The troubled aviation firm reported nearly $6.2 billion in net losses in its quarterly earnings call with investors. That included a $2.4 billion loss for its Defense, Space and Security sector, whose former head, Ted Colbert, was fired Sept. 20.

Boeing defense reported $2 billion in charges on major programs, including the KC-46A Pegasus tanker, as the company reeled from the effects of the nearly six-week International Association of Machinists strike.

Members of the union are voting Wednesday on a proposed contract for about 33,000 machinists that would include a cumulative 35% raise, which could end the strike.

The KC-46′s roughly $661 million charge stems partly from the work stoppage that began Sept. 13, the company said, which hit work on the 767 airliner that form the foundation of the refueling aircraft.

The strike also led the company to decide to wrap up most of its 767 production, and beginning in 2027, only produce 767-2C aircraft to support the KC-46 program, Boeing said. This decision to cease production of most 767s also contributed to the program’s charges.

Boeing also racked up a roughly $908 million charge on the Air Force’s T-7 Red Hawk trainer, which was driven by expected higher costs on production contracts beginning in 2026. The Commercial Crew space capsule program had a $250 million charge, and the Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray program had a $217 million charge, its first of the year.

When combined with $250 million in previous charges on the VC-25B Air Force One program, Boeing defense’s five major fixed price development programs have incurred $3.3 billion in losses so far this year.

Under a fixed-price contract, the government agrees to pay a company a certain amount of money to produce an aircraft or other system. If the company gets the job done cheaper than expected, it can pocket the remaining payments as profit.

But if the fixed-price program experiences delays or cost overruns, the company is on the hook for losses — which can sometimes run into the billions of dollars, as in the case of the KC-46.

Boeing’s fixed-price losses expanded in magnitude as the company closed the books on the third quarter, chief financial officer Brian West said, as higher estimated production costs on the T-7 in 2026 and beyond came into focus.

“While acknowledging these are disappointing results, these are complicated development programs, and we remain focused on retiring risk each quarter and ultimately delivering these mission-critical capabilities to our customers,” West said.

Chief executive Kelly Ortberg said Boeing has no choice but to “work our way through some of those tough contracts,” and that “there’s no magic bullet to that.”

The company needs to keep a closer eye on such “problematic” contracts, he said, and work with customers such as the military to reduce the risk on those programs before their costs start to run over expectations.

“We’ve gone from today’s problem, to today’s problem, to today’s problem, and that’s because we’re not looking around the corner enough on these programs,” Ortberg said. “Some of that means that you’ve got to be better at working with your customer to define success on these programs. … We know how to run these programs. We just have lost a little bit of discipline.”

But cutting losses and exiting those troubled programs isn’t an option for Boeing, Ortberg said, since the company has made long-term commitments to customers such as the Air Force.

“We do have to get in a position where we’ve got a portfolio much more balanced with less-risky programs and more profitable programs,” Ortberg said. “But I don’t think a wholesale walk-away is in the cards.”

With current global turmoil and rising defense spending, demand for Boeing’s defense products remains strong, West said, and the company expects it will be able to improve financial performance in the medium to long term.

Until then, however, more financial pain remains on the horizon. Boeing expects its overall performance next year to be much better than in 2024 — but still expects to be in the red for all of 2025. The company has so far lost $8 billion in 2024.

Ortberg is still traveling to Boeing facilities and having in-person conversations with rank-and-file employees, and said he believes the company has “fantastic people” on its staff.

“We just got to get everybody in the right position, running the right plays,” Ortberg said, adding that he and top Boeing leaders have “talked explicitly about what we’re going to do to change the culture, but it’s going to take time. This isn’t something that there’s just a light switch that flips. It’s a never-ending process.”

Ortberg declined to comment on who might be the next head of Boeing defense, but said he would look outside the company if Boeing can’t find the right internal candidate.

But the delay in reaching the contract for upcoming batches of F-35s — along with multi-million dollar payments the government is withholding from Lockheed until the newest fighters can fly in combat — is costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lockheed’s aeronautics sector reported $6.5 billion in sales in the third quarter of 2024, a 3% decline from one year earlier, as well as a 2% decline in aeronautics profit. Officials said higher volume on C-130 aircraft and belt-tightening on spending helped it absorb most of the F-35 losses.

The U.S. government at the end of 2023 authorized Lockheed to start initial work on lots 18 and 19, and awarded the company an advance acquisition contract to fund production and ensure they didn’t fall behind schedule.

But that initial funding has run out, Lockheed said, and the company said it incurred about $700 million in delayed revenue on the F-35 in the third quarter.

The earnings call with investors provided more insight into the financial repercussions Lockheed is facing as it tries to recover from a year-long F-35 delivery delay, stemming from software and hardware troubles with an upgrade known as Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3.

TR-3 is meant to give the jets improved displays, computers and processing power, beginning with lot 15. But software integration problems and hardware delays meant the upgrades did not work as intended, and the government refused to accept jets intended to have TR-3.

Lockheed developed an interim version of the software that allows TR-3 jets to fly combat training missions, which satisfied the government enough to resume deliveries this summer. But those jets are not yet able to fly in combat, and won’t be until 2025.

Lockheed delivered its first 48 F-35s of the year in the third quarter, chief executive Jim Taiclet told investors, and expects to deliver between 90 and 110 jets by the end of 2024.

That is less than the roughly 156 jets Lockheed typically aims to produce and deliver annually, and about in line with the 98 fighters the company delivered in 2023, as the delivery halt began.

Lockheed expects to take a $600 million hit in 2024 on the delays associated with lots 15 through 17 jets, chief financial officer Jay Malave told investors. But he expects the company to recover those costs over the next few years.

While Lockheed Martin won’t deliver its full complement of F-35s in 2024, Malave said the company expects to deliver about 180 annually over the subsequent three years, as it works through its backlog.

Malave also expects the government to start releasing withheld payments starting next year, as TR-3 improves. The F-35 Joint Program Office is withholding about $5 million in payments for each jet until they are fully combat-capable. About 95% of the new TR-3 jets’ combat capabilities have been validated, Taiclet told investors.

Malave expects Lockheed to receive about $300 million to $400 million more in 2025 as it delivers more jets and withheld payments from the government start to shake loose, with more to come in 2026.

“Cash collections will smooth out over this period of time,” Malave said.

But some lawmakers have lost patience with Lockheed and its difficulties with the F-35.

Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass., on Tuesday introduced a resolution that would say Lockheed and its subcontractors have failed to deliver what the company promised on the F-35, and that the Pentagon has failed to hold the program accountable.

The proposed resolution outlines a litany of shortcomings with the F-35, most recently its TR-3 troubles and the delays in future upgrades known as Block 4 that are now resulting.

“Its unacceptable to leave the American taxpayer on the hook for a broken system and allow appropriators in Congress to divest funds from service members’ child care to invest in broken F-35s,” Gaetz said. “We must stop rewarding failure and prioritize our military families.”

He ordered his military to hold drills involving battlefield nuclear weapons with ally Belarus.

He announced Russia will start producing ground-based intermediate range missiles that were outlawed by a now-defunct U.S.-Soviet treaty in 1987.

And last month, he lowered the threshold for unleashing his arsenal by revising the country’s nuclear doctrine.

Putin is relying on those thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles as an enormous doomsday machine to offset NATO's massive edge in conventional weapons to discourage what he sees as threats to Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

A look at Russia's atomic arsenal and the issues surrounding it:

Russia's strategic weapons

The Federation of American Scientists estimated this year that Russia has an inventory totaling 5,580 deployed and nondeployed nuclear warheads, while the U.S. has 5,044. Together, that’s about 88% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

Most of these are strategic, or intercontinental-range weapons. Like the U.S., Russia has a nuclear triad of ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bombers and ICBM-armed submarines.

Since Putin came to power in 2000, the Kremlin has worked to upgrade the Soviet-built components of the triad, deploying hundreds of new land-based missiles, commissioning new nuclear submarines and modernizing nuclear-capable bombers. Russia’s effort to revamp its nuclear forces has helped prompt the U.S. to launch a costly modernization of its arsenal.

Russia has reequipped its land-based strategic missile forces with mobile Yars ICBMs and recently began deploying the heavy, silo-based Sarmat ICBMs — designated “Satan II” missiles in the West — to gradually replace about 40 Soviet-built R-36M missiles. Sarmat has had only one known successful test, and reportedly suffered a massive explosion during an abortive test last month.

The navy commissioned seven new Borei-class atomic-powered submarines, each with 16 Bulava nuclear-tipped missiles, and plans to build five more. They are intended to form the core of the triad’s naval component alongside a few Soviet-era nuclear subs still operating.

Russia still relies on Soviet-built Tu-95 and Tu-160 strategic bombers carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Moscow has restarted production of the supersonic Tu-160 that was halted after the 1991 Soviet collapse, aiming to build several dozen modernized aircraft with new engines and avionics.

Russia’s nonstrategic nuclear weapons

The U.S. estimates that Russia has between 1,000 and 2,000 nonstrategic, or tactical, nuclear weapons intended for use on the battlefield that typically are far less powerful than the strategic warheads capable of destroying entire cities.

Russia has high-precision ground-launched Iskander missiles with a range of up to 310 miles, which can be fitted with either a conventional or a nuclear warhead.

