The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, in an announcement last week warned the watches may contain malware, potentially granting whoever sent the peripherals “access to saved data to include banking information, contacts, and account information such as usernames and passwords.”

A more innocuous tactic may also be to blame: so-called brushing, used in e-commerce to boost a seller’s ratings through fake orders and reviews.

The CID, an independent federal law enforcement agency consisting of thousands of personnel, did not say exactly how many smartwatches were so far distributed.

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

Wearable tech and downloadable applications have long clashed with the national security ecosystem, where secrecy is paramount. Smartwatches and their software log personal info and location data, can record audio and often lack a sufficient means to validate users.

The New York Times in 2018 reported that Strava, a fitness app that posts a map of user activity, unwittingly revealed locations and habits of military bases and personnel, including those of American forces in the Middle East. And in 2020, Bellingcat reported military and intelligence personnel could be tracked via Untappd, a beer-rating social network.

The investigation division said troops that receive a smartwatch unsolicited should not turn the device on and should instead report the matter to a counterintelligence or security official.

The bill is the first of three major defense bills Congress expects to move forward in less than three days. The Armed Services Committee voted in favor of the bill 58-1 after 14 hours of debate, setting the stage for the full House to vote in July before negotiating final legislation with the Senate. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., was the lone no vote.

“It is a good bill that will strengthen our national defense and provide for our warfighters,” House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said at the beginning of the mark up on Wednesday. “It will help build the ready, capable and lethal fighting force we need to deter China and our other adversaries.”

Still, Rogers and other Republican defense hawks previously have criticized the $886 billion defense top line as “inadequate” because it doesn’t keep pace with inflation. The top line is up 3.3% from last year, and is locked in place after Congress negotiated a deal to raise the debt ceiling while cutting non-defense spending to $704 billion.

Rogers has joined Senate Republicans in calling for Congress to circumvent the debt limit deal’s defense spending caps through supplemental spending packages for the Pentagon later this year, though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has resisted that idea.

Ukraine and Taiwan

The Armed Services Committee used electronic voting for the first time this year to mark up the defense authorization bill and more than 800 amendments, allowing lawmakers to move through the marathon session slightly faster than in prior years.

The amendments included a provision from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that would establish an independent inspector general to oversee Ukraine aid, similar to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan. Republicans have called for this measure to provide an additional layer of Ukraine aid oversight beyond the Pentagon Inspector General. The committee approved the Ukraine inspector general as part of a package of nonpartisan amendments adopted by voice vote.

Democrats unsuccessfully sought to add $500 million to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative beyond the $300 million the Biden administration requested. Republicans argued the boost would harm readiness, with Rogers noting the offset “robs just about every operations and maintenance account in existence.” The proposed increase, introduced by Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, failed in a 28-31 party-line vote.

The bill stipulates that $80 billion of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funds it provides should go toward giving Kyiv long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, which the Biden administration has so far refused to send.

Additionally, the bill includes some bipartisan recommendations advanced by the House China Committee last month, including an amendment from China Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., requiring the Defense Department to collaborate with Taiwan on cybersecurity.

Republicans passed 31-28 another China provision introduced by Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, over Democratic objections. That amendment requires the Pentagon to submit a report on plans to blockade fuel shipments to China in the event of a conflict. Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, deemed the provision too aggressive and argued the Pentagon likely has classified plans for this scenario already.

Procurement

The bill authorizes procurement of nine battle force ships: two Virginia-class submarines, one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, two Arleigh Burke destroyers, two guided missile frigates, one T-AO fleet oiler and one amphibious transport dock ship.

The Navy did not request the amphibious ship, but the Marine Corps asked for $1.7 billion in its unfunded priority list to finish buying it.

The Armed Services Committee sided with the Marines, arguing the Pentagon’s plans to pause the line would allow the amphibious fleet to drop below the statutory 31-ship requirement. These ships are usually purchased every other year, but an amendment added by sea power subcommittee Chairman Trent Kelly, R-Miss., would authorize incremental funding through FY25 to allow the Defense Department to begin contracting and procuring the next amphibious transport dock in FY24.

Republicans also cited the Pentagon’s decision to pause buying amphibious ships as part of their justification for a provision in the bill that would abolish the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation Office and move its duties elsewhere, accusing the office of slowing down the acquisition process.

Lawmakers said the proposed pause could upend workforce and supply chains when Congress is focused on bolstering the shipbuilding industrial base. The bill also invests $251 million in the submarine industrial base in the hopes of getting it on track to build two Virginia-class and one Columbia-class submarines per year.

Republicans also passed an amendment from Strategic Forces subcommittee Chairman Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., that would institutionalize the sea-launched cruise missile nuclear program, while allocating nearly $196 million for its research and development in FY24. Democrats said instating the program would cost at least $31 billion and fundamentally change the mission of attack submarines.

But Lamborn failed to secure enough support to undo Rogers’ provision barring construction at the temporary Space Command headquarters in his Colorado district until Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall makes a long overdue final basing decision and justifies it to Congress. Lamborn withdrew the amendment in the face of opposition from Rogers and two other Alabama lawmakers on the committee, who want the Air Force to place the headquarters in Huntsville.

The bill would thwart Navy efforts to retire three amphibious ships and two cruisers, but it would allow the Air Force to retire 42 A-10 Warthog attack planes after long blocking efforts to do so. And the committee added by voice vote an amendment from Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., to prevent the retirement of Air National Guard squadrons until six months after Congress receives a report on how to fill the gap.

The countries unveiled the India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem, dubbed INDUS-X, during a June 21 summit hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The effort provides a pathway to funnel technology developed by startups and other commercial companies into U.S. and Indian defense agencies.

The announcement comes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the U.S. this week, seeking to strengthen ties between the two countries.

“INDUS-X provides a mechanism to drive change,” Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Radha Iyengar Plumb said during a speech at the summit. “This forum can leverage not only government-to-government collaboration, but also robust and dynamic private sectors in both countries. . . . Fundamentally, it’s all about forming connections between our innovators and entrepreneurs.”

The Indian Ministry of Defense’s Innovations for Defense Excellence organization and the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon are leading the initiative.

India’s MoD has set a goal of increasing its annual exports to $5 billion by 2025, and the agency views co-development and co-production with the U.S. as one means for achieving that target. The U.S., meanwhile, wants to strengthen relationships in the Indo-Pacific region and views the country as a key partner.

The creation of INDUS-X is one of several joint technology initiatives between the two nations in recent years. Last year, President Biden and Modi announced the creation of the U.S.-India Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology, under which the leaders agreed to cooperate on their development of high-need defense technologies.

In April, India’s Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed an agreement to share space domain awareness data and made plans for more space information exchanges this year.

Earlier this month, the two countries established a joint roadmap that identifies five high-priority opportunities for cooperation – air combat, ISR, logistics, undersea domain awareness and munitions. As part of that roadmap, leaders agreed to work together to address policy and industrial base concerns “of mutual interest” and to seek to make India a logistics hub for the U.S. and other partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

Within INDUS-X, the two military departments will establish mentor-protégé opportunities between U.S. and Indian defense firms and startups, Plumb noted.

“These connections will help enable the production of Indian-built components that can expedite some of the [foreign military sales], and they will also support diversification in both nations’ industrial bases, while signaling enduring investments in the startup firms,” she said.

Along with partnerships between startups of established defense companies, the initiative also seeks to create “pipelines” between those companies and research and development organizations and universities.

INDUS-X will also create an accelerator program for defense industry newcomers and establish partnerships between academia and industry. Further, India and the U.S. will “explore options” to co-fund support for deep-tech defense startups, whether through public-private partnerships or through connecting companies with venture capital firms and investors in India.

