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.

Increments 2 and 3 of the Next-Generation Operational Control System, dubbed OCX, were supposed to be delivered in January, but technical discoveries during testing delayed the effort and caused the program to re-evaluate its schedule.

According to a June 8 Government Accountability Office report, prime contractor Raytheon’s delivery delay will push the initial capability date to next spring. A spokeswoman for Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s acquisition arm, told C4ISRNET in a June 8 email the service is awaiting approval of the new schedule.

Raytheon has incurred $123 million in additional costs as a result of the delays, SSC said, citing a Materiel Inspection and Receiving Report the company filed with the Defense Department.

The program is at risk of further delays due to “funding challenges,” GAO said. In fiscal 2023 Congress cut $75 million from OCX that was meant to be used to pay for more contractor support for Blocks 1 and 2. The service’s fiscal 2024 budget includes $200 million for the effort.

The Space Force’s constellation of GPS satellites provides navigation support to military and civilian users. It features older spacecraft as well as newer ones, and the most recent version, GPS III, is more accurate and resistant to adversary jamming attempts.

OCX was designed to operate the entire GPS fleet — old and new. The first capability increment was delivered in 2017, and brought some hardware, software and cybersecurity improvements. The system, dubbed Block 0, can support GPS III launches, but doesn’t have the ability to operate the in-orbit satellites. Blocks 2 and 3 will bring that ability along with better performance and protections against cyber threats.

Schedule uncertainty

Schedule uncertainty has been a persistent challenge for OCX, which was supposed to be fielded in 2016.

The program’s 2012 cost estimate of $3.7 billion has been revised several times, growing to $4.3 billion in 2015 and $6.2 billion in 2018. The first cost increase triggered what’s known as a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach, requiring the Defense Department to develop a new cost and schedule baseline in 2016.

Speaking earlier this year, Space Force acquisition executive Frank Calvelli called it one of the service’s “long-standing troubled programs.”

GAO’s report sheds some light on its most recent challenges, caused largely by “overlapping efforts” to test various satellite capabilities and integrate software.

“Because of the risk that not all requirements would be complete by delivery, the program modified the schedule to allow more time for software testing and addressing deficiencies, as well as developing technical manuals and training operators,” the report states.

To mitigate that risk, the program is honing in on critical software deficiencies and plans to award Raytheon a contract modification to address continued deficiencies, according to GAO.

Beyond testing, SSC is concerned about the strain on GPS operators during the period between system delivery later this year and initial operations next spring.

“During this time, the operators need to complete training and assist with transition activities, while controlling the GPS constellation using the existing system,” GAO said. “Space Force officials stated that they are training operators on the current system and are working with the program office to schedule events. But, they told us that they remain concerned about the ability of trained operators to support the OCX events as scheduled.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s been 19 years since the Air Force last convened the biennial air-to-air weapons meet, which began in the early days of the Cold War in 1954.

The competition is named for the legend of William Tell, a 14th-century Swiss farmer who — as the tale goes — had to fire an arrow so accurately that it would knock an apple from his son’s head, lest they both be killed for insulting the Austrian Habsburg empire.

For decades, the shootout provided a stage for ambitious fighter pilots to show off their skills for bragging rights, a trophy and the title of “Top Gun.”

The Air Force has held just one William Tell competition in the 27 years since it paused the regular meets in 1996. The event reconvened for its 50th anniversary in 2004, before the War on Terror spurred a 19-year hiatus.

Now with U.S. forces out of Afghanistan and a substantially smaller footprint in Iraq and Syria, the Air Force is turning its attention to a faster-paced, more complex kind of air war.

This year’s William Tell, slated for Sept. 11-15 at Savannah Air National Guard Base in Georgia, will reflect military competition in the Indo-Pacific — namely, the U.S.-China rivalry — posed by savvier enemy pilots, high-tech jets and advanced anti-aircraft artillery.

F-35 Lightning II, F-22 Raptor and F-15 Eagle units will go head-to-head in a gauntlet of simulated air combat scenarios, weapons loading, maintenance and weapons director competitions.

Fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft will act as the adversarial “red team,” Air Combat Command spokesperson Mike Reeves told Air Force Times. It’s unclear whether William Tell will bring in the Air Force’s red air contractors like Top Aces and Textron subsidiary ATAC, which fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon and Mirage F1 jets, or turn to drone targets like the remote-controlled QF-16s.

Pilots will be tested on their offensive and defensive prowess against simulated enemy air forces, and on how well they maneuver when an adversary aircraft is in sight.

