Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Army scraps PEOs in bid to streamline procurement, requirements processes

 

at 11/14/25 12:12pm

The Army is taking another swing at slashing its sometimes decades-long procurement cycle by gathering up the many offices that weigh in on requirements and stacking them under a new program office structure. The six Portfolio Acquisition Executives will compress the previous 12 Program Executive Offices, with the new Transformation and Training Command in the overseeing uniformed position, and the assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology as the civilian boss. “So we had, arguably, an alphabet soup of requirements folks across both [Army Futures Command] and [Training and Doctrine Command],” Gen. David Hodne, who leads the newly merged Transformation and Training Command, told reporters Wednesday. “So generally, you had…Ill just say over 40 agencies that could either vote on or veto requirements.” Now, they’ll all report to the PAE, which will make one determination that goes up to the four-star level. The Army unveiled the move Wednesday to Breaking Defense, just a few days after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued orders to revamp the PEO system amid a larger reform of the defense acquisition process.  Each PAE will own one of the six “capability areas”: Fires; Maneuver Ground; Maneuver Air; Command and Control and Counter Command and Control; Agile Sustainment and Ammo; and Layered Protection and Chemical, Biology, Radiological and Nuclear Defense.  “Under the current fragmented process, accountability is distributed across multiple organizations and functions, creating misalignment between critical stakeholders,” Brent Ingraham, the civilian oversight official for the PAEs, said in a release. “Aligning this reform with operational concepts better postures the Army to deliver capabilities our [soldiers need] without delay.”  Now the old PEO structures and Centers of Excellence will be nested under the PAE, rather than being their own co-equal organizations. On the Maneuver Ground team, Hodne said, you’ll have the Maneuver CoE commander as the director, with the former PEO Soldier director as his deputy, as an example.  ‘Conned the American people’ The PEO revamp is a concrete change, but the service is hoping it’s part of a bigger overall shift. Hegseth’s acquisitions changes do away with a requirements process notorious for taking so long and being so rigid in its output that by the time a program was ready to be fielded, it was a mere irrelevant shell of its initial concept.  The Army is also hoping that a new approach to requirements will allow acquisitions teams to go with the best commercially available options for some systems in the short term, while continuously looking for better solutions. That philosophy is in stark contrast to the way the Army has done business for the last half-century or so, working with one or two vendors to compete to build a new, customized system from the ground up.  “It used to be 90 percent of things we bought were purpose-built for the military or the Army, and 10 percent were off the shelf,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said Wednesday. “This is what I would say is, that the defense industrial base broadly, and the primes in particular, conned the American people in the Pentagon and the Army into thinking that it needed military-specific solutions, when in reality, a lot of these commercial solutions are equal to or better. And weve actually harmed ourselves with that mentality.” Driscoll said he would like to see those ratios flip.  “Because when you actually start to think about what large-scale conflict looks like, you cannot scale one-off solutions as quickly and easily as you can scale commercially available things,” he said. “And we are, in every decision, thinking when we buy this thing, we go to conflict, how many of them can we get, and how long will it take to hit peak scale?” Pressed on his characterization of prime contractors as con artists, Driscoll conceded that the Army has often been the one driving the requirement for bespoke equipment. “I think their incentive structure has been to make things seem harder, to build more exquisite and more expensive,” he said. “I regularly, when I meet with them, highlight how bad of a customer we have been and the characteristics that they have today, we created and incentivized over a long period of time, and I appreciate that its so difficult to build against our demand signal, and it requires such balance sheet to outlast all of our insane processes, that I can appreciate that from their perspective, by the time we actually start to buy a thing, they have to lock in some number of those to make back their expenses that we laid onto them.” Now, the Army will be doing more dynamic decision-making about how much a system fulfills a requirement, how quickly they can field it and how much it will cost, the Army chief of staff said Wednesday. “So if you have a requirement, and somebody says it needs to weigh a certain amount, and it has to go 100 miles an hour, and then somebody comes back to you and says, ‘Hey, it can go 90 miles an hour and weigh just a little bit differently, but you can get it for half the cost in half the amount of time — I mean, thats what were after,” Gen. Randy George said. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— Shutdown deal adds $850M for B-21, Sentinel construction projects

 

at 11/14/25 11:44am

As lawmakers negotiated an end to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, they added hundreds of millions of dollars for projects related to the B-21 bomber and Sentinel ICBM programs. The three-bill funding package signed into law on Wednesday night gives the Air Force $3.9 billion for military construction projects, some $204 million above the service’s 2026 budget request. And it includes more than $850 million for flexible spending beyond the continuing resolution for at least 11 projects related to the B-21 and Sentinel. The  allocations for military construction show continued bipartisan support for the Air Force’s nuclear modernization efforts, which have seen massive cost overruns on the Sentinel effort and shutdown-stalled talks about accelerating B-21 production.Air Force and Northrop Grumman spokespeople did not respond to questions by press time. House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., and Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said in a joint statement on Tuesday that the bill will “support the infrastructure of bases across the globe.” The B-21 projects include a simulator, alert facility, and outdoor shelters for the bomber at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota; a weapons release storage system and a radio-frequency hangar at Whiteman AFB, Missouri; a mission-planning facility and site improvements at Dyess AFB, Texas; and a four-dock depot maintenance hangar to house Raiders and B-52s at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. [[Related Posts]] Ellsworth will be the first B-21 main operating base and location of the Formal Training Unit, while Whiteman and Dyess Air Force Base have been identified as the preferred locations for the bomber’s subsequent main operating bases. The Air Force is planning to buy 100 B-21s by the mid-2030s. The B-21-related funding marked a historic investment for Dyess, said Rep. Jodey Arrington, a Texas Republican and the House budget chairman. “Last night, we successfully passed into law $90.8 million for B-21-related construction projects at Dyess Air Force Base—the largest investment in Dyess history, more than triple last year’s historic $30 million allocation,” Arrington said in a Thursday news release. “These funds will directly support the B-21s arrival and ensure Dyess remains the tip of the spear for America’s air arsenal.” Another $130 million will fund work on a Sentinel-related utility corridor at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, part of the effort to replace 7,500 miles of copper wire with newer fiber-optic cables for the missile system. The appropriations bill also directs the Air Force to look at hardened shelters to better protect aircraft and troops from harsh weather and enemy attack.  “The Committees recognize the importance of shelters that protect aircraft from foreign threats and extreme weather but are concerned about the suitability of open sided shelters for platforms operating out of installations that are at higher risk of aerial attacks and severe weather events,” a joint explanatory statement in the bill said.  Lawmakers asked the service to provide a briefing within 90 days about the costs and feasibility of building hardened structures to protect "strategically valuable” assets or ones that “contain fuel or munitions of which ignition could yield catastrophic” explosions.  The U.S. probe into the feasibility of building hardened aircraft shelters follows Operation Spider Web, the devastating coordinated drone attack on Russia’s strategic bombers this summer. Former defense officials have called the attack a wake-up call about the potential targeting of U.S. aircraft deployed abroad. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— One-stop shopping for counter-drone gear is aim of joint task force

 

at 11/14/25 10:50am

An Army-led task force is building an online marketplace where commanders of military installations, officials of agencies such as the FBI and Homeland Security Department, and more can purchase tested and vetted components to build systems for countering small-unmanned aerial systems. Industry offers hundreds of sensors, weapons and other pieces of counter-UAS gear, but there’s no central ordering hub, Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, who commands Joint Interagency Task Force 401, told reporters Friday, so the marketplace will allow agencies to streamline purchasing and build systems that make the most sense for their missions.  “Were trying to make sure that across the department, we have an integrated system that allows [vendors] to introduce their capability, so that we can test and evaluate it and provide them feedback, and then get them focused on the most recent or current problems for the department,” Ross said.  A launch date for the marketplace is still to be determined, but the task force is planning a counter-UAS summit for later this month, bringing together subject-matter experts to discuss the policy, science and technology, operations, and intelligence collection of a national counter-UAS effort.  In addition to the marketplace, the two-month-old JIATF 401 will be testing new components and creating policy and guidelines for selecting and deploying systems domestically, including at military installations and along the southern border.  The Defense Department has been primarily focused on defending troops abroad, where small drone attacks have  sometimes been an everyday occurence. But the systems that work well at remote bases in Iraq and Syria, where troops are prepared to quickly don protection and take cover during an attack, don’t translate stateside.  “Today, if we were to field a counter-UAS solution around some critical infrastructure in the U.S., we would likely not include an explosive warhead,” Ross said.  An electronic jammer would be more appropriate. Or, he added, if it’s appropriate to fire an actual round at the drone, it should be something that doesn’t explode, so the damage is limited.  The task force is also taking a look at different kinds of UAS threats. The U.S. has “robust capability” for shooting down Group 3 UAS, Ross said, larger drones with medium ranges that might drop missiles or gather intelligence. But the threat from smaller drones—Groups 1 and 2, under 20 pounds and between 21 and 55 pounds — is more consistent stateside, so the department wants to put more time into creating strategy to counter them, he said.  The task force doesn’t yet have a budget, but Ross said he expects it to draw funds from a mix of operations and maintenance; research, development, test and evaluation; and procurement pools.  “I only have one measure of effectiveness, and thats delivering state-of-the-art counter-UAS capability to the war fighter, both at home and abroad,” he said. “And so as we look at those different colors of money, especially in the near-term, I think procurement is going to be really important for us.” But JIATF 401 will also have a hand in testing and evaluating systems before they’re added to the marketplace, alongside the regular counter-UAS exercises that the services may be doing. “If a vendor comes and performs this month in November 2025, and a similar capability is evaluated in March of ’26 at a different exercise or demonstration, we should be able to do a relative comparison between those two evaluations,” Ross said. “Today, we cant do that because we do not always measure the same performance attributes, and so we are taking that on across the department to make sure that weve got a more synchronized model.” ]]

[Category: Threats]

— The D Brief: A second Southern Spear; Boeing strike ends; Heavy-lift competitor sticks landing; Anduril’s S. Korean lashup; And a bit more.