“Not only will this stimulate direct investment into promising technologies and ideas, but it will also create a network to share best practices on leveraging private capital to support production at scale for critical military capabilities,” Plumb said.

INDUS-X also provides a venue for the countries to work through barriers policy barriers like U.S. export control laws and identify “concrete areas of change” to address those bureaucratic hurdles, she said.

Plumb and other DoD officials, including Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, emphasized during the summit that the relationship between the U.S. and India is built on “shared values” of peace and security in the Indo-Pacific and a “free and open region.”

Those comments come as human rights organizations highlight growing concern about press freedom in India. Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders have cited multiple incidents of media suppression in recent years.

Last month, Indian authorities arrested longtime Defense News correspondent Vivek Raghuvanshi and accused him of espionage. Leadership at Sightline Media Group, which publishes Defense News, said they have not seen evidence to substantiate the charges.

Jaime Moore-Carillo contributed to this report.

Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., in a bid to pressure Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to make a long overdue basing decision for Space Command’s permanent headquarters, included in the legislation a prohibition on additional construction at the provisional facility in Colorado Springs.

More than two years ago, the Air Force announced Huntsville, Alabama would serve as the new location for Space Command headquarters.

But Republican Doug Lamborn, who represents the Colorado district where the temporary headquarters is located, on Wednesday sought to partially undo the provision.

“It harms our national security,” said Lamborn. “It freezes funding for any U.S. Space Command construction projects no matter how necessary. Should this become law, this provision would prohibit even minor improvements necessary for national security.”

Rogers was quick to criticize Lamborn’s amendment.

“There’s nobody who knows the threats we face to national security more than me, and that’s why I’m so enraged by this pointless, ridiculous amendment,” he said.

Lamborn’s amendment would have left intact Rogers’ other provision, which would freeze half of Kendall’s travel budget until Congress receives a decision on Space Command headquarters and a justification.

But Lamborn found himself outnumbered and withdrew the amendment in the face of opposition from the three other Armed Services Committee members from Alabama as well as lawmakers from outside states.

“I can see the writing on the wall,” he said.

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the committee, came to Rogers’ aid, calling it “ridiculous” that a decision is now months overdue.

“As they’re stumbling along here, they’re spending money on building up a potential Space Command in Colorado without making an actual decision,” said Smith. “I believe that this type of forcing mechanism will finally force the Air Force to make a decision. And I don’t care where they put it. I really don’t.”

Rogers’ fellow Alabama Republican Rep. Dale Strong also sits on the Armed Services Committee, as does Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell from the same state.

“Huntsville is the world’s premiere hub for space innovation and exploration,” said Sewell. “Colorado was not ranked two in the reviews. It was not ranked three in the reviews. It was ranked fifth in the reviews.”

The House’s defense spending bill contains similar language barring construction at the Colorado Springs facility until a permanent location is chosen. The Appropriations Committee is set to debate that bill on Thursday.

At the 2023 iteration of the Paris Air Show here, the company announced Romania as the latest customer of its Watchkeeper X system. The contract was signed as part of a framework agreement finalized in December, and it will see Elbit deliver three initial unmanned aerial systems by 2025, with the possibility to provide four additional ones later.

The drones will be an upgraded version of the Watchkeeper X, integrated with add-on capabilities, including the Spectro XR multi-spectral, electro-optical payload as well as new communications and radar features.

Speaking to Defense News, Amir Bettesh, vice president of UAS marketing and business development at Elbit, explained that as part of the framework agreement part of the production of the Watchkeepers will be carried out in Romania and involve local partners.

“We view this opportunity as a gate to selling our systems to other NATO countries, especially in Europe, where we are seeing an important increase in the demand” for drones of that size, he said.

The Watchkeeper X is a dual-payload drone that can be used to carry out intelligence and reconnaissance missions, providing maritime and land surveillance as well. It is the UK export variant of a British Army model, produced by a joint venture between Elbit and Thales UK, and based on the Israeli Hermes series.

The UK has faced a number of issues with the Watchkeeper X program, with government officials pointing out that in 2020 only 13 of the 45-strong drone fleet had flown that year. Prior to this, between 2017 and 2018, three of them crashed in different parts of the country.

When asked about these problems, the Elbit executive called them “common challenges” faced by the majority of countries operating aerial drones.

It was only a few weeks ago that Romania announced that it was acquiring TB2 drones from Turkish manufacturer Baykar, showing a willingness to diversify its suppliers.

Part of the firm-fixed-price deal — the largest ever awarded for AMRAAM weapons — will cover missiles for sale to multiple foreign allies and partners, including Ukraine.

RTX will produce AMRAAM weapons, telemetry systems and spare parts in Tucson, Arizona, under the contract, as well as provide production engineering support, the Pentagon said in a statement announcing the deal. The company is expected to finish work on Lot 37 of the missiles by the end of January 2027.

RTX said in its own statement the contract will be for the D3 and C8 versions of the AMRAAM, which have the latest F3R — which stands for form, fit, function refresh — upgrades to its software and hardware. Those AMRAAMs also have improved circuit cards and other hardware in their guidance systems.

The Pentagon said about 39% of the value of the contract, or $449 million, will be for foreign military sales to 18 nations, including the United Kingdom, South Korea, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Ukraine fires AMRAAMs from its National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System batteries. The U.S. Army in December 2022 awarded RTX another contract worth up to $1.2 billion to deliver six NASAM batteries to Ukraine.

While the latest contract was awarded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy will provide more than $330 million in procurement funds and will receive some missiles from the lot. The Navy will also provide about $5 million in research and development funds.

The Air Force plans to spend more than $351 million in procurement funds on these missiles, as well as another $10 million for research and development, plus and $3.9 million in operation and maintenance funds.

RTX said this will mark the fifth production lot of the upgraded AMRAAMs.

Italian defense company Leonardo has been in the business of producing UAS for two decades, and today some sixty units of its Falco drones are in use worldwide. The company has in the past advertised its systems primarily for civilian operations as well as intelligence and surveillance-based missions. This has in part reflected a tendency that has existed in the broader Italian defense culture over time, which could somewhat be considered as a resistance or even taboo towards arming these types of systems.

This could be changing as Leonardo displayed its light medium-altitude long endurance, or MALE, drone, the Falco Xplorer, mounted with MBDA’s lightweight Brimstone missile at the Paris Air Show, going on this week. Although only one was visible, a company representative told Defense News that it could be fitted with a total of four missiles.

“MBDA and Leonardo are cooperating together on integrating Brimstone on the Falco Xplorer and are also currently doing joint integration studies and demonstrations,” the representative said.

The ambition is to have this variant available on the market for customers by 2025. It was not developed in response to a requirement issued specifically by the Italian Air Force, rather responding to a demand by other customers, they said.

The FALCO Xplorer has a maximum payload of 350 kilograms (772 lbs) and has an endurance of 24 hours.

Concerning potential sales, it is likely to peak the interest of existing Brimstone operators. Beyond the U.K., the missiles have in the past been sold to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Germany and most recently Ukraine for use as a surface-launched ground attack system. The Spanish Air Force also selected the weapon earlier this year to equip its fleet of Eurofighters.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said a detailed review of the accounting error found that the military services used replacement costs rather than the book value of equipment that was pulled from Pentagon stocks and sent to Ukraine. She said final calculations show there was an error of $3.6 billion in the current fiscal year and $2.6 billion in the 2022 fiscal year, which ended last Sept. 30.

As a result, the department now has additional money in its coffers to use to support Ukraine as it pursues its counteroffensive against Russia. And it comes as the fiscal year is wrapping up and congressional funding was beginning to dwindle.

“It’s just going to go back into the pot of money that we have allocated” for the future Pentagon stock drawdowns,” said Singh.

