The order for the Common Sensor Payload Version 3, or CSP v3, is worth as much as $118 million and stems from a previous indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity arrangement, according to an announcement from the service’s Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors.

The sensor packages are typically fitted to MQ-1C Gray Eagle uncrewed aircraft. The General Atomics-made drone can carry multiple payloads, including synthetic aperture radar, communications relays and missiles.

The latest edition of sensing tech will feature “several enhancements over the previous version,” Dennis Teefy, project director for sensors-aerial intelligence at PEO IEW&S, said in a June 21 statement.

L3Harris, Raytheon chosen for next phase of Army aerial intel upgrades

“It will have an improved camera with short-wave infrared capabilities, which will enable better resolution in low-light scenarios,” he said. “It also addresses hardware obsolescence in the current CSP Version 2 to ensure sustainment can continue well into the future.”

RTX is the second largest defense contractor in the world when ranked by revenue, according to Defense News analysis.

The company rolled out its new three-letter moniker, matching its stock-market ticker, earlier this week. The rebrand coincided with news that Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary, would take control of about $2.7 billion in Joint All-Domain Command and Control work.

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.

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.

The company unveiled its new three-letter moniker, RTX, in a LinkedIn post on Monday. The rebranding comes three years after Raytheon merged with aerospace manufacturer United Technologies Corp. to form Raytheon Technologies. Since then, the company’s stock has traded under the RTX ticker symbol.

Raytheon injecting Collins Aerospace unit with $2.7 billion JADC2 jolt

RTX “is a nod to the past and a nod to the future,” Greg Hayes, the company’s chief executive, said at an investor meeting Monday. He noted United Technologies’ ticker symbol was UTX; Raytheon’s was RTN.

Last summer, the conglomerate announced it would move its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia. Earlier this year, it announced plans to reorganize into three brands: Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, and Raytheon.

In a call with analysts in April, Christopher Calio, RTX’s chief operating officer, said the restructuring is meant to better align the company’s businesses with customer priorities, improve performance, and to better use company resources to optimize investments and cost structure.

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 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 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.

MILAN — Portuguese drone manufacturer Tekever has told Defense News it will provide some of its long-endurance systems to Kyiv to support land and maritime operations, a move bankrolled by the United Kingdom’s International Fund for Ukraine.

Earlier this month, the British Defence Ministry shared a video on social media showcasing military equipment being provided by the IFU account to Ukrainian troops. Launched last summer, the first IFU deliveries — funded by Denmark, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the U.K. — will begin to arrive in July.

The International Fund for Ukraine is supplying critical capabilities for Ukraine, with deliveries from the first procurement round due next month.

Yesterday we announced a £92m air defence package, to be provided through the second procurement round: https://t.co/wipYETa8Ur pic.twitter.com/XOvX1yJ1qa

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) June 14, 2023

Open-source intelligence analysts were quick to identify what appears to be Malloy T150 quadcopters manufactured by the British company Malloy Aeronautics, the DeltaQuad Pro VTOL drone produced by Dutch firm DeltaQuad, and the Astero ISR system from Denmark’s Nordic Wing. Two other unspecified drone models can be seen in the footage, with one shown taking off vertically and launched via catapult.

The British Defence Ministry declined to comment on specific platforms in the video.

Defense News can, however, confirm that one of the two unidentified drones is the Tekever AR3 Vertical Takeoff and Landing system, manufactured by the Lisbon-based firm Tekever.

“Yes, our Tekever AR3 system is depicted in the video produced by the UK MoD,” a company representative told Defense News. “It includes images of the drone being deployed with support of a catapult — which we can use for extended endurance operations up to 16 hours — and in an optional VTOL configuration. Each operator can easily choose which variant it wants to use for a specific mission.”

Tekever’s CEO and founder, Ricardo Mendes, added that the company is “very proud to support Ukraine and thankful to the UK MoD and IFU for allowing us to contribute to one of the most important causes of our lifetime.”

The AR3 is a small, long-endurance drone designed to provide wide-area surveillance for both land and maritime missions. It has a maximum payload capacity of 4 kilograms (9 pounds), can fly at a cruise speed of 75-90 kph (47-56 mph) and can also be recovered via parachute.

