Boeing originally expected to start delivering its latest batch of F-15EX Eagle II fighters to the Air Force in December 2022, the federal watchdog wrote in its annual assessment of weapon systems, released Thursday.

Several production problems delayed the delivery of those six fighters in lot 1B, GAO said. Those delays were mainly caused by what office referred to as “supplier quality problems related to a critical component in the forward fuselage assembly that ensures safety of flight.” The report did not provide further details on that component, but said quality problems were fixed by the time Boeing built the seventh and eighth F-15EXs.

Boeing also mis-drilled windscreen installation holes on four F-15EXs in this lot because the company used tooling with a design error, GAO said. Program officials told auditors the problem was caught before more planes were mis-drilled, and that Boeing will redrill the holes on affected aircraft before starting production on the second lot of fighters.

Boeing declined to comment to Defense News on the quality issues highlighted in GAO’s report, and referred questions to the Air Force. Defense News has reached out to the service for comment.

Boeing spokeswoman Deborah VanNierop confirmed Friday that the only F-15EXs so far delivered to the Air Force are the two test aircraft that were delivered in spring 2021, which were considered lot 1A.

More than two years later, the service is still waiting for the next batch of fighters.

The F-15EX is an upgraded version of the fourth-generation Eagle fighter, with advanced avionics such as fly-by-wire controls and improved electronic warfare capabilities.

But those problems are having ripple effects on the F-15EX program, GAO said. Each lot 2 fighter is now delayed by two months as a result of the earlier lot’s problems, the report read, and delivery schedules are in danger of slipping further.

The report noted that program officials thought Boeing could deliver the six F-15EXs in that lot between May and July, with two delivered per month. But Boeing and the federal Defense Contract Management Agency warned that more delays could occur, GAO said.

Boeing’s analysis predicted it would be unable to deliver the first fighter in this batch until July, and the second in August.

The Defense Contract Management Agency concluded the last deliveries in the lot would probably not happen until September because of the problems that cropped up so far.

GAO said that if delivery of these planes is delayed beyond July, it will be tough to meet planned deadlines in 2023, including the declaration of initial operational capability in July and full-rate production in October.

Boeing referred Defense News’ questions on the fighters’ schedule to the Air Force.

GAO also warned that cybersecurity vulnerabilities remain the F-15EX’s primary vulnerability. The fighter’s design was derived from versions of the F-15 that were sold to foreign militaries, GAO said, and weren’t designed to meet the Air Force’s own cybersecurity requirements.

Program officials told GAO that it is working through the Defense Department’s six-phase process for assessing cybersecurity vulnerabilities on the F-15EX, with the first four either already done or expected to be finished in early 2023. The program expected to finish the final two phases on the aircraft delivered in lot 1B.

The Air Force is now planning to buy 104 F-15EXs, and requested money to buy 24 of the fighters in the proposed fiscal 2024 budget.

The Air Force last year moved to scale back its F-15EX procurement in the FY23 budget, from the original 144 to 80. This was intended to free up funds for higher priority programs, GAO said.

The watchdog warned that a lack of enough procurement funding for the F-15EX could cause the program to be curtailed slightly below that already reduced 80. A June 2022 cost estimate showed the Air Force wouldn’t have enough money for 80 fighters, and only be able to buy 78, GAO noted.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a March budget briefing that the service had decided to partially reverse its decision to cut the F-15EX procurement to 80, bringing it back up to 104.

Putin said during a meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko that work on building facilities for the nuclear weapons will be completed by July 7-8, and they will be moved to the territory of Russia’s neighbor and ally quickly after that.

The move comes as Ukraine has stepped up attacks in several sectors of the front line in what some observers see as the start of its long-expected counteroffensive.

Russia used Belarus’ territory to send its troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and has kept forces and weapons on the territory of its ally.

“Everything is proceeding as planned,” Putin said in televised remarks as he hosted Lukashenko at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. “On July 7-8 the preparations of the relevant facilities will be completed and we will immediately start the activities linked to the deployment of those weapons on your territory.”

Tactical nuclear weapons are intended to destroy enemy troops and weapons on the battlefield. They have a relatively short range and a much lower yield than nuclear warheads fitted to long-range strategic missiles that are capable of obliterating whole cities.

Putin announced the planned deployment of the short-range nuclear weapons in Belarus earlier this year in a move widely seen as a warning to the West as it stepped up military support for Ukraine. He has emphasized that Russia will retain control of them.

Russia didn’t say how many nuclear weapons would be sent to Belarus. The U.S. government believes Russia has about 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, which include bombs that can be carried by aircraft, warheads for short-range missiles and artillery rounds.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya strongly condemned the move.

“Putin and his puppet Lukashenko are planning to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus immediately before NATO’s summit in Vilnius in July,” Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press. “This is a rude blackmail, an attempt to force Europe to back down, but we can’t allow dictators to dodge punishment for the nuclear blackmail.

Lukashenko, who has been in power for 29 years, has relied on Russia’s political and economic support to survive months of protests, mass arrests and Western sanctions following an election in 2020 that kept him in power but was widely seen at home and abroad as rigged.

Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that U.S. intelligence officials believe a plant in Russia’s Alabuga special economic zone could be operational early next year. The White House also released satellite imagery taken in April of the industrial location, several hundred miles east of Moscow, where it believes the plant “will probably be built.”

President Joe Biden’s administration publicly stated in December that it believed Tehran and Moscow were considering standing up a drone assembly line in Russia for the Ukraine war. The new intelligence suggests that the project, in the Yelabuga region of Tatarstan, has moved beyond conception.

Iran has said it provided drones to Russia before the start of the war but not since.

Kirby said that U.S. officials also have determined that Iran continues to supply the Russian military with one-way attack drones made in Iran: The drones are shipped via the Caspian Sea, from Amirabad in Iran to Makhachkala, Russia, and then are used by Russian forces against Ukraine.

As of May, Russia had received hundreds of one-way attack drones, as well as drone production-related equipment, from Iran, according to the White House.

“This is a full-scale defense partnership that is harmful to Ukraine, to Iran’s neighbors, and to the international community,” Kirby said. “We are continuing to use all the tools at our disposal to expose and disrupt these activities including by sharing this with the public — and we are prepared to do more.”

Kirby said the Democratic administration on Friday would announce a new advisory meant to help businesses and other governments put in place measures to ensure they are not inadvertently contributing to Iran’s drone program. The United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom in recent months all have issued rules designed to cut off the flow of drone components to Russia and Iran.

The Biden administration has repeatedly publicized intelligence findings that detail how Iran is assisting the Russian invasion.

The persistent drip of intelligence findings from the administration is intended to detail what U.S. officials say is a deepening defense partnership between Russia and Iran. It’s also part of a broader administration effort to spotlight Moscow’s prosecution of its war in Ukraine in hopes of further promoting global isolation of Russia.

The White House last month said Russia was looking to buy additional advanced attack drones from Iran after using up most of the 400 drones it had previously purchased from Tehran.

The Biden administration last year first publicized satellite imagery and intelligence findings that it said indicated Iran sold hundreds of attack drones to Russia. For months, officials have said the United States believed Iran was considering selling hundreds of ballistic missiles to Russia, but White House officials have said they do not have evidence a deal was consummated.

The White House has noted that Iran also has weapons flowing its way from Russia.

Iran is seeking to purchase additional military equipment from Russia, including attack helicopters, radars and YAK-130 combat trainer aircraft, according to the White House. In April, Iran announced that it had finalized a deal to buy Su-35 fighter jets from Russia.

The latest infusion of funding, one of the larger packages the U.S. has provided, comes as there are signs that Ukraine is beginning — or about to begin — the much anticipated counteroffensive to try to take back territory that has been seized by Russia.