 

at 11/14/25 9:20am

The U.S. military’s war on drugs in Latin America has a (borrowed) name. “Today, I’m announcing Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted Thursday. “Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and SOUTHCOM, this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people. The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood—and we will protect it.” Hegseth made the announcement on social media; he hasn’t held a press conference since late June.  And the Pentagon’s 20th known boat strike killed four more people on Wednesday, raising the death toll in these U.S. attacks to at least 80 people, CBS News reported.  ICYMI: To date, “U.S. officials have not provided specific evidence that the vessels were smuggling drugs or posed a threat to the United States” on any of the 20 known strikes, CBS reminds readers. And U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said this week there are “strong indications” of “extrajudicial killings” in the Pentagon’s boat attacks.  “From what we know, these instances violate international human rights law,” he told French media. Notable: It wasn’t immediately clear how Hegseth’s announcement relates to the pre-existing Operation Southern Spear, an effort to “operationalize” the use of aerial and seaborne drones that the Navy’s 4th Fleet began running in the region in January.  A widening window into the White House’s legal decision-making process is emerging after more reporting Thursday from Charlie Savage of the New York Times, who has been tracking the development of a secret memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.  The memo declared “extrajudicial killings of people suspected of running drugs were lawful as a matter of Mr. Trump’s wartime powers,” which Savage reports “contradicts a broad range of critics, who have rejected the idea that there is any armed conflict and have accused Mr. Trump of illegally ordering the military to commit murders.” The conclusion of the memo also “offers potential legal defenses if a prosecutor were to charge administration officials or troops for involvement in the killings. Everyone in the chain of command who follows orders that comply with the laws of war has battlefield immunity, the memo says, because it is an armed conflict,” the Times reports.  Expert reax: “It would be difficult to establish that the cargo on these vessels was a military objective under the law of war because there is no obvious connection between a shipment of drugs and military action by these supposed groups,” said former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane.  Another seemingly confusing wrinkle: “Despite concluding that an armed conflict is underway, the memo also says the operation is not covered by the War Powers Resolution,” Savage writes. Continue reading (gift link), here.  New: Just 29% of Americans support the U.S. military killing drug suspects without the involvement of a court or judge, according to survey results from Reuters/Ipsos published Friday.  More than half openly opposed the killings (51%), including 27% of Republicans polled in a survey of 1,200 adults that concluded this week.  Less than half supported designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (47%), including 75% of Republicans compared to just 22% of Democrats surveyed.  And starting a war to depose Venezuela’s leader? Just 21% of Americans supported it versus 47% opposed—including 49% of voters who said they are not aligned with the GOP or Democrats. Read the rest, here.  Additional reading: “Family of Fisherman Killed in U.S. Military Strike Says It Wants Justice,” the New York Times reported Thursday from Colombia.  Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1969, NASA launched Apollo 12, its second moon-landing mission.  Industry Boeing Defense workers have approved a new contract, ending a strike that idled fighter-jet and weapons production in St. Louis for three months. “The roughly 3,200 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 837 voted 68% in favor of approving the five-year contract. They will start returning to work as early as Sunday,” Reuters reported on Thursday. The New York Times also has a report, here. Anduril says it will build an autonomous vessel prototype in Korea. It’ll be the first fruit of a partnership with shipbuilding tidal HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, and is intended to lead to subsequent vessels built at the former Foss Shipyard in Seattle, Wash., the company said. The goal is to have infrastructure in place to compete for the Navy’s Modular Attack Surface Craft, or MASC, program, a combination of the service’s previous large and medium unmanned surface vessel programs. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports, here. Related: See “How American and Chinese Drone Arsenals Stack Up,” via the Wall Street Journal reporting Friday.  Blue Origin’s giant reusable rocket matches SpaceX’s landing on second flight. Ten months after missing its “stretch goal” of sticking the landing in its maiden flight, the heavylift New Glenn booster touched down safely on a landing ship Thursday after launching a probe toward Mars. “I think New Glenn is the most promising competitor for SpaceX right now because it is the only other medium/heavy-lift launcher with reusability. ULA’s Vulcan and Arianespace’s Ariane 6 missed the boat on reusability and have no real chance at being cost-competitive,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Defense One in January. Space-dot-com has more, here. Fresh possible U.S. arms sales include the first batch of assistance to Taiwan since Trump took office in January. That pending sale includes “spare and repair parts, consumables and accessories, and repair and return support for F-16, C-130, and Indigenous Defense Fighter aircraft” for about $330 million, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced Thursday.   And in a smaller package intended for Iraq, the U.S. is on the verge of selling Baghdad an array of communications equipment for a “country-wide repeater system” totalling about $100 million. DSCA has details. Congress could object to either of these packages, though that prospect seems unlikely.  It’s now been a week since SecDef Hegseth announced his arms procurement makeover from the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington. “Move faster and invest more—or we just might make you,” was how Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams characterized his effort. Second opinion: “Theres nothing remotely transformative about this strategy. The admin is simply fulfilling arms industry demands for bigger, longer contracts, reduced weapons testing, and the ability to determine contract prices. Of course, theyre justifying it all by fearmongering on China,” says Julia Gledhill of the Washington-based Stimson Center think tank, writing Thursday on social media. “The result will be unfettered weapons development and production—regardless of need, cost, or reliability. Hard to imagine how military contractors could tighten their grip on USA, Inc... but here we are,” she added.  Additional reading:  Citing fears of Chinese tech theft, “U.S. Officials Raise Concerns About Saudi Arabia’s Bid for F-35 Jets,” the New York Times reported Thursday; And “Israel seeks 20-year military aid deal with U.S. with ‘America First’ tweaks,” Axios reported Wednesday.  Trump 2.0 Developing: Trump’s State Department says four left-wing groups in Europe are anti-fascist “foreign terrorist organizations.” The groups span Germany, Italy and Greece, and State Secretary Marco Rubio said Thursday he plans to announce the terrorist designations sometime next week.  Rubio: “Groups affiliated with this movement ascribe to revolutionary anarchist or Marxist ideologies, including anti-Americanism, ‘anti-capitalism,’ and anti-Christianity, using these to incite and justify violent assaults domestically and overseas,” he said in a statement Thursday.  The groups include Germany-based “Antifa Ost,” two organizations from Greece—Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense—and one out of Italy the State Department refers to as the “Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front.”  By the way: Antifa Ost—Antifa east, in German—is “not a formal organization but a label used by German police, intelligence services, and media to describe a cluster of more militant anti-fascist activists in eastern Germany,” extremism researcher Amarnath Amarasingam noted on social media Thursday.  The designations come at least partly in response to physical attacks against neo-Nazis in Germany, including this 2023 Dresden court case involving beatings of far-right extremists using clubs and hammers. The other three groups have carried out select attacks over the past two years that have included explosive devices, but those did not result in injuries, Reuters reports.  Additional reading:  “Feds should get at least most backpay by Nov. 19, administration says,” Government Executive reported Thursday;  Lots of expensive lobbying is “How Pakistan’s Spending Blitz Helped Win Over Trump and Flip U.S. Policy,” the Times reported on Thursday; And a “Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts,” ProPublica reported Friday. ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Feds should get at least most backpay by Nov. 19, administration says

 

at 11/13/25 2:40pm

Most federal workers will receive their first paycheck in more than a month between Saturday and Wednesday of next week, and it should include at least most of the backpay that is due, Trump administration officials said Thursday. Lawmakers included a provision guaranteeing full backpay for furloughed workers in the deal to end the 43-day government shutdown after the White House repeatedly insinuated it might break a 2019 law enacted during President Trump’s first term requiring all feds be paid upon the restoration of appropriations. A senior administration official told Government Executive that federal HR workers are aiming to get the first post-shutdown checks out to employees within the next week. For many agencies, these paychecks will reflect pay furloughed and excepted workers would have earned from Oct. 1 through Nov. 1. General Services Administration and Office of Personnel Management employees can expect to see a paycheck Saturday, while Energy, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and Defense Department civilian workers will be paid Sunday. On Monday, paychecks are set to go out for workers at the Education, State, Interior and Transportation departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, National Science Foundation, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Social Security Administration. Another tranche of workers must wait until Wednesday, Nov. 19, to see their backpay, though their checks will also include pay for the Nov. 2-Nov. 15 biweekly pay period, effectively making them whole for time during the shutdown and paying them for their work between Thursday and Saturday of this week: the Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor and Treasury departments, and the Small Business Administration. Guidance issued Wednesday by OPM Associate Director for Workforce Policy and Innovation Veronica Hinton to agency chief human capital officers provides additional details on how that backpay will be calculated—with the caveat that in agencies’ haste to get checks out, there may be some mistakes. “To facilitate making retroactive payments as quickly as possible, payroll providers may have to make some adjustments,” Hinton wrote. “Thus, the initial retroactive pay that an employee receives after a lapse in appropriations has ended may not fully reflect application of all the guidance in this document regarding the treatment of hours for pay, leave and other purposes. Payroll providers will work with agencies to make any necessary adjustments as soon as practicable.” Excepted employees should be paid for the time they worked during the shutdown, including overtime pay for any time in excess of their normal tour of duty. And furloughed employees should be paid for the time they would have spent at work, had they not been forced to stay home due to the appropriations lapse. That includes overtime, provided the employee is “regularly scheduled” to work excess hours. “A furloughed employee who, before the lapse in appropriations, had been regularly scheduled to perform, during the period subsequently covered by the lapse, overtime work or to perform work at night or during a period for which any other form of premium pay would otherwise be payable is entitled to receive overtime pay, night pay, or other premium pay as if the work had been performed,” OPM wrote. “Allowances, differentials and other payments otherwise payable on a regular basis (e.g., administratively uncontrollable overtime pay and law enforcement availability pay) must be paid as if the furloughed employee continued to work.” Ineligible for backpay are individuals who were scheduled to be in leave without pay status during the lapse, or suspended. And excepted employees placed in absent without leave status for “missed assigned work hours” similarly will not be paid for that time. The Social Security Administration controversially refused some employees’ request to be placed in intermittent furlough status and labeled them AWOL instead. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— Anduril to build autonomous vessel prototype in Korea