Some of the military operators of the AR3 include Portugal, the UK, and Nigeria. Hence, its label in the footage, NAF 167 (an acronym used for the Nigerian Air Force), raised the question as to where the drones were purchased from.

“I can confirm that Nigeria purchased a number of the Tekever AR3 platforms from Tekever Ltd. of Portugal. However, all the drones acquired are currently operating in Nigeria — none have been donated in any way or form to Ukraine or any other country,” Maj. MS Muhammad, deputy defense adviser to the Nigeria High Commission in the U.K., told Defense News.

He added that the drone shown in the video with the NAF 167 label, which does indeed stand for Nigerian Air Force, “must have been provided by the manufacturer, or the clip used in the said tweet might have come from the company’s promotional videos, as the model with that particular number is presently in use in Nigeria.”

It is important to note that the individual platforms showcased in the video are not necessarily the final ones that Ukraine will receive, but rather were provided by industry partners to display some capabilities provided as part of the first $212 million defense package announced in February.

The second IFU procurement, referred to as Urgent Bidding Round 2, launched on April 11. The first capability package resulting from that second round was announced earlier this week and will include a $188 million air defense package. Capabilities requested include sensors to detect and track cruise missiles, low-flying drones and/or ballistic missiles, air burst rounds for cannon-based air defense systems, and sensor-guided air defense cannons to defeat low-flying drones and cruise missiles.

Johan Hjelmstrand, a press officer for Sweden’s defense minister, noted much of the IFU account is unspent, and that some companies either do not go public with related contracts or that not all contracts are yet signed, but that “more packages are on the way.”

In terms of how the fund operates, Martynas Bendikas, a strategic adviser with the Lithuanian Defence Ministry’s public affairs team, explained that defense ministries contribute only with financial resources. Following this, an international public tender is organized for specific military equipment, and all seven countries’ companies can participate.

“However, so far, Lithuanian drones are being sent to Ukraine in other formats,” she said.

Epirus, a U.S. company specializing in directed energy, and DroneShield, an Australian firm involved with electronic warfare, on June 15 announced the successful marriage of the former’s Leonidas high-power microwave kit and the latter’s sensing-and-jamming DroneSentry.

Together, they provide “significantly expanded options” for the U.S. Department of Defense and other customers, DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik said in a statement. “Additionally, there are synergies on the business development front, which DroneShield and Epirus are already working on.”

‘Smaller, better and cheaper’: The rise of portable drone interceptors

Epirus in November invested roughly $2.5 million into DroneShield.

Military adoption and deployment of drones has ballooned, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine again pushing their use into the public eye. The proliferation of overhead threats is motivating the Pentagon to rethink its battlefield defenses. High-power microwave systems use bursts of energy to disrupt or destroy distant electronics.

Epirus this year won a $66 million Army prototyping contract handled by the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, which serves as a bridge between the science-and-technology community and program executive offices. With the Leonidas equipment, the company is focusing on the service’s indirect fire protection capability, meant to negate rockets, artillery, mortars, missiles and more.

A Leonidas array was previously joined with a Stryker combat vehicle, in partnership with General Dynamics Land Systems, and used to roast both individual drones and collective swarms. The “Stryker Leonidas,” developed in less than one year, was on display at the 2022 Association of the U.S. Army convention.

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.

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 Bayraktar TB2 can carry lightweight, laser-guided bombs and fly for up to 27 hours at a time, which, according to the company, was “a record” it had set while testing the drone in Kuwait in 2019.

Tuesday’s announcement would set Kuwait to become the 28th country to procure the TB2 drones.

Demand for the drones has surged due to their successful deployment in conflict zones such as Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

Kuwaiti Air Force operations chief brigadier, Gen. Fahad Al-Dosari, said in a video posted on Twitter that the drone fleet can support the naval and coast guard forces, as well as monitor maritime and land borders. He said the drones can also “carry out reconnaissance and targeted missions” in addition to supporting search and rescue efforts.

Baykar and the Kuwaiti government did not say how many drones were purchased or when they would be delivered. Both could not be immediately reached for comment.

The drones — priced under $2 million each according to estimates — are produced by the defense company Baykar, which belongs to the family of Selcuk Bayraktar, the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Bayraktar is the company’s chief technical officer.