Unlike the U.S. equipment, weapons and ammunition that are more frequently sent from Pentagon stocks and delivered quickly to Ukraine, this money would be provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and is meant to be spent over the coming months or even years to ensure Ukraine’s future security needs.

In a statement, the Pentagon said the package shows America’s continued commitment “to both Ukraine’s critical near-term capabilities as well as the enduring capacity of Ukraine’s Armed Forces to defend its territory and deter Russian aggression over the long term.”

The aid also will include munitions for laser-guided rockets, an undisclosed amount of artillery rounds, and funding for training and maintenance support.

A number of administration officials have acknowledged that the fighting in Ukraine has intensified in recent days, but much of the focus turned early this week to the collapse of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River. The White House and the Pentagon insisted Thursday they are still working to determine who caused the damage, which set off a scramble to evacuate residents in dozens of flooded areas and get aid to those still there.

Although the U.S. has been willing to provide billions of dollars in military weapons and other aid, the Biden administration has been clear that there will be no U.S. combat forces inside Ukraine. In that vein, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said Thursday the military had no plans to directly provide transportation or other support to the areas damaged by the dam collapse.

The Biden administration has provided more than $37.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.

The so-called hunt-forward mission, handled by experts on the Cyber National Mission Force, was conducted inside Southern Command’s area of responsibility, which comprises more than two-dozen countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Jamaica and Nicaragua.

“We had our first defend-forward mission, a hunt-forward mission, in SOUTHCOM just recently, which is amazing,” Brig. Gen. Reid Novotny said June 8 at the Potomac Officers Club’s Cyber Summit in McLean, Virginia. “The whole point of the defend-forward mission is to learn something on someone else’s network, a partner network, another nation’s network, so we can bring back that information and make sure our networks are more secure.”

Novotny did not say when or where, exactly, the hunt-forward took place. Inquiries made by C4ISRNET to CYBERCOM on Thursday were not immediately answered.

US Army revamps program executive offices to sharpen cyber focus

Hunt-forward missions are defensive measures taken by CYBERCOM at the invitation of another government. The international endeavors are often disclosed well after the fact — or not at all, depending on agreements made. The Cyber National Mission Force has deployed dozens of times across at least 22 countries, including Ukraine, ahead of Russia’s latest invasion; Albania, in the wake of Iranian cyberattacks; and Latvia, where malware was unearthed.

The intelligence gathered on the trips is used to strengthen both foreign and domestic cybersecurity practices.

Maj. Gen. William Hartman, the commander of the mission force, in May said adversaries often use “spaces outside the U.S. as a test bed for cyber tactics.” Hunt-forward missions, he continued, help identify and classify “that activity before it harms the U.S., and better posture the partner to harden critical systems against bad actors who threaten us all.”

Common European acquisition processes often move very slowly, even by U.S. standards. Procurement issues are compounded by inconsistent demand signals from governments across Europe. Once defense equipment is procured, the interoperability of that equipment is sometimes questionable.

Limitations in national defense budgets mean that governments are constrained in their ability to throw money at any of these problems.

Beyond the borders of Europe, industrial base readiness is also an increasingly salient issue. Refilling the stocks of munitions and other systems supplied to Ukraine in its self-defense against Russia’s invasion has taken on new urgency as stocks across the world dwindle and the West works to meet Ukraine’s demand.

In the United States, challenges in increasing the levels of defense production link to an industrial base that has been incentivized over the decades to prioritize efficiency over maintaining slack, difficulties in recruiting new factory workers in an economy with a low rate of unemployment, and supply chain limitations compounded by a lack of transparency into the lower tiers.

The idea of “ally-shoring” or “friendshoring” has frequently been offered as a solution. Under this model, the industrial base of the U.S. and its allies may be understood as a joint asset to supply capability as needed and to backfill what has been provided to Ukraine, or to build capability for other potential contingencies.

Building out unused capacity in manufacturing plants for new production is significantly cheaper and easier than building new factories, meaning that output could be available faster. During World War II, the “arsenal of democracy” took five years to engage — and defense manufacturing has only become more complicated since those days.

European nations make up many of the United States’ closest and longest-standing allies, so the European defense-industrial base is a natural place for the U.S. to look for refilling stocks if any excess capacity exists. However, even if it does, the lack of coherence in the European defense-industrial base creates a challenge for a cooperation strategy that extends beyond the standard intellectual property concerns and export control policies.

National interests continuing to prevail when it comes to defense production will limit the opportunities for increased cooperation useful for defense-industrial resilience, both on the European continent and across the Atlantic. And given that this cooperation may be necessary to develop and produce the capabilities needed for any future warfighting success, this represents a strategic risk.

Rather than waiting until the need is urgent — when there is a conflict underway — working together now can build the process expertise and communication pathways that support successful cooperation. The proverb “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is now” applies to defense-industrial collaboration as well.

There are certainly examples of defense-industrial cooperation in Europe today. The question is whether these are seen as individual projects or part of a pathway toward something new.

While NATO or the European Union working to enhance defense-industrial cooperation as an alliance may yield the greatest results, even bilateral agreements can help build bridges. Nations dissatisfied with existing defense-industrial policy approaches can work to bridge national boundaries and embrace an evolution toward a more integrated strategy, with a specific focus on building on success over time.

A “crawl, walk, run” approach focused on developing cooperation will yield better results than one starting with the most complex problems, even if they are urgent.

Initially, nations could cooperate to fill specific and pressing gaps, such as munitions for legacy systems, including 155mm howitzer shells. These systems have a high degree of standardization and are not subject to some of the most stringent export controls.

An intermediate and more complicated step could be designing the manufacturing enterprise for a weapon system that spans national boundaries and is tuned to provide manufacturing surge capacity, to enhance resilience. This will require industry and governments to work together — for governments to understand that surge capacity is something that they have to invest in as a distinct capability.

A larger vision of integration would be the international procurement of interchangeable defense systems across a network of allies and partners. This may prove to be a generational political and economic challenge, but building that capability and capacity to cooperate will make Europe and the United States more responsive and resilient to existing and future threats.

Cynthia Cook is director of the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group and a senior fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Without stating the number of planes bought or the value of the deal, Leonardo said the sale was a spin-off of closer energy ties between Italy and Azerbaijan, which supplies gas via the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline to Italy.

After reducing its reliance on Russian gas, Rome is currently seeking to double the capacity of the TAP route.

“Initially linked to the energy sectors, the collaboration between Italy and Azerbaijan is now also extended to defense industry products thanks to the valuable contribution provided by the Italian Ministry of Defence working group,” Leonardo said.

Talks between the defense ministries of the two countries to reach the deal reflects Italy’s growing use of government-to-government negotiations to sell products produced by state controlled firms Leonardo and Fincantieri.

Existing customers flying the C-27J tactical transport include the air forces of Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Peru, Slovakia, Morocco, Zambia, Romania, Kenya, Chad, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia and Australia.

In the United States, the aircraft is operated by the Coast Guard and U.S. Special Operations Command.

Leonardo said the aircraft has now notched up 170,000 flight hours.

The Italian Air Force is currently funding the development of two variants of the aircraft. The C-27J EW-Jedi is an electronic warfare variant designed to knock out electronic threats to ground forces including IEDs. Three Jedi aircraft are planned.

The second variant, known as the Praetorian, will offer a palletized gun, carry precision guided munitions and offer support to special forces.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on June 8 to correct the list of countries with C-27J planes in their inventories.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, led five other House Democrats and two House Republicans from his state in a letter asking the Biden administration to place the headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The letter, addressed to President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, touted the Air Force and NASA installations that Ohio already hosts. These include the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, the National Space Intelligence Center, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“These facilities support key space-related operations, including innovation in space components and technology,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which Brown highlighted on Twitter. “Co-locating the U.S. Space Command headquarters with these assets will generate incredible potential for cross-functional collaboration that will greatly enhance the efficiency and the effectiveness of the organization.”