 

at 11/13/25 9:37am

Anduril wants to build dozens of autonomous ships a year. So it’s teaming up with global shipbuilding titan HD Hyundai Heavy Industries to manufacture the type of autonomous ships the U.S. Navy wants for its hybrid fleet vision, Defense One has learned.  The first prototype, a dual-use autonomous surface vessel, will be built in Korea, but future vessels will be made in the U.S. at the former Foss Shipyard in Seattle, Wash., the company said. The Puget Sound facility “will serve as Anduril’s initial U.S. hub for low-rate vessel assembly, integration, and testing of ASVs for the MASC program,” Anduril said in a news release announcing the partnership. But the goal is to have infrastructure in place to compete for the Navy’s Modular Attack Surface Craft, or MASC, program, which is a combination of the service’s previous large and medium unmanned surface vessel programs. The Navy requested, and is still evaluating, pitches from industry earlier this year for three prototypes: a standard MASC, one with high capacity, and one for a single payload.  “Weve been working this for some time. So were cutting steel in the U.S. Were cutting steel in Korea already, you know, weve been working in advance of this competition to get ready for it. So, you know, were hopeful that it comes our way, and that will certainly accelerate the plans,” Shane Arnott, Anduril’s senior vice president of programs and engineering, told Defense One. The partnership with HD Hyundai will help Anduril—which has made unmanned submersibles but not surface vessels—produce the autonomous vessels more quickly if the Pentagon asks.  “Were talking dozens of ships per year…but its an order of magnitude beyond what current production methods can achieve,” Arnott said. “Scale is the problem that were trying to solve. Weve been very deliberate in our partnership. Weve been very deliberate in material selection. Weve been very deliberate with the workforce. Theres further things into the supply chain and advanced manufacturing approaches that weve taken from other industries.” HD Hyundai, already one of the world’s largest shipbuilders, has been expanding, including through partnerships with U.S. shipbuilders like HII to help increase domestic capacity. But shipbuilding is a historically challenging arena that newcomers such as Eureka Naval Craft, Havoc AI, Saronic, and Blue Water Autonomy are trying to navigate with shipyard partnerships and plans to build their own.  “Anduril has never built an autonomous warship like this. Weve never delivered it at scale, but were teamed with one of the worlds largest and leading ship builders that does significantly more [deliveries] of far larger vessels,” said Chris Brose, Anduril’s president and head of strategy. “So with that [HD Hyundai] partnership, through the design, the development and then ultimately, the delivery of scale, well feel very confident that the Anduril-Hyundai team can deliver what the U.S. Navy needs, and a lot more beyond that.”  The partnership also sets Anduril up to supply other countries with autonomous ships as global defense spending increases.  “Theres an enormous global demand for maritime capacity and autonomous warships and thinking differently about how to change naval warfare,” Brose said. “Were eager to see where the U.S. Navy decides to go, but theres an enormous amount of global demand out there. And for a system that is relatively low cost in terms of the maritime capability that it brings to bear, I think it is something that will have a lot of interest from a lot of partners, allies and partners.” ]]

[Category: Business]

— The D Brief: Shutdown ends; USAF’s new missile; New ONR chief; Norway mulls big defense bet; And a bit more.

 

at 11/13/25 9:19am

With the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown now over, the Air Force wants to build a $500,000 counter-air missile, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported Wednesday. That’s costlier than some missiles the service already has, but the main idea seems to be modularity: the effort would start with a ground-launched version that would develop components for an eventual air-to-air version, according to a Nov. 7 request for white papers posted on SAM.gov. For context: “The proposed cost is less than the service’s $1 million AIM-120D Advanced Medium-Range Air-To-Air Missile and comparable to the existing $472,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder, according to figures from the War Zone. But it is significantly more expensive than the service’s APKWS II jet-fired anti-drone rockets—the most costly components of those missiles run between $15,000 and $20,000,” Novelly writes. Read on, here. Commentary: The push for modularity is a key part of the Pentagon’s revolutionary new approach to acquisition, says Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, who helped advise the various parts of DOD in the runup to last Friday’s rollout. The U.S. military has finally acknowledged that taking years to build exquisite weapons won’t work on battlefields where tech and tactics change week to week.  “The last few years of war in Ukraine, the Red Sea, and Israel have been screaming the lesson that better kit doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, ‘better’ means something different than it did even a decade ago,” Clark writes in an oped for Defense One. A swift product pipeline is now more important than the products themselves. Read on, here. Additional reading: “OpenAI’s Open-Weight Models Are Coming to the US Military,” WIRED reported Thursday. However, “Initial results show that OpenAI’s tools lag behind competitors in desired capabilities, some military vendors tell WIRED. But they are still pleased that models from a key industry leader are finally an option for them.” Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2015, ISIS terrorists killed 130 people during a complex attack across multiple locations in Paris. Trump 2.0 DOGE veteran could bring much-needed change to Navy research, observers say. Rachel Riley, the new head of the Office of Naval Research, is more than just an alum of the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, according to current and former military and defense officials. Indeed, they said, the 33-year-old Rhodes Scholar and former McKinsey consultant may have what it takes to bring urgent reform to the Navy’s top R&D office, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Wednesday.  Riley was appointed acting chief of naval research sometime in October after nine months at Health and Human Services. She had never worked for the government before January, according to her LinkedIn profile. But Riley has completed significant academic work related to China, which sources we spoke to highlighted as relevant. She is also a military spouse, Tucker notes.  At McKinsey, much of her work focused on helping the government address the challenge of too much bureaucracy, too low a risk tolerance, devotion to committee meetings, and other rigid structures that inhibit timely deployment of technology. “There are entire enterprises within ONR that have never produced anything,” one former defense official said. “They continue to be justified as part of the research enterprise, the kind of thing Anduril would love to stand up a division to deliver on tomorrow, and Silicon Valley would respond to by founding a whole new company.” Continue reading, here.  Developing: A senior officer with no experience in cyber security or signals intelligence is now a top nominee to lead Cyber Command and the NSA, Martin Matishak of The Record reported Wednesday—roughly seven months after Trump fired NSA/CYBERCOM chief Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh on the advice of far-right activist Laura Loomer.  The new candidate is Army Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, currently deputy commander at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. Before that, he served as INDOPACOM chief of staff. And “He previously was the head of Special Operations Command Pacific. Among other leadership positions within special forces, he deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Matishak reports. Read more, here.  You may remember a roughly 300-agent, special-operations-like immigration raid in Chicago in late September. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security was so enamored with the optics of the operation they turned footage of it into a sizzle reel for likes on social media.  Recap: Shortly after midnight on Sept. 30 at Chicago’s South Shore, “Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes” and “detained nearly every resident of the 130-unit building—including children and babies—placing them in zip ties and separating them by race into vans for more than two hours early [that] morning,” the city’s South Side Weekly reported on location.  Update: Despite the enforcement optics and narrative pushed by DHS officials, five reporters from ProPublica investigated the aftermath and found almost an entirely different story, including:  None of the 37 people arrested were criminally charged; There was no evidence the building was “filled with TdA terrorists,” as White House advisor Stephen Miller alleged; And there appears to have been no legitimate reason for agents to rappel down onto the building in the dark of night from a Blackhawk helicopter. Full story: “‘I Lost Everything’: Venezuelans Were Rounded Up in a Dramatic Midnight Raid but Never Charged With a Crime,” published Thursday morning.   Industry Norway’s public-wealth fund might invest in defense firms for the first time in two decades, spurred by Russia’s European invasion and fears it can no longer rely on the United States, Reuters reports. Additional reading:  “Counter-drone radar firm Chaos raises $510 million in defense tech boom,” Reuters reports in a Thursday scoop; “Google Has Chosen a Side in Trumps Mass Deportation Effort,” 404 Media reported Thursday;  “Russian Robot Faceplants on Stage During Moscow Showcase,” Gizmodo reported Wednesday;  “Anthropic, Microsoft announce new AI data center projects as industry’s construction push continues,” AP reported Wednesday;  Cursor, “The AI Coding Startup Favored by Tech CEOs Is Now Worth $29.3 Billion,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday;  “Govini founder arrested on child solicitation charges,” Washington Technology reported Wednesday after the story broke at Pittsburgh’s WTAE4 News.  ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Air Force wants a $500,000 counter-air missile, despite cheaper options

 

at 11/12/25 6:53pm

Air Force planners want ideas on building the service’s next counter-air missile at a cost of $500,000 per unit, although the service already has cheaper munitions. As part of the service’s Counter-Air Missile Program, or CAMP, the Air Force wants to develop a ground-launched missile that will set the groundwork for a “low-cost air-to-air missile,” according to a Nov. 7 request for white papers posted on SAM.gov. “The highest priority of this effort is the development and demonstration of an affordable, open system, modular, and highly producible ground-launched capability,” the notice from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center reads, adding that work would start on ground-launch versions as a way to test the technology before pivoting to “future affordable air-to-air missile capabilities.” The first phase of CAMP would focus on developing and demonstrating a ground-launched prototype in two years. Phase two would turn the missile into a program of record, and future phases would seek to produce an air-to-air variant. Industry ideas are due by Dec. 2.  The notice lacks technical details of the missile’s design and function but says the government will “trade exquisite capabilities for affordability and producibility in support of delivering quantities of 1,000-3,500 per year in full rate production.” [[Related Posts]] But it’s unclear how the new missile would be used with existing air-to-air and counter-drone munitions in the Air Force inventory.  The proposed cost is less than the service’s $1 million AIM-120D Advanced Medium-Range Air-To-Air Missile and comparable to the existing $472,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder, according to figures from the War Zone. But it is more expensive than the service’s APKWS II jet-fired anti-drone rockets, whose most costly components run between $15,000 and $20,000.  Air Force spokespeople did not immediately respond to questions about the proposed benefits of the program in relation to the price tag.  The call for industry ideas follows the passage of the reconciliation bill this summer, which allocated $250 million to develop, procure, and integrate Air Force low-cost counter-air capabilities. The notice was posted the same day as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech to defense companies urging them to invest more and move faster on acquisition programs.  “This effort follows the strategic direction of the [Defense Department] to innovate warfighter advantage, accelerate production, and deliver at scale,” the notice reads. The notice also mentioned the munition will be a part of the Air Force’s “new weapon class of Enterprise Test Vehicle”—the low-cost cruise missiles currently being pursued by the service in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit. Anduril and Zone 5 Technologies were both selected to move to the second phase of the ETV program and are progressing towards a live-fire test this summer, DIU announced in September. ]]

[Category: Defense Systems]

