Five members of the joint chiefs of staff — including Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman — are required statutorily to leave their posts within the coming months, starting in July. Meanwhile, most of the vice chiefs — many of whom are the nominees or favorites to replace the chiefs — are preparing to assume leadership of the services amid the Senate impasse.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is doubling down on his blockade of military confirmations. He told Defense News that the looming vacancies will not prompt him to back down from his ongoing hold on hundreds of military promotions, including the joint chiefs.

“If they’re worried about readiness, they need to go back to their old policy and we’ll get it done,” Tuberville said on Wednesday. “But they’re more worried about social programs than they are about military readiness.”

The senator imposed his blockade in February to protest the Pentagon’s new policy that provides leave time for troops to travel to receive abortion services if they’re stationed in states where it’s now illegal.

The first service chief vacancy will occur when Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger steps down on July 10, commencing a steady stream of exits from the joint chiefs through October. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville must step down next on August 8, followed by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday shortly after on August 21.

President Joe Biden nominated Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown as the next joint chiefs chairman, replacing Milley, who must depart by early October, and creating another opening at the top of the Air Force.

“There’s no playbook for this,” Arnold Punaro, a former staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with Defense News. “This is really a time for regular order, and not the chaos and uncertainty that we see in the system right now.”

The tumult sends a terrible message about the seriousness with which the United States takes its military promotion process, he said.

“It sends a sign of weakness to the rest of the world, that we can’t get our work done on time, and that we’re involved in political chaos,” Punaro said. “This has nothing to do with the individuals involved. We want the young officers, and up-and-coming commanders to see that the military promotion system is based on merit and [who is] best qualified.”

The Senate typically confirms noncontroversial military nominees, including the joint chiefs, using expedited floor procedures via unanimous consent. But any individual senator can block a unanimous consent request, allowing Tuberville to force the Senate to move through numerous procedural votes on each individual nominee.

“All they’ve got to do is put it on the floor and vote for it,” Tuberville told Defense News. “I’ll vote for it.”

Tuberville’s hold would require several weeks of limited Senate floor time to confirm the five joint chiefs nominees alone. Tuberville’s blockade is also holding up more than 220 flag and general officer promotions, which would take an additional several months of scarce floor time if the Senate did nothing but confirm military nominees. The Senate expects to receive hundreds more military nominees in the coming months.

Democratic leaders appear reluctant to use valuable floor time to confirm otherwise noncontroversial nominees and worry that doing so will encourage other senators to block military promotions in order to extract policy concessions.

“The Senate cannot encourage this behavior by handing out rewards for holding up hundreds of nominees,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who chairs the military personnel panel, told Defense News.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., repeatedly declined to commit to scheduling floor votes for the joint chiefs nominees when pressed by reporters at a Wednesday press conference.

“What Sen. Tuberville has done is just awful,” Schumer told Defense News. “We believe that Republican senators, if they care about national security, should be putting pressure on him to release the holds.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last month that he disagrees with Tuberville’s military holds.

And Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Defense News he hoped the issue could be resolved with a vote on the Pentagon’s abortion policy in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act– a suggestion that Tuberville shot down.

“I don’t want to put it in the NDAA and then hold it up because you’re going to have people that will be against it,” Tuberville told Defense News. “I’d rather have the Defense Department draw something up, send it over here and let’s vote on it, stand-alone.”

What happens next?

The fact that the same nominees tapped to lead the services will fill in for the vacancies in their capacity as the number two officer provides the Senate with little immediate incentive to resolve the impasse.

Punaro said vice chiefs would step in and perform those duties to keep the services running on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady would temporarily perform the duties of chairman if Brown is not confirmed by the beginning of October.

Delaying the start of new chiefs’ tenures hinders their ability to start making their desired changes to their services, he said.

Gen. Eric Smith, the Marines’ No. 2 officer and Biden’s nominee for commandant, is scheduled for a confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Given Smith’s current role as assistant commandant, the Marines are preparing for Smith to perform the commandant’s duties when Berger leaves on July 10 even if the Senate has not confirmed him by then.

The confirmation hearings for the other joint chiefs nominees, including Brown, are slated for July.

That includes Army vice chief Gen. Randy George to replace McConville. Biden has yet to nominate a new Chief of Naval Operations, but Navy vice chief Admiral Lisa Franchetti is widely considered the favorite for the position.

And of course, Biden will have to nominate a new Air Force chief of staff to replace Brown, with current Air Force vice chief Gen. David Allvin considered the frontrunner.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., told Defense News “It would be absolutely irresponsible” not to have a congressionally confirmed service chief.

Senators have held up votes on noncontroversial nominees more frequently in recent years. For instance, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., imposed a blanket hold on all Defense Department civilian nominations for more than a year.

They target military nominees less frequently. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., was the last senator to do so in 2020. Her hold lasted less than two weeks before she lifted it. By contrast, Tuberville’s hold has lasted more than three months with no end in sight.

“What goes around comes around,” Reed told Defense News. “If basically this succeeds, then the next two years from now someone who wants an assault weapons ban will say ‘gee, I’ll just hold up all the generals.”

Jen Judson contributed to this report.

The update comes as the service and the Pentagon grapple with what future warfare might require of American forces.

In its annual update on June 5 — part of the Corps’ ongoing Force Design 2030 modernization push — the service laid out two parallel efforts: a 21st Century Amphibious Operations concept the Corps is studying with the Navy; and an ARG/MEU Next concept, which refers to the amphibious ready group/Marine expeditionary unit pairing of ships and embarked forces.

The 21st Century Amphibious Operations concept would “articulate the future role of amphibious operations in support of maritime campaigns and will describe new operating methods that incorporate agile platforms to supplement traditional amphibious ships,” according to the Force Design update.

Examples given include long-range, unmanned systems that can infiltrate an enemy’s weapon-engagement zone, manned-unmanned fleets, and other “disruptive technologies.”

This concept looks into the 2040s and considers how Marines might conduct amphibious operations.

One new facet of amphibious operations could involve military vessels serving as motherships to unmanned systems that operate in several domains of warfare.

Col. Daniel Wittnam, the director of the service’s Integration Division, told Defense News in a recent interview that the commandant of the Marine Corps is interested in putting anything unmanned or autonomous onto amphibious ships for experimentation.

“The mothership concept is another opportunity for the Marine Corps to show flexibility and to be able to show resiliency by looking at manned and unmanned teaming and different platforms to utilize new and emerging technologies with our ARG/MEU teams,” Wittnam said.

He said the service already had funding to deploy the Shield AI-made V-BAT unmanned aerial vehicle on amphibious ships, and that the first Long-Range Unmanned Surface Vessel prototype would in the coming months move from Virginia to California to begin a user evaluation, which will include operations with a Marine expeditionary unit at sea.

This concept study will focus on how amphibious forces will fight, and not weigh in on how many ships the Corps needs the Navy to buy and maintain.

Still, even as the service takes a longer-term look at this piece of its portfolio, there is significant uncertainty hanging over its head about these operations today.

The Marine Corps, the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense have differing views on the role of amphibious operations in today’s joint force, and therefore how much money to spend on upkeeping existing ships and building replacements.

Congress attempted to partly settle the dispute by putting a 31-ship-fleet minimum into law, but the current long-range shipbuilding plan of record falls short of that mandate. Furthermore, the Pentagon has shown no sign of support for additional shipbuilding spending that would be needed to sustain a 31-ship fleet.

Despite multiple studies in recent years on the required size of the amphibious fleet, yet another study is nearing its conclusion and will look at ships’ design, acquisition and construction processes, eyeing opportunities to decrease the cost of the fleet.

The Marine Corps has pushed back on this idea, with Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, telling Defense News this year that rough drawings from the Pentagon would reduce the capability of the ships in a way the service finds unacceptable.

The study is due to the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office imminently. It is unclear what will happen once the office receives the Marine Corps’ and the Navy’s input, as leadership has only said the study will inform the fiscal 2025 budget process.