The revelation comes as Ukraine moves ahead with the early stages its counteroffensive, in an effort to dislodge the Kremlin’s forces from territory they’ve occupied since a full-scale invasion in February 2022. The counteroffensive has come up against heavily mined terrain and reinforced defensive fortifications, according to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

Russia, meanwhile, has been bombarding the Kyiv region with dozens of Shahed exploding drones, in an assault that has exposed gaps in the country’s air protection after almost 16 months of war. Officials said Ukrainian air defenses downed 32 of 35 drones that were launched by Russia early Tuesday.

The Pentagon has repeatedly used presidential drawdown authority to pull weapons, ammunition and other equipment off the shelves, so that it can get to Ukraine far more quickly than going through a purchase process.

Based on previous estimates announced June 13, the U.S. had committed more than $40 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded. Using the new calculation, the U.S. has actually provided less than $34 billion in aid.

Officials have not been able to give exact totals for the amount of money that remains for the drawdowns or for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides longer-term funding to purchase weapons, including some of the larger air defense systems.

The U.S. has approved four rounds of aid to Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion, totaling about $113 billion, with some of that money going toward replenishment of U.S. military equipment that was sent to the frontlines. Congress approved the latest round of aid in December, totaling roughly $45 billion for Ukraine and NATO allies. While the package was designed to last through the end of the fiscal year in September, much depends upon events on the ground, particularly as the new counteroffensive ramps up.

President Joe Biden and his senior national security leaders have repeatedly stated that the United States will help Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel the Russian forces. Privately, administration officials have warned Ukrainian officials that there is a limit to the patience of a narrowly divided Congress — and American public — for the costs of a war with no clear end.

Members of Congress have repeatedly pressed Defense Department leaders on how closely the U.S. is tracking its aid to Ukraine to ensure that it is not subject to fraud or ending up in the wrong hands. The Pentagon has said it has a “robust program” to track the aid as it crosses the border into Ukraine and to keep tabs on it once it is there, depending on the sensitivity of each weapons system.

Singh said the accounting mistake won’t affect the ongoing delivery of aid to Ukraine.

While the majority of defense companies present at the Paris Air Show here are focused on furthering their aerospace ventures, the Israeli radar specialist has also been eyeing an expansion in the underwater market.

The firm announced its new partnership with Atlas, a subsidiary of Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems, aimed at launching a joint product, the BlueWhale anti-submarine warfare (ASW) variant. The system is based on Elta’s autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), integrated with Atlas’ towed passive sonar triple array.

“The unique feature of this addition is that it allows the system to operate at depths generally used by submarines to avoid being detected by using a low-frequency sonar,” Yoav Tourgeman, chief executive officer of Elta Systems, told Defense News on the sidelines of the air show here.

He added that the widening set of possible applications for autonomous underwater systems, commercial or military, is part of what is driving the company to further explore their potential.

The BlueWhale ASW package features an advanced transmitter that allows for the bistatic detection and tracking of submarine targets.

Tourgeman confirmed to Defense News that the company was in talks with several customers interested in the system, but would not confirm whether one of those was Germany.

While the BlueWhale ASW could be of interest for the German Navy, some naval experts have expressed doubts regarding whether the country would be the launch customer based on current financial constraints.

“From a general standpoint, it would be interesting for them, especially based on the recently published German Navy objectives for 2035 and beyond, which places a strong emphasis on uncrewed systems in the underwater domain as a way to match increasing operational demands with scarce human resources,” Johannes Peters, head of the Center for Maritime Strategy and Security at the Institute for Security Policy at Kiel University, said.

However, he notes the multitude of large projects the country has ongoing in the naval sector, including the development of the new F-126 frigate, the U212-CD submarines and purchasing P-8 maritime patrol aircraft from Boeing.

“Given this backdrop, there is simply no budget for a short or medium term procurement – it is highly unlikely that the proclaimed first customer would be Germany,” Peters opined.

The launch took place at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and demonstrated the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed, or MACH-TB, program’s first suborbital flight of a hypersonic payload.

MACH-TB is led by the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center and the Naval Surface Warfare Center’s Crane Division. The team selected Leidos as the program’s prime integrator last September, and California-based space company Rocket Lab is one of 12 subcontractors supporting the effort.

“This successful test has demonstrated [the] first hypersonic insertion of a payload from a commercial launch vehicle and the team is ready to move forward into the next phase of this program,” Leidos CEO Tom Bell said in a June 19 statement.

Hypersonic vehicles can fly at speeds of at least Mach 5, and the Pentagon in recent years has increased its investment in high-speed weapons and aircraft as Russia and China demonstrate systems of their own. A lack of test facilities and equipment, particularly to support flight demonstrations, has limited the number of flight tests major programs can perform, and MACH-TB is part of DoD’s push to remedy that.

Along with serving as the program’s technology integrator, Leidos is developing an experimental glide body that can be used to test hypersonic capabilities that could support a number of Defense Department programs.

During the first phase of the effort, the team is developing a test plan for MACH-TB, prioritizing and scheduling demonstrations based on program needs. The first test took just 49 days from conception to flight, and Leidos expects future demonstrations will build on that cadence.

The June 17 launch was also the first flight of Rocket Lab’s Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron, or HASTE. The vehicle is a derivative of the company’s Electron rocket, featuring a modified “kick stage” that can carry up to 1,540 pounds and deploy a variety of hypersonic payloads.

“The success of this mission demonstrates collaboration across government and industry partners to change the paradigm in hypersonic testing,” said Brian Rogers, Rocket Lab’s senior director of global launch services, in a statement. “HASTE enables the frequent, affordable flight testing needed to advance the nation’s hypersonic technology development.”

The rocket will also support the Defense Innovation Unit’s Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities program, which is expected to log its first test flight next summer.

The missile systems and technology company has signed letters of intent with four European nations – France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands – to launch a concept stage for the Hypersonic Defense Interceptor Study, or HYDIS2, which would introduce several designs before choosing one, officials said June 19 during the Paris Air Show here.

The consortium includes 19 companies and 30 suppliers from 14 European countries, Bruno Verzotti, MBDA’s director of future systems, told a small group of reporters. Besides the four nations that have signed letters of intent to support HYDIS2, industry partners hail from Finland, Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, Spain and Belgium.

“HYDIS2 aims to define Europe’s interceptor,” Verzotti said during the briefing. After the three-year concept study is over, the plan is for the four nations underwriting HYDIS2 to choose one counter-hypersonic interceptor concept to push forward.

The company has been at work on counter-hypersonic technology for roughly the past four years, he said. Internally to MBDA, the capability under development has been dubbed “Aquila,” the Latin word for “eagle.”

The intent is for Aquila’s development to be linked to the EU-funded Timely Warning and Interception with Space-based TheatER Surveillance (TWISTER) program, supported by the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) scheme.

Nearly one year ago, the EU announced its initial roster of 61 programs to be supported by the European Defence Fund (EDF). One of those, the EU HYDEF effort, would cover the concept phase to build a similar endo-atmospheric interceptor, led by a consortium including Spain’s Sener Aerospacial Sociedad Anonima and Germany’s Diehl Defence.

The EU HYDEF program is expected to cost about €110 million ($100.74 million) and cover a 36-month period, the EU previously shared. It is also linked to the PESCO TWISTER program.

MBDA also submitted a bid to receive EDF funds to build an interceptor in 2022 under the moniker HYDIS. While their proposal was not selected then, officials are optimistic that a second effort – with the very same industry team – might prove more effective.

Meanwhile, Israeli arms maker Rafael announced June 14 that it had developed its own hypersonic interceptor dubbed “Sky Sonic.” The weapon was unveiled for the first time at this year’s Paris Air Show and is on display at the company’s stand.

