The Defense Department's Space Development Agency wants to blanket Earth with a constellation of low-cost, open-architecture data-relay and missile-tracking satellites whose sheer numbers, along with their 1,000-kilometer-high orbits, would theoretically thwart some modes of interference—but not all. With all going according to plan so far, ...
The U.S. Space Force has done much in its first 16 months. We must allow it to unlock its full potential, by providing it with the tools and authorities to accomplish its mission. The new service should be authorized to unify the department so everyone ...
The Missile Defense Agency on March 23 awarded Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin contracts worth a total of $7.6 billion to develop technology for the Next Generation Interceptor, which will replace aging ground-based interceptors and serve as the first layer of defense against intercontinental ballistic ...
The government’s 70 hypersonics programs—ranging from enabling technology efforts to all-up prototyping projects—are expected to cost $15 billion from 2015 through 2024, and several have sharply exceeded cost estimates, the Government Accountability Office reported. Hypersonic research funding grew 740 percent, government-wide, between 2015 and 2020. ...
The Space Force and the national Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps announced the first 10 JROTC units to convert their affiliation from the Air Force to the Space Force. All 10 schools converting volunteered. Selections were based on proximity to Space Force or ...
Advanced cruise missiles and potential hypersonic weapons will challenge North American Aerospace Defense Command’s legacy warning systems, so the command needs to improve awareness to provide earlier warning. USAF Gen. Glen. D. VanHerck, commander of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, told the Senate Armed Services ...
Pentagon officials are nailing down what the military wants to see from its next round of new satellites procured by the Space Development Agency, with a request for proposals due out this summer, the agency’s director said Feb. 16. The Defense Department is in the ...
The Pentagon has so many hypersonics projects underway there aren't enough people to conduct them and not enough facilities to test them, Air Force chief scientist Richard J. Joseph said during a Dec. 17 Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event. His comments came on the ...
L3Harris and SpaceX won contracts Oct. 5 to provide the first ballistic missile warning satellites for the Space Development Agency, growing the number of companies working on the future military constellation to four. L3Harris received $193.6 million and SpaceX got $149.2 million to design, develop, ...
The Space Force will stand up its Space Systems Command to oversee software and hardware acquisition “sooner rather than later” in 2021, the service’s second-highest uniformed official said Oct. 1. Lt. Gen. David D. Thompson said during a Defense One event that the new systems ...
Tracking and countering advanced cruise missiles developed by Russia and China needs to be a top priority for U.S. Northern Command, the nominee to lead the organization told lawmakers July 28. USAF Lt. Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, currently the director of the Joint Staff, said ...
The DOD's top two research and engineering officials are leaving their posts July 10 to pursue an opportunity in the private sector together, according to an email the pair sent out to Pentagon colleagues June 23. Michael D. Griffin was the first to occupy the ...