“There will be a heritage event with live air-to-air gun employment against a towed banner,” Reeves said. “There will also be … weapons loading, command and control, and intelligence competitions.”

Wings across Air Combat Command and Pacific Air Forces are allowed to send teams of 10 to 14 airmen, depending on the type of aircraft. Each team needs one captain, an aircrew of up to eight people, two intelligence airmen and three weapons loaders. Command-and-control wings can also send three members apiece to participate.

Participants will compete for individual and team awards. The group that best thinks outside the box in collaborating with other jets will be crowned the top “fighter integration team,” to show that the aircraft are “most lethal when used as a cohesive fighting force,” Reeves said.

Planners hope the resurgence of William Tell will help prepare airmen for real-life combat operations in the Indo-Pacific, where they could face off against Chinese jets like the J-16 fighter that buzzed an American RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance plane on May 26.

The U.S. considers China its top strategic threat and has pledged to protect Taiwan, the autonomous island nation that Beijing claims as its own territory, if China were to invade.

“Our unwavering commitment to air dominance remains steadfast,” Air Combat Command boss Gen. Mark Kelly said in a release. “We reiterate our steadfast dedication to maintaining control of the skies in support of our joint force and multinational partners.”

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.

The 65,000-square-foot Hypersonics and Applied Research Facility hosts a Mach 8 quiet wind tunnel, designed to closely simulate hypersonic flight — which is reached when a vehicle hits a speed of Mach 5 or higher — and provide precise data on a system’s performance. It is also home to a hypersonic pulse shock tunnel that uses shock waves of high-temperature air to simulate various flight scenarios at speeds from Mach 5 to as high as Mach 40.

Also located within the facility is Purdue’s Hypersonics Advanced Manufacturing Technology Center, where the university collaborates with industry to improve materials and manufacturing processes and prototype fully-integrated hypersonic systems.

Mark Lewis, chief executive officer of the Purdue Applied Research Institute and a former DoD hypersonics official, told reporters June 5 that advanced testing facilities like these not only help train the future workforce, but provide the test and research capabilities needed to advance U.S. hypersonic development at a time when Russia and China are racing to compete in this area.

“I believe very much that we are in a race with peer competitors that are determined to beat us in hypersonics,” Lewis said.

Russia and China’s hypersonic advances are driving a sense of urgency within the Defense Department to field hypersonic weapons of its own and boost funding for enabling technology, including advanced materials and propulsion systems.

The Pentagon relies on wind tunnels and other testbeds to validate flight characteristics for hypersonic vehicles, but those facilities are in high demand, limiting access even for major programs. Those constraints in ground testing, according to Lewis, play a role in the flight-test failures and program delays the department has experienced over the last year.

That includes the Air Force’s Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, which logged its latest flight-test failure in March. Service officials have said they may not progress the program to the procurement phase due to its testing woes.

“Why have we been having failures like that? Because we haven’t been testing,” Lewis said. “We need to get to a rhythm where we’re testing, flight testing, constantly putting things in the air. In order to support that, we need ground test infrastructure. That gives us the information that we then roll into our flight tests.”

Purdue is part of the DoD-led University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics, a group of more than 90 colleges that partner with the department and industry to support technology development. The Pentagon’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office solicits research and prototype projects from consortium members in a range of technology areas, including materials and structures, air-breathing propulsion and guidance and navigation.

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.

So senators are organizing educational briefings. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, on June 6 announced three such planned get-togethers this summer, including a classified session dedicated to AI employment by the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community, as well as AI developments among “our adversaries” such as China and Russia.

“The Senate must deepen our expertise in this pressing topic,” reads the announcement, backed by fellow Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Republican Sens. Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Todd Young of Indiana.

“AI is already changing our world,” it continues, “and experts have repeatedly told us that it will have a profound impact on everything from our national security to our classrooms to our workforce, including potentially significant job displacement.”

Q&A: Maxar execs discuss US Army simulation, Project Maven

The Defense Department is pouring billions of dollars into AI advancement and adoption, including a proposed $1.8 billion for fiscal 2024 alone. China and Russia, considered top national security threats, have significantly invested in AI for military applications, as well.

U.S. officials consider AI an invaluable tool to improve performance on the battlefield and in the boardroom. With it, they say, tides of information can be parsed more effectively, digital networks can be monitored around the clock, targeting aboard combat vehicles can be enhanced, maintenance needs can be identified before things fall apart and decisions can be made quicker than ever before.

But a lack of general understanding — what, for example, is the difference between AI, ML, autonomy, bots, large language models and more — can hinder policymaking on the Hill, spending decisions from there and deployment further downstream.