The air force has a fleet of MiG-31 fighter jets that carry a hypersonic Kinzhal missile, which can be equipped with a nuclear or conventional warhead. Russia has widely used conventional versions of both Iskander and Kinzhal against Ukraine.

As part of the Kremlin’s nuclear messaging, Russia and ally Belarus held drills to train their troops with the battlefield nuclear weapons in May, shortly after Putin began his fifth term.

MAD and Russia’s nuclear doctrine

Moscow and Washington have relied for decades on nuclear deterrence under the concept of mutually assured destruction — MAD for short — based on the assumption that an overwhelming retaliation would discourage either side from launching an attack.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine adopted in 2020 envisaged using such ultimate weapons in response to a nuclear strike or an attack with conventional weapons that threatens “the very existence of the Russian state.” Moscow hawks criticized that document as too vague, urging Putin to toughen it.

Last month, he warned the U.S. and NATO allies that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied longer-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russia would put NATO at war with his country.

He reinforced the message by announcing a new version of the nuclear doctrine that considers a conventional attack on Russia by a nonnuclear nation that is supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack on his country — a clear warning to the U.S. and other allies of Kyiv.

Putin also declared the revised document envisages possible nuclear weapons use in case of a massive air attack, holding the door open to a potential nuclear response to any aerial assault — an ambiguity intended to deter the West.

Changes in the doctrine suggest Russia “is doubling down on its strategy of relying on nuclear weapons for coercive purposes” in the war in Ukraine, said Heather Williams, director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a commentary.

The future for arms control

The 2010 New START U.S.-Russian arms reduction treaty, the last remaining arms control pact between Moscow and Washington that expires in 2026, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers.

In February 2023, Putin suspended Russia’s participation in New START, but vowed that Russia would abide by its limits.

In July, Putin declared Russia will launch production of ground-based intermediate range missiles that were banned under the now-defunct U.S. Soviet INF Treaty. The 1987 pact banned missiles with a range of 310 to 3,410 miles. He said Moscow will respond in kind to the planned deployment of U.S. intermediate-range missiles to Germany, taking steps to “mirror” Washington’s move.

Even as U.S.-Russian tensions soared to their highest point since the Cold War amid fighting in Ukraine, Washington has urged Moscow to resume dialogue on nuclear arms control. Putin rejected the offer, saying such negotiations are meaningless while the U.S. is openly seeking to inflict a strategic defeat to Russia in Ukraine.

Resuming nuclear testing

Russian hawks are calling for a resumption of nuclear tests to demonstrate Moscow’s readiness to use its atomic arsenal and force the West to limit aid for Kyiv.

Putin said Russia could resume testing if the U.S. does so first, a move that would end a global ban in place after the demise of the USSR.

Last month, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the nuclear test range on the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya is ready to resume tests if the U.S. does so.

Prospective new weapons

In 2018, Putin revealed an array of new weapons, claiming they would render any prospective U.S. missile defenses useless.

They include the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, capable of flying 27 times faster than the speed of sound and making sharp maneuvers to dodge an enemy’s missile shield. The first such units have already entered service.

Putin also mentioned the nuclear-armed and atomic-powered Poseidon underwater drone, designed to explode near coastlines and cause a radioactive tsunami. Earlier this year, he said Poseidon tests are nearing completion, without giving details.

Also under development is an atomic-powered cruise missile, a concept that dates to the Cold War. But the missile, called the Burevestnik, or Petrel, has raised skepticism among experts, who cite technological obstacles and radiation safety concerns. During tests in 2019, an explosion at a naval range on the White Sea reportedly involving the Burevestnik killed five engineers and two servicemen, and caused a brief spike in radiation.

Putin said this year its development was in the final stages and the military has reportedly built a base for the missiles in the Vologda region of northwestern Russia.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Lakota variant, which Airbus calls the UH-72 Logistics Connector, is the company’s bid for the Marines’ Aerial Logistics Connector program, senior manager for business development Carl Forsling said Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Washington.

Aerial Logistics Connector is one of several Defense Department programs aimed at improving how the military delivers logistical support to troops in distributed environments during a high-intensity conflict.

Airbus built a mockup of an uncrewed Lakota’s internal chassis, with all crew stations removed to make room for cargo throughout the body. Airbus tested it recently at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina to make sure standard Marine cargo containers and other specialized cargo could be loaded and unloaded from it, Forsling said, though the company declined to say exactly when the demonstration took place.

“Integrating warfighter inputs early on in this phase of the contract helps ensure we’re hitting all the marks and gives us invaluable insights so we deliver the right capabilities to the U.S. Marine Corps,” Rob Geckle, chairman and chief executive of Airbus U.S. Space and Defense.

Airbus aims to have the UH-72 helicopter fly autonomously, Forsling said, and is working with the Marine Corps and other firms to develop the necessary technology. If the Marine Corps or another customer decides they want a piloted version in the future, the design could be adapted to accommodate a human pilot, according to Forsling.

Without the need for a cockpit, this UH-72 would use the space behind its nose for more cargo storage, Forsling said. The nose may open up like a clamshell or swing open to one side on a hinge, he said, but Airbus has not yet decided on the exact configuration.

The ability to front-load cargo into the UH-72 will make it possible to carry larger containers or equipment that would not fit in a normal Lakota’s side doors, according to Forsling. It will also allow users to load cargo into the helicopter with a forklift, he said, and load missiles for transport.

The Marine Corps isn’t currently requiring the UH-72 to fire ordnance, Forsling said. However, the helicopter could be adapted using open systems architecture should the Corps or another future customer decide it needed strike capability, he said.

Demonstrations will continue through the first phase of the middle tier of the acquisition program, which ends in late 2025, Forsling said, and the Marine Corps will then decide whether to move forward with the program and with who. The service aims to have a flying prototype for the Aerial Logistics Connector program in 2028 or 2029 and make a production decision by the end of 2029.

Near Earth Autonomy, Leonardo and Honeywell are also working as a team on the Aerial Logistics Connector program.

Airbus is now in the design phase of this program and doing risk reduction work, focusing on the helicopter itself, Forsling said. As it moves toward the next phase, Airbus is laying the groundwork for autonomous flight, he said.

Forsling said it’s too soon to say how much the UH-72 might cost or whether it would be more or less expensive than the standard Lakota. He declined to comment on whether Airbus has spoken to other services or foreign countries about the UH-72B, but said it would be applicable across the joint environment and with allies.

AeroVironment, which specializes in small and medium drones, uncrewed ground vehicles and loitering munitions like the Switchblade, created the P550 drone as a candidate for the Army’s Long Range Reconnaissance program.

One of the company’s top priorities — and a key lesson it took from customers who used its other drones — was to make the P550 easily adaptable and allow integration of multiple capabilities, product line manager Cris Cornell said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

“The battlefield changes so quickly, things need to be adaptable very quickly,” Cornell said.

The P550 is designed with modular open systems architecture principles to allow users to quickly hot swap payloads such as batteries, sensors and other equipment in the field in less than five minutes, he added. Hot swapping refers to a component being added or replaced without shutting the system down.

The P550 will be able to conduct strike missions, Cornell said, but won’t be a one-way loitering munition like the Switchblade. Instead, he described it as a “miniature bomber” that could drop weapons, such as mortars, on enemy targets.

AeroVironment has already integrated the Shryke precision munition, made by L3Harris Technologies and Corvid Technologies, onto the P550, Cornell said, and is talking with other companies on pairing additional munitions with the platform.

CACI’s Pit Viper electronic warfare module is another outside capability that AeroVironment has integrated into the P550, Cornell said.

AeroVironment also partnered with Parry Labs to integrate digital engineering, software and mission system hardware into the P550 to make it easily adaptable.

Users would slide new payloads, including weapons, into the P550 “almost like sliding a drawer,” Cornell said, which would then latch into place. To remove most payloads, he said, the user simply pushes a release button and pulls the unit out.

For safety reasons, removing unfired weapons would be a more detailed process, Cornell said, requiring the use of a tool to ensure weapons don’t slip off.

The P550 can carry up to 15 pounds of payload, according to AeroVironment. Its all-electric propulsion system allows it to fly for up to five hours and up to 60 kilometers.

AeroVironment largely used a fresh design for the P550, but incorporated elements from previous drones like autopilots, sensors and navigation systems.

Ukraine’s experience during the last two-plus years of war with Russia has demonstrated how vital drones are to modern war, Cornell said, and how rapidly troops need to be able to adapt those drones.

“Robotics are being used on the battlefield in ways that none of us thought possible even a few years ago,” Cornell said.

AeroVironment hopes the Army will choose the P550 for its Long Range Reconnaissance program, but Cornell said other services, U.S. civilian organizations and nations have also expressed interest. He declined to say which countries are eying the P550. AeroVironment has briefed Ukraine’s government on the P550, Cornell said, and will continue to assist the nation in its fight against Russia.

Ukraine has used AeroVironment’s two models of Switchblade drone — the smaller Switchblade 300 and the larger Switchblade 600 — to great effect, and raised the company’s profile considerably.

