Crooked Bough News Round-up

— SDA awards L3Harris, Sierra $1.75B for missile defense satellites

 

at 7/14/26 2:51pm

WASHINGTON —The Space Development Agency has awarded L3Harris Technologies and Sierra Space contracts, worth a total of $1.75 billion, to develop 36 satellites for missile warning, tracking, and targeting in support of the Pentagons Golden Dome missile shield. The new birds, dubbed Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 (AMDT3) space vehicles (SVs), are to be ready for launch in 2028 — which is when President Donald Trump has mandated Golden Dome to be operational. The previous SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer contracts, awarded last December to L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Rocket Lab and worth up to $3.5 billion for 72 satellites, are not slated to launch until 2029. [T]he the good piece of this is that, I think, we can actually now go on the record and talk about that its helping with the Golden Dome architecture, which is new and finally flowing some money, Jeff Schrader, chief financial officer at Colorado-based startup Sierra Space, told Breaking Defense. Under its contract worth up to about $955 million, L3Harris is to provide 18 Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS)-like missile defense variant SVs across two orbital planes, according to SDAs announcement on Monday. Sierra Space was awarded a contract worth up to $798 million to provide 18 missile warning/missile tracking variant SVs across two orbital planes. Gurpartap GP Sandhoo, SDA director and Space Force portfolio acquisition executive for missile warning and tracking, said in a statement, “With these awards, SDA is accelerating the deployment of the Tracking Layer to provide the homeland, our deployed forces, and allies with global, persistent indications, detection, identification warning, tracking, and defense against advanced and evolving missile threats.” SDA’s missile warning/missile tracking satellites carry wide field-of-view infrared cameras that can spot missiles when they launch and follow them in flight over a large volume of space. Satellites designated missile defense variants carry more precise medium field-of-view cameras, which cover a smaller area, but can generate data good enough for providing interceptors with targeting coordinates. Josh Lovejoy, general manager for proliferated missile defense at L3Harris, explained that the missile warning, missile tracking, missile defense monikers denote a spectrum of technical requirements: first seeing the incoming missile; second, generating its position, velocity and trajectory; and lastly producing actionable information with high confidence that the spatial and the temporal resolution of the data is up to fire control quality that can enable a hit. Both L3Harris and Sierra Space, along with Lockheed Martin, also are building SDAs previous generation Tracking Layer Tranche 2 satellites under a January 2024 contract with a total value $2.5 billion. Each contractor is slated to develop 18 birds (16 for missile warning/tracking, two for missile defense) for launch no later than April 2027. L3Harris, which originally developed the HBTSS for the Missile Defense Agency, has invested its own money for upgrades and technology enhancements to the initial sensor design, Lovejoy told Breaking Defense, but would not go into details about the capabilities. Schrader said that Sierra Space has invested $1.5 billion on its missile defense capabilities prior to the new SDA contract award. Weve invested a significant amount of of our capital in in our last several series funding raises on building out the infrastructure, being able to scale to these larger constellations, he said. At the same time, Schrader added, Sierra Space has been working with its subcontractor Leidos developing some really new capabilities for not only missile warning/missile tracking, but also, holistically, missile defense based on the state-of-the-art 8K [8,000 by 8,000 pixels] focal plane arrays developed for the Tranche 2 sensor payload. So, instead of doing a full new architecture with new busses, with new with new payloads, new everything really working with our focal plane provider, our partners with Leidos and utilizing software to provide fire control quality for tracking, he said.

[Category: Space, Golden Dome, Hypersonic and Ballistic Space Sensor (HBTSS), L3Harris, Leidos, missile targeting, missile tracking, missile warning, Sierra Space, Space Development Agency, Space Force, Tracking Layer]

— Senate Democrats block NDAA amid concerns on Iran War, budget topline

 

at 7/14/26 2:34pm

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats today blocked the fiscal 2027 defense authorization act from moving to the Senate floor, impeding the trajectory of the typically bipartisan measure, due to opposition to the war in Iran and concerns about the growth in defense spending. Senators voted 50-46 on party lines, failing to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to bring it to the floor. Today’s vote marks the second time in two weeks that lawmakers have held up progress on the National Defense Authorization Act, which would greenlight about $1.14 trillion in funding for the Defense Department and make policy changes with implications for troop pay, drone operations and defense contractor earnings. In the Senate, the NDAA turned into a referendum on the Iran war following President Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday that the conflict had recommenced — and that the administration believes it has another 60-day period where it can wage war without congressional authorization. Another key concern is the high price tag of the FY27 budget request, which — if coupled with a further $350 billion in reconciliation spending requested by the Pentagon — would bring defense spending to a historic height of $1.5 trillion at the same time the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts to other government agencies. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said both the war and the budget influenced his vote against proceeding with the NDAA, noting that Congress has yet to come up with a bipartisan deal that sets an agreed upon topline for defense and nondefense spending. “I think the most practical step is to settle the budget issues, because we understand that this war is a multifaceted dynamic that’s very much more complicated than they initially thought,” he told Breaking Defense. “But I think if we have a solid resolution of the budget, both domestic and defense will be in a much better position to go ahead.” “I think its the type of legislation that we can revive quickly when we have the opportunity and the stars align,” he added. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, a SASC member who voted for the bill in committee but voted against moving it to the floor today, said Republicans should negotiate with Democrats over the toplines for defense and nondefense budgets. “Generally, theres been some sort of parity. This time, the increase in defense is four times the increase on the domestic side,” he said. “The other piece would be, lets have a debate about the war. Lets have the administration make the argument and tell us what it costs,” King added. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., announced earlier today that she would vote against the NDAA unless her amendment — which would prohibit funds authorized in the bill from being used for the Iran war — was included. “[Fifteen] of our servicemembers have been killed, billions of dollars have been wasted and our economy is in tatters,” she said in a statement. “The President wants to rebuild Iran before he rebuilds America, and it’s outrageous that Republicans are willing to roll over and let him.” Ahead of the vote, SASC Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s efforts to block the bill represent a “new low.” Late last month, a group of 14 Republicans joined Democrats to block the House’s version of the NDAA from moving to the floor of the lower chamber over disagreements about how the SAVE America Act was set to be bundled with the NDAA. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told Punchbowl News today that the House could attempt to take up its version of the NDAA next week before lawmakers leave Washington for August recess. ‘Do The Right Thing’ Tensions over the fate of the NDAA bubbled up during a confirmation hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier today, when Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, urged his Democratic colleagues to push the NDAA forward and to support efforts to pass a $67 billion supplemental request to cover Defense Department expenses associated with Operation Epic Fury. “Usually, we try — the serious senators on this committee try — to forego politics and focus on national security. And I hope there comes the supplemental, when it comes again on the NDAA today, that they do the right thing,” Sullivan said. “That would be voting on these things, or at least considering them.” King countered, If the war had been authorized, it would be a different discussion. Throughout the hearing, Democrats expressed frustration when Jay Hurst, who is nominated to be the Pentagons comptroller, repeatedly declined to answer questions about the cost of the Iran war, the makeup of the supplemental request, or the status of about $152 billion in defense funds approved as part as last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Hurst, who was originally confirmed as the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs, performed the duties of the Pentagon’s comptroller until May 20, when he was nominated for the job on a permanent basis. Michael Powers is currently the Pentagon’s acting comptroller. During his time as acting comptroller, Hurst was a regular fixture on Capitol Hill, briefing lawmakers on the fiscal 2027 budget request and spending on Iran operations. But today he said that since he hasnt been in the comptroller post for the last few months, he didnt have up to date information. “Mr. Hurst, I am unpersuaded by your professions of ignorance about the cost of he war,” King said. “And to sit here today and say, Oh, I dont know. Im not in the position. Come on. You had to know this question was going to come up in this hearing today. How much has the Iran War cost the American people? Hurst responded by repeating a the $29 billion estimate he had given lawmakers in May. “In preparing for this hearing, you didn’t ask any questions about updating that number?” King asked. “I felt it would be inappropriate to do so because thats not in my current role at the department,” Hurst said. Hurst was also asked about progress in spending $152 billion in defense-related reconciliation dollars, with Reed stating that only $67.5 billion had been obligated as of earlier this month. In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that $26 billion had been put on contract. “While Im not in the position of comptroller right now, and I cant give you a current total, that figure alone suggests to me that the department is committed to obligating these funds, Hurst said.

[Category: Congress, Pentagon, 2027 NDAA, Angus King, Defense Budget 2027, Jack Reed, National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, Sen. Roger Wicker]

— Army well short of 155mm ammo production goal, Texas facility in the spotlight

 