In late May, a North Korean rocket carrying a military reconnaissance satellite crashed soon after liftoff, posing a setback to leader Kim Jong Un’s push to acquire a space-based surveillance system to better monitor the United States and South Korea.

The failed launch and North Korean efforts to modernize its weapons arsenal were discussed extensively at a three-day ruling party meeting that ended Sunday, with the presence of Kim and other top officials.

A lengthy Korean Central News Agency dispatch on the meeting didn’t clearly say who spoke, but said a report to the meeting “bitterly criticized the officials who irresponsibly conducted the preparations for (the) satellite launch.”

The report set forth tasks for officials and scientists to learn the lessons of the failed launch, find what caused the rocket’s crash and make a successful launch in a short span of time, KCNA said.

It didn’t say exactly when North Korea might attempt a second launch. But South Korea’s spy agency earlier told lawmakers that it would take likely take “more than several weeks” for North Korea to determine what went wrong in the failed launch.

North Korea monitoring groups haven’t reported any purges or dismissals of scientists or others involved in the failed launch.

A spy satellite is among several high-tech military assets Kim has publicly vowed to acquire to cope with what he calls U.S.-led hostility. Other weapons systems Kim wants to possess are a multi-warhead missile, a nuclear submarine, a solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile and a hypersonic missile.

Since the start of 2022, North Korea has carried out more than 100 missile tests, some of which were related to developing a spy satellite and other powerful weapons on Kim’s wish list.

During the meeting, Politburo members also analyzed the “extremely deteriorating security situation” in the region caused by the “reckless war moves” of North Korea’s rivals, the report said, apparently referring to the expanded U.S.-South Korea military drills.

The United States and South Korea have been expanding their military drills in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear arsenal and warn that any attempt to use nuclear weapons would result in the end of Kim’s government.

The Politburo members set down unspecified “important tasks” for strengthening solidarity with countries that are “opposed to the U.S. brigandish strategy for world supremacy,” KCNA said.

North Korea has pushed to boost relations with Russia, including defending its military action in Ukraine. It says Russia is protecting itself against the West’s “hegemonic policy.”

The North has also sought to build on its ties with China, its main ally and economic lifeline that is locked in an intensified strategic rivalry with the United States over trade, technology and regional influence.

Russia and China, both veto-holding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have repeatedly blocked attempts by the U.S. and others to toughen U.N. sanctions on North Korea over its missile tests.

The party meeting also discussed efforts to improve North Korea’s struggling economy, which experts say has been further strained by pandemic-related border closures.

KCNA said there has been some progress in efforts to boost agricultural output and revive production in metal and chemical industries, though it acknowledged unspecified shortcomings. KCNA claimed progress in the construction field, citing a project to build tens of thousands of new homes in the capital, Pyongyang.

It’s virtually impossible to verify the claims by the North, one of the most secretive countries in the world. Experts say there are no signs of social unrest or famine in North Korea despite the pandemic-caused hardships.

KCNA didn’t say whether Kim spoke during the plenary meeting of the Workers’ Party Central Committee.

Koo Byoungsam, spokesperson for South Korea’s Unification Ministry, said it would be highly unusual for Kim to sit through such a high-profile party meeting without a public speech. Koo said the apparent lack of a Kim speech might stem from the satellite launch failure and North Korea’s lack of economic achievements.

The Aarok is a medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) combat drone, designed and made in France by Turgis & Gaillard.

Its development began three years ago, although its capabilities were only disclosed for the first time over the last week. The system is envisioned to carry up to 6,000 lbs (3,000 kilograms) of payload and fly for up to 24 hours. It is powered by a PT6 turboprop engine from Pratt & Whitney Canada. According to the company, the Aarok is designed to carry out a wide range of missions, including strike operations, land and maritime surveillance and anti-submarine warfare.

Because of its reported capabilities and size, the Aarok has earned several comparisons by the French press to the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone that the French military already operates. The newcomer is 3 feet larger than the American system, with a 72-foot wingspan, but their differences seemingly do not stop there.

“It is clear that the Reaper has created a tremendous benchmark you have to meet for entry into a very competitive market,” C. Mark Brinkley, senior director of strategic communications at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), told Defense News. “If you’re coming in 20 years later with your own version, you have to earn your experience.”

Brinkley added that it is too early to tell what the Aarok drone can actually do or how it performs, as it has not yet flown. The French company has said that it is hopeful that the system will fly for the first time before the end of this year. In contrast, the MQ-9A Reaper has already logged more than four million flying hours, according to the manufacturer.

Marketed as the first European MALE drone at the show, the Aarok was shown next to four AASM Hammer precision-guided munitions produced by Safran, which can be the drone’s armament.

The arrival of the prototype has raised many questions regarding how it hopes to coexist with the multinational Eurodrone project. Last year, France re-stated its intention to acquire a total of six systems, four of which have already been ordered. The goal is that the French Eurodrones will gradually replace the Reapers currently in operation within the military and set to be retired after 2030.

Turgis & Gaillard declined to comment on which customers it hopes to sell the Aarok to.

The Eurodrone initiative has faced considerable delays over the years and is currently not supposed to enter into service before 2030. When contacted, an Airbus official said that there was no comment from their side on the Aarok at this time.

As for GA-ASI, Brinkley said that while the company sees new competition as a source of innovation and welcomes it, the company nonetheless “owns this category of platforms and isn’t going anywhere.”

The French Defense Innovation Agency – an agency similar to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – signed a contract with Nexter on June 16 to build a new medium-range, remotely operated munition under the “Larinae” project, which was launched in early May. Larinae is Latin for seagull.

Nexter and its partners’ proposed solution includes an unmanned aerial system (UAS) manufactured by French vendor EOS Technologie, along with core-generating charge technology produced by Nexter, and a GPS-independent navigation system capable of operating in contested environments from startup TRAAK. It’s intended to have a range of at least 80 kilometers (nearly 50 miles) and to remain autonomous for three hours.

The French defense ministry declined to give a price tag for the project.

Nexter – which is part of the European land defense systems group KNDS alongside Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann – touted the munition’s proposed ability to “thwart” active defenses of armored vehicles before piercing their armor. It will also contain an optronic ball capable of detecting vehicles 15 kilometers away by day, three kilometers by night, and which allows operators to observe terrain from afar.

The French Armed Forces have put a premium on developing a low-cost unmanned solution that can target and neutralize an armored vehicle between 5 and 50 kilometers away. Larinae focuses on the higher end of that distance, and a second project, “Colibri” – or Hummingbird – focuses on the lower end.

Loitering munitions have received renewed attention from militaries since being used by both Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020, and for their use by Ukraine in their ongoing defense against Russian forces.

France first announced an interest in procuring U.S.-built loitering munitions in 2022 as a transitional capability while the Larinae and Colibri projects move forward. This past April, U.S. unmanned systems manufacturer Aerovironment announced it had received a $64 million contract to provide its Switchblade 300 drone to the U.S. Army, and that the contract included foreign military sales for the capability to France “for the first time,” as well as to “another allied nation.” Those drones are scheduled to be delivered in 2024. Aerovironment has supplied the Switchblade 300 to the U.S. Army for over a decade.

The French government’s proposed military budget for the 2024-2030 period includes €5 billion ($5.5 billion) for unmanned systems. The budget is currently being deliberated by the French Senate, and has already been passed by the government’s lower body, the General Assembly.

The shuffle, effective July 1, will shift 4,700 positions and $2.7 billion in business to Collins, which will also continue its commercial aviation programs. Leadership at Collins is not expected to change.

The company will absorb from Raytheon’s intelligence and space and missiles and defense divisions work supporting autonomous systems, command and control, networking and connectivity, protected communications and battle management. The move was previously teased in a fiscal 2023 first-quarter earnings call.