The Pentagon in August awarded AeroVironment a $990 million contract to make Switchblades for infantry units to target tanks, personnel carriers and other enemy targets. And the Army plans to field more than 1,000 Switchblades as part of the Pentagon’s Replicator program.

Cornell would not say how much the P550 costs.

AeroVironment plans to build the P550 in Simi Valley, California, Cornell said, and would be ready to start delivering the first units in early 2025.

The service’s top two leaders declined to provide details on the deployment ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin over the weekend. But they spoke broadly about their concerns as the demand for THAAD and Patriot missile batteries grows because of the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas militants.

US to send missile defense system and troops to Israel

“The air defense, artillery community is the most stressed. They have the highest ‘optempo’ really of any part of the Army,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said, using a phrase meaning the pace of operations. “We’re just constantly trying to be as disciplined as we can, and give Secretary Austin the information he needs to accurately assess the strain on the force when he’s considering future operational deployments."

Wormuth said the Army has to be careful about “what we take on. But of course, in a world this volatile, you know, sometimes we have to do what we have to do.”

The Pentagon announced the THAAD deployment Sunday, saying it was authorized at the direction of President Joe Biden. U.S. officials said the system will be moved from a location in the continental United States to Israel and that it will take a number of days for it and the soldiers to arrive. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of troop movements.

The move adds to what have been growing tensions within the Defense Department about what weapons the U.S. can afford to send to Ukraine, Israel or elsewhere and the resulting risks to America's military readiness and its ability to protect the nation.

“Everybody wants U.S. Army air defense forces,” Gen. Randy George, Army chief of staff, said Monday as he and Wormuth took questions from journalists at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “This is our most deployed formation.”

The decision to send the THAAD came as Israel is widely believed to be preparing a military response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack, when it fired roughly 180 missiles into Israel. Israel already has a multilayered air defense system, but a Hezbollah drone attack on an army base Sunday killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others, underscoring the potential need for greater protection.

Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. The Sunday drone attack was Hezbollah’s deadliest strike since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.

Since the THAAD deployment only involves about 100 soldiers, it won't add a tremendous amount of additional strain on air defense forces, Wormuth said at the conference.

But it adds to the pace of their deployments. Since the frenetic pace of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has subsided, the military has tried to ensure that service members have sufficient time at home to train and reset between deployments.

Shrinking that so-called dwell time can have an impact on the Army's ability to keep good soldiers in the force.

“They're very good, but obviously deploying for a year and coming back for a year and deploying for a year — it's tough to do for anybody,” George said.

He said the Army is looking at a range of ways to limit the impact on recruiting and retention, including growing the force and modernizing the systems so that it takes fewer soldiers to operate them.

But the repeated deployments makes it difficult to get the systems into the depots where they can be upgraded.

As a result, Wormuth said, Army leaders are trying to make their arguments as clear as possible when combatant commanders go to Austin and ask for another Patriot system in the Middle East or another one for Ukraine.

“We need to be able to bring these units home to be able to go through that modernization process,” she said. “So we’re trying to lay that out for Secretary Austin so that he can weigh those risks — essentially current versus future risks — as he makes recommendations to the president about whether to send the Patriot here or there.”

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized the deployment of the THAAD battery at the direction of President Joe Biden. He said the system will help bolster Israel’s air defenses following Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel in April and October.

The delivery of the sophisticated missile defense system risks further inflaming the conflict in the Middle East despite widespread diplomatic efforts to avoid an all-out war. The Iranian warning came in a post on the social platform X long associated with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who noted the earlier reports that the U.S. was considering the deployment.

Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. Late last month, Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.

Israel is widely believed to be preparing a military response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack when it fired roughly 180 missiles into Israel.

In a brief exchange with reporters before leaving Florida on Sunday, Biden said he agreed to deploy the THAAD battery “to defend Israel.” Biden spoke at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa after making a quick visit to see the damage caused by Hurricane Milton and meet with first responders, residents and local leaders.

Ryder, in his statement, said the deployment "underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran.”

It was not immediately clear where the THAAD battery was coming from or when it will arrive. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli army spokesman, declined to provide any timeline for its arrival, but thanked the U.S. for its support.

The U.S. deployed one of the batteries to the Middle East along with additional Patriot battalions to bolster protections for U.S. forces in the region late last year after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas militants. Ryder also said that the U.S. sent a THAAD battery to Israel in 2019 for training.

It is also not unusual for the U.S. to have a limited number of troops in Israel, which the U.S. considers a key regional ally. There have generally been a small number of forces there consistently as well as routine rotational deployments for training and exercises.

The THAAD will add another layer to Israel's already significant air defenses, which include separate systems designed to intercept long-range, medium-range and short-range threats. Israel recently retired its U.S.-made Patriot systems after decades of use.

According to an April report by the Congressional Research Service, the Army has seven THAAD batteries. Generally, each consists of six truck-mounted launchers, 48 interceptors, radio and radar equipment and requires 95 soldiers to operate.

The THAAD is considered a complementary system to the Patriot, but it can defend a wider area. It can hit targets at ranges of 150 to 200 kilometers (93 to 124 miles), and is used to destroy short-range, medium-range and limited intermediate-range ballistic missile threats that are either inside or outside the atmosphere.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is responsible for developing the system, but it is operated by the Army. An eighth system has been funded and ordered and is expected to be in the field sometime next year.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Aamer Madhani in Tampa, Florida, and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, saw significant rain and strong winds as Hurricane Milton cut across the state Wednesday night, but the base appears to have avoided the worst of the storm.

As of Thursday, trees are down, some roads are impassable and low-lying areas are flooded, said Capt. Kaitlin Butler, chief of public affairs for the 6th Air Refueling Wing. However, the flooding did not reach any of the base’s buildings, she said, and damage appears to be limited. No injuries have so far been reported.

“We are incredibly fortunate to have been spared the expected storm surge, and the winds did not gust any stronger than they did,” Col. Ed Szczepanik, commander of the 6th Air Refueling Wing, said in a video posted on social media Thursday.

But with roads still riddled with storm debris, evacuated MacDill personnel and families cannot return yet, Szcezpanik said.

Milton terrified many in the region earlier this week as it swiftly grew to Category 5 status, coming only two weeks after Hurricane Helene slammed into the northwestern part of Florida and left a deadly path of destruction across the Southeast.

But wind shear, or a sudden change in the wind’s direction that can cause turbulence for airplanes, began to weaken Milton as it approached Florida. It ended up tracking to the south and making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane near Siesta Key, about an hour south of Tampa.

While the storm dumped a significant amount of rain on still-saturated MacDill and winds reached more than 90 miles per hour, the base was fortunate that a storm surge didn’t materialize the way it did during Helene, Butler said. Helene’s storm surge reached a record-breaking 7 feet, 9 inches in some places on base, causing floods and knocking out power to the base.

MacDill remains closed and largely evacuated, and it was not yet known when people and planes will return, Butler said. The limited evacuation order will remain in place at least through Thursday, she said, to keep people safe and ensure they don’t end up getting caught on dangerous or impassable roads trying to get back to MacDill.

A hurricane recovery team is now working its way through MacDill identifying and addressing damage or potentially dangerous spots, Butler said.

MacDill, home of the 6th and 927th air refueling wings and headquarters of U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command, has about 5,250 service members and 1,350 civilian personnel, as well as family members who live on base.

As Milton approached Florida over the weekend after forming in the Gulf of Mexico, the base began to evacuate its aircraft and personnel. Two of the base’s KC-135 Stratotankers that couldn’t be flown out were stored in hangars, while 13 others were evacuated to McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas. Other KC-135s are conducting operational missions elsewhere.

About 185 base personnel are operating out of an emergency operations center at Raymond James Stadium, the Air Force said.

Chauncey McIntosh, currently a Lockheed vice president and its deputy on the F-35 program, will take over as the program’s general manager on Dec. 1, the company said Wednesday.

Bridget Lauderdale, who currently runs Lockheed’s F-35 program, will retire at the end of the year after 38 years with the company.

“Chauncey is an exceptional leader with distinct qualifications needed to lead the F-35 program,” Lockheed Martin Aeronautics President Greg Ulmer said. “Critical leadership appointments like this will continue to advance our 21st Century Security solutions to support our growing customer needs.”

21st Century Security is Lockheed Martin’s strategy for integrating physical hardware with digital technologies, and making defense supply chains more resilient.

McIntosh was previously vice president and general manager of integrated warfare systems and sensors for Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems. During that time, McIntosh oversaw software development for the Aegis Weapon System, as well as managing missile defense, radar, shipbuilding, directed energy, and combat system integration programs.

The F-35 program has struggled with its own software issues, which were a major factor in a recent year-long delivery halt. Beginning in July 2023, the Pentagon refused to accept delivery of new F-35s that were to include an upgrade known as Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, which promised better displays, computer memory and processing power.

TR-3 had software problems and difficulty integrating with the F-35′s new hardware. This, along with hardware delays, prompted the delivery halt and caused dozens of fighters to be stored at Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility.

Lockheed eventually developed a “truncated” form of the software that worked well enough for the jets to be delivered and to fly training missions. But those jets still can’t fly combat missions, and likely will not be ready for combat until 2025. The government is withholding about $5 million in payments to Lockheed for each jet, until TR-3′s combat capability is qualified and delivered.

