Pentagon Set to Boost Spending on High-Tech Armaments.

• Author: Harper, Jon

The U.S. military is looking to enhance the lethality of its weapons as it prepares for high-end warfare against advanced adversaries. A wide range of modernization needs includes everything from small arms all the way up to long-range precision missiles.

The fiscal year 2018 omnibus spending bill passed by Congress included $16.2 billion for munitions, about $1.9 billion above the president's budget request. In fiscal year 2019, the Defense Department plans to spend more than $20 billion on the technology.

The Pentagon's push to enhance its armament systems has support from lawmakers. The Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act calls for increasing procurement of advanced munitions.

The bill "continues the work of the department to maximize as many munitions production lines as possible--particularly those specific to the high-end fight," according to the committee's summary of the legislation. That includes the long-range anti-ship missile, joint air-to-surface standoff missile extended range, Harpoon anti-ship missile and MK-48 torpedo.

The U.S. military must replenish its weapons stockpiles that have been expended in places like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, while bolstering its arsenal for another potential conflict against peer competitors like China and Russia, noted Retired Lt. Gen. David Halverson, chairman and CEO of Cypress International.

"We're spending a lot on munitions because if you may have to go to war... you're going to use a lot," he said at the National Defense Industrial Association's Armament Systems Forum in Indianapolis. "How you get more lethality and more range and capacity to allow our systems to have overmatch over other systems --that's really important and that's where the money is going."

Anthony Sebasto, executive director of the enterprise and systems engineering center at the Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, said opportunities abound for industry as the Pentagon moves to beef up its armaments.

"For everybody in this room that's involved in the lethality business, whether you're guns, whether you're missiles, whether you're directed energy... I think it's fair to say all of you are the right people at the right time to come together" to provide new capabilities, he said at the forum.

Sebasto's slide presentation identified some of the top modernization needs: higher pressure/lower wear weapons technologies across all platforms; extended range projectile technologies; novel...