— The Pentagon chooses learning over losing

 

at 11/12/25 2:12pm

The acquisition reforms announced last week by Secretary Pete Hegseth reflect a revolutionary shift in mindset: after decades of aspiring to remain the world’s most advanced force, the U.S. military has finally recognized that adaptability trumps performance. Better late than never. The last few years of war in Ukraine, the Red Sea, and Israel have been screaming the lesson that better kit doesn’t guarantee success. In fact, “better” means something different than it did even a decade ago.  Rather than faster, bigger, or rangier, the better solution today is one that is already fielded and good enough for the current situation, as we noted in our work with the Pentagon in the runup to the reforms’ release. The only guarantee is that “good enough” will be different in a few weeks or months. Build an adaptation pipeline The Pentagon has long taken years to envision, specify, manufacture, and deliver systems to warfighters. The fundamental bet was that these exquisite products would remain superior to countermeasures at least as long as it would take to produce their replacements. Hegseth’s Nov. 7 directive recognizes the futility of this approach in the modern era. Under the acquisition model announced last week, the pipeline is more important than the product. Any weapon, sensor, or drone will only be relevant for a short time in its current form, so the military needs a robust problem-to-product pipeline that will deliver the next version. The secretary announced three transformations that will build his department’s new adaptation pipeline. First, he killed the toothless joint-requirements process that was a rubber stamp for service wishlists. In its place, he established a way to define and rank joint problems from combatant commanders, then tie them to dedicated funding for solutions. Second, he ordered the department to give acquisition executives real authority and accountability. Portfolio Acquisition Executives, or PAEs, will own their programs entirely, including funding, development, specifications, contracting, and delivery. They will have the authority to make trade-offs between performance and schedule to field relevant capabilities when they are needed. And if PAEs cannot deliver, senior leaders will replace them. And third, Pentagon acquisition will embrace real modularity, rather than the interoperability cosplay of static and proprietary “open architectures.” The new directive requires that systems have machine-readable interface specifications posted in government repositories. Any vendor will be able to build compatible software modules without asking for the system developer’s permission. This matters because modern military systems are increasingly software-defined. A missile is basically a collection of computers with explosives. By separately competing modules for everything from seekers and guidance and navigation controls to propulsion, PAEs can swap in appropriate components as new technologies and needs emerge. Our adversaries already do this with commercial parts. Were finally catching up. Like the commercial best practices, the new acquisition model will enable adaptation through a continuous integration and delivery pipeline. When interfaces are exposed and government-owned, innovation can happen at the edge, not just in the prime contractors’ labs. [[Related Posts]] Stop fighting yesterday’s wars Some traditionalists worry that prioritizing timeliness over performance will lead to poor-quality products rushed to meet deadlines. This misunderstands modern military competition, which is about constant adaptation rather than generational, game-changing leaps. For example, last month Ukrainian air defenders realized their U.S.-supplied Patriot interceptors were missing incoming ballistic missiles due to a combination of new Russian flight profiles and saturation attacks. U.S. and Ukrainian engineers and operators are now scrambling to reprogram decades-old Patriot software.   This wasn’t the first case of 20th-century U.S. designs failing in 21st-century conflict. Less than a year into the war, Ukrainian troops found that Excalibur GPS-guided artillery rounds were no longer hitting their targets. Despite costing more than $100,000 each, the U.S.-supplied rounds could not adapt to use other navigation methods in the face of Russian jamming. Today, Kyiv’s defenders rely on terrain-mapping drones alongside traditional artillery. Ukrainian forces are keeping those drones relevant through an even more aggressive adaptation cycle. Every day, soldiers and technicians reprogram radios and control software and evolve tactics to counter the latest Russian jammers and counter-drone systems. The U.S. military hasn’t been spared from the adaptation imperative. As Houthi attacks mounted in the Red Sea, U.S. Navy engineers and surface warriors recognized they needed to use shorter-range defenses to avoid burning through a lifetime of Standard missiles in a month. Now guns and jammers take out more drones than do surface-to-air missiles. The lesson from these contemporary battlefields is that. Instead of attempting to manufacture weapons for a predicted future, militaries need to use what is available today to solve today’s problems. The leap to 21st-century mobilization As these contemporary battlefields suggest, the Pentagon needs this new acquisition model to prepare for 21st-century mobilization. Within any realistic peacetime budgets, the defense industrial base will never have the capacity to build today’s weapons at the scale needed for sustained confrontations like those in the Red Sea or Ukraine, much less a great power war against China. The U.S. military will need the commercial sector. That’s the same approach Secretary Hegseth’s predecessors took during World War II, but the industrial base and the military are very different now. Instead of bombers rolling out of Michigan auto plants, the Pentagon will need contract manufacturers that build everything from MRI machines to vehicle chargers to start assembling drones and missiles by the tens of thousands. That only happens if the War Department follows through on modular designs, open interfaces, commercial-first procurement, and prioritizing speed over sophistication. If not, today’s weapon stockpile could be tomorrow’s junkpile. Bryan Clark is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute. ]]

[Category: Ideas]

— Govini founder arrested on child solicitation charges

 

at 11/12/25 12:49pm

A leader of a company gathering steam as a data and artificial intelligence provider to the Defense Department has been arrested for allegedly soliciting an underage girl for sex. Eric T. Gillespie, the founder and chairman of Govini, has been charged as part of a sting operation by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office and the Lebanon County, Pennsylvania district attorney’s office. A law enforcement agent with the attorney general’s office posing as a preteen girl allegedly connected with Gillespie in an online chat. Gillespie then attempted to arrange a meeting with the girl, according to the attorney generals office. Gillespie was charged on Monday with four felony counts and is being held without bail in a Lebanon County jail. The charges come as the company has built out its defense business and attracted new private equity investment. On Monday, the day Gillespie was charged, the company placed him on administrative leave. But today, the Govini board fired Gillespie from his chairman position and removed him from the board. He no longer holds any position with the company. "Mr. Gillespie stepped down from the role of CEO almost a decade ago and had no access to classified information," the company said in a statement. "Govini is an organization that has been built by over 250 people who share a profound commitment to America’s national security, including veterans, reservists, and people who have dedicated their lives to causes greater than themselves. The actions of one depraved individual should not in any way diminish the hard work of the broader team and their commitment to the security of the United States of America.” Gillespie founded the company in 2011 as a data provider helping government contractors track contract awards and upcoming procurements. But over time, it has transitioned into a software provider for government agencies with tools to help them manage their acquisition processes. The company touts $100 million in annual revenue and attracted a $150 million investment from Bain Capital, which was announced in October. That money is earmarked for investment in Govini’s offerings such as its Ark AI application and the hiring of more tech practitioners. “This investment validates not just the current position achieved by our incredibly talented team, but also our long-term goal of fundamentally rewiring how defense and national security communities make decisions with AI and data,” Gillespie said of the Bain investment at the time. ]]

[Category: Business]

— DOGE veteran could bring much-needed change to Navy research, observers say

 

at 11/12/25 9:54am

Rachel Riley, the new head of the Office of Naval Research, is more than just an alum of the controversial Department of Government Efficiency, according to current and former military and defense officials. Indeed, they said, the 33-year-old Rhodes Scholar and former McKinsey consultant may have what it takes to bring urgent reform to the Navy’s top R&D office. Riley was appointed acting chief of naval research sometime in October after nine months at Health and Human Services. Like DOGE employees across the federal government, she was assigned to HHS with a White House mandate to reduce staff; Politico described her as a “driving force” behind a failed effort to cut 8,000 people. One official told the news site that “No one wanted to work with her anymore,” but another said had helped “reorganize the department in a short period of time” and brought “strong analysis to the problems.” And despite DOGE’s record of disruptive change, hasty cuts, fecklessness, and conflicts of interest elsewhere, one former and one current defense official said its members at the Pentagon had a different relationship to their agency. At DOD, the DOGE office is led by Owen West, a former Marine and longtime defense policy expert, not a 19-year-old nicknamed “Big Balls.”  Riley earned an MSc in contemporary Chinese studies and a Ph.D in social policy at Oxford, then worked her way up to partner during eight years at McKinsey.  She had never worked for the government before January, according to her LinkedIn profile. But Riley has completed significant academic work related to China, which sources we spoke to highlighted as relevant. (She is also a military spouse.) At McKinsey, much of her work focused on helping the government address the challenge of too much bureaucracy, too low a risk tolerance, devotion to committee meetings, and other rigid structures that inhibit timely deployment of technology. Three current senior defense officials on background told Defense One in a note that they had full confidence in Riley and particularly the skills she had honed at McKinsey. They pointed out what numerous government reports have also highlighted, that persistent inefficiencies and layers of bureaucracy in Defense Department-led tech research, including time delays, sometimes caused more than a decade to field new capabilities. The Navy’s canceled $500 million electromagnetic railgun program is one example. The former defense official said that much of DOD’s work in fields like autonomy and artificial intelligence is simply a slower, more expensive version of what private tech firms already do, often better.  “There are entire enterprises within ONR that have never produced anything,” the official said. “They continue to be justified as part of the research enterprise, the kind of thing Anduril would love to stand up a division to deliver on tomorrow, and Silicon Valley would respond to by founding a whole new company.” A former military official who worked in drone research noted that billions of dollars going to research projects produces a fielded capability a fraction of the time. “That’s not a great model for the DoD.” They said some traditional defense contractors have built side businesses around research contracts that lack any requirement to deliver deployable systems quickly. Meanwhile, private capital is rapidly moving in. Venture-backed defense tech is already producing systems faster and cheaper, largely because much of the research is dual-use. In autonomy, for example, private-sector R&D is driving advances that have direct commercial applications, such as self-piloting cargo vessels. Venture capitalist Paul Madera made a similar point in December, writing, “Venture capitalists seem to be shifting their investment strategies toward so-called hard tech and deep tech opportunities: hardware products with high technical risk, versus software products with high market risk.” The former defense official said ONR devotes too little attention to development timelines, and to asking, “What’s commercially available?” New guidance from the defense secretary’s office echoes that point. Given those trends, the former official said, Riley’s experience is highly relevant. “The only way to prevent waste is strong leadership willing to say ‘no’ to projects and slaughter sacred cows,” the former defense official said. “And the Navy, with its federated holdover system, is really uncomfortable with that.” But Riley, and the new research and engineering leaders at the Pentagon, will also need to recognize that ONR funds research in areas that are crucial to national security yet unlikely to attract commercial R&D: high-level encryption, ocean climate science, marine geosciences, physical oceanography, marine biology, and more. As Congress cuts support to institutions like the National Science Foundation, the Defense Department has become a last refuge for high-risk, high-reward, strategically vital research. These are research areas that China prizes highly. But their future in the U.S. remains uncertain. Defense One was unable to reach Riley for comment. ]]

[Category: Science & Tech]

— The D Brief: Shutdown nears end; Allies limit intel-sharing over boat strikes; Price tag for US occupations; Marines want multiple prototypes; And a bit more.

