Last Friday, the Missile Defense Agency issued a classified draft request for proposals to replace the Redesigned Kill Vehicle, which was cancelled last month after Pentagon leadership concluded the program wouldn’t work. The new program has been dubbed the Next Generation Interceptor.
On Sunday, Shi’ite militias operating under the command of Iran’s Quds Force – the overseas arm of Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards – fired a number of rockets at Israel from Syria, but they failed to hit Israeli territory. The military said the rockets were launched from an area near Damascus.
On Monday, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presided over a presentation of the colors ceremony that reestablished U.S. Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. Marine Corps General Joe Dunford said SPACECOM allows the U.S. to retain the high ground in this new world of warfare.
On Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense advanced its Fiscal Year 2020 funding bill that provides the Missile Defense Agency with $237.8 million to accelerate hypersonic defense programs. It also included $108 million for the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program.
Also on Tuesday, the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio issued a capability request for information for the Directed Energy Counter-Cruise Missiles project. The DE C-CM experiment seeks to assess directed energy weapon technology to defeat cruise missiles.
Additionally on Tuesday, North Korea tested its super-large multiple rocket launcher hours after a diplomat announced Pyongyang would be willing to resume negotiations with the U.S. later this month. The test included three launches and is believed to have had mixed failure and success. One of the rockets is believed to have misfired and only one successfully hit its target 330 km away from the launch site.
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