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.

The firm, a Boeing subsidiary, was already on contract to deliver six spacecraft for the Missile Track Custody, or MTC, program, and the new order deal brings its total contribution to 12. The first batch of satellites is on track for delivery in 2026 and the company plans to deliver the second batch of satellites in late 2027, Lindsay Dewald, Millennium’s program manager for the effort, told Defense News.

“We have successfully demonstrated the maturation of our design in all of our review milestones to date, addressed technical concerns that the customer may have and are moving full force into the production and integration test phase,” Dewald said in an interview Tuesday. “The dedicated production line that we’ve stood up for MTC is something that enables us to add additional vehicles and be ready to deliver.”

The $386 million contract is less than the $509 million deal the company was awarded for the first six satellites. Dewald attributed that change to the efficiencies that come with increasing production quantities.

The new order follows Space Systems Command’s decision in May to oust RTX from the program. The company had been on contract to deliver three satellites but struggled to maintain cost and schedule performance.

Speaking Wednesday at SSC’s Space Industry Days event in Los Angeles, Col. Rob Davis praised the program’s quick response to RTX’s removal.

“When one of our two industry partners struggled with delivering on cost and schedule, we were able to quickly pivot and still maintain program progress by turning to the performing vendor,” said Davis, SSC’s program executive officer for space sensing.

The MTC program is one piece of the Space Force’s plan to make its on-orbit missile warning and tracking capabilities more resilient against growing threats from China and Russia. Today, those satellites either reside in geosynchronous orbit — about 22,000 miles above Earth — or in highly elliptical orbit beyond GEO. The Space Development Agency is also launching a fleet of more than 100 satellites in low Earth orbit, less than 1,200 miles above the equator.

Through MTC, the service plans to launch warning and tracking satellites to medium Earth orbit, located between 1,200 and 2,200 miles above Earth, where space sensors can observe a larger area. The Space Force expects to upgrade the satellites’ technology, launching new batches, or epochs, of spacecraft every few years. In August, the service issued a request for proposals for its second MTC epoch.

Millennium’s first 12 MTC satellites, part of Epoch 1, will carry an electro-optical infrared payload built by Boeing that uses advanced sensors to detect and track heat signatures from missile threats. The spacecraft will then use an onboard processing system to analyze that data.

Dewald noted that Millennium is working closely with its suppliers to ensure they can continue to deliver on schedule despite an increased buy from the Space Force. The second batch of satellites, she said, is a “build-to-print” design of the first six spacecraft, which means the focus will be on maintaining a steady production cadence.

“It’s really just continuing the production line — not only at our vehicle level but at our vendor level as well — to deliver on time,” she said. “It’s really building off the relationships that we already have with those vendors to continue to execute additional orders. And our vendors have been working hard to prepare for these additional orders.”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin shared the assessment Wednesday morning while traveling in Rome, becoming the first member of the Biden administration to do so.

The White House later offered more details, saying that around 3,000 North Korean troops sailed to the Russian port of Vladivostok earlier in October and are now training across three military sites in the east.

“What exactly they’re doing will have to be seen,” Austin told a group of traveling press.

South Korean defense and intelligence officials have reported for weeks that Pyongyang intended to send troops to Russia, the latest step in a burgeoning partnership that began after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration avoided commenting on the assessment until Wednesday as the government separately confirmed the intelligence.

As Austin’s comment showed, the most immediate theme from American officials was uncertainty. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House said it knew why the soldiers were in Russia, what North Korea was getting in return or whether they would fight in Ukraine.

If that last concern proves true, White House spokesperson John Kirby said, they would be “fair game” for the Ukrainian military.

Russia has suffered huge casualties in recent months while making steady gains in Ukraine’s east, losing more than 1,000 troops a day and surpassing 600,000 total casualties since 2022, American officials have said.

“This is certainly a highly concerning probability: After completing training, these soldiers could travel to western Russia and then engage in combat against the Ukrainian military,” Kirby said, noting that the U.S. has briefed the Ukrainian government on its intelligence.

Austin traveled unannounced to Kyiv earlier this week in his fourth and likely last trip to Ukraine as secretary. While there, he spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and unveiled another $400 million package of military aid, the second such tranche within a week.