“I’m very pessimistic,” Heckl said during the recent interview about his near-term outlook on the amphibious fleet’s size and readiness. “Until amphibs genuinely become a priority, this will always be a struggle — to procure and then maintain. The fact that these vessels have been ridden hard and put away wet simply exemplifies how useable they are: They are in constant demand.”

He recommended the Defense Department reconsider how ships are funded. Currently, only the Navy can buy those vessels in its shipbuilding account, and only the Navy can maintain them within its operations and maintenance account, even though Marines are the primary beneficiaries of the ships.

Fleet combinations

As something of a hedge against the projected shortfall of amphibious ships, the Marines’ Force Design update also references a look at the ARG/MEU team’s composition.

As part of the ARG/MEU Next effort, the Corps is eyeing different ship configurations — including existing Navy expeditionary ships and potential “lower cost alternatives” to supplement amphibs — that could keep Marines afloat around the globe.

In the future, the Navy and Marine Corps could use a greater number of smaller and less expensive ships to “complicate the ability of our adversaries to find and target our sea-based expeditionary forces,” according to the Force Design update document.

Wittnam said that earlier in his career there were three ARG/MEU teams at sea routinely. But today, it’s difficult to keep two — or even one — at sea.

Marines need new ideas to address mobility, or their ability to move around independently of joint force assets, which Wittnam called a top concern heading into the next year of Force Design experimentation.

Despite Heckl’s concerns about today’s ARG/MEU team and the ability to strengthen the fleet in the coming years, the general did say Marines “are going to do what we’ve always done, what quite frankly we do really, really well: We’re going to fight for every damn penny we can get with Congress, and we don’t care who gets hurt along the way because we’re doing it to have what our nation needs.”

Given the grave rhetoric, reports of possible 10% to 20% cuts to Army special operations forces — a prime force for competing in the “gray zone” to achieve U.S. aims short of armed conflict — seem misaligned with U.S. goals. While it is important to weigh the potential strategic ramifications of these reductions, it is as critical to recognize that they are just the latest manifestation of a misalignment between U.S. defense strategy and resources. This misalignment compels the Army to make short-term decisions to meet budgetary constraints that harm the joint force’s ability to execute the U.S. defense strategy.

The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes the most complex strategic environment the United States has faced in decades. The joint force must outpace the People’s Republic of China, deter Russia’s “acute threat,” and remain vigilant of the “persistent threats” of North Korea, Iran and global violent extremist organizations. The 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission assessed that to execute the 2018 NDS — the core tenets of which the 2022 NDS maintains — U.S. defense funding required 3% to 5% of real annual growth.

But between 2019 and 2023, the defense budget was more than $200 billion below what was necessary to have achieved 5% real growth. The fiscal 2024 defense budget request is a 0.8% increase in real terms, but it will be a decrease if inflation remains above 2.4%.

The Army has faced the most severe budgetary challenges of the joint force. Assumptions that the United States will likely fight short, high-tech wars predominantly in the air and sea, instead of protracted ground wars, have resulted in budgets that accept excessive risk to U.S. land power and the joint force. Between FY19 and FY23, the Army lost nearly $40 billion in buying power, and the FY24 request represents a 3.3% decrease in real terms from the previous year.

The Army’s end strength has fallen to its lowest level since 1940 to satisfy budgetary constraints while maintaining fight-tonight readiness and keeping modernization on track. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has indicated that, in part driven by current recruiting shortfalls, more force structure cuts are on the horizon.

These trends would be less alarming if the historical data of all major U.S. wars in the past eight decades were not so definitive about the Army’s central role in combat. Across WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army has averaged approximately 60% of forces deployed to the combat theater and about 70% of wartime fatalities.

Counter to the conventional wisdom that ground forces play a minimal role in the Indo-Pacific region, the Army’s share of combat deployments and casualties in the United States’ three major ground wars in the theater has been consistent with wars fought elsewhere. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that while the character of warfare is constantly evolving, there is no substitute for land forces in imposing political will.

Even in times of relative peace, the Army accounts for about two-thirds of global U.S. combatant commander requirements. As an example, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Army provided about three-fourths of the additional U.S. forces deployed to reinforce Eastern European NATO allies. Additionally, the Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve have been instrumental in training U.S. partners and allies, enabling global operations with logistics support, and responding to crises at home, whether COVID-19 or natural disasters.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is quoted as saying: “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you your strategy.” A budget that disproportionately decrements the service that routinely faces the heaviest demands both in times of peace and war is divorced from the aims of the ambitious National Defense Strategy. One temptation might be to drastically reduce U.S. commitments — in the Middle East, Africa or even Europe — to close the resource gap. But this ignores the increasingly interconnected nature of geopolitics, forfeits the strategic competitive space and discounts the potential for security deterioration that later requires a more significant U.S. commitment once vital interests are threatened. There are few risk-free reductions in either budget or global force posture.

To safeguard American security, Congress should ensure that the Army’s budget receives 3% to 5% real annual growth, matched by the necessary investments in U.S. air, sea, space and cyber power. If this is truly a “decisive decade,” the military’s budget must reflect this urgency. A joint force capable of converging each service’s capabilities across warfighting domains is one that potential adversaries will not seek to fight. To quote Milley: “The only thing more expensive than deterrence is actually fighting a war, and the only thing more expensive than fighting a war is fighting one and losing one.”

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Robert Brown is the president and CEO of the Association of the United States Army. He previously served as the commander of U.S. Army Pacific.

Anduril is a defense technology company that specializes in artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation.

The company said retired Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood will lead Anduril’s expansion into Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville is near Redstone Arsenal, home to the Army’s program executive offices for missiles and space and aviation, the service’s Space and Missile Defense Command and the RCCTO. Thurgood retired from the Army last year after 38 years of service.

In his new role, he will shape Anduril’s business strategy to help deliver “critical company priorities, such as counter-unmanned air systems, air and missile defense, tactical weapons and mission systems, and command and control capabilities,” according to a company statement.

“Thurgood will also play a leading role in Anduril’s continued growth and maturation for large-scale production, program management and capability delivery in support of government partners,” it added.

As the former RCCTO director, Thurgood’s portfolio included rapid development and delivery of the service’s most critical technologies, including hypersonic and laser weapons, counter-UAS capabilities, and even hybrid-electric combat vehicle prototypes.

During his tenure, he oversaw the creation of a new industrial base to build hypersonic glide bodies for the Army and Navy, the establishment of the first Army unit with hypersonic weapons and the building of 50-kilowatt laser prototypes on Stryker combat vehicles.

Thurgood told Defense News he sees a match between Anduril’s technologies and the program offices at Redstone Arsenal, such as aviation and missiles and space.

Christian Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, told Defense News Thurgood is “a critical addition” to the company as it becomes “a bigger company, focused on production, manufacturing, all the things that we are now tasked with doing at real scale.”

Anduril has won contracts with the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps and U.S. Special Operations Command and has supplied equipment to Ukraine, including its Ghost loitering munition. The company is preparing to send its Altius UAS to the country.

Anduril has acquired Dive Technologies, Area-I, and Copious Imaging. While originally focused on force protection such as counter-UAS and base defense solutions, the company has expanded to offer air vehicles and underwater vehicles linked by command and control and collaborative autonomy.

“There are some clear areas that are opportunities for us,” Thurgood said. “Counter-UAS is the future.”

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.

The tank training got underway as the United States and its allies began to work out agreements to train Ukrainians on F-16 fighter jets, another long-sought advanced system. Those aircraft would be part of a security plan to deter future attacks, U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley said late Thursday as he arrived in France.

“Everyone recognizes Ukraine needs a modernized Air Force,” said Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It’s going to take a considerable amount of time.”

The intent is to provide capabilities for Ukraine in the mid- to long-term, said Nicolas Vaujour, a vice admiral who is chief operations of France’s Joint Staff and spoke to reporters traveling with Milley.

Milley said detailed planning on the size of F-16 training classes, the types of flying tactics and locations for training was being worked out among the U.S. and allies such as the Netherlands and Britain that have pledged to provide the American-made F-16s. The United States has not said whether it will directly provide jets, but President Joe Biden has said the U.S. will support F-16 training as part of the coalition.

