Shown here is the Army’s MSV-L designed to replace the Landing Craft Mechanized-8, (LCM-8). (Vigor LLC photo)

WASHINGTON — Repairs to the US Army’s new Maneuver Support Vessel-Light (MSV-L) prototype are expected to continue throughout the calendar year and possibly into early 2025. But, once completed, the vessel is Hawaii bound for a testing series with the 8th Theater Sustainment Command, according to the two-star commanding general.

“The vessel is going to come to Hawaii and that’ll probably be … optimistically, late this year, probably most likely early next,” said Maj. Gen. Jered Helwig.

Helwig is slated to leave his current post in early July, and has been nominated to receive a third star and take over as the deputy commander for US Transportation Command. While he will be long gone from his current post when the MSV-L arrives in Hawaii, on Monday he walked Breaking Defense through the tentative test plan that will drive fleet changes.

Designed to replace the aging Landing Craft Mechanized-8 (LCM-8), the MSV-L is envisioned to operate at greater speeds and carry heavier payloads of M1 Abrams, Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as food and medical supplies. After years of working the watercraft program, the Army accepted the first MSV-L from Vigor Works on Feb. 5, and the plan was to use it in the Project Convergence capstone event that month. 

But while en route to Camp Pendleton, the prototype vessel “experienced mechanical issues” and returned to a location near the company for “evaluation,” Zina Kozak-Zachary, the project manager for transportation systems within the Program Executive Office Combat Support & Combat Service Support, told Breaking Defense earlier this year.

Kozak-Zachary’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the outcome of that evaluation or the ongoing fixes, and neither did Vigor Works. But from his vantage point as the user, Helwig said he anticipates that the prototype will be back with the Army by early next year and then on to Hawaii. Once there, 8th Theater Sustainment Command soldiers will be working with the testing and acquisition communities to assess the vessel over a nine-month to one-year period.

“Everything that we can knock off that list we will do in the archipelago … because that allows us to do the tests in the environment that the vessel will operate in ultimately,” Helwig added. “It’s a great opportunity to really kind of get the vessel, then see it in the environment that, ultimately, it’ll operate in.”

The watercraft will primarily ferry back and forth between Oahu and the Big Island carrying soldiers, equipment and supplies to validate its specifications and more. It might also make its debut in a Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center (JPMRC) exercise in late 2025 before moving to the mainland United States’ east coast for schoolhouse training.

That core training in Hawaii, though, is expected to influence Army leadership decisions on future MSV-L configurations as the service looks for ways to pare down requirements and drive down the price point for the 13 vessel fleet.

“The first four might be the more expensive ones and the trailing nine would be a little less expensive,” Army acquisition head Doug Bush said in October 2023.

At that time, Bush disclosed that the projected MSV-L price point had ballooned but was now in a “much better place.” He did not address the new price point, but fiscal 2024 budget request documents pegged the per-vessel cost in the $31 million to $48 million neighborhood depending on the year and purchase quantity. The more recent FY25 request includes an ask of $66.5 million to buy one MSV-L. (That figure could be the reduced price point Bush alluded to, though higher than what the service predicted the year before.)

Boats, Boats, Boats 

As the Army eyes the return of its MSV-L prototype and possible new requirements for a heavy version too, Helwig and his team are continuing to look at new and modified ways to support the force in the Indo-Pacific region.

For example, his command is assigned four of the larger Logistic Support Vessels (LSVs) but one of those watercrafts was reassigned to the new 5th Composite Watercraft Company in Japan. To offset that loss, the 8th Theater Sustainment Command is now leasing a US-flagged commercial vessel that is roughly the same size as an LSV.

The Army is already using that watercraft to help sort through leasing options and operation concepts, even as the company works on getting the newly installed landing ramp up and running to help offload equipment. Helwig said the Army is using this model for now to explore the pros and cons of such a setup.

“Do these vessels have the capability to tie down our equipment? How do we work communicating with commercial and military vessels together?  Are we in sync?” he asked.

“In terms of ports, and authorities to get into different places, what are the requirements that those vessels would have? Are they the same or different from what we have on our military side,” Helwig added.

In addition to work on new crewed vessels, Army is interested in a host of manned and unmanned teaming options including in the maritime arena. One influencer is the Marine Corps work with its new Autonomous Low-Profile Vessel concept. One of those vessels is expected to participate in the upcoming Valiant Shield 2024, and Helwig said his team is eager to see how it performs.

“We’re very interested in … partnering and learning how theirs operates. Then … through that requirements process broadcasting that we think that it is an important part of any kind of future set,” he added.

The second flight of the national combat aircraft KAAN, which was initiated by the Turkish Defence Industries Presidency (SSB) in order to meet the combat aircraft requirement of the Turkish Air Forces Command and developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), is carried out successfully in Ankara, Turkiye on May 06, 2024. According to the statement made by SSB, KAAN stayed in the air for 14 minutes, reaching an altitude of 10 thousand feet and a speed of 230 knots. (Photo by TUR Defence Industries Presidency/Anadolu via Getty Images)

BEIRUT — Only one week after the second test flight of Turkey’s domestically-produced KAAN fighter, Turkish Aerospace Industries’ general manager has announced that the firm expects to deliver 20 aircraft by 2028 — and is making some big claims about its capabilities.

“This aircraft is better than the F-35,” Temel Kotil said during an event in Ankara, according to the Turkiye Newspaper. “The F-35 carries six tons; this one carries 10 tons of ammunition. It has two engines compared to the F-35’s single engine. Having two engines means more energy and radars illuminating a greater distance.”

Such claims are, clearly, hard to prove, and come with plenty of nationalistic background. Turkey was part of the Lockheed Martin-led F-35 aircraft program and Turkish firms produced parts of the aircraft, but in 2019 the US suspended Turkey’s participation over Ankara’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense systems, much to the anger of the Erdogan government.

The expulsion from the F-35 effort has led to a major emphasis on developing and producing the KAAN design, which successfully completed its maiden flight in February 2024.

“We will deliver 20 KAAN aircraft in the year 2028. We’ll deliver many more between 2030 and 2033, and the Turkish fleet will comprise hundreds of KAAN aircraft,” Kotil reportedly said. He added that TAI is also manufacturing the engine and hoped to fly the aircraft with local engines by 2028-2029.

Turkish defense expert and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Can Kasapoglu, told Breaking Defense earlier this year that KAAN’s design philosophy has evolved over time.

“KAAN, formerly TF-X, was once planned to be an air-superiority asset. Now it is turning into a multirole aircraft,” Kasapoğlu said.

The challenge facing Turkey with its indigenous defense efforts is cost. Even nations like the US and China seek out defense exports to help defray unit costs, something especially vital for a nation with currency inflation rate like Turkey.

For KAAN, Kasapoğlu said, Turkey will need to be looking for export opportunities in order to keep the unit cost from “skyrocketing.” One early adaptor, at least on paper, has already put its hand up: In July 2023, during a national defense expo, Azerbaijan joined Turkey in its fifth-generation fighter jet program in a move described by Erdogan as a “new sign of solidarity between the two countries.” (Turkey has identified Pakistan as another potential partner.

“Producing all systems is not financially feasible. While Turkiye seeks to make its defence industry sustainable through exports, international cooperation provides another avenue for maintaining this growth. Engaging in international cooperation, however, comes at the expense of autarky, and this trade-off can present very difficult choices,” an IISS report published earlier this month argues.

U.S. Cyber Command members work in the Integrated Cyber Center, Joint Operations Center at Fort George G. Meade, Md., April. 2, 2021. (Photo by Josef Cole)

WASHINGTON — The House Armed Services subcommittee on cyber, information technologies and innovation issued cybersecurity guidance requiring reciprocity on cloud computing systems Monday, pushing the Pentagon to streamline often-duplicative Authorization To Operate procedures. 

In the draft 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, the subcommittee wrote that no later than 270 days after the NDAA is implemented, the CIOs of the Army, Navy and Air Force Departments should develop and implement a policy that enforces reciprocity for cloud computing. In essence, if one office in the department officially deems that a “cloud-based platform, service, or application” is sufficiently cybersecure to use, then all parts of DoD can accept this “Authority To Operate” (ATO) instead of having to redo the certification process.

The idea is to eliminate redundant ATO processes, currently a major headache for both defense officials and IT contractors, who must prove a particular piece of software or hardware is secure over and over to different Authorizing Officers (AOs) with jurisdiction over different organizations, who often impose subtly different standards.

This mandate doesn’t apply to non-cloud “on premise” systems, which remain a large percentage of the DoD network, albeit an ever-dwindling one.

Related: Pentagon announces new reciprocity guidance to streamline software adaptation

The draft language released Monday proposes that before approving or denying a request for authorization to operate a cloud-based platform, service or application, military department AOs must consult with the current or planned mission owners of that platform, service or application. This means that the AO from one department or office should comply with what other AOs decided when determining if a cloud computing system is cybersecure. 

Other guidance in the draft proposes that AOs shall provide documentation that is accessible and comprehensible to “relevant stakeholders.” Additionally, a system that compiles and shares the documentation “of cloud-based platforms, services, and applications between mission owners and system owners” should be developed. 

HASC’s proposal of reciprocity comes after the Pentagon released cybersecurity guidance also enforcing reciprocity last week, which was not specific to only cloud computing systems. 

The plan, according to a one-pager signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, formally titled “Resolving Risk Management Framework and Cybersecurity Reciprocity Issues,” states that the “Department implements the Risk Management Framework (RMF), in accordance with DoD Instruction 8510.01, to guide how we build, field, and maintain cyber secure and survivable capabilities.”

Pentagon CIO John Sherman told the GEOINT audience that this move will assure “that folks don’t have to check each other’s homework over and over again,” unless an official has “bona fide reasons” to perform rechecks.

The full guidance has yet to be released by the Pentagon, however a representative from Sherman’s office told Breaking Defense in an email that the full guidance will be released “in the coming weeks.” 

The HASC plans to mark up the FY25 NDAA on May 22.

The future of the Royal Navy’s HMS Albion was until recently under threat, but decisionmakers say it will remain in service until 2033 (UK MoD)

BELFAST — British Royal Marines are to receive a fleet of six amphibious support ships capable of carrying drones, larger aircraft and insertion craft, the Royal Navy said today.

The new vessels, which sit under the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Multi Role Support Ships (MRSS) program, are set to replace HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark — the navy’s existing amphibious flagships from 2033/2034  — three other Bay-class platforms, and support ship RFA Argus, according to a statement from the service.

In addition to carrying heavy duty vehicles and aircraft, the future ships can also be operated as casualty receiving vessels, offering urgent medical care to sailors.

Lawmakers had been concerned that both HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark would be scrapped before reaching their 2033 out of service date, reportedly to allow sailors to transfer to other ships, amid recruitment problems, but the MoD eventually decided in January that they would not be retired prematurely.

It remains to be seen when an order for the MRSS fleet will be placed, and a total cost for the program has yet to be decided, but the Royal Navy statement noted that the MoD has started a first (concept) stage, and plans on collaborating with industry “as part of early market engagement ahead of developing the vessel design.”

The MRSS “procurement strategy will be set following conclusion of the concept phase,” said a MoD spokesperson in a statement to Breaking Defense, adding that market engagement is expected to start in  the fourth quarter of 2024.

“All Royal Navy warships are designed to meet Naval survivability standards, as a minimum to protect our sailors and marines,” explained the spokesperson. “Beyond that, the ongoing concept phase is considering cost and capability trade-offs within a set of key user requirements and wider fleet assumptions.”

Britain has a select pool of shipbuilders to call upon for the MRSS acquisition, namely; Babcock, BAE Systems, Camell Laird, and Harland and Wolff.

A spokesperson for BAE Systems said, “We welcome the announcement that the Multi Role Support Ships programme will proceed. We have a long history of supporting Royal Navy shipbuilding, combat systems and radar programmes and we look forward to working with the UK Ministry of Defence and industry partners on the next phase of the programme.”

Harland and Wolff, based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is currently under contract to deliver three Fleet Solid Support (FSS) ships for the Royal Navy, after securing a £1.6 billion ($2 billion) contract in January 2023. The vessels are designed to provide munitions and stores to Royal Navy aircraft carriers, destroyers and frigates when deployed at sea. The shipbuilder had not replied to a request for comment about MRSS at the time of publication.

Among other big ticket naval programs under contract, London is investing in new Type 26 and Type 31 frigates.

Reflecting on the decision to add the six MRSS ships to 22 other Royal Navy vessels on order or in build, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said, “this is a golden age for British shipbuilding,” during a speech today at the annual Sea Power Conference in London, England.

The acquisition, he added, is “backed” by the recent announcement to increase UK defense spending by 2.5 percent GDP by 2030, though such a plan remains subject to the Conservative Party winning a general election, due to be called in the second half of the year.

Polls, however, show that the Labour Party is on course for victory and a return to power after 14 years in opposition.

In a report published on Monday, the Council on Geostrategy, a British think tank, said that the UK “does not have enough naval capabilities” to protect British and NATO interests in the Euro-Atlantic region amid Russian threats, or to adequately “contribute towards sea denial in the Indo-Pacific to deter” China.

If those two targets are to be realized, the Royal Navy must “increase lethality, greater mass, survivability and integration” while investment should seek to “ensure the maximum potential of Britain’s aircraft carriers,” by ordering more US F-35B fifth generation fighter jets, according to the report.

US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro walks with officials from HD Hyundai Heavy Industries. (Photo courtesy of US Navy.)

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has made several speeches calling out contractors for buying back shares instead of investing that money in their facilities. In this new op-ed, Bill Greenwalt of the American Enterprise Institute pushes back at those criticisms.

The US Navy is on the precipice of its greatest crisis in decades as our major shipbuilding programs are wracked by delays while our adversaries’ capabilities continue to grow. Any hope of catching up to China’s massive naval buildup is fading fast, as the inadequacies of peacetime funding and mindsets continue to hollow out our Navy.

Amid these problems, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has both the time and the gumption to blast the industry players that enable us to compete. Rather than address our crisis head on and argue for the resources to support the type of naval buildup that is needed, what better strategy than to complain about so-called greedy contractors?

The Navy Secretary has been trying to pin the blame on a profit-seeking industry as the source of his problems. He recently noted that defense contractors are earning “record profits,” while “continu[ing] to goose [their] stock prices through stock buybacks, deferring promised capital investments, and other accounting maneuvers.”  He of course included that other bugbear in the anti-industry mantra — executive compensation — as another shot across the bow.

