Inhofe Passes. Former Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who served as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) from 2018 through 2021, passed on July 9 at 89 years old. Inhofe served in the Senate from 1994 to 2023, to include as SASC ranking member from 2021 through his retirement, where he was a vocal proponent for increased defense spending and securing nuclear modernization funding. From December 2017 to September 2018, Inhofe led the SASC in an acting capacity in place of John McCain (R-Ariz.), while the former Arizona senator was away from Congress fighting brain cancer. Inhofe’s tenure atop SASC was marked by a good working relationship with Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the committee’s chairman, and the two often remarked on their bipartisanship to get things done, including annual passage of the NDAA.
HASC Dems/Biden. Several prominent Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), including the panel’s ranking member, have called on President Biden to drop his reelection bid. “The president’s performance in the debate was alarming to watch and the American people have made it clear they no longer see him as a credible candidate to serve four more years as president,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), HASC’s top Democrat, said in a statement, referring to Biden’s debate against former President Donald Trump on June 27. Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Mikie Sherill (D-N.J.), who both sit on HASC, have also called on Biden to exit the race.
F-35 Deliveries. Software problems have delayed delivery of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters with the Technology Refresh-3 update needed for the aircraft’s new Block 4 weapons, sensors, and other mission systems, but the company is to begin delivering a TR-3 version, while not full-up. Lockheed Martin said that it looks forward “to delivering the first TR-3 F-35s with combat training capabilities soon.”
China Committee. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he plans to renew the Select Committee on Strategic Competition with China for the next Congress. “I’m grateful for Speaker Johnson’s clear-eyed assessment of the existential threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and the importance of the Select Committee on the CCP in tackling that threat head-on. What the Chinese Communist Party fears most is a united America where Democrats and Republicans work together to defend our nation. For the remainder of this Congress and into the next, the Select Committee will work in a bipartisan manner and alongside the committees of jurisdiction to continue to protect the United States and our values from the malign influence of our nation’s foremost adversary, the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), the panel’s chair, said in a statement. The House established the Select Committee on China in January 2023, with the panel taking a bipartisan approach to examining issues and working on policy recommendations related to the U.S.’ competition with Beijing.
Strategic Automated Command and Control. Senate defense authorizers want the Air Force secretary to brief the congressional defense committees regularly “on the progress made by the Air Force to develop a replacement for the Strategic Automated Command and Control System [SACCS] by the date in [sic] which the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program reaches initial operational capacity.” Northrop Grumman is developing Sentinel. Housed at Offutt AFB, Neb., SACCS, which dates back to 1968 and has 1970s-era IBM Series 1 software, is a message system for ICBMs, strategic bombers, reconnaissance planes, transports and tankers. In fiscal 2023, the Air Force started technology maturation and risk reduction for the SACCS replacement (SACCS-R) to include a move from SACCS’ Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) to SACCS-R’s planned Internet Protocol (IP) architecture. Through fiscal 2029, the Air Force plans to spend $111 million on SACCS-R development. “SACCS has equipment that has reached its end of life and is no longer repairable due to diminished manufacturing sources and parts obsolescence,” the Air Force said in its fiscal 2025 budget request. “This jeopardizes Air Force Global Strike Command’s (AFGSC) ability to meet mission requirements as required by Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Nuclear Technical Performance Criteria and Operational Standards (CJCSI 6811.01). In order to mitigate the risk of SACCS inability to operate once the current spares are completely diminished and ensure the system remains secure against modern/future threats, the Air Force is developing a replacement system (SACCS-R).”
U.S. Iron Dome? The newly adopted GOP platform includes building an “Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield” over the entire country among a list of 20 “promises” for the potential Trump administration. “Republicans will ensure our military is the most modern, lethal and powerful force in the world. We will invest in cutting edge research and advanced technologies, including an Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield, support our troops with higher pay and get woke leftwing Democrats fired as soon as possible,” Republicans write in the platform. While the platform does not offer more specifics on the “missile defense shield” idea, it’s likely to be modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system developed by Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries and which utilizes Tamir interceptors.