Collins President Steve Timm told C4ISRNET the realignment will take better advantage of the company’s existing “commercial and military expertise” to expand on and develop new technologies that will aid the realization of JADC2, a multibillion-dollar Pentagon affair.

“The integration of these capabilities can be challenging,” Timm said, “and our new structure brings together the best talent we have into one organization to focus on providing solutions for our customers at speed.”

The Defense Department is pursuing JADC2 as a means to understand and react faster on battlefields of tomorrow. By linking forces and databases across land, air, sea, space and cyber, defense officials hope to outwit, outmaneuver and outshoot technologically advanced adversaries such as China and Russia.

L3Harris completes $2 billion purchase of Viasat Link 16 assets

The Army, Air Force and Navy are each pitching in on JADC2. The Army is doing it through Project Convergence. The Air Force has its Advanced Battle Management System. And the Navy is chipping away at Project Overmatch.

Raytheon in September was named to the Air Force’s ABMS Digital Infrastructure Consortium alongside four other defense industry heavyweights. Together, they will collaborate on secure processing, resilient communications, open-ended designs and other digital challenges inherent to the service’s next-generation command and control methods.

Timm anticipates the realignment will streamline how business is done across the Raytheon ecosystem, which also includes engine specialist Pratt & Whitney. That company will generally go unchanged.

“The official shift is July 1 of this year, but our technology and people synergies have been operational for much longer,” Timm said. “Similar to our customers’ need to seamlessly connect, our teams must do that, as well, to bring support to the edge with efficiency.”

Raytheon both this year and last pieced together products from its various divisions and put them to the test at Valiant Shield and Northern Edge. The exercises are dedicated to figuring out inter-service and inter-military cooperation.

Collins last year won an Army contract worth as much as $583 million to produce MAPS GEN II, the latest version of a technology that provides soldiers jam-resistant navigation capabilities aboard armored vehicles. The indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity arrangement was expected to run for five years.

Federal spending caps for fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 forced the House Armed Services Committee to agree to retire aging ships and aircraft they may have otherwise fought to keep a little while longer, Rep Rob Wittman told Defense News.

But, he warned, “there’s probably going to be some gap” between when old platforms like the Air Force’s A-10s and the Navy’s cruisers retire, and when the services can fully rebuild their inventory.

“I think it really calls to the forefront the issue of using other smaller, less expensive, attritable platforms as the gap-filler,” Wittman, R-Va., said in a June 14 interview in his Capitol Hill office.

“Those things can be very, very capable, and these are platforms that are already out there that could go to production tomorrow. So unmanned surface vessels, unmanned underwater vessels — the Navy really has to push the gas pedal on this and say: ‘OK, how do we get these platforms integrated?’ ” added Wittman, who chairs the committee’s tactical air and land forces panel and also sits on its sea power and projection forces subcommittee.

Though Congress has questioned some of the Navy’s experimentation and acquisition efforts following expensive mistakes with the Littoral Combat Ship program, among others, Wittman said now is an appropriate time to take more risk in pursuing unmanned surface and subsurface vessels at a quicker pace.

The Navy has largely eyed programs of record based on the size of the platform: it’s aiming to award a contract for the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel’s design and construction in FY25, and a Medium USV would likely follow a few years behind. The Orca Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle program is running several years behind in the construction and testing of five prototype vehicles, but the Navy expects to see a version operating overseas by FY26.

Wittman said the Navy could potentially move faster if it focused on mission rather than size, which is more in line with the experimentation happening in the Middle East under Task Force 59.

“They need to go out there and say, ‘Listen, we believe this platform will do a great job as an addition to a carrier strike group, or as an addition to an [amphibious ready group], or destroyer squadron, or Virginia-class [attack submarine], or Ohio-class [ballistic missile submarine],’ and then buy a relative number that you can test very vigorously” for 12-18 months, and then either modify them or move into serial production, he said.

“The good news is, these things are at a price point where you can afford to take some risks. You can afford to have platforms that you look at and go: ‘Gosh, looked like it was going to work out, but it just didn’t,’ ” he added.

He’d also prefer the Navy have unmanned surface vehicles that can only perform surveillance missions, others solely meant for electronic warfare and more that only shoot weapons, he said, versus spent too much money and too much time trying to pursue a platform that can do it all.

“I just want the Navy to look at those things, and I think they can do that speed of relevance. That’s going to be the gap-filler because our exquisite platforms — aircraft carriers, our surface ships, our submarines — all great platforms, but it takes years and years and years to get them in the inventory. So even with the best of intentions, we’re not going to have that capability” in time for when China might attack Taiwan.

What about the Air Force?

The Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee included language in its section of the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act setting cost limits for collaborative combat aircraft plans, which would see a drone serve as a wingman for crewed jets, such as the future Next Generation Air Dominance fighter.

Wittman said this is a preemptive measure, and not because he has concerns about collaborative combat aircraft. In fact, he explained, he is “very comfortable” with what he’s seen, including several vendors with many options that come in at a good cost point.

He also said he’s optimistic about the way the competition is looking at this early stage, but wants to avoid requirements and therefore cost ballooning.

“We’ve seen that too many times with programs where we’re chasing requirements, we’re chasing technology, and you never catch it. And then all of the sudden we see platforms that started out as [an] X-million-dollar platform [that] are now three or four times the cost,” he noted.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall wants the collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, to be cheap enough that, in some cases, the service can afford to lose some in combat. A drone wingman that could be sacrificed might not need as many protective subsystems, which could help keep down costs, Kendall said at the September 2022 Defense News conference.

The service considers CCAs a way to deliver combat capability at a lower price point and to move away from recent spiraling costs of fighters and bombers.

For his part, Wittman considers these drones important in light of the retirements of legacy Air Force planes and a dip in inventory in the short term. He connected CCA efforts to another program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, for which the NDAA proposes creating a formal “major subprogram” to focus on the continuous development and delivery of new F-35 capabilities, and designating six aircraft as permanent test assets for this work.

Wittman said the focus of these efforts is to address ongoing software issues as well as engine power and cooling challenges today, and prepare to quickly address challenges in the coming decades.

“Along with partners, there’s going to be 3,300 of these aircraft out there. What we don’t want is all of a sudden for somebody to come back in 10 years and go: ‘Oh, sorry, the whole fleet’s antiquated,’ ” he said. “So let’s do some rigorous testing and evaluation, figure out how do we make sure this platform gets maximum utility. And I think there are a lot of ways that they can do that — and especially if you combine this platform with combat collaborative aircraft, and you combine it with E-7s, which has to happen — all of a sudden this aircraft is a pretty significant gap-filler until you get to endgame.”

“But you don’t have its full potential unless you rigorously test what the challenges are with the aircraft. And that’s on every element of the platform, from the avionics to the software to the engine systems to the power and cooling,” he added, noting the designation of the major subprogram would signal the seriousness of this effort to the Pentagon and congressional appropriators.

Even with budget caps in place, Wittman said the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee is trying to make these adjustments.

“We are making smart investments in the FY24 NDAA by reprioritizing and reallocating funding requested for Air Force and Navy NGAD programs,” he said, noting his subcommittee is making investments in CCA refueling technology maturation and risk reduction within the Air Force’s research and development budget, in the Adaptive Engine Transition Program that would replace the current F-35 engine, and in F-15 procurement and E-7 advance procurement.

The information squirreled away at the so-called winter White House — in a bathroom and shower and bedroom, on a stage, in a storage room, and in office space — featured data from the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, according to federal court records made public earlier this month.

The former develops, launches and operates spy satellites. The latter analyzes overhead imagery, maps the Earth for military purposes and handles Project Maven, launched by the Pentagon in 2017 to detect targets of interest in footage captured by uncrewed systems.