Putting aside the Secretary’s comments about stock buybacks and investments, which Jerry McGinn, Mikhail Grinberg, and Lloyd Everhart have thoroughly addressed, more attention must be paid to the first half of his remarks. The implied conclusion is that the defense industry and specifically naval ship builders are in the midst of an era of grand profiteering and should now do whatever Del Toro says with their “excess” profits to bail him and the Navy out of the tough spot it’s in. If only it were that simple.

It’s unclear exactly what the source of Del Toro’s angst is, but it seems in line with messaging out of the White House. Look at a November 2023 White House Fact Sheet announcing its “Better Contracting Initiative,” which states that “many of the largest Federal contractors [are] operating at historically high margins, resulting in costs to taxpayers that are simply too high.” Citing a study done by Deltek, the White House suggests that “contractor profit margins have grown to 15-17 percent, above historical norms of 6-10 percent.”

But is this true? In other words, is the defense industry really making as much profit as the White House and the Secretary suggest? Examining the profit margins of our top defense firms shows this not to be the case.

As the below graph shows, for six of the largest US defense contractors that AEI research analysts examined over the last decade, defense-specific operating profit margins are not at all-time highs — and in fact, have largely trended downward in the last ten years, negating Del Toro’s comments. While Lockheed Martin has seen a small upward swing in its trend lines, the other contractors examined have seen the opposite. More specifically, shipbuilding’s margins are approaching the point where investors might do better long-term by starting to think about buying savings bonds. Huntington Ingalls Industries, one of our country’s two major shipyards and presumably a company that Del Toro was referencing in his comments, has seen its profit fall from a decade high in 2016 at 12.1 percent to 6.8 percent last year. The same trend is seen at General Dynamics’ shipbuilding unit where annual profits have fallen from a peak of 9.9 percent in 2013 to 6.5 percent last year. Hardly a record.

This data comports with other findings about profit among defense contractors. Looking at the industry for decades prior to the analysis here, the Defense Business Board showed in 2014 that between 1980 and 2013, the average operating profit margin for the defense industry remained either just above or below 10 percent. In 2023, the average operating margin for the entire defense and aerospace industry came in at 9.7 percent.

In short then, US defense contractors haven’t been reaping record profits, and these have either stayed largely flat or decreased over the last decade.

Compare that to other industries with much higher margins. For instance, green and renewable energy, which is heavily subsidized by the federal government, saw an operating profit margin of 24 percent last year. Should Congress immediately start investigating cases of “green” profiteering? The case can be made for that much more than with the defense industry. Many industries’ comparable profits are even higher. The semiconductor industry, the source of government CHIPS Act giveaways, has profits almost three times (25.28 percent) the defense industry, while software (34.05 percent) is closing in on being four times as profitable. Highly regulated industries like utilities (22.17 percent) and railroads (35.52 percent), and even steel (12.5 percent), in its supposed death throws facing global dumping from China, have higher profits than defense.

How do we explain the White House numbers then? The underlying analysis might have methodological issues in sampling, or mixing apples and oranges by including commercial contractors who will only sell to the government under commercial prices, profits, and terms and conditions. The government may be buying more commercial goods and services and not trying to replicate at ten times the price that which already exists in the marketplace. That could skew the data and see the government paying more in profits to non-defense companies. But buying commercial would be a good thing and has been an objective of acquisition reforms since the 1990s. The other potential explanation to look into is that perhaps some civilian agency contractors may indeed be taking advantage of the government.

The key national security takeaways are that defense contracting profit margins are not even close to being at the White House numbers, are not increasing, and for shipbuilders, are in a freefall decline.

Profit is what encourages companies to invest. If they can’t turn a profit, then there’s little reason to put money into their business, and all of the new technologies, platforms, and weapons that our defense industry turns out wouldn’t come to fruition. The notion that defense profits are at a record high isn’t born out by the data and because of recent declines in these profits we will likely see less outside investment in the sector.

Believing in the falsehood of exorbitant profits in defense as our Navy Secretary advocates skews our collective perception towards our defense industry, making it seem as if it’s practically a government entity and not a group of businesses with their own financial interests.

The Navy needs to relearn that the profit motive and our national defense should go together. It allows our capitalist system to spur innovation in defense, leading to new platforms, new products, and new ways of doing business. Take profit out of the equation and you’d have a military with little innovation, unable to face threats today and badly underprepared for the conflicts of the future.

That, you might note, sounds an awful lot like the situation the Navy is facing today.

William C. Greenwalt is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy.

The GPS constellation that provides positioning, navigation and timing signals to the US military and civilians around the world, is made up of 31 active satellites. (BlackJack3D/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As Defense Department concern grows about the increasing ability of adversaries to disrupt GPS satellite signals, experts warn that there is no one-size-fits-all alternative to meet military needs for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities.

Radio-frequency (RF) signals broadcasted from Global Positioning System satellites can be used by a wide variety of platforms for almost an infinite number of military missions — ranging from helping a soldier navigate an all-terrain vehicle in an unfamiliar landscape to steering an airborne missile to its target.

The problem, as is being demonstrated every day in conflict zones such as Ukraine and Gaza, is that GPS RF signals are weak and easily jammed — or, perhaps worse, spoofed to fool users into going to or looking at the wrong place. For example, in March a plane carrying UK Defence Minister Grant Shapps from Poland back to Britain lost GPS near Kaliningrad due to suspected Russian jamming — something that his spokesperson said is not unusual over Russia’s Baltic coast.

“It’s a real world problem,” Michael Monteleone, the director of Army Futures Command’s new All-Domain Sensing Cross-Functional Team (CFT), said during a May 5 panel at the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation’s annual GEOINT conference in Kissimmee, Fla.

Thus, the Pentagon, the Space Force, the Army and the other military services have been scrambling to find alternatives for when (not if) GPS stops working on the battlefield.

The difficulty, however, is that each technique available now or in the foreseeable future for what is often called “alt-PNT” comes with a need to make size, weight, power and cost trade-offs based on what type of platform is being used, as well as the nature duration of the mission, according to experts.

Lloyd Dabbs, director of public sector business development for SandboxAQ, explained during the GEOIN panel that the Pentagon will need a “holistic strategy” to develop methods for creating “a good composite signal” provided by combining different techniques. “Nothing will ever take over for GPS,” he said.

“There is no silver bullet,” Nikki Markiel, senior GEOINT authority for geomatics at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), told Breaking Defense . “Everybody would like to have one. And I think that is where a lot of the struggle comes, because GPS has been easy. It’s ubiquitous.”

“Now you have to do some homework,” she told Breaking Defense.

Finding Where You Are, Where You Are Going

Markiel explained that there are six broad “families” of methodologies for positioning and navigation based on the type of data used. The good news is that means there are alternatives. The bad news is it means each can provide separate benefits and drawbacks.

“The key point in my mindset is that at the end of the day, it’s really about the data. Folks really want to chase down the path of technology but really it’s what data is going to be available to enable that technology,” Markiel added.

GPS itself falls under the first, and most widely used today, method for determining where you are and where you are going: RF signals. Other countries have developed their own RF satellites similar to GPS — such as Europe’s Galileo constellation and China’s Beidou birds — meaning one of things the US military could do to provide GPS backup is simply make its receivers compatible with those systems, just as most civilian cell phones already are.

Cell towers and radio/TV towers also provide “signals of opportunity,” other types of RF signals that can be tapped into for positioning and timing.

However, Markiel said, it is unclear what real benefits these alternatives to GPS really bring.

“If you can jam GPS, you can jam anything else in the RF spectrum just as well,” she said. “The second issue is someone has to be monitoring to make sure that whatever that RF is, it is legitimate.

“The great value of GPS is that between NGA and the US Space Force, every six seconds every GPS transmission is validated. The world can trust it because every six seconds it just got validated. We know in near real time if its not [accurate,]” Markiel said.

A second family of devices are those based on using gravity, Markiel said, which is how inertial navigation systems (INS) such as those carried by most military aircraft work. The drawback of these devices is that they “drift” and have to be course corrected by other means, usually by GPS.

“There are efforts to make INS’ better, both in industry and in government. But you’ll never eliminate all of” the drift, she said. On the other hand, “gravity can’t be jammed.”

A third methodology for positioning and timing uses “crustal magnetics,” Markiel said. Known as “mag-nav,” the essence of the technique is the use of a magnetometer to measure changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

“When rock solidifies, it locks in the signature of the Earth’s magnetic field at that time,” she explained. “And that provides a very unique signature that fundamentally doesn’t change unless the rocks get melted and reconstitute to what the magnetic field direction is today. So, if you have an onboard magnetometer, you can collect the data, compare it to an onboard map and figure out where you are.”

Mag-nav systems have a number of advantages, Markiel said. “It works very well over land, very well over sea … is essentially unjamable, and you can’t change it” to spoof someone. A mag-nav system also “is a passive sensor, so you’re not giving away your position. So it’s really an ideal solution.”

The big problem yet to be overcome is first “getting the data” to figure out whether these types of systems can meet warfighter needs, she said. “What does the fidelity data need to be, how much data do you need, how accurate does the data need to be? Those things are not fully understood yet.”

Celestial navigation is a fourth method, using the location of stars and planets like sailors have since time immemorial. Markiel noted that there are some new tricks being explored for this ancient art, such as using man-made space debris as well as natural celestial bodies.

“Space junk can be particularly advantageous. It does not do sudden maneuvers. It just kind of tends to float along doing its thing,” she said.

On the other hand, clouds and bad weather — as well as smoke which isn’t uncommon on a battlefield — are curses for this type of navigation.

Likewise, weather and smoke are obstacles for the fifth potential alternative to GPS: remote sensing, basically such “visual navigation” simply using landmarks and a paper map.

Using elevation or bathymetry — measuring distance above land or sea — is the sixth method that has been in use “for many, many decades,” Markiel said.

Cruise missiles, for instance, use altimeters, bouncing radar beams “off of the land,” and match the return signals “to an onboard elevation map. That’s how cruise missiles navigate inland and do bad things to bad people,” she said. “You can equally do sonar, obviously submarines … have been bouncing sonar beams for many many years.”

The problem with these methods is that they require an “active sensor,” she said. “You’ve got to shoot out radar beams, you’ve got to shoot out sonar beams. You’ve now advertised where your position is and that that can be a bad thing.”

In the end, Markiel and other experts said, it will take a painstaking process for the services to sort through all the options.

“All of them have their their advantages and their disadvantages.” she concluded.

HMCS Corner Brook leaves C-Jetty at CFB Esquimalt, B.C., for sea trials in 2011. (Canadian Ministry of Defence)

WASHINGTON and STOCKHOLM — Canada is weighing “collaboration” from foreign partners in a bid to figure out a way forward on replacing its fleet of aging Victoria-class submarines, even as critics say the Trudeau government is not doing enough to fast-track the procurement.

There are “real opportunities for greater collaboration with others on this. And so we’re pursuing those discussions as well. I’m pretty confident we will get to a determination of our path forward on underwater surveillance submarines,” said Bill Blair, Canada’s Minister of National Defence, speaking in Washington on Monday.

“We need to be able to be, to the extent possible, connected and interoperable with allies. We all have a shared mission, those of us who are close and aligned, and finding the best way for us collectively to achieve that mission is really in our interest.”

Interestingly, Blair told the event hosted by the Defense Writers Group that he has received reach out about joining the German-Norwegian Thyssenkrupp-made 212CD class submarine package.

“I met last week with the German defense minister, and he brought to me a letter signed by both him and our Norwegian counterpart — they are interested in working collaboratively with Canada on a number of different options across a broad range of defense capabilities, but also included underwater surveillance,” Blair said. “Frankly, I’m pleased and we’re hearing from many others as well.”

Canada operates four Victoria-class submarines, whose design dates back to the late 1980s; the youngest of the subs entered service in 2003. However, Ottawa has struggled to regularly deploy the subs over the history of their use. One estimate says the fleet has another 15-20 years of life, and given the lengthy timelines for submarine production, getting under contract sooner rather than later seems imperative.

The pool of potential contenders are deep: shipbuilders from Japan, South Korea, Germany, Sweden and the United States will likely be considered as the ministry does its work.

When Canada’s recent Defence Policy Update (DPU) was released, critics quickly jumped on the fact that rather than including specifics about what a new submarine fleet might look like, the paper instead said that, “We will explore options for renewing and expanding our submarine fleet” in the future. Blair today said he “regrets” using the term “explore,” given the criticism that it  “is not a very clear and powerful word.

“It’s certainly not my intention to be wishy washy. What I’ve tried to articulate very, very clearly and strongly in the document is, we know we have to replace our submarine fleet, and we’re going to do that,” Blair said. “There’s some work to do.”

Without being able to secure actual funding for the submarines in the DPU, the goal was to signal to industry and international partners that Canada is in the information gathering stage, Blair said. He also emphasized that whenever the submarines are bought, it will help push Canada over the NATO target of 2 percent GDP spending on defense. Last month, Canada pledged to increase defense spending by $5.9 over the next five years, a sum that still falls short of the alliance goal.

“We’ve got some work to do in both determining what our requirements are, what choices are available within the market, and we’re beginning those processes right away” shared Blair. “And then once we’ve done that work, I’ll be in a much stronger position to go back to my own government saying, we now have a very clear path to this new capability acquisition, and then seek the funding for it.”

Replacing the subs “is necessary. It is, I might suggest, inevitable,” he said. “One of things we’re hearing from our armed forces, but also hearing from industry, they need the clarity and certainty of direction, and then commitment. And so I hope in the DPU, I provided them with direction. And I’m working hard on getting the commitment.”

That will be welcome news from industry, which also found the language in the DPU to be underwhelming.

Speaking to a group of reporters and analysts in Stockholm on Monday, Simon Carroll, President of Saab Canada, said of the language, “I don’t personally think that goes strong enough, that that wording is strong enough for future submarines in Canada. I think we need to advance the ‘explore’ status and put some money to it or put some numbers to it at the moment. So I think that was for me a little disappointing.”

Continued Carroll, “Others will say it’s given us policy coverage. And I get that. I just think we need to get moving forward because I think putting it in the same categorization as a number of the other ‘explore’ capabilities that Canada wants to look at in the future doesn’t say we’re going to buy submarines in the future, even though we know full well that the Victoria class submarines are on their way out.” (Breaking Defense, like other outlets, accepted travel accommodations from Saab for this trip.)

While noting that the work is underway, Blair was careful not to put any sort of hard timeline on when a final decision could be made on moving forward with a submarine buy.

“You’ll forgive me, I can’t get too far ahead or presenting anything to government,” he said. But, “I have a sense of urgency around this.”