at 7/14/26 2:10pm

WASHINGTON — The Army has fallen well short of its goal to produce 100,000 155mm ammo rounds per month, according to a new Pentagon watchdog report that singled out a facility in Texas as having failed to produce any usable components since it officially opened in 2024. The report, published by the Defense Department Inspector General, warned that the services inability to ramp up the ammo production could decrease the DoW’s readiness and increase its risk of not meeting the operational needs of the United States, allies, and partner nations in potential future conflicts.” DoW is the unofficial name for DoD. Following the heavy use of artillery after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the US Army rushed to bolster 155mm production, looking to move from producing roughly 14,000 rounds per month to just north of 100,000 shells by October 2025. But as of March — five months after that deadline — the service only succeeded in boosting capability up to 36,000 rounds monthly. The IG credited the modest increase in part due to expansion and modernization efforts at both the projectile metal parts and the load, assemble, and pack facilities, but said that the overall dramatic shortcoming came because two out of three existing metal parts production facilities each fell short of their goals — and one new facility was unable to produce any projectile metal parts that meet contract specifications. That new facility, owned and operated by General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD-OTS), is in Mesquite, Texas, and has drawn the ire of Army officials before. The facility, which cost the Army $469 million, was on the hook to produce 30,000 units a month. But as of March, that production was zero and without it, the Army will reach only 71,000 rounds per month, or 71 percent of its month production capacity goal for 155-mm artillery rounds, the IG said. A company spokesperson told Breaking Defense it has now reached an agreement with the Army which includes additional GDOTS investment to complete the project. “We appreciate the collaborative efforts of the US Army in working toward a positive resolution that enables this facility to deliver essential munitions to the US military,” the company spokesperson wrote in a short statement to Breaking Defense today. An Army spokesperson did not directly respond to questions about that deal but pointed towards comments from the head of Army acquisition Brent Ingraham in May where he said the Army was not planning to invest more in the line. Rather, the plan is to move from three production lines down to two and only produce 20,000 units per month. Theyre putting their own investment in to finish the line off with the focus on supporting a number of FMS [foreign military sale] allies and partners that want to continue buying 155 rounds, Ingraham said at the time. Well stay tightly connected with them. Well validate the product coming off the line. If the Army wants to buy rounds off that line, we can.” High Risk, High Reward The Army awarded a contract to GD-OST for the Mesquite facility in late 2022, and even then the Army knew it would be a “high-risk, high reward” opportunity, DoD IG wrote. Still, officials “accepted the contractor’s proposal to acquire [and] adapt unique production equipment and an unproven production process because equipment was already available.” But within seven months of inking the deal, the company was missing initial milestones, and in June 2023, the service issued its first letter of schedule inquiry. By mid-2025, as Breaking Defense first reported, the Army was considering scrapping GD-OTS’s management of the project and issued a “show cause” letter. Part of the problem, that letter explained, is that equipment did not meet “technical requirements of the contract.” By August 2025, the IG said the Army issued a 90-day “stop work” order and that was later extended in November, and then ultimately extended until April 30 to help the two parties “resolve production issues.”  According to the company spokesperson, a plan is now in place to get the project back on track. The spokesperson referred all specific questions on that plan to the Army, and the Army referred to its responses included in the IG report and previous comments by the services acquisition czar. Among them, an Army official wrote in response to the IGs findings that its proposed plan is to produce 20,000 units at the facility in Mesquite, but shift the production of another 9,000 over to National Technological and Industrial Base (NTIB) sources that are currently being established and are projected to be available by December 2028. (The IG does not seem convinced, writing in yet another response that the Army does not provide details describing how the Mesquite contractor facility, which was not capable of producing M795 155-mm projectile metal parts as of March 2026, will achieve or start producing at the goal rate.) But problems with the Mesquite facility, only account for 30,000 rounds of that 64,000 round shortfall. Three other facilities are also working on 155mm projectile metal parts, and all but one is coming up short.  For example, the Scranton Army ammunition plant, also run by GD-OTS, should have been producing 35,000 units each month by October 2025 but was only at the 15,000 mark in March because of problems upgrading plant equipment. Up in Canada, the Ingwesoll facility operated by the IMT Group, should have been producing 15,000 rounds per month in March but was hovering around 10,000.  The one facility meeting its goals — a GD-OTS run facility in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., — is producing 21,000 rounds each month as planned. Beyond finalizing a plan to rectify the shortcomings at Mesquite, the IG recommended the Army review GD-OTSs contract for that facility to make sure it was money well spent. The Army largely agreed with those reviews, the IG said.

[Category: Land Warfare, Pentagon, 155mm, Army, artillery, DOD IG, GD-OTS, Mesquite, Russia, Ukraine, US Army]

— The Space Force faces growing pains. Here’s how the next chief can help.

 

at 7/14/26 12:14pm

On July 16, Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess will appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a hearing as part of his path towards being the third Chief of Space Operations.  If confirmed, he will move into a position that is on solid ground thanks to the leadership of his predecessors. But that does not mean there will not be challenges waiting, including a major one that will have to be addressed quickly: the charge to double the services size during his tenure.  While this is a windfall for the Space Force, there are significant challenges with growing a service as rapidly as what the Space Force must now do. Doubling the service from roughly 10,000 to 20,000 military members by 2030 is not a trivial matter. Gen. Schiess and the Space Force must ensure it has the right people, with the right ranks, doing the right functions, and in the right locations — all while preserving the high standards of qualification that make Guardians unique, and in a way that will create a sustainable force structure. While new accessions are a major part of necessary growth, the service cannot simply open the recruitment spigot and count on thousands of new second lieutenants and new specialists to enter the field. The Space Force must grow across all ranks simultaneously to preserve a structured career path for its officer and enlisted members, preventing the creation of a force structure with too flat a base that will have promotion and assignment implications for decades.  Thankfully, there are additional options that, collectively, could increase the Space Force without creating a massive influx of the most junior members. Here are a few options that Gen. Schiess should immediately consider. Restoration of service of members separated for non-disciplinary reasons: Due to new Pentagon policies, DOGE cuts, and even a few retirements, the Space Force lost many qualified personnel across its military and civilian workforce. While the numbers of people in these categories are likely in the low hundreds for the Space Force, they could offer ready-made talent that could be easily re-integrated. Interservice transfers: Transfers were the core tapped for the establishment of the Space Force. While there are still over 3,000 military personnel, across all ranks, in other services performing space missions, they may not be performing the right functions for the needs of the Space Force. Unless there is a re-examination of military space soldiers, sailors, and airman retained by the Army, Navy and Air Force, this will not result in a significant increase in Space Force end strength.  However, one area where new interservice transfers might be helpful is to grow the existing apparatus responsible for new accessions — recruitment, basic training, skills training, and assignment matching. The current Space Force structure lacks the capacity to handle a rapid doubling of military personnel. Growth in these areas will be a prerequisite for any expansion, and transfers from other services might help fill the gaps. Integration of Guard and Reserve forces: The transfer of Air Force Reserve and Guard members to the Space Force under the Personnel Management Act will also only slightly increase the size of the force. Combined numbers of Guard and Reserve to enter the Space Force appear to be around 1,000. Direct appointments: Perhaps the most promising option is for the Space Force to direct commission or direct enlist experts from industry and other fields whose specialties the Space Force needs. This would be like the programs the other services employ for medical and legal professionals. The technical nature of many Space Force functions could be ideal for such an approach. By bringing them in at higher ranks than a traditional new member, the Space Force can create a more uniform growth path for itself. This approach also bolsters the Space Force initiative to have tighter relations with the industrial base and allow Guardians to flow back and forth between military service and working with industry.  Obviously, there are challenges with this approach that must be overcome, not the least of which is transitioning perspectives from those of the corporate worlds to instill them with the Guardian spirit, warfighting ethos and space-minded mentality of the Space Force. But this could create a small, experienced cadre of more senior officers and enlisted in a few short years, as opposed to the long career building required if relying wholly on new recruits.  Other areas of growth Beyond sources of new personnel, the Space Force must also ensure to grow the right functions, whether within existing roles or new ones. To be intentionally small and focused, the initial policy of the Space Force was to only bring in military personnel performing operations, intelligence, cyber, or the acquisitions roles of program management and engineering. The doubling of the Space Force creates an opportunity to re-examine this policy. The Space Force should consider expanding to include space specialists in career fields such as lawyers, public affairs, contracting, finance, and additional acquisition personnel particularly scientists. As the Space Force looks to grow, it must also grow outside of its existing footprint. Currently, the Space Force is predominantly located in only a few states such as Colorado, Florida, California, New Mexico, Ohio and around the National Capital Region in Virginia and Maryland. The Space Force should now look to expand its footprint into other states.  This will serve multiple objectives. First, it will broaden the base of understanding and awareness about the Space Force to further inspire future recruits. Additionally, it will also increase Congressional support and advocacy for the Space Force. The more members of Congress that have a direct and vested interest in the Space Force and the well-being of its Guardians, the more likely the Space Force will continue to garner the support necessary for its sustained growth. The service has already announced plans to add new operations centers in New Mexico, Alabama, North Dokata and Colorado. Carrying this further into other states may have compounding benefits. The Space Force is about to embark on its next chapter, under the new leadership of General Schiess. He will undoubtedly make countless consequential decisions during his time as the third Chief of Space Operations. The mix of options and timing of initiatives he chooses to double the service will likely be one of his most significant, impacting the force today and for generations to come. Charles Galbreath, a Senior Resident Fellow for Space Studies at the Mitchell Institute, is a retired United States Space Force Colonel, a Command Space Operator with expertise in Missile Warning, Space Control, Space Launch, and ICBM operations, and a Senior Materiel Leader with experience developing advanced technology demonstration and prototype systems. 

[Category: Opinion, Space, Air Force Reserve, Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, Op-Ed Commentary, recruitment, Space Force]

— Pentagon pursues space-based solar power

 

at 7/14/26 10:35am

In this weeks episode of The Break Out, Breaking Defense Editor-in-Chief Aaron Mehta and Senior Space Reporter Theresa Hitchens discuss the US militarys renewed ambition to harness solar power for missions in orbit. Can interest from Silicon Valley and venture capitalists help deliver a new solution? Then Mehta and Deputy Editor Lee Ferran recap top news from the NATO 2026 summit in Ankara before setting the scene for next weeks Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom. hbspt.forms.create({ portalId: '2097098', formId: '572d65c9-320c-4f86-86a9-7b1af51cec00', target: '#hubspot-form-572d65c9-320c-4f86-86a9-7b1af51cec00', });

[Category: Space, Break Out Video, Europe, Farnborough 2026, NATO Summit 2026, Silicon Valley, Solar, space, Space Force, Video]