 

at 11/12/25 9:11am

After nearly two months away from their jobs, House lawmakers are returning to vote on a deal to end the 43-day government shutdown, which is the longest in U.S. history. That vote is expected sometime this evening.  The deal, which advanced through the Senate Monday evening, would use a continuing resolution (PDF) to fund the Defense Department until Jan. 30. It will also unwind the more than 4,000 layoffs the Trump administration issued during the shutdown. Those reductions in force are currently paused by a federal court, Eric Katz of Government Executive reports.  Bigger picture: “[A]s the possibility of an end to the shutdown draws near, almost no one will be satisfied. Democrats didn’t get the health insurance provisions they demanded added to the spending deal,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday morning. “And Republicans, who control the levers of power in Washington, didn’t escape blame, according to polls and some state and local elections that went poorly for them.” ICYMI: Leaders from four of the military’s professional advocacy groups united to ask Congress to re-open the government, provide backpay to civilians who are looking at another missed paycheck, and pass legislation so that in the event of another shutdown, Defense Department civilians won’t be forced to work without pay, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reported Monday.  Despite House preparations to vote this evening, the services are looking at a long road to recovery. That’s in large part because the prospect of another CR to patch over a shut down means the services will have to pick and choose which missions to prioritize even more than usual. Read more, here.  Squeezed into that deal to end the shutdown: Funding for the Air Force’s new E-7 Wedgetail radar jet—despite the fact that the service wants to gut the program, Defense One’s Thomas Novelly reported Monday.  Background: The E-7 was pitched as a replacement for the service’s aging E-3 Sentry aircraft. Boeing and the Air Force reached an agreement last year for two test planes, to be delivered in 2028 for a substantial $2.6 billion. Those costs have risen by $884 million, according to a June Government Accountability Office report.  However, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told appropriators this summer that the E-7 was an example of a platform that was “not survivable in the modern battlefield or they dont give us an advantage in a future fight.” Additionally, defense officials this summer said the program was going to be cut “due to significant delays with cost increases.”   Expert reax: “If it passes, this is a big win for Boeing, and it shows that many in Congress still have doubts about how quickly the Space Force can deploy the AMTI system it funded in the reconciliation bill a few months ago,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the American Enterprise Institute think tank. “This is Congress hedging its bets on the airborne warning mission.” Continue reading, here.  Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. Around the Defense Department New: The British military has paused intelligence-sharing with the Pentagon regarding alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean region “because it does not want to be complicit in US military strikes and believes the attacks are illegal,” CNN reported Tuesday. The halt in sharing began “over a month ago,” British officials told Natasha Bertrand.  Notable: “Several boats hit by the US have either been stationary or were turning around when they were attacked, CNN has reported, undermining the [Trump] administration’s claim that they posed an imminent threat that could not be dealt with through interdiction and arrest.” Not just the Brits: Canada “has made clear to the US that it does not want its intelligence being used to help target boats for deadly strikes, the sources told CNN.”  And Colombia said it would stop sharing intel with the U.S. over the strikes, President Gustavo Petro announced Tuesday on social media. “Such a measure will be maintained as long as the missile attack on boats in the Caribbean persists. The fight against drugs must be subordinated to the human rights of the Caribbean people,” he wrote.  Britain’s MI5 is also annoyed with FBI chief Kash Patel, who reportedly went back on a pledge to keep a key liaison officer in London, the New York Times reported Monday. The report raised eyebrows among longtime intelligence watchers, who noted that disputes between the countries’ intel communities rarely emerge in public. On Sunday, the U.S. military attacked and destroyed two more alleged drug trafficking boats in the waters off Latin America, SecDef Hegseth announced on social media the following morning. “Both strikes were conducted in international waters and 3 male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All 6 were killed,” he said. “These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific,” Hegseth claimed.  Updated death toll: According to Hegseth and Trump, the U.S. military has killed at least 76 people in almost two dozen strikes since Sept. 2. The New York Times and Military Times are both maintaining a running log of these strikes (though the NYT is typically more up to date).  New: The USS Gerald R. Ford carrier is now in the Caribbean region after it was diverted out of the Mediterranean Sea and closer to Venezuela, U.S. Naval Institute News reported Tuesday. Ship spotters located it off the coast of Puerto Rico on Tuesday.  By the way: “Ford’s escorts include guided-missile destroyers USS Bainbridge (DDG-96), USS Mahan (DDG-72) and USS Winston Churchill (DDG-81),” USNI writes. There are already at least eight U.S. warships, a nuclear submarine and F-35 aircraft operating in the Caribbean region, Reuters reminds readers.  Related reading: “Venezuelan military preparing guerrilla response in case of US attack,” Reuters reported separately on Tuesday.  Update: ​​Trump’s military occupations of U.S. cities have cost nearly half a billion dollars so far, the Intercept reported Tuesday, citing estimates from the National Priorities Project and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.  The total includes “$172 million spent in Los Angeles, where troops arrived in June; almost $270 million for the occupation of Washington, D.C., which began in August; nearly $15 million for Portland, Oregon, which was announced in September; and more than $3 million for Memphis, Tennessee, and almost $13 million for Chicago, which both began last month,” Nick Turse writes.  Those costs could rise, too, considering Trump “has specifically threatened to surge troops into Baltimore, New York City, Oakland, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Seattle to put down supposed rebellions and to aid law enforcement agencies, despite falling crime numbers and pushback by local officials. Troops are also expected to be deployed to New Orleans later this month.” Read more, here.  Related: “Trump Administration Plans to Send Border Patrol to Charlotte and New Orleans,” the New York Times reported Tuesday.  Meanwhile in the Pacific region, just one prototype won’t cut it anymore, Marine Corps Forces Pacific commander Lt. Gen. Jim Glynn said during a keynote speech at the recent AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference in Hawaii. Glynn: “What we need is: when you come with it, don’t come with one with the intention to take it home with you, and all the data that was collected while we conducted an exercise together. Come with five. Take one or two home and leave three with us, and we’ll continue to work with it. We’ll give you access to all the data that’s coming off of it, and we’ll do everything we can to break it, with the goal of making it better.”  He cited the Joint Fires Network as an example, saying that it has evolved over the past five years from “the amalgamation of some prototypes” to a formal program. Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad has more from Honolulu, here.  Additional reading:  “Hegseth’s policies are pushing qualified women out of the military,” CNN reported Tuesday (paywall);  “Defense industry heaps praise on Hegseths weapons-buying reformation,” Axios reported Wednesday;  “BAE Systems says strong demand underpins profit outlook,” Reuters reported Tuesday;  And in emerging tech, “Scientists Created a Bulletproof Material 3 Times Stronger Than Kevlar—It’s Already Breaking Records,” Popular Mechanics reported Tuesday.  Middle East U.S., Saudi officials rush to finalize defense pact before MBS visits White House. The pact may include the sale of weapons, including F-35 jets, promised as part of a giant package in May. It might also include a U.S. security guarantee of the sort Trump extended to Qatar last month, though “would fall short of a legally binding defense treaty, which would be nearly impossible to pass through the Senate,” Axios wrote. U.S. and Saudi officials have also discussed Riyadh’s desire to normalize relations with Israel, but only if Jerusalem ends its opposition to a deadline for creating a Palestinian state. More, here. Next week’s visit will be the first to the U.S. by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since the 2018 murder and dismembering of journalist Adnan Khashoggi, a killing that MBS has called a “mistake” and which U.S. intelligence sources say he directed. The negotiations include Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who in 2020 launched a private equity firm with a reported $2 billion investment from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund controlled by MBS. Kushner has denied this represents a conflict of interest. Trump welcomed al-Qaeda leader-turned-Syrian president to the White House on Monday. New York Times: “The Syrian leader has been discreetly cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS and Al Qaeda since he took control of a slice of rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria in 2016, according to Syrian officials and Western diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol.” Read on, here. ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Funding for E-7 Wedgetail included in bipartisan deal to end 41-day government shutdown

 

at 11/10/25 5:16pm

Funding for the Air Force’s new E-7 Wedgetail radar jet was included in the bipartisan agreement on Sunday evening to end the longest-ever government shutdown—despite the fact that the military wants to gut the program. Tucked into the 31-page continuing resolution agreement that would fund the government through January is a nearly $200 million spending exception for “continued rapid prototyping activities to maintain program schedule and transition to production” of the Air Force’s E-7 program. Similar efforts to fund the early warning and control aircraft were included in versions of the National Defense Authorization Act and Defense Appropriations Act this summer, as well as a stopgap funding bill in September. “Other programs will be funded through January 30th, while the Senate and House continue work on the remainder of the year-long appropriations bills,” Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and Senate Appropriations Committee chair, said Sunday. “I look forward to voting for this legislation and ending the unnecessary harm to the security of our families and our nation.” While several procedural hurdles remain before Sunday’s agreement is finalized, the inclusion of the E-7 in the continuing resolution marks a win for Boeing, which makes the Wedgetail.  However, a company spokesperson declined to comment on the latest measure. The Air Force did not return a request for comment.  [[Related Posts]] The Congressional support for the radar plane more than 40 days into the government shutdown is at odds with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s criticism of the E-7’s survivability and the Air Force’s 2026 budget request axing funding for the program. While officials have pointed to investments in space-based capabilities for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance instead, defense experts said the inclusion of the Wedgetail shows lawmakers are concerned about the Space Force getting its Airborne Moving-Target Indication systems up and running quickly. “If it passes, this is a big win for Boeing, and it shows that many in Congress still have doubts about how quickly the Space Force can deploy the AMTI system it funded in the reconciliation bill a few months ago,” said Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the American Enterprise Institute think tank. “This is Congress hedging its bets on the airborne warning mission.” Hegseth told Congressional appropriators this summer that the E-7 was an example of a platform that was “not survivable in the modern battlefield or they dont give us an advantage in a future fight.” Additionally, defense officials this summer said the program was going to be cut “due to significant delays with cost increases.”  The E-7 was pitched as a replacement for the service’s aging E-3 Sentry aircraft. Boeing and the Air Force reached an agreement last year for two test planes, to be delivered in 2028 for a substantial $2.6 billion, the service previously announced. Those costs have risen by $884 million, a 33 percent increase, according to a June Government Accountability Office report.  In September, the British government announced that those two E-7 prototypes will be built in the United Kingdom.  ]]

[Category: Business]

— Just one prototype won’t cut it anymore, Pacific Marine commander tells industry

