DefenseScoop

🏆 We are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2024 #DefenseScoop50 Awards! These visionary leaders and innovative programs are at the forefront of revolutionizing defense through advanced technology. Join us in congratulating these pioneers who are not only redefining the future of military strategies but also ensuring our national security. Explore the full list of this year's remarkable recipients: https://lnkd.in/d3ED45ST

The Air Force is looking to procure a new unmanned system for Task Force 99, putting a premium on endurance and range. The unit — which was stood up in October 2022 at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, to use uncrewed platforms to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities and perform technology experiments — has multiple lines of effort including increasing air domain awareness, locating hard-to-detect mobile targets, and creating dilemmas for adversaries, according to officials. https://hubs.li/Q02MrzJC0

After deciding to split up its integrated signals intelligence and electronic warfare platform, the Army is pursuing a new architecture for its EW suite. Following operational demonstrations, the service determined that the concept for the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team was not going to work the way it was intended or gain the efficiencies desired. https://hubs.li/Q02Mryh20

The Army’s electronic warfare program office is using experimental units to help pave the way for its emerging capabilities and devise future requirements and concepts. Those units are part of Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George’s so-called transforming-in-contact concept, where the service plans to use deployments and troop rotations to test new equipment — mainly commercial off-the-shelf gear — that could allow units to be more responsive on a dynamic battlefield. https://hubs.li/Q02Mrxx60

The Air Force is moving “as fast as possible” to integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning tools into its efforts to boost readiness levels and prepare for future conflicts, according to Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin. As part of its plan to “reoptimize” for great power competition, the service is revamping how it generates readiness for contested environments in the Indo-Pacific by conducting new large-scale exercises, enhancing supply chains and more. Through these initiatives, the Air Force is looking at how AI and ML can enhance preparedness by improving command and control in operations and the way the organization accounts for spare parts, Allvin said Wednesday during a media roundtable with reporters. https://hubs.li/Q02MrnNy0

Major private sector suppliers that make up most of the United States’ defense industrial base are increasingly primarily serving only government customers — and are therefore becoming isolated from the broader commercial economy, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. For the study, co-authors Greg Allen and Doug Berenson analyzed a dataset that was designed to show what share of the major weapons system acquisition budget went to commercial companies or defense specialists, dating back to 1977. https://hubs.li/Q02Mrns_0

The Army announced Thursday it has selected Sierra Nevada Corporation to serve as the lead system integrator for its High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES), a key program for one of the service’s top modernization priorities known as “deep sensing.” https://hubs.li/Q02Mrr8L0

The Marine Corps is looking for commercially available technologies that can detect, identify and track a variety of uncrewed platforms and other targets that troops might need to engage. The service is eyeing a potential acquisition of these types of capabilities for its Observation and Sensing System (OSS) program, according to a sources-sought notice released Thursday by Marine Corps Systems Command’s program executive office for land systems. https://hubs.li/Q02Mrg9k0

As the U.S. military prepares for future fights and simultaneously confronts intensifying conflicts in multiple regions of the world, Pentagon leaders are advancing efforts and technologies that promote civilian harm mitigation, according to a senior official deeply involved in that work. “The world has gotten much more complicated, and we often think about how certain domains we’re now operating in routinely never existed a couple decades ago — cyberspace, electronic warfare. So these are important elements that we need to factor in as we think of the civilian environment, well beyond the sort of traditional kinetic effects that often are most highlighted as affecting civilians in a negative way,” Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, told reporters at a roundtable Friday hosted by the Defense Writers Group. https://hubs.li/Q02Mrnxb0

The Air Force is looking to procure a new unmanned system for Task Force 99, putting a premium on endurance and range. The unit — which was stood up in October 2022 at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, to use uncrewed platforms to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities and perform technology experiments — has multiple lines of effort including increasing air domain awareness, locating hard-to-detect mobile targets, and creating dilemmas for adversaries, according to officials. https://hubs.li/Q02MrF2F0