— Leonardo DRS CEO on ‘nearly insatiable’ demand abroad, using AI and more

 

at 7/14/26 9:15am

WASHINGTON — On Jan. 1 John Baylouny became the new CEO of Leonardo DRS. But it’s hardly a new company for him — Baylouny has worked at the firm for decades, and was most recently COO under previous CEO Bill Lynn. Last month, Baylouny sat down with Breaking Defense, in which he laid out his priorities, how he sees the market shifting with new entrants, and the “almost insatiable” demand from abroad. The following has been edited lightly for length and clarity. BREAKING DEFENSE: You first joined what would eventually become Leonardo DRS back in 1986, so obviously you’re very familiar with the company. But having been in the CEO role for about six months now, has anything surprised you? JOHN BAYLOUNY: Look, nothing surprised me. I think that what I found is exactly what I expected, a great team of people, all focused on the national security problems of the day, all focused on shareholder value, all focused on building the business. I would tell you that the bigger thing thats been surprising me is really the market changes. Its the speed at which our customers are running. The changes in the acquisition approach is new, but very favorable. I really think that the administration is doing a good job here in creating an ability to buy what they really need. In the past, with the PEO structure, the appropriators would appropriate line items — Okay, buy this many radios, buy this many computers, buy this many cameras — and [the PEOs] would have to buy those. And when you said to the customer, Hey, I can combine those into one box. They were like, Actually, my job is to buy computers, cameras and radios. I cant buy a combined system. Today with the PAE structure, they actually have the ability to buy solutions, and it turns out that we were investing in that direction already. So you’re seeing real changes from the acquisition overhaul. I am seeing some really big changes. Especially in the Army, less so in the other services. I think the Navys right behind it, but less so in the other services. I think the Armys in the front, and I think theyre defining the role of the PAE. I think theyre in the front because of necessity, because the nature of warfare is changing so quickly. And let me pick at that a little bit, because a lot of people talk about the lessons from Ukraine being drone warfare, [but] the big change in warfare is the speed of change, how quickly things are changing in the battlefield, and I think the army feels that the most. Back to the CEO transition — okay, so there weren’t any major surprises, but what are you looking to change compared to your predecessor? Were not changing our direction. What were changing is our speed. Weve rolled out something we call the Accelerate program, and that Accelerate program is everything that we do, but its how do we do it faster — not leaving anything behind, not putting quality behind, not putting customer satisfaction behind, but doing it faster. So thats the big change weve rolled out. Weve got a lot of adaptation of that at multiple levels, kind of everything that we do, hiring, reviewing contracts, signing non-disclosure agreements, putting proposals out, developing product, manufacturing product, getting subcontracts — all those things can be done faster. Everyone says they want to go faster, so how are you actually getting at that? You know, its really a function of driving this from the folks that touch those elements, our employees. You know, its funny — if you have some folks that leave the business and they say what frustrates them, its well, you know, it took too long to make decisions, right? And you say, Well, how would you fix that?” And they come back with really great ideas, and then you adopt those ideas, and now youre going faster — and [that helps with retention]. Get those folks at the at the working level, folks that are actually doing the work to find ways of going faster, and if it involves changing procedures or policies, were doing that. Your business is roughly one-third Army, one-third Navy and one-third everything else. Is that a mix you’re seeking to keep going forward, or do you envision that balance shifting? I think that were going to continue the businesses that weve got, but our growth factors are more domain specific, rather than customer specific. Were looking at growth in space, were looking at growth in sensing the battle space in all domains, were looking at missile seekers and sensing, even for one-way drones. Power propulsion, electric power is going to be ubiquitous, its got to be part of the plan for the Navy. So those are our growth factors. I think over time the mix is going to change. Were going to invite other customers into the into the mix, so, the 1/3-1/3-1/3 might change a little bit for that, [but] were not going to lose sight of the customers that we have. Were going to continue to support them. I dont see an urgency to go after and change that mix, what I see is a focus on growth of the business in the areas of the budget that are growing the fastest. That fits in with the kind of four core topics that you guys have focused on in the last few years [advanced sensing, network computing, naval power and propulsion, and force protection]. So a similar question: Do you think you want to keep those four areas as the core, or do you think theres room for a “fifth core,” for lack of better term? I would tell you that those are our cores today. Were examining the highest priority areas of the budget to establish where were headed. I can see some adjacencies coming, but they would be based on our core competencies, right? Our core competencies have taken decades to build; were embedded in a lot of programs. It takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of brilliance on our engineers to create those core competencies. So, I dont see them leaving. We might add some capability and some capability across the spectrum. I think legally we both get thrown in jail if we do a business interview and don’t talk about AI. So how are you approaching that for DRS? Well, I look at it in two different vectors. One is the operational side — being able to see something, for instance, in the distance and say, hey, that looks like a tank, thats real AI. These platforms are going to be sensing in multiple modalities, and then you come back to it and say, well, if it looks like a duck and smells like a duck, maybe its a duck —and maybe it is a tank, and maybe its about to shoot at me, so maybe I have to do something about it. Thats a real case of AI at the edge, and thats what were building out in SAGEcore, and our integrated sensing portfolio. On the other side of AI … its an ability to us to change the way that we do business. This goes back to that speed and that Accelerate process. How do I hire faster? How do I put requisitions out faster? How do I make sure that Ive got compliant bids out? How do I adapt my manufacturing processes faster? AI is a way to make that happen. Do you feel any, for lack of a better term, pressure from either DoD or the market to make a show of using AI? Because I think theres a lot of use cases, but they’re not sexy, right? Using it to help speed up HR process is actually super important but might not move the needle with investors. Right. Look, I think we have to resist that kind of behavior. To me, its kind of equated to the AS9100 approach, where you can put a plaque on the wall and say ‘Ive got AS9100,’ but thats not really the value. The value is, how did it make your business better? And so we really focus a lot more attention on, how can we make the business better, how can we change the way we do business, using this opportunity. Lets talk IRAD [independent research and development] for a second. You said previously that’s going to be a focus for the year. What are some of the areas that youre looking specifically to funnel that IRAD towards? Its aligned to the areas that were focused on for our growth. So weve raised the IRAD budget to about three and a half percent of revenue. We expect to continue at that level. The focus areas are space power, counter-UAS, sensing and computing. Those areas persist. Those are the areas that were focusing a lot of our money on. There are some adjacencies in there, which I won’t get into, but thats our focus. For M&A, you have said you’re looking at technology gaps but aren’t feeling urgency to go after additions. What kind of gaps are you looking at for inorganic growth? I would be looking for things that we currently either buy, or things that would bring us to a different level from a solutions standpoint. So, think about SAGEcore — how do we enhance SAGEcore to address the AI needs that we just discussed? How do I build out the sensing architecture that we discussed? So, theres a lot of different opportunities — and Im not saying structural gaps — but how do we enhance, go to an adjacency? So technology gaps, customer gaps, like you talked about — can we get more Air Force [work]? Its not an imperative, but could we open our solutions to those channels. Or geographic gaps as well. Can I get to a different part of the world by bringing an acquisition to the table? And were active here, its just, its not our focus. Our focus is organic. But we are active, looking for inorganic as well. What’s the atmosphere for M&A like right now? Are you finding lots of options and interest? I think that its more active than it has been in a while. I think that some of the smaller companies are starting to see that theres value in combining into bigger organizations. I think thats one element. On the other side of things, I think some of the primes are looking to focus, [and] in order to focus and speed up their manufacturing, theyll divest some things. Theres value in having a little bit more heft in the marketplace. Frankly, when the customers are looking for solutions, having one slice of it is very hard, but if you have a bigger slice or [are a] bigger part of the solution, its easier. So, I think [smaller firms] see that the value that they created with the technology that theyve created is value enhancing for both organizations, but becomes easier to get to the market. Does that include new entrants, the VC-backed firms? Some of them are. Most of them, their end game is either a public offering or a divestiture or a sale. I think that at the end of the day, public offerings are difficult. Being a public company is not easy, because you have to continue to maintain your financials for quite a long time. Well see how some of the new ones do over time. Leonardo DRS has prided itself as being a champion of the “mid-tier” firms. Do you feel pressure from the new entrants, or do you view them more as potential partners? I think its all the above. Every company that’s out there today [is] a potential partner, potential customer, or potential competitor, and we deal at all levels with these companies you mentioned. Anduril [is] customer, partner, and competitor, right? At the end of the day, DRS has built its core capabilities over decades. When we enter the marketplace, we enter knowing that we have core capability that that will win the day, and so we tend to try to partner with companies like that to work with them. But at the end of the day, I mean, we win most of what we go after. Let’s talk regional growth. Europe has a lot of money flowing, but there’s seemingly a preference for European firms. Obviously you have the Leonardo connection, but how are you looking to increase share there? You know, Europe is not unlike the US in that it needs to arm quickly. The US is acting as if speed is imperative, almost without regard to where the technology is coming from — I need it now, give it to me, [and] where it comes from is almost unimportant. The European domain is very similar. Weve got some fractures politically, but at the end of the day, they have technology gaps that can be filled with product solutions from the US or otherwise, and they can be licensed to give them an indigenous capability. So our approach to growing in those markets is really twofold: selling products or solutions, or licensing, or a combination of the two. A lot of countries are looking for indigenous capability, and licensing makes sense for them. Some countries are saying, I have a gap right now, I need your products. Some countries are approaching it as a hybrid, I have a gap right now, and ultimately I want to have that as core capability. Okay, lets sell you some product license of technology on the other side. Well find a partner and bring that in. Let’s move to the Middle East. Have you seen any changes in demand since the Iran war started? Oh yeah. There’s a huge gap in capability. I mean, lets talk about radars for a second. We lost the TPY2 in Bahrain, thats an $800 million radar, right? I think we realize from our experience that big radars are targets, they either need to be protected, or they need to be taken out of the battlefield in favor of a proliferated set of smaller radars. In both Ukraine and Israel, you get the air picture from thousands of radars rather than one, and if you lose a few, you dont really lose anything. The Middle East is definitely interested in more and more air defense, more and more understanding whats going on in the airspace. And so the demand is nearly insatiable right now. Are you getting pinged directly by those countries saying, basically, “We’ll take anything you have available right now?” Yeah, yes we are. Can you meet that production demand? I said “nearly” insatiable. [Laughs] We have expanded capacity tremendously across our business. Were investing heavily in expansion, and the market is moving fast. Ok then, how confident are you in expanding production when weve seen in the past sometimes theres a big burst of spending, and then everyone hits pause and leaves industry holding the bag? Its the general trend from centralized sensing to distributed sensing. Its the general trend from a mechanical drive to electric drive. Those trends transcend the individual budgets, or budget cycles. These are changes in markets. Were investing heavily in our infrared foundry to give us the ability to produce tremendous numbers of sensors for those one-way drones and missiles. Were investing in radars, were investing in power propulsion. Again, these big trends are going to transcend the budgetary cycles. Let’s round out the world tour with Asia. Given the tyranny of distance, are you hearing a different requirement set from customers there, or is it the same trends seen in Europe and the Gulf? It’s pretty much the same trends. I mean, youre seeing the same capabilities building up there. The technology gaps are different, but the trends are the same. There’s a lot of uncertainty about the [US defense] budget, which features a lot of money tied into a reconciliation effort that is looking shaky. As you’re planning for the next year, how do you react to that situation? Yeah, our plan doesnt have any of the reconciliation elements in it. Our plan is focused on the $1.15 trillion [base budget], actually a little bit below that. Whats more important than the top line for us, is whats in the budget request. That budget request signals prioritization of capabilities, which align very nicely with our capabilities. So regardless of what the top line number is, our Department of War is telling us whats important to them, and ship building, missiles, sensing, computing, counter-UAS, drones — the demand signals never been more clear about what theyre looking for.

