Here are the programs that made the biggest news over the past week:
Big DDG-51 contract awards — In recent years, there have been serious concerns that the tenuous budget situation would threaten future DDG-51 buys. For now, however, the Navy is opening the checkbook: the service announced contracts worth more than $600 million apiece for two destroyers from General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries, as well as another $79.4 million for advance procurement of future ships,
we reported. The buy brings the total multi-year deal buy — which began in fiscal 2013 — to 10 ships.
GAO questions Aegis Ashore — You can add the Aegis Ashore effort to a list of defense programs outside observers believe is moving too fast for its own good, according to a report from Global Security Newswire. The Government Accountability Office concluded in a recent report that the Pentagon is being too optimistic in its schedule for installing permanent Aegis Ashore missile defense sites in Poland and Romania later this decade as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense, unveiled by the Obama Administration years ago. The GAO wrote that problems with some of the technology involved in the system has already caused the program to postpone deployment of some capabilities.
P-8s get some action — The Navy’s P-8A maritime surveillance aircraft got its first high-profile mission last week: hunting for debris of the missing Malaysian flight MH370 near Australia, according to NBC News. Unfortunately, the aircraft’s advancements over the aging P-3C Orion weren’t enough to help it track down debris from the airliner, and the aircraft had to return to the Australian city of Perth to refuel after a four-hour search. The aircraft has the ability to search an area of up to 10,000 square miles, helpful in a search involving vast amounts of open ocean.
Italians waffle on F-35 — The F-35 program got some bad news on the international market last week, with reports emerging that Italy could cut its already-trimmed 90-jet order even further in an effort to reduce its defense budget by $4.2 billion over the next three years, according to Reuters. A paper distributed amongst lawmakers by the prime minister’s party stated that the F-35 presented no significant industrial gains for the country and the cost was far too high. The aircraft is already unpopular among Italians, the Reuters report stated, and Italy slashed orders by 30 percent just two years before.