Pål Jonson, Sweden’s minister of defence meets with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the alliance’s defense ministers summit in Brussels, Belgium (NATO).

STOCKHOLM — Pål Jonson, Sweden’s minister for defence, said his country has no plans to send personnel to Ukraine, but left open considering such options if it were proposed by the Scandinavian country’s new allies in NATO.

“As far as I understand, there was no unified position among” the countries that met at a Paris summit earlier this year, Jonson told a group of reporters and think tank analysts here at Saab’s office on Monday. (Breaking Defense, like other outlets, accepted travel accommodations from Saab for this trip.) “There’s no concrete proposal for it here and now. If it comes up, a concrete proposal, we can take it into review,” added Jonson.

In February, French President Emmanuel Macron became the first European leader to begin publicly voicing support for the idea of his nation and other NATO allies sending personnel into Ukraine to help defeat Russia’s invasion. His impromptu summit was attended by 20 European leaders as well as at least one US State Department official, Reuters reported.

The French president’s remarks naturally stirred other countries to begin either publicly or privately mulling the idea.

The White House quickly ruled out the possibility of sending American troops to Ukraine, adding that such a choice is a “sovereign decision” for every NATO country. Estonian officials told Breaking Defense last week that the Baltic nation had at least internally discussed sending troops, though no decision is imminent. and the prime minister of Lithuania, Ingrida Šimonytė, told the Financial Times she was open to sending Lithuanian troops into Ukraine to train Kyiv’s forces there.

Speaking in Washington on Monday, Canadian Minister of Defence Bill Blair said that while his country is open to “evolving” its stance, right now there are no plans for sending major Canadian forces into Ukraine.

“Just to make it very clear, the conditions, in my opinion, are not yet appropriate to deploy Canadian troops in any capacity into Ukraine, as it pertains to their combat zone,” Blair told reporters at a Defense Writers Group event. “We are present in Ukraine and providing, for example, assistance to our consulate and force protection for the personnel that we have provided there. But I think we need to be very cautious about doing anything that would implicate our militaries in the combat zone.”

INTERVIEW: Sweden’s top officer on the ‘mental transition’ of joining NATO and Russian concerns

Rear Adm. Jens Nykvist, a Royal Swedish Navy officer and deputy chief of the defence staff, told reporters here that while NATO does not consider Sweden a front line country relative to Russia, it is still close enough that any adverse Russian action would almost certainly have consequences for the Scandinavian country.

“You have the front line states and Sweden now is not in NATO view in that way a front line. Finland is a front line, so we are part of the rear area,” he said. “I think it’s important though that yes, it might be part of the rear area, but it’s really — it’s still too close not to be affected. I’m pretty sure it will be affected.”

When asked about activities in Baltic shipping since Russia’s invasion, Nykvist told Breaking Defense that the normal flow of goods has remained steady, but there has been an increase both in activities from NATO allies in the region as well as Russian ships which, he noted, use it as a pathway to the Mediterranean. The admiral estimated around 4,000 vessels are transiting the Baltics at any given moment.

Unlike the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Baltic Sea is relatively shallow, particularly brackish and its smaller size means that military installations ashore are capable of tracking and affecting ships at sea and vice versa. Those qualities are important to countries like Sweden who are keenly aware that Russian submarines are “always” present in the Baltics, Nykvist noted.

For its part, Sweden has followed a trend of European nations growing their defense budgets in response to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Key lawmakers recently delivered to Jonson a review that ultimately recommends the country boosts its defense spending from 2.2 to 2.6 percent of GDP by 2028. The proposal by Swedish lawmakers followed an equally ambitious plan announced by Norway in early April.

Jonson called the proposed increase a “substantial investment” and “much needed.”

“We have a strong defense industrial base for being a small country,” he said. “We like to think that we punch above our weight. There is no other country of course of 10 million [people] that have the capability to design fighter aircraft, submarines, surface combatants [and] advanced artillery systems… So, that’s an asset that we take into the alliance.”

The Virginia-class attack submarine Pre-Commissioning Unit Minnesota (SSN 783) pulls pierside at Naval Station Norfolk from a scheduled underway. Minnesota, the Navy’s 10th Virginia-class submarine, was delivered to the Navy June 6, 2013. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Alex R. Forster/Released)

WASHINGTON — The House Armed Services chairman’s mark of the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act greenlights $849.8 billion in funding for the Defense Department, sticking to congressionally-mandated budget caps but breaking with the president’s budget proposal on the F-35 and Virginia-class submarine programs.

The House Armed Services Committee draft version of the bill, released today, also includes $33.8 billion in defense spending at other federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, for about $883.7 billion total in national defense spending.

HASC is scheduled to “mark up” the bill during a marathon, all-day May 22 session where members will be able to offer amendments that could radically change the shape of the proposed legislation.

Although the dollar amounts laid out in the NDAA are just recommendations, as congressional appropriators are responsible for constructing the budget, HASC made two major funding changes on key weapons programs.

First, it adds $1 billion for the Virginia-class submarine program — allowing the Navy to begin buying a second boat in FY25 — by zeroing out procurement funds for the Constellation-class frigate program due to delays.

The bill also proposes slashing 10 F-35s from the Pentagon’s request of 68 jets while fencing off funding for 10 additional jets — a measure senior staff members said is meant to free up funds that would allow Lockheed Martin to make needed investments to get the program on more stable footing. Among the stipulations is a mandate to resolve all deficiencies identified in the 2024 F–35 Initial Operational Testing and Evaluation report submitted by the Pentagon’s independent weapons tester and to create a “digital twin” of the F-35.

The Pentagon is currently not accepting deliveries of the F-35 as Lockheed struggles with validating software associated with Technology Refresh 3, which has contributed to lawmaker frustrations with the program, said a senior majority staffer.

A senior minority staffer added that some members questioned whether the program should be terminated but ultimately decided, “The answer is no. We need this program to succeed.”

One item that could turn contentious during full-committee debate of the bill is the fate of a total 578 Air National Guard members across six states who are currently performing the space mission, which the Space Force hopes to absorb.

HASC Chairman Mike Rogers’s mark of the NDAA contains language that would permit the transfer of those Guard members to the Space Force, but is crafted to be more narrow in scope than the Department of the Air Force’s original proposal, a senior majority staff member said.

RELATED: HASC chair backs Air Force plan on space Guard units

The bill language would cap the number of affected Guard members at 580 and would force the Air Force to find new jobs for Guard members who do not want to transfer to the Space Force.

“We want to see how the governors react to this, and hopefully we acknowledge their concerns,” the majority staffer said. “Some of the things they’ve raised is, they won’t have the manpower to respond to civil disturbances or natural disasters. But these people are doing a space mission and we want them to maintain that space readiness … and that’s just something that they’re not doing right now.”

Additional highlights of the draft NDAA include:

• The mark would allow the Air Force to continue divesting the A-10, but prohibit retirements of the F-15E
• It approves multiyear procurement of the CH-53K helicopter used by the Marine Corps
• The mark prohibits the retirement of two guided missile destroyers, the USS Lake Erie and the USS Shilo
• Certain provisions would force the Army to brief the committee on how it plans to bridge the gap between the retirement of the RQ-7 Shadow and the fielding of future tactical unmanned aerial systems
• Citing concerns with the cancellation of the Army’s Extended Range Cannon Artillery program, it mandates that the Army provide an assessment of how current formations would perform in the current battlefield environment for both counter unmanned aerial systems and long-range cannon fires, including whether new vehicles are being considered
• One provision calls for the Air Force and Navy to deliver a report on inventory requirements for air-to-air munitions, including the cost-benefit of developing an extended range AIM–120D missile
• The mark does not address findings from the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution on how to reform the budget process, with the majority staffer saying that while the commission “did a good job,” it will be up to the Pentagon to decide how it will act on recommendations to its internal processes
• The draft bill requires a detailed report from the Pentagon’s Chief Digital & AI Officer (CDAO) on its efforts to scale CJADC2, the hoped-for future meta-network to connect all US forces across land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. In the provision, HASC notes that only four Combatant Commands — CENTCOM, NORTHCOM, EUCOM, and INDOPACOM — have involved themselves extensively in building CJADC2 systems, and “the committee believes there are needs across all the combatant commands.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee will mark up its own version of the defense policy bill from June 11 to 14 in a series of closed door meetings.

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. contributed to this story.

“The Secretary of Defense may establish and carry out a program to be known as the ‘Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve’ program. Under the program, the Secretary may include in a contract for the procurement of space products or services one or more provisions under which a qualified contractor agrees to provide additional space products or services to the Department of Defense on an as-needed basis under circumstances determined by the Secretary,” states the subcommittee’s portion of the draft fiscal 2025 space policy bill.

DoD stated its intent to pursue CASR, first initiated by the Space Force, in its new Commercial Space Integration Strategy issued in April. The strategy explained that the Pentagon wants to “ensure” its “access” to commercial capabilities, including “being able to surge commercial capacity to meet military requirements and capability needs across the spectrum of conflict.”

The draft 2025 National Defense Authorization Act language, made public today, would limit participation in CASR to US firms and US citizens, with the language stressing that any new contracts under CASR must be compatible with Pentagon security requirements, including those surrounding access to classification.

Further, the HASC subcommittee requires Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, in coordination with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to engage a federally funded research and development center to study “the availability and adequacy of commercial insurance to protect the financial interests of contractors providing support services” to the US military in light of increased risks. This includes whether any lack of commercial insurance access could be filled in via the government with policies similar to those provided in the maritime and air domain.

This issue of shutter control and financial compensation, including indemnification, has been a key debate in the Space Force’s CASR effort.

The HASC subcommittee has long been pushing the Pentagon and the Space Force to move out more quickly and to put more resources toward the use of commercial space systems to rapidly improve the resiliency of vulnerable US national security space systems.

The draft 2025 NDAA language continues that trend, and piles on with new demands. Besides the CASR language, the draft bill would force DoD to create a new pilot project designed to kickstart its nascent plans to create a so-called hybrid space architecture linking national security, commercial, civil and allied satellites into a massive mesh network.

Such hybrid architectures that “leverage a mixture” of space assets “across multiple constellations are critical to modern warfighting and implementing new warfighting concepts,” including the Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), the lawmakers assert.

“Beginning in fiscal year 2025, the Commander of the Space Systems Command of the Space Force shall carry out a pilot program to demonstrate a hybrid space architecture,” the draft bill states, that must include “at least one military satellite communications system, such as the Wideband Global Satcom system or the Micro Geostationary Earth Orbit system.”

Space Systems Command is the Space Force’s primary acquisition command, headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif.

The Wideband Global Satcom constellation, comprised of 10 communications satellites based in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), already has nine partner nations: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Norway.

The Space Force in October 2023 solicited commercial industry on the feasibility of creating a contractual vehicle for obtaining services from SATCOM operators with micro-satellites in GEO. On April 19, it issued a companion request for information asking about potential support for DoD’s own development of a GEO constellation of many small birds, under an effort called the “Protected Tactical SATCOM — Global (PTS-G) Program.”

The HASC intends to mark up the FY25 NDAA on May 22.

A live-fire demonstration of the Army’s newest and most modernized combat vehicle, the M10 Booker, at a dedication ceremony at Aberdeen Proving Ground, on April 18, 2024. (US Army/Christopher Kaufmann)

WASHINGTON — As the US Army prepares to field its new light tank next year, the M10 Booker, it is gearing up for a testing series that will help determine just what modifications may be needed, according to a one-star general charged with requirements.

Shortly after the July 4 holiday, operators and maintainers at Ft. Liberty, N.C, are scheduled to start new equipment training with the tracked combat vehicle that will last through the August-September timeframe, the director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman told Breaking Defense May 9.

Some of those soldiers and vehicles will then head to Ft. Stewart, Ga. to embark on gunnery training before returning to Ft. Liberty for collective training in November. If the plan stays on track, in early January 2025 the service will take the vehicle to an Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) event that will determine what near-term and long-term changes General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) needs.

“There will be a list of things that we want to improve on the vehicle: Our team, along with others will make recommendations as to which things need to be fixed immediately prior to fielding, what things are maybe a longer-term fix and what things may be for consideration later if funding is available,” the one-star general added.

That critical test event also paves the way for the Army and company to ink a full-rate production deal, a decision point slated for the April to June 2025 timeframe, according to recent budget request documents. For now, though, the service envisions acquiring 504 Booker vehicles, with initial vehicles costing the service between $12 million and $14 million.

Initially dubbed the Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF), Army leaders unveiled the fleet’s new name last year: A vehicle now carrying the name of Private Robert Booker (an infantryman) who was killed in action during World War II on April 9, 1943, and Staff Sgt. Stevon Booker (a tanker) who was killed in action on April 5, 2003, during the Thunder Run into Baghdad.

As for its design, in 2022 the GDLS prototype won out over BAE Systems’ design. That winning vehicle is crewed by four soldiers — a commander, a gunner, a loader, and a driver — and includes the XM35 105 mm cannon, a coaxial machine gun, and a diesel engine, according to the company and the service.

The Army devised plans for the Booker fleet before Russia invaded Ukraine, and Norman said the service hasn’t massively overhauled its design to address observations out of that war. (However, it is using those findings for work on the future Abrams tank and Bradley replacement vehicle.)

“Coming out of Ukraine, there have not been significant design adjustments made,” Norman said.

“I know that the 82nd airborne and the 18th airborne corps are really excited about the capability that this platform brings to the light infantry combined arms team. … It’ll be really good for the Army to put it through its paces through this operational test period,” he later added.

That said, the service and GDLS have worked on several vehicle fixes including two larger items: toxic fumes and cooling.

In the fiscal 2022 Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) report, for example, the office noted that after soldiers fired the XM35 105 mm cannon, the vehicle filled with “high levels of toxic fumes.”

Norman explained that this happened because those 105 mm shells were “now sitting in the floor of the vehicle” and residual propellant was burning off.

“It’s not a new problem for the MPF and Booker but certainly the understanding of the potential health risks of those fumes is better understood now than it was when those rounds were designed decades ago,” he added.

To mitigate harm to soldiers inside the combat vehicle, GDLS developed a different ventilation configuration that extracts those fumes more rapidly, and directs them away from the crew.

“Those toxic fumes are now at a safe level,” Norman added.

The second big change involved fixing the Booker’s cooling system towards the back of the vehicle. 

“There wasn’t enough airflow going through some radiators … and that was redesigned to make sure that the engine, the transmission and all of the fluids for the vehicle were getting sufficient cooling,” Norman said. “[GDLS has] done that work and those changes have been cut into the production vehicles and then been retrofitted on the earlier vehicles.”