Besides working with the F-35 and Aegis programs, McIntosh’s tenure at Lockheed has included time overseeing program and project management, software engineering, systems engineering and avionics design for the F-22 Raptor, C-5 Galaxy, P-3 Orion, and S-3 Viking aircraft.

The stealthy wingman drone will be operated directly from the Rafale cockpit, the Armed Forces Ministry said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The unmanned combat aerial vehicle will build on Dassault Aviation’s work on its unmanned nEUROn demonstrator, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

“This stealth combat drone will contribute to the technological and operational superiority of the French Air Force by 2033,” Dassault Aviation CEO Éric Trappier said in the statement.

The French plan to give Rafale pilots a drone buddy come as the timetable for the jet’s successor remains unclear. France’s senate in November had called on Dassault Aviation to start work on the Rafale upgrade, including a so-called loyal wingman, as soon as 2024 because of the lack of visibility on the Future Combat Air System being developed with Germany and Spain.

The wingman drone will incorporate stealth technologies, autonomous control with man-in-the-loop functionality and internal payload capacity, and designed to evolve with future threats, according to Dassault Aviation.

The French aircraft builder started the nEUROn program in 2003, and the drone had its maiden flight in December 2012 and first released a weapon from its internal bay in September 2015. Partners in the program include Leonardo for the internal weapons bay, Saab for the design of the main fuselage, avionics and fuel system, as well as Airbus for expertise on the wings.

Airbus showed off its self-funded Wingman concept, a large fighter-type stealth drone to team up with piloted jets such the Eurofighter, at the Berlin Air Show in June. The company described the drone as an answer to the “clear need” of the German Air Force for an unmanned buddy aircraft before FCAS will be operational.

German air force chief Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz said in November that remote carriers resulting from the FCAS program were needed “much, much earlier” than the 2040s.

Dassault Aviation is the main contractor for the work on the fighter jet at the heart of the FCAS program, with Airbus as the principal partner. Development of the remote carriers is led by Airbus, with MBDA as the principal partner.

The governments involved aren’t waiting for FCAS though, with Germany agreeing in 2022 to buy the F-35 jet from the United States. France as recently as January announced an order for an additional 42 Rafale jets, lifting the total number of aircraft ordered to 234, including a special order for 12 fighters in 2021 to replace aircraft transferred to Greece.

The future F5 standard Rafale carrying the future ASN4G nuclear missile will be a “major evolution” for France’s airborne nuclear deterrent, the Armed Forces Ministry said on Tuesday. Manufacturers received the first orders for the upgrade program several weeks ago, according to Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu.

The modernized Rafale “will be ready to face the threats of the 2030s and 2040s,  Lecornu said. “For strategic air forces and conventional aviation alike, this is a revolution as significant as the transition from the Mirage 2000 to the Rafale.”

The French Air and Space Force received the first Rafale fighters upgraded to the F4 standard in March last year. The standard is focused on connectivity and includes the Mica medium-range air-to-air missile supplied by pan-European missile maker MBDA as well as an upgrade of the Spectra self-defense system developed by Thales.

MBDA is working on the ASN4G nuclear missile to replace the supersonic ASMP air-launched missile now carried by the Rafale, with the new missile scheduled to be operational around 2035, MBDA board adviser Adm. Hervé de Bonnaventure said in a parliamentary hearing last year. The new missile will have multiple warheads and performance “in the realm of the hypersonic,” according to the admiral.

French aerospace research lab Onera, with MBDA as co-contractor, received an order from France’s Directorate General for Armament to pursue work on the supersonic and hypersonic propulsion that will power the future nuclear missile, the researcher said Sept. 30.

The lab will focus in particular on the combustion chamber for air breathing propulsion within the Myhysis program. The program will also develop quantum computing capabilities with the potential to create a breakthrough in fluid and energy mechanics, an area of challenges for hypersonic missiles due to the speed at which they travel through the atmosphere.

MBDA and Onera have been studying hypersonics since the 2000-2010 period, de Bonnaventure said in last year’s parliamentary hearing.

France on Tuesday also announced the first qualification firing of the next-generation Aster 30 B1 surface-to-air missile, the upgraded interceptor that will arm the SAMP/T NG air-defense system ordered by France and Italy, as well as both countries’ air-defense frigates.

SAMP/T NG can intercept hypersonic missiles and deal with threats in a 360 degree radius, Lecornu said in a post on X. The system, developed by the Eurosam joint venture between MBDA France, MBDA Italy and Thales, is scheduled to enter service in the French forces by 2026.

“From Ukraine to the Middle East, the current conflicts illustrate to what extent ground-air defense is key,” Lecornu said.

France still expects to deliver Mirage 2000 jets to Ukraine in the first quarter of 2025, with the jets currently being fitted with new air-to-ground capabilities and electronic-warfare countermeasures, Lecornu said Tuesday, adding that training of Ukrainian pilots and mechanics continues. France has been gradually replacing its fleet of Mirage 2000s with the Rafale, which first flew in 1986.

“One base will be selected to host the new mission pending a final basing decision, and the outcome of a planned environmental impact analysis anticipated no later than 2027,” the Air Force said. “The first of eight aircraft are scheduled to arrive in 2031.”

McConnell-based KC-46 completes around-the-world flight in 45 hours

The possible locations include: Bangor Air National Guard Base, Maine; Forbes Field Air National Guard Base, Kansas; Key Field Air National Guard Base, Mississippi; McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base, Tennessee; Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base, Ohio; Scott Air Force Base, Illinois; or Sumpter Smith Air National Guard Base, Alabama.

The Air Force plans to buy 179 KC-46A tankers in a $4.9 billion contract with Boeing, but the rollout has been bumpy. The first plane was delivered to McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas, in 2019, two years after it was initially slated to arrive. And the tanker has faced other issues as well, including a stiff fuel pipe that was unable to connect to and refuel A-10 Warthogs as recently as March.

Wherever the KC-46As end up, they are set to replace the aging KC-135 Stratotankers, which are scheduled to begin retiring in 2027.

Among their capacities, the tanker provides “boom and drogue refueling on the same sortie, worldwide navigation and communication, cargo capacity on the entire main deck floor, receiver air refueling, improved force protection, and multi-point air refueling capability,” according to the Air Force.

Under the deal, which Anduril announced on Tuesday, the Defense Department will buy 500 Roadrunner all-up rounds as well as the firm’s portable Pulsar electronic-warfare capability, which can be integrated with aircraft to jam enemy systems.

“This latest contract award highlights Anduril’s commitment to investing its own research and development to support defense innovation, providing rapid, scalable solutions to safeguard U.S. forces,” the company said in a statement.

An Anduril spokesperson declined to name the firm’s DOD customer due to security concerns, but the company said the contract will serve multiple military services in “priority regions where U.S. forces face significant threats” from drones. Deliveries will begin this year and continue through the end of 2025.

The firm is already on a 10-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $1 billion with U.S. Special Operations Command to supply counter-drone hardware and software, but the spokesperson would not confirm whether the new business is part of its SOCOM award.

That deal was announced in January 2022 and later that year, the command awarded Anduril $12.5 million for Roadrunner. SOCOM also requested another $19 million for the technology in its fiscal 2024 budget request.

Anduril unveiled Roadrunner last December after spending two years secretly developing it with internal funding. At the time, the company’s founder Palmer Luckey told reporters that Roadrunner was in low-rate production with an initial U.S. customer for “hundreds of units.” He said the company plans to quickly scale to quantities in the hundreds of thousands.

The use of drones and loitering munitions on the battlefield has expanded in recent years. The department wants to learn from the ingenuity of the Ukrainian military, which has deployed small drones in response to Russia’s onslaught, but it also wants to develop a strong defense against the use of hostile drones by adversaries like Iran and its proxies.

The Pentagon created the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office to develop a coordinated, long-term response to drone threats in 2019, and in 2023, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks revealed a new DoD initiative called Replicator to field thousands of autonomous systems by next summer.

The department announced last week that Replicator’s next area of focus will be Counter-UAS.

According to Anduril, Roadrunner offers a solution for both sides of the challenge. Chris Brose, the company’s chief of strategy, told reporters last December the system — which can carry a variety of payloads — was built to adapt as DOD’s needs change.

“We’re very hopeful that the government will see in this capability what we see in it, which is a novel solution that is built to be adaptable to where those threats are going in the near future — which, by the way, has been a process that’s been playing out over the past few years, and it’s just going to get worse,” he said.

MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, started evacuating personnel on Monday as Hurricane Milton approaches.

The emergency storm preparation comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded parts of the base, where U.S. Central Command’s and U.S. Special Operations Command’s headquarters and the 6th and 927th air refueling wings are located.

And it comes as Milton rapidly intensified, reaching category 5 status.

Milton formed as a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend and is heading northeast towards Florida. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts it will hit the Tampa Bay area late Wednesday or early Thursday.

MacDill, which is the home of KC-135 Stratotankers, began flying aircraft to safer locations on Sunday, 6th wing commander Col. Edward Szczepanik said in a video posted on social media.

Szczepanik on Sunday issued a mandatory evacuation order for base personnel living in certain areas likely to be hit by the hurricane, including those who live in on-base housing, which was to begin at 12:30 p.m. Monday and finish by 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Personnel who are mission-essential or assigned to a hurricane recovery team are not being evacuated, the base said, and child development centers remain open to accommodate personnel who must respond to the storm.