The letter’s other signatories are Ohio’s Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Joyce Beatty, Shontel Brown, Emilia Sykes and Greg Landsman as well as Republican Reps. David Joyce and Max Miller. The nine other Republicans in Ohio’s congressional delegation did not sign the letter.

Two years ago, during the final days of the Trump administration, the Air Force announced Huntsville, Alabama — the site of the Army’s Redstone Arsenal and home to the Missile Defense Agency — would serve as the new location for Space Command headquarters, moving it from Colorado Springs.

The decision infuriated Colorado’s congressional delegation, who asked the Air Force to review the decision. Several Colorado Democrats argued it was an act of political retaliation because Biden won the swing state in the 2020 election.

A May 2022 report by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General found the Air Force followed all relevant laws and policies when selecting Huntsville. But the report also found the rules themselves may have been flawed, resulting in a less than optimal decision.

A separate June 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office found the Air Force did not follow best practices when making the basing decision.

Kendall is reviewing both reports’ findings, but the final basing decision for Space Command headquarters is long overdue.

NBC News reported last month that the Biden administration may halt plans to move the headquarters to Alabama in part because of the state’s new law making abortion a felony punishable up to 99 years in prison for physicians.

Further complicating matters, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has placed a blanket hold on Senate confirmations for hundreds of military promotions over the Pentagon’s policy providing leave time and stipends for troops and their family members to travel across state lines in order to receive abortion services.

The Defense Department enacted the policy in February after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, thereby allowing states to enact anti-abortion laws.

The memorandum of understanding, signed in Mumbai where Mazagon is based, happened as German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius made a stop there at the end of his weeklong visit of allied nations in the region.

His presence in official photos from the event suggests Germany’s candidacy for an eventual award of six new submarines, reported by Reuters to be worth $5.2 billion, is far along, according to analysts.

Wednesday’s agreement between the German and Indian businesses is said to cover activities worth €7 billion (U.S. $7.5 billion), according to German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

On the table is the “intended construction of conventional, air-independent propulsion submarines,” TKMS said in a statement.

Executives were keen to stress that the German vendor’s role would lie in providing engineering, design and consultant services, with manufacturing and delivery falling entirely to Mazagon. The approach is meant to comply with India’s policy of mandating that military goods be domestically produced.

The division of labor also befits TKMS, whose German-based shipyards are busy making submarines for the sea services of Germany, Norway, Israel and Singapore, said Johannes Peters, who heads the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at the Institute for Security Policy of Kiel University.

A prospective multibillion-dollar deal for submarines in India makes the German shipbuilder more attractive for investors, as the ThyssenKrupp conglomerate seeks to sell the business in an effort to consolidate and focus on more predictable operations, Peters said. The shipbuilding business is famously fickle because of its intensive capital needs, financial guarantees and long lead times, he added.

The nine-month study will allow Naval Group to examine principal use cases and develop system architectures for an Unmanned Combat Underwater Vehicle, or UCUV. Its missions would include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), with the idea of helping the French military “master” the seabed, according to Naval Group.

The Armed Forces Ministry’s procurement office, the Direction Générale de l’Armement, awarded the contract on May 4, per a company statement.

The study comes as Naval Group prepares its extra-large unmanned underwater vehicle (XL-UUV) demonstrator for sea qualification this summer. The company began developing the system in 2016 and first unveiled it in 2021.

Once qualified, Naval Group will use the XL-UUV to test various “technological bricks” in a short cycle, the company said. One such brick could be the Controlled Decision-Making Autonomy (ADC) capability, developed with France’s national aerospace research center ONERA to be an “onboard brain for drones.”

“This first UCUV project paves the way for additional work to quickly develop the key technological bricks of such a drone, in relation to the development of the first demonstrator,” Naval Group said in the release.

The company did not respond to questions regarding the cost of the study before this article’s publication.

Seabed warfare has become a dominant topic of conversation in Europe, especially for the French military. Paris was the first government to issue a dedicated military strategy for the ocean floor domain in early 2022, and a portion of the nation’s €10 billion ($10.7 billion) dedicated to innovation in the proposed 2024-2030 Military Program Law will focus on the topic. A key goal for Paris is to develop an underwater drone that can reach depths of 6,000 meters.

The lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, voted on Wednesday to approve the six-year programming law, known as the Loi de Programmation Militaire (LPM) in French, by a vote of 408-87. The bill now goes to the Senate as the upper chamber for a vote.

Two ways the Pentagon can provide that steadier business include multiyear procurements for weapons and greater use of predictive maintenance, Brown said during a discussion with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Brown said the military has focused too little keeping a steady flow of munitions production and procurement. “In some cases, because you don’t have a threat on your doorstep, munitions aren’t maybe high on our priority list,” he said.

But with the threat now posed by China and Russia, “that’s different now,” he added.

“This is an area that we’ve got to continue to pay attention to, to ensure that we bring [munitions] along as well,” said Brown, who President Joe Biden last month nominated to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He cited the Korea readiness review, which the military conducted during his tenure as Pacific Air Forces commander, examining what would be necessary to counter a threat from North Korea as an example of the kind of advance munitions planning that must take place. Part of that review, Brown said, was to “look really hard at munitions.”

Brown reiterated the Air Force’s call in its proposed fiscal 2024 budget for multiyear procurements for three key weapons: the Raytheon Technologies-made AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile, and the Lockheed Martin-made Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range as well as the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile.

Air Force officials said in March during the budget’s unveiling that the service wanted to use about $1 billion so industry could procure long-lead items for those weapons, as well as other steps that would send a longer-term demand signal to industry. The FY23 National Defense Authorization Act granted the Air Force the authority to make those multiyear purchases.

The Air Force’s proposed FY24 budget would roughly double its overall spending on missiles, from $2.3 billion in FY23 to $4.7 billion.

The Pentagon is also seeking lawmakers’ approval to conduct multiyear buys of Raytheon’s Patriot surface-to-air guided missile system and Lockheed’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, fired from the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. The U.S. government has provided those weapons to Ukraine as it fights off a Russian invasion.

And if the military wants industry to be able to surge munitions production capacity in an emergency, Brown said, it must make such multiyear buys a regular part of how it does business. That way, industry will have a more reliable demand signal and can keep its production lines flowing.

“I believe that’s just a start,” Brown said, referring to the multiyear buys in the FY24 budget request. “We’ve got to look at multiyear procurements so that it helps give a predictable demand signal to industry. And it’s not just the prime [contractors], it’s all the subs below them so they actually have supply chains laid in, they’re [set up with the proper facilities], they have the workforce, and it’s not a little bit up and down and unpredictability.”

Brown also said it will be important to ensure allies and partners have access to these munitions — and that industry can build enough to keep both them and the United States armed.

“It’s great for them to have the airplanes, but they’ve also got to have the munitions that are capable,” Brown said. “How do we make sure that we have enough munitions on the shelf to support us and our allies and partners? This is something that we need to focus on.”

Brown said the digital engineering of munitions will make it easier to take a more modular approach to building some weapons, similar to the way new aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider, use a modular architecture.

Brown also said the Air Force’s desire to conduct more predictive, conditions-based maintenance on aircraft — where maintainers track how long parts have been on an airplane and try to replace them before they wear out and break — could also help provide a steadier demand signal for industry.

“With data, you know based on the service life of this part how long before it’s going to break,” Brown said. “You don’t wait until it breaks. You’re able to replace it a little bit sooner, which also can help create the demand signal for the supply chain.”

Brown said the Air Force’s Rapid Sustainment Office has been looking closely at ways to use maintenance data to not just decide when maintainers should replace parts, but also to help industry predict how it needs to manage its supply chains.