North Korea and Russia have had a distant relationship dating back to the end of the Cold War, but have moved closer in the last two years. The two countries’ leaders have met together, including in a rare trip by Kim Jong Un outside his country to visit Vladimir Putin.

U.S. officials cast the news as a sign of “desperation” from Russia, particularly if North Korean troops joined the fight. The description has become familiar for the Biden administration, which didn’t anticipate how the war in Ukraine would realign American adversaries such as Iran, which alongside North Korea has also sent weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine.

North Korea has shipped over 16,500 containers of munitions and related material to Russia since last fall, U.S. and European officials have said.

“This is an indication that [Putin] may be even in more trouble than most people realize. But, again, he went tin cupping early on to get additional weapons and materials from the DPRK and then from Iran. And now he’s making a move to get more people,” Austin said, using the initialism for North Korea’s government.

ISTANBUL — Turkish government and industry officials were rushed out of the country’s largest defense show here on Wednesday following an attack on a national aerospace company near the capital city of Ankara.

At least four people have been killed and 14 injured in a “terrorist attack” against state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI, or TUSAS) headquarters in Kahramankazan, near Ankara, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a statement.

The assault took place on the second day of the country’s largest defense fair, Saha Expo, organized here from Oct 22-26.

In the late afternoon of Oct. 23, a number of sirens were heard outside of the expo’s venue as responders headed towards the nearby highways. A number of Turkish government and industry officials were then rushed to cars waiting outside, although it was unclear which companies they represented.

TAI’s general manager, Mehmet Demiroglu, was among those who left Saha Expo early to return to Ankara, roughly 280 miles to the east, state news agency Anadolu reported.

Additional police cars were placed in front of the Turkish Airlines Flight Training Center located next to the exhibition hall.

It was unclear on Wednesday if the defense expo would continue the following day. While organizer representatives initially told Defense News that it was likely to run as planned, they canceled portions of the remainder of the show on Wednesday evening.

Assailants set off explosives and opened fire in an attack Wednesday on the premises of the national aerospace company, killing four people and wounding several, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

At least two of the attackers died, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.

“We have four martyrs. We have 14 wounded. I condemn this heinous terrorist attack and wish mercy on our martyrs,” Erdogan said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the sidelines of a BRICS meeting in Kazan, Russia.

Putin offered him condolences over the attack.

Selim Cirpanoglu, mayor of the district of Kahramankazan, told The Associated Press that the attack on the company in the outskirts of the capital, Ankara, had abated but could not provide more details.

It was not clear who may be behind it. Kurdish militants, the Islamic State group and leftist extremists have carried out attacks in the country in the past.

Security camera images from the attack, aired on television, showed a man in plainclothes carrying a backpack and holding an assault rifle.

Turkish media said three assailants, including a woman, arrived at an entry to the complex inside a taxi. The assailants, who were carrying assault weapons, then detonated an explosive device next to the taxi, causing panic and allowing them to enter the complex.

Multiple gunshots were heard after Turkish security forces entered the site, the DHA news agency and other media reported. Helicopters were seen flying above the premises.

TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles both civilian and military aircrafts, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. The UAVs have been instrumental in Turkey gaining an upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants in Turkey and across the border in Iraq.

Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said the target of the attack was Turkey’s “success in the defense industry.”

“It should be known that these attacks will not be able to deter the heroic employees of defense industry,” he wrote on X.

With material from the Associated Press.

On Oct. 17, Australia pledged to gift 49 second-hand M1A1 AIM Abrams tanks to Ukraine. This came just weeks after a first batch of new M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams replacements arrived in Australia from the U.S.

Australia never utilized its 59 M1A1 Abrams in combat, but they will soon be used in anger against Russian invaders in Ukraine. Boasting a 120mm main gun, thick armor and advanced sensors, older Abrams still remain a formidable battlefield weapon, whether in Ukraine or the Asia-Pacific region.

“There are no other current or emerging technologies – or combination of technologies – that can yet deliver the capability currently provided by a main battle tank,” an Australian Department of Defence spokesperson told Defense News.

