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Happy Friday!
Yesterday the White House announced that it would prioritize weapons deliveries to Ukraine, reallocating Patriot and NASAMS missiles originally purchased by other countries and moving back their delivery dates.
Northrup has plans to start manufacturing munitions inside Ukraine, funded by Ukrainian dollars.
- This is an example of the coproduction goal we have heard Bill LaPlante and others talk about this year.
Last week the SASC advanced its markup of the NDAA, with a topline of $911 billion, well past the $895 billion limit set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
- It adds funding for a number of programs, like a second Virginia-class submarine, and invests in priorities such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
- SASC chair Jack Reed was joined by other Senators who voted against the bill because of this ambitious topline, the result of an amendment from Roger Wicker.
In research, GAO's annual assessment of major acquisition programs brings insights into how the most expensive programs are doing.
- Costs are down, but over half of the programs surveyed are seeing delays.
- Their assessment of programs using the middle-tier acquisition pathway focused on the 20 largest programs, producing an unsurprising result: these programs are still taking over 10 years to be fielded.
- What remains to be studied: the other 86 programs using MTA. (Shout out to Defense Tech and Acquisition for making this point in their analysis of the GAO report.)
Our top story brings more news of planned incorporation of AI in acquisition, this time from the Army's Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology arm.
- The large language model will be trained on Army data, be used to expedite contract writing, and will be designed to cite sources.
Last week's top story explored the challenge of getting new vendors on the Space Force's space launch contract. That same day, we learned that a third vendor landed on contract -- Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin.
Anduril is responding to the predicted demand signal for large unmanned underwater vehicles, with plans to open a large-capacity production facility next year.
- Goal is to produce 200 hulls each year.
- This is significant because the shipbuilding and submarine industrial base are notoriously operating below the capacity needed to meet current goals.
France's military is working with its drone industry to create a more rapid acquisition process and develop a nationalized drone sector in addition to the commercial market.
Several stories detail lessons the Navy can learn from the Red Sea conflict with Houthis and Ukraine's use of drones in the Black Sea.
- Gen. Christopher Mahoney, assistant commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, explores this comparison and difference between the two maritime battle fields: "Like Ukrainian forces, they [the Houthis] rely on drones and long-range missiles; but unlike Ukraine, they have sunk few ships."
- Dov Zakheim calls for a lower cost maritime defense system for the Red Sea analogous to Israel's Iron Dome.
It's graduation day on the NPS campus, and we're celebrating all the graduates walking the stage today.
- ARP has supported students with their research and thesis work, and today we're bragging about the Department of Defense Management students who won awards. Several of these warrior-scholars shared their findings at the symposium's student poster show. We've included links to these summaries. Full theses are still being finalized.
- Today's commencement speaker is Vice Admiral Kelly Aeschbach, Commander, Naval Information Forces. You can watch online.
And in final ARP news, we have a few symposium videos for your viewing pleasure:
- a short excerpt of BG Frank Lozano talking about how PEO Missiles and Space is innovating processes and people
- and the full panel from which that excerpt comes: the Service Acquisition Flag Officers Roundtable.
Come work with us!
The Department of Defense Management (DDM) at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is looking to hire one full-time faculty member specializing in program management. Duty location of Monterey CA.
Applications due as soon as possible. Start date: October 1, 2024.
Learn more and apply now!
This Week's Top Story
Army teases pilot generative AI program to start in July
Carley Welch, Breaking Defense
The Army is looking to pilot a generative artificial intelligence program within its acquisition, logistics & technology (ASA(ALT)) division in July as part of its 500-day plan to reduce risks associated with implementing AI algorithms. If carried out correctly, the pilot will utilize generative AI to complete often laborious and lengthy tasks such as contract writing.
The pilot program will leverage a large language model (LLM) and will operate at an Impact Level (IL) 5 secure cloud environment — a system that has the highest level of authorization to store and process controlled unclassified information. The pilot will also act on its own authority to operate process procedures.
“The pilot is not just about increasing our productivity, which will be great, but also what are the other things that we can do? What are the other industry tools that are out there that we might be able to leverage or add on … say, our vehicles or you know, our weapon systems,” said Jennifer Swanson, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for data, engineering and software, at Defense One’s Tech Summit today.
Unlike other LLM models like ChatGPT, the Army’s LLM will be trained using the Army’s data, Swanson said.
In March, the Army began a 100-day initiative, which will end June 30, to investigate methods for mitigating risks linked to AI algorithms, with a subsequent 500-day project set to commence later this summer. The LLM pilot program will be at the forefront of this latter stage, she explained.
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