Police removed computer files from the homes of ex-Leonardo CEO Alessandro Profumo and a former Italian Italian prime minister, Massimo D’Alema, and are probing former Fincantieri executive Giuseppe Giordo amid claims bribes were offered to Columbian officials to buy planes and ships.

Gianluca Luongo, D’Alema’s lawyer told Defense News the men were accused of offering the bribes while seeking to organize kickbacks in return.

“We deny all wrongdoing, my client’s involvement in talks was totally transparent,” he said.

Italian media outlets which obtained leaked copies of investigative documents reported magistrates in Naples in southern Italy are focusing on talks to sell M-346 jets built by state-controlled Leonardo, and corvettes and small submarines produced by state-controlled ship yard Fincantieri.

The deal, which did not go ahead, was worth four billion euros and involved suspected kickbacks and bribes worth 80 million euros, the reports stated.

Profumo ran Leonardo from 2017 to last month while Giordo was hired as head of naval operations at Fincantieri in 2019 after a long career with Leonardo’s aircraft division when the firm was known as Finmeccanica.

Before joining Fincantieri he also ran Czech firm Aero Vodochody. His lawyer told Italian financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore that Giordo denied all wrongdoing.

D’Alema, who was Italy’s prime minister from 1998 to 2000 and foreign minister from 2006 to 2008 has said he did get involved in talks to sell planes and ships to Colombia.

“But he merely put the two sides in touch,” said his laywer, Luongo.

Police are now scrutinizing D’Alema’s emails, Whatsapp messages and computer files, he added.

“I am not sure who is behind this investigation but it is very strange and appears to be a trap from the start,” he said.

Italian magistrates are also probing former Colombian foreign minister Marta Lucia Ramirez and other officials, Italian media reported.

Lucia Ramirez tweeted that she was “not involved in the purchasing of military equipment.”

Leonardo was rocked in 2013 by a legal probe by Naples magistrates into the alleged payment of bribes to India linked to a €560 million ($600 million) deal to sell 12 AW101 helicopters.

The head of the Italian firm was arrested as the case wound through Italy’s labyrinthine justice system before the country’s supreme court handed down acquittals in the case in 2019.

By that time the helicopter deal was cancelled and India had ordered a ban on the buying of defense products from Italy, which was only lifted in late 2021.

The Modular Unmanned Ground System (iMUGS) program, led by the Estonian company along with a dozen consortium members from across the EU, completed all contractual activities and reached its objectives in May 2023, Milrem said in a statement.

“During iMUGS the consortium demonstrated that unmanned systems play a crucial role in military environments and scenarios, paving the way for wider adoption and use of these systems in the near future,” said Milrem CEO Kuldar Väärsi.

The project, whose goal was to deliver a standard architecture for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) to the European Commission, lasted 30 months. On April 26, the sixth and final iMUGS demonstration was held at the San Juan del Viso military grounds in Madrid, Spain.

At the closing event, two modified THeMIS vehicles, Milrem’s reference platform for the program, were used to showcase their capabilities at the individual level, without operator involvement, and in swarming operations.

The culmination of the project takes place against the backdrop of a pending security review by the European Commission. The probe evaluates Milrem’s claims that its recent takeover by EDGE Group won’t harm EU security interests in the context of defense-cooperation projects like iMUGS and possible follow-on endeavors.

The assessment, which began in March, is still “in progress and ongoing, with no announcement at this stage,” an EU official told Defense News this week.

Few details have been released regarding an envisaged second phase of the iMUGS project. Thus far, all new information has regarded its peer initiative, the Integrated Unmanned Ground Systems 2 (IUGS2). That project which is part of the bloc’s PESCO cooperation scheme, which is, at least in theory, about governments teaming up on capability improvements as opposed to contractors taking the lead.

Led by Milrem’s home government Estonia, it involves nine EU countries, and its objective is to produce a UGV capable of manned-unmanned and unmanned-unmanned teaming with other autonomous robotic platforms as well as manned main battle tanks.

The Air Defender 23 exercise starting next week will see 10,000 participants and 250 aircraft from 25 nations respond to a simulated attack on a NATO member country. The United States alone is sending 2,000 U.S. Air National Guard personnel and about 100 aircraft to take part in the June 12-23 training maneuvers.

“This is an exercise that would be absolutely impressive to anybody who’s watching, and we don’t make anybody watch it,” U.S. Ambassador to Germany Amy Gutmann said.

“It will demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt the agility and the swiftness of our allied force in NATO as a first responder,” she told reporters in Berlin.

“I would be pretty surprised if any world leader was not taking note of what this shows in terms of the spirit of this alliance, which means the strength of this alliance,” Gutmann said.

“And that includes Mr. Putin,” she added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

While the drill was planned for several years, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 ear has jolted NATO into preparing in earnest for the possibility of an attack on its territory. Sweden, which is hoping to join the alliance, and Japan are also taking part in the exercise.

“We are showing that NATO territory is our red line, that we are prepared to defend every centimeter of this territory,” said Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz of the German air force, which is coordinating the exercise. “But we won’t, for example, conduct any flights toward Kalinigrad. So this is intended to be defensive.”

Kalinigrad is a Russian exclave located on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania.

Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh, director of the U.S. Air National Guard, said the exercise goes beyond deterrence.

“It’s about the readiness of our force. It’s about coordination, not just within NATO, but with our other allies and partners outside of NATO,” he said.

Loh said the exercise would be an opportunity for younger U.S. airmen, many of whom have mainly gotten experience serving in the Middle East, to build relationships with allies in Europe and prepare for a different military scenario.

“So this is about now establishing what it means to go against a great power, in a great power competition,” he said.

Authorities have said the drill will cause some disruption to civilian flights in Europe during the period.

The U.S. government created the A-10 in the 1970s to provide close-air support to American ground troops. At the time it was an effective counterweight to the threat of Soviet tanks, and in the decades since it has served the military faithfully.

The A-10 proved especially useful in the Gulf War, when it flew 8,100 sorties and destroyed thousands of Soviet-era combat vehicles and equipment. Later, it helped the U.S. destroy hardened enemy positions in the war on terrorism.

But major military operations in the Middle East have ceased. Today, our greatest adversary is communist China, whose tanks and emplacements are much more advanced than those used by the Soviets or Islamic terrorists.

To prepare to counter Beijing in a future conflict, we must make the best possible use of our limited hangar space and procurement dollars. To do that, we must retire the A-10, as senior military leaders have called for. This will make room for aircraft like the F-35 Lightning II, and free funds for the development and construction of next-generation missiles and missile defense systems, which will be invaluable in any future Indo-Pacific conflict, whether that’s in Taiwan, the South China Sea or the Korean Peninsula.

However, the A-10 can still do a lot of good if transferred to allies and partners in need of it. The most obvious example is Ukraine, which is preparing to mount a counteroffensive against Soviet-era tanks and entrenched Russian positions.

At the recent G7 summit, President Joe Biden stated he supports training Ukrainian forces to operate F-16 Fighting Falcons, a first step to allies providing the planes to Ukraine. But even if we accept the president’s position, there is good reason to wonder if an air-to-air fighter makes the most sense. Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief, for one, believes Ukraine would fare better with A-10s. Moreover, F-16s require 6,000 feet of tarmac — increasingly rare in bombed-out Ukraine — to take off and land, while A-10s only require 4,000 feet of dirt runway.

Beyond Ukraine, potential beneficiaries of an A-10 transfer program include African countries in the Sahel fighting ISIS and Boko Haram, or even Latin American nations combating paramilitary rebels and drug cartels in the jungle.

Such a program would be neither unprecedented nor unusual. The U.S. manufactures and sells vehicles and platforms the U.S. military no longer uses on a semi-regular basis. For instance, production of the A-29 Super Tucano employs hundreds of Floridians in Jacksonville and supports counterterrorism operations in Africa and Colombia.