As those logistics are figured out, the Abrams tank training is moving ahead.

About 200 Ukrainian soldiers began an approximately 12-week training course in Germany over the past weekend where they are learning how to maneuver, fire and conduct combined arms operations with the advanced armored system. An additional 200 troops are receiving training on tank fueling and fuel truck maintenance.

The U.S. training schedule is timed to get the troops up to speed on the systems before 31 of the 70-ton Abrams tanks the Biden administration has promised to Ukraine are scheduled arrive by this fall. Those tanks will make up part of a force of about 300 tanks in total pledged by Western allies including Challenger tanks from the United Kingdom, Leopard 2 tanks from Spain and Germany, and light tanks from France.

The U.S. and its allies balked for months at providing such tanks, citing the significant maintenance and fueling challenges the systems require. Abrams tanks can burn through fuel at a rate of at least 2 gallons per mile (4.7 liters per kilometer), whether the tank is moving or idling. That means a constant supply convoy of fuel trucks must stay within reach so the tanks can keep moving forward.

As with the recent decision on F-16 training, the U.S. approval to send its own Abrams systems was a necessary part of the allies’ negotiations on tanks for Ukraine so that no Western nation would be providing the systems alone, possibly incurring direct retaliation from Russia. In January, the Biden administration reversed course and agreed that Ukraine would get the tanks.

Milley is in France to mark the 79th anniversary of D-Day, which launched the allies’ World War II massive ground counteroffensive to push back Nazi forces in Europe. The war involved some of the largest armored battles in modern history, including a major Soviet counteroffensive against the Nazis in 1943 along the Dnieper River, the same edge along which tens of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian forces are now entrenched.

“You can look back to World War II and some of the biggest armored battles that were ever fought in history were fought, basically, in parts of Ukraine,” Milley told reporters traveling with him. “So tanks are very important, both to the defense and the offense, and upgraded modern tanks, the training that goes with it, the ability to use them, will be fundamental to Ukrainian success.”

The Army bought two Iron Dome batteries from Israel in order to fill a gap in cruise missile defense as it develops its own indirect fire protection capability, but has stressed it won’t buy more of the stand-alone systems, partly because the Israeli government has been unwilling to turn over its proprietary source code.

But at a May 30 Center for Strategic and International Studies event, Moshe Patel, who heads the Israel Missile Defense Organization, said he believed relevant information sharing limitations between the two countries have now been resolved.

“I can tell you that just recently, we solved all the issues and problems that they have and we are going to give them the right solutions and whatever they need in order to integrate fully the capability of Iron Dome inside their systems,” Patel said in response to a question about whether he believed Iron Dome could be integrated into the U.S. system, as opposed to being merely interoperable.

“More than that, we deployed two Iron Dome batteries already that we are willing to fully integrate those Iron Dome batteries into the [Integrated Battle Command System] and whatever is needed,” he added.

The IBCS, which is the Army’s command-and-control system that will connect sensors and interceptors across the battlefield, was recently approved for full-rate production. Army officials have maintained if a system can’t connect with IBCS, it can’t be a part of the service’s emerging air-and-missile defense architecture.

While the Army has deployed Iron Dome to Guam for a short period of time to evaluate its capability in an operational environment, it has yet to talk about how it might deploy it or any plans for the two systems in detail.

Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at CSIS, said earlier this year that Iron Dome cannot be integrated into the Army’s future air and missile defense network until Israeli provides access to the source code, with cybersecurity a major concern.

“Unless Israel permits access to address these concerns, these two batteries will remain a standalone niche capability,” he wrote in a recent opinion piece. “As such, the Army seems to not know what to do with them.”

Technological solutions exist to tie Iron Dome effectively into the Army’s air-and-missile defense architecture that don’t require the Israelis to pass over proprietary source code, former Missile Defense Agency director retired Lt. Gen. Henry Obering wrote in an opinion piece for Defense News in 2020.

“One option could be through technical escrow accounts, which would allow trusted national security officials to process integration without putting Israeli ingenuity at risk,” he writes. “At the same time, the United States does not need proprietary Israeli intellectual property to derive use from the air defense system. Integrating the Iron Dome within U.S. defenses would be ideal, but there are still discreet interoperable uses for the system, similar to how the Marines reportedly connected it to their Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar.”

Patel pointed to several other efforts where Iron Dome was able to connect effectively such as the command-and-control element of the brand new AN/SPY-6 radar aboard Navy destroyers and the Marine Corps’ air defense system as well.

“Whatever we can help you in the United States to have better defense and to fill your gap, we will do with all the support that we have received from you along the years. I think that is our obligation,” he said.

“As of today, the Army does not have a requirement for the Iron Dome software,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief told Defense News in a June 1 statement sent through a spokesperson. “However, given recent discussions that issue is under review.”

Currently, the Army has “an acceptable interoperability strategy in place with an existing command and control system planned for implementation by the end of the calendar year,” Bush added. “This approach ensures the Army’s two Iron Dome systems will be effective if they are deployed.”

Even so, IBCS is the “critical element that connects everything,” Bush said. “Commanders could make the decision to employ United States-owned Iron Dome units for specific missions and threats, but the long term operational defensive design for air defense relies on IBCS and IBCS-enabled equipment.”

While Iron Dome’s future with the U.S. force structure remains uncertain, Rafael, the company that developed and manufactured Iron Dome in a partnership with the United States government and U.S. based Raytheon, is also setting its sights on the possibility that some parts of Iron Dome could see wider adoption.

For example, while the Army picked Raytheon’s AIM-9X for its first Indirect Fires Protection Capability missile, the service plans to evaluate and hold competitions later on for other missiles to add to the inventory that are capable of taking out rockets, artillery and mortars as well as cruise missiles and drones. Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptor would likely be a candidate in any future IFPC interceptor competition.

An initial contract for the digital conduit is expected to be inked in March or April 2024, according to Col. Chris Anderson, a project manager at the Army’s Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S. More contracts should follow.

“I envision it’s going to end up being a series of contracts for various aspects of the pipeline,” Anderson told C4ISRNET on the sidelines of Technical Exchange Meeting X, a defense industry conference held last week in Philadelphia. “Building a team of teams, both within the government, with industry, academia and everybody else — it’s going to take a village to make this happen.”

The Pentagon has for years recognized the value of AI, both on and off the battlefield, and has subsequently invested billions of dollars to advance and adopt the capability. The technology can help vehicles navigate, predict when maintenance is required, assist with the identification and classification of targets, and aid analysts poring over mountains of information.

Through Project Linchpin, the Army intends to deliver AI capabilities across the closely related intel, cyber and electronic warfare worlds, documents show, while also addressing hang-ups associated with the field, such as the consumption and incorporation of real-world data.

Lockheed paces JADC2 information-sharing at Northern Edge

“There’s a data-labelling component, the actual model training that happens,” Anderson said. “Then there’s verification and validation on the back end, and then just, kind of, running the infrastructure. So that’s four or five different focus areas that will probably require different industry partners.”

Included in the PEO IEW&S portfolio are the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node meant to centralize and automate the collection, parsing and distribution of data; the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance jet outfitted with advanced sensors; and the Terrestrial Layer Systems designed to provide soldiers with cyber and electronic warfare assistance.

Each will play a specific role on the battlefield of the future, and each will tie back to Project Linchpin.

“Any sensor-related program within the PEO, this will be their machine-learning pipeline,” Anderson said. “We want to take it from a science fair experiment into a program of record.”

An industry day for Project Linchpin is planned for August or September. PEO IEW&S conducted market research at a previous technical exchange meeting in Nashville, Tennessee.

The 3rd MLR, a unit crafted as part of the ongoing Force Design 2030 modernization effort, is meant to carry out the new Stand-In Forces operating concept, which calls for small U.S. Marine Corps units to pair with allies in the first island chain, which stretches from Japan’s East China Sea islands through the Philippines. This would allow the units to operate there on a regular basis as well as provide sensing and shooting capabilities while remaining stealthy.