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu attends a meeting of President Vladimir Putin with the country’s top security officials in Moscow on June 26, 2023.(GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. — On May 12, Moscow announced a move that was somehow both long-expected and still surprising: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who has held that position since 2012, is being relieved of duty. May 14 will see Andrei Belousov, currently a First Deputy Prime Minister, take that role.

Belousov will be the third in a series of Russian Defense Ministers with no military experience and no background in national security matters. Shoigu was originally a construction foreman before becoming the Russian Emergency Services Minister in 1991. When first appointed to head the MoD in 2012, he replaced Anatoliy Serdyukov, a former furniture company executive who was made head of the Russian Federal Tax Service in 2004 prior being named Defense Minister in 2007.

The question, then is two-fold: What finally did Shoigu in, and what does it mean for the Ukraine conflict?

Shoigu getting fired was seen by many as a long time coming. The poor showing of Russia’s military against the Ukrainian Armed Forces (ZSU) since the February 2022 invasion was defined by problems with Russian troops being sent into battle with inadequate training and defective weapons, and Shoigu took much of that blame on Russian social media. In June 2023 a personal feud between Shoigu and the head of the Wagner Group Private Military Company, the late Yevgenniy Prigozhin, culminated in the latter’s June 2023 march on Moscow with a demand that Shoigu be removed.

Speculation as to whether or not Shoigu’s days were numbered ticked up several notches in late April, when one of his deputy ministers and close confidants, Timur Ivanov, was taken into custody on bribery charges. Ivanov was able to access so many sources of considerable funding that he became known by the nickname of “Shoigu’s wallet.”

Ilya Shumanov, who heads up Transparency International Russia, had previously told Politico.eu that ever since the invasion of Ukraine, corruption in the MoD had been rising as fast or faster than overall military spending. For [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and others in the leadership “this undermines the country’s defense capabilities. Someone had to answer for that,” he said.

However, Shoigu isn’t being thrown out a metaphorical window. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov instead announced that Shoigu will take up the position of head of the National Security Council. Notably, that means he will be shunting aside long-time Putin ally and advisor Nikolai Patrushev, who had been head of the Russian NSC since 2008.

Patrushev is a former KGB official like Putin himself and perhaps the most senior and influential member of the Russian president’s inner circle. He had pushed for the Ukraine invasion when many others counselled against it, and his name has frequently been at the top of the list of potential successors to the presidency.

A disturbing recent profile of Patrushev in The Atlantic reads: “Americans should worry about how much Patrushev’s outlook reinforces his boss’s — and about how his delusional, more-belligerent-than-Putin fulminations in long interviews with top-circulation Russian newspapers become the party line, which deafening propaganda then inculcates in the mind of millions of Russians.”

Given his connections to Putin it is highly improbable that Patrushev will be put out to pasture now. But when announcing these and other personnel changes in what is now the fifth term of Putin’s administration, Peskov did not reveal what responsibilities the former KGB alumnus and Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) would now assume, only stating that details would be announced in the coming days.

Asked today about how the change in ministers could impact the Ukraine conflict, Canadian Minister of National Defence is Bill Blair said he wasn’t hopeful that it would result in Russia making changes to how it targets civilian populations.

“We’re going to continue to stand with Ukraine, we’re going to continue to support them as they defend their sovereign territory and their citizens,” Blair told reporters in Washington at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group. “Frankly, I have not been given a strong indication that the changes that Putin is putting in place are going to in any way change their efforts to prosecute this conflict. But at the same time, we’re gonna – we’ll respond as is required. And if there’s a change in tactics, then we will evolve our support.”

Russia’s Defense Sector Realignment

This new Russian national security team has numerous challenges to overcome, not the least of which are turning around increasing losses on the battlefield. Ukraine’s military estimates than in the last week alone Russia’s military lost 8,030 personnel and 79 tanks.

Asked to comment on Shoigu’s new assignment and his replacement, British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps wrote online that the long-time official’s legacy was having “overseen over 355,000 casualties amongst his own soldiers and mass civilian suffering with an illegal campaign in Ukraine.”

And that number is expected to grow: speaking in Washington last week, Britain’s top uniformed officer, Adm. Sir Tony Radakin, told reporters he expects Russia to hit 500,000 casualties over the summer.

These appointments appear to be more than just switching around major figures in order to mitigate against the dual embarrassments of Russia’s mounting losses of personnel and equipment in Ukraine and this high-profile corruption scandal in the MoD. They also suggest three strategic realignments now developing as Russia’s war in Ukraine passes the 800-day mark.

One is that Belousov is likely to focus primarily on an overhaul of the defense industrial sector and will look for means to increase efficiencies in production of better and more modern weapon systems in addition to tackling the corruption plaguing the military establishment. In announcing his appointment as the new defense minister, Peskov spoke exclusively about Belousov’s qualifications and previous experience in portfolios of innovation and economic management.

“Today, the winner on the battlefield is the one who is more open to innovation, more open to implementation as quickly as possible. Therefore, at the current stage, the President decided that the Ministry of Defense should be headed by a civilian,” said the Kremlin spokesman to a Kremlin press corps audience.

There is an increasing need for more effective management of the MoD as Russia’s defense spending climbs from “in the area of about 3 percent of GDP to 6.7 percent,” said Peskov. This puts the country’s defense spending situation very close to the levels of the 1980s, he explained.

Ukraine seems to agree, with a top advisor telling media today that the new appointees come with a clear industrial focus.

Secondly, this arrangement permits the management of the Russian military effort to be bifurcated and creates a division of labor between the MoD and the Security Council. Philip Ingram, a former British military intelligence officer and NATO planner, who also spoke to Politico, explained while Belousov is working on modernizing the industrial sector, this enables Putin to “keep Shoigu on side, while bringing in someone who may be able to deal with the impact of corruption across the Russian Ministry of Defense.”

As the Secretary of the Security Council, Shoigu will still have oversight of defense policy both foreign and domestic. He additionally retains his seat on the Military-Industrial Commission and will also have a role in the decisions of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, the government body that regulates and sets policy on foreign sales of weaponry.

The China Factor

The third potential change here, analysts tell Breaking Defense, is that there are signs Moscow felt significant changes in the management of the war effort are necessary if Russia is to secure the continued and increasing support of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

US intelligence has reportedly assessed that the PRC currently supplies 90 percent of the microchips and other high-technology components and 70 percent of all precision machine tools used in Russia’s defense industrial sector — making defense trade with Beijing essential to Moscow’s war machine at this point. Without China’s support, Russia would be struggling to flow materiel into the field, even with its shift to a war economy. That gives Beijing influence, even if indirect, on how the war is prosecuted.

Stephen Blank, a specialist on the Russian military and a former faculty member at the US Army War College, explained to Breaking Defense that the recent reports of a PRC senior academic, Feng Yujun of Peking University’s School of International Relations, predicting an eventual total defeat for Russia in Ukraine was very likely a “signal” being sent by Beijing to Putin and those around him.

“What [PRC Communist Party] General Secretary Xi Jinping is saying is Beijing cannot afford the embarrassment and potential repercussions of Russia losing this war,” Blank said. “Therefore, if Putin wants their support, which is almost critical to the Russian war effort at this stage, there must be changes in the Russian national security team.”

Ryan Clarke, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asia Institute, echoed the same conclusions, telling Breaking Defense that “the PRC cannot afford for Moscow to field armies that collapse in Ukraine -and then have that collapse spread back to Russia. There is too much that could go wrong with the subsequent collateral damage — unrest in Russia, for example. China is too heavily vested in a Russian victory at this point.”

Clarke has conducted extensive research into several high technology sectors in the PRC’s weapons industry and the People’s Liberation Army and has also produced detailed assessments on the PRC role in the Ukraine war.

“This new Russian defense minister is more of a technocrat type and he will possibly have a more systematic, technical/technology and managerial approach to the relationship with Beijing,” he continued. “This would indicate that this strategic partnership has begun to solidify and mature beyond event-driven engagement.”

The PRC’s concerns are, however, almost entirely about the potential blowback from a failed Russian war effort. They are not worried about emptying the shelves of materiel for their own military by supplying Russia in the way the US and its NATO allies are as they continue to ship military aid to Ukraine, said Richard Fisher, a senior fellow at the Potomac-based, International Assessment and Strategy Center.

“The Chinese have the capacity to supply multiple wars,” he explained. “At the beginning of the [Ukraine] war the Xi-Putin strategy was to bleed us [of our own defense capacity] and consume us … Arms and ammunition are not something they worry about running out of.”

Retired US Naval Intelligence officer Capt. James Fanell, an experienced observer of China’s foreign military and diplomatic initiatives, said the Shoigu move “may be an indicator that the failure to successfully invade Ukraine has finally reached a tipping point in both Moscow and in Beijing.”

Fanell agrees with others that “the PRC may have influenced Shoigu’s removal in order to get Putin due to the implications of what happens in Ukraine,” but added: “My assessment is that if anything Beijing may have pressed Putin to get someone in the job who could overcome the corruption of the Russian Military-Industrial Commission and could really push all the way to Kyiv in order to drive American and NATO further into the quagmire of this conflict in Ukraine.

“In this way the Chinese divert valuable western military resources that cannot be used to obstruct Beijing’s goal of taking Taiwan.”

Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this report. 

Pentagon grapples with growth of artificial intelligence. (Graphic by Breaking Defense, original brain graphic via Getty)

WASHINGTON — AI-powered machine translation, big data analytics, and now large language models are sucking up data from social media, smartphones and other “open source” to generate unprecedented amounts of open-source intelligence. That means the 18 agencies of the Intelligence Community need new contracting and technical approaches to tap the rising power of OSINT without being overwhelmed by it, IC officials said last week.

“It’s amazing what’s there. It also scares me,” said Randall Nixon, director of the Open Source Enterprise at the CIA, which leads the IC as “functional manager” for OSINT. “The next intelligence failure could easily be an OSINT failure, because there’s so much out there.”

It’s often overwhelming for analysts just to pull together the OSINT they already have access to and put it in context of classified information, said Casey Blackburn, assistant director for emerging technology at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “We need to integrate that open source into the environments where our people work,” he said. “As long as analysts … have to separate their attention between multiple different terminals of unintegrated information, we will never take full advantage of open source.”

“We can do it securely,” Blackburn emphasized. It’s not technology that’s the problem, he said: “It’s acquisition and process and something of policy that’s getting in the way right now.”

“We have to change our model, our approach, our way of obtaining information, our way of purchasing information,” agreed Jason Barrett, the IC-wide open source intelligence executive at ODNI. “It’s not up to the commercial sector at this point to come to us. It’s up to the government to start to change how we do our business.”

The problem is two-fold, Barrett, Blackburn, Nixon and other experts explained Wednesday at the Special Competitive Studies Project’s second annual Ash Carter Exchange. There are too many IC elements trying to solve the problem independently — not just the 18 agencies, but individual analysts using OSINT ad hoc without proper training — and vastly too many OSINT providers vying for those IC contracts.

“It’s not like in the old days,” said Kristin Wood, who served over a quarter-century in the CIA before entering the private sector. “In the old days … you could go and set up relationships with companies and do a one-on-one contract. [Now] there’s two or three or four or 500 companies that have value to bring to the open-source space.”

That explosion has been powered, in large part, by technology. Once upon a time, the term “open source intelligence” might have invoked a plane-spotter watching an airbase runway through binoculars, or a lone linguist listening to foreign radio broadcasts, but today, OSINT is big business and high tech. One of the first companies to catch the wave, Recorded Future, was founded in 2009 based on three insights, said co-founder Staffan Truvé: the proliferation of smartphones to gather data, breakthroughs in deep-learning algorithms to sift that data, and the rise of cloud computing to run those algorithms affordably.

Today, Recorded Future claims over 1,700 clients worldwide, including over 30 governments and more than 200 of the Forbes Global 500 companies. Since private-sector demand is increasingly important for OSINT companies, that creates another complication for government agencies, because today’s OSINT pricing schemes are often punitive for federal customers. Charging for each user with access to a company’s OSINT products, for instance, may work for a private firm with 10, 100, or even 1,000 employees, but it scales up astronomically if government agencies want to share OSINT across the entire Intelligence Community, let alone the Department of Defense.

“Private sector likes to sell by license,” Nixon said. “That immediately makes it nearly impossible for us, because of the large scale of users that we have.”

“We have to have new ways of doing those contracts,” he continued. At best, “purchase it once and share” across the entire IC; at minimum, write contracts with easy options for agencies to share data as needed with each other.

“We can get to a more streamlined acquisition process,” Barrett agreed. “We really do need a mindset shift when it comes to how we are acquiring it [OSINT], so that we’re not taking 18 different approaches and then having to set up the contracts 18 different ways.

Neither official offered more details of how the IC would reform OSINT contracting. The IC’s recently released OSINT Strategy [PDF] doesn’t offer specifics, either, but Barrett made it clear that getting open-source right was a high priority.

“We’re reaching an inflection point,” he said. “Commercial and publicly available data is so powerful, and it’s so foundational to what we are trying to accomplish.”

“What is important,” Barrett went on, “is to really focus on where can we get the greatest return on investment … not to duplicate what’s already being built, probably faster and better, outside the walls, [but] how can we bring that in or leverage those capabilities in the commercial private sector.”

Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor won the US Army’s Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) competition in 2022. (Bell)

SOF WEEK 2024 — The Army held a preliminary design review (PDR) of the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) in late March and is in the process of tweaking the aircraft’s design to accommodate unique equipment for special operators, according to a spokesperson for the Army’s aviation program executive office.

“The Army conducted the FLRAA weapon system Preliminary Design Review (PDR) on March 25-29 and is in the process of closing out some open actions,” the spokesperson told Breaking Defense in a statement. 

“The Army is currently working with the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to incorporate provisions into the baseline design that will enable integration of SOCOM-specific mission equipment packages. This will avoid major re-design efforts that we have seen in previous SOCOM configurations, and more efficiently use SOCOM funding early in the Army’s base-line design efforts,” they added.

A PDR is a key step in the development process of a major weapon system, which ensures that a product’s design is effective and typically informs a program’s eventual Milestone B decision. A Bell official previously said the program’s Milestone B decision — the formal entry into the engineering and manufacturing development phase — is planned for the third quarter of this year, according to Defense News. 

SOCOM’s Rotary Wing Program Executive Officer Steven Smith first revealed that the PDR had occurred during May 7 comments at the SOF Week conference, and said the command and the Army have had a years-long dialogue to “influenc[e] the FLRAA design,” which yielded changes to the aircraft as a result.