Trump faces Espionage Act charges, which covers a lot more than spying

Details were also attributed to the Energy Department, a steward of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile through its National Nuclear Security Administration, and the State Department’s intelligence and research bureau, responsible for providing data to shape diplomacy.

The NRO and NGA both referred C4ISRNET inquiries to the Justice Department. A spokesperson there said the department was “limited to the information contained in the indictment.” The Energy Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Papers please

The files Trump is accused of mishandling and conspiring to keep contained insights concerning nuclear weapons, the military capabilities of other countries, activities in foreign lands and potential stateside vulnerabilities.

Pages were marked secret and top secret as well as with more-arcane designations such as “NOFORN” and “ORCON,” “REL TO USA, FVEY,” “TK” and “FISA,” according to a list in the 49-page indictment.

The markings strictly define who can see what, and indicate from where the knowledge came: no foreign distribution; no dissemination outside a certain department; available to properly credentialed officials within the Five Eyes alliance, involving Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.; sourced from satellite observation, or so-called talent keyhole; and tied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

While it is difficult to discern exactly how precious information is based on labels alone, given the prevalence of over-classification, “not every document that is classified is unnecessarily classified,” Elizabeth Goitein, the senior director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told C4ISRNET. “Trump had so many of these documents — and some of them were the sort of highest levels of classification — there’s certainly a very, very good chance that there was some extremely sensitive information in there.”

As president, Trump had at his fingertips the most exquisite information gathered by the U.S. government and its agents. Access dries up after leaving office. However, the feds allege, “Trump caused his boxes, containing hundreds of classified documents, to be transported from the White House to the Mar-a-Lago Club” where in at least one instance containers tipped over, spilling their contents across the floor.

Snowden, Manning, Teixeira

Any unauthorized disclosure of such information, the indictment states, could jeopardize U.S. security, international relationships and covert sources in the field.

“The exposure of classified information in and of itself can cause damage to the national security,” Bradley Moss, a national security attorney, told C4ISRNET. “The fact these materials not only were classified as high as top secret/SCI, but concerned issues such as war plans and details on nuclear weaponry, indicates they were incredibly sensitive and were never meant to be shared widely within the cleared community, let alone with non-cleared individuals.”

The circumstance is unprecedented, Moss added, “in the sense that it was done by a former president and that the individual failed to return the records when asked to do so. Leakers of classified information such as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning exposed highly sensitive details of U.S. government operations, as did Jack Teixeira, allegedly.”

Zero trust would have helped prevent Pentagon leak, CIO Sherman says

Snowden was a former American contractor who made public the existence of global surveillance dragnets. The U.S. government deemed him a traitor. He was later granted Russian citizenship. Manning, once an Army analyst, was convicted in 2013 after she fed WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of records pertaining to Iraq and Afghanistan. Then-President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, is accused of leaking via Discord a trove of guarded reports, including some tied to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“I think when people talk about leaks, they’re talking about leaks to the media, or they’re talking about leaks to a foreign adversary. He’s not accused of that,” the Brennan Center’s Goitein said of Trump. “However, plenty of people have been charged and imprisoned for willfully retaining documents they were not entitled to retain.”

What’s to come

Trump this week pleaded not guilty to 37 felony counts during an arraignment in Miami. The former president — who is running for reelection in 2024, and who has doubled down on conspiracy theories — described the charges against him as the product of a “most evil and heinous abuse of power.”

“This is called election interference in yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election,” Trump told supporters in New Jersey on Tuesday. “More importantly, it’s a political persecution, like something straight out of a fascist or communist nation.”

The 2020 presidential election wasn’t stolen, and there is no evidence of tampering or widespread voter fraud.

Booz Allen can proceed with EverWatch acquisition, federal judge rules

Special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump, said he is a seeking a speedy trial and one “consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused.” Speedy, though, could mean months or even years, potentially clashing with a bustling presidential campaign schedule.

Trump’s likely course of action, Moss said, is to attempt to “cripple, if not outright throw out” the case during the upcoming pre-trial motion phase. A jury would not be allowed to view the documents in question and would have to rely on their public descriptions to determine significance.

“They will raise objections regarding use of privileged testimony by Mr. Corcoran, seek to tarnish the government’s case with allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, and seek to argue about selective prosecution for political motivations,” Moss told C4ISRNET. Evan Corcoran joined Trump’s legal team in early 2022. “These arguments are not likely to succeed, but they represent his best hope of beating back this indictment.”

The Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic, or DIANA, will open up applications for its first set of challenges on June 19, when companies can compete for hundreds of thousands of euros in grant funds.

The hope is to have those selected startups “up and running” with grant support by the end of 2023, said Deeph Chana, DIANA’s managing director.

The technology challenges — in reflecting DIANA’s primary mission — are meant to support innovative startups and small businesses that are focusing on dual-use science and technology solutions that could help with critical defense issues, Chana recently told reporters in a virtual briefing.

“We want to attract these innovators to the problems that we have in security and defense, but also we want to look at how these [security and defense] problems are set in a much broader context,” he said. “When we talk about defense, what we’re thinking about is how science and technology can help us, for example, to lower the chances of conflict erupting, as well as having the kind of tools and systems that we need to be able to resolve conflict in more efficient and effective manners in the future.”

What are the challenges?

The initial set of challenges will focus on energy resilience and energy systems; the secure transfer of information and data; and sensing and surveillance capabilities.

For the first challenge area, DIANA is interested in solutions that help supply energy in a more agile, innovative way, and also how to secure the networks and infrastructure of energy systems, Chana said.

The second area pertains to ensuring “communications between different points are actually secure,” he added. “In some cases, one of the things we’re really interested in there is — in situations where you don’t have a lot of energy, or you don’t have any bandwidth, or you have difficult comms — how can you still do that security problem and keep those lines of communication secure.”

The sensing and surveillance challenge has to do with building “next-generation detectors, and systems of detectors and sensors, to effectively give us an ability to inspect difficult environments,” he said. Specifically, DIANA is interested in the challenge of underwater detection and sensing capabilities, he added.

NATO expects about 30 startups to participate in the first set of challenges. Those who make it through the first phase will each receive €100,000 (about U.S. $108,000) in grants, and those who succeed in making it to the second phase will each receive €300,000 (about U.S. $324,000) in grant money for a six-month period, Chana said.

A panel will evaluate participants. The panel includes investors, subject matter experts in the challenge areas, members of academia and representatives of the end-user community, he added.

This year’s round of challenges will take place at five DIANA accelerator sites on both sides of the Atlantic, according to NATO. Future challenges will take place at other accelerator locations around the alliance’s member nations, and eventually expand to include a greater number of startup participants.

NATO touted that benefits for those selected include the fact that DIANA will not ask for intellectual property or equity, but rather wants to “maximize the growth opportunities for innovators without any typical restrictions.” Participating in the tech challenges will also offer exposure to a trusted investor network — in particular the nascent NATO Innovation Fund, collaboration opportunities with allied end users and pathways to 31 allied markets.

Meanwhile, DIANA itself continues to grow since it was formally established last year, and will become operational with the tech challenge launch on June 19. To date, the accelerator is based at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, and another headquarters is planned for Halifax, Canada, Chana said. A regional hub is to open in Tallinn, Estonia. DIANA also hosts a network of almost 100 accelerator sites and test centers across the alliance.

The accelerator currently hosts about 30 staff, Chana said, with an additional 80 personnel expected to join within the next 12-18 months. That doesn’t include personnel based at the various DIANA accelerator sites within the alliance, he noted.

To start, DIANA is operating with a €50 million annual budget, Chana said, while emphasizing the organization is currently operating within a “pilot program.”