When the unit first attended the 2022 Balikatan exercise, it had recently been redesignated and did not have all its subordinate commands in place. Col. Tim Brady, the regiment’s commanding officer, said that year’s drill marked 3rd MLR’s first chance to leave its Hawaii home base with a skeleton crew of a couple hundred Marines and operate in the South China Sea.

“It was our inaugural deployment: beginning to get into the first island chain, develop our relationship with the Coastal Defense Regiment of the Philippine Marine Corps, and begin our development of our tactics, techniques and procedures,” he said in a May 22 interview.

This year, however, 1,300 Marines from a fully established 3rd MLR showed up at the exercise in April and sought to demonstrate their intended multidomain role in a joint and combined fight.

After an initial live-fire training phase, the littoral regiment conducted a series of air assaults in the Luzon Strait to take control of three islands — Fuga, Calayan and Basco — and then use them as expeditionary advanced bases for sensing and shooting.

During the coastal defense live-fire phase and then the littoral live-fire phase, during which forces sank an old Philippine amphibious ship, the regiment’s littoral anti-air defense battalion provided air defense and air domain awareness, working as an enabler for the rest of the force to find targets and synchronize fires.

Col. Darryl Ayers, the operations officer for 3rd Marine Division, which commanded the forces at Balikatan, said the exercise demonstrated the role 3rd MLR was meant to fulfill: operating inside China’s weapons engagement zone; conducting sea control and sea denial operations if conflict begins; and setting the conditions for larger, follow-on actions by the joint and coalition force.

The littoral anti-air defense battalion, he said, can provide sensing, air defense, and air command and control.

“You disperse them in northern Luzon, you identify what areas you can cover and where you need to focus your efforts with regards to identifying threats, identifying targets and then identifying what you need to take out those targets,” Ayers said in a May 17 interview.

The forces under the littoral combat team, which includes a medium missile battery, infantry forces and combat engineers, “provide security for the force, but they also provide a … fires capability with regard to the future of the ROGUE NMESIS,” an unmanned anti-ship missile launcher the Marine Corps began procuring this year.

He also said the littoral logistics battalion proved it can sustain the regiment for about 30 days during independent operations, depending on the specifics of the activities.

At Balikatan, Ayers said, the regiment was able to disperse these capabilities into small units fighting from multiple advanced bases across the theater, and then aggregate the full regiment when needed.

Enabling allies and joint forces

The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment has grown in size since last year, and its subordinate units are fully redesignated, but Brady said the biggest change has come in the Corps’ understanding of how to leverage the MLR to support a higher headquarters, to enable joint forces, and to work with allies and partners.

Since last summer’s participation in the massive Rim of the Pacific exercise, Brady said the regiment signed up for four major events.

In the fall, the MLR participated in the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center’s rotational training event with the Army’s 25th Infantry Division. This event in Hawaii helped the regiment refine its tactics for working under a joint force land component commander, and allowed Marines to serve as a stand-in force while setting the conditions for incoming land forces.

Weeks later, in a Fleet Battle Problem event with U.S. Pacific Fleet, the regiment paired with a Marine expeditionary unit embarked on a Navy amphibious ready group for the first time, operating around the Hawaiian Islands as a stand-in force and managing a fictitious crisis until follow-on maritime forces could flow in. This allowed 3rd MLR to refine its tactics for working under a joint force maritime component commander.

In February and March, the unit attended a service-level training exercise in Twentynine Palms, California, which included the first-ever Marine littoral regiment training event. Brady said this allowed the regiment to work as part of a larger stand-in force under 3rd Marine Division as the intermediate headquarters, and hone its multidomain operations tactics. At one point, the regiment was operating from expeditionary advanced bases across the entire training area: San Clemente Island, Camp Pendleton, Twentynine Palms and Barstow in California, and Yuma, Arizona.

At the recent Balikatan exercise, 3rd MLR repeated that same type of operation — distributed groups operating from multiple advanced bases, all under the command of the higher headquarters at 3rd Marine Division — but applied it to a mission in the first island chain alongside allies and partners.

During all of these exercises, communication and connectivity have been key focus areas, Ayers and Brady said. For 3rd MLR to have the greatest effect on the battlefield, it must be at the heart of a joint and coalition web of sensors and weapons.

Brady said the series of exercises over the last year allowed 3rd MLR to work through this kill web first within Marine forces and then in the joint force. Brady said the unit is in the nascent stage of looping in allies and partners.

With the Philippines, for example, he said there are some remaining information-sharing agreements and cross-domain data-sharing solutions in the works.

As it relates to radars, sensors, radios, command-and-control tools, and more that 3rd MLR needs to send and receive data as part of this kill web — some of which exists in the Corps, and some of which is still in development and fielding under Force Design 2030 — Brady said: “We’re well on our way to having everything we need.”

Learning and executing

Though the regiment will continue to refine its tactics and bring in new gear, leaders say the unit is ready to take on real-world missions if called upon.

The unit is expected to reach initial operational capability by September, but Brady said he’s not focused on the formalities of initial operational capability and full operational capability.

“We are absolutely capable today, capable of fighting now today, which we just demonstrated in Balikatan 23. We have a task-organized unit, everybody is established, and we have the capability to move forward into the first island chain and execute expeditionary advanced base operations today,” Brady said.

Maj. Gen. Roger Turner, the Marine Corps’ operations division director, told Defense News this spring “they’re a viable force right now” regardless of the upcoming declaration of reaching an initial operational capability.

The 3rd MLR operating as a stand-in force “is viable against the pacing adversary, and we think it complicates their calculus, and we think it contributes to deterrence,” he said of China. After some “pretty significant changes to the Marine Corps,” Turner said the service is in the implementation phase of Stand-In Forces.

This comes as Turner says America’s Pacific allies and partners are growing increasingly concerned about China’s behavior in the region, with its maritime forces encroaching on other nations’ fishing waters, bullying their ships, and making other aggressive moves on the sea and in the air.

“That’s a massive undertaking to basically establish the stand-in force that stays with our partners and allies in the Western Pacific and builds their confidence, supports our alliances, builds partner capacity [at a time when] the aggressive behavior of the [People’s Republic of China] is driving people to us,” the general said.

The commanding officer said the regiment will adjust, and the Stand-In Forces concept will change, as would be the case for any new unit or concept. But by this time next year, the 3rd MLR will focus more on sustaining a near-permanent presence in the Philippines, as opposed to learning and experimenting.

The 3rd MLR will continue participating in two major annual exercises in the Philippines — Balikatan in the spring and Kamandag in the fall — but will also seek “other opportunities alongside the Philippine Marine Corps and inside the Philippines to get us to almost a 365-day a year presence at some level of capacity,” Brady said.

Ayers said some of the remaining learning relates to sustainment, the main area where the relationship between 3rd MLR and the Coastal Defense Regiment will come into play.

Ayers said the Marine Corps knew how to handle logistics in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it could build up an iron mountain in the desert and send out people and materiel as needed. Learning how to sustain distributed forces in the first island chain, where resupply routes are certain to be targeted by Chinese forces in a war, is still taking time.

“It takes a lot of working with the combined partners, the [Filipinos], the Japanese, the Koreans, to try and figure out how we do that,” Ayers said.

Though he praised the littoral logistics battalion’s work, he said 3rd Marine Division continues to look for shortfalls in 3rd MLR’s ability to sustain itself, and then to turn to Philippine forces for help solving those logistical challenges.

“That’s really the focus of the MLR, is getting them into the Philippines, getting them to have a persistent presence there — and not just for the security of the area, but also to continue to build upon the relationships that we’ve built over decades with the [Philippine joint forces] because it’s critical to the success of [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s] mission out here in protecting the first island chain.”

Turner highlighted lift — the platforms that help small teams from 3rd MLR get to and move around within the Philippine island chain — as another area that will continue to undergo maturation. The Marine Corps is experimenting with stern landing vessels ahead of procuing a Landing Ship Medium vessel in fiscal 2025.