 

at 11/10/25 4:22pm

HONOLULU—The defense industry is producing some great gear, but just one prototype isn’t enough to truly test out something new, the commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific told an audience of tech company representatives. “What we need is: when you come with it, don’t come with one with the intention to take it home with you, and all the data that was collected while we conducted an exercise together,” Lt. Gen. Jim Glynn said during a keynote speech at AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific. “Come with five. Take one or two home and leave three with us, and we’ll continue to work with it. We’ll give you access to all the data that’s coming off of it, and we’ll do everything we can to break it, with the goal of making it better.” This type of experimentation and immediate feedback is critical because, Glynn said, “in this dynamic moment, we have to be ready to fight tonight. And we are going to fight with what we have, not what the acquisition system can get us five years from now.” Glynn cited the Joint Fires Network as an example, saying that it has evolved over the past five years from “the amalgamation of some prototypes” to a formal program. “Nine months ago, I had a colonel tell me, ‘But sir, that’s not a program of record.’ My response? I don’t care. It’s what we’re using. It’s what we’re going to have to use. We have to move at speed.” [[Related Posts]] In the Indo-Pacific in particular, he said, “we’re working in weeks and months, not years.” One of the most talked-about technologies in recent years is drones, and Glynn said the Marine Corps as a whole has an “energetic effort to use small unmanned systems.” But right now, he said, Marines are using those systems as one operator to one drone. They need to move to having one Marine able to control entire swarms of drones at once. “What we seek are, the ability for those unmanned systems to mesh themselves together,” he said. ]]

[Category: Business]

— Longest shutdown in history creating a readiness hole of unknown proportions

 

at 11/10/25 4:16pm

As the government shutdown heads into its seventh week, leaders from four of the military’s professional advocacy groups came together to call on Congress to re-open the government, provide backpay to civilians who are looking at another missed paycheck, and pass legislation so that in the event of another shutdown, Defense Department civilians won’t be forced to work without pay. As of Wednesday, the government will have been shut down for about 13 percent of the fiscal year. At a time when the Pentagon is “laser-focused” on lethality, the department is hemorrhaging readiness, with training and maintenance hours lost due to lack of funding. Even as the House prepares to vote on a Senate continuing resolution to at least get some money flowing again, the services are looking at a long road to recovery. “We get a CR, which doesn’t really let us catch up or exceed,” Burt Field, president of the Air and Space Forces Association, told reporters. “We’re in a never-ending spiral of not being able to get where you need to be.” Senior military leaders beat the drum against continuing resolutions every year, pleading with Congress for a full appropriations bill that lets them increase operations, training, and maintenance over the previous year. But the prospect of another CR to patch over more than a month shut down means the services will have to pick and choose which missions to prioritize even more than usual.  “You’ve only got so many days to do a certain window, and the missions dont stop,” said Les Smith, vice president for leadership and education at the Association of the U.S. Army. “So how we make sure you put those back on the schedule is important for each one of the missions that weve asked the service members to do.” [[Related Posts]] A National Guard unit is preparing to deploy at the beginning of 2026, Frank McGinn, the president of the National Guard Association of the United States, told reporters. But the dual-status technicians who do the maintenance for that unit aren’t able to get their equipment ready. “Its going to affect the timeliness of their impending deployment. So that just makes it more challenging,” he said. “The availability of ranges—theyre compressed to begin with anyway, especially from a reserve component, theres not as much availability. So you have a backlog there for training ranges and such.” The Guard has more than 30,000 of these dual-status technicians, who are technically civilians but are required to maintain active reserve military status in order to do their jobs. They haven’t been paid since the end of September. “We need to fix this. We need Congress to pass protections for our uniformed and technician personnel,” McGinn added. “Should we face a shutdown in the future, the stress and uncertainty of our people, families, and employers over the last six weeks can never happen again. Our people took an oath to uphold their duty. We call on Congress to do the same.” During previous shutdowns, Congress has passed emergency exceptions to keep Defense Department personnel paid. Advocacy groups are hoping that, should it happen again, there will be a law in place to make sure service members and military civilians receive their paychecks. But the Pay Our Troops Act, which was introduced on Sept. 16, hasn’t seen a vote.  “So you know, every day that the shutdown continues, it really kind of signals to those who volunteer that their service is conditional, so thats why we have to get this government back on target, get our folks paid and back on track,” said John Hashem, executive director of the Reserve Organization of America. There’s also concern that the uncertainty will cause DOD civilians to resign, Field said. However, that concern may not be shared by the current administration, since it has made whittling down the workforce one of its goals.  “If Congress has congressional duties to do and debates to have and arguments to win. Thats fine. Thats how their institution is built, and thats what they do,” Field added. “But they do not have to do that on the backs of service members, civilians, and their families. So they want to have these discussions and have these arguments and put their positions forward. Go ahead, but keep the government open while theyre doing it. Its as simple as that.” ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Senate moves on shutdown deal that would fund DOD by CR until Jan. 30

 

at 11/10/25 8:52am

The Senate on Sunday took a first step toward ending the longest-ever government shutdown, clearing a procedural hurdle to approve a package that would keep agencies funded through at least January and walk back thousands of federal employee layoffs.  The agreement came together on the shutdown’s 40th day and would approve full-year appropriations for the Veterans Affairs Department, Agriculture Department and the legislative branch. All other agencies would operate at their fiscal 2025 levels under a continuing resolution that would expire after Jan. 30.  Most Democrats still voted against the deal as it will not take any affirmative step to abate health care premium increases for millions of Americans next year, the key demand that led to the shutdown in the first place. Still, a sufficient number of Senate Democrats joined nearly all Republicans to approve the bill after stating the funding lapse was hurting too many people for it to continue. The upper chamber must still take additional votes to send the measure to the House, though the bill could wind up on President Trump’s desk later this week.  In one concession to Democrats, the bill will unwind the more than 4,000 layoffs the Trump administration issued during the shutdown. Those reductions in force are currently paused by a federal court. The court injunction applies to the duration of the shutdown and the Trump administration mostly had not indicated whether it would seek to move forward with the RIFs after the government reopens. In the interim, the employees remain on the rolls in a paid leave status. Some agencies, such as the Interior Department, have suggested the shutdown had no bearing on their layoffs plans. The legislation would ban all agencies from carrying out any RIFs through January. The package of three full-year funding bills would largely reject funding cuts proposed by President Trump, particularly those within USDA.   The measure will also ensure the Trump administration follows a 2019 law that guarantees back pay for all federal workers furloughed during the shutdown, something the White House had suggested it would not do. Those who worked during the shutdown are also guaranteed retroactive pay.  Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he voted for the bill in part to protect federal employees, though his state counterpart, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., voted against it.  “This legislation will protect federal workers from baseless firings, reinstate those who have been wrongfully terminated during the shutdown, and ensure federal workers receive back pay, as required by a law I got passed in 2019,” Kaine said. “Thats a critical step that will help federal employees and all Americans who rely on government services.” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who also represents one of the largest shares of federal workers, voted against the measure despite pleading to continue fighting for civil servants.  “I am prepared to work toward a compromise, but this funding bill before us tonight does not come close to meeting those terms,” Van Hollen said, adding the measure failed to prevent the Trump administration from “ignoring the law and withholding funds for important priorities.”  Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., announced on Sunday that as part of the deal he will allow a vote in December on continuing Affordable Care Act subsidies. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has not made the same promise. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— The D Brief: Acquisition reforms; SecDef’s purge; Army’s million-drone plans; Shutdown deal?; And a bit more.

 