The TB2 has been credited with helping tip the balance of conflicts in Libya, as well as to Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan in fighting with Armenian-backed forces in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2020.

It has also enabled Ukraine to mount a stiff defense of its cities, carrying out attacks against Russian forces with an effectiveness that surprised many Western military experts and triggered a rush among nations to procure the unmanned craft.

A private Lithuanian crowdfunding campaign, inspired by the drone’s effectiveness in battle, rallied ordinary citizens and raised nearly €6 million (U.S. $6.5 million) to purchase a TB2 for Ukraine.

The drone contract between Baykar and Kuwait, struck through direct negotiations between the Turkish and Kuwaiti governments, also includes weapons provisioning, electronic warfare and mobile ground control facilities compatible with NATO standards, according to Kuwaiti state media.

Kuwait, considered a major non-NATO ally, and the U.S. have had a close military partnership since America launched the 1991 Gulf War to expel Iraqi troops after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the country. The country hosts the U.S. Army Central’s forward headquarters and some 13,500 American troops.

The full rollout, expected in August, is the latest step in the $136 million Navy Enterprise Service Desk venture, meant to modernize and consolidate more than 90 IT help desks into one central node. General Dynamics Information Technology announced it was awarded the NESD indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract in late 2021.

Sailors, Marines and civilians with a common access card and who can be verified through the Global Federated User Directory will be able to contact Amelia via phone or text. The program should serve more than 1 million users around-the-clock responses based on a depth of training and insider know-how. Additional applications, such as in a classified environment, could follow.

“Predominantly, we’ve had to have agents around who had knowledge of ‘how do I fix a specific issue,’” Travis Dawson, GDIT’s chief technology officer for the Navy and Marine Corps sector, told C4ISRNET in an interview. “Well, that issue can be documented, right? And once it’s documented, we can go ahead and have that resolved via automation, without the human interaction.”

While Amelia is taught to answer questions and complete repetitive tasks, Dawson said it is capable of more, such as sensing frustration in user queries.

“In the AI world, I will tell you, they get really sensitive when you call conversational AI a bot,” he said. “A bot has a back-ended script, right? So it’s only going to tell you the answer that it knows. If it doesn’t tell you, you sit at a dead end.”

Pentagon takes own ‘Pulse’ with internal data dashboard

Should Amelia be unable to answer a question or fix a problem, it is capable of forwarding the matter to a live agent — the sort of human-to-human interaction traditionally associated with connectivity woes or locked accounts. In testing, Amelia has helped slash the number of abandoned calls “significantly,” and the “first-contact resolution rate has been pretty high, in the higher 90 percentile,” according to Dawson.

“People are able to get their answers quicker than they have historically,” he said.

The Pentagon is spending billions of dollars on AI advancement and adoption. The technology is being applied to both the battlefield and the boardroom. It can assist target identification onboard combat vehicles, and it can parse mass amounts of personnel and organizational info.

GDIT, a division of General Dynamics, the fifth largest defense contractor in the world by revenue, in May launched a tech-investment strategy with focuses on zero-trust cybersecurity, 5G wireless communications, automation for IT operations, AI and more.

The company provided C4ISRNET a rendering of Amelia as a female sailor in uniform. No explanation of the name or gender selection was given.

“The requirement moving forward was to have the integration of an AI capability,” Dawson said. “And with automation that’s out there today, Amelia fit the bill.”

Defense officials at the Pentagon on Tuesday announced six recommendations on how the department plans to speed up foreign military sales, which also include streamlining the processes for reviewing and releasing technology to allies and partner nations; finding ways to speed up the approval of non-programs of record cases; better mapping out the process for prioritizing and awarding foreign sales; and working with the State Department, lawmakers and other parts of the government to find more ways to improve the process.

“Our allies and partners are a center of gravity and the greatest strategic advantage for the U.S. military” as it prepares for a possible conflict against an advanced nation, according to Sasha Baker, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.

“The [National Defense Strategy] is a call to action for the defense enterprise to incorporate our allies and partners across the board at every stage of defense planning, and obviously FMS has a big role to play in that process,” Baker said in a briefing with reporters.

