By
Theresa Hitchens on January 11, 2021 at 5:11 PM
WASHINGTON: DoD and the Commerce Department are seeking help from industry to set up a “challenge” competition to help accelerate development of open software for 5G networks, including potential market incentives for companies willing to eschew proprietary tech.
Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) the executive branch agency that has the lead for coordinating interagency telecommunications and information policy today issued a Notice of Inquiry seeking “comments and recommendations from all interested stakeholders to explore the creation of a 5G Challenge that would accelerate the development of the open 5G stack ecosystem in support of DoD missions.”
It will take time for the Biden administration to build its national security and defense strategies. In the absence of a new defense strategy, the most logical route for Congress would be to plan a two-year budget deal that buys back readiness and investment lost to the Budget Control Act.
By
Mackenzie Eaglen on January 10, 2021 at 4:58 PM
CLARIFICATION/UPDATE:
To reflect that the SDA Tracking Layer satellites will be able to directly tip and queue other OPIR satellites in future; and the resumption of the program.
WASHINGTON: The $4.9 billion contract to produce three Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) missile warning satellites seems to fly in the face of loudly touted Air and Space Force efforts to embrace open standards and cut the number of ground stations, receivers and antennas, experts said.
Instead, the new contract awarded to Lockheed Martin includes bespoke ground systems and sensor processing software raising questions in particular about how the data collected eventually will be shared with the Space Development Agency’s ballistic and hypersonic missile tracking sats.
By
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on December 15, 2020 at 6:26 PM
BAE Systems’s prototype for the Army’s Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) light tank.
WASHINGTON: The pandemic has disrupted a second BAE Systems armored vehicle program, this time delaying deliveries of prototype Mobile Protected Firepower vehicles to the Army’s 18
th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg.
Earlier this year, problems with COVID and quality control at BAE’s York, Penn. factory delayed delivery of BAE’s Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle – the replacement for the vulnerable, Vietnam-vintage M113 – by several months. Now I’ve learned that COVID has also affected production of the MPF, an air-deployable light-tank, whose prototypes are being built at a BAE facility in Sterling Heights, Mich.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte, leader of the congressional push to keep the A-10 flying, is calling out the Air Force. The service claims it won’t have enough mechanics to keep both F-35A Joint Strike Fighters and A-10 Warthogs flying safely and thus may miss the F-35’s politically important Initial Operating Capability milestone for the F-35A because Congress won’t retire the A-10.…
By Colin Clark
SAN DIEGO: How much Kentucky bourbon will it take for President Barack Obama and presumptive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to come to an agreement of some kind on how to alleviate sequestration? A few drinks in the Oval Office? A bottle between them up in McConnell’s Capitol eyrie? And what about those new Republicans…