversary systems and be integrated into a command and control framework. Earlier this month, the command’s innovation team solicited proposals from industry for the effort, dubbed Desert Guardian.
SpaceNews
U.S. Space Command on June 28 sent out a reminder that it will closely monitor the controlled deorbiting of approximately 100 Starlink satellites, an operation that SpaceX announced in February. The decision to deorbit these early version 1 Starlink satellites came after SpaceX identified a potential issue that could increase the risk of future failures. The operation, projected to last several months, involves a controlled descent of satellites from low Earth orbit.
One More Thing
The War Zone
Eighty years ago this week, a truly bizarre air-to-ground weapon was successfully employed in combat for the first time. It was so strange, in fact, that the Allied pilots who first encountered it in the skies over Normandy were not entirely sure what it really was.