[Category: Air Warfare, Land Warfare, Naval Warfare, Networks & Digital Warfare, Air Force, Army, Business & Industry, cyber security, Interview, John Baylouny, Leonardo DRS, Middle East, Navy, networks, technology]

— ‘Innovative shift’: Navy bets $2.2 billion on new vessel construction manager strategy for LSM

 

at 7/14/26 8:16am

WASHINGTON — The Navy has tapped maritime company TOTE Services to serve as the vessel construction manager (VCM) for the Landing Ship Medium (LSM) program. The Navy announced the $2.2 billion contract award on Monday, and said it aims to “maximize commercial practices to accelerate delivery, improve cost discipline, and expand the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base,” according to a service news release.  While the VCM model is common in commercial shipbuilding, it is a departure from the Navy’s status quo, with TOTE serving as the services first VCM. The VCM has the prime contract, and as a result, has direct contractual oversight of construction and delivery for the LSM, the Navy said Monday.  “The VCM strategy is an innovative shift in Navy shipbuilding. We are changing the way we do business, and leveraging commercial best practices to improve cost, schedule, and performance,” Will Mahan, who is performing the duties of assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said in a statement on Monday.  The Navy has selected Bollinger Shipyards to construct the initial LSM and Fincantieri Marinette Marine to build four more. The VCM will oversee subcontracts with these yards for those five ships, and have the authority to determine the “best award strategy” for up to three more ships for total initial production of up to eight vessels, according to the Navy.  TOTE Services has prior experience with the VCM model, and is currently the VCM for the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV) program for the US Maritime Administration.  “This is a tremendous responsibility and a defining moment for American shipbuilding, the VCM model, and TOTE Services,” Jeff Dixon, president of TOTE Services, said in a statement Monday.  “We look forward to collaborating with and supporting PAE Maritime as we work together on LSM,” Dixon said. “The U.S. is counting on this program to succeed, and our job is clear: steward the work responsibly, cultivate the best talent and expertise, move with urgency, and deliver for the American people.” The Navy and Marine Corps announced in December 2025 that a ship design from Dutch shipbuilder Damen would serve as the foundation for the LSM program. The ship is intended to carry Marines and their equipment through island chains in the Indo-Pacific region.  The first vessel is currently slated for delivery in the fall of 2029, according to the Navy. Altogether, the services are seeking to acquire 35 ships for the program. 

[Category: Naval Warfare, Bollinger Shipyards, Fincantieri Marinette Marine, Landing Ship Medium, Marine Corps, Navy]

— Nine European allies join Ukraine in new anti-ballistic coalition

 

at 7/14/26 7:39am

MILAN — Nine European countries have partnered with Ukraine to create a new anti-ballistic coalition, envisioned to create a pan-European capability to counter adversarial ballistic attacks, leaders said at the program’s inaugural meeting on Monday.  The new platforms will complement existing ballistic missile defence systems, including sovereign European solutions already acquired, or to be acquired by participating countries, the group said in a joint declaration. By bringing together our defence industrial base, our research, and our operational experience, we aim to build a shared antiballistic missile capacity for Europe and support relevant contributory activities. We do this not against any people, but in defence of our own. The United Kingdom, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, France and Germany officially joined the project in response to the shrinking availability of anti-ballistic missiles on the global market. Country leaders, as well as industry, gathered in Paris to sign the joint declaration outlining the group’s current priorities, which are focused on establishing common operational requirements, joint technical working groups, and a roadmap towards initial capabilities in this field.  Though the declaration doesnt identify any particular country as a threat, it does acknowledge the unique experience of Ukraine, gained in defense against Russia’s war of aggression. At the NATO Summit in Ankara last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Russia’s ability to deploy ballistic missiles at scale “its last major advantage” in the war and a challenge against which Europe urgently needs its own defensive capability. “We all value the [American-made] Patriot system. It is an excellent system. There are others [in Europe] as well. But today’s wars have shown that current Patriot production is not enough to meet the growing demand for protection against ballistic missiles; that is a fact,” he said during his address on July 7. (Later at the summit, American President Donald Trump said Ukraine would receive a license to produce Patriots on its own.) The Ukrainian government said the coalitions flagship project will be based on the Freyja anti-ballistic system, developed by the Ukrainian company Fire Point, which is built on its FP-7X interceptor.  Zelenskyy specified on Monday that while Ukraine can provide the system itself, partners could supply radars, tracking, command-and-control systems, as well as other critical components. He added that countries will be able to decide how many systems Europe needs and where these should be located. The goal would be to see it operational within the next 12 months, he said.  Also in attendance at Monday’s meeting were representatives from major European defense companies including Leonardo, MBDA, Saab, Safran, Thales, Kongsberg, Hensoldt, Eurosam, Diehl Defense, and Destinus. On the sidelines of the coalition meeting, Thales, Airbus, Destinus, MBDA and Safran signed a Letter of Intent to establish the Bliksem EXO, a multinational European industrial partnership to develop and scale production of an extremely high-altitude interceptor. “The Bliksem EXO is conceived as a sovereign European exo-atmospheric interceptor system designed to counter medium and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats, including the [Russian] Oreshnik-class systems,” a Thales press release said.

[Category: Air Warfare, Air Force, Airbus, ballistic, Europe, france, MBDA, Missiles, NATO, Russia, Safran, Thales, Ukraine]

— German UAV firm Helsing picks West Virginia for first US manufacturing

 

at 7/14/26 6:06am

PARIS — German defense firm Helsing plans to establish its first US defense manufacturing facility and open a new drone production plant in West Virginia, the state’s governor revealed on Monday. Helsing will initially invest $50 million to open the facility, according to a press release from the office of Gov. Patrick Morrisey. The release says the facility will start manufacturing Helsing’s HX-2 drone. Company executive Jennifer McArdle said at an event in West Virginia announcing the new facility today that the firm plans to produce as many as 2,000 drones a month, according to local media.  Welcoming a global defense technology innovator with battlefield-deployed products like Helsing to Berkeley County is another major milestone for West Virginia, Morrisey said in the release. The company said the facility in Martinsburg — situated in the northeast of the state wedged between Virginia and Maryland — is planned to have initial operating capability by November and full rate production within a year. “West Virginia stood out for its skilled workforce, speed to build, manufacturing heritage, and commitment to strengthening the U.S. industrial base,” said McArdle, Helsing’s US general manager, adding that the company was excited to build in Appalachia. The HX-2 is a loitering munition powered by company software that can hit targets like armored vehicles and structures as far as 100 km (62 miles) away, according to the firm. The drone has been used in combat in Ukraine. The German firm, founded in 2021, is headquartered in Munich and has grown rapidly with a focus on autonomous software. Helsing on Monday also announced results of a new funding round that raised $1.8 billion, growing its total valuation to $18 billion.  Besides its work in autonomous software, the company is chasing other opportunities over in Europe for larger drones like Collaborative Combat Aircraft. At the Berlin Air Show in June, Helsing revealed that it was designing a kinetic attack variant of its in-development CA-1 Europa drone wingman, which is scheduled for first flight in early 2027. 

[Category: Air Warfare, Air Force, Drones, Europe, Germany, Helsing, West Virginia]

— Reditus readies first launch of its re-entry vehicle/hypersonic target

 

at 7/13/26 2:06pm

WASHINGTON — Atlanta-bases startup Reditus Space today announced it has completed construction of its reusable re-entry vehicle for microgravity research, which also is being developed for Defense Department use as a hypersonics test bed — and, potentially, target vehicle. Stef Crum, the companys co-founder and CEO, told Breaking Defense that the spacecraft, called ENOS, can carry payloads for military testers wanting to evaluate how a specific system or technology functions in a hypersonic environment — or instead serve as a Mach 25+ target vehicle for interceptors both above and within the atmosphere. The spacecraft is designed to be launched and operate on-orbit like a satellite, leveraging the existing, and increasingly expanding launch-infrastructure. ENOS is capable of maintaining operations on-orbit, for days, months or years, providing operators with maximum mission flexibility. Then, ENOS can initiate its own reentry, and be recovered under parachute, the Reditus announcement explained. Crum said that Reditus currently is in the thick of multiple engagements with different [DoD] entities. The two-year old firm, which has raised $7.85 million in seed money, last December announced it had been added to the Missile Defense Agencys massive Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) contracting pool to develop new tech and capabilities in support of the Trump administration’s Golden Dome initiative. Early this year, Reditus also nabbed a low-dollar Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the Navy to model turbulence flows and thermal dynamics for its hypersonic glide bodies. Crum said the discussions with MDA are particularly focused on, Hey, what do the targets look like on that front. So far, Id say more [focused on] detection, but eventually kinetic engagement as well. For the Navy, he said, Reditus is pushing the forefront of hypersonic modeling. Crum said the company is also in discussions with the Air Force on using the ENOS as a test bench, as well as allowing the service access to that high hypersonic environment for the maturation of their technologies and mission profiles. This includes, he added, shaping up a contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory. The ENOS vehicle weighs about 200 kilograms (about 441 pounds) and is about the size of a smal family fridge, said Crum. The spacecraft — which looks a bit like a smaller version of the capsules used to splash down astronauts during the Apollo-era — is designed to operate in low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 450-600 kilometers (approximately 280-373 miles), he added. For its inaugural flight, ENOS will lift off onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, carrying microgravity research payloads for multiple commercial customers, operating on orbit for about two months before initiating a deorbit burn and landing in the ocean. The vehicle, which is equipped with a heat shield developed in-house by Reditus, will reenter the atmosphere at approximately Mach 29, descending under parachute to a recovery point off the coast of Florida, the companys announcement said.