at 11/10/25 8:40am

SecDef Hegseth’s message to defense-industry executives: Move faster and invest more, or we just might make you. President Trump’s Pentagon chief spoke for more than an hour to a packed auditorium at the National War College on Friday, a gathering Hegseth himself described as an opportunity to look those very executives “in the eye.” Chief takeaways: Hegseth unveiled a slew of policy changes intended to replace his department’s Cold War-era acquisition processes with ones that value speed over rigid requirements. But perhaps most notably, he told defense companies to put more of their own money into developing military technology, or take their business elsewhere, Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reported from Fort McNair in southwest Washington, D.C.  SecDef: “We commit to doing our part, but industry also needs to be willing to invest their own dollars to meet the long-term demand signals provided to them. Industry must use capital expenditures to upgrade facilities, upskill their workforce, and expand capacity. If they dont, we are prepared to fully employ and leverage the many authorities provided to the president which ensure that the department can secure from industry anything and everything that is required to fight and win our nations wars,” Hegseth said, and vowed to his audience, “Were going to make defense contracting competitive again.” The speech drew largely from a draft memo about the changes that circulated last week. More about that, here. Expert reax: “Their first response is going to be hiring a whole ton of K Street people to lobby Congress to point out the problems with this process, which is, were going to take a lot more risk and a lot more things will fail,” said Steve Blank, a professor and co-founder of Stanford Universitys Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation.  Professor Blank called the speech a death knell for the Pentagon’s existing acquisition system. “The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed,” he said, and added that he expects major defense contractors to push back against the new efforts.  However, the speech seemed well received among defense tech founders, executives, and investors, Williams reports. “It is a vindication of our thesis that America needs an acquisition system focused on meritocracy and transparency,” one attendee said. Read more, here.  Related reading: Sen. Elizabeth Warren “challenges [the] defense industry on right-to-repair opposition as funding talks continue,” Reuters reported Monday.  And more broadly across the Defense Department, “Hegseth Is Purging Military Leaders With Little Explanation,” three New York Times correspondents reported Friday. That includes about two dozen generals and admirals in just nine months. “The utter unpredictability of Mr. Hegseth’s moves, as described in interviews with 20 current and former military officials, has created an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust that has forced senior officers to take sides and, at times, pitted them against one another,” the reporters write.  Coverage continues below… Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. The Associated Press reports that on this day in 1898, an estimated “2,000 white supremacists killed dozens of African Americans, burned Black-owned businesses and forced the mayor, police chief and aldermen to resign at gunpoint, before installing their own mayor and city council in what became known as the ‘Wilmington Coup.’” Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll wants the service to buy one million small drones over a two- to three-year period, Reuters reported Friday, calling the development a “major ramp-up” for the Army’s acquisition plans.  Notable: The Army “acquires only about 50,000 drones annually today,” which helps indicate the scale of Driscoll’s challenge. For some added perspective, “Ukraine and Russia each produce roughly 4 million drones a year,” Reuters writes.  Driscoll: “We expect to purchase at least a million drones within the next two to three years. And we expect that at the end of one or two years from today, we will know that in a moment of conflict, we will be able to activate a supply chain that is robust enough and deep enough” to expand based on the threat. ICYMI: The Army launched a drone-centric pilot program called “SkyFoundry,” which is intended to accelerate work with private industry. “This concept will stimulate the U.S. drone industry, support American manufacturing, increase access to rare earth materials, produce low-cost components and ultimately deliver drones for immediate needs to the Army,” a service spokesman told Military Times, reporting Friday as well. “Some drones will be expendable as if they’re munitions, others will be durable, but not meant to last forever,” the spokesman said. Read more, here.  Analysis: As drones proliferate across the Army, Defense One’s Tom Novelly asks, will a new approach to flight school help the service’s pilots transition?  Background: The Army has said it will will cut 6,500 of its 30,000 active-duty aviation-community soldiers over the next two years, mostly by removing one aerial cavalry squadron from each active-duty combat aviation brigade, as part of the effort to build “a leaner, more lethal force.”  The rub: Current Army aviators are trying their best to stay optimistic, but fear that decades-worth of experience will be lost in the culling. But the Army doesn’t just want fewer pilots, it wants better-qualified ones; and its looking to the defense industry for a solution.  That includes turning its longtime entry-level helicopter education into a new contractor-owned and -operated model called Flight School Next. Officials and contractors said the new model will offer a simplified approach to training, develop better aviator skills, and save money by taking helicopters, instructors, and maintenance out of the service’s hands. Continue reading, here.  Related reading: “UK sends defence equipment to help Belgium deal with disruptive drones,” Reuters reported Sunday from London.  In the Pacific region, the U.S. Army is amid a rapid modernization effort called Transformation in Contact, and several of the units created or chosen to test new technology and concepts are part of U.S. Army Pacific, Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad reported Friday from the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference in Honolulu. According to USARPAC’s commander, the greatest risk the Army has in the Indo-Pacific region is “being late” when a crisis or conflict emerges, out of position, not fast enough, “or even worse, doing nothing at all,” Gen. Ronald Clark told the conference audience. “So as leaders, we have to become comfortable with failing fast, iterating quickly, and developing better solutions,” he said. Read the rest, here.  And in new podcasts, a former senior director at the National Security Council joined us to discuss what the new film “A House of Dynamite” got right and wrong on U.S. missile defense and nuclear command and control. Jon Wolfsthal, director of Global Risk at the Federation of American Scientists, shared some of his experiences as special assistant to President Obama, where he was responsible for things like nuclear arms control and policy at the NSC. Find that conversation on our website, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.  And ICYMI ahead of Veterans Day, we recently spoke with historian David Nasaw who just published a new history of American World War II veterans and their often tortured journeys back to normalcy in his book, “The Wounded Generation.” You can find that conversation on our website as well, here.  Trump 2.0 Developing: The Senate on Sunday took a first step toward ending the longest-ever government shutdown, clearing a procedural hurdle to approve a package that would keep agencies funded through at least January and walk back thousands of federal employee layoffs. The agreement would approve full-year appropriations for the Veterans Affairs Department, Agriculture Department and the legislative branch. All other agencies would operate at their fiscal 2025 levels under a continuing resolution that would expire after Jan. 30, Eric Katz of Government Executive reports. Next: The Senate must still take additional votes to send the measure to the House, though the bill could wind up on President Trump’s desk later this week. Read more, here.   Happening today: A federal judge is set to hear a legal challenge to West Virginia National Guard troops’ deployment to Washington, D.C., in August. That deployment came in response to the president’s orders when he offered false and exaggerated crime statistics to justify soldiers on the streets amid his takeover of the D.C. police force. Quick summary of the case: “A civic organization called the West Virginia Citizen Action Group says in a lawsuit that Gov. Patrick Morrisey exceeded his authority by deploying up to 300 Guard members to Washington, D.C.,” AP reports. “Under state law, the group argues, the governor may deploy the National Guard out of state only for certain purposes, such as responding to a natural disaster or another state’s emergency request.” For his part, “Morrisey’s office has argued the deployment was authorized under federal law.”  Related: “In an encrypted group chat, National Guard members question Trump deployments,” NPR reported Monday.  And lastly: A federal judge is stepping down after warning this Trump administration poses an “existential threat to democracy” because, in part, he warns the president is “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment,” District Court Judge Mark Wolf wrote in an op-ed published Sunday at The Atlantic. Why speak out? “I hope to be a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people,” he told the New York Times this weekend. “The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out,” Wolf wrote in his essay, stressing for his readers, “Silence, for me, is now intolerable.” He added in a warning to Times readers, “Americans proudly say that we live in the longest-lived democracy in the world. But that should teach us that all the others failed.” Read more in his essay (gift link), here. Additional reading:  “The Heritage Foundation goes from MAGA to MEGA—Make Europe Great Again,” Politico reported Sunday;  “Trump pardons Giuliani, 76 others accused of bid to overturn 2020 election,” Axios reported Monday;  “‘Mega detention centers’: ICE considers buying large warehouses to hold immigrants,” NBC News reported Friday;  “F.B.I. Director Is Said to Have Made a Pledge to Head of MI5, Then Broken It,” the New York Times reported Monday from London;  And “A far-right German activist is seeking political asylum in the US, arguing she is being persecuted at home,” Semafor reported Monday.  Reminder: Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and we tip our hat to those who served. So enjoy the federal holiday for those marking the occasion. And we’ll see you again on Wednesday! ]]

[Category: Threats]

— As drones proliferate, Army pilots worry about their future. Will a new approach to flight school help?

 

at 11/9/25 12:18pm

“We’re cooked,” one Army aviator said recently, describing the reactions of fellow students at the service’s helicopter flight school to Sikorsky’s new uncrewed Black Hawk. “Why are we even doing this, for real?” As the Army races to realize the promise of unmanned aircraft—more platforms, more flexibility, less risk to aircrew—it is shrinking the units that fly and maintain the helicopters that have long been central to the service’s way of war. Some pilots worry that their careers and expertise will be lost in the transition, even as some express optimism that the Army’s new contractor-run training approach will make tomorrow’s smaller aviation community better than ever. The Army has said it will will cut 6,500 of its 30,000 active-duty aviation-community soldiers over the next two years, mostly by removing one aerial cavalry squadron from each active-duty combat aviation brigade, as part of the effort to build “a leaner, more lethal force by infusing technology, cutting obsolete systems,” as Secretary Dan Driscoll and the service’s top uniformed leader Gen. Randy George put it in a May 1 letter. Panels are already scrutinizing the skills of pilots and other aircrew, some of whom may choose to leave their jobs, Maj. Gen. Clair Gil, who leads the service’s flight school, told reporters at the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., last month. At the same time, Sikorsky isn’t slowing down. The defense company announced last week it taught an enlisted soldier, not a pilot, how to fly one of its autonomous helicopters. The sergeant oversaw the software-flown helicopter’s more than 70-nautical-mile cargo mission from a tablet. It took him less than an hour to learn the program. Current Army aviators are trying their best to stay optimistic, but fear that decades-worth of experience will be lost in the culling. “I’d like to believe the future won’t include completely offloading aerial resupply and air assault missions to unmanned aircraft, but maybe that’s my bias,” the aviator said in a message. “I think the bigger challenge is integrating technology (inevitable) to reduce risk to soldiers without losing the generational knowledge required to fly these complex systems.” But the Army doesn’t just want fewer pilots, it wants better-qualified ones; and its looking to the defense industry for a solution. The service plans to turn its longtime entry-level helicopter education into a new contractor-owned and -operated model called Flight School Next. Officials and contractors said the new model will offer a simplified approach to training, develop better aviator skills, and save money by taking helicopters, instructors, and maintenance out of the service’s hands. While some current and former pilots are skeptical about the Army’s broader aviation strategy, they viewed a flight-school revamp as a much-needed opportunity for the military to reinvest in its future aviators and make training more efficient and competitive. “When you have our current experience to compare it to, you have to imagine that theres a better way,” the aviator said. “The Army has a reputation for saying ‘Hey, if we need 1,000 pilots, sure as shit, youre going to give me 1,000 pilots.’ But are those all pilots that we want to be walking across the graduation stage with? I can tell you, on a personal level, that I dont feel that right now.” Keeping it simple The deadly Jan. 29 collision of an Army UH-60 Black Hawk and a commercial airliner outside Washington, D.C., further increased scrutiny on pilots amid rising mishap rates.   There were 17 class-A mishaps, the term for the service’s deadliest and costliest incidents, in fiscal year 2024 alone—the most the service has seen since 2007. Army leaders have repeatedly said declining aviator skills has been a factor. “One of the things that weve noticed over the last couple years is our accident trends are moving in the wrong direction,” Gil said, saying senior leaders identified shortcomings among some aviators and told him, “‘We have a very talented population thats coming out. Theyre inexperienced, theyre very good at systems operations. Theyre not very good at flying fundamentals.’” He said that’s partly because the helicopter used to train new Army pilots since 2015—the twin-engine Airbus UH-72 Lakota—doesn’t allow aviators to practice certain techniques.  “Were looking at single-engine trainers. Those are aircraft that weve flown in flight school for years before we went to the current UH-72. Where we trained maneuvers like auto-rotations and things we call stuck-pedal or anti-torque maneuvers—things that we dont train in a dual-engine aircraft. This is going to give us an opportunity to go back to that,” Gil said at AUSA.  And, he added: “A single-engine, two-bladed aircraft is going to be fundamentally cheaper to operate than a twin-engine, four-bladed aircraft.” Defense companies have been eager to pitch their ideas for Flight School Next. Leonardo and Boeing are teaming up to offer a “turnkey, innovative approach” using Leonardo’s AW119T training helicopter and Boeing’s experience with the AH-64 Apache. Defense contractor Bell has pitched its single-engine 505 helicopter and the expert instructors at its Bell Training Academy in Fort Worth, Texas, as a possible solution. “Not only do we believe we have the right aircraft for this program…but also Bell has been training pilots, including Army pilots, for a long, long time. We trained the first Army pilots in 1946,” Matthew Dorram, capture lead for Flight School Next for Bell, said in an interview on the sidelines of AUSA. Several contractors are reportedly vying for the contract with single-engine training helicopters, including MD Helicopters, Enstrom, and at least two teams, including Boeing and Leonardo and Robinson and M1 Support Services. Airbus, who is also making an offer for the new contract, has defended its UH-72 Lakota helicopters from the Army’s criticisms, saying its stability and autopilot features can be easily toggled off for a more rigorous training experience. “With its unmatched safety record, superior training versatility, the UH-72A Lakota remains the premier platform for preparing America’s next generation of Army aviators,” the company said in a July statement. Lowering costs, raising morale Problems with the Army’s training system are perhaps exemplified by the recent news that maintenance woes will extend new aviators’ required decade of service to 12 years or even more. In July, Army officials announced that flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, was moving slowly, “largely due to maintenance challenges with the AH-64 Apache helicopter.” Flight school students from the 2023 group were still waiting to finish their courses while the Army Aviation Center of Excellence was waiting to receive the class of 2026. Instead of starting the 10-year service clock after graduating flight school, officials announced they were moving it forward to begin after completion of Initial Entry Rotary Wing training. “This means it may be over two years before some students graduate flight school, so their 10-year ADSO grows to 12 or 12 and a half years, at no fault of the soldier,” said Kenneth Hawley, the center’s organization and personnel force development director, in the news release. It’s hard to keep spirits high when training pilots are grounded, the Army aviator said.  “The sentiment broadly among current flight school students right now is that flight school is dealing with a multitude of maintenance, timing, and aircraft issues,” the aviator said. “Morale, specifically in the Apache course, is rock-bottom.” Older veterans, like Dan McClinton, have also seen concerning trends in Army flight school. The retired Apache pilot and 1987 flight school attendee said the Army made poor choices with helicopter training in the past, speculating the service was prioritizing costs, not quality. “Theres always a desire to do more with less, because its a money game,” McClinton said, but added he seemed less worried about the cost-savings angle of Flight School Next.  “Its not like theyre doing that solely for the reason to save money, it just happens to save money,” McClinton said. “Because if the Army had to buy all those helicopters, obviously the cost would be a lot more. So, theyre putting that on the contractor.” While both McClinton and the Army aviator in flight school remained optimistic about changes to flight school, they expressed some skepticism about the Army’s inevitable pivot to unmanned systems. “I understand, you know, technology is changing and Im fully on board with trying to take advantage of technology when you can, but I am concerned that they may be going too far, too fast,” McClinton said.  At AUSA, Boeing announced it was designing a tiltrotor drone wingman concept to support the Army’s helicopter fleet, with company officials saying it comes as service leaders evolve the Apache’s role in battle. Unmanned technology will evolve. But until they’re fully replaced, Army aviators say they’re focusing on becoming the best pilots the service still, hopefully, needs. “It’s a really interesting time,” the aviator said. “We will look back at this year for Army aviation and think of it as a really pivotal time in the future of this transformation that were in the midst of. Because, at the same time that we are focusing on those unmanned systems and we recognize the value they’re playing in the modern battlefield, were still trying to provide good, extensive training for the pilots that we have.” Correction: An error in the name of M1 Support Services appeared in an earlier version of this report. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— Unveiling acquisition overhaul, Hegseth tells industry to get with the program