“I’ve been doing this stuff long enough that I feel like, to a certain degree, AI has become the buzzword of what cyber was maybe 15 or 20 years ago, where everybody on a government program says, ‘I’m going to add this buzz term and see if I can get a little more money on whatever program I have,’” Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat at the head of the intelligence committee, said Tuesday at the Scale Gov AI Summit, blocks from the White House.

“What we’re all trying to work on,” he added, “is how do we get ourselves educated as quickly as possible.”

Public attention paid to AI and its offshoots skyrocketed following the November rollout of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is capable of carrying a convincing conversation or crafting computer code with little prompting. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before the Senate in May. He previously expressed worries about AI being used for misinformation campaigns or cyberattacks.

The study of AI and its consequences by lawmakers must remain fluid and free from political jockeying, according to Rounds, who sits on the armed services committee.

“We’re trying to combine, and to put together a process, where members of the U.S. Senate can actually come to a common understanding of just exactly what we mean when we talk about ‘machine learning’ or ‘AI,’ what it really is in terms of its current status, what it looks like today,” he said at the summit where Warner spoke.

“And we’re trying to do this as a group in a bipartisan basis,” he said, “so that folks can bring in their ideas and can be a host for other parts of the industry to come to different members and say, ‘These are the concerns we’ve got.’”

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.

Lockheed picked GE’s CF6-80E1 engine for its planned LMXT strategic tanker, which would be a variation of Airbus’s A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport.

Over the next decade, the Air Force plans to buy about 75 tankers to tide it over between the Boeing-made KC-46 Pegasus — of which the service plans to buy 179 units — and a next-generation design that could be fielded in the latter half of the 2030s.

Lockheed hopes its proposed LMXT can fill that interim role, which in the past has been referred to as a “bridge” tanker.

But the Air Force has downgraded its procurement plans for the interim tanker, announcing in March that it had decided to cut in half the original plans to buy 150 of them and speed up the procurement of the next-generation tanker. And Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has suggested the service could forgo a competition for the interim tanker, and instead buy another series of modified KC-46s from Boeing.

The Air Force’s surprise announcement upended the state of play on its future tanker vision, and made Lockheed’s path to success on LMXT tougher.

In a briefing with reporters Tuesday, Larry Gallogly, head of Lockheed’s campaign, said the company wants its engine decision to show the Air Force that its LMXT tanker could be a viable choice for the service if it decides to launch a competition.

“We want the Air Force to be very confident that we are the low-risk solution,” he said. “We do want to convince the Air Force that we are ready to go ahead, but we also need to show the Air Force exactly what they would be getting if they entered this competition — what is the real alternative?”

Gallogly said Lockheed hopes the positive 50-year track record of GE’s CF6 series of engines on other planes such as the C-5M Super Galaxy and the current Air Force One presidential planes will make it easier for the Air Force to opt for a competition.

“This aircraft has the space, it has the electrical power requirements,” he said. This engine would provide “a lot of electrical power on the aircraft to grow with the mission. … When we look at the Pacific theater in particular … there will be this insatiable need for gas. And if the Air Force chooses to sole-source this interim block of tankers, we set ourselves up for a single point of failure for bulk delivery of fuel in-theater.”

Abdoulaye Ndiaye, the general manager for GE Aerospace’s mobility engines program, said the Royal Australian Air Force now flies MRTT aircraft with GE’s CF6-80E1 engines, and the Spanish Air Force plans to use those engines on its future MRTT fleet.

Lockheed chose this version of GE’s CF6 engine over other unspecified engines because it would deliver greater thrust — almost 70,000 pounds — and better fuel efficiency than previous models, Gallogly said.

If the Air Force goes with LMXT, Lockheed Martin plans to build it in Mobile, Alabama, and Marietta, Georgia.

Lawmakers such as Rep. Jerry Carl, R-Alabama, have criticized the Air Force for considering skipping a competition. In May 2022, Carl made an unsuccessful attempt to add an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have forced a tanker competition, saying lawmakers could not allow the Air Force to “run away with our checkbook and do what they want to do.”

The Air Force has not yet released its requirements for the next tanker purchase, but Gallogly said the process of setting requirements will likely be finished in late June or early July.

Lockheed expects the Air Force to release a request for information after the requirements are done, he said, and by the end of the year, it will be clearer if the service plans to hold a competition.

“When we see those final requirements, that will give us a much better idea of how well the LMXT is aligned with the priorities of the Air Force,” Gallogly said. “We think we’ve got a pretty good idea of what those requirements are going to be, but we’re looking forward to actually seeing those requirements in writing.”