Brigadier James Davis, the Australian Army’s director general of Future Land Warfare, told Defense News that crew skills – “the basics of warfare, camouflage, concealment” – remain as important as ever amid the advent of loitering munitions and similar threats.

Captured Leopard 2 resurfaces at Russia’s main tank factory

“That’s how Western armored vehicles – and Australian armored vehicles – crewed by Western crews and Australian crews, are going to survive on the battlefield; a combination of training, tactics, technology and systems,” he said.

The tank donation to Kyiv, worth approximately A$245 million (US$164 million), will “bolster the armed forces of Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s illegal and immoral invasion,” Canberra said.

Australia’s Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Pat Conroy commented, “These tanks will deliver more firepower and mobility to the Ukrainian armed forces, and complement the support provided by our partners for Ukraine.”

In response to the news, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted, “I’m especially grateful for Australia’s brave decision to provide 49 M1A1 Abrams tanks for our defense against Russian aggression.”

American permission was required for this handover, but Ukrainian crews are already familiar with the platform after the U.S. promised to donate 31 M1A1 SA Abrams to Ukraine in January 2023. Perhaps half have been destroyed to date.

Australia will retain ten M1A1 tanks, and these will assist in the transition to its own fleet of M1A2s. Under Project Land 907, approved in January 2022, the Australian Army is receiving 75 M1A2 SEPv3 tanks, 29 M1150 Assault Breacher Vehicles, 17 M1074 Joint Assault Bridges and six additional M88A2 armored recovery vehicles.

Under the Australian military’s restructure announced in 2023′s Defence Strategic Review, the Army’s 3rd Brigade in Townsville will be the sole repository of this heavy-armor influx.

To date, Australian military assistance for Ukraine is valued at more than A$1.3 billion, and it includes Bushmaster protected vehicles, M113AS4 armored personnel carriers and M777 howitzers.

Austin told reporters Wednesday “What exactly they are doing? Left to be seen. These are things that we need to sort out,” according to a video posted by the Washington Post.

If the troops join the war in Ukraine on Russia’s side, it will be “a very, very serious issue,” Austin said, adding it would have an impact in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific region.

South Korean intelligence first publicized reports that the Russian navy had taken 1,500 North Korean special warfare troops to Russia last week, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had earlier said his government had intelligence that 10,000 North Korea soldiers were being prepared to join the invading Russian forces.

The U.S. and NATO had not previously formally confirmed North Korea’s reported troop dispatch, but have warned of the danger of such a development if true. Russia and North Korea have so far denied the troop movements.

South Korean National Intelligence Service Director Cho Tae-yong told lawmakers that said another 1,500 North Korean troops have entered Russia in a closed-door meeting, according to lawmaker Park Sunwon, who attended the briefing.

Cho told lawmakers that his agency assessed that North Korea aims to deploy a total of 10,000 troops to Russia by December, Park told reporters.

Park cited Cho as saying the 3,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Russia have been split among multiple military bases and are in training. Cho told lawmakers that NIS believes they have yet to be deployed in battle, according to Park.

Speaking jointly with Park about the NIS briefing, lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun said that the NIS found that the Russian military is now teaching those North Korean soldiers how to use military equipment such as drones.

Lee cited the NIS chief as saying Russian instructors have high opinions of the morale and physical strength of the North Korean soldiers but think they will eventually suffer a heavy causalities because they lack an understanding of modern warfare. Lee, citing Cho, said Russia is recruiting a large number of interpreters.

Lee said NIS has detected signs that North Korea is relocating family members of soldiers chosen to be sent to Russia to special sites to isolate them.

The NIS chief told lawmakers that North Korea hasn’t disclosed its troop dispatch to its own people. But there are rumors that the news is spreading to local residents, including those whose loved ones have been assigned Russian tours, Lee said, citing the NIS.

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate head, Kyrylo Budanov, told the online military news outlet The War Zone that North Korean troops will arrive to Russia’s Kursk region today to help Russian troops fighting off a Ukrainian incursion.

North Korea and Russia, embroiled in separate confrontations with the West, have been sharply boosting their cