Pentagon’s R&D repository to lose nearly 80% of its staff. The Defense Technical Information Center was created in 1945 “to serve as a centralized repository of R&D information, allowing DoD to easily and effectively leverage and share technical knowledge,” wrote Defense Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, in an Aug. 4. memo. “However, its unfocused organizational model and legacy information platform are not suited to keep pace with global R&D, take advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI), or integrate with other data and intelligence systems that support strategic deterrence-impacting R&D investment decisions by the Department of Defense.”
Forty of the 190-plus DTIC employees will stay, having been IDd as mission-essential. All other civilians will receive notices of reduction-in-force by Aug. 25.
The move aims to eliminate duplicative functions and roles while refocusing DTIC to “its core statutory mission of administering a library of technical information and improving the user experience,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement emailed to reporters. Parnell said says that this reduction in force will save $25 million. Nextgov’s Alexandra Kelley has more, here.
The Army says it plans to add two Patriot battalions, which would give it a total of 18 plus “a composite battalion” in Guam, Defense News reported Monday.
Background: The service has 15 Patriot battalions, and officials announced plans to add a 16th two years ago.
And for Guam, the “composite battalion…will include the Integrated Fire Protection Capability, or IFPC, and the Integrated Battle Command System-enabled Patriot with the Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS,” Jen Judson and Todd South write for Defense News.
And in more missile developments, “The Pentagon awarded $7.8 billion in contracts to Lockheed Martin and RTX Corporation at the end of July to produce thousands of new missiles for the Air Force and Navy, as well as a host of international allies,” Military Times reported Monday. “The contracts include $3.5 billion to RTX Corporation for the AMRAAM Air-to-Air missile, reported to be the largest contract in the history of the AMRAAM missile program.”
Just in: Defense technology startup Anduril says it has become the third U.S. supplier of solid rocket motors on Tuesday, breaking a duopoly on production. Until now, only Northrop Grumman and L3Harris have produced SRMs, which power critical munitions for the Pentagon. By the end of 2026, Anduril said it will be able to build 6,000 tactical motors annually. Story to come at defenseone.com…
Related:
Meet INDOPACOM’s “expeditionary foundry.” From FPV drones to irreplaceable howitzer parts, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command has a new advanced manufacturing facility that can make one-of-a-kind prototypes and small batches of items that can be tested and proven for use in the military or commercial industry, Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad reported Monday from Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks.
It sprang from the need to produce high-quality, high-precision parts at sea, as would likely be necessary during a war in the Pacific. And it’s envisioned as a step toward a 10,000-square foot manufacturing facility near Pearl Harbor.
The warehouse that is now the Forge was built in 1936. Used as a horse stable in the era of towed artillery, it was later a Sherman tank repair shop, then a Stryker facility. It had been vacant for about 13 years before officials showed up and saw potential under its leaky roof, despite grass so tall it obscured most of the building, and feral pigs living inside.
“I was told to move fast, take more risks, because China wasn’t waiting,” said Benjamin Worrell, director of the Forge and Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s strategic advisor to INDOPACOM. Journalists were recently allowed to view, but not photograph, some of the one-of-a-kind prototypes, like a carbon fiber-reinforced polymer boat that can be printed in 18 hours for less than $1,000. Read the rest, here.
Commentary: Back stateside, is isolationism taking hold inside Trump’s Pentagon? There is a “war on ideas” taking place at the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, veteran national security journalist Nancy Youssef wrote Monday for The Atlantic. She begins with Hegseth’s department-wide ban on attendance at think-tank events, articulated by Hegseth’s top aide Sean Parnell in a social media post on July 18. But Youssef also cites Hegseth’s removal of the Office of Net Assessment, “which had been created in the 1970s as a hub for strategic analysts to produce internal assessments of U.S. readiness against potential foes.”
It’s a notable change from precedent for a department that in many ways is still inside the long shadow of the ill-advised Iraq invasion of 2003. As a consequence, “defense officials and conference planners told me, the Pentagon risks groupthink that could have real consequences.” Read the rest (gift link), here.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston and Audrey Decker. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1963, the U.S., U.K., and Soviet Union signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which banned above-ground nuclear tests.
Trump 2.0
Trump’s interim NASA administrator wants to build a nuclear reactor on the moon, Politico’s Sam Skove reported Monday. The plans are expected to be announced sometime later this week.
It’s not the first time this has come up, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s plans “would set a more definitive timeline” for the project, Skove reports. “The reactor directive orders the agency to solicit industry proposals for a 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor to launch by 2030,” he adds.
Expert reax: “This is not crazy as it sounds,” Naval War College professor David Burbach noted on social media. “NASA has long but low-key thought we’ll need 24/7 compact high-capacity electric power sources.” Indeed, “Since Trump 1, we’ve been more serious about developing small nuclear reactors for space use,” he said. Even President “Biden’s NASA kept that going.”
But “100kW is quite small compared to Homer Simpson / Three Mile Island style commercial power plants—about 10,000x smaller,” Burbach writes. “Still a big deal as the US has not used space reactors before (the Soviets did, famously contaminating Canada when one failed).”
The Department of Veterans Affairs is extending outside-care authorizations for up to one year across 30 medical specialties, including “cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, neurology, psychiatric outpatient treatments, optometry, some orthopedic work and addiction medicine,” Military Times reported Monday.
Background: “Community care has been a topic of controversy within the department since President Donald Trump’s first term in office. He frequently promised to expand ‘choice’ for veterans in their health care, charging that many faced long wait and travel times for federal health care.” Critics, on the other hand, worry “that outsourcing too much of veterans medical care to the private sector amounts to privatizing the department’s health care responsibilities, and that the oversight of non-VA clinics is already too lax.”
Related commentary: “Trump Is Dismantling the VA to Privatize Veterans’ Health Care,” veteran and former Congressional staff Michael Embrich argued Friday in Rolling Stone.
The VA is also ceasing to offer abortion services. Military-dot-com: “In a notice published Monday in the Federal Register, the VA said it planned to return to regulations that were in place until September 2022 — excluding abortions from its medical services coverage unless the pregnancy threatened the life of the mother.” Read on, here.
Additional reading:
Read the full article here