“The good news is prior to the recent completion of their PDR, that they’ve adopted all of our changes to the aircraft,” Smith said, according to Aviation Week. Per Smith, that included specific nose design requirements, hardware for a refueling probe and “a couple other minor things that we’ve asked for to get into that platform that will make our modifications less expensive down the road.”

The collaboration, Smith said, is a “a good news story” that will make it “easier for us to incorporate all the secret sauce, all those boxes that we put on the aircraft that provide our unique capability.”

Bell Textron’s tiltrotor V-280 Valor in December 2022 bested a joint team consisting of Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky and Boeing, who offered a coaxial rotor design known as the Defiant X in an Army competition. The service expects to field the aircraft in the early 2030’s.

The UK is pursuing development of a homegrown hypersonic missile with support from 90 suppliers across industry and academia (UK MoD)

BELFAST — The United Kingdom has selected 90 small and large organizations from industry and academia to bid for contracts in support of developing indigenous Hypersonic missile capabilities.

The various suppliers were all picked to join a Hypersonic Technologies and Capability Development Framework (HTCDF) agreement, making them eligible to compete for eight lots worth a maximum value of £1 billion ($1.3 billion) over seven years, according to a UK Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) statement today. The agency is the UK’s defense procurement arm.

The eight hypersonic technology lots cover: design and integration; modelling and testing; airframe and power generation; low Technical Readiness Level (TRL) concepts; a lethality package (including warhead and fuse); propulsion; on board computing; and seekers.

Hypersonic missiles typically travel at Mach 5 or faster within the Earth’s atmosphere and are capable of maneuvering, but sustained flight can be challenging because of air resistance and the weapons being subject to extreme surface temperatures.

The framework was originally announced in December 2023 with the stated aim of developing a UK “Hypersonic Strike Capability and to provide a route to market for future operational elements of hypersonic and adjacent technologies.”

Building off that target, DE&S said, “The HTCDF has been designed to provide a responsive, agile route to market to facilitate capability realisation at pace. Uniquely it will be used to select suppliers to deliver services and supplies to support the research, development and testing of hypersonic technologies right through to a capability.”

It also shared that research can be “spirally developed” across various TRL’s towards reaching the hypersonic capability and noted the “maturity of the services and supplies provided under the resulting Call Off contracts will be TRL 1 – 9.”

As previously reported by Breaking Defense, London has settled on a three-step strategy of buy, collaborate and develop to build out hypersonic missile capabilities, which also focus on potentially acquiring a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) as part of the AUKUS trilateral coalition (under Pillar 2 relating to new military technologies) and joining “existing or new” international HGV or Hypersonic Cruise Missile (HCM) development programs.

James Cartlidge, UK Minister for Defence Procurement said: “Hypersonics will be a landmark capability of the future and it is essential we keep pace with the developments of our adversaries. The Framework sends a clear demand signal to UK industry.”

Both Russia and China work off multiple hypersonic missile programs and are judged to have “likely fielded operational hypersonic glide vehicles — potentially armed with nuclear warheads,” according to a February Congressional Research Service report [PDF].

In addition to deploying Kinzhal missiles in Ukraine with limited success, Moscow is currently pursuing development of two other hypersonic programs — Avangard and Tsirkon. Avangard, a hypersonic boost glide vehicle, can be launched from an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), travel at Mach 20 and boasts a range of over 6000 km, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Russia launched the naval-based Tsirkon missile for the first time off the frigate Admiral Gorshkov in 2020, reported state news agency TASS, adding that the flight exceeded a range of 500 km.

In the US, hypersonic missile programs are developed in line with the US Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike Program, though those pursued by Washington do not include a program of record that would see those under development move to serial production. Alongside the US Navy, the US Air Force, US Army and DARPA are all involved in hypersonic missile programs.

Here’s how a U.S. Marine Corps logistics IT modernization program is doing just that.

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Estonian conscripts wait in formation following their graduation ceremony from Staabi- ja sidepataljon, Signal Battalion, in Tallinn, Estonia, Sept. 5, 2016. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Rachel Diehm/Released)

[UPDATED 5/14/24 at 2:30 pm ET to include comments from Estonia’s defense minister, following a previous update with additional context from national security advisor Roll.]

TALLINN — The government of Estonia is “seriously” discussing the possibility of sending troops into western Ukraine to take over non-direct combat, “rear” roles from Ukrainian forces in order to free them up to fight on the front, though no decision is imminent, Tallinn’s national security advisor to the president told Breaking Defense.

Madis Roll said the executive branch is currently undertaking an analysis of the potential move, and though he said Estonia would prefer to make any such move as part of a full NATO mission — “to show broader combined strength and determination” — he didn’t rule out Estonia acting in a smaller coalition.

“Discussions are ongoing,” he said on May 10 at the presidential palace here. “We should be looking at all the possibilities. We shouldn’t have our minds restricted as to what we can do.” He also emphasized that it’s “not unthinkable” that NATO nations opposed to such a move would change their minds “as time goes on.”

RELATED: Three reasons Russia dismissed Sergei Shoigu, its longtime defense minister

Following publication of this report, Madis clarified that such a decision is not pending before the Estonian prime minister or her cabinet specifically, and he meant only that the discussion “is not dead” and is “ongoing in Estonia in general.” “We have not excluded any option in the future,” he said.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur on May 14 told the European news outlet ERR such talks haven’t “gone anywhere” in Tallin.

“There is nothing new here. When France came up with the idea of considering whether Europe and the allies could do more, it has been floated in various discussions, but it has not gone anywhere, because at the moment there is no clear understanding among the allies of what it adds,” Pevkur told ERR. “There is certainly no initiative by Estonia and certainly Estonia alone is not going to do anything.”

Roll’s boss, Estonian President Alar Karis, holds a position with many ceremonial duties relative to the nation’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, but he is ultimately Estonia’s commander-in-chief and is a key figure in foreign policy.

RELATED: Estonian volunteers fighting in Ukraine are helping prepare Tallinn’s rapid response force

Roll’s comments came after the head of Estonia’s defense forces, Gen. Martin Herem, told Breaking Defense earlier last week there had been discussions in the military months ago about sending troops to western Ukraine to take on jobs like medical services, logistics or air defense for some western cities, but the air had gone out of those talks after the idea became a public lightning rod.

Herem and Pevkur were referring to the outcry that followed French President Emmanuel Macron’s declaration that Western nations must be open to discussing sending their troops in to aid Ukraine. (Kallas, the Estonian PM, in March appeared to defend Macron’s statement, noting that he wasn’t talking specifically about sending ground troops into combat. “In the exact same way, I can assure you that our soldiers will not go there to fight,” she said.)

Also earlier last week a key Estonian lawmaker, Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Marko Mihkelson, told Breaking Defense that European nations “have to start thinking about a coalition of the willing” to more directly help Kyiv, potentially with direct combat forces. (The Estonian officials spoke last week to an audience from the Kaplan Public Service Foundation; Breaking Defense accepted accommodation in Estonia from KPSF.)

The willingness of different nations to send some forces into Ukraine is a potential dividing line inside NATO. Although each member of the alliance is free to send forces where it feels it must for its national interests, some nations have been clear they see more risk than reward in doing so.

Notably, Germany and the US have flatly rejected the idea of sending in troops. The US Ambassador to Estonia, George Kent, pointed Breaking Defense to the Biden administration’s policy of aiding Ukraine through significant aid packages, but a firm commitment not to send in American soldiers.

Asked May 9 in Washington how Russia could react to NATO-nation forces being in Ukraine, British Chief of Defense Adm. Sir Tony Radakin was evasive, saying, “I won’t go into too much commentary on your question, if you don’t mind … The UK position is very clear in terms of, that’s not a path that the Prime Minister wants to go down.

However, he emphasized that the UK position is not “being governed by how Russia will react.” Instead, he said, it is based around what the UK views as the best approach overall: “I think that what you’ve seen all the way through, is a UK that has done the right thing, based on its judgment of what’s needed to be done.”

In contrast, there is Macron’s statement, as well as Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė who recently told the Financial Times she was open to sending Lithuanian troops into Ukraine to train Kyiv’s forces there. The FT wrote that Šimonytė predicted Russia could see the move as an escalation, but added, “If we just thought about the Russian response, then we could not send anything. Every second week you hear that somebody will be nuked.”

Šimonytė added that to this point, Ukraine has not requested its troops.

Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this report. 

US President Joe Biden greets Chinese President Xi Jinping before a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With both the US and China making artificial intelligence a central element of their strategic competition, the two superpowers will meet in Geneva on Tuesday to discuss the risks of the rapidly advancing technology.

First hinted at by President Joe Biden after his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping last November, the “exchange of views” is not expected to lead to any binding commitments or public announcements, senior administration officials told reporters. Instead, the goal seems to be a greater understanding between the nuclear-armed rivals on how each perceives the potential risks of AI.

The US delegation will be led by mid-tier officials: the National Security Council’s senior director for technology, Tarun Chhabra, and the State Department’s acting special envoy for critical and emerging technology, Seth Center (who does not hold ambassadorial rank). Their Chinese counterparts will come from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Development and Reform Commission, a powerful economic body. Other agencies will participate on both sides, but there were no specifics as to whether the Defense Department or its Chinese counterparts would be represented.

Overall, the officials who briefed the press declined to give details on the agenda and seemed at pains to lower expectations.

“The talks are not going to be focused on any particular deliverables, but rather an exchange of views on the technical risks of AI, as an opportunity to directly communicate on respective areas of concern,” one official said. “We’re not looking to develop a joint statement.”

Further, the official emphasized, “our talks with Beijing are not focused on promoting any form of technical collaboration, for cooperating on frontier research in any matter, and our technology protection policies are not up for negotiation.”

Still, “we do think it is worth opening a channel for communication on these issues.”

RELATED: Can tech reduce civilian deaths in conflict? Mark Milley isn’t so sure.

What issues? “Emerging…risks associated with advanced artificial intelligence,” the official said. “We’ll also discuss respective domestic approaches to addressing those risks, explain our approach to normative principles of AI safety, as well as our respective views on the role of international governance.”

The officials demurred when reporters asked about specific topics.

Would the two superpowers work to forswear the use of AI to command, control, and operate their nuclear arsenals? “This is the first meeting of its kind, so we expect to have a discussion of the full range of risks, but wouldn’t pre-judge any specifics at this point.”

Deepfakes and AI-driven misinformation in the 2020 elections? “The subject of election interference or influence has come in previous engagements… but that is not specifically on the agenda,” an official said.

Chinese hacking and espionage aimed at stealing cutting-edge AI? “The White House doesn’t get involved in law enforcement kind of issues,” an official said, “but… there will be a discussion on our concerns, on their concerns, on a range of issues related to AI.

The officials did not mention the Defense and State Departments’ push for “responsible” military use of AI and automation, to which some 53 countries have signed on — not including China. Instead, they put the Geneva talks in context of broader, civilian-led discussions of “AI safety:” President Biden’s Executive Order and the G7 statement on AI, both in October; the UK-led Bletchley Declaration in November; and a UN General Assembly resolution on AI for sustainable development passed by unanimous consent in March.

“The US and PRC were both engaged at the UK safety summit and in negotiating the resulting outcomes of that summit,” one official said. “The United States negotiated very hard with the PRC at the United Nations over the text of AI resolution in New York. So in that respect, we are already engaged in AI diplomacy.”

“The world does expect us to talk about AI, and many of our closest partners are engaged directly themselves already with China on the range of AI issues,” the official continued. “We’ve consulted quite extensively with our allies and partners in advance of these talks, and they certainly understand the purposes, intent and limited nature of this dialog.”

The talks with China are “fundamentally different from our more comprehensive and intensive” collaboration with “like-minded partners,” the official said. With China, they went on, “we are in a competition to shape the rules of the road, but also to explore if some of the rules can be embraced by all countries.”

So while China is hardly an unproblematic partner, the officials emphasized the two rival superpowers still need to talk. “Intense competition requires intense diplomacy to reduce the risk of miscalculation and unintended conflict,” one said. “This is particularly true in the case of AI.”

Soldiers fire a Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems from their M270A1 Multiple Launch Rocket Systemin September 2021 during the Thunder Cloud live-fire exercise in Andoya, Norway. (US Army/Maj. Joe Bush)

WASHINGTON — This week, US Army Europe and Africa Commander Gen. Darryl Williams kicked off the annual Fires Symposium in Lawton, Okla. with, appropriately, a bit of a bombshell.

“Traditional cannon-based mass fires,” he told the audience, “are still the best solution in an EW environment.”

Williams, a veteran field artillery officer, has had a front row seat for nearly two years assessing some of those challenges and seeing how US provided weapons are working on the Ukrainian battlefield against an adversary with electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. Following decades of investments across the US military in precision capabilities, the claim that simpler weapons may be the best for the modern battlefield raises larger questions about whether the Army has been putting billions over billions of dollars down the wrong hole.

And yet, two other four-star generals speaking this week cautioned that one can’t move too far away from precision weaponry, an indication that Army leadership is still working through the results of the war in Ukraine and thinking through how it could apply to future conflicts with both Russia and China.

Williams himself called precision weapons “essential,” but cautioned that they cannot “supplant the indispensable volume of… unguided cannon fire,” on the battlefield.

Although Williams did not disclose which precision munitions are experiencing higher failure rates, there have been multiple reports of Russian forces jamming or spoofing munitions that rely on GPS. 

Last month, for example, Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante disclosed problems with another weapon that Defense One potentially identified as the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB). And in May 2023 CNN reported that Russia was using electronic jammers to throw the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles off course. 

GMLRS uses GPS guidance and has inertial navigation systems that are not susceptible to EW misdirection. However, that also makes them less precise than when guided by GPS. Regardless, Williams said GMLRS inertial navigation units are helping “offset” challenges inside Ukraine.

But the difference between precision munitions and conventional weapons is not black and white, and precision rounds have varying levels of technology and sophistication, said Byron Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

RELATED: Sullivan: Defense industry ‘still underestimating’ global need for munitions

On the lower end, the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kit for dumb bombs, GMLRS and Excalibur rely on GPS guidance but when the GPS signal gets “fuzzy” or drops off, the weapon can rely on a inertial navigator, according to Clark. Inertial navigators, however, vary in accuracy and are not as precise as GPS guidance. When the weapon’s GPS guidance is jammed, the inertial navigators keep the round flying in the same direction, but do not receive external updates, meaning the weapon cannot track a moving target or have its target changed

In an EW environment like Ukraine, this essentially means the military cannot rely on having precision weapons.