The United States typically sells tens of billions of dollars of weapons to foreign governments each year, reaching a recent high of $83.5 billion in 2020, before dropping to nearly $35 billion the next year and then growing again to nearly $52 billion in 2022.

But the government’s pace of approving and delivering weapons to nations such as Taiwan has been consistently sluggish, often languishing for months or years, and has drawn the ire of lawmakers and partner nations who want the U.S. to move faster.

Baker said the Pentagon’s panel reviewing the FMS process knew it must change how the military does business, noting the department frequently heard from customers that such sales “can be a pain point for them.”

But, she cautioned, there was no single “silver bullet” to fix the process, and the panel settled on an assortment of smaller improvements.

The top change Baker highlighted was to improve how the department talks with ally and partner nations about their military sales needs. To do this, and to cut down on delays in the process, the department plans to set up a new Defense Security Cooperation Service, similar to the existing Defense Attaché Service, as well as make other changes to how it organizes its security cooperation processes.

This new service will ensure security cooperation officers receive training and professional development to “make good choices and decisions” while working with customers, Baker said. Details on the establishment of this new service are not yet determined.

Having a stronger understanding of what foreign customers need will also help expand the capacity of the defense-industrial base, Baker said, by giving defense firms a better idea of what ally and partner nations require in the years to come.

Baker said the industrial base expansion strategy will include a greater use of multiyear contracts, the Special Defense Acquisition Fund and five-year analyses that predict what customers’ needs.

The Pentagon has already moved to make multiyear purchases of key munitions, for example, as efforts to arm Ukraine and other partner nations have in many cases stretched America’s supply of munitions thin and maxed out the industrial base’s production capacity.

“We can’t produce things on cold lines, where we just don’t have the production capacity,” said Radha Plumb, deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

Plumb said the Pentagon’s effort to encourage the defense-industrial base to expand production capacity — such as building surge capacity for high-demand, low-supply systems and munitions — will complement its goal of improving the FMS process and creating a greater supply for foreign customers.

This “will also allow us to provide a clear demand signal for industry as they plan for production expansions and work with us on systems of interest for foreign partners, as well as for our own systems,” Plumb said.

While the weapons and supplies the United States has provided to Ukraine are not foreign military sales, Plumb noted, several of the same issues have cropped up in discussions about how to speed up that nation’s security assistance.

Baker also said the Pentagon must create more ways for customers to clearly communicate with the U.S. about the status of their FMS requests. Too often, she explained, foreign nations don’t hear anything from the Pentagon for months after submitting a request and are left “in limbo.”

The Pentagon already has the ability to prioritize sales to certain nations, Baker said, but the panel reviewing the FMS process concluded the Pentagon must pay more attention to combatant commanders’ perspectives.

Combatant commanders often hear from partner nations more frequently about the challenges or timing issues they face, and what would most help them, Baker said. But that information can take a while to get back to Washington.

To fix this, the Pentagon has created a monthly meeting on FMS issues, in which combatant commanders can highlight cases that need more attention from senior leaders, or have gone wrong and need to be fixed.

Plumb said the Pentagon plans to map out the FMS prioritization and award process using consistent metrics, so both the government and industry have a clearer picture of what is going on and where potential problems exist.

The Pentagon also has acquisition tools — such as indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts, as well as undefinitized contract actions — that could allow it to move faster, Plumb said, and the department will look for FMS cases that could benefit from quicker strategies.

The Pentagon also plans to set up a board, headed by Baker and Plumb, to continually look at the highest-priority FMS cases and process improvements to avoid stalled requests.

Baker said this board will also provide senior leaders a better, data-driven view of where logjams are occurring.

“Where is the system blinking red?” Baker said. “Is it a particular region? Is it a type of capability? Is it on the production side? Is it on the precontracting side? … A lot of the data exists, but it’s not particularly easy for senior leaders to get … their hands on it.”

Schumer said the new partnership will give GlobalFoundries an edge when applying for grants through his chips subsidies bill that Congress passed last year, which sets aside $2 billion in grants specifically for microelectronics in defense systems.

“Because of my chips and science bill, two titans of upstate New York industry are coming together —GlobalFoundries and Lockheed Martin — to ensure that most of the chips that are used in our sensitive military technology are made right here in upstate New York,” Schumer said at an event announcing the partnership at GF’s headquarters in Malta, New York.

