Author: Michael

On Tuesday, April 4, Finland joined NATO, making it the transatlantic alliance’s 31st member and the first new member since North Macedonia in 2020. Finnish membership will bring a modern force to the alliance, better able to deter Russian attacks along their shared 835-mile border. 

Finland’s accession has been in the making for about a year when the country’s voters and politicians were forced to abandon their neutrality in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, cooperation with NATO has always it has been important.

USN

The U.S. Navy is actively exploring using its CMV-22B Osprey tilt-rotors in other roles beyond carrier onboard delivery, or COD. This could include acting as backup communications nodes in the event that a carrier air wing’s E-2D Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft are unavailable for any reason.
Vice Adm. Kenneth Whitesell, currently the head of the Navy’s Naval Air Forces and the U.S.

A Pile of U.S. Dollars

On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced its latest round of military aid for Ukraine, totaling $2.6 billion.
According to a White House press release, $2 billion of the funding would be for different types of munitions, weapons, and radar. The additional military aid also comes just ahead of an expected and much-anticipated spring offensive against Russian troops.
In a statement released by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the package will include “U.S.-provided HIMARS, air defense interceptors, and artillery rounds that Ukraine is using to defend itself.

According to the Chinese military’s assessment, the Chinese fleet of six Jin-class ballistic missile submarines conducts “almost continuous” patrols from Hainan Island to the South China Sea. According to analysts, equipped with a new, longer-range ballistic missile, they can reach the continental United States.
When it was released in late November, the 174-page report received less attention. Four regional military attachés with experience in naval operations and five other security specialists say this still demonstrates significant growth in China’s military might.

Rafael

NATO’s newest member, Finland, announced Wednesday it will procure the David’s Sling medium-range air defense system from Israel. This is the first export customer for the system.
The system, which fires the unique “dolphin”-nosed Stunner interceptor, is a joint venture between Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Raytheon.

The Navy has added funding in its budget plans for a critical airborne electronic attack capability that’s expected to provide increased range and address specific gaps.
The Navy is requesting an increase of $32.5 million in research and development funding for the Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band Extended (NGJ-MBX) in fiscal 2024.
The next-gen system, which is the replacement for the decades old ALQ-99, will be mounted on the EA-18G Growler aircraft.

As the Office of Naval Research’s international arm ONR Global moves to expand its worldwide presence, senior officials are eyeing India as the next nation where they’ll set up a post.
“Scientific collaboration with our international partners is an important ongoing effort. ONR Global has been working with officials in India to open an office there. If new partnerships become official, we will provide details,” an ONR spokesperson told DefenseScoop on Tuesday.
One element within the far-reaching Naval Research Enterprise, ONR Global is a vessel through which the U.S.

The Pentagon’s Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve initiative is slated to run multiple technology “sprints” each year with the ultimate goal of quickly filling capability gaps identified by the Joint Staff and combatant commanders. But the timelines for transitioning the tech to warfighters will be determined on a case-by-case basis, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu told DefenseScoop.
The Pentagon requested $359 million for the RDER program in fiscal 2023 to kick off the technology sprints. For fiscal 2024, it is asking for $687 million.

The French military budget will amount to 413,000 million euros in the next seven years.
One year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the French government presented the new Military Programming Budget (LPM) on Tuesday, representing an increase of 100,000 million euros compared to the previous seven-year budget.
“This LPM represents an unprecedented increase in the defense budget,” said Sébastien Lecornu, French Minister of the Armed Forces, who admitted that some programs had priority over others.

It’s an idea that’s been tossed around for quite a while now: To better protect federal information, any federal civilian contractors that handle the government’s sensitive data will have to meet basic cybersecurity standards much like those that are set to be imposed on defense contractors under the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, best known as CMMC.
According to Stacy Bostjanick, the head of CMMC at the Department of Defense, that’s inevitable and now in the works.