In the meantime, Turner pointed to the F-35B fighter jet, the MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and the CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopter as tools increasingly applicable for 3rd MLR.

“Those platforms were envisioned to support our [Marine expeditionary unit], but then they also are super essential in the stand-in force capability because of the [aircraft] ranges,” he said.

Turner also gave a nod to the Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar, which has changed since its original development to conduct air- and ground-search missions. Though G/ATOR was made for a traditional land campaign, “we’ve learned its applicability for the stand-in force. And what it can provide to the joint force is really special. We’ve made some changes to it.”

“Even though those programs and those requirements were written under a different conceptual way — because we were really focused on [amphibious ready group/Marine expeditionary unit operations], and we were really focused on joint forcible entry — a lot of that stuff was able to easily segue into the stand-in force.”

Collins will replace Vice Adm. Jon Hill, who has served as director since 2019.

The Air Force general is currently the MDA’s program executive officer for Ground-Based Weapons Systems at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. Within that $3.4 billion portfolio, Collins manages the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System, consisting of interceptors in the ground at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, designed to intercept potential intercontinental ballistic missiles from North Korea and Iran.

Also under his purview is the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, four Joint U.S. and Israeli programs and other classified programs.

Collins previously was the Air Force’s program executive officer for weapons and director of the armament directorate, where he worked on the Air Force’s $92 billion non-nuclear weapons, munitions and ammunition portfolio.

The general began his military career in 1993 as a missile analyst in the 83rd Fighter Weapons Squadron at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida.

As the services are moving to develop offensive hypersonic capability, Collins recently oversaw the ups and downs of the Air Force’s AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon development, or ARRW, which experienced a successful test last year. Amid a slew of failed test events before and after its successful one, the Air Force decided to drop the Lockheed Martin-developed program earlier this year.

Now, Collins will oversee an MDA program in its nascent phase of development — an interceptor capable of taking out hypersonic weapons in the glide phase of flight, a difficult technical challenge.

MDA has also spent the last four years working to upgrade the GMD system, which resides in Collins’ current portfolio. Two teams are competing to build a next-generation interceptor for the system as the current system undergoes a service life extension program.

Collins will also manage the MDA portion of a major new venture in Guam to develop a highly capable air and missile defense architecture to defend the island territory from continuously evolving and growing threats in the region. Some elements of that architecture include systems already in his purview.

The MDA’s $10.9 billion fiscal 2024 budget request continues to prioritize regional and homeland missile defense with a major focus on building the defensive architecture in Guam.

WASHINGTON — Equipment drawn from the U.S. Army’s Kuwait-based pre-positioned stock bound for Ukraine was not ready for combat operations, the Pentagon’s inspector general has found.

During the inspector general’s audit of that pre-positioned stock area, the fifth of seven such locations around the world, “we identified issues that resulted in unanticipated maintenance, repairs, and extended leadtimes to ensure the readiness of the military equipment selected to support the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the May 23 report stated.

All six of the M777 howitzers and 25 of 29 M1167 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles were not “mission ready” and required repairs before U.S. European Command could send the equipment to Ukraine.

By January 2023, the U.S. government used its drawdown authority 30 times in total to provide $18.3 billion in equipment and ammunition to Ukraine, which is fighting a Russian invasion.

Army pre-positioned stock, or APS, is meant to be kept at the highest level of readiness so that it can be used immediately in case of an emergency.

The inspector general issued the report mid-audit out of concern that “issues with poor maintenance and lax oversight of the [APS] equipment could result in future delays for equipment support provided to the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” the report read. “In addition, if U.S. forces needed this equipment, they would have encountered the same challenges.”

The 401st Army Field Support Battalion in Kuwait is responsible for overseeing contractor maintenance work, which includes issuing equipment. Army Materiel Command confirmed the contractor conducting the work at the site is Amentum, which is based in Chantilly, Virginia.

Hazardous howitzers

Because the battalion did not ensure the contractor was meeting its maintenance requirements for approximately 19 months on M777 howitzers, an Army Materiel Command senior representative from Kuwait issued a request for assistance, bringing in a U.S. Army Tank-automotive and Armaments Command mobile repair team from Anniston Army Depot, Alabama.

When the team arrived at Camp Arifjan in March 2022, the contractor provided a howitzer that it said was fully mission capable. But the weapon system was not maintained according to the standard technical manual, per the mobile repair team, and “ ‘would have killed somebody [the operator],’ in its current condition,” the report stated.

The team subsequently found that all six howitzers had operational issues. Four of the six howitzers had breech blocks improperly aligned with the rack gear, which prevented the breech from correctly locking. A breech not properly locked could result in an explosion that could kill the crew, the report noted.

Additionally, all six howitzers contained reused, old hydraulic fluid, which is not allowed because the fluid degrades over time and could lead to “disastrous results and malfunctions of critical systems,” the inspector general found.

The contractor paid the mobile repair team $114,000 for labor and travel expenses, according to the report.

As the howitzers were being prepared to leave Kuwait for shipment to Europe on June 21, 2022, one of the howitzers experienced a brake fire, likely due to the contractor not releasing the parking brake when moving it, according to the report, which cited a specialist with the mobile repair team. The contractor claimed it was likely due to leaking brake fluid, the report noted.

When the howitzers reached Poland for distribution to Ukraine, officials there said all six howitzers still had faults that made them non-mission capable, according to the report, including worn firing pins and issues with the firing mechanism. The repairs cost about $17,490 in labor and materials.

Officials said they were able to avoid delays in getting the howitzers to Ukraine, but the inspector general noted in the report the inadequate maintenance on the howitzers highlights the need to consider the time it would take to maintain and repair equipment coming from the APS site in Kuwait for Ukraine.

Tire troubles

Prior to August 2022, the 401st declared 28 of 29 Humvees as fully mission capable, but when it received an order to pull those out for Ukraine on Aug. 24, only three of the 29 were ready, the inspector general said.

Problems with the Humvees included dead batteries, inoperative lights, faulty gauges, damaged seat belts, broken door lock latches and fluid leaks, the report listed.

In order to meet the deadline to ship the equipment to Europe, the contractor took parts from other Humvees in the inventory, including in one case a transmission, “potentially making that equipment non-mission capable,” the report noted.

When the vehicles arrived in Poland, officials there reported one of the tires on a Humvee was shredded due to dry rot. When the tire was replaced with a spare, that one also failed due to dry rot, the report described.

The officials in Poland opened up work orders to replace tires damaged with dry rot in September 2022. Additionally, the vehicles did not come with spare tires, the officials noted, causing concern they would cross the border and fail with no means to replace tires there.

Tires were ultimately pulled from other equipment for the Humvees headed to Ukraine.

The process delayed delivery to Ukraine and required significant labor and time, “pulling soldiers away from primary duties,” and cost $173,524 for labor and material, the report added.

Getting back in fighting shape

The head of Army Sustainment Command explained, in response to the report, that the service’s funding level for APS maintenance in Kuwait was 30% of the validated requirements in fiscal 2023 — about $27.8 million of the $91.3 million requirement.

And the commander stated the contractor “is not contractually obligated or appropriately resourced to maintain [APS] equipment” at standards laid out in the technical manual the inspector general followed to make determinations regarding mission-capable readiness of the equipment.

The inspector general disagreed that the contractor was not obligated to follow the same technical manual used by the inspector general and also noted in the report that the Army obligated nearly $1 billion from Aug. 31, 2016, through April 13, 2023, for the APS location.

The inspector general recommended in the report that the Army’s deputy chief of staff — or G-3/5/7, which is responsible for issuing what goes into APS — “consider the level of maintenance and leadtime required before selecting Army Prepositioned Stock [in Kuwait] equipment for sourcing Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

The commander of the 401st should also develop and implement “increased inspection procedures to not only validate that the [APS] contractor has properly corrected known maintenance deficiencies but also to conduct a thorough visual inspection of equipment and correct any deficiencies including tires damaged by dry rot, before shipping the equipment to [U.S. European Command] for transfer to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

The nascent AI “bill of materials” effort would be similar to existing software bill of materials practices, or SBOMs, the comprehensive lists of ingredients and dependencies that make up software, according to Young Bang, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.