“DIANA is the first startup of DIANA,” he said. “Through the pilot process, we will be also learning and developing.”

CISA, which monitors cyber threats and recommends policies and tools to combat them, would not say which agencies were attacked, though officials said they’re not aware of any impacts to the military or the intelligence community. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

There are so far no indications that stolen government data has been leaked, and the government has received no ransom demands, the officials said.

“It is not the case today that the actor has disclosed any information stolen from federal agencies on what are called their leak sites where they often disclose information to demand a payment as part of their extortion scheme,” a CISA official told reporters on June 15. “Impacted federal agencies are conducting appropriate analyses to understand impacts to their agencies and effective data.”

As first reported by CNN, the impacted technology involved MOVEit, a commonly used file transfer software that encrypts and transfers data.

The creator of the technology, Progress Software Corporation, formerly Ipswitch, Inc., partners with 1,700 software companies and 3.5 million developers, according to its website.

CNN also reported that a group of Russian speaking hackers have been hacking this kind of software to target broad groups of users and extort them for money. This group, called CLOP, previously took credit for some of these hacks that affected state governments, the BBC and British Airways, among others, according to CNN.

It wasn’t clear whether the particular attack affecting agencies was perpetrated by the same people.

“We are also moving urgently to ensure that similar types of products and applications are appropriately hardened,” officials said.

CISA said it has responded by adding this recent intrusion to its exploited vulnerability catalog and mandated federal agencies to begin mitigation. It also published an advisory with the FBI.

“Although we are very concerned about this campaign and working on it with urgency, this is not a campaign like SolarWinds that presented systemic risk to our national security or our nation’s network,” said Jen Easterly, CISA’s director.

The service’s reliance on battery-powered capabilities to manage daily operations is increasing. Soldiers need batteries to, for example, operate the Samsung-based Nett Warrior situational awareness system, and to keep command posts and operations centers running.

The Army is also moving toward using electric vehicles on the battlefield and alternative energy power sources for its facilities and bases. The Army’s climate strategy released in early 2022 lays out a plan to field hybrid tactical vehicles by 2035 and moving to all-electric tactical vehicles by 2050.

To get there, the Army told Defense News in the spring of 2022, it was preparing its first-ever operational energy strategy, expected by the end of the year. No such strategy has materialized.

According to legislation proposed by the House Armed Services Committee’s readiness panel, the Army would have one year to conduct its analysis of alternatives following enactment.

“The Secretary shall develop study guidance under which such an analysis is required to include for consideration as such potential alternatives to the full range of military commercially available capabilities for the storage and distribution of electric power,” the draft legislation states.

For each alternative examined, the legislation reads, the Army should include per unit cost, mobility levels, the ability to store and distribute electric power necessary for charging soldier-worn devices, the ability to store or distribute power through a network or microgrid for tactical command posts, and any other capabilities needed to meet operational requirements.

Once the analysis is complete, the Army secretary will have 90 days to deliver it to congressional defense committees. The report should include the full range of capabilities considered and an assessment of the types of analysis used to determine costs and benefits.

The report should also lay out concerns with prospective options related to “acquisition, operational requirements or user communities,” the draft legislation states, to include cost, capabilities and interoperability with existing or planned systems.

The proposed legislation would push the service to map out how it manages and distributes power in operations across the battlefield and to consider existing technology that could strengthen that logistics tail — from longer-lasting, lighter batteries to trailer-sized chargers to microgrids.

Industry has been busy coming up with ways to answer the call to support an ever-increasing electric-powered battlefield.

Oshkosh has developed a hybrid version of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle; and the Army’s new JLTV-maker, AM General, will also be expected to deliver the capability when the Army decides to move out on a requirement. Teams designing concepts for the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle that will ultimately replace the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle are also incorporating hybrid capability.

Companies developing microgrids like Schneider Electric, which built one that powers Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, are showing interest in the Army’s push to use the technology at installations and on the battlefield.

Plasan North America has spent the last year pitching its All-Terrain Electric Mission Module. The ATeMM is a single platform that solves a variety of power capability and logistics issues, including attaching to a vehicle and converting it into a hybrid platform, serving as a supplemental generator to power command posts, or acting as a mass mobile charging station for conformable wearable batteries.

The Army has made some headway engaging with industry over the past few years. For example, the service’s Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Ground Vehicle Systems Center has hosted electrification forums across the U.S., asking companies whether they were focused on how to recharge in an austere environment, Michael Cadieux, the center’s director, told Defense News last year.

At first, industry didn’t raise their hand, but now there has been a significant shift, Cadieux said at the time. Industry is “coming to the table and engaging with us, saying … they have something that [they] think is a unique product or capability and it starts to address or get at tactical recharging.”

The provision in the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act would require both the Navy and Air Force secretaries to submit alongside their annual budget requests “development and technology maturation progress reports” for the Next Generation Air Dominance program and the complementary effort for collaborative combat aircraft.

NGAD is a sixth-generation fighter program that would pair with unmanned aircraft, including the CCA acting as a so-called loyal wingman.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., who chairs the House Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, told Defense News that “the Navy needs to speed that up, so that’s why we want to report on what they’re doing.”

The Air Force is juggling several technology development efforts in parallel, including work on advanced engines and a next-generation tanker to give the NGAD fighter additional range in highly contested environments. Wittman said he wants to ensure one technology doesn’t fall behind, and potentially lead to bad decisions for other components.

If the various technology development efforts are properly aligned, “we can either deliver on time or deliver to the left,” or ahead of schedule, he explained.

One nightmare scenario, he said, is that the aircraft’s development gets ahead of engine development, and the Air Force eventually realizes it made a bad decision that would have been avoided if the engine had matured faster.

“We want to see all those things happen in a sequence where one takes advantage of the other … so we’re making maximum use of resources,” Wittman said of the annual reporting requirement.

Asked about the gap between the Navy’s and the Air Force’s progress on NGAD, Wittman said the Navy must set its requirements beyond simply seeking a carrier-based fighter.

The Air Force about five years ago realized its fifth-generation fighters were at risk from Chinese weapons within the first island chain, Wittman noted. (The first island chain runs parallel to the mainland of the Asian continent, starting in the Kuril Islands, through the Japanese Archipelago; includes Taiwan and the northwestern portion of the Philippines; and finishes in Borneo.)

The Navy, he added, at first believed it could mitigate the threat by keeping its aircraft carriers farther away and sending its fifth-generation F-35Cs in along with tankers to increase their range. But, Wittman continued, the jets and the tankers are still at risk, and so this sixth-generation NGAD program is important to the sea service.

“The Navy is behind, and I don’t want the Air Force to mark time while the Navy’s trying to catch up,” Wittman said.

“But I do think the things that the Air Force is doing will inform the Navy, and the Navy should, with that, be able to make big steps forward that they otherwise couldn’t make if they were doing this on their own. So what our expectation is, is the Navy can do a significant amount of catch-up, based upon what the Air Force is doing.”

The ongoing digital belligerence is attributed to a group dubbed “Cadet Blizzard,” allegedly active since 2020, Tom Burt, corporate vice president for customer security and trust, said in the post. The company also connected the group to destructive data-wiping attacks that plagued Ukraine ahead of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

Russia historically uses cyber to project power, soften targets and meddle in foreign affairs. An International Institute for Strategic Studies report in 2021 placed the country in tier two of its cyber powerhouse rankings, alongside China but behind the U.S.

Advance work in Ukraine blunted Russian cyber advantage, US says

In addition to targeting Ukraine, Cadet Blizzard is focusing efforts on NATO members that are funneling military aid into Eastern Europe, Microsoft said. Countries have committed billions of dollars in equipment, ordnance and combat vehicles to Ukraine to help battle back Russian forces.