“Without GPS, they become kind of dumb bombs again, and we’re having to aim them the traditional way of just sort of aiming and doing sighting and spotting, you know, figuring out how to land the artillery in the right place,” Clark told Breaking Defense on Thursday. “It’s like going back to the 20th century old school method of fires.”

When it comes to the Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), though, each round has multiple inertial navigation units “knitted” together with software. If the round loses GPS guidance, that technique still provides the weapon with accuracy, Clark explained.

Then there are more higher tech weapons like the future Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), Tomahawk cruise missile and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) that also include seekers and terrain mapping.

“These more sophisticated weapons will have [something] like a radar system that’s measuring the altitude of the cruise missile above the ground, and it could use that to do terrain mapping and figure out, ‘Okay, am I going approximately the right direction, because I should be able to tell based on the altitude and the terrain that I see underneath me,’” Clark said.

Some of those higher-end weapons, like JASSM and Tomahawk, can also host a passive radio frequency sensor designed to detect known emitters like radio towers. The military can preprogram it to use radio towers to geolocate and continue towards the target if it loses GPS guidance.

Europe Vs The Pacific

Lessons learned from the Ukraine conflict absolutely have applicability elsewhere. But when the distances get longer, the need for higher-end weapons become unavoidable.

US Army Pacific commander Gen. Charles Flynn, for example, is monitoring the growing EW challenges while also awaiting new, longer-range precision munitions like the PrSM and Dark Eagle hypersonic weapon. His area of responsibility was also the first to recently receive the new Mid-Range Capability launcher development, also known as Typhon, that fires precision SM-6 and Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Philippines was the first official international stop for that new weapon when the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force deployed there for a series of exercises.

Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Flynn said while he needs area fire weapons like mortars and howitzers, precision munitions remain essential.

“Maybe a mortar or two Howitzers have a role on the modern battlefield…and I would argue that that particular asset also plays a role out here,” Flynn said on a call. “But out here, just like in Europe, you also need another set of equipment and types of munitions that are precision in nature, you know, GMLRS, ATACMS and… long-range precision fires.”

“All of those are going to be needed in today’s environment, and certainly into the future,” he added.

That Flynn would still be prioritizing high-end munitions makes sense, given the differences between his theater and that of Williams. Unlike in Europe, Flynn is challenged by a more dispersed area with larger distances and water between key locations, and without a NATO-like alliance. That has meant striking new bilateral agreements with countries for US equipment flow in — temporarily and more permanently — practicing the quick deployment of long-range fires and developing new precision munitions with a longer range and ability to target ships.

With both modern-day, expensive munitions and simpler shells being needed for the battlefield, the challenge becomes figuring out how to budget for both. While commanders like Williams and Flynn gather observations from their respective theaters and help translate those into requirements, Army Futures Command head Gen. James Rainey is tasked, in part, with helping make that happen. 

Rainey recently helped pen a new tactical fires study for service leaders that may reshape artillery plans. Similar to how the previous long-range fires study helped shape programs like MRC and hypersonic weapon development, it was a “no brainer” to take lessons out of Ukraine and apply that to cannon artillery, he explained.

“It is helping us think about things we should be experimenting with. things we should be looking at, [and] potentially adjustments that we should make to some of our programs,” Rainey said on the sidelines of the Ash Carter Exchange. (Earlier this year the service announced it had stopped work on the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, platform prototype and would ask industry to demo what they have today.)

When it comes those EW challenges with precision munitions in Ukraine, Rainey said, “We’re paying attention, we’re learning.”

“I think that there will be a need for precision guided munitions: I think there will be the need for conventional munitions,” he added. “And just like always in war, you know, you’re gonna have way more of the conventional stuff than you have the precision stuff.”

Options Ahead

As leaders like Rainey weigh on the future arsenal, the war in Ukraine rages on — with new feedback constantly heading back to the states for incorporation into both tactics and technology.

The US is continuously upgrading weapons sent to Ukraine to address vulnerabilities, according to one US Army source. That source declined to provide specific details about those modifications but noted that there is no silver bullet or single system that can win the war.

Industry, too, is incorporating feedback from the field. AeroVironment’s Switchblade 300 and 600, two precision guided loitering munitions, have made their way into Ukraine’s arsenal. During a Wednesday interview with Company CEO Wahid Nawabi, he explained that his team is continually learning from Ukraine’s war and making “a lot of improvements to our products” to respond to battlefield challenges. Those changes, he noted, include a new autonomy retrofit kit that uses terrain mapping for targeting.

Clark surmised that the Department of Defense could be looking at its options for boosting GMLRS and the JDAM kit’s accuracy when jammed. Both weapons, he added, could be candidates for other navigation systems like Europe’s Galileo global navigation satellite system or SpaceX’s Starlink — the latter of which has been at least somewhat compromised by Russia.

“If you’re Russia, you would have the jam GPS and Galileo,” complicating their EW strategy, Clark added. However, those changes significantly drive up the per unit cost for the US, and likely could not happen quickly.

“GPS was a great way to kind of cheaply add precision to every one of its weapons, and now they have to rethink how to do that,” Clark said. “That’s the challenge the DoD running into, these are all supposed to be cheap weapons, we can buy at scale, and [now] making them too sophisticated.”

Michael Marrow in Tampa, Fla. contributed to this report.

Fincantieri’s FCx30 multirole frigate model on display at the World Defense Show (Breaking Defense)

BELFAST — Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri has formally agreed to the acquisition of national counterpart Leonardo’s Underwater Armament Systems (UAS) unit in a deal which could amount to a total value of €415 ($447 million), and one largely signaling military torpedo production growth.

The two companies announced the acquisition, set to be finalized in early 2025, on Thursday, with Fincantieri sharing that it will “acquire not only the technologies related to torpedo’s production but also the control of the country’s underwater acoustic technologies,” which it considers to be a “fundamental element in the group’s growth strategy in the underwater sector.”

The UAS division was originally established as Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei (WASS), a torpedo unit that recorded revenues of €160 million ($172 million) last year.

Fincantieri holds a market share of over 40 percent in naval defense and offshore vessel markets, covering 18 shipyards in four continents, according to its 2023 annual report [PDF].

Terms of the UAS acquisition include the shipbuilder paying a fixed fee of €300 million ($323 million) and, “based on certain growth assumptions,” an additional €115 ($124 million) directly relating to performance of the underwater armaments business this year.

A spokesperson for Fincantieri told Breaking Defense the company could not provide further details about the acquisition because it has yet to be finalized.

Fincantieri CEO Pierroberto Folgiero said last month that undersea defense and commercial markets are equivalent to the early development of Space technologies “40 years ago,” with the company committed to taking advantage of such opportunity. Providing insight into the lucrative undersea market, he suggested it could be worth up to $400 billion by 2030.

The latest undersea business push builds on the company’s acquisition of Remazel, an Italian submarine supplier, and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in December 2023 with WSense, an underwater monitoring and communication systems company, based in Rome. The latter agreement involves Fincantieri and WSense exploring Underwater Internet of Things (UIoT) collaboration.

For Leonardo, the selling of its undersea unit is in line with a new five-year industrial plan unveiled by the company in March, which includes company restructuring, divesting of some assets, exiting a number of defense programs and making supplier payment changes in a bid to cut costs of €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) through 2028.

Kraken Technology Group’s K4 Manta was on display with BlueHalo markings, following a recent announcement of a new partnership between the two companies. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

SOF WEEK 2024 — Special operators may be a relatively small community in the world of military affairs, but there was no shortage of attendees at this year’s SOF Week conference in Tampa. According to the conference’s organizers, over 15,000 people hailing from more than 60 nations were expected at the conference, with thousands packing the streets to see the event’s annual capabilities demonstration on the water just outside of the Tampa Convention Center.

Amid a rise of global tensions and increasing demand for special operators that US Special Operations Command boss Gen. Bryan Fenton described as a “renaissance,” there was a plethora of equipment on display by vendors this week. Below are just a few photos of what the show looked like on the ground.

Polaris debuted a new concept demonstrator of its tactical MRZR Alpha vehicle, which is aimed at missions like precision fires and logistics. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

Hascall-Denke’s equipment-carrying display dog may not have been real, but he was still a good boy. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown during a keynote address on Thursday. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

Attendees mill about Thursday morning before addresses from top officials delivered at the JW Marriott in downtown Tampa. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

Special operators during the conference’s marquee event, a capability demonstration held on the water just outside the convention center. This year’s featured drone swarms, F-35 flyovers, Black Hawk and Little Bird helos, fast attack boats and more. The organizers stressed the demonstration did not use actual special ops techniques, since that would be silly to allow the public to catch on camera. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

Israel Aerospace Industries’s booth included multiple uncrewed systems. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

L3Harris displayed multiple communications devices, which are critical for special operators constantly on the move who need to closely coordinate their missions. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

Stidd sought to make waves with this submersible boat that operators can use to more quickly swim to their target. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

BlueSky innovations had a host of communications equipment on display. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

German Army soldiers compete during the second day of the 2024 Sullivan Cup in Fort Moore, Georgia. (Photo: US Army)

BELFAST — German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius used a Thursday speech in Washington to call for both Berlin and Washington to hit 3 percent GDP spending on defense, while also stating his support for reintroducing conscription to the German armed forces.

Both statements may raise hackles back in Berlin, as Germany continues to debate how it should rearm itself following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m convinced that Germany needs some kind of military conscription,” Pistorius told a crowd at the American-German Institute. “We need to ensure our military staying power in a state of national or collective defense.” (He did not specify what that would look like, but elsewhere emphasized “some kind” of conscription is needed.)

The country made a “mistake” by suspending conscription at the end of the Cold War, he added. Berlin officially ended compulsory military service in 2011.

RELATED: Eight ‘capability coalitions’ are rushing arms to Ukraine. Here’s who will donate what. (EXPLAINER)

It is not the first time Pistorius has indicated an interest om conscription, previously saying that a discussion around a general duty of service for civilians would be “valuable.” But the topic is a politically sensitive one at home, and him giving such a full-threated endorsement is notable.

His comments also come at a time when other NATO nations are considering their own approaches to the issue. In the Nordic and Baltic nations, there is an increased emphasis on conscription as a key part of the military’s toolbox. For example, Denmark has decided to extend military service from four to 11 months and open conscription to women, while Norway plans on building a conscript force of 13,500 by 2036, an uplift of 4,500 personnel.

But in the United Kingdom, a January comment from Army chief Gen. Patrick Sanders about the need for a “citizen army” led to a firestorm. Eventually Adm. Tony Radakin, Chief of the UK Defence Staff, had to publicly walk it all back, saying: “We are not on the cusp of war with Russia. We are not about to be invaded. No one in the Ministry of Defence is talking about conscription in any traditional sense of the term.”

That Pistorius is even willing to make such a public comment is another example of Germany’s increasingly progressive approach to reshaping its defense posture, which has turned decades old criticisms of acquisition underspending, substandard equipment availability and armed forces readiness on their head.

Berlin’s “turning point” or Zeitenwende, in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine, supported by a €100 billion ($107 billion) special arms fund, dramatically shifted perceptions. Germany increased its defense spending by 9 percent between 2022 and 2023, to an annual total of €66.8 ($72 billion) in 2023, according to figures [PDF] from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It also means Germany is set, for the first time, to meet NATO’s 2 percent GDP spending target this year.

Call For More Defense Spending

However, in another notable comment, Pistorius indicated 2 percent may not be the goal for Germany going forward, instead calling for both Washington and Berlin to aim for 3 percent.

“[There are problems] we have not solved yet,” he said. “The industry, neither Germany nor US or in other countries of the world, is yet at the level to produce as much as we need, that matches with ammunition [demand], with missiles, with Patriot systems or whatever you name, so we have to synchronize that. We need more money, there’s no doubt about it, and I think we will rather arrive at 3 percent or even more.”

However, Pistorius did not give a timetable for when he would like to see that target be reached — and there are potential roadblocks. German lawmakers are currently locked in discussions about how to fund a €25 billion ($27 billion) budget “gap” in 2025, with solutions of social welfare cuts or higher taxation on the table. If a defense spending request made by Pistorius, for €6.5 billion ($7 billion) is not agreed, procurement of new equipment will suffer.

He also expressed gratitude toward the US for belatedly passing new Ukraine military aid funding under the $95 billion foreign aid bill, but based on an awareness that US resources and attention “cannot and will not” be only focused on Europe, Germany is “working hard to make Europe’s contribution to transatlantic burden sharing more relevant.”

To date, Germany has contributed €7 billion ($7.5 billion) in military aid to Ukraine, including supplies of Leopard 1 and 2 main battle tanks, Marder infantry fighting vehicles, IRIS-T and Patriot air defense systems, Stinger and Strela MANPADS and over 80,000 155mm artillery shells, but controversially in the view of some allies, continues to refuse sending Taurus long-range missiles.

Alongside Poland, Berlin also leads a multinational armored vehicles capability coalition for Ukraine and an integrated air and missile defense coalition with France. Both are designed to accelerate and better co-ordinate new equipment deliveries to Kyiv.

Regarding industry ties with the US, Pistorius said that Germany is currently spending $23 billion with American manufacturers, covering 380 contracts, and which include orders for Lockheed Martin F-35A fifth-generation fighter jets and Boeing CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopters.

Photo by Staff Sgt. Vernon R. Walter III. Courtesy U.S. Air Force.

The work involved with supplying the world’s most elite military units is never done.

Because their missions change, their threats evolve, and their requirements change, so too must their tools and equipment.

It’s no different even with sophisticated platforms such as unmanned aerial systems, which need upgrades and improvements to keep pace with the ever-adapting threats to U.S. and allied special operations forces.

This is why General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., the San Diego-based builder of the MQ-9A Reaper® remotely piloted aircraft, has partnered with cyber-startup Shift5, sited just across the river from Washington, D.C., to further protect part of the Air Force’s fleet of Reapers.

Specifically, the companies are adding Shift5’s onboard cyber anomaly detection and predictive maintenance capabilities onto the aircraft owned by United States Special Operations Command and Air Force Special Operations Command.

Hazards to allied aircraft don’t only come in the form of missiles or artillery rounds. They also might involve malicious code that could disable a Reaper or steal priceless intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance or do other harm. Shift5 defeats that.

The GA-ASI and Shift5 partnership will provide AFSOC and SOCOM the ability to assure mission readiness and cyber survivability.

“The next logical and immediate extension of our work in enabling the U.S. Air Force is empowering AFSOC and SOCOM with additional resiliency and survivability of the MQ-9A on the battlefield,” said David Alexander, president of GA-ASI. “Shift5 represents a new class of dual-use defense tech business that can successfully operate at speed and scale with us to make an immediate impact for the warfighter.”