Such disclosures are championed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other organizations.

“We’re toying with the notion of an AI BOM. And that’s because, really, we’re looking at things from a risk perspective,” Bang told reporters on the sidelines of Technical Exchange Meeting X, a defense industry conference held May 24-25 in Philadelphia. “Just like we’re securing our supply chain — semiconductors, components, subcomponents — we’re also thinking about that from a digital perspective. So we’re looking at software, data and AI.”

Bang and others met with AI companies during the conference to gather feedback on the potential requirements. He did not share insights from the private get-together.

The Pentagon is investing in AI, machine learning and autonomy as leaders demand quicker decision-making, longer and more-remote intelligence collection and a reduction of human risk on increasingly high-tech battlefields. The Defense Department in 2021 established its Chief Digital and AI Office, whose executives have since said high-quality data is foundational to all its pursuits.

More than 685 AI-related projects are underway at the department, according to the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog, with at least 232 being handled by the Army. A peek under the algorithm hood, Bang said, is more about ruling out “risk like Trojans, triggers, poison data sets, or prompting of unintentional outcomes,” and less about reverse engineering and exposing sensitive intellectual property.

“I just want to make sure we’re explicit about this: It’s not to get at vendor IP. It’s really about, how do we manage the cyber risks and the vulnerabilities?” he said. “We’re thinking about how do we work with industry.”

The Army published a request for information regarding the as-a-service tack, a potential pivot away from the traditional means of buying and maintaining radios, and received 15 responses by March.

Input ranged from “folks wanting to be the the manager of the process, all the way to folks providing us everything that a lower tactical network needs,” Col. Shermoan Daiyaan, the project manager for tactical radios at the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, or PEO C3T, said May 24 at an industry conference in Philadelphia.

At the same time, other vendors came “back and said, ‘Nope, we’re not going to play,’” Daiyaan said. “That was a response, and that’s data. We’ll appreciate that and take that to heart.”

The Army has hundreds of thousands of radios — too many to quickly and cost-effectively modernize given security deadlines and constant competition with China and Russia, which have sophisticated signals intelligence that can cue onto communications. Service leaders have said the as-a-service method, while experimental, could drive down costs and boost adaptability.

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to demo data processing node

As initially teased in December by Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo, radio as a service would be more akin to a subscription offered by some makers of consumer products. It could mirror other deals in which companies furnish goods and services on a rolling basis, keep them up to date and handle quality control.

“We left that RFI very open, very generic. We approached it from: We don’t want to shape your response,” Daiyaan said. “It’s such a novel idea that we didn’t want to take things off the table.”

The colonel expects to speak with senior leaders about the effort in the coming weeks. PEO C3T is tasked with overhauling the Army’s battlefield connectivity tools.

“What we’re trying to figure out is if there’s something in there to explore,” Daiyaan said. “I believe there’s something there to explore.”

The Army has long been working to select a Future Tactical Uncrewed Aircraft System, meant to replace its Shadow UAS fleet. In 2022, after a roughly four-year competition, the service awarded AeroVironment an $8 million contract to provide its Jump 20 system as an interim FTUAS capability for a single brigade. AeroVironment purchased Jump 20′s developer Arcturus in 2021. An undisclosed number of Jump 20s have been provided through U.S. security assistance to Ukraine.

In a statement, AeroVironment said the decision “does not have a material impact on the company’s near-term outlook.”

“While we are extremely disappointed with the U.S. Army’s decision, we respect it. We are now fully assessing the U.S. Army’s evaluation process to determine our next steps,” said Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment’s chief executive, said in the statement.

The Army wants its FTUAS to be a vertical take-off and landing aircraft, so it can be runway independent. Additionally, the service wants the system to offer improved maneuverability and the capability to be controlled on the move. Other planned attributes include a reduced transportation and logistics footprint and a quieter system than is offered today to avoid enemy detection.

The service in fall 2021 opened competition for a permanent system and, earlier this year, the Army selected five companies, including AeroVironment, to build prototypes. Now, the Army is awarding contracts to move into the design phase to Griffon Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada and Textron Systems — all of the competitors except AeroVironment.

The Army did not disclose the value of each contract awarded in a May 24 statement.

Since late February, the Army has evaluated the five submissions’ performance, cost, schedule, risk and modular open systems approaches, according to the service’s statement.

The effort going forward will include a series of design reviews. Then, competitors will be chosen to demonstrate capabilities in actual flight and will go through third-party verification of modular open system architectures.

If competitors pass through those gauntlets, each team will provide air vehicles, mission systems packages, payloads and ground controllers among other tools and manuals in order to go through qualification testing and operational assessments, the Army stated earlier in the competition.

The system is scheduled to enter full-rate production in the second quarter of FY26.

The Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, or PEO IEW&S, headed by Mark Kitz, will by Oct. 1 absorb defensive cyber operations, cyber analytics and detection, cyber platforms and systems, and the technology applications office. Those efforts are now associated with the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, or PEO EIS, run by Ross Guckert.

The move coincides with the start of the government’s fiscal 2024, as well as a separate consolidation of network portfolios involving the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, or PEO C3T, overseen by Maj. Gen. Anthony Potts.

The portfolio changes across all three PEOs were discussed May 24 at a conference with industry known as Technical Exchange Meeting X, in Philadelphia. No jobs are expected to be cut, and contracts should flow as normal.

“Synergy, our optimization of the organization here, is really important for us as a cyber enterprise,” Kitz said.

The next Army recruiting tool amid a slump? It could be the metaverse.

Using the Pentagon’s acquisition budget management tool, PEOs engage with external stakeholders to track the full lifecycle of budget data for procurement. Offices were established by the Defense Department in the 1980s as a means to control costs and improve delivery performance, and oversight of specific initiatives are reassigned from time to time as missions and priorities change.

PEO IEW&S is already home to several Army cyber efforts. In August, the office unveiled a cell dedicated to offensive cyber and space capabilities called Program Manager Cyber and Space.

The Army is always looking at how it can get upgraded hardware and software into soldier hands. That, among other factors, is motivating the office reorganization, or optimization, according to Young Bang, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army, or ASA, for acquisition, logistics and technology, or ALT.

“As the Army is modernizing, and we’re transforming, we looked at the structure and said, ‘Hey, are things really linked together to be more efficient, to support things like the unified network?’” Bang said at the conference. “We had a lot of discussions across the ASA(ALT) community and the PEOs. We talked about those types of things.”

Additional shuffles may be on the horizon, he said.

Leaders in Prague have designated Minister of Defense Jana Černochová the point person to negotiate a Czech buy of the weapons, made by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann and Rheinmetall and known as Kampfpanzer in German, the defense ministry said in a May 24 statement.

The idea is to piggy-back on a German purchase that will initially cover 18 Leopard 2A8 tanks, for $565 million, to replace Berlin’s donations to Ukraine, but that could grow over time into a multibillion-euro deal for up to 123 copies, German media reported.

The envisioned Czech investment “paves the way for the Army of the Czech Republic to acquire a top-of-the-line ground platform, which is also in use in a number of European armies and is compatible with other NATO armies,” reads a ministry statement. “In addition, from the joint procedure with Germany, the Czech side promises a significant price reduction, shorter deliveries and the provision of adequate logistical support.”

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius lauded the prospective Czech participation as a big step towards Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fabled “Zeitenwende” objective, a wholesale boost of German and European defense capabilities.

Other nations are invited to join the emerging program to achieve lower prices, higher production rates — vendors will almost certainly have to add capacity — and increased commonality on everything from training to sustainment, Pistorius said.

Czech defense officials expect their new tanks by the end of the decade at a cost of “tens of billions of crowns,” said Col. Ján Kerdík, director of the MOD’s Land Forces Development Department. Ten billion Czech krona equals roughly $450 million.

Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais on May 21 told attendees of the GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis that the Army, the military’s largest branch, must “leverage immersive-type environments to expand awareness of the numerous opportunities available when you serve,” especially in a recruiting environment that is “the toughest it has ever been since the inception of the all-volunteer force 50 years ago.”

The service missed its fiscal 2022 recruiting goal by roughly 15,000 new soldiers, leaving it shorthanded. Another shortfall is expected for 2023.

Among the most promising new technologies that could help reverse the trend, Gervais said, is the metaverse: a heady subject that is different things to different people, but boils down to the meshing of in-hand peripherals with immersive digital spaces, social interaction from wherever and an online presence foreign to older crowds.

“We already do some things, but our reach is extremely limited. And we need to do better connecting with our younger generations,” Gervais said. “The metaverse could be a way to extend our reach, improve our brand awareness through advertisement placement, and creating an experience, which could pique the interest and expand the awareness of serving in the military for our youth.”

US Army to ‘overhaul’ recruiting school amid personnel shortage

Searches for “metaverse” peaked in late 2021 and early 2022, according to Google Trends, and has since tapered off.

A virtual experience could more easily draw in Generation Z and its successor, Generation Alpha, according to Gervais, who previously led the Synthetic Training Environment Cross-Functional Team, tasked with polishing the latest in highly accurate military mapping and simulation. The Army earlier this year extended its deal with Maxar Technologies, geospatial intelligence specialists, to work on One World Terrain, a critical piece of the Synthetic Training Environment.

Whereas previous generations were targeted with ads in print and on television — such as the revived “Be all you can be” campaign — and through community outreach, the youngest cohorts require new finesse, Gervais said. The service’s own first-person shooter video game, America’s Army, was shut down in 2022 after more than a decade of sustainment. The series, decried by some as propaganda, showed players the ins and outs of combat as well as soldier life.

“Recruiting the next generation of soldiers and leaders will take the Army investing in modernizing the way it operates,” Gervais said. “They interact differently, and they desire to be engaged differently. And we must transition from our Industrial Age accessions processes and policies and move towards a digital-informed accessions and training process.”

Last year, the New Zealand Defence Force received about NZ$4.9 billion. Inflation to December 2022 was just over 7%, according to Statistics NZ.

New Zealand’s Army has the largest share of funding among the armed services, receiving NZ$1.1 billion. The Army received about NZ$1.1 billion last year.

The government is allocating about NZ$1 billion — compared to NZ$941 million last year — to the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

The Royal New Zealand Navy is set to get about NZ$714 million — an increase from last year’s NZ$667 million.

An additional NZ$574 million will go toward protecting New Zealand’s territorial sovereignty and contribute to regional and global security efforts. And more than NZ$30 million is meant to assist with “the employment of New Zealand’s Armed Forces overseas, and to enable the provision of military capabilities overseas.”

The Government Communications Security Bureau, which specializes in gathering intelligence from electronic communications, is to receive almost NZ$402 million — a 25% increase from last year.

The Defence Ministry is set to get about NZ$1.3 billion for the “procurement of major military capabilities.” This includes NZ$605 million for five new C-130J-30 Hercules airlifters to replace the existing C-130H fleet, which has been in service with the Air Force since 1965, and almost NZ$14 million for P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. The third P-8A of four ordered is to arrive in New Zealand on May 19.

The budget also includes more pay for military personnel, with increases ranging from NZ$4,000 to NZ$15,000, beginning July 1 and costing NZ$419 million over four years. Defence Minister Andrew Little said the increase has led to the withdrawal of some resignation letters.

The budget for resource and border protection operations increases from NZ$610 million to NZ$634 million.

A domestic effort that partly supports public awareness of the proficiency and practice of the military will receive a modest increase from NZ$62.1 to NZ$64.2.

Budget documents noted that the funding increase this year follows obsolescence-driven serviceability issues that caused the unavailability of SH-2G(I) Seasprite helicopters, thus reducing naval aviation readiness, and the inability to service Boeing 757 engines, leading to a reduction in strategic air mobility readiness.

Command posts of the past were relatively stationary, cumbersome to set up and break down, and often identifiable by the heat, noise and electronic artifacts they give off. Such easy targets will not cut it in a fight against China or Russia, world powers with mature sensing and targeting capabilities, according to Army officials.

So the service is investing in several projects to make the battlefield hubs hardier, including what are known as Command Post Integrated Infrastructure and the less-mature Mobile and Survivable Command Post. The former combines trucks with communication nodes and off-the-shelf commercial technologies for intuitive use. The latter could feature remote antenna systems, enhanced camouflage techniques and self-sufficient power generation and banking.

“Five years ago, two years ago, we spent a day setting up a command post and then we spend a day tearing it down, so the command post was never able to really fight,” Ward Roberts, the assistant program executive officer for command, control and communications-tactical, or PEO C3T, said at a virtual C4ISRNET event May 16. “Now, the idea is that commander needs to be maneuvering the command post as well as maneuvering his elements.”

“Between the ability to move the command post around and the efforts to reduce the ability to detect the command post — two lines of effort really driving at solving that problem of ‘how do we make the command post survivable,’” he added.

A conflict with either China or Russia would mean defending against an array of eager eyes and ears: drones overhead, signals intelligence capabilities that can cue in on communications, and other long-range sensors. Commanders need to understand their footprint, Ward said, as well as how to manipulate the hardware they have in hand.

US Army preps for fresh mobile communications experiment

The envisioned future — to which the broader Defense Department is cleaving — is a far cry from the decades the U.S. spent waging counterterrorism campaigns in the Middle East, where combatants were less equipped and less technologically savvy.

“Most of our commanders have grown up not having to worry about that problem. When you were in a forward-operating base in Iraq and Afghanistan, it wasn’t a challenge,” Roberts said. “We have seen that when you have a highly skilled enemy, you can’t sit there very long. If you do sit there and long, they’re going to find you. If they can find you, they can target you.”

Footage captured in Ukraine and disseminated through social media, among other outlets, shows the dangers of staying still; entrenched troops are often the pickings of airdropped ordnance, as are slow-rolling vehicles.

Maj. Gen. Jeth Rey, the director of the Army’s Network Cross-Functional Team, earlier this month told reporters there is a clear demand for mobility. Minutes in the same place can mean the difference between life or death.

“We can’t halt,” said Rey, who works closely with PEO C3T. “One of the big things we’re moving forward on is on-the-move capabilities for them.”

Olena Zelenska visited South Korea as a special envoy of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. During her meeting with Yoon, Zelenska requested South Korea expand its support of nonlethal military supplies, including equipment for detecting and removing mines and ambulance vehicles, according to Yoon’s office.

Yoon replied that his government would closely coordinate with NATO and other international partners to “actively support the Ukrainian people,” his spokesperson Lee Do Woon said during a briefing.

Yoon also condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the “horrific losses of innocent lives, especially women and children, are unacceptable under any circumstances,” according to remarks shared by his office.

Lee said Zelenska made no request for South Korean weapons supplies during her conversation with Yoon.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, has provided humanitarian aid and other support to Ukraine while joining U.S.-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But it has not directly provided arms to Ukraine, citing a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

During a visit to South Korea in January, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for South Korea to provide direct military support to Ukraine, saying Kyiv is in urgent need of weapons to fight off the prolonged Russian invasion.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, South Korea has reached billions of dollars worth of deals to provide tanks, howitzers, fighter jets and other weapons systems to Poland, a NATO member. An American official said in November that the United States has agreed to buy 100,000 artillery rounds from South Korean manufacturers to provide to Ukraine, although South Korean officials have maintained that the munitions were meant to refill depleted U.S. stocks.

The assessment, known formally as the Armored Formation Network On-The-Move Pilot, is scheduled for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, and will likely happen at Fort Bliss, Texas, according to John Gillette, the product manager for mission network at the Army’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, or PEO C3T.

Armored formations now lack the connectivity Army leaders want, and network modernization is among the service’s top priorities as it prepares for potential large-scale conflicts with China in the Indo-Pacific or Russia in Europe.