Simply put, phasing out the A-10 by transferring it to allies and partners is the smart thing to do. Not only would it help America adapt to the challenges of the 21st century, it would also help our friends confront their own challenges without deep U.S. intervention. That’s killing two birds with one stone — the best kind of public policy.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is vice chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and services on the Foreign Relations Committee.

The proposition from Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., comes amid a flurry of proposals from defense hawks on Capitol Hill to bypass the $886 billion military spending top line laid out in the debt ceiling deal that President Joe Biden signed into law over the weekend. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., appeared to throw cold water on additional defense spending bills on Monday.

Rogers said once Congress completes work on the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act and defense appropriations bill, “then it’s time for us to look and see if we actually address China. If we did, fine. If we didn’t, we’ll go ahead and drop more funding. It’s all about China for me.”

The House was initially slated to mark up the FY24 defense authorization bill in May, but Republican leaders asked Rogers to postpone it amid the debt ceiling negotiations. That markup is now scheduled for later this month.

For his part, McCarthy resisted efforts to circumvent military spending caps in the debt ceiling bill, which locks in Biden’s proposed defense budget — a 3.3% increase over this fiscal year.

“What we really need to do, we need to get the efficiencies in the Pentagon,” McCarthy said, according to CNN. “Think about it, $886 billion. You don’t think there’s waste? They failed the last five audits. I consider myself a hawk, but I don’t want to waste money. So I think we’ve got to find efficiencies.”

In response, Rogers said McCarthy is “right.”

“It is premature to be talking about a supplemental right now, but we will need a supplemental later this year — for China specifically,” Rogers said.

Rogers, who previously hammered the Biden administration for refusing to deliver Ukraine certain weapons like long-range missiles, also struck a less bullish note on aid to the country currently fighting a Russian invasion.

“Based on how effective the counteroffensive is this summer, and if there is a ceasefire or some resolution by the end of September, I’ll probably have to revisit Ukraine then, at a much smaller level than anything we’ve done before,” Rogers told Defense News.

The Pentagon did not include additional Ukraine aid in its FY24 budget request, noting that it would request future aid packages through supplemental spending that Congress would have to approve. The Defense Department expects to run out of Ukraine aid funds by the end of the fiscal year in September.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., last week floated the idea of adding additional Pentagon spending in the next Ukraine aid supplemental. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., endorsed additional supplemental spending packages Thursday on the Senate floor in order to ease concerns over the debt ceiling deal from defense hawks, primarily Republicans who argued the defense top line increase falls below the rate of inflation.

Further complicating matters, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has testified that the Pentagon is preparing a package to transfer weapons to Taiwan, but that he would require congressional appropriations to backfill U.S. military stockpiles.

However, the appetite for additional defense supplemental spending in the House — be that to counter China or to support Ukraine or Taiwan — remains unclear.

“Unless there is a willingness to increase domestic spending at the same time, we have a law that is a guide,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told reporters Tuesday.

Still, DeLauro did not rule out additional Ukraine aid spending, noting she funded four supplementals for Kyiv last year as the top appropriator.

“I will wait to hear from [the Defense Department] about what we need for Ukraine,” DeLauro told Defense News.

Total defense spending for FY23 — which ends Sept. 30 — will come to $893 billion after accounting for $35.4 billion in emergency Ukraine aid. Total FY22 defense spending came to $794 billion after Congress allocated an additional $26 billion in Ukraine aid.

Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, has also supported Ukraine aid but voiced concern about whether the House could pass it given opposition from a vocal minority of Republican lawmakers.

“It’s a chaos caucus, so I don’t know if they’ll be able to bring it to the floor,” McCollum told Defense News.

Witnessed by journalists onboard a Philippine coast guard patrol boat, the BRP Cabra, the drills focused on a scenario involving the interdiction and boarding of a vessel suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction off the Bataan Peninsula, Philippine coast guard spokesperson Commodore Armand Balilo said.

Shots rang out as heavily armed coast guard personnel rapidly boarded the vessel from a speedboat and herded the crew members toward the stern. A helicopter hovered as U.S. and Japanese coast guard ships helped rescue crew members who jumped off the target vessel during the mock assault.

“We are not just all display,” Philippine coast guard deputy spokesperson John Ybanez said. “All these exercises that we do will help us help each other in possible scenarios in the future.”

The U.S. Coast Guard deployed one of its most advanced cutters, the 418-foot (127-meter) Stratton, in the June 1-7 exercises hosted by the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia. The Stratton has been conducting exercises in the region to share expertise in search and rescue and law enforcement, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

“This first trilateral engagement between the coast guards of these nations will provide invaluable opportunities to strengthen global maritime governance though professional exchanges and combined operations,” the Stratton’s commanding officer, Capt. Brian Krautler, said at the start of the exercises. “Together we’ll demonstrate professional, rules-based standards of maritime operations with our steadfast partners to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Japan deployed a large coast guard ship, the Akitsushima, while four Philippine coast guard vessels joined the exercises.

The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in the South China Sea and in any future confrontation over Taiwan, the self-governing island which Beijing regards as a Chinese province.

Washington lays no claims to the strategic South China Sea, where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysian, Taiwan and Brunei have been locked in tense territorial stand-offs for decades. But the U.S. says freedom of navigation and overflight and the peaceful resolution of disputes in the busy waterway are in its national interest.

Philippine officials say such joint exercises with U.S. forces do not target any country. But China has warned that increased U.S. security deployments in Asia target Beijing’s interests and undermine regional stability.

The U.S. Pacific Command said over the weekend that a U.S. guided-missile destroyer and a Canadian frigate were intercepted by a Chinese warship in the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese vessel overtook the American ship and veered across its bow at a distance of 150 yards (about 140 meters) in an “unsafe manner,” it said.

Last month, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said a Chinese J-16 fighter aircraft flew directly in front of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 plane in an “an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” while the American reconnaissance plane “was conducting safe and routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace, in accordance with international law.”

In April, Japan adopted a new five-year ocean policy that calls for stronger maritime security, including bolstering its coast guard’s capability and cooperation with the military. It cited a list of threats, including repeated intrusions by Chinese coast guard ships into Japanese territorial waters.

The Philippine coast guard, meanwhile, has intensified patrols in the South China Sea and taken extra efforts to document and publicize assertive Chinese behavior in the waterway following a Feb. 6 incident in which a Chinese coast guard ship aimed a military-grade laser that briefly blinded some crew members on a Philippine patrol boat off a disputed reef.

Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila contributed to this report.

The current plan is to begin training experienced Ukrainian pilots while European nations begin to send aircraft from their existing inventories. Many of these aircraft were purchased in the 1980s. Most have received some upgrades, such as modern networking equipment, allowing aircraft to share targeting data with one another (known as Link 16). However, these aircraft do not have the latest sensors and electronic protections.

Many NATO members fly the F-16 and are ordering new aircraft — mainly the F-35 — to replace their aging fleets. F-35s are slow to arrive, however, meaning that only a handful nations are prepared now to provide aircraft.

The F-16 is designed to fly up to 8,000 hours. They typically fly between 200 and 350 hours a year in peace time. Likely aircraft going to Ukraine could have up to 7,000 hours of flight time. Thus, while F-16s might offer improved capabilities compared to Ukraine’s Soviet-era fleet, they will need to be replaced in perhaps four to six years.

One option might be to provide Ukraine with new F-16 Block 70s. This option would keep Ukraine in the F-16 ecosystem — streamlining both training and sustainment — and offer the latest software, radar and electronic protection technologies. It would also allow Ukraine to continue using the weapons it has been given. But this option would be expensive and take years, and the U.S. would surely bear the cost rather than sharing it with allies.