Shift5’s Platform reveals critical operational and cybersecurity insights that enable operators to move from data to decisions quickly and confidently.

The platform provides operator situational awareness, system health, and historical trends. The Shift5 Platform deploys on-premises or in the cloud and supports streaming and air-gapped modes for offline and online capability.

These upgrades let SOCOM and AFSOC continue to operate their unmanned aircraft with the confidence that they’ll remain protected against emerging threats.

“The battlefield of the future will include more remotely piloted, autonomous, and unmanned systems. Central to maintaining advantage in this operating environment is access to real-time data,” said Josh Lospinoso, CEO and co-founder of Shift5. “Our work with GA-ASI represents one of the most efficient and effective ways that AFSOC and SOCOM can gain access to critical operational and cybersecurity insights, democratize that data, and maintain decision dominance.”

The old-school dangers haven’t gone away, though. Although one great advantage of using unmanned aircraft is that they put no onboard human crews in danger, the Air Force and other users want to preserve them as much as possible to provide intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and other capabilities.

That’s why GA-ASI and SOCOM are developing a new Airborne Battlespace and Defense pod – known as ABAD – for Air Force Special Operations Command’s MQ-9A Block 5-model Reapers. ABAD provides detection and protection against radio frequency and infrared anti-air threats.

Anti-aircraft weapons rely on radio waves or infrared systems to go after their targets. ABAD supports MQ-9 the way a threat warning suite works on a traditional tactical aircraft. It can sense if an anti-aircraft sensor is present and alert the remote crew of the Reaper about the prospect of danger from the ground. The ABAD pod also offers defensive measures against other air and ground systems.

These capabilities give tactical aircraft a greater chance to see ground threats earlier and deal with them quickly. Commanders also get time and space to decide what action to take – should they withdraw? Should they keep an aircraft in the threat area knowing the risks? Should they decide to counterattack the anti-aircraft weapons that have identified themselves by emitting or firing?

Upgrades such as the ABAD pod and the new onboard cyber monitoring system let Reaper continue to play its central role in the way American and allied forces fight, even in highly dynamic environments, and they also underscore how adaptable the MQ-9 platform remains. The Reaper and its newer-model siblings are destined to stay at the vanguard for a long time.

TOPSHOT – Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan (R) receives US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretariat in Riyadh on April 29, 2024. (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / POOL / AFP) (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

BEIRUT — On April 29, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a surprising announcement: that a new defense pact between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is “potentially very close to completion.” In turn, Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said that bilateral agreements between the two sides are expected “in the near future.”

The statements sent media in the region scrambling to announce that the two sides were effectively done crafting a defense agreement that Riyadh has long sought from Washington. But the reality, according to experts, is that any deal is still a long way away.

While it seems evident that negotiations are ongoing, there are two large hurdles still to be cleared: what Riyadh is expected to demand from the US, and a counter-demand from Washington that such an agreement be twinned with Israeli-Saudi normalization.

“This whole conversation is a non-starter. I’m not sure why it’s been floated around as if they’re incredibly close,” said Bilal Saab, associate Fellow at Chatham House, summing up the general tone from five analysts who discussed the issue with Breaking Defense.

Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East Program at CSIS, added that despite the official statements, “it is unlikely for there to be a comprehensive US Saudi agreement in the coming months.”

What Riyadh Wants From Washington

The first issue is the question of what a US-Saudi defense pact would look like. Officially, little has been said about what shape that could take.

Asked about the potential for such a pact, a State department official told Breaking Defense that, “the long-term goal of a more peaceful, stable, prosperous, and integrated Middle East region remains a focus of U.S. foreign policy. We continue to have conversations on these issues, to include on the need for a sustainable peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Our immediate focus remains on securing the release of hostages and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.”

Ali Bakir, professor at Qatar University and non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, described a potential deal with Saudi Arabia as “vague and general.”

“Based on publicly available information, the deal appears to involve offering Riyadh a defense pact similar to the one the US has with South Korea, where Washington would be committed to defending Saudi territorial sovereignty against external threats, but it would stop short of the mutual defense guarantee enshrined in NATO’s Article 5,” Bakir said.

He added that “such a limited defense proposal falls short of Saudi Arabia’s demands and may not be well-suited to the complex security environment of the Middle East, where non-state and semi-state armed actors play a significant role and traditional deterrence dynamics and calculations are not so effective.”

Kristian Alexander, head of the International Security and Terrorism Program at Trends Research & Advisory think tank based in the UAE, said that according to such a defense pact, “the US would provide security guarantees to Saudi Arabia, which might include commitments to defend the kingdom in the event of external threats. The agreement could also allow Saudi Arabia access to sophisticated U.S. military technology that was previously restricted, which could significantly enhance the kingdom’s defense capabilities.”

On the US side, Alterman told Breaking Defense that Washington would be asking for “constraints on engagements with China” as part of the deal.

According to Bloomberg, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would “limit Chinese technology from his nation’s most sensitive networks in exchange for major US investments in artificial intelligence and quantum-computing, and get American help to build out its civilian nuclear program.”

Another issue raised by analysts is logistical: The US doesn’t easily create formal defense agreements, and the Saudis will want something written in stone.

“The United States doesn’t have defense pacts with a lot of countries. It has mutual defense pacts with countries in NATO. But the idea of a written defense pact is not something the United States normally gives nor does it give [easily] because it means that there’s a possibility that Americans will die in accordance with the requirements of the pact, and that requires a lot on the other side,” Alterman said.

He added that “Saudis want as close as they can get to written US agreement to defend the Kingdom under a variety of circumstances,” but with so little detail revealed it is unclear what those circumstances are.

Alexander agreed, noting that any defense pact with KSA “will very likely also raise concerns among some US lawmakers (US Senate and Congressional Approval), who view the Saudi government as an untrustworthy partner and are critical of its human rights record and involvement in the Yemen conflict.”

And if Congress won’t endorse a formal pact — something that is hard to see given the polarization in DC around Saudi Arabia — the White House “might have to go the executive route,” which is “going to be looked at, especially by adversaries [like] Iran, as a weaker form of security guarantee, which frankly, goes against the wishes of the Saudis,” Saab highlighted.

Israel-Saudi Normalization Seems Far Away

Which leads into the second, and perhaps largest, obstacle: the reliance of any defense pact between US and KSA on the Saudi normalization with Israel.

Said Saab, “They may be close in terms of negotiating the details and the contours of [a] defense pact but nevertheless, the number one condition remains which is normalization with Israel and the one country that is holding that up, of course, is Israel itself.”

While reportedly Riyadh and Washington might have drafted a plan B for a bilateral defense pact that doesn’t depend on normalization with Israel, US officials have, at least in public, stressed that no defense pact will happen without normalization.

With the Gaza conflict raging and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemingly becoming more bellicose in tone, making declarations that Israel will prosecute its war with or without American support, getting the Saudis and Israelis on the same page seems a tall task.

“A key condition for Israel to enter into such an agreement involves ending the conflict in Gaza and taking steps towards establishing a Palestinian state, which are substantial political challenges given the current Israeli government’s stance,” Alexander said.

Bakir concurred, noting that “Netanyahu has recently rejected the two-state solution and is refusing to agree to a deal that would halt the Israeli war on Gaza and establish a permanent ceasefire — both of which were central to Saudi Arabia’s proposal for potential normalization with Israel.”

Given all that, why make the announcement that Blinken did? Andreas Krieg, CEO of MENA Analytica, a London-based strategic risk consultancy firm focusing on the wider Middle East region, said that “It looks very much like a desperate attempt to create a consensus around something [at a time of chaos in the region], when in reality, we’re still very, very far away because it requires a couple of conditions to be met that are currently not met.”

In his opinion, Krieg said that “US officials are trying to create some buzz around the story [defense pact] because they need a foreign policy … vis-a-vis their electorate as they’re going into elections. And so they’re trying to create a narrative that they’re strongly working towards a ceasefire in Gaza, that they’re trying to create a new framework for the Middle East security that would allow Gulf states to pivot away from China and Russia closer to the United States.”

However, there may be some strategy there, said Bakir. He notes that getting a bilateral deal with Riyadh worked out first would give the Biden administration a carrot to dangle in order to push normalization with Israel.

Added Alexander, “While the proposed pact could set a foundation for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, actual normalization would require sustained diplomatic efforts, significant political compromises, particularly concerning the Palestinian issue, and a conducive regional environment.

“The agreement, therefore, represents a starting point rather than a conclusive solution to these complex regional dynamics,” Alexander said.

Gen. Angus Campbell, chief of the Australian Defense Force, speaks in Canberra at Air & Space Conference on May 9, 2024. (Colin Clark/Breaking Defense)

CANBERRA — With controlled passion, the chief of the Australian Defense Force today offered a ringing rebuttal of critics of the AUKUS plan to buy and build nuclear powered attack submarines.

Gen. Angus Campbell, making what is likely one of his last speeches before retirement, called on his countrymen to “Get in the ring, give it a go, because we are delivering nuclear powered submarine capability to this nation — full stop — and it will be an extraordinary program.”

He contrasted the AUKUS effort to other major works in his country’s history, saying: “I would ask you to reflect on so many other occasions when Australians, cringing, disappointed themselves by declaring the Sydney Harbour Bridge’s two halves will fall into the ocean. The Sydney Opera House will never be the greatest opera house on the planet. The Snowy Mountains hydro scheme will fail somewhere in the mountains. The Collins class submarine — worst submarine on the planet.”

Campbell’s rhetoric is uncharacteristic of the country’s top officers, who is seen as cerebral and controlled in public. Now that he is on the last stretch of his term, Campbell may feel compelled to defend what will become an important part of his legacy, as the decision was made to buy the nuclear subs on his watch.

Critics of the AUKUS deal have said everything from the subs’ total cost — estimated at $368 billion AUD ($243 USD) — is too big, the capability of the nuclear-powered subs isn’t needed, Australia has to wait too long before buying its first of at least three Virginia-class submarines in 2032, and it forces Australia to rely too much on the United States, which many Australians fear may be a less reliable ally than it has been.

At the end of his speech at the annual two-day Air & Space Conference, Campbell was also pressed about Chinese claims that one of its J-10 fighters operated in a “professional and safe” manner when it dropped flares in front of an Australian MH-60R Seahawk helicopter.

The Australian helicopter and its mother ship, HMAS Hobart, were operating in international waters in Yellow Sea, performing sanctions patrols to keep watch on efforts to illegally supply North Korea.

Campbell flatly rejected Chinese claims that the Australian aircraft had maneuvered proactively. “The helicopter was behaving in a correct and disciplined fashion, and I don’t accept that the response was anything but unsafe and unprofessional,” he said.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian previously put forward a different version of events, during a press briefing.

“What truly happened was, an Australian military aircraft deliberately flew within close range of China’s airspace in a provocative move that endangered China’s maritime and air security in the name of enforcing UN Security Council’s resolutions,” said Jian. “The Chinese military took necessary measures at the scene to warn and alert the Australian side. The way the situation was handled was consistent with our laws and regulations, professional and safe. China has lodged serious protests to the Australian side on its risky moves.”

Since Australia first published news of the incident the discussion in Canberra has escalated to criticism by the opposition Liberal Party, which called for the prime minister to make representations directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping about the incident. And then the prime minister weighed in.

“There’s no question that the Australian Defence Force personnel were both in international waters and in international airspace,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in Perth on Wednesday.

“In the circumstances that occurred we were not satisfied, and very reasonably not satisfied with regard to both safety and professionalism,” Campbell said at the conference. He did not say if he would contact his Chinese counterpart.

Australia has not released any video of the encounter, and it’s not known if there is any. But Britain’s Air Force Chief has suggested Australia should release any imagery it had of the confrontation to help call out China’s “unprofessional” conduct.

The head of the Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation at the conference here that publicizing any video of a dangerous incident can show “why it’s dangerous to conduct them in that unprofessional way and how that can lead to miscalculation and ultimately to accidents which I think would be an awful outcome through sheer incompetence and lack of professionalism”.

AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600 drone on display at the SOF Week conference in Tampa. (Michael Marrow/Breaking Defense)

SOF WEEK 2024 — On the heels of the Pentagon’s announcement that the company’s Switchblade weapon was picked for the DoD’s Replicator initiative, manufacturer AeroVironment expects that it will have to ramp up production of loitering munitions in the years ahead — and that its offerings will evolve to meet new mission sets.

“We have already expanded production ahead of Replicator, and irrespective of Replicator, because we know where this is going,” AeroVironment CEO Wahid Nawabi told Breaking Defense in a Wednesday interview at the SOF Week conference here in Tampa. “We are actually increasing that capacity even more because we believe there’s even more demand in the future for loitering munitions.”

Describing the company’s loitering munitions — otherwise known as suicide drones — as the “poster child” of Replicator, Nawabi pointed to the extensive deployment of their use in Ukraine. “Eight or 10” of the company’s weapons are deployed in the conflict, Nawabi said, claiming they have a “very high success rate. And that’s why they want more of them.”

Still, the conflict has been something of a learning experience. Intense Russian electronic warfare continues to knock thousands of Ukrainian drones out of the sky, prompting companies like AeroVironment to adapt their technology to circumvent new threats.

“We’ve learned a lot from Ukraine, and we’ve actually made a lot of improvements to our products since the beginning of the conflict, and in fact, reacting to some of the challenges that Ukrainians are facing with our systems,” Nawabi said. An example he pointed to is a new autonomy retrofit kit that can integrate with the company’s Puma drone, which he said uses terrain mapping to find its way to a target if GPS is unavailable. The tech is being used in Ukraine, he said, though he declined to say whether similar tech has been incorporated on the Switchblade. 

According to Nawabi, AeroVironment’s goal is “end-to-end complete mission autonomy” for weapon systems that can operate in swarms — a “holy grail” of capability that can function in a contested environment and doesn’t require an operator in the loop to execute. “So our vision is to build our technology to that level of capability,” he said. “Whether it’s allowed to be used, those are all rules of engagement within the military that we don’t have a say in.”

Looking ahead, Nawabi said he expects the Switchblade to integrate with new platforms and be characterized by different warhead sizes, ranges and possibly other roles.

“You could see Switchblade going into armored vehicles, Humvees, JLTVs [Joint Light Tactical Vehicles], armored trucks, tanks, airplanes and helicopters,” he said, later describing a scenario where a Switchblade acts as an anti-radiation weapon to destroy enemy radar.

“We’re just at the beginning of the cycle,” he said. 