“When Global Foundries applies for a chips grant to expand and meet demand for their chips by the defense industry and other industries like autos, they’re going to know that they have a willing customer in a great company like Lockheed Martin,” he added.

In addition to the possible defense grants from the Chips Act, the Pentagon already awarded GlobalFoundries $117 million in Defense Production Act funding last year to produce 45-nonamometer semiconductors in New York.

The company will seek to more securely and efficiently manufacture chips Lockheed needs, including next-generation microelectronics, while bundling chips more tightly to reduce production costs.

Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said the partnership will “help increase access to domestically produced microelectronics — a true national security imperative.”

Lockheed declined to offer details on the partnership, including how much it is investing.

The subsidies and tax incentives for microelectronics companies in the Chips Act are largely geared toward onshoring semiconductor production amid concerns China could disrupt the global supply chain.

China and its neighbors produce most of the word’s semiconductors, and the U.S. only produces 12% of global microprocessors. Additionally, Taiwan makes 92% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, sparking fears that a Chinese invasion of the island could deprive the U.S. of the cutting-edge and lower-end chips both needed in weapons systems.

“We need the most advanced chip technologies and superior cybersecurity, anti-tamper and other capabilities that are specialized to bolster our national defense and deter aggression,” said Taiclet.

Taiclet noted that each CH-52 helicopter for the Marines contains over 2,000 chips. He also stressed the need for lower-end “legacy chips” for systems like Javelin anti-tank missiles that Ukraine has used to defend against Russia’s invasion. Each Javelin system contains 250 microchips, and the U.S. has sent thousands of the missiles to Ukraine.

Beijing produces many of these lower-end chips and exports many to the U.S. — though it’s unclear how many actually end up in American weapons systems.

Schumer added an amendment to the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act that will eventually ban Chinese-produced semiconductors from critical U.S. national security systems, arguing they could compromise weapons systems.

The six-month extension for GFIM, as it’s known, is valued at $8.5 million. It builds upon a nine-month, $14.8 million deal announced in late 2022 as well as prototype work the year prior.

The management system is meant to consolidate more than a dozen aging applications. It will also automate a raft of tasks that were once done manually, such as determining unit status.

“GFIM is a game-changing capability that holds immense importance for the U.S. Army and has the potential to revolutionize processes by enabling data-driven decision-making, automation of critical functions, and real-time visibility,” Ryan Legge, BigBear.ai’s president of integrated defense solutions, said in a statement June 12.

Senators plan briefings on AI to learn more about risks

During the extension, BigBear.ai is expected to migrate GFIM to the cARMY cloud. Modernization of the Army’s networks and underlying computer infrastructure is among the service’s priorities; Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has said achieving digital fluency and data centricity is her No. 2 objective.

The extension for BigBear.ai comes on the heels of user testing in late May and early June. BigBear.ai staff, Army leaders and technical experts associated with GFIM attended. Army GFIM Capabilities Management Officer Lori Mongold in a statement Monday described the system as a “transformative leap forward in force management capabilities,” once fully fleshed out.

BigBear.ai last month unveiled a partnership with L3Harris Technologies, the 10th largest defense contractor by revenue, according to Defense News analysis.

As part of that agreement, BigBear.ai will supply L3Harris with its computer vision, predictive analytics and related applications in a bid to improve manned-unmanned teaming and identification and classification of foreign vessels for the Navy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The images and other readings gathered from afar were critical to grasping the situation in Eastern Europe at the time, and their continued dissemination, including through the press, aids public understanding of the war.

Among those involved in the capture and distribution of such information is Maxar Technologies, which provides satellite imagery to the Defense Department and intelligence community, among other national security pursuits.

In February 2023, for example, the Colorado-based company won an additional round of work on the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain, which compiles extremely accurate virtual maps of territory across the globe for military purposes. It’s considered a key piece of the service’s Synthetic Training Environment, an immersive training-and-rehearsal tool. The company is also involved with Project Maven, launched by the Pentagon in 2017 to detect targets of interest in footage captured by uncrewed systems.

C4ISRNET reporters interviewed two Maxar executives — Tony Frazier, executive vice president and general manager of public sector earth intelligence, and Jennifer Krischer, vice president and general manager of intelligence programs — on the sidelines of the GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis.

