The Air Force is encouraging the development of space situational awareness platforms to track satellites that can be smaller than a book and hard to identify from the standpoint of intent and ownership in increasingly cluttered orbits.
The Army validated its Network Service Center; the Government Accountability Office highlighted lessons learned from the canceled Future Combat Systems program; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms dominate the Paris Air Show; and a Marine Corps command in Iraq turned to wide-area network optimization during a headquarters relocation.
A memorandum issued June 23 confirms the recommendations made earlier this year by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to replace the single, giant program with a number of smaller modernization efforts.
A number of key developments concerning intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance were unveiled at the Paris Air Show last week.
A GAO official told a Senate subcommittee that though the Army's Future Combat Systems failed to live up to expectations, successive programs will benefit from its trial and error.
The Defense Department is seeking an increase of 18.4 percent, or $870 million, in funding for unmanned systems in fiscal 2010 over the amount spent for such systems in 2009, Defense Update reported.
A General Dynamics unit will acquire Axsys Technologies Inc., a developer of electro-optical and infrared sensors and systems and surveillance and reconnaissance cameras, for $643 million.
Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle gets liquid-cooled enclosures to protect electronics; Nortel’s Optical Multiservice Edge 6500 is approved for mission-critical networks; and the military orders more friend-or-foe digital transponders and towed decoys for aircraft.