Armor often can’t afford to stop — or stop for too long, lest be targeted — and runs the risk of digitally disconnecting as it thunders across the landscape. The heavy-duty machinery also presents unique challenges to designers, integrators and crew: Tight quarters make every inch precious, power consumption needs to be balanced, and constant rumbles and vibration require rugged hardware.

The upcoming on-the-move pilot will ultimately help “outfit the armored units” as well as inform the next wave of development, Gillette said at an event this month at Fort Myer, Virginia. Future equipment, he added, will be “a lot simpler and a lot more resilient, and then also lighter on the vehicle.” PEO C3T is moving away from what were known as capability sets, batches of upgraded equipment rolled out every other year, to what is now recognized as the “division as a unit of action network design,” meant to address the Army’s 2030 and 2040 goals.

US Army revising how it develops, deploys advanced networking gear

The initial on-the-move experimentation was done in early 2022, at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Bundles of equipment were distributed for evaluation at the time, with soldier feedback indicating that the new gear significantly improved the ability to move and communicate quickly, C4ISRNET reported.

“We took an armored brigade and we outfitted three companies with three different solution sets. The intent there was to inform us on what types of technologies would work, but not to do a downselect,” Gillette said. “We started out with the legacy vehicles, the M1068. Our objective vehicle is the AMPV, or the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, the command post variant.”

BAE Systems-made AMPVs were in March delivered to the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart.

The vehicles share common components with the Army fleet, including Bradleys and howitzers. The Army expected to buy 197 AMPVs in 2024, when combining base budget and supplemental funding.

The deal, valued at €20 million (U.S. $21.8 million), is the latest between the two countries. In 2019 the first government-to-government deal was signed for $35 million in which Elbit Systems provided remote control weapons stations to the Balkan country.

Elbit wins artillery weapons orders from mystery buyer in Europe

The agreement between Montenegro and Israel is one of several recent contracts for Elbit in Europe, including multiple contracts in Romania. The sale was approved by the Director General of the Israel Ministry of Defense, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir.

“This marks the third agreement with our partners in Montenegro since bolstering our defense relations in 2019 and is a great expression of confidence in the Israeli defense industry,” said Gen. Yair Kulas, head of the International Defense Cooperation Directorate at Israel’s Ministry of Defense, in a statement. “Montenegro is a partner and ally of Israel and faces complex security challenges like other European countries.

The contract, signed in Tel Aviv, will include Elbit Systems 120mm mortar munition system that are mounted on vehicles. Photos show it being mounted and fired from the back of a lightly armored vehicle.

The previous 2019 contract included the supply of Remote Controlled Weapon Stations for what were at the time new Oshkosh Defense 4X4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles . In May 2022, Oshkosh Defense said that along with Elbit Land Systems it had successfully demonstrated a live fire of Spear 120mm low recoil mortar on a JLTV Mortar variant during a multinational demonstration hosted in Israel.

Loud explosions boomed over Kyiv as the nighttime attack combined Russian missiles launched from the air, sea and land in an apparent attempt to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses. No casualties were reported as Western-supplied weapons helped fend off the assault.

The failure of Russia’s missile war in Ukraine

The barrage came as European leaders sought new ways to punish Russia for the war and a Chinese envoy sought traction for Beijing’s peace proposal.

Russia’s latest attack on Kyiv was “exceptional in its density — the maximum number of attacking missiles in the shortest period of time,” said Serhii Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration.

Valentyna Myronets, a 64-year-old Kyiv resident, said she felt “pain, fear, nervousness, restlessness” amid the assaults. “God, we are waiting for victory and when all this is over,” she said.

U.K. Ambassador Melinda Simmons tweeted that the barrage was “pretty intense.”

“Bangs and shaking walls are not an easy night,” she wrote.

It was the eighth time this month that Russian air raids had targeted the capital, a clear escalation after weeks of lull and ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive. It also came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy concluded a whirlwind European tour to greet Ukraine’s key wartime allies, which spurred an additional tranche of pledged military aid.

Six “Kinzhal” aero-ballistic missiles were launched from MiG-31K aircraft, nine cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and three land-based S-400 cruise missiles targeted the capital, air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat said in a statement on Telegram.

After the first onslaught, Russia also launched Iranian-made Shahed attack drones and conducted aerial reconnaissance, Ihnat said.

Debris fell across several districts in the capital, starting fires, but no losses were reported, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Sophisticated air defense systems provided by Ukraine’s Western allies, including American-made Patriot missiles, have helped spare Kyiv from the kind of destruction witnessed elsewhere in the country as Russian forces press on with their tactic of long-range bombardment.

A Russian defense official said that Tuesday’s attack destroyed a Patriot missile battery in Kyiv. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the system was destroyed by a “Kinzhal.”

He didn’t provide evidence, and the statement couldn’t be independently verified.

The bolstered air defenses have deterred Russian aircraft from going deep into Ukraine and helped shape the course of the war, military experts say.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov cheered the display of defensive prowess, calling it in a tweet “another unbelievable success.”

The barrage came as European leaders were due to attend a rare summit of the 46-nation Council of Europe, the continent’s main human rights body.

The two-day meeting in Iceland seeks to set up a way of logging damage in Ukraine caused by the Kremlin’s forces so compensation claims can be lodged against Moscow.

Meanwhile, a Chinese envoy is preparing to visit Ukraine and Russia in coming days as Beijing presses the peace plan it released in February.

Li Hui, a former ambassador to Moscow, also will visit Poland, France and Germany, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government says it is neutral and wants to play a role as mediator in the war, but it has given Moscow political support and a breakthrough appeared unlikely more than 14 months after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

At least seven civilians died and 14 others were wounded in Russian shelling of Ukrainian regions from Monday through Tuesday morning, the country’s presidential office said.

The service now plans to launch these small, uncrewed aircraft not only from air platforms, but from launchers on the ground or off vehicles and, as a result, is moving away from calling them “air-launched effects” to simply “launched effects.” It has demonstrated the capabilities several times, including at the service’s first Edge exercise in 2021, which experiments with technology to enhance operations in the aerial tier.

The Army is considering several size classes for these launched effects, but is rapidly prototyping the first version of a small, launched effects capability. This version is meant to help the service decide how to procure and employ these systems on the battlefield for tasks ranging from targeting, communications and networking to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

In 2020, the service selected 10 companies to provide mature launched effects technologies. From those, the Army then chose five companies earlier this year to come together to build a prototype with each company bringing a different element to the system.

Anduril Industries is providing the air vehicle. Anduril purchased Area-I, the original developer of the vehicle — the Altius 700 — in 2021. The Altius 700 has been in use by the Army to evaluate launched effects for over five years.

Collins Aerospace, a Raytheon Technologies company, is the mission system provider, and Aurora Flight Sciences is the system integrator.

Technology Service Corp. and Northrop Grumman Information Systems are providing modular payloads.

Maj. Gen. Rob Barrie, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, told Defense News in a recent interview the Army plans to wrap up evaluation of the prototypes in September 2024 and will then weigh a number of options, from rapid fielding to low-rate initial production to more prototyping.

Dustin Engelhardt, Collins Aerospace’s senior manager of business development for air launched effects and future tactical UAS, said the prototype is applying a “Dr. Frankenstein’s monster approach.”

“They’ve got an air vehicle that’s being brought in, two payloads being brought in, so kind of the body and the fists,” Engelhardt said. “We’re really the brains that tie all of those together and also the mouth … we also have a responsibility for the communication.”

Release the hounds: Army event to feature drone swarms that behave like a wolf pack

The launched effects are deployed in teams and instructed where to operate and what mission to undertake.

Each system is aware of what happens to the other systems in the team and can autonomously adapt if one drops off or is shot down, Engelhardt said. And the mission system’s autonomy is adaptable, even during a fight that is progressing. The pilot in the manned aircraft could tell the launched effects to change behavior to be more aggressive or operate with extra caution, he said.

The level of autonomy in the system “allows the manned platforms to call for artillery or to potentially command a kinetic strike by the [launched effects] teams, it really gives a lot of flexibility with limited operator involvement,” he added.