Parts of MacDill were temporarily powerless and flooded in low-lying areas after Hurricane Helene struck Florida Sept. 26, as it passed north. MacDill said at the time that the storm surge that resulted from Helene brought near-record water levels and left debris scattered across roads, though the water soon subsided.

It’s been a grueling battle involving inflation, supply chain crunches, evolving requirements and developmental problems, and remains ongoing to this day.

But now, looming over the horizon, Air Force leaders face an even harder challenge: Developing a sixth-generation fighter, a successor to the F-22, that can be produced at or below the cost of an F-35.

It’s an ambitious goal, and one being increasingly floated by Air Force leadership, even as the service continues to sort out what its next-generation platform will entail.

But outside experts caution that cutting costs on an advanced platform could sacrifice capability.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall first suggested the F-35′s price tag as a cost goal for the future fighter program, known as the Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, platform in a June interview with Defense News.

At the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Space Cyber conference in September, Kendall doubled down.

“The F-35 kind of represents, to me, the upper bounds of what we’d like to pay for an individual [NGAD] aircraft,” Kendall said. “The F-15EX and the F-35 are roughly in the same cost category. I’d like to go lower, though.”

How the Air Force can rein in that cost remains unclear. The price tag for NGAD’s original concept was coming in at about three times the price of an F-35, Kendall said in June. That sticker shock prompted the Air Force to pause its NGAD contract effort — which had been set to be awarded this year — and rethink its plans for a future air dominance platform.

Meanwhile, some aerospace experts worry that the Air Force is setting an unachievable pricing goal for NGAD — one that might require the fighter to be so watered down that it becomes an irrelevant asset for war and leads to the program’s demise.

“I think it would be extremely challenging, if not unrealistic, to get the kind of capability and performance that they need in NGAD [for] less than the cost of an F-35,” Heather Penney, a retired F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Defense News. “I’m concerned at the way that Secretary Kendall and the senior leadership have been talking about NGAD, because it feels a lot like they’re boiling the frog, that they’re getting people ready for a program cancellation.”

The Air Force is consulting with airpower experts, including former chiefs of staff Norton Schwartz, John Jumper, and Dave Goldfein, to help it figure out how it will dominate the skies for decades to come, Kendall said.

“We’ve got the A-team on this, and we’re moving pretty quickly … to get to some answers,” Kendall said. “Then, by the way, we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to pay for it. Which I think may, at the end of the day, be our biggest problem.”

Cloudy skies ahead

The Air Force wants NGAD to replace the F-22 Raptor fleet sometime in the 2030s. For years, Air Force leaders emphasized how vital NGAD would be to win future wars and it sought to retire older air frames to free up money to develop the system.

But NGAD’s cost has become its Achilles’ heel, and rumors began to spread earlier this year that the program was in trouble.

Kendall told Defense News in June that the service was still planning to build a next-generation fighter, but that it needed a redesign to bring its price tag down and allow the Air Force to buy it in significant numbers.

“We are looking at the NGAD platform design concept to see if it’s the right concept or not,” Kendall said in June. “We’re looking at whether we can do something that’s less expensive and do some trade-offs there.”

Next-gen fighter not dead, but needs cheaper redesign, Kendall says

The Air Force envisions NGAD as a “family of systems” that include not only the sixth-generation crewed fighter, but also multiple autonomous drones known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, along with advanced sensors, weaponry and other technology.

The service has been secretive about the details of what NGAD will include and its capabilities, but in recent years has started planning for NGAD to be accompanied by CCAs, which will be drone wingmen for crewed fighter jets, accompanying jets on missions and performing a variety of functions.

The Air Force first started working on NGAD before conceiving of autonomous CCAs, Kendall said, and as NGAD is redesigned, it needs to be structured to better integrate those drone wingman and what they can offer.

Kendall said last month that CCA could help lighten the load for NGAD fighters.

“Once you start integrating CCAs, and transferring some mission equipment and capabilities, functions, to the CCAs, then you can talk about a different concept, potentially, for the crewed fighter that’s controlling them,” Kendall said. “So there’s a real range in there.”

The Air Force also wants to power NGAD with a cutting-edge “adaptive” engine, which would shift to the most efficient configuration as flying conditions change, a capability once considered for the F-35.

And as the entire Pentagon pivots to preparing for a possible war with China, the Air Force is rethinking how it would achieve air superiority against Beijing, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife said at the Defense News Conference in September.

At the same time, Kendall has also left the door open to other ways of dominating the skies against rival nations like China.

“NGAD itself is still a possibility, it’s one of the things we’re looking at,” Kendall said. “We’d like to get [the price tag] down from [multiple times the cost of an F-35]. But if that turns out to be the most cost-effective operational answer, that’s what we’re going to do, and go fight for the money to have it.”

US Air Force eyes NGAD deliveries by 2030. Can it be done?

But that pursuit could come with a cost, he warned.

“You end up with small numbers,” he said. “The more the airplane costs, the fewer of them you’re going to have. Numbers do matter, so it’s a trade-off.”

Will the numbers add up?

Whatever NGAD ends up looking like going forward, it faces multiple headwinds that could make bringing it into the F-35′s price range difficult, if not impossible, said John Venable, senior resident fellow of aerospace studies at the Mitchell Institute, a national security think tank that focuses on air and space power.

The Air Force has benefited by not being the only customer for the F-35, he noted.

By the mid-2040s, the Defense Department plans to have purchased about 2,500 F-35s for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps combined. The United Kingdom, South Korea, Germany, Israel and about 15 other allies and partner nations are also buying their own Joint Strike Fighter fleets, which allows Lockheed Martin to build as many F-35s as it can and bring the cost down by producing in bulk.

But the F-22 didn’t have that advantage, Venable said. The Air Force was the only customer for that fifth-generation jet, and originally planned to buy about 750 of them from Lockheed Martin.

That fleet was drastically slashed by former Defense Secretary Bob Gates, and the Air Force now has 183 F-22s, which cost $143 million each.

This time around, the Air Force does not plan to sell NGAD to other countries, and it’s not working directly with the Navy on a sixth-generation fighter.

The Navy calls its NGAD effort F/A-XX. In an Oct. 2 Defense Writers Group roundtable with reporters, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said the Navy is now in the process of selecting from three potential vendors to create F/A-XX.

US Air Force eyes fleet of 1,000 drone wingmen as planning accelerates

The Air Force has not officially said how many NGAD platforms it wants, but last year Kendall suggested it might be around 200.

The B-21 — which maker Northrop Grumman has touted as the first sixth-generation aircraft — had an average unit procurement cost of about $692 million apiece when it was rolled out in 2022.

This further casts doubt on the feasibility of a sub-$100 million sixth-gen NGAD fighter, Venable said.

“You really think that you’re going to get an airplane that has that much more capability at the price point of an F-35, when you’re only going to buy [about 200] of those, and you’re not going to sell it to anybody else?” Venable said. “It’s just not a realistic expectation. … The range, the sensor payload, the stealth capabilities of this new system — all of those things are going to cost money to get right.”

Venable fears the steady drumbeat of questionable news for NGAD is jeopardizing its chances of ever becoming a reality.

“The way you kill things today is to study it until it’s no longer viable,” Venable said. “Because the threat is so much higher, NGAD is not going to be viable in the 2030s because of the delays. And so this is where you go down that slippery slope.”

If the Air Force kills NGAD, that will make other elements of the Air Force’s planned future airpower such as the B-21 and CCAs more vulnerable, Penney said.

And if NGAD is excessively whittled down to bring its cost under control, she said, that could also essentially defeat the purpose of creating a sixth-generation fighter.

To survive a fight against China — which would take place over vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean — NGAD would need to have considerable speed and range, she said.

And if an NGAD fighter has to fly a long distance for its mission, it needs to be able to carry enough of a weapons payload to make the trip worth it, and be a credible enough stand-in force to deter China.

But if those capabilities end up getting pared down so NGAD can survive a budget crunch, she added, that could compromise the jet’s entire reason for being.

“If you go too cheap, it’s not going to be relevant for the things that the need it to be able to do,” Penney said.

Potential solutions

One avenue the Air Force could take will be to increase the modularity of NGAD, Penney said, so more elements such as sensors and processors could be developed separately and later bolted on.

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Andrew Hunter said earlier this year that the service is looking at the “design concept” for NGAD, or the elements that drive a program’s cost, such as its size, propulsion needs, and the complexity of its mission systems.

“These things all interact and kind of say, this is how much the thing you’re looking at is going to cost,” Hunter said. “As we look at the design concept, we want to get that right, and we are looking at an affordable design concept.”

When asked if the Air Force would release an entirely new solicitation for NGAD following the program’s review, Hunter said that it’s not yet clear what path the Air Force will take. If the review finds the program only needs slight changes, he said, “there may not need to be a huge change to our approach.”

But if the review finds the Air Force needs something dramatically different than its current NGAD path, he said, that will require a more significant shift.