B-52 EW. L3Harris said that it recently tested five of nine Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) it is upgrading for the B-52’s AN/ALQ-172 electronic warfare system as part of a 10-year, $947 million U.S. Air Force contract awarded to L3Harris on Aug. 31, 2021 for ALQ-172 modernization. Under the maintenance and reliability system (MARS) upgrade contract, L3Harris said that it tested the five LRUs together for the first time during a more than five-hour flight over Texas. The five LRUs “performed as expected,” L3Harris said, “demonstrating stability, reliability, and particular strength in three key areas: acquisition: finding and tracking targets or signals; electronic countermeasure response time–speed at which the system can respond with countermeasures like jamming; and geolocation–ability to determine precise location of threats or signals.” Jimmy Mercado, a program director at L3Harris, said in the company statement that “the electronic threat landscape grows more complex and contested every day, underscoring the importance of our continued EW enhancements to the B-52” and that the recent flight test “showed that we’re providing the advanced capabilities needed to ensure the aircraft and its crews remain mission-ready and effective well into the 2050s.” The company said that it has redesigned seven of the nine LRUs as part of the MARS contract and expects to do so for the final two soon.
Weather Satellites. General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) said that the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command has awarded the company a contract for a second Electro-Optical Weather System (EWS) satellite—a deal which the company said includes three years of operations services. “This award modifies the current GA-EMS contract to design and deliver an operational EWS spacecraft with integrated EO/IR payloads to support the transition of the USSF’s aging Defense Meteorological Support Program (DMSP) on-orbit systems to a new generation of affordable, high performance, small weather satellites,” GA-EMS said. In March, Arcfield’s Colorado-based Orion Space Solution, the other company chosen by the Space Force to build EWS, said that it had launched its EWS cube satellite on a one-year mission to demonstrate accurate weather forecasting that meets Space Force requirements.
Army Pacific. President Biden has nominated Lt. Gen. Ronald Clark to be the next commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific. Clark is currently serving as the senior military assistant to the secretary of defense. Clark would succeed Gen. Charles Flynn, who has led USARPAC since June 2021.
Black Hawks. The Army on July 11 awarded Sikorsky a $251.5 million contract modification for UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters. The award includes funds to deliver Black Hawks for foreign military sales cases with Croatia and Jordan. Work on the deal is expected to be completed by the end of June 2027.
Howitzer Award. The Army on July 3 awarded BAE Systems a $579.3 million contract for M109A7 155mm self-propelled howitzers and M992A3 ammunition resupply vehicles. A total of $265.8 million was obligated at the time of award, according to the Pentagon. Work on the deal is expected to be completed by the end of January 2029.
Austal Steel. Austal USA on July 9 marked the start of construction of its new steel final assembly facility in an expansion of its Mobile, Ala. shipyard to the south of the company’s current waterfront operations. It will include a 400 by 480 feet assembly building with over 192,000 square feet of manufacturing space and three bays able to erect the Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutter and Navy’s TAGOS-25 ocean surveillance steel ships. Austal said it will also be able to build modules for submarines and other surface ships. This expansion includes a Pearlson-designed shiplift that will be able to launch ships as they are finished in the assembly buildings as well as bring ships to the land-side facility for repairs and maintenance. Once the expansion is complete, Austal says the facility will include a 117,000 square foot steel panel line, two module manufacturing facilities and seven bays providing over 400,000 soiree feet of indoor erection space.
NDAA Carriers. The Senate Armed Services’ Committee draft FY ‘25 defense authorization bill includes a sense of Congress recommendation for the Secretaries of Defense and the Navy to adopt two-ship acquisition strategy for future Ford-class carriers CVN[82 and 83, which the Navy is currently considering. The committee also hopes CVN-82 will not be procured later than FY 2028. This follows the Navy buying CVN-80 and 81 in a two-ship buy in order to save over $4 billion versus buying them separately.
DDG-122. General Dynamics Bath Iron Works (BIW) delivered the future Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA destroyer USS John Basilone (DDG 122) to the Navy on July 8. This follows a series of at-sea and pier-side trials to demonstrate ship readiness to the Navy. BIW has six other destroyers under construction: the future USS Harvey C. Barnum Jr. (DDG-124), Louis H. Wilson Jr. (DDG-126), Patrick Gallagher (DDG-127), William Charette (DDG-130), Quentin Walsh (DDG-132) and John E. Kilmer (DDG-134).
F/A-18 ADVEW. L3Harris Technologies on July 2 announced it recently conducted the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for its advanced electronic warfare (ADVEW) system prototype to be used on the U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet aircraft. The A\DVEW aims to provide F/A-18s with new countermeasures and L3Harris said it aims to conduct Prototype System Integration Lab Testing this summer. This is part of an $80 million contract with the Navy to deliver the new electronic warfare systems for Hornets and Super Hornets.