Challenges with new F-16s

Recent F-16 Foreign Military Sales cases to Bulgaria and Slovakia illustrate the cost of modern fighters — nearly $200 million per aircraft. F-16 flight packages include initial stockpiles of parts, munitions and training. Ukraine says it intends to procure between 40 and 100 aircraft. Low-end estimates would amount to $8 billion. With funding for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative running out soon, new aircraft, as the Department of Defense has said, might break the bank.

F-16s also cost a substantial amount to operate. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, operating one F-16 costs $4.6 million a year, or $184 million for a fleet of 40 aircraft. Ukraine’s Air Force budget in 2020 was nearly $1.1 billion, which included support for about 70 older, former Soviet fighters.

Time delays are another major consideration. Lockheed Martin moved the F-16 production line from Fort Worth, Texas, to Greenville, South Carolina. This required both training a new cohort of workers to produce the aircraft and the installation of machine tooling.

Slovakia, for example, placed orders for F-16s in 2018, but its first delivery will occur only in 2024, or five to six years from contract award to aircraft delivery.

Are there other options?

European allies may receive F-35s over a period of some years. This means they could continue for some time to transfer used F-16s, allowing Ukraine access to a flow of these aircraft for a decade or more. This option would allow for continued allied burden-sharing.

This also makes sense in a strategic context since Russia’s war on Ukraine may be viewed as an existential challenge to European security.

There might be other options for combat fighters, such as the Saab Gripen, the Dassault Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon.

The Gripen is expensive to buy but cheaper to operate than the F-16. In recent years, Rafale aircraft have outsold F-16s on the international market, implying improved capabilities. The Eurofighter might offer the most advanced capabilities compared to the other options.

These aircraft could be available sooner than new F-16s and might offer some improved capabilities compared to older F-16s. Introducing multiple Western combat aircraft into Ukraine’s Air Force might offer some improved capabilities, but at the cost of sustainment and training challenges.

Europeans may be unlikely to finance the provision of new aircraft for Ukraine, but might be willing to provide used aircraft. Ukraine could end up with a used fleet of multiple aircraft with different maintenance, repair and overhaul requirements.

It is encouraging that Ukraine might receive F-16s to improve its combat capabilities. Over the longer term, Ukraine may seek a continuing flow of used F-16s and possibly of one or more European combat fighters. Western policymakers might begin thinking now about what the Ukrainian Air Force may require in the future, especially if the Russian threat remains acute.

John Hoehn is an associate policy researcher at the Rand think tank and a former military analyst with the Congressional Research Service. William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at Rand and former U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia.

Ukraine accused Russian forces of blowing up the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper River in an area that Moscow controls, while Russian officials blamed Ukrainian bombardment in the contested area. It was not possible to verify the claims.

The potentially far-reaching environmental and social consequences of the disaster quickly became clear as homes, streets and businesses flooded downstream and emergency crews began evacuations; officials raced to check cooling systems at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant; and authorities expressed concern about supplies of drinking water to the south in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

Both Russian and Ukrainian authorities brought in trains and buses for residents. About 22,000 people live in areas at risk of flooding in Russian-controlled areas, while 16,000 live in the most critical zone in Ukrainian-held territory, according to official tallies. Neither side reported any deaths or injuries.

The dam break added a stunning new dimension to Russia’s war in Ukraine, now in its 16th month. Ukrainian forces were widely seen to be moving forward with a long-anticipated counteroffensive in patches along more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) of front line in the east and south.

It was not immediately clear whether either side benefits from the damage to the dam, since both Russian-controlled and Ukrainian-held lands are at risk. The damage could also hinder Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the south and distract its government, while Russia depends on the dam to supply water to Crimea.

Although Kyiv officials claimed Russia blew up the dam to hinder the counteroffensive, observers note that crossing the broad Dnieper would be extremely challenging for the Ukrainian military. Other sectors of the front line are more likely avenues of attack, analysts say.

Even so, Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the alleged Russian destruction of the dam “betrays a lack of confidence, a lack of confidence, a profoundly defensive measure, the lack of confidence in Russia’s longer-term prospects” in the war.

Experts have previously said the dam was in disrepair, which could also have led to the breach. David Helms, a retired American scientist who has monitored the reservoir since the start of the war, said in an email that it wasn’t clear if the damage was deliberate or simple neglect from Russian forces occupying the facility.

But Helms also noted a Russian history of attacking dams.

Authorities, experts and residents have expressed concern for months about water flows through — and over — the Kakhovka dam. After heavy rains and snow melt last month, water levels rose beyond normal levels, flooding nearby villages. Satellite images showed water washing over damaged sluice gates.

Amid official outrage, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he convened an urgent meeting of the National Security Council. He alleged Russian forces set off a blast inside the dam structure at 2:50 a.m. (2350 GMT Monday) and said about 80 settlements were in danger. Zelenskyy said in October his government had information that Russia had mined the dam and power plant.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it “a deliberate act of sabotage by the Ukrainian side … aimed at cutting water supplies to Crimea.”

Both sides warned of a looming environmental disaster. Ukraine’s Presidential Office said some 150 metric tons of oil escaped from the dam machinery and that another 300 metric tons could still leak out.

Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s President’s Office, posted a video showing swans swimming near an administrative building in the flooded streets of Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka, a city in the Kherson region where some 45,000 people lived before the war. Other footage he posted showed flood waters reaching the second floor of the building.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry urged residents of 10 villages on the Dnieper’s right bank and parts of the city of Kherson downriver to gather essential documents and pets, turn off appliances, and leave, while cautioning against possible disinformation.

The Russian-installed mayor of occupied Nova Kakhovka, Vladimir Leontyev, said it was being evacuated as water poured into the city.

Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom said via Telegram that the damage to the dam “could have negative consequences” for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is Europe’s biggest, but wrote that for now the situation is “controllable.”

The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency said there was “no immediate risk to the safety of the plant,” which requires water for its cooling system. It said that IAEA staff on site have been told the dam level is falling by 5 centimeters (2 inches) an hour. At that rate, the supply from the reservoir should last a few days, it said.

The plant also has alternative sources of water, including a large cooling pond than can provide water “for some months,” the statement said.

Ukrainian authorities have previously warned that the dam’s failure could unleash 18 million cubic meters (4.8 billion gallons) of water and flood Kherson and dozens of other areas where thousands of people live.

The World Data Center for Geoinformatics and Sustainable Development, a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization, estimated that nearly 100 villages and towns would be flooded. It also reckoned that the water level would start dropping only after five-seven days.

A total collapse in the dam would wash away much of the broad river’s left bank, according to the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Working Group, an organization of environmental activists and experts documenting the war’s environmental effects.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that “a global ecological disaster is playing out now, online, and thousands of animals and ecosystems will be destroyed in the next few hours.”

Video posted online showed floodwaters inundating a long roadway; another showed a beaver scurrying for high ground from rising waters.

The incident also drew international condemnation, including from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said the “outrageous act … demonstrates once again the brutality of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

Ukraine controls five of the six dams along the Dnieper, which runs from its northern border with Belarus down to the Black Sea and is crucial for the country’s drinking water and power supply.

Ukraine’s state hydro power generating company wrote in a statement that “The station cannot be restored.” Ukrhydroenergo also claimed Russia blew up the station from inside the engine room.

Leontyev, the Russian-appointed mayor, said numerous Ukrainian strikes on the Kakhovka hydroelectric plant destroyed its valves, and “water from the Kakhovka reservoir began to uncontrollably flow downstream.” Leontyev added that damage to the station was beyond repair, and it would have to be rebuilt.

Ukraine and Russia have previously accused each other of targeting the dam with attacks.