[Category: Space, Air Force, Golden Dome, hypersonics, missile defense agency, Navy, Space Force]

— Pentagon announces ‘immediate suspension’ of CMMC Phase II mandates

 

at 7/13/26 1:30pm

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is suspending part of its cybersecurity requirements for industry, specifically related to third party assessments, citing onerous burdens on especially smaller defense firms. “In support of Secretary of War Hegseth’s directive to aggressively scale warfighter readiness, Im announcing the immediate suspension of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC, Phase II requirements, which were originally scheduled to go into effect November 10, 2026,” Kirsten Davies, chief information officer, told reporters at the Pentagon today, using the secondary name for the secretary of defense. “I want to be clear across the Department of War and our defense industrial base, investing in and dynamically maintaining robust cybersecurity remains a critical non-negotiable priority. This action does not eliminate the legal requirement for our industry partners to protect federal data.” Davies added later, “We are not reducing cybersecurity through this measure. We are reducing the red tape.” A July 10 memo released by the Pentagon today notes that the current iteration of CMMC imposes “significant and often prohibitive burdens on the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), particularly the small and non-traditional businesses that are the engine of American innovation. While cybersecurity is essential, administrative compliance cannot come at the cost of warfighting capability and industrial base growth.” The current administration has made it a top priority to loosen perceived bureaucratic restrictions and hurdles in order to speed up the delivery of systems and capabilities while seeking to simultaneously grow the industrial base. CMMC has been in the works since at least 2019, during the first Trump administration. At the time, there was worry that America’s enemies were able to infiltrate contractors and suppliers to steal information and aggregate it to gain a significant advantage. The program was meant to bolster the security of the entire industrial base so that the weakest link wouldn’t be an in for adversaries. As initially conceived, it was a tiered cybersecurity framework that graded companies on a scale of one to five based on the classification and security necessary for the work they conducted. In 2021, the Biden administration reworked the program paring down the levels from five to three under what was dubbed as CMMC 2.0. Phase II, the target of the memo, required both self assessment and assessments from a third party every three years. What is changing? Let me be direct. We are halting complex audits. We are stopping the requirement for third-party assessors and audits, Michael Duffey, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, told reporters. We are cleaning up active solicitations immediately. If a current defense solicitation or contract contains those suspended phase two requirements, I have directed our program managers and contracting officers to amend or modify them as soon as possible. Those audits apply to third party assessments as part of CMMC Phases, or Levels, II and III, according to documents provided by the Pentagon. There was always difficulty in getting enough organizations qualified to conduct the assessments, which would have created a massive backlog for companies hoping to receive audits and be in compliance. Were seeing that theres over 100,000 DIB businesses still that needed a third-party assessment conducted and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100, maybe a little over 100 assessors that are available for that. So the math just simply doesnt math for small to medium-sized businesses to even get compliant by … the former transition date November 10, 2026, Davies said. The memo said that data and feedback from the Small Business Administration have documented that the current CMMC program is “structurally incompatible with our need to rapidly expand the DIB.” The Pentagon will now initiate a task force that will conduct a comprehensive review of CMMC and serve as the central hub for synthesizing industry feedback from public request for information regarding compliance challenges. The task force will issue a final report within 60 days, recommending realistic measures that prioritize speed to capability and lower the barrier of entry for small and non-traditional companies. During the 60-day review period, the Pentagon said it will continue to enforce baseline cybersecurity compliance through NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 standard through self-assessments, which the department says, will focus on tangible cyber hygiene as opposed to administrative overhead. The officials insisted that the suspension will not sacrifice cybersecurity.  “We’re not relaxing any standards by any means, Duffey said. We expect businesses to adhere to the standards that NIST has outlined. What were removing is the bureaucracy of the third-party assessment.” The decision is likely to please defense firms who have long argued the CMMC regimen created too many obstacles for defense work, especially for small companies don’t have the resources to meet compliance requirements and testing — much to the chagrin of those who developed it. “Going on LinkedIn and complaining to the world that the CMMC is too hard … you’re — and I want to say [with] the most respect I can to anybody — you’re foolish in what your statement is, because your company has been contracted since 2014 to institute the 110 requirements of the NIST 171. What you’re saying is you’re noncompliant,” Katie Arrington, largely thought of as the creator of CMMC during the first Trump administration, said last year as the official performing the duties of the DoD CIO. She has since left government.

[Category: Networks & Digital Warfare, Pentagon, Business & Industry, CMMC, cyber security, networks, technology]

— In first, US uses sea drones in combat in Iran strikes: CENTCOM

 

at 7/13/26 12:09pm

WASHINGTON — US forces used unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for the first time in combat operations — striking a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran on Sunday, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM).  “Three Corsair unmanned surface vessels hit the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, marking the first time American forces have employed sea drones in combat operations,” CENTCOM said in a social media post on Monday. “Last night’s strikes degraded Iran’s ability to continue attacking commercial shipping.”  In a 24-second unclassified video posted by CENTOM, three unmanned surface vessels are shown individually approaching shoreline infrastructure — the same dock appears to be the target in two of the clips. The video then cuts to a first-person view from what appears to be the bow of one drone, showing the final approach to a dock that appears to be housing an exposed small submersible. Cutting back to an overhead view, the final seconds of the video shows clips of three explosions. The unmanned milestone comes after CENTCOM said on Sunday that it had launched a fresh wave of offensive strikes against Iran that day, just after President Donald Trump said on Friday that a ceasefire with Iran is “OVER” in a social media post. Likewise, Trump said in another social media post today that the US would reinstate the naval blockade of Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz.  Though it may be the first combat use, its not the first time Saronics Corsair vessel has played a high-profile role in operations in the Middle East in recent weeks. CENTCOM said last month that the Navy’s Task Force 59, which is focused on unmanned operations in Bahrain, assisted rescue operations of two crew members from a downed US Army AH-64 Apache off the coast of Oman. Media reports said the vessel located and picked up the crew members. Outside the Iran conflict, Ukraine has employed unmanned one-way surface attack vessels to great effect in its fight against Russia. Saronic says the Corsair can carry up to 1,000 lbs over 1,000 nautical miles. Task Force 59 began fielding the Corsair in March, per CENTCOM.  The Navy announced in May that Saronic is one of seven companies selected to  participate in the service’s MUSV Marketplace’s at-sea testing this summer. Those who successfully complete the demonstration will receive $15 million, and qualify for follow-on production, according to the service. 

[Category: Naval Warfare, Networks & Digital Warfare, AI & Autonomy, CENTCOM, cyber security, Drones, Iran, Middle East, Navy, networks, technology, Trump, Unmanned]

— NATO’s plan to buy Triton drones: Three cheers, two concerns

 

at 7/13/26 10:30am

Last week at its summit in Turkey, NATO nations announced the planned purchase of several new aircraft, including up to five MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicles. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway will lead the alliance’s procurement of Triton, a high-altitude, long-endurance maritime surveillance aircraft originally developed for the U.S. Navy. Triton is intended to expand NATO’s ISR Force, the alliance-owned fleet of five RQ-4D drones based in Sigonella, Italy which started flying in 2021 and has proven operationally valuable and cost effective since then. The Triton announcement is welcome news, fulfilling a recommendation we made in a study earlier this year. We think the plan deserves three cheers: one tactical, one operational, and one strategic. Being think tankers, though, and naval intelligence officers to boot, our cheeriness has limits. Two aspects of the plan give us pause.  First, cheer the tactical benefit. Acquiring Triton will allow NATO to surveil targets more thoroughly because the aircraft carries sensors that NATO’s existing RQ-4Ds do not. The RQ-4D has both the synthetic aperture radar and moving target indicator, two powerful systems it has used to good effect. However, it cannot collect electro-optical and infrared imagery or signals intelligence. Triton offers those capabilities, along with radar, on an airframe reinforced for maritime conditions.  The result is a superb ship finder well suited to, for example, track Russia’s shadow fleet of smuggling vessels. Triton’s sensors give it different ways to beat the shadow fleet’s deception tactics, which include ship-to-ship transfers, spoofing locational data and automatic identification system blackouts. It is hard for ships to hide from an aircraft that can see so many of their physical and electronic signatures.  Moving to operational gain, fielding Triton will enable NATO to maintain more persistent surveillance in key areas because the alliance will have more aircraft at its disposal and can base them in different places. The four countries leading the Triton procurement will likely want the aircraft based in or near their territory for political reasons. Thankfully, that also makes sense operationally.  If based at Satakunta Air Base (Finland) and Andøya Air Station (Norway), for example, Triton could reach — in two hours or less — key targets around the Baltic Sea, Eastern European border, High North and the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap. These are critical places to watch for Russian provocations. With northern-based Tritons covering these areas, Sigonella-based RQ-4Ds could monitor places closer to Italy, using the flight time saved from not transiting so far north to cover more targets or spend more time on each target. This strengthened surveillance posture will signal to Russia that wrongdoing will be detected, deterring it from acting aggressively in the first place. Third is the strategic benefit, which relates to the alliance’s political cohesion. Buying Triton will help NATO reduce its reliance on U.S. surveillance capabilities. American and alliance leaders have long desired that outcome, but progress has been underwhelming. With the open pressure from President Donald Trump on the alliance, unprecedented urgency now exists for burden shifting within NATO.  NATO’s Triton procurement shows the United States that the alliance is making progress. NATO should not rely on member-state contributions, whether from the United States or other nations, for all its surveillance. Those contributions might not always come when needed. The alliance-owned aircraft of NATO’s ISR Force, bolstered with new Tritons, provides NATO with essential flexibility and autonomy. That meshes with the Trump administration’s goals but, to be clear, it is also a longstanding U.S. and NATO objective.  Now about those concerns. Two stand out to us.  The first is about people — specifically the military personnel required to fly, upkeep and analyze the data collected by surveillance drones. In recent years, NATO’s ISR Force in Sigonella was manned at about 60 percent of its authorized strength of 600 people because member states did not send enough support. With too few people, and some of them always in training, the force averaged only one flight per week, far below the four to six flights it could perform if fully manned.  NATO has not released full details about Triton, but if the manning plan is anything similar, then personnel shortfalls could limit Triton’s contributions. As NATO nations prepare to invest in aircraft, they must also prepare to provide the necessary people. The second concern is about what comes next. Our study found that NATO’s ISR Force needed at least 15 aircraft to cover Europe’s key areas, and that a mix of high-altitude and medium-altitude drones offered the best balance across likely missions. The medium-altitude MQ-9B, for example, offers distinctive capabilities especially useful in wartime, including missile strikes, air-launched effects and short takeoff and landing.  Buying five Tritons, thus giving NATO’s ISR Force 10 total aircraft, is a huge step, but it alone will not meet all NATO’s airborne surveillance needs. In our view, the alliance should follow the Triton purchase with an equally sized buy of medium-altitude drones, to be announced at the next NATO summit. This follow-on purchase will further strengthen NATO’s surveillance posture in peacetime while improving its ability to target enemy forces in wartime. Although the Triton decision is encouraging, NATO ISR Forces history stretching back to 1992 is littered with hopeful plans crushed by political disputes and broken promises. Several factors in place with Triton should help avoid that fate, including agreement from the outset about U.S.-European industrial workshare, rising NATO defense spending and Triton’s demonstrated value during Operation Epic Fury against Iran.  Our simple advice for the managers of the Triton purchase is to work fast. Everything might seem politically favorable now, but windows of opportunity to acquire NATO surveillance aircraft have closed suddenly in the past. Best to move quickly so the alliance gets the aircraft it needs. Travis Sharp is a senior fellow and director of the defense budget studies program at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) in Washington, DC. Ryan Kaufman is a visiting fellow at CSBA. They are both officers in the U.S. Navy Reserve. This commentary is adapted from their report, Diamond in the Rough: The Past, Present, and Future of NATO’s ISR Force. 

[Category: Air Warfare, Opinion, Air Force, Denmark, Drones, Europe, Finland, GASCC26, Germany, GIUK, ISR, MQ-4C Triton, MQ-9B, NATO, Norway, RQ-4D, Sigonella]

— Space tag: Jackal, Puma spacecraft to chase each other Victus Haze demo

 

at 7/13/26 8:59am

WASHINGTON — With the first, threshold-setting missions for the Space Forces Victus Haze demonstration now complete, space firms Rocket Lab and True Anomaly will undertake several sets of maneuvers over the next six months in a celestial game of tag — trading roles as chaser and chased, according to executives from both companies. The point of the game is to demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), which involve close maneuvers around a target satellite to either surveil it, as is the primary goal of Victus Haze; help it, for exampling by refueling; or, in the case of on-orbit combat, hurt it. Victus Haze is the second of several Victus demos planned under the services Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) program. The first mission, named Victus Nox and launched in September 2023, was praised by senior Space Force officials as a game-changer for the service in future great power competition. Under that demonstration, Firefly Aerospace launched a maneuverable space vehicle developed by Boeing’s Millennium Space Systems. Victus Haze goes a step further and is interesting because [the two firms will] be taking turns for various roles throughout the mission [to] practice tactics and operational concepts for dealing with on-orbit threats, Even Rogers, founder and CEO of True Anomaly, told Breaking Defense. And so, we change, we switch roles, but we dont have a designated role, it just depends on the mission were doing. While the Space Force has given the two players a set of objectives to fulfill and set mission boundaries, he explained, the on-orbit game play is not scripted and neither company knows exactly how the others spacecraft will act. Brian Rogers (no relation), Rocket Labs vice president of global launch services, said that the design of Victus Haze thus is very different than most RPO demonstrations up to now, which instead have involved highly scripted maneuvers using cooperative satellites as the target. If you look at missions like this in the past, its frankly been a dead satellite or a self-deployed fly-along payload. Like everything is very much kindergarten. This is not, he told Breaking Defense. Rocket Labs Rogers added that another key aspect of how Victus Haze is structured is that the Space Force isnt really developing new capabilities under the project, but is focused on setting up these use cases that Rocket Lab and True Anomaly are then operationalizing. Theyre saying: Hey, Rocket Lab, True Anomaly, go do this thing. And we go do it, he said. So there is no hugely expensive or or wildly classified bespoke capability that has been developed to go do this. It is more like the government facilitating a training ground and commercial companies [are] executing. Still, citing Space Force sensitivities, both executives were coy about the precise activities, beyond imaging each others spacecraft, involved in the future Victus Haze mission sets. But public releases have described some early successes in the friendly cat-and-mouse game. True Anomalys Jackal spacecraft launched May 3 on a SpaceX Falcon 9, after a delay caused by a duo of failures last year with Fireflys Alpha rocket. True Anomaly on July 1 announced it had completed an early RPO mission to find and chase down Rocket Labs Puma, a variant of its Pioneer-class bus, which launched on June 19. In a June 22 press release, SSC described the Victus Haze mission scenarios as designed to demonstrate space domain awareness and characterization capabilities. Rocket Labs Puma is carrying a sensor payload developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and provided by SSC as government furnished equipment. True Anomalys Jackal spacecraft is equipped with its own sensor suite. The task was to acquire the Rocket Lab satellite with our on-board sensors, so we used some awkward cueing for that maneuver towards Rocket Lab, circumnavigate the Puma target, and take multiple images over the circumnavigation, True Anomalys Rogers said. And we had a criteria for how what we needed to achieve egress. Likewise, Rocket Lab stated in a July 8 video that it had completed its RPO tasking, having racked, approached, and photographed the target satellite in under 59 hours (25 hours ahead of deadline). While the exercise isnt hostile, the TacRS program and its Victus demonstrations are being managed by the Space Forces new Combat Power Program Acquisition Executive office, headed by Col. Bryon McClain, responsible for space warfare. According to the services fiscal 2027 budget documents, TacRS falls under the Combat Power mission area[,] which provides the systems required to protect and defend space-based capabilities and ensure space superiority by enabling and executing combat operations in space. Further, both True Anomaly and Rocket Lab (partnering with RTX) are working on space-based interceptors for the Trump administrations Golden Dome missile shield initiative. The TacRS program has at least three more Victus demonstration projects in the works. The FY27 budget documents said that the spend plan for FY26 includes $29.8 million in base funding and $135 million in reconciliation funding. The FY27 request is for $86 million, with a total of $300 million requested through FY31. The service last February announced a $21.81 million award to Firefly Aerospace for the third demo, called Victus Sol. However, Space Systems Command officials at the time were circumspect about what exactly would be involved in that effort, other than to say that it would be the first to put an operational system on orbit. In addition, according to the budget documents, testing will begin late this year on Victus Surgo and Victus Salo, both of which are characterized as maneuverable, prepositioned space domain awareness missions. While noting that FY27 funds will be used to finalize assembly, integration and testing for both demonstration, the documents do not provide planned launch dates. True Anomalys Rogers said that the upcoming Victus Haze missions will involve a series of sorties based on increasingly complex and challenging maneuvers by both spacecraft. The timelines will shrink, the expectations for operating within a certain margin will increase, and the behaviors of your target will change, he said.

[Category: Space, Golden Dome, Rendezvous and Proximity Operations RPO, Rocket Lab, space domain awareness SDA, Space Force, True Anomaly, Victus Haze]

— Europe’s military advantage depends on sovereign command of the ground truth

 

at 7/13/26 7:55am

Europe stands at a defining moment for sovereign intelligence. The next disruption—whether driven by adversarial aggression, cyberattack, supply chain pressure, or natural disaster—will test more than the ability to collect information. It will test whether nations and coalitions can understand what is happening in real time, share that understanding securely, and act before conditions change. That requirement is moving space-based intelligence from a specialized capability to a core element of national resilience. Satellites help governments monitor military activity, track threats across borders, support disaster response, and protect critical infrastructure. Paired with aerial systems and ground-based data, they can create a constantly updated view of the physical world. But more sensors do not automatically produce more clarity. Across defense, security, logistics, and infrastructure, organizations are managing enormous volumes of data from systems that were not designed to work together. The result is a familiar gap: the data exists, but the operational picture does not. Sovereignty depends on the system, not just the hardware  Many sovereign space strategies still begin at the sensor layer. The logic is understandable: if a nation owns the satellite, it controls the data. If it controls the data, it controls the outcome. Sovereign sensors matter. They provide assured access, reduce dependency, and give governments a level of control that was not possible a decade ago. But modern intelligence is inherently multi-source. Each sensor captures only part of the picture. Electro-optical imagery, synthetic aperture radar data, drone feeds, and ground-based signals can each be accurate while still failing to produce a shared understanding. If those inputs cannot be aligned quickly, commanders and operators are left reconciling fragments instead of acting on a trusted view of reality. In a contested environment, that delay is not administrative. It is operational. Ukraine shows what speed and integration can deliver Ukraine has shown how quickly commercial capabilities can be integrated into sovereign warfighting solutions when operational speed is the priority. Vantor has deployed an integrated space-based intelligence system that gives Ukrainian troops on the frontline the ability to directly task high-resolution electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar imagery, helping soldiers identify targets and coordinate drone operations with greater speed and precision. Bringing geospatial intelligence directly to the frontline gives units the ability to understand, act, and respond at decisive speed. That model matters for Europe. Building space hardware takes years, but operational requirements do not wait. Nations that can integrate commercial and national capabilities into sovereign intelligence architectures today can deploy earlier, adapt faster, and maintain continuity as their hardware infrastructure matures. Commanding the ground truth requires the full stack This is where integrated spatial intelligence becomes essential. Sovereignty does not come from adding another data feed, sensor, or analytics tool into disconnected workflows. It comes from having the infrastructure to turn trusted sources into one operational picture, and the tools to control that process from tasking through delivery. Vantor provides that infrastructure. Its spatial intelligence capabilities give nations and partners the foundation, platform, and AI-powered tools needed to build and operate sovereign intelligence systems. It starts with secure, local access to a highly accurate 2D and 3D spatial foundation: a living model of the Earth that allows satellite imagery, radar data, drone feeds, and other sources to be aligned to a common reference point. From there, Vantor’s end-to-end platform gives nations the software tools to orchestrate the intelligence cycle across sovereign and commercial sensors. Users can keep their operational picture current, apply AI to accelerate analysis, and deliver finished intelligence wherever it is needed — all within a private, secure sovereign environment. That means commercial capability can be integrated without giving up control of the data or the mission architecture. The result is intelligence that can move at operational speed. When these capabilities operate together, spatial intelligence becomes the infrastructure for command: connecting sensors, systems, operators, and machines to the same trusted view of reality. From collection advantage to decision advantage Europe’s security requirements demand a shift from asset-centric thinking to system-centric capability. The question is no longer simply who owns the most sensors. It is who can bring sovereign and commercial inputs together into an architecture that delivers clarity, speed, and control when it matters most. That is the foundation of modern sovereignty. Not isolation from commercial capability, but command over the system that turns every trusted source into operational advantage. Learn more about how integrated spatial intelligence can help build sovereign decision advantage. 