 

at 11/7/25 8:23pm

FORT MCNAIR—Move faster and invest more, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told hundreds of defense-industry executives on Friday—or we just might make you.  Hegseth, who spoke for more than an hour to a packed auditorium at the National War College, formally unveiled a slew of policy changes intended to replace his department’s Cold War-era acquisition processes with ones that value speed over rigid requirements. The secretary described the gathering as an opportunity to look executives “in the eye.” “We commit to doing our part, but industry also needs to be willing to invest their own dollars to meet the long-term demand signals provided to them. Industry must use capital expenditures to upgrade facilities, upskill their workforce, and expand capacity. If they dont, we are prepared to fully employ and leverage the many authorities provided to the president which ensure that the department can secure from industry anything and everything that is required to fight and win our nations wars,” Hegseth said. In the wake of the speech, Hegseth’s office released a trio of memos: one to order the renaming and transformation of the Defense Acquisition System into the Warfighting Acquisition System; another ordering an overhaul of the joint requirements process; and a third focused on streamlining foreign military sales.   The Pentagon chief told defense companies to put more of their own money into developing military technology—or take their business elsewhere. “You must invest in yourselves rather than saddling taxpayers with every cost. For those who come along with us, this will be a great growth opportunity, and you will benefit. To industry not willing to assume risk in order to work with the military, we may have to wish you well in your future endeavors—which would probably be outside the Pentagon,” he said. “Were going to make defense contracting competitive again.” [[Related Posts]] Steve Blank, a professor and co-founder of Stanford Universitys Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, called the speech a death knell for the Pentagon’s existing acquisition system—“the Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed.” And he expects major defense contractors to push back against it. “Their first response is going to be hiring a whole ton of K Street people to lobby Congress to point out the problems with this process, which is, were going to take a lot more risk and a lot more things will fail,” Blank told Defense One after the speech. “So this really forces primes, if they dont want to hire lobbyists, to change their business model. And the problem is their business model is predicated on a system thats no longer sustainable.” Blank said Hegseth’s emphasis on speed and commercial technology will see traditional defense prime contractors pushed more than ever to compete with “startups banging on your door. Boy, the direction to me sounded pretty clear: that were going to people who have stuff that could be delivered cheaply and quickly.”  In his speech, Hegseth called out symptoms that ail the Pentagon’s acquisition system.  “These changes will move us from the current prime contractor-dominated system defined by limited competition, vendor lock, cost-plus contracts, stressed budgets, and frustrating protests, to a future powered by a dynamic vendor space that accelerates production by combining investment at a commercial pace with the uniquely American ability to scale quickly,” he said. The projected shift from cost-plus contracts, which allow for increases as a result of delays or unforeseen expenses to more fixed-price contracts, where work has to get done at a certain price, began in the Obama administration. Studies have since suggested that fixed-price can be better for production contracts, while cost-plus may be more appropriate for development work. But fixed-price contracts can bring their own woes. Boeing says they are partially to blame for delays to new presidential jets. Northrop Grumman’s CEO has said they don’t make sense in development work.  In introductory remarks before Hegseth’s speech, Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg said the Pentagon and “our contractors need to change and do better” but “those who don’t and resist it will be done.”  Hegseth’s speech seemed well received among defense tech founders, executives, and investors. One attendee told Defense One after the speech that prime contractors should take Pentagon leaders at their word.  “It is a vindication of our thesis that America needs an acquisition system focused on meritocracy and transparency,” the expert said.  The directive to buy commercial first doesn’t just mean off-the-shelf, it means changing the contracting process to value metrics and speed, which could mean more fixed-price contracts with milestones for production, they said.  Arms exports Beyond buying and producing weapons systems faster, Hegseth spent a chunk of his speech talking about improving the foreign military sales process. “Believe me, I hear about this on every foreign trip. And every conversation I have with every president, prime minister, and minister of defense is, ‘What is wrong with your foreign military sales? We ordered it in 2014; its 2025 and its scheduled to deliver in 2032.’ And I sit there going, ‘I dont know, what the hell?’ We didnt break it, but were going to fix it,” he said.  “Not only are foreign military sales and defense commercial sales important to our American industrial base, but theyre also critical to our strategic vision on the global landscape…and to accomplish this, our allies and partners must be armed with the best and most interoperable weapons systems in the world. Foreign military sales allow our warfighters to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies.”  One of the Nov. 7 memos orders the organizations that handle foreign military sales—the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and Defense Technology Security Administration—to be moved from the Pentagon’s policy shop to its acquisition shop.  The new focus on “burden sharing” and being a better customer to allies and partners is “refreshing,” said Jerry McGinn, who leads the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ industrial base division. “The strong endorsement of the importance of allies and partners, it allows more overall industrial capacity. And so I think thats a good thing,” McGinn  said, noting that Denmark had recently canceled its order of U.S. Patriot missiles.  “They werent going to be able to get Patriots for at least five years because of the backlog in production. So, doing better on that will be better overall because youll have allies buying stuff thats compatible with ours—and its good for overall capacity, good for the industrial base,” he said. Implementing all this will take money and people, he said. “Ive been calling to have our industrial base on more of a ‘war footing’ for some time. And these are the kind of measures that you would have to take to do that. So follow through is going to be the key,” McGinn said. “And then the question is resourcing. Because some of this is…is going to require a lot of attention and some additional resources.”  ]]

[Category: Business]

— Pacific soldiers push forward with transformation, with an eye on China

 

at 11/7/25 2:10pm

HONOLULU—The greatest risk the Army has in the Indo-Pacific region is inaction—“being late” when a crisis or conflict emerges, out of position, not fast enough, “or even worse, doing nothing at all,” said U.S. Army Pacific commander Gen. Ronald Clark. The command is the “Army’s innovation testbed,” Clark said, and continuous transformation is imperative. “So as leaders, we have to become comfortable with failing fast, iterating quickly, and developing better solutions,” he told an audience of defense industry representatives and troops at the AFCEA TechNet Indo-Pacific conference. The Army is amid a rapid modernization effort called Transformation in Contact, and several of the units created or chosen to test new technology and concepts are part of USARPAC. The command has also “embraced AI to shorten workflows and enhance the speed and efficiency at which we think, learn, and work,” the general said. As soldiers walked through the keynote area holding drones, Clark said the command is “at the forefront of testing new systems and processes that are driving the formation of an Army unified network based on zero trust principles, and we’re innovating with unmanned aerial systems.” A drone was originally supposed to fly over the audience during the event, Clark explained, but the buzzing sound it makes “scares the crap out of everyone.” [[Related Posts]] In an interview with Defense One earlier this year, Clark explained what he sees as the two major challenges for the Army in the region: the “tyranny of distance,” and the “increasingly aggressive, belligerent, and coercive” actions of the Chinese. “It’s not just about the Taiwan Strait,” Clark said. “It’s across the region, in multiple areas, where the [People’s Liberation Army] is threatening the sovereignty of our treaty allies and partners, so our ability to be ready to respond to crisis through our activities as we operate in the theater—it’s important that we’re in the right place, at the right time, with the right capabilities to not just match that threat, but to deter.” Deterrence, he said at TechNet, “is our highest duty and the cornerstone of our strategy in the Indo-Pacific.…We know that the cost of failure is too damn high, and we owe it to our soldiers and their families and our allies and partners…to be prepared for any challenge.” ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Defense One Radio, Ep. 198: Jon Wolfsthal and “A House of Dynamite”

 

at 11/7/25 1:34pm

Apple Podcasts Guest: Jon Wolfsthal, Director of Global Risk at the Federation of American Scientists. ]]

[Category: Threats]

As of 11/15/25 2:29am. Last new 11/14/25 1:09pm.