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Associated Press writer Danica Kirka in London contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ng Eng Hen was speaking at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, which took place June 2-4. The International Institute for Strategic Studies hosted the event, which brought together defense ministers and military leaders from the Indo-Pacific region and the wider world.

Global military spending rose 19% during 2013-2022, and has grown every year since 2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a Sweden-based think tank.

Ng cited this trend during his plenary speech on Sunday, adding that “within the Asia-Pacific region, without any physical conflict, combined military expenditures has increased to $575 billion,” he said.

Last year, the world spent $2.2 trillion on defense, according to SIPRI, with Singapore spending $11.7 billion of that.

Ng acknowledged that defense spending is core to deterrence. “But in the absence of a strategic framework of engagement and mutual restraint, cooperation despite competition, that balance tilts away from deterrence and the risk of conflict increases. In that context, the increased military spending veers towards an arms race with greater potential for destruction.”

The minister also called for Japan to improve relations with China for the sake of regional stability, noting tension remains as a result of World War II, during which Japan invaded China.

Asked how Japan could contribute more to regional security, Ng said the most important thing that Japan can do is “improve its relations with China,” noting “there is still a residual feeling” in Asia that there is no accountability for Japan’s actions during WWII like that of Germany.

This feeling is particularly strong in China, which lost Manchuria in 1931 and subsequently saw large parts of its territory invaded and occupied by imperial Japan between 1937 and 1945.

Last year, Japan spent $46 billion on defense, while China spent an estimated $292 billion, according to SIPRI data.

The Japanese military also occupied Singapore from 1942 to 1945. Ties between their defense forces have steadily improved in recent years, with Ng meeting his Japanese counterpart Yasukazu Hamada at the dialogue.

Both countries also inked an agreement concerning the transfer of defense equipment and technology over the weekend. It is a follow-up to an enhanced memorandum on defense exchanges that both countries signed in June 2022, and it establishes a legal framework for the import and export of defense equipment and technology between Singapore and Japan.

This provides the Singapore Armed Forces with more options to meet its training and operational requirements, according to a statement released by the country’s Defence Ministry.

Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

The report’s finding should have instead been that America’s defense-industrial base is failing our warfighters and taxpayers, as the Pentagon has willfully and with foresight created today’s monopolistic, overregulated and costly defense marketplace. That marketplace has left the DoD without the ability to procure at scale the goods and services it needs to fight a major war, demonstrated by munitions shortfalls from the conflict in Ukraine. It’s also left the Pentagon in need of a change to its profit policy as CBS’ “60 Minutes” segment on price gouging in the defense-industrial base recently showed.

The origins of today’s defense marketplace are as follows: First, the leadership of major defense primes are mostly compensated with stock awards, which, while substantial, are expected within our capitalistic system. Wall Street then rewards these companies with higher share prices based upon their ability to provide profits for dividends and stock buybacks. But thanks to the Pentagon, these returns are less a result of competitive market forces and more a result of industry consolidation.

In the 1950s and in the 1980s, the Pentagon’s spending power created a healthy, competitive marketplace where defense firms competed on both price and innovative capabilities. This marketplace fostered free and open competition, equipping the United States with the best military in history. Despite this success, the Pentagon killed the proverbial golden goose by consolidating the defense-industrial base in the 1990s, leaving fewer suppliers and, therefore, little competition.

Industry consolidation is but one piece of the puzzle when it comes to how the Pentagon has elevated prices for taxpayers. Another is the Pentagon’s misguided divest-to-invest strategy, which devotes an ever-greater share of the department’s investment dollars to research and development rather than adequately funding procurement. R&D has thinner profit margins, meaning that for every dollar the government spends on R&D, few are able to become profit for contractors.

As the prices for weapons and components increase, the Pentagon orders less of each. With less purchased, the primes are poised to negotiate harder for higher prices so that they can maintain or increase their total profits, further raising the price of their products and leading to even fewer purchases. This means that, in effect, the divest-to-invest strategy is a pricing-to-procurement death spiral, threatening readiness and fair prices.

Elevated prices are also a consequence of the interactions between prime contractors and their array of subcontractors. Not subject to the same payment terms or timely cash flow from the government as the primes, the subcontractors receive less cash themselves. This squeezes the suppliers, already often sole- or single-source, leading to less redundancy and less capacity. The suppliers left standing then become economically powerful, as “60 Minutes” correctly noted.

But what’s most important here is that this results in a lack of surge production.

An inability to surge production is also a product of rosy planning assumptions where the Pentagon’s leaders essentially assume away the problem. The defense-industrial base is healthy if you assume only one very quick war. If this assumption isn’t correct, the Pentagon then believes that allies will pick up the slack, but their weapons’ cupboards are barer than ours.

In short, forced consolidation, faulty Pentagon planning assumptions, a focus on R&D at the expense of procurement, and the cash flow structure of the major defense primes have led us to the situation that we find ourselves in today: We’re in need of warfighting capabilities — a lot of them — but cannot produce them at scale and at prices that a functioning capitalistic market would allow.

Thankfully, the Pentagon can start to turn this around. First, when starting the acquisition of new weapons systems, it should err on the side of not developing them as joint programs, which are essentially a synonym for “contract-to-monopoly.” Consolidation of buying power into the purchase of one system kills off competitors and creates a monopoly; the market for fighter jets shows this to be true.

Secondly, the Pentagon should procure much more, and it should do so by making multiyear procurement contracts and block buys the rule rather than the exception.

Lastly, the federal government can break open the doors to competition by eliminating unnecessary regulations that make it difficult and costly for emerging startups to do business with the DoD.

Failing to take these actions will mean that we’ll be stuck with a defense-industrial base that’s unhealthy, not meeting the needs of the warfighters and, on the most basic level, not providing the American taxpayer with a fair deal. And that’s an industrial base that we shouldn’t accept.

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. Ferrari previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the service. Charles Rahr is a research assistant at AEI.

Sgt. Maj. Carlos A. Ruiz will replace Sgt. Maj. Troy Black, who has been in that job since 2019, according to a Monday Marine Corps press release.

Ruiz’s role will be to advocate for enlisted Marines and serve as an adviser to the commandant ― the top Marine leader.

“My wife and I are truly humbled, honored, and grateful for the opportunity to serve as the next sergeant major of the Marine Corps,” Ruiz said in an emailed statement to Marine Corps Times on Wednesday. “Almost 30 years ago my recruiter cracked the door open for me to walk through and along the way Marines of all ranks and experiences took the time to teach and mentor me. I’m sure they are exhausted!”

Ruiz particularly thanked Black and his wife, retired 1st Sgt. Stacie Black, for their “incredible work, passion, and vision.”

Black told Marine Corps Times on Monday, “As sergeant major of the Marine Corps, he will lead our Marines to the next level. He’s a Marine who will provide leadership, guidance, care and advocacy for all Marines and their families.”

Biden’s pick to lead the Marine Corps helped design its new vision

On May 30, President Joe Biden nominated Gen. Eric Smith to become the next commandant beginning in July.

Smith’s confirmation may be held up by the blockage of senior military nominees by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama, in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion policy.

A Phoenix native, Ruiz enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993, according to the press release.

It took Ruiz multiple attempts to join the Marine Corps “because he could not speak English,” Lt. Gen. David Bellon, commander of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Corps Forces South, noted on LinkedIn on Monday.

“He never quit,” Bellon wrote. “He has not quit since.”

After starting out as a warehouse clerk, Ruiz became an enlisted leader at units across the Corps, according to the release. He also has served as a recruiter and drill instructor, as well as a chief instructor of drill instructors.

He has deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, according to the release.

Ruiz’s awards include the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal with combat distinguishing device, Meritorious Service Medal with gold star, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with two gold stars, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with one gold star, and Combat Action Ribbon with one gold star, according to his official biography.