John Sherman, then Acting Department of Defense Chief Information Officer participates in a virtual panel with Billington Cybersecurity at the Pentagon, April 15, 2021 (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

GEOINT — The Pentagon has rolled out new cybersecurity guidance, with the intent of resolving what Chief Information Officer John Sherman has characterized as sluggish, duplicative processes that hinder technology and software innovation.

The plan, according to a one-pager signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks last week and released on Wednesday, revolves around enforcing the concept of “reciprocity,” which essentially means if one office certifies that a system is cyber secure, then all offices can accept it instead of having to redo the certification process.

Sherman announced the new guidance during a keynote at the annual GEOINT symposium in Orlando, Fla. on Wednesday, telling the crowd that, “Immediately after I get done talking we’re about to publish new guidance the Deputy Secretary signed out that is going to direct reciprocity by default within the Department of Defense.”

Sherman explained that this move will assure “that folks don’t have to check each other’s homework over and over again,” unless an official has “bona fide reasons” to perform rechecks.

“We’re gonna move to reciprocity by default and start to dynamite through this,” he added.

The move comes after a multitude of complaints within the department and industry heads surfaced over authority to process (ATO) procedures. ATO procedures have been viewed as a problem because they’re not just slow and bureaucratic, but they can be redundant as different organizations often each have their own Authorizing Officer (AO) who has to give a piece of software an ATO before it can be implemented.

AOs often have different criteria, so the software company going through this process has to operate a little differently each time, dragging the process down when the office next door may already have been cleared to use the same software.

“We’ve heard you loud and clear on this within the DoD. I’m not going to say this is going to solve every bit of it, but it’s going to help us a bit,” Sherman said.

Though Sherman made clear that this initiative is dedicated to cutting down time, he emphasized that the process can be more complicated and might require another step, which he said his office is prepared to assist with.

“There’s going to be a second major aspect of this. It’s going to be, if an authorizing official feels like they’re being hindered in some way, they can elevate it directly to my office working with our chief information security officer,” Sherman said.

In addition to saving time, reciprocity also saves money, as it lets federal entities reuse other organization’s internal and external findings which in turn reduces costs in investments from approving IT systems that operate on various networks.

“This is coming from the deputy secretary on down that reciprocity should be a default. It should be the first choice as opposed to having to redo all the due diligence again,” Sherman told DefenseScoop in an interview Wednesday. 

The guidance published Wednesday, formally titled “Resolving Risk Management Framework and Cybersecurity Reciprocity Issues,” states that the “Department implements the Risk Management Framework (RMF), in accordance with DoD Instruction 8510.01, to guide how we build, field, and maintain cyber secure and survivable capabilities.”

While the RMF is guidance for the Pentagon, the CIO also plans to provide similar direction for the breadth of the intelligence community, Sherman told DefenseScoop. 

“That’s kind of our next hill to climb later, because of different classifications and where those bodies of evidence are kept on secret or top secret, versus unclassified databases and so on,” he told the outlet. 

Theresa Hitchens in Orlando contributed to this report. 

(image courtesy of BAE Systems)

What is BAE Systems’ Intrepid Shield™?

Intrepid Shield is our full-spectrum approach to platform survivability. Executing missions in the modern battlespace is extremely challenging; platforms will be seen and will be engaged. Our platforms need a coordinated, complimentary approach to survivability to penetrate and survive, using the full electromagnetic spectrum to detect, exploit, and counter advanced threats. We call this concept Intrepid Shield.

Tell us about the threat.

The modern battlespace is getting more and more complex every day and surviving is harder than ever in the air, sea, space, and ground domains.

A platform executing a mission in a modern, heavily contested battlespace will be met with coordinated threat sensors and weapons that will observe and engage the platform throughout its mission. Emerging threats from the ground, sea, air, or space are extending the contested area well beyond the horizon, holding previously safe assets at risk.

Any penetrating platform will have to deal with layered long-, medium-, and short-range air defenses from the sea, air, or ground. That includes long-range early warning from aircraft, ground- and maritime-based radars, and increasingly, unmanned systems. That’s followed by fighters with advanced air-to-air missiles, highly sophisticated surface-to-air missile systems, all the way down to short-range man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) and small arms fire. All of these weapon systems are supported by electronic warfare systems denying our communications and sensors, and by networks of sensors on robust command-and control networks that pass fused data around the battlespace. On any given mission, you may encounter all of these threats and must survive.

Can you explain what you mean by full-spectrum electromagnetic warfare?

The different threat systems use different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to accomplish their missions. There are two bands of the electromagnetic spectrum that are primarily used in electromagnetic warfare – radio frequency (RF) and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) – and each has different properties. In the most general terms, RF sensors detect RF energy reflected or emitted from the target and EO/IR sensors detect reflected or emitted light and heat from the target.

Airborne, ground, and maritime early warning, target acquisition, and engagement radars; missile seekers; radar jammers; and communications systems all operate in the RF spectrum. Different parts of the RF spectrum are used for different tasks. The accuracy and type of information needed, such as target velocity, position, or even shape, dictates the frequency band and waveform designs chosen for the radar system. RF is attractive because it can easily pass through the atmosphere, including poor atmospheric conditions like clouds and rain. However, active radar systems work by emitting energy, which makes them observable in the battlespace. Radars and RF communication systems are the primary transmitters on the modern battlefield, and the signal environment is incredibly dense. Deciphering who’s who, who sees me, and what I need to do about it is a really hard problem.

EO/IR sensors include everything from our eyeballs through large format, artificial intelligence- supported infrared cameras. That includes surveillance sensors, fire control sensors, and infrared missile seekers. Every platform in the battlespace has a detectable EO/IR signature, from hot engines and rocket motor plumes to reflected moonlight, all you need is a sensor in the right wavelength band. EO/IR energy doesn’t pass through the atmosphere very well, which traditionally restricted EO/IR sensors to shorter range tasks, but advances in sensor technology has greatly increased the range of EO/IR sensors in recent years. The advantage to EO/IR is that unlike active radar, sensors don’t have to emit energy, or rely on someone else deliberately emitting energy, to detect a target. This reduces the target’s awareness that it is being engaged, reducing the risk to the sensor platform.

The key enabler to full-spectrum RF and EO/IR kill chains is the network. In today’s battlespace, both RF and EO/IR sensors can and will communicate. Full spectrum electronic warfare means we must counter coordinated, full-spectrum threats that combine RF and EO/IR sensor data within the integrated air defense network, on ships and aircraft, and within missiles.

How do we break the kill chain?

Full-spectrum threat systems support the adversary’s kill chain – its method of finding and fixing, tracking and targeting, and engaging targets (see Illustration 1). BAE Systems’ Countermeasure and Electromagnetic Attack business develops systems to disrupt tracking and launch, detect and track missiles after launch, and jam or confuse guidance systems in the end game to defeat intercept.

Illustration 1 (courtesy of BAE Systems)

With kill chains loaded with networked sensors throughout the battlespace, survivability requires a full spectrum solution to break chains in all domains. Countermeasures must cover the whole spectrum, matching the band, power, and waveforms used by the threat – during acquisition and track, missile launch, midcourse guidance, and seeker handoff. With every threat evolution we must include more capability in our EW systems and sensors.

At the same time, EW systems and sensors need to be small, lightweight, energy-efficient, and cost effective to make it onto the platforms. They need to be powerful and sensitive, take advantage of advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to improve performance and response speed, and be part of an open architecture to enable interoperability.

BAE Systems invests heavily in creating the smallest form factor, most efficient, smartest EW systems to make sure we defeat the threat and meet platform needs. We have also deeply invested in operational and threat analysis, performance modeling, algorithm development, and the digital engineering ecosystem, and are transforming our operational analysis capabilities in 2024 and beyond to ensure the technology is relevant for today’s and tomorrow’s fight.

There are many elements that go into survivability: solutions that enable freedom of maneuver, counter threats, and react faster than threats. These requirements drive the technology we develop. BAE Systems’ Countermeasure and Electromagnetic Attack Solutions (CEMA) business is at the forefront of electromagnetic warfare and missile warning, delivering a full-spectrum Intrepid Shield that breaks kill chains and ensures mission success.

Estonia’s Scouts battalion conducts urban warfare training. (Estonian Defense Forces)

TAPA ARMY BASE, Estonia — Estonia’s rapid-response Scout Battalion would likely be among the first defenders to meet Russian forces if Moscow ever seeks to cross the border. Luckily, the unit is getting first-hand guidance on how best to fight Russians, thanks to a flow of former Scouts who volunteered on their own to fight in Ukraine, and have since returned to provide insights for their active-duty comrades. 

“So we are trying to learn … from them how to change our tactics, procedures, all those kinds of things,” Lt. Col. Ranno Raudsik, the Scout battalion’s commander, said today here at Estonia’s largest military base, which sits about 90 miles west of the Russian border.

Raudsik said the “biggest part that’s going to change” is how the unit fights with and against drones. The volunteer fighters also reinforced the emphasis on “small but still important things” like “really good” medical care for the wounded (soldiers should carry four tourniquets, one per limb). Electronic warfare has also been a point of discussion, namely “how to conduct concealment by this way that no one is finding us on the battlefields. That’s a challenge, definitely.”

As a result, the Scouts are constantly refreshing their training and focus areas to better reflect what a real-world battlefield looks like in 2024. Training currently consists of “conventional warfare,” but has a renewed focus on “infantry tactics” after “looking at Ukraine,” Raudsik said.

RELATED: In new NATO trick, Finland stores equipment in Norway, spurred by Russia’s range

Based on the US Army’s Philippine Scouts, the Estonian Scouts have a long history of fighting, dating back more than 100 years, and more recently have deployed to a handful of nations, from Mali to Afghanistan. (Founded by an Estonian-American, the unit’s motto is E Pluribus Unum, the founding motto of the United States.)

When asked if he was concerned about the possibility of fighting Russians either in Ukraine or in Estonia, Raudsik, who wore a Ukrainian flag patch below his Estonian one on his arm and whose Scouts would be among the first to respond to an invasion, said simply, “We’re always ready. That’s our task.”

Part of that readiness includes the ability to call up reserve forces from throughout Estonia, which has a conscription service. Raudsik said the nation will occasionally conduct a snap exercise in which reserve troops have literal hours to drop what they’re doing and appear for days- or weeks-long training. A vast majority, Raudsik said, show up on time and most of the rest have good excuses.

It should come as no surprise that Estonia, a former vassal of the USSR that shares a border with Russia, is heavily invested in finding ways to both help Ukraine and to prepare for a potential invasion of its own territory.  Gen. Martin Herem, Estonia’s top military officer, told Breaking Defense this week that the Estonian military had previously discussed sending Estonian troops to rear-guard positions in western Ukraine, in order to free up Ukrainian troops to go to the front. Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Marko Mihkelson, also speaking this week, said European nations “have to start thinking about a coalition of the willing” to more directly help Kyiv, potentially with direct combat.

Some Scouts are getting real-world experience right now, but thousands of miles away.

EXPLAINER: Eight ‘capability coalitions’ are rushing arms to Ukraine. Here’s who will donate what. 

A Scouts detachment is currently in northern Iraq, in Erbil, where it conducts personnel and base security missions, Raudsik said. (Raudsik, like the other Estonian officials, spoke to an audience from the Kaplan Public Service Foundation; Breaking Defense accepted accommodation from KPSF in Estonia.)

Western facilities in the Middle East came under increased attack since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel and Israel’s aggressive military response, though the incidents dropped off after three American soldiers were killed in Jordan in February. More broadly, the US military has been looking into different ways to defend its facilities in the face of the rise of loitering and one-way attack drones.

Raudsik said the current threat is mostly from those one-way attack drones, launched by groups in Iraq who are ultimately funded by Iran. But for now, he downplayed the security situation at the base in Erbil.

“The threat level is medium, maybe even low,” he said.

The base’s air defenses, he said, worked “really, really well.”

Royal Australian Air Force Leading aircraftman Peter Ellis gives the thumbs up that the E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft is ready for a sortie during Red Flag-Alaska 19-3 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Aug. 9, 2019. (U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Mark Goss)

WASHINGTON — The Air Force and Boeing are close to resolving a pricing disagreement that has held up a deal for the first two E-7 Wedgetail planes, and a final agreement could materialize within weeks, the Air Force’s top acquisition official said Wednesday.

The Air Force initially estimated it would cost $2.1 billion for the rapid prototyping program, but Boeing’s own projections were around double the service’s planned costs, Andrew Hunter said.

The final agreement “will be higher than our original estimate. I think we understand now that that is necessary,” he told reporters after a congressional hearing.

But the Air Force still believes it will be able to get a good deal that doesn’t simply split the difference between the two parties’ initial proposals.

“We think we can substantially improve over what Boeing offered us. I would say we will not meet in the middle,” Hunter said. He added that while the costs of the rapid prototyping portion of the program will increase, “we aren’t currently projecting a significant difference in the cost of production,” though that could change as the service gleans more data.

Boeing said in a statement, “We are partnering with the US Air Force to deliver this critical capability and are working diligently to reach an agreement.”

The Air Force awarded Boeing a $1.2 billion contract for the Wedgetail in 2023 under an undefinitized contract action, or UCA, which allows work to start while the parties iron out final contract details such as pricing and schedule. The agreement covers the first two prototypes, with a plan to transition the program into production and field a total of 26 Wedgetails by 2032.

But negotiations between Boeing and the Air Force hit a stumbling block over price, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in February. Hunter said then that the planemaker had projected a large amount of non-recurring engineering required to meet US specifications, driving up costs.

At the same time, billions in cost overruns on fixed-price defense programs and an ongoing safety crisis in its commercial planes unit has forced Boeing executives to underscore the importance of “contract discipline,” with leaders publicly stating that the company will not enter into fixed-price development contracts or agreements that could further put Boeing in financial peril.

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The hold up in negotiations forced the Air Force to delay procurement funding slated to begin in fiscal 2025, as it did not have a design firmly under contract, Hunter said. However, the Air Force still believes Boeing will be able to deliver the first prototype aircraft in FY27.

“It would not have been possible to project it to enter procurement [in FY25] when we didn’t even have a definitized prototyping contract that we felt like we could stand behind and say, ‘This is an affordable capability,’” he said. “We’re much closer to that. And we’ll have an opportunity to revisit how we ramp into production with the next budget.”

Beginning work for a program under a UCA isn’t optimal, Hunter said, and the Air Force understood entering into the agreement with Boeing that it would be better to “understand the full parameters” of a contract before starting the program. But service officials felt like it was the best course of action so that it could replace the E-3 AWACS early warning and control plane as soon as possible, he added.

The E-3’s engines are set to reach their end of life around 2030, Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said during the hearing.