“While it has not been the most successful Russian actor, Cadet Blizzard has seen some recent success,” Burt said in the post. “Microsoft’s unique visibility into their operations has motivated us to share information with the security ecosystem and customers to raise visibility and protections against their attacks.”

U.S. leaders have for more than a year urged the private and public sectors to step up their cybersecurity practices and keep an eye out for virtual irregularities.

A lack of test ranges and other infrastructure is a significant limiting factor in the U.S. Department of Defense’s development of hypersonic systems, which can fly and maneuver at speeds of Mach 5 or higher. Officials want to fly these aircraft and weapons at a more regular cadence but the aircraft and ranges it relies on are in high-demand, limiting major programs to a few flights per year.

Defense Innovation Unit eyes first flight of hypersonic testbed

In its proposed fiscal 2024 defense policy bill, released June 12, the House Armed Services Committee called for the department to study “at least two additional corridors” for long-distance hypersonic testing and initiate any environmental reviews that would be required for those tests.

A separate provision would require the Secretary of Defense to brief the committee by early next year on its plan to “maximize” the use of its West Coast flight ranges. That plan should include the cost and schedule for making improvements at those locations.

“The committee is aware of the need for expanded test ranges for hypersonic, autonomous systems and new aerospace developments that require access to restricted, air, land and sea space,” the committee said. “The need to expand rages for seamless interoperability is paramount to address the complexity of weapon systems.”

The bill also notes that DoD is overdue in delivering a hypersonic testing strategy, which was required in the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. Lawmakers proposed blocking a portion of the travel budget for the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy until that plan is submitted.

Speaking June 14 at a Defense One Technology Summit, Air Force Research Laboratory Chief Technology Officer Timothy Bunning said his team is trying to do more of its testing in virtual and simulated environments, but that flight-test constraints are a major detriment to the service’s hypersonic programs.

In fact, he highlighted a recent review from the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board that identified test limitations as “the number one threat right now to the portfolio.”

“We don’t have what we need to operate at the speed of relevance right now,” Bunning said.

New hypersonic testing facility could boost US development

The Air Force’s Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon had a notable test failure in late March, and service acquisition chief Andrew Hunter has signaled it may not move forward with the program beyond the prototyping phase.

The House Armed Services Committee’s policy bill — which does not ultimately determine defense appropriation levels, but has influence on the process — recommends cutting the $150 million in fiscal 2024 funding that the service would need to finish ARRW’s prototype phase.

Bunning said today that while failures aren’t ideal, they’re a biproduct of a rigorous test program.

“We’re really exercising muscles that we haven’t exercised in a while,” he said. “These are complex systems and things go wrong, and we have to be tolerant of that failure.”

No more than 70% of the Office of the Secretary of the Army’s travel budget can be obligated or spent until Secretary Christine Wormuth submits that analysis for the FARA program to congressional defense committees, the mark of the bill laid out.

The Army completed a “very robust” analysis of alternatives in 2019 for its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program, subcommittee Chairman Rob Wittman, R-Va., told Defense News in a June 14 interview. “So our question was why not the same for FARA?”

The Army chose Textron’s Bell to build the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft in December 2022.

As for the FARA program, the Army released a request for proposals in the summer of 2021 limited to two preselected teams — Lockheed Martin and Bell — for a competitive fly-off. Each team has essentially finished building prototypes and are awaiting the delayed Improved Turbine Engine Program engine in order to get off the ground for the fly-off phase of the competition. Flights are delayed by at least year. The current plan is to fly by the fourth quarter of FY24.

“Apparently they started out but never completed [the analysis of alternatives for FARA] and then came to a decision, and here’s where we’re going to go with the request for proposals on FARA,” Wittman said. “What we’re saying is that with all the things going on today with all the different service branches and looking at these platforms and looking at how do we have capability and capacity at the same time, they should do a very rigorous look at alternatives.”

There are other schools of thought on future attack and reconnaissance capabilities, Wittman said, pointing to the Marine Corps’ vision for semiautonomous and autonomous aircraft to reduce risk and “have a bigger footprint in that realm.”

Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told Wittman during a hearing in April that the service is conducting an analysis of alternatives for the FARA program, noting the process was slowing the program in addition to the ITEP engine struggles.

Wittman said during the hearing that he is alarmed the Army is just now conducting an analysis of alternatives AOA for FARA — having already spent $2 billion on the program — and pressed Bush for what might happen if the review showed a better alternative to what is in development now.

Bush explained the analysis kicked off now because the Army had not decided on an acquisition pathway earlier in the program. The Army debated between whether it could enter the program at the engineering and manufacturing development stage, or if it should take a more traditional approach and go through a technology development phase.

“We decided the more responsible approach would be to go to a traditional Milestone B, which requires the AOA,” Bush said. “I think I’m confident though that the AOA, the way it’s structured, is fair. It’s very thorough, examining many alternatives. I think that’s good.”

“We’ll know more later this year,” he added. “I think we will be in a good place to know exactly where things are going to land in terms of the program schedule.”

Because of delays within the program, Bush said during the hearing, FARA’s technology maturation phase won’t begin until the first quarter of FY26.

The Army is continuing to develop systems for FARA, despite delays, that go beyond just the airframe, Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the service’s vertical lift modernization, told Defense News in April.

While the Army waits for the engine, it is developing the weapons systems and a critical modular, open-system architecture for the aircraft, Rugen said. “This is our effort to claw back schedule and claw back scope.”

The LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile — formerly known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent — will reach its initial operational capability sometime between April and June 2030, the Government Accountability Office said in a June 8 weapons assessment report.

Lawmakers seek clearer picture of nuclear command and control

That schedule has slipped from the program’s previous estimates, which anticipated the missile would start replacing the Cold War-era LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM sometime in 2029.

Officials with Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor on the program, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The $100 billion Sentinel program is one of the Defense Department’s top priorities, with the more than 50-year-old Minuteman III program approaching the end of its life and in need of replacement. The Air Force’s Minuteman III program now has 400 missiles and 450 silos spread across nearly 32,000 square miles.

The Air Force is now expected to make a decision on full-rate production of the Sentinel sometime between July and September 2030.

Supply chain struggles, including shortages of materials and long lead times for basic commodities, have hampered the Sentinel program and caused it to slip behind schedule, GAO said. Northrop is working on several steps to try to ease the supply chain crunch, it said.

Staffing shortfalls — particularly in finding skilled software workers — and delays in the processing of security clearances needed to work on the program have also slowed the program down, according to the report.

Technical problems have also hampered Sentinel. Classified information technology infrastructure issues have contributed to the schedule delays, GAO said. And the complexity and scope of Sentinel’s unique software development effort is also at a high risk.

Sentinel delivered its first incremental software capability, dubbed IFC 0.5, in August 2022. This software capability showed how the missile and its command and launch modules would connect in a simulated environment.

But follow-up software capabilities are lagging, GAO said, and IFC 1.0 is expected to be late and over cost.

The Air Force and National Security Agency also have not yet approved a way to transfer data between networks with different security classifications, which is also limiting the program.

The large scope of the Sentinel program, which encompasses hundreds of facilities and operations over thousands of miles and requires the creation of new technologies and infrastructure, is also adding to the program’s complexity, GAO said.

The program office told GAO that its main schedule “contains many deficiencies and cannot be used to effectively manage the execution of the program.” Northrop and the program are now reviewing the schedule and considering how to possibly change it, GAO said.

The Air Force’s arsenal of ICBMs makes up one element of the U.S. nuclear triad, with submarines and bomber aircraft armed with their own nuclear weapons comprising the rest. The Air Force is also in the process of upgrading its bomber fleet, with Northrop Grumman-made B-21 Raider stealth bombers now in production.