A shift in strategy on NGAD could bring Northrop Grumman back into contention. Last year, Northrop chief executive Kathy Warden told investors the company didn’t plan to bid on the Air Force’s version of NGAD as a prime contractor. But at a conference in September, Warden said Northrop is watching what the Air Force does on NGAD, and that a “material change to the program” would prompt the company to take another look at it.

No matter what NGAD’s final price ends up being, the Air Force will need to be able to afford to field it in sufficient numbers to fight a fierce, vast war against a comparable military, and fly long ranges to get to the battle, Hunter said.

“That’s the puzzle we’ve got to solve, and I grant you, it’s a very challenging puzzle,” he said, adding that there’s more than one way the Air Force can settle on a design for the air superiority it requires.

The Air Force could also finish its NGAD review and conclude there’s no way to bring its price under that of an F-35, Hunter conceded.

“That is possible, yes, but we’ve got to do the work,” he said. “We’ve got to do the analysis. And we know what would be most advantageous.”

The Defense Innovation Unit released a solicitation this week for one-way, uncrewed aerial systems that can fly at ranges of 50 to 300 kilometers in low-bandwidth, GPS-denied environments.

“Recent conflicts have highlighted the asymmetric impact low-cost, one-way unmanned aerial systems have on the modern battlefield,” DIU said in the notice. “The Department of Defense must be able to employ low-cost precision effects at extended ranges.”

DIU plans to hold a live flyoff demonstration as soon as December to evaluate the proposed systems.

Small, one-way attack drones have featured heavily in recent conflicts — from Ukraine to the Middle East. Since last fall, the Iran-backed Houthi militia group has targeted commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea, using aerial vehicles, uncrewed surface vessels and cruise missiles. Last week, the group launched what the Pentagon termed a “complex attack” on U.S. ships in the region.

On Monday, Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the Pentagon would focus the next round of its Replicator effort — a process for quickly fielding high-need technology at scale — on countering drone threats like these. But the department also recognizes the impact these systems can have and wants to stock up on its own supply.

“Reliable, affordable, and adaptable long-range UAS platforms that allow for employment at scale will maximize operational flexibility for the joint force,” DIU said.

A DIU spokesperson told Defense News that while the drones the department wants could perform attack missions, it’s also interested in systems that can fly electronic warfare, ISR and communications relay payloads.

According to the solicitation, the vehicles should also be hard to detect and track, have several pathways for two-way communications and be equipped with mission planning software. Critically, the department wants modular systems that can integrate new hardware or software in a matter of hours.

“Proprietary interfaces, message formatting or hardware that require vendor-specific licensing are not permitted,” DIU said.

The notice doesn’t detail how many systems the department might buy and it doesn’t set a cost target. The spokesperson said that omission was intentional because DIU’s selections won’t be based on the cost of a particular drone, but on the cost of the effect the platform achieves.

“The best way to think of what we’re targeting is a cost per effect,” the spokesperson said. “If we launch one $1M platform or ten $100k platforms and generate the same effect, then the cost per effect is the same and that’s what we want to focus on.”

The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence, said the U.S. is actively supporting Israeli defensive preparations.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning Monday to Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas.

“There is nowhere in the Middle East Israel cannot reach,” Netanyahu said, just days after an airstrike south of Beirut killed the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah group, which is backed by Tehran.

The Israeli military earlier warned several southern Lebanese communities near the border to leave their homes, shortly after starting what it called a limited ground operation against Hezbollah targets.

Hezbollah’s acting leader, Naim Kassem, promised the group will fight on following the death of its long-time chief Hassan Nasrallah and several of the group’s top commanders who have been assassinated in recent days. Kassem said the group’s fighters are ready and the slain commanders have already been replaced.

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since Oct. 8, the day after Hamas sent fighters into Israel and sparked the war in Gaza. It’s been almost a year since some 250 people were abducted from Israel, and friends and family are worried about their loved ones as attention turns away from hostages and north toward Lebanon.

The F-16, whose pilot was assigned to the 35th Fighter Squadron of the 8th Fighter Wing at Kunsan Air Base, crashed during a training flight on the morning of Dec. 11, 2023, causing the loss of the $28 million fighter. The pilot safely ejected from the jet before the crash, sustaining no injuries, and was rescued by South Korean maritime forces.

The pilot was flying in formation along with three other F-16s as part of a defensive counter-air training mission, according to the report released Sept. 26. But the weather was poorer that day than expected, and the pilot flew through dense cloud coverage.

About 13 minutes into the flight, the report said, the jet’s attitude indicator stopped working due to the failure of its embedded GPS inertial navigation system. The attitude indicator is an instrument that tells the pilot where the horizon is relative to the aircraft.

US pilot safely ejects in F-16 crash off South Korea

The word “FAIL” appeared on the jet’s center display unit. The pilot switched to a backup attitude indicator, but that instrument was likewise glitching and yielding incorrect information, disorienting him, the report said.

That backup system indicated the fighter’s nose was high, but showed its altitude continued to decline. The pilot later told the investigation board he became “task saturated” — or overloaded with too much information to process and things to do at once — trying to keep the jet under control.

A wingman helped guide the pilot down, hoping to break through the clouds. But weather data later showed the cloud cover was so thick — as low as about 795 feet above sea level — that he would not have been likely to reach clear skies, the report said.

As the pilot reached 3,000 feet above sea level, he tried to level off but his disorientation became worse. As the jet neared the water, the pilot grew increasingly worried that his instruments were unreliable and ejected, 19 minutes after takeoff and 1,730 feet above sea level.

Little wreckage from the F-16 has so far been recovered, the report said. The jet’s black box containing more precise flight data was not found, nor was the Northrop Grumman-made GPS unit in the attitude indicator that is believed to have failed.

Investigators couldn’t determine why the GPS unit malfunctioned, the report said, but that it most likely lost power or experienced power fluctuations, as happened in other F-16 mishaps. That unit’s failure was the primary cause of the crash, the report said. The pilot’s need to rely on a backup attitude indicator that was also unreliable, and his disorientation, substantially contributed to the crash.

The 7th Air Force, which oversees Kunsan, said that the Air Force is working to limit the effects of temporary power fluctuations on F-16 flight instrument systems. Air Combat Command is also increasing its training to help pilots catch and fix problems with flight instruments during emergency situations, the 7th said.

The sole-source contract is for AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) and AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) and will include foreign military sales to Japan, the Netherlands, Finland and Poland.

The Pentagon in 2023 proposed using multiyear procurement authorities — which are usually used for buying ships or aircraft — to buy munitions, which it hoped would allow industry to expand its production capacity. Defense officials said at the time this was intended to deter China and strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base, but arming Ukraine against its invasion by Russia has also taxed U.S. weapons stockpiles.

The plan included a strategy called a large lot procurement pilot program. This contract will allow Lockheed to increase the number of JASSMs and LRASMs it can produce each year, Lockheed said in a statement

“Multi-year procurements of critical munition systems like JASSM and LRASM are a key anti-fragility measure to increase industry resilience and ensure operations can be ramped more quickly going forward,” Lockheed said.

Lockheed will build the missiles in Orlando, Florida, and is expected to finish the work by the end of July 2032. The Air Force is providing $1.5 billion in missile procurement funds and $2 million in operations and maintenance funds at the time of the award, and the Navy is providing $176 million in its own weapon procurement funds. The Pentagon is also obligating another $752 million of FMS funds for the contract.

The JASSM is a cruise missile designed to allow aircraft to strike ground targets while keeping a safe distance away from enemy air defenses or other hostile aircraft. The LRASM, based on the JASSM’s design, is intended to penetrate enemy air defense targets to take out ships from standoff range.

Also on Friday, the State Department approved a possible $405 million sale of up to 100 Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missiles-Extended Range and related equipment to Australia. Selling these missiles to Australia, a key ally in the Pacific, would help support the U.S.’s foreign policy and national security objectives, the State Department said.

Australia would be able to suppress or destroy land- or sea-based radars used by enemy air defenses with those Northrop Grumman-made missiles and improve allied aircraft’s ability to survive a conflict, according to the State Department.

Developed by Eprius, the long-pulse, high-power microwave technology known as Leonidas Expeditionary can drop swarms of drones with massive and pointed walls of electromagnetic energy.

Epirus has already delivered high-powered microwave systems to the Army as part of a $66 million contract last year.

It developed its latest Leonidas capability in partnership with the Office of Naval Research, Joint Counter-Small UAS Office, the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab and the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO).

The company unveiled the system on Sept. 23 and is expected to deliver the completed system to the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab by the end of this year.

So far there are four iterations of the Leonidas system including the newest, which is formally known as the Expeditionary Directed Energy Counter-Swarm, or ExDECS.

Earlier Leonidas offerings have included systems that can be attached to vehicles or air drones.

Army gets first high-power microwave prototype to counter drone swarms

Leonidas ExDECS is another systems entry on the smaller side, capable of “swarm defeat,” with a transportable profile that’s highly mobile and provides a low physical signature, according to Andrew Wargofchik, a spokesperson for Epirus.

The crown jewel of the Epirus system, aside from its microwave system, is a technology called Line Replaceable Amplifier Module, or LRAM. It’s an architecture that allows the company to scale systems up or down.

“We like to think of them as sort of very scalable Lego blocks,” Wargofchik said.