Ruiz was selected in December 2022 to be the senior enlisted leader of U.S. Space Command and had planned to start that role June 30, according to Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Craig Thomas. But then Ruiz got chosen as sergeant major of the Marine Corps, meaning that Space Command will now have to find a different senior enlisted leader.

In 2013, when Ruiz was taking over as the senior enlisted leader for 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, he said, “My plan for this battalion is the same as it has been for every battalion I’ve been with. I’m going to take care of my Marines and push them to maintain the standard set down for them, and uphold their high level of discipline.”

“While SgtMaj Ruiz loves being a Marine, he loves Marines even more,” Bellon wrote Monday on LinkedIn. “He is a warrior of the first order and has proved that many times over.”

Sergeants major of the Marine Corps typically serve four-year terms, at the pleasure of the commandant, according to the news release.

“I will be forever grateful to every Marine I have ever served with,” Ruiz said in his statement. “It’s in large part because of their sacrifice and effort that I find myself here today.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional comments about and by Sgt. Maj. Ruiz and more information about his planned move to U.S. Space Command.

SINGAPORE — The defense ministers of Germany and the United Kingdom have pledged to keep up their respective military presence in the Indo-Pacific region, while also outlining their plans for military deployments, at a regional security summit in Singapore.

Britain’s Ben Wallace and Germany’s Boris Pistorius were speaking at their respective plenaries during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, an event organized by the International Institute of Strategic Studies that ran June 2-4.

Wallace said that the Royal Navy will deploy another aircraft carrier and an accompanying strike group to the region in 2025, following a deployment of the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to the region in 2021.

He also highlighted the permanent deployment of the offshore patrol vessels HMS Tamar and HMS Spey to the Indo-Pacific. Both vessels arrived in the region in 2021 and have since undertaken 16 port visits and 20 regional exercises.

The ships have also engaged in real-world missions such as sanctions monitoring in the East China Sea and disaster relief following a tsunami in Tonga.

Wallace also cited China’s “epoch-defining” rise as the biggest challenge for the region, warning that “none of our most fundamental global issues can be solved without engagement with China.”

“Be they climate change, energy and food security, economic stagnation, tech regulation, nuclear proliferation,” he said, “we must also speak plainly and acknowledge that there are also challenges from that ‘rise’ — illegal fishing, tensions in territorial waters, sovereignty disputes and debt diplomacy.”

For his part, Pistorius confirmed in his speech that Germany will send a frigate and a supply ship to the Indo-Pacific region in 2024. A German frigate made a similar deployment in 2021, while its Eurofighter multirole combat aircraft undertook a deployment to the region last year, taking part in a large-scale air combat exercise in Australia and visiting several other local countries.

He also urged respect of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and backed the principle of freedom of navigation, which “can and should be done via non-military means” to a large extent. As an example, he highlighted Germany’s participation in the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, an international agreement dubbed ReCAAP.

“Germany also stands ready to support all efforts to promote bilateral or multilateral confidence-building measures such as pre-notification of exercises, mutual invitation to participate in exercises, mutual site visits, inspections of military installations or arms control agreements,” Pistorius said, welcoming the Biden administration’s offer to enter into negotiations with Russia and China on nuclear arms control without preconditions.

Japan’s Yasukazu Hamada met with his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jong-sup, at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, an event organized by the International Institute of Strategic Studies that ran June 2-4.

Hamada told reporters after the meeting that both sides agreed to “accelerate talks, including steps to prevent a recurrence” of a 2018 radar incident. That incident saw Japan accuse a South Korean warship of locking onto a Japanese maritime patrol aircraft with its fire control radar in international waters between the countries, a allegation South Korea has denied.

The administration of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has sought stronger bilateral ties following years of a frosty relationship over Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

In their respective plenary speeches at the Shangri-La Dialogue, both ministers flagged improving ties as a way for their nations to counter North Korea. Lee said in his speech that strengthening South Korean-Japanese ties, plus trilateral security cooperation with the United States, is “an inevitable measure taken to protect regional freedom and peace from the advancing North Korean nuclear and missile threats.”

He added during a question-and-answer session that bilateral relations “should not merely focus on the issues of the past, but rather we have to share the sentiment that we have to develop this in a future-oriented manner, especially regarding the nuclear and missile threats by North Korea.”

In a separate plenary session, Hamada said improving ties with South Korea is crucial in light of the increasingly tough security situation in the Indo-Pacific region. He also said he looked forward to enhancing communication with the South Korean government.

North Korea is technically still at war with South Korea, with an armistice to end the Korean War in 1953 still holding in the absence of a formal peace treaty. The North has continued its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs despite international sanctions and pressure, with missile tests flying over Japan’s territory on several occasions.

Austin’s visit comes as India strengthens its domestic defense industry by acquiring new technologies and reducing reliance on imports, particularly from Russia, its largest supplier of military hardware despite the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Austin and his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, explored ways of building resilient supply chains, a statement from India’s Defense Ministry said. They decided “to identify opportunities for the co-development of new technologies and co-production of existing and new systems and facilitate increased collaboration between defense startup ecosystems of the two countries.”

They also discussed regional security issues and committed to strengthening operational collaboration across all military services, with an eye to supporting India’s leading role as a security provider in the Indo-Pacific, the statement said.

The new road map for U.S.-India defense industrial cooperation will fast track technology cooperation and co-production in areas such as air combat and land mobility systems, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, munitions and the undersea domain, the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi said.

“This initiative aims to change the paradigm for cooperation between U.S. and Indian defense sectors, including a set of specific proposals that could provide India access to cutting-edge technologies and support India’s defense modernization plans,” it said.

The discussions also included cooperation in space, cyberspace, and artificial intelligence. Austin also met with India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.

“I’m returning to India to meet with key leaders for discussions about strengthening our Major Defense Partnership. Together, we’re advancing a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Austin tweeted after his arrival in New Delhi on Sunday.

Austin, who is on his second visit to India, was expected to lay the groundwork for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington on June 22, which has fuelled speculation about a possible announcement of defense contracts.

India is looking to buy 18 armed high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. for an estimated $1.5 billion to $2 billion, said Rahul Bedi, a defense analyst. The UAVs would likely be deployed along its restive borders with China and Pakistan and in the strategic Indian Ocean region, Bedi said.

Indian media reports said a joint production and manufacture of combat aircraft engines, infantry combat vehicles, howitzers and their precision ordnance were discussed last month in Washington at a meeting of the U.S.-India Defense Policy Group.

Austin arrived in New Delhi from Singapore, where he attended the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual forum bringing together top defense officials, diplomats and leaders. Austin lobbied for support for Washington’s vision of a “free, open, and secure Indo-Pacific within a world of rules and rights” as the best course to counter increasing Chinese assertiveness in the region.

China’s Defense Minister Gen. Li Shangfu said at the conference that the U.S. has been “deceiving and exploiting” Asia-Pacific nations to advance its own self-interests to preserve “its dominant position.”

Li suggested that Washington has been holding on to alliances that are “remnants of the Cold War” and establishing new pacts, like the AUKUS agreement with Britain and Australia and the Quad grouping with Australia, India and Japan, “to divide the world into ideologically-driven camps and provoke confrontation.”

India is trying a balancing act in its ties with Washington and Moscow, and has been reducing its dependence on Russian arms by also buying from the U.S., France, Germany and other countries.

The U.S. defense trade with India has risen from near zero in 2008 to over $20 billion in 2020. Major Indian purchases from the United States included long-range maritime patrol aircraft, C-130 transport aircraft, missiles and drones.

Experts say up to 60% of Indian defense equipment comes from Russia, and New Delhi finds itself in a bind at a time when it is facing a 3-year-old border standoff with China in eastern Ladakh, where tens of thousands of soldiers are stationed within shooting distance. Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese troops died in a clash in 2020.