A new Pentagon strategy to maximize small business participation in defense contracting is in the works for this spring, defense officials told Defense News. The Pentagon’s first small business strategy since 2019 would come amid a decline in the number of contracts awarded to small businesses and as Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has acknowledged the barriers to work with his department are too steep.
The first Iranian UAV was detected by Israeli sensors at 1:50 AM on March 13, 2021, approaching Israel from the south. The second UAV was detected at 2:12 AM, approaching Israel from the east. Minutes later, both Iranian-launched drones were shot down by Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-35s, the first acknowledged operational air-to-air kill for the fifth-generation fighter. Operation Two Bridges, as the F-35 strike was known, happened almost a full year ago, but the details were uncovered only today during a special briefing by the IAF.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency may have been created to develop cutting-edge technology to help the U.S. take on the Soviet Union in the Cold War, but now it’s taking on another deadly enemy: mosquitos. DARPA’s latest idea, now entering its second phase, is to get down to the molecular level to make a topical cream that would actually alter the “microbiome” of human skin to make it less appetizing to the disease-carrying insects.
The Defense Department will permanently shut down the Navy’s massive fuel tank facility in Hawaii that leaked petroleum into Pearl Harbor’s tap water, and will remove all the fuel, The Associated Press has learned. A senior defense official said the decision, which Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III made Monday, is based on a new Pentagon assessment, but also is in line with an order from Hawaii’s Department of Health to drain fuel from the tanks at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility. The tanks, built into the side of a mountain during World War II to protect them from enemy attack, had leaked into a drinking water well and contaminated water at Pearl Harbor homes and offices.
As adversaries continue to field advanced weaponry, missile threats against the nation are growing rapidly. They’re more complex, survivable, reliable, and accurate than ever before. “The traditional missile warning architecture is not designed for the new, advanced hyper glide vehicle threat, putting our nation at risk,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Millennium Space Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Boeing Company. “Adding additional layers to the OPIR (Overhead Persistent Infrared) architecture will allow us to not only warn against oncoming threats, but also track these advanced threats in order to intercept them.”
Now in the fold of BAE Systems’ U.S. subsidiary, Bohemia Interactive Simulations started in Australia nearly 10 years ago with its headquarters being on farmland at the time with animals making noise in the background. Roughly halfway through that typical startup origin story, company co-founder and former Australian army officer Pete Morrison realized that video games could both inspire and be adapted into training platforms for soldiers.
Russia’s senior space official recently warned that any tampering with the nation’s satellites is grounds for war, underscoring how reliant modern communications and military operations are on the orbiting tools. Whether America views satellite hacking or attacking as a basis for a war declaration, though, isn’t so cut and dry.
An often-heard complaint about U.S. military satellites is that they’re not resilient —which generally means they don’t have enough protections against modern electronic jammers, advanced lasers, and cyber hacks. This is a growing concern for the Pentagon as Russia threatens to extend the war against Ukraine into space, and China continues to roll out advanced technologies that could be used against U.S. and allies’ communications and navigation satellite networks.
In Oregon, a man said his health deteriorated after a glowing blue orb passed through his body. A family in California reported strange lights and a gray figure with spindly legs in their orchard. A werewolf-like creature allegedly prowled around homes in suburban Virginia. All three incidents were probed as part of a secret Pentagon program investigating UFOs. The program, contracted by the Defense Intelligence Agency, plumbed the connection between the flying objects and the paranormal for two years, according to the men who ran it.
The average workday for many security forces Airmen, the Air Force equivalent of military police, often involves standing around at the base gate checking service members’ identification. But every once in a while, things rapidly become very real, sometimes at speeds above 100 miles per hour. At least, that’s what Senior Airman Sarah Hardy experienced on Dec. 16 when she was patrolling Patrick Space Force Base, Florida.