The announcement of the Leonidas Expeditionary comes on the heels of the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, where AI’s role in the defense industry was the talk of the town.

But as the future of warfare arrives, Wargofchik said Epirus doesn’t buy into the concept that killer robots are on the horizon.

He noted projects like the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or unmanned fighter jets, as a better embodiment of what lies ahead.

Half-man, half-AI is the defense landscape the company envisioned - manned systems existing harmoniously alongside unmanned ones.

“Our CEO, Andy Lowery, likes to call it centaur warfare,” Wargofchik said.

While some in the industry criticize the Defense Department for not adopting existing and emerging AI and machine learning technologies quickly enough, Epirus is more optimistic.

Epirus directed energy to face off against vessels in US Navy testing

One of the main challenges involves bridging the gap between research and development to mass production, Wargofchik said.

Though the company began with the explicit goal of providing high-powered microwave systems for counter-drone missions, it’s expanding the development of the same systems as a counter for any-and-all electronics.

In April, Epirus demonstrated its capability to effectively take out certain vessel motors at sea during a Navy event.

“We’re kind of arriving at the shores of a whole new beach of maritime applications,” Wargofchik said.

Ukraine had wanted more. It has repeatedly sought permission to use U.S.-built Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles for long-range strikes deep in Russia. They have a range of up to 190 miles and, with their speed, are better able to hit mobile targets. Prior to Zelenskyy’s visit, there were hints the U.S. might provide Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM). Unlike ATACMS missiles, these missiles are abundant in the U.S. arsenal, and their stealth capability make them more effective at hitting defended targets.

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Sentiment in NATO is growing to give Ukraine more scope for action. This month the European Parliament asked European Union members to “immediately” lift deep strike restrictions, and so have top U.S. House Republicans and several leading congressional Democrats. Nonetheless, the U.S. approach remains hesitant.

There may be risks. On Sept. 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned an attack on Russia by a state backed by a nuclear power could lead to a nuclear response. He often cries nuclear wolf, but this time, his timing suggested worry that Biden might cave to pressures and unleash Ukraine to conduct more deep attacks.

A Russian nuclear response, however, seems unlikely and would probably bring little, if any, military gain. Russian troops are not trained to fight on a nuclear battlefield, as in the Cold War. Ukraine has few, if any, concentrated, high-value military targets. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have warned Putin not to go nuclear, while Biden has warned of “catastrophic consequences” if he does.

There is also a risk that some JASSMs might miss their targets or not be fully destroyed. Russia — and China — could analyze the debris to try to learn more about their stealth capability and sensitive electronics.

Time and again when Ukrainian forces have surprised or shocked Russia — from destroying or damaging one-third of its Black Sea fleet to seizing territory in Russia’s Kursk region — the Kremlin’s response has been weak. Suffering steep manpower losses and needing arms from Iran and North Korea, Russian forces may face limitations.

To its credit, Ukraine is doing a lot on its own to strike deep inside Russia. On Sept. 18, it carried out a stunning attack in Russia’s Tver region, blowing up a huge weapons depot in a blast akin to an earthquake. To overwhelm air defenses, Ukraine used over 100 slow-flying drones. The depot was 300 miles away from Ukraine, well beyond the 190-mile range of ATACMS missiles.

A welcome surprise has been Ukraine’s high-tech drone innovation. Former CIA Director General David Petraeus called it “unprecedented” in scale and pace. Even more is coming. Last month, Zelenskyy said Ukraine had deployed its first high-speed missile-drone, the Palianytsia.

But Ukraine needs more long-range strike power than its own aviation sector can provide. U.S. arms may be a valuable complement, despite their higher cost.

Last spring the U.S. began sending the long-range variant of ground-to-ground ATACMS missiles to Ukraine for use inside its territory. In occupied Crimea, they have ravaged Russia’s navy and air defenses and supporting infrastructure. ATACMS missiles are responsive and can hit mobile targets that elude drones. In June, the U.S. allowed Ukraine some added flexibility — to strike across the border inside Russia with ATACMS missiles wherever enemy forces were engaged in attacks.

On Sept. 26, Biden also promised to send hundreds more Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM). Armed with them, Ukraine’s F-16s could shoot down some Russian combat aircraft in flight before they release devastating glide bombs.

The long-range strike mission is important for Ukraine, but so are other factors. It faces challenges in several areas, including a soldier shortage, inadequate defensive fortifications and uncertainties about future Western aid.

Nonetheless, the U.S. could benefit Ukraine by doing more to help it to conduct long-range strikes in Russia. Neither U.S. weapons nor Ukraine’s, by themselves, are enough. Together, they could raise the cost to Russia of its perfidy and help strengthen European security.

William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND research institution and was U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, Georgia, and a U.S.-Soviet commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.

John Hoehn is an associate policy researcher at RAND and a former military analyst with the Congressional Research Service.

The uniforms were initially slated to arrive in 2022, but the COVID-19 pandemic presented a slew of problems, including supply chain issues, that delayed the schedule. Fabric shortages and fabric color-match problems also contributed to delays.

After the pandemic subsided, the service planned to address the PT uniform release once again. However, the U.S. Space Force was stood up and attention was redirected toward issuing Space Force PT uniforms.

Now that the Space Force has begun rolling out its PT uniforms, the Air Force said it will fulfill its promise to deliver new PT uniforms.

New Air Force PT uniforms roll out after 2-year delay

Uniforms are expected to arrive at select CONUS Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores beginning in November, according to an Air Force spokesperson, with some optional uniform items currently in development, such as the long-sleeve shirt and sweatshirt, set to be released later.

In April, the Air Force said the new uniforms had started rolling out at basic military training that month, while the Army and Air Force Exchange Service said the uniforms would reach exchange shelves in July. However, the July deadline was missed.

“The fielding of a new uniform required time for mandatory government sources to find, and collaborate with, domestic fabric manufacturers to meet the technical requirements of the PT uniform materials,” an Air Force spokesperson said. “That process took longer than expected.”

The collection includes a jacket, two shorts — a running short with a spandex liner and a pair of standard gym shorts — pants, long- and short-sleeve T-shirts with moisture-wicking material and two sweatshirt options that include a hoodie and a crewneck.

The new uniforms were rolled out only to fit-testers and those in basic military training, said Don Lee, acquisition program manager for the Combat Ready Airman program, at last week’s Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

Fit-testers were utilized to assist with the tailoring process, Lee said, making sure the uniform’s materials fit the body while still allowing movement. Basic military training use focused on the uniform’s durability, testing the clothing’s ability to go through multiple wash and dry cycles.

In July, the Air Force began providing the short-sleeve shirt, running shorts, all-purpose shorts and track suit to airmen in basic training, according to a service spokesperson.

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The revamped uniforms mark the first time in two decades the Air Force has updated its physical training uniforms.

The uniform, which airmen will be required to wear beginning in 2026, is similar to the current iteration but now comes in sizes for both men and women.

Courtney Mabeus-Brown contributed to this report.

The ICBM carried a dummy warhead and fell into a designated area of the sea, the Defense Ministry said in a statement posted to social media.

The launch by the People's Liberation Army's Rocket Force was part of routine annual training, complied with international law and was not directed against any country or target, according to the statement.

It is unclear how often China conducts tests over such a distance. In 1980, China launched an ICBM into the South Pacific.

A map published in Chinese newspapers at the time showed the target area as roughly a circle in the center of a ring formed by the Solomon Islands, Nauru, the Gilbert Islands, Tuvalu, western Samoa, Fiji and the New Hebrides.

The U.S. and nongovernmental organizations have said China has been building up its missile silos, but it’s unclear how many missiles and nuclear warheads it has added to its arsenal.

The People’s Liberation Army, which functions as the ruling Communist Party’s military wing, runs China’s space program, which has established an orbital station and has ambitions to set up a moon base and land a spacecraft on Mars.

Rocketry has long been part of China’s development into a major global power, spurring nationalism and growth that has made China the world’s second-largest economy.

The U.S. remains China’s main global rival, although Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and others have territorial disputes with Beijing that occasionally threaten to develop into military clashes.

China maintains a “no first use” of nuclear weapons policy, even as its desire for regional predominance grows.

Tests of China’s intercontinental ballistic missiles into international waters are rare. Experts and a historical survey of China’s program by the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative suggest the last occurred in May 1980. That test saw China launch its DF-5 missile into the South Pacific.

China typically launches missiles toward its western deserts from its east coast, said James Acton, the co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The fact that China launched a test that splashed down in international waters was unusual but mirrors testing that the United States does for its own ballistic missile fleet.

"When they haven’t done something for 44 years and then they do it, that’s significant,” Acton told The Associated Press. “It’s China’s way of telling us, ‘Like you, we’re not ashamed we have nuclear weapons and we’re going to behave like a great nuclear power.’”

The launch came amid the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York. China is one of five veto-holding permanent members of the U.N.'s Security Council and has sought to gain influence over its key departments involving human rights and that align with its authoritarian system.

A series of corruption arrests this year ensnared several leading officers in the Rocket Force, alongside the detentions of two previous defense ministers amid allegations of misconduct.

A test launch now could both provide assurances to China's population amid an economic downtown and a signal to the world that the party remains firmly in control and is determined to rise to global prominence.

