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Happy Friday!
Our top story brings a good news story that we've heard promised over the past year: the effort to increase industrial capacity for munitions, especially 155mm artillery shells, is starting to bear fruit.
- A new factory has opened in Texas in less than a year, with more facilities on the way.
This week's acquisition section brings more good news of industry partners creating useful technology for the Navy and DoD without waiting for requirements to direct them.
- L3 Harris, for instance, has built unmanned surface vessels that have been used -- but not purchased -- by the Navy.
- L3Harris president Jon Rambeau suggests these and other sensing capabilities in development can be acquired through fee-for-service contracts or urgent operational needs statements.
DIU has two new projects -- an emerging technology portfolio that will include other organizations such as DARPA.
- A recent solicitation in this category looks for quantum sensors for alternate positioning, navigation, and timing.
- DIU has also awarded a contract to The Spaceport Company to develop a sea-based space launch platform.
The Navy is working to take advantage of the new cybersecurity reciprocity guidance to build on Army successes in data analytics.
- Navy CIO Jane Rathbun shared that the Navy is also planning to update its Information Superiority Vision strategy this summer, with a focus on data management.
Senator Wicker has released a plan to increase defense spending by $55 billion to address threats from Russia and the People's Republic of China.
The Congressional effort to fight price gouging continues, with more demands for getting accurate pricing data from contractors.
- A letter from four Senators calls out “sweeping,” which it defines as "the practice by which contractors do not submit cost or pricing data that were reasonably available at the time of price agreement.” They ask DoD for more information about why this happens and how it can be remediated.
In ARP news, we bid one more bittersweet farewell to Rear Admiral Jim Greene, NPS Acquisition Chair and Founder of ARP, who passed away in 2022.
- Greene was interred at Arlington National Cemetery last Monday, with full military honors. His service to the nation was also recognized with a notice in the Congressional Record.
- His career with the Navy included serving as Project Manager for the Aegis Ship Building Project and as senior military Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition.
- In civilian service, he served on the board of the American Chestnut Land Trust in Maryland and other environmental organizations that showed his dedication to preserving public lands for future generations.
Finally, this week's Defense Tech and Acquisition newsletter from our friends Pete Modigliani and Matt MacGregor gave an excellent recap of this month's symposium.
- Matt co-authored two papers for the symposium, and it was great to see him in Monterey.
- We love being part of this community of passionate researchers and advocates for innovation!
This Week's Top Story
Pentagon Opens Ammunition Factory to Keep Arms Flowing to Ukraine
John Ismay, The New York Times
In a warehouse off Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway in an industrial area outside Dallas, the future of American military ammunition production is coming online.
Here, in the Pentagon’s first new major arms plant built since Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkish workers in orange hard hats are busy unpacking wood crates stenciled with the name Repkon, a defense company based in Istanbul, and assembling computer-controlled robots and lathes.
The factory will soon turn out about 30,000 steel shells every month for the 155-millimeter howitzers that have become crucial to Kyiv’s war effort. ...
To keep Ukraine’s artillery crews supplied, the Pentagon set a production target last year of 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. Factories in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., together make about 36,000 shells per month. The new General Dynamics facility in Mesquite, Texas, will make 30,000 each month once it reaches its full capacity.
The 100,000-per-month goal represents a nearly tenfold increase in production from a few years ago.
Less than a year ago, the surrounding area here in North Texas was just a dirt field. But with millions of dollars from Congress and help from Repkon, the American defense firm General Dynamics was able to open the factory about 10 months after breaking ground...
“Despite all our starts and stops with the government, the continuing resolutions and getting the last supplemental, the industrial base responds when you fund it and it’s done right,” William A. LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, said in an interview with his Army counterpart, Douglas R. Bush.
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