Portions of the interview below, conducted May 23, have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Where do you see the future of One World Terrain and, by extension, the Synthetic Training Environment going? What does that look like?

Frazier: We started with a focus of helping the Army modernize its training with geospecific data, with a goal of being able to provide soldiers as realistic an experience as possible.

Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais, she was the first cross-functional team lead for the Synthetic Training Environment. Her vision at the time was: If we can have reps and sets with hundreds of experiences in the virtual environment, then we can help soldiers be safe when they actually deploy.

That has continued to be the core focus of the program. That being said, as we exposed the data to different parts of the community, there was insatiable demand from the operational users to apply it to current missions. Whether it was in support of the Afghan drawdown, there was data that we provided over Ukraine — using it for operational mission-planning was very prominent.

Even the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, there was a reference to One World Terrain, and I think it did a nice job of highlighting the variety of use cases that had been proven out.

So what we’re seeing is, as we build out more complete, global coverage of that capability, being able to use it as a reference layer to integrate other data sources against it, and have all those data sources inherit the same accuracy, that foundation really enables a form of sensor fusion that we haven’t been able to see at scale.

One example that we are demonstrating is how we can apply 3D geo-registration software that uses that reference as a way to take — whether it’s space-based, or airborne, or even an unmanned surface vehicle — a sensor feed and use the terrain as a source of registration to tie that down, both in terms of the right location and the right orientation, so that you’re able to inherit the same accuracy as that base.

Think about a realtime feed from a drone. That would then allow you to be able to know exactly within this type of radius where that pixel is. That, I think, is probably one of the more breakthrough opportunities, in terms of taking it fully operational.

Q: How has the conflict in Ukraine shaped or factored into Maxar’s business? What is that consumption like — is there an increased need for satellite imagery or your other products?

Frazier: We support a global mission, and we’ve been providing these capabilities for decades. And you can look at every major event, and Maxar has played a role in that, in some capacity.

I think what’s unique about Ukraine was that at all phases, the crisis leading to conflict, we were able to, through different channels, expose our capability in a way that was helpful to the mission.

The focus of the Defense Department now is integrated deterrence — the role that commercial was able to play to bring transparency to what was happening, with troop buildup and, as it pivoted to conflict, what was happening on the ground.

The combination of what was exposed through the media, through our partnerships there, along with the fact that the intelligence community, Defense Department, allies and partners were all able to access current imagery over those areas, just allowed a level of interoperability and mission planning that, I think, has helped support the mission, but also helped a lot of decision makers think through ways that can be applied, more broadly.

NATO hunger for info driving deals for commercial satellite imagery

I know you recently covered the Global Information Dominance Experiments series.

One of the things that’s helped us do is have conversations with different stakeholders across the community, who have been looking at how do I take the increased commercial collection, some of the innovation that’s happening with applied machine learning, so computer vision, to be able to interpret imagery quickly, the types of technology I referenced earlier with our 3D, where we can georeference that data on quick timelines, and then how can that support different forms of experimentation. That is demonstrating how new use cases for how commercial can be applied to the here-and-now missions.

We’ve supported Project Convergence and Scarlet Dragon; those were examples of exercises and experimentation that we supported with commercial capabilities. I think we’re seeing that there’s a lot of interest.

Q: The big news at GEOINT yesterday was Project Maven, with Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth talking about its transition to a program of record. How do you envision Maxar taking part in Project Maven, and what do you hope to contribute?

Krischer: We’re already contributing to Project Maven.

We are generating algorithms around both electro-optical and our synthetic aperture radar imaging capabilities. So object detection, using those different modalities.

We also have been working with Project Maven for years now on providing low-latency imagery so that we can run the algorithms against the imagery in a sensor-to-shooter methodology that really resonates with the warfighter. So we’ve already been doing these things.

We envision the future of Maven as being: How do you bring the vast computer-vision algorithms sets to bear on the different missions, whether it be the intel analyst or the warfighter in the field, and how do you enable the warfighter to do these things?

We’re working kind of hand-in-hand to understand what it needs to be and helping shape the future, so that it’s not vendor-locked, it’s really meeting the users where they need the information.