“We’re entering a new age. We’re entering an age where the U.S. and China are engulfed in what feels like an arms race,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a missile expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in the U.S.

“The Chinese government always prioritized diplomatic issues over operational readiness. It’s just a different China. It’s a China that does not feel constrained,” he said.

“There’s a renewed emphasis on assuring themselves these systems work and demonstrating to others they work,” Lewis added.

Meanwhile, tensions remain high over Taiwan, and with the Philippines, where the U.S. Army has deployed its new mid-range missile system, known as Typhon, to Northern Luzon. On Wednesday, two Filipino officials said the U.S. and the Philippines have agreed to keep the system there indefinitely to deter China.

“I don’t know what’s the plan, but if I were to be followed, if I were given the choice, I would like to have the Typhon here in the Philippines forever because we need it for our defense,” said Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., the head of the Philippines’ military.

Defense officials in Japan and Taiwan declined to comment directly on the Chinese announcement. Both, along with South Korea, maintain robust defenses against Chinese moves, including early warning systems and air raid shelters.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

The U.S. Army transported the Typhon missile system, a land-based weapon that can fire the Standard Missile-6 and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, to the northern Philippines as part of combat exercises in April with Philippine troops and to test its deployability aboard a U.S. Air Force aircraft.

Tomahawk missiles can travel over 1,000 miles, which places China within their target range. Officials are considering keeping the missile system in the northern Philippines up to April next year, when U.S. and Philippine forces are scheduled to hold their annual Balikatan — Tagalog for “shoulder-to-shoulder” — large-scale combat exercises, he said.

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The two officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive U.S. missile deployment publicly. There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials.

Chinese diplomats have repeatedly conveyed their alarm to the Philippine government, warning that the deployment of the missile system could destabilize the region.

A Philippine army spokesperson said earlier that the system was scheduled to be removed from the country by the end of this month. Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. refused to confirm or deny the extension.

But Teodoro rejected China’s demands as interference in the Philippines’ internal affairs, speaking to reporters Tuesday on the sidelines of an Asian defense industry exhibition in Manila.

“China is saying that they are alarmed but that is interference into our internal affairs. They are using reverse psychology in order to deter us from building up our defensive capabilities,” Teodoro said.

“Before they start talking, why don’t they lead by example? Destroy their nuclear arsenal, remove all their ballistic missile capabilities, get out of the West Philippines Sea and get out of Mischief Reef,” Teodoro said. “I mean, don’t throw stones when you live in a glass house.”

Teodoro used the Philippine name for the disputed South China Sea and for a contested reef off the western Philippines that Chinese forces seized in 1995 and is now one of seven missile-protected island bases China maintains in the disputed waters.

Philippine military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. said he has asked U.S. military officials to keep the missile system in the Philippines, but declined to say what was their response.

“If I were given the choice, I would like to have the Typhon here in the Philippines forever because we need it for our defense,” Brawner told reporters.

Last month, Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi expressed China’s “very dramatic” concern over the U.S. mid-range missile deployment to the Philippines during their recent talks in Laos on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings with Asian and Western countries.

Manalo said Wang warned the presence of the U.S. missile system could be “destabilizing,” but he said that he disagreed. “They’re not destabilizing” and the missile system was only in the Philippines temporarily, Manalo said he told Wang.

Although the missile system was transported to the Philippines for joint combat exercises in April, it was not fired during the joint drills by the longtime treaty allies, according to Philippine and U.S. military officials.

China has strongly opposed increased U.S. military deployments to the region, including to the Philippines, saying they could endanger regional stability and peace.

The U.S. and the Philippines have repeatedly condemned China’s increasingly assertive actions to fortify its territorial claims in the South China Sea, where hostilities have flared since last year with repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine coast guard forces and accompanying vessels.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have overlapping claims in the busy waterway, a key global and security route which is also believed to be sitting atop vast undersea deposits of gas and oil.

Associated Press journalist Aaron Favila contributed to this report.

The Swedish company, which plans to break ground by the end of the year, said it will use the facility for final assembly and integration of shoulder-fired munitions and precision fire systems.

Manufacturing work will begin in early 2026, according to a company statement.

“We are making a long-term commitment not only to the U.S. defense industrial base, but to the local community as well,” Erik Smith, president and CEO of Saab in the U.S., said. “Saab plays a positive role in the communities where we live and work, creating jobs and investing in the local community, and we look forward to joining the Grayling community.”

The Michigan site, chosen from six possible locations, presented the “most efficient way to execute the work that we have to get done,” Smith told Defense News. The 388-acre plot is located near the largest Army National Guard training base in the country, and the region also has an experienced workforce needed for the type of production.

Smith first told Defense News of Saab’s plans to grow its footprint in the U.S. with a new facility focused on manufacturing ground combat weapons and missile systems in March. He noted six states were in the running.

The new site is part of a global manufacturing push by the company to quadruple its global capacity to produce its ground combat weapons, he said.

“As this facility ramps up, what you will see is a combination of products that Saab is very well known for and some new products that really haven’t hit the market yet.”

The new facility will create at least 70 jobs, the company statement notes. There is potential to hire even more employees as the facility gets up and running, according to Smith.

The site size “allows for expansion for when we need it,” Smith said. “I do envision engineering capacity there as well as the business evolves,” he added, but noted, “right now we are pretty laser focused on manufacturing capacity.”

The facility will feature advanced manufacturing capability and an innovation center to enhance munitions production capacity stateside, according to Smith. He also said it will support the production of components for the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, or GLSDB, system and close combat weapons.

Saab joins a wide variety of defense manufacturers in Michigan, a state with a long legacy of weapons production.

“We built the arsenal of democracy to win WWII and will keep rolling up our sleeves to protect our national defense,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in the company statement. “We are building on our economic momentum and strong reputation as a leader in advanced manufacturing.”

Saab will now have 10 facilities operating in the U.S. Other locations include West Lafayette, Indiana, for aerospace advanced manufacturing; Syracuse, New York, for radar and sensor systems; and Cranston, Rhode Island, and Quincy, Massachusetts, for autonomous and undersea systems.

The facility will follow a similar model to what Saab did with its West Lafayette site, Smith told Defense News. In that case, the first engineering and manufacturing development fuselages were built in Sweden, then, in parallel, Saab built the Indiana plant with high-end technology to produce the fuselages beginning with low-rate initial production.

Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a memo to employees that Steve Parker will temporarily lead Boeing Defense, Space and Security until a permanent replacement for Colbert is named. Parker is the chief operating officer for Boeing’s $32.7 billion defense sector.

In the memo, Ortberg thanked Colbert for 15 years of service to Boeing. But he also spoke about the need for Boeing — which has had a series of prominent failures over the last year — to do better.

“At this critical juncture, our priority is to restore the trust of our customers and meet the high standards they expect of us to enable their critical missions around the world,” Ortberg said. “Working together we can and will improve our performance and ensure we deliver on our commitments.”

Colbert took over Boeing’s defense sector in March 2022 after running Boeing Global Services. Later that year, he reorganized it amid steep revenue losses and quality concerns.

Colbert also stuck firm to the company’s commitment to no longer agree to fixed-price contracts with the Pentagon. Such contracts have led to billions of dollars in losses for Boeing, leading the company to swear them off, even if it meant passing on some major programs like the Survivable Airborne Operations Center, or SAOC.

At the Farnborough Air Show in England in July, Colbert told reporters that the Air Force’s plan for SAOC would have required Boeing to agree to fixed-price elements and other components it felt were unacceptable. He said if the Air Force were to require fixed-price deals for its new collaborative combat aircraft autonomous drones, Boeing would similarly steer clear of that program.

“If it’s a fixed-price development program that requires a ton of maturity … that is a recipe for failure,” Colbert said.

But losses at Boeing Defense continued during Colbert’s tenure. The sector lost $1.8 billion in 2023 and is down $762 million so far in the first half of 2024.

Colbert’s removal marks Ortberg’s first major management change since taking the reins of Boeing last month.

And it comes nearly two weeks after Boeing’s Starliner space capsule returned to Earth from the International Space Station without its crew amid safety concerns.

During Starliner’s June 5 flight to the space station, engineers observed several helium leaks and problems with its thrusters, according to NASA. NASA and Boeing engineers spent nearly three months testing thrusters and reviewing data to try to figure out how to fix the problems. But on Aug. 24, NASA determined it was too risky to fly the two astronauts home on Starliner and opted to instead bring them home on a planned SpaceX mission next February.

Ortberg is trying to put Boeing back on course after years of quality and safety troubles with aircraft such as the Max airliners, the KC-46 Pegasus refueling tanker and the new Air Force One presidential transport planes, which upended the company’s once-strong reputation as an aerospace giant.

Boeing is also reeling from a massive strike declared Sept. 13 by tens of thousands of its machinists, which is also impacting the firm’s defense programs like the KC-46. Ortberg has been speaking directly with workers to try to find a way to resolve the disagreement over issues such as pay and end the strike, the company said. A lengthy strike would harm its production, deliveries and operations.

In July, Boeing pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States over charges stemming from the crashes of two 737 Max aircraft. In January, the door plug of another 737 Max blew out midflight, with videos of the frightening scene aboard going viral. The incidents prompted congressional hearings into Boeing’s safety problems.