[Category: Global, Networks & Digital Warfare, Sponsored Post, 3D mapping, cyber security, Europe, NATO, networks, Presented by Vantor, satellite, Space Force, Sponsored Content, technology, Vantor, Vantor Custom]

— Auterion, Ukrainian drone-maker Skyfall to supply 50,000 FPVs

 

at 7/13/26 7:00am

MILAN — The US defense company Auterion has signed onto a new partnership with Ukraine-based drone manufacturer Skyfall to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with 50,000 FPV drones equipped with autonomy software to strike moving targets, the American company announced today.  The total drone order is more than double Auterion’s prior deployments to Ukraine, which totalled approximately 40,000 units, a company representative told Breaking Defense. The purchase involves Skyfall’s Shrike first-person-view drones, already used in combat across the war-torn country, fitted with Auterion’s Skynode S, which relies on artificial intelligence and computer vision to fly drones through electronically jammed environments. Auterion said the contract, to be jointly executed by it and Skyfall, was awarded by an undisclosed European NATO nation. Auterion, for its part, would receive $100 million in revenue from the deployment. Reuters reported on Sunday, citing an unnamed source, that Germany was the undisclosed European funding nation behind the order. Auterion has a major European office in Munich, and a company representative told Breaking Defense that the Munich-based team is delivering the order. The German Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for comment at press time. As part of a future software update, the Skynode S will give FPV drones swarming capabilities, according to a company press release. Deliveries of the systems have already begun this week and will conclude “in the coming months.”  Skyfall said that the Shrike has destroyed a wide range of Russian military assets, with hits on targets including an Mi-8 helicopter, armored vehicles, electronic warfare and artillery systems and a TOS-1A SoIntsepyok heavy flamethrower. A significant cost asymmetry has emerged throughout the Ukraine war, accelerated by the use of low-cost FPVs that have crippled multi-million-dollar military assets that would otherwise have required expensive missiles or equipment to engage. Last month, Serhii Sternenko, a drone warfare advisor to the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, published on X that a Ukraine-made FPV quadcopter successfully hit a target at a range of 102 kilometers (63.4 miles) without using a mothership. This would represent a major breakthrough in extending the distances FPVs can reach, where the initial operational standard for these platforms was much lower, around five to 15 kilometers at the start of the conflict.

[Category: Air Warfare, Networks & Digital Warfare, AI, AI & Autonomy, Air Force, Auterion, cyber security, Drones, Europe, FPV, Germany, NATO, networks, Russia, Skyfall, technology, Ukraine]

— Air Force pushing contractors to purge Anthropic by Sept. 1: Memo

 

at 7/10/26 1:15pm

WASHINGTON — The Air Force Research Laboratory is pushing its contractors to purge all Anthropic products from their systems by Sept. 1, almost a month ahead of a Defense Department-wide deadline, according to memos obtained by Breaking Defense. The AFRL memo, sent to industry July 9, says it is issued to “formally notify” contractors of the Department-wide requirement for “the removal of all products and services provided by Anthropic.” AFRL asks its contractors to find all use of Anthropic anywhere in their systems report back by Aug. 1, then remove them completely by Sept. 1. That target date is almost a month ahead of a Sept. 29 Department of Defense-wide deadline, but the memo says such a buffer is necessary “to allow for administrative processing time and to ensure the DoW [Department of War] deadline is met and “to ensure a smooth transition and facilitate any necessary modifications to your contract.” Neither the Pentagon-wide Sept. 29 deadline, nor the AFRL-specific date, has been previously reported. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly announced the ban on Feb. 27, when he declared on X.com that Anthropic was “a Supply-Chain Risk to National Security” and that “no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic.” That pronouncement was so broad, and so legally problematic, that it was later limited to just banning the use of Anthropic on defense contracts, not in a company’s work for civilian clients. At the time, Hegseth set a six-month requirement to dump Anthropic, which would have come in at Aug. 27. Since, that date has slowly shifted to the right. A March 6 memo from DoD CIO Kirsten Davies, previously reported by CBS, set an 180-day deadline, which would have expired Sept. 2nd. However, Breaking Defense has obtained a second memo from Davies stamped “April 02 2026,” says all Anthropic software “must be removed within 180 days from the date of this memorandum,” putting the new date as Sept. 29. That date is confirmed by an official website for reporting compliance. The two memos, issued roughly a month apart, are almost identical, word by word, with one key difference: the April 2 memo no longer includes mention of Anthropic being “an unacceptable supply chain risk.” Requests for comment to the Pentagon and AFRL were not returned by deadline. RELATED: Trump memo on AI aims to avoid repeat of Anthropic debacle As the directive percolated down the hierarchy, the dates on the memos suggest that each echelon needed time on the front end to draft its implementation plan. In the Air Force, for example, the service only issued its own order implementing the purge on May 21st — a month and a half after the DoD CIO’s initial memo. There’s no explanation given for this delay in drafting the Air Force memorandum, which is less than one page long and refers to “the recent directive from the DoW CIO.” It appears that at least some AFRL contractors had been notified of the Sept. 1 date before the July 9 memo: “If you have already responded to an AFRL contracting representative through a prior notification, you may disregard this specific notice,” it reads. The self-reporting from industry is being handled through a publicly assessable form hosted by Microsoft, but that requirement may not be simple for industry to meet. Because many software companies subcontract or partner with each other, it may not be obvious to the end user when a given application actually relies on “products or services provided by Anthropic, PBC, and its subordinate, subsidiaries, or affiliated offices or entities,” in the expansive phrasing of the AFRL memo. Just taking inventory and filing an accurate report can be a complex process — let alone removing all the prohibited code and call-outs without hamstringing company operations that have come to depend on them. Meanwhile Anthropic’s lawsuits to overturn the ban grind on, with the Wall Street Journal reporting a major release of executives’ private communications with Pentagon leaders. If either or both cases go badly for the government, a judge could require defense agencies and their contractors to undo much of what they’re now racing to get done. Mark Pomerleau and Theresa Hitchens contributed to this report.

[Category: Networks & Digital Warfare, Pentagon, AI & Autonomy, Air Force Chief Information Officer, Air Force Research Lab AFRL, anthropic, artificial intelligence AI, CIO, cyber security, networks, technology]

— DIU, Navy launch containerized payload competition

 

at 7/10/26 10:50am

WASHINGTON — The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the Navy are launching a competition to expedite the development of containerized payloads on manned and unmanned surface vessels — for missions as varied as surveillance to electronic attack. For the competition, dubbed the Spectacular MIST Challenge, DIU is teaming up with the Navy’s Rapid Capabilities Office and Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific to accelerate the prototyping and fielding of “transformative technologies,” according to the solicitation, posted Thursday.  “A critical component of this modernization effort is the deployment of autonomous and containerized payloads to generate combat power at speed and scale,” the solicitation said. “This initiative focuses on accelerating the development, prototyping, and production of a portfolio of payloads for integration onto manned and autonomous Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs), providing adaptable, lethal, and decisive advantages in contested maritime environments.” The competition comes after Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle has pitched plans in recent months for a containerized capability campaign for any number of maritime capabilities. If it fits in a container, I want it and I should be able to fight anywhere in the world with it across many, many platforms. At speed. At scale, Caudle said on April 20 at the Sea Air Space exposition, according to a transcript of his remarks. And while the new DIU solicitation did not single out the Navy’s medium unmanned surface vessel, or MUSV, program individually, those overseeing the new MUSV Marketplace launched by the Navy in March have said that the initiative was in alignment with Caudle’s containerization push. For this initiative, the solicitation said DIU and the Navy want “open-system architectures and software-defined capabilities” focused on the following lines of effort: threat radar simulators, active electronic attack, and passive electronic surveillance.  Proposals must address unmanned platform integration design, and identify plans for solution availability, unit cost, and production capacity starting six months after the competition wraps up, per the solicitation.  Industry has until July 22 to share their submissions, and those selected to advance to the next round will receive up to $250,000 to support their participation in the challenge. The next phase will involve an at-sea live demonstration in Southern California in September to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposals under “realistic” conditions. Those selected to the third round could receive up to $1 million, as well as a follow-on prototype or production contract, the solicitation said. Prize challenge winners will be announced in October.  “High-performing vendors transition into unit-focused field assessments for extended evaluation, training, and rapid fielding,” the solicitation said.