Frazier: In our conversations, the intent is to enable geospatial AI at scale. And, as a result, as these capabilities get more mature, you want to be able to take advantage of all the collection that’s happening across the constellation.

For the U.S. government, the constellation includes commercial as a part of that. That’s why EOCL is electro-optical commercial layer. With the contracts that were awarded to us, and Planet and BlackSky, and then what’s being done now to add other modalities, like radar and radio-frequency sensing and the like, the goal is to create an architecture where you can quickly run the algorithms against that source to then get the information out to those users.

Geospatial-intelligence agency making strides on Project Maven AI

We’ve had a lot of use of our existing systems to apply computer vision against the imagery that we’re hosting and disseminating now, across the community, and now it’s about how do we actually do this at scale, have more machine-to-machine exploitation at scale. The last couple of decades have been focused on how humans visualize imagery.

Q: With Project Maven, and with a lot of these things like Joint All-Domain Command and Control, there’s just an incredible amount of collection and data that has to be sorted through. So you can’t ignore the AI or ML portion on your side, right? That has to be baked in, basically?

Krischer: Absolutely.

Frazier: Correct.

Q: Is there a need for a One Space Terrain? Maybe with a more artful name?

Frazier: I can see that happening.

You heard the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, his comments, about how they’re supporting the lunar mission. And I think, yeah, we need to have an accurate representation of all domains, where we expect to safely navigate, to be able to mitigate threats, et cetera.

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

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

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

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

Lockheed paces JADC2 information-sharing at Northern Edge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what’s going on?

The claim that hypersonic weapons are invincible is one of the many beliefs about these weapons. Here’s why it’s wrong.

Kinzhal is an air-launched ballistic missile with fins that allow it to maneuver as it approaches its target. It is called “hypersonic” since its top speed is reportedly around Mach 10, which would give it a range of somewhat over 1,000 km. This system is not, however, what defense analysts typically mean by the term “hypersonic weapon” since it is not designed to glide over a significant fraction of its trajectory. Its high speed and ability to maneuver, however, mean that it poses a similar challenge as true hypersonic weapons to terminal missile defenses, like Patriot, that are used to defend against weapons of this range.

A maneuvering missile traveling at Mach 10 would be too fast for the U.S. Patriot PAC-3 and similar defense systems to intercept reliably. However, Mach 10 is roughly Kinzhal’s maximum speed, and its speed drops sharply as it reenters and travels through the increasingly dense atmosphere to hit a target on the ground.

Patriot is designed to intercept missiles at low altitudes, and my estimates show that Kinzhal slows enough during its dive that current versions of PAC-3 should be capable of intercepting it. Moreover, reports indicate that at least for the first of the Kinzhal intercepts, Ukraine was not using the most advanced version of the PAC-3 (called MSE, which is 25 percent faster than the previous version).

This analysis has two important implications.

First, Ukraine’s claims that it intercepted Kinzhal missiles are credible, and its defenses may be able to blunt a significant weapon in Russia’s arsenal.

Second and more generally, the medium-range hypersonic glide weapons like those the United States, Russia, and China are currently developing may not be as effective at performing key mission as advocates often claim.

A common argument for building hypersonic weapons is the desire to use them to destroy enemy missile and air defenses early in a conflict, to clear the way for subsequent attacks. Technical modeling, however, shows that the hypersonic weapons the United States has been developing – including the Air-Launched Rapid Response hypersonic Weapon (ARRW), the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) – may also be vulnerable to interception by missile defenses.

In particular, reports about the speeds and ranges of these weapons imply that they begin the glide phase of their trajectory with a speed of about Mach 12 or less. Their speed decreases due to atmospheric drag during the glide phase – especially if they are maneuvering significantly – and will decrease even further as they dive into the thick atmosphere on their way to their targets on the ground. My estimates show that these effects will likely make these systems vulnerable to interception by systems similar to current versions of PAC-3, although intercepting them may require the advanced PAC-3 MSE.

The United States must assume it will face defenses like these in other countries — soon if not now.

To be able to evade such defenses, hypersonic weapons would need to be launched with even higher speeds. Doing so would significantly increase the intense heating they experience during flight, which is a key obstacle to developing these weapons. Increasing their speed also makes them larger and heavier, which reduces the number that aircraft can carry.

Adding propulsion, such as scramjet engines being developed for hypersonic cruise missiles, could help the weapon maintain its speed during the glide phase. But these engines are unlikely to be powerful enough to help much against the exponentially increasing drag encountered during the dive phase, which could leave these weapons vulnerable to interception.

Russian and Chinese hypersonic weapons similar to these U.S. systems (such as the Russian Zircon and Chinese DF-ZF and Starry Sky 2) are also likely to be vulnerable to defenses like PAC-3. In this sense, these weapons do not represent a revolution in threat beyond that posed by medium-range ballistic missiles.

The Ukrainian experience with Kinzhal may be a wake-up call for Russia. It should also be a wake-up call for the United States. Congress and the U.S. military need to think clearly about the missions these weapons can realistically accomplish and whether they justify the high priority and budget share they are getting.

David Wright is a visiting scholar in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering’s Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy.

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

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

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

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

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to demo data processing node

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

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

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

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

The two Koreas, technically in a state of war, have no military reconnaissance satellites of their own and both are eager to possess them. The South Korean launch Thursday will likely assist its efforts to develop a space-based surveillance system.

The domestically built three-stage Nuri rocket lifted off from a launch facility on a southern island with a payload of eight satellites, including a main commercial-grade satellite whose mission is to verify radar imaging technology and observe cosmic radiation in a near-Earth orbit.

Science Minister Lee Jong Ho later told a televised news conference that the launch was successful, saying it proved the rocket’s reliability and South Korea’s potential to operate various satellites and explore space.

Lee said seven of the eight satellites including the main one were successfully released from the rocket. He said more time is required to confirm the release of the eighth satellite.

“Today, we confirmed that dreams can come true,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol wrote on Facebook. “I hope our future generations have a great dream and challenge while looking at the Nuri rocket soaring into space.”

The launch boosted South Korea’s hopes of catching up with Asian neighbors such as China, Japan and India in a regional space race. Lee, the science minister, said South Korea plans to conduct three more Nuri rocket launches by 2027 and will seek to develop more advanced launch vehicles.

The launch was initially scheduled for Wednesday but was postponed at the last minute due to a technical problem.

Last year, South Korea used a Nuri rocket to place a “performance verification satellite” in orbit, becoming the world’s 10th nation to send a satellite into space with its own technology. But that launch was primarily designed to test the rocket.

Many experts say Thursday’s launch will also help South Korea accumulate technologies and knowhow to operate military spy satellites and build long-range missiles.

South Korea is expected to launch its first spy satellite later this year. It currently relies on U.S. spy satellites to monitor North Korean facilities.

Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, noted that the satellite launched Thursday is designed to be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit, which is typically used for reconnaissance satellites.

South Korea already has missiles capable of reaching all of North Korea. But experts say it needs longer-range missiles to prepare for future security threats from potential adversaries China and Russia.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high following North Korea’s barrage of missiles tests since the beginning of last year. Some of the tests demonstrated its potential ability to launch nuclear strikes on the mainland U.S. and South Korea and Japan.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seeking to develop more sophisticated weapons systems, including a spy satellite, to cope with what he calls intensifying U.S. and South Korean hostilities. Analysts say Kim wants to use an expanded weapons arsenal to win greater concessions from Washington in future dealings.

“North Korea must be so concerned about the South Korean satellite launch Thursday because much of Kim Jong Un’s interest now is in possessing a spy satellite,” said Moon Seong Mook, an analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. “He has a strong desire to launch a spy satellite before South Korea does.”

Recent commercial satellite imagery of North Korea’s main launch center in the northwest shows activities that suggest “a new level of urgency in making the site ready to accommodate satellite launches,” 38 North, a North Korea-focused website, said Wednesday. It said the images indicate progress on a new launch pad is moving forward “at a remarkable pace.”

Last week, Kim examined a finished spy satellite and approved a plan for its launch during a visit to the country’s aerospace agency.

The spy satellite disclosed in North Korean state media doesn’t appear sophisticated enough to produce high-resolution imagery. But Lee, the expert at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, said it is likely to be capable of monitoring deployment of U.S. strategic assets such as an aircraft carrier and the movements of South Korean warships and fighter jets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional shuffles may be on the horizon, he said.