[Category: Naval Warfare, Networks & Digital Warfare, cyber security, Defense Innovation Unit DIU, Drones, MUSV, Navy, networks, Rapid Capabilities Office, technology, Unmanned]

— The state of play with the defense budget’s various moving parts

 

at 7/10/26 10:00am

As lawmakers are set to return to Washington next week, Breaking Defenses Valerie Insinna explains where things stand with potential passage of the annual defense policy bill, either chambers appropriations bill, and reconciliation. hbspt.forms.create({ portalId: '2097098', formId: '1ae78672-6dbf-4528-ae72-18d629c6b1f4', target: '#hubspot-form-1ae78672-6dbf-4528-ae72-18d629c6b1f4', });

[Category: Congress, Pentagon, 2027 NDAA, appropriations, Congressional Roundup Video Series, Video]

— Pentagon picks Lockheed, nLIGHT for laser defense project

 

at 7/10/26 9:13am

PARIS — An arm of US Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin and specialist firm nLIGHT Defense have been selected to lead development of high-energy lasers the US military expects can defend against drones and eventually cruise missiles, the Pentagon announced. In a press release on Thursday, the Defense Department said that the two companies’ contracts for the Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) program would come with a starting value of $86 million, which could be raised to a total ceiling of $847 million. The announcement did not specify a period of performance or the timeline for developing prototypes. The release says that “initial” prototypes will carry 150 kilowatts of power for meeting unspecified “urgent operational demands” — likely the counter-drone mission. Prototypes are then planned to scale the 300-500 kW range “for robust cruise missile defense,” the release says.  A separate laser source developed under the separate High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative will “concurrently” be developed in a 500-kW integrated system, according to the release. Overall, the Pentagon expects laser systems to be containerized and suitable for use on ground- and sea-based platforms.  Paul Lemmo, vice president and general manager of Lockheed’s sensors, effectors and mission systems unit, said in company release that the firm is “honored to field this operational-tactical prototype” and that “[b]y applying our expertise in lowering size, weight, and power along with rugged‑system design, we can rapidly build containerized laser weapons in the near term.” The contract is specifically going to Lockheed Martin Aculight, a business unit created in 2008 when Lockheed acquired Washington-based Aculight, which at the time was described as specializing in countermeasures, laser radar, high power directed energy and medical products. Scott Keeney, chairman and CEO of nLIGHT, said in a company statement that the award reflects the Department of War’s increasing focus on transitioning directed energy from prototype to deployed capability at scale and aligns directly with our strategy to move beyond demonstration programs and into production-oriented platforms that can be fielded across land and maritime environments. (nLIGHT said the programs initial award is $44 million and that its ceiling is set at $627 million. The DoD did not immediately return a request for clarification.) The Pentagon has been eager to field laser weapons, also known as directed energy systems, amid conflicts like the Iran war where adversaries have relied on low-cost drones, missiles and rockets to saturate air defenses and sap pricey interceptor stockpiles. While prototypes have been demonstrated — which military officials hope will offer cheaper, more sustainable air defenses — the US military has been slow to field directed energy systems at scale amid technological hurdles. The JLWS effort is spearheaded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering led by Emil Michael, under one of six critical technology areas dubbed scaled directed energy. We must actively defend the homeland against emerging threats, Michael said in the Pentagon’s release. “We are partnering with industry to rapidly deliver deep magazine directed energy capabilities to the Joint Force that can be seamlessly deployed across multiple domains.  Gesund-light Elsewhere in laser news, a joint team from MBDA and Rheinmetall were selected to build a laser weapon for the German Navy, which an MBDA press release published today says is set to enter operations in 2029. The contract is valued at “hundreds of millions of euros,” and covers the fielding of a “complete system for maritime applications.” Calling the system a “flagship technological project with a very high level of technological maturity,” Thomas Gottschild, executive vice president for strategy and future growth at MBDA and the managing director of MBDA’s German subsidiary, said that the new “containerized” laser weapon “will also be cost-effective for port security as well as other applications.” Roman Koehne, who leads Rheinmetall’s weapon and ammunition division, added in the release that the laser “will provide our personnel deployed on naval vessels with a significantly higher level of protection, particularly when it comes to countering drones.” The laser was tested at sea for a year and showed it could tackle “air, sea and land targets even in adverse weather conditions,” according to the release, which emphasizes “national sovereignty” fostered by “German supply chains and system expertise.”

[Category: Air Warfare, Land Warfare, Naval Warfare, Air Force, Army, directed energy, Drones, Emil Michael, Europe, lasers, Lockheed Martin, MBDA, Navy, Pentagon, Rheinmetall]

— The autonomous CCA wingmen of 2030 may look nothing like today’s assumptions

 

at 7/10/26 8:42am

Asked to picture an autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), most will describe the same thing: an unmanned, armed jet-powered drone flying alongside a manned fighter. That picture is already out of date. The CCA of 2030 will likely look less like a flying weapons magazine and more like the proverbial Swiss Army knife that can conduct electronic warfare in one sortie, relay targeting data in another, and loiter over contested territory doing missions that no manned fighter could risk doing.  “The introduction of unmanned systems that pair with manned aircraft can shift the dynamics of whats happening, what kind of missions are being performed, said Matthew Milas, president of Honeywell Defense & Space, talking as part of a Breaking Defense video series on the future of military aviation. “A lot of people think of them as missile trucks, but theres a lot more capabilities that can be incorporated if youre incorporating things like electronic warfare, other RF signaling. The way that they can interact and provide a persistence of deployment can change how we operate in the battlefield.”  The Autonomy Timeline That ambition didnt emerge overnight. To understand where the Pentagon is heading with CCAs and how it has gotten here, it’s important to review the ups and downs along the timeline of uncrewed development.  The lineage of manned-unmanned teaming stretches back to World War II with Operations Aphrodite and Anvil. The plan was for crews to fly explosive-laden bombers partway to a target before bailing out and letting a mothership attempt to radio-guide the now-unmanned bomber the rest of the way. President John Kennedy’s brother Joseph was killed in just such a mission when his plane prematurely exploded.  The concept resurfaced after 9/11, according to Caitlin Lee of the RAND Corporation, when the Army eventually formalized a manned-unmanned teaming doctrine around 2010, pairing Apache helicopters with Raven and Shadow drones for reconnaissance and strike. What distinguishes todays CCAs from that history – and from the small attack drones proliferating over Ukrainian front lines – is their kinship with fighters, tasked and controlled by the same units, and often with much of the same cockpit configuration as the manned aircraft they’re partnered to. A YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft lands after a test flight at a California test location. (Courtesy Photo, Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs) The Air Forces effort is furthest along of US services. Increment 1 is envisioned as roughly 100 simple bomb-and-missile-carrying CCAs meant to let operators experiment with the concept. It’s gone more slowly than planned, but initial contracts were awarded to General Atomics and Anduril in recent weeks. Increment 2, once conceived as a more maneuverable, exportable design developed with foreign partners, has effectively been redefined as whatever the Air Force decides to buy next. Increment 3 is envisioned as a higher‑capability, US‑only version of Increment 2.  The CCA program is unusual in running three separate competitions simultaneously – airframe, engine, and control software – and the Air Force has already demonstrated swapping one vendors control software for anothers in flight, according to Lee.  The other services are pursuing parallel paths: the Navy has issued early conceptual contracts to Anduril, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, and Boeing for a carrier-based drone wingman; the Marine Corps has paired Northrop Grumman with Kratos Valkyrie drone; and the Army has floated VTOL concepts that suggest CCAs need not be jet-powered at all. Internationally, Airbus and startups like Germany’s Helsing and its CA-1 Europa CCA are developing their own teaming concepts, while the Netherlands has said it wants to partner with the US Air Force on CCAs. “An important thing to remember specifically about Europe is that a lot of Europes tactical combat aircraft fleet in the future is going to be F-35s,” said JJ Gertler of the Teal Group, also participating in the Breaking Defense video series. “For Europeans right now theres this big push for indigenous investment in technology, but the fact of the matter is that at least the way I look at things, I think for many European countries, they are happy to let the US kind of work out some of the kinks first and leverage that investment when the time is right.” The Industrial Reckoning A bigger question is whether the industrial base can actually deliver CCAs at the scale being discussed. The absence of common technical standards is one of the programs most consequential unsolved problems, according to Milas.  Unfortunately, right now, there are none, he said of industry-wide standards for how CCA subsystems interface and interact. Everybody is piecing together their own solutions, redeveloping basic foundational technologies like wheels and brakes, actuation systems, and power and thermal management from scratch rather than building on shared groundwork. Its a big opportunity for how we make CCAs affordable and producible at the scale thats being demanded.” Milas also noted that attritable doesn’t mean disposable. These are going to be things that we want to get flight hours out of, he said, describing aircraft expected to return from missions, be serviced, and fly again.  That reality collides with an aerospace industry whose profits have historically come from decades-long sustainment of complex platforms, not short production runs of iteratively redesigned aircraft. Said Gertler, The traditional defense primes are built for success, while the new entrants more and more are designed to fail, treating early failure as a step along the way to producing minimally viable products. Government mandates for open architectures and organic sustainment, designed to prevent vendor lock-in, further erode the long-term revenue streams contractors have traditionally relied on. The supply chain pressure extends well beyond the CCA program itself. Milas described the entire aerospace industrial base as really challenged right now, with commercial, business aviation, and defense all competing for the same pool of suppliers for castings, forgings, and bearings.  Simply adding domestic capacity, he argued, wont be fast enough; adding more suppliers in the US isnt going to make a dent in the near term to meet all of the demand.  His answer is commonality. “The more common and high-volume production that we can get into, the better it is for the nation. On propulsion specifically, CCA Increment 1 has leaned on off-the-shelf business-jet engines like the Williams FJ44 to enable near-term production.  Resilient navigation should be another common element: If you dont have an alternate navigation, an anti-jam solution, youre just throwing metal at an object,” he said.  How Soon, How Many? Another consideration is CCA command and control, in other words, the human factor. Current Pentagon guidance lets CCAs manage their own flight paths but requires a human pilot to authorize target engagement. This model shifts decision-making from human in the loop to human on the loop, analogous to how the Patriot air-and-missile-defense system already operates with significant autonomy because air-defense reaction times preclude waiting for human input. Whether a single fighter pilot can meaningfully supervise multiple CCAs while flying a high-speed combat mission under fire remains an open question, as does how the US reconciles its commitment to human oversight with adversaries like China and Russia that don’t. On the potential market for CCAs, Milas called it “very significant as far as what it is, thousands of these types of aircraft, pointing to a spectrum of interest ranging from Group 3-class systems to full-size fighters and trainers converted to unmanned operation.  Getting there, however, may require a clear operational driver. RAND’s Lee drew the comparison to an earlier inflection point: I go back to thinking about the Predator, the Predator before 9/11, not a ton of interest in the Predator before there was a clear sort of strategically relevant operational problem to solve, which was high-value targeting and killing bin Laden. That urgency, she suggested, still hasnt fully arrived for CCAs. 

[Category: Air Warfare, Air Force, artificial intelligence AI, autonomy, Business & Industry, collaborative combat aircraft, defense industrial base, Drones, electronic warfare (EW), Future Airpower Roundtable, Navy, Pentagon]

As of 7/14/26 4:11pm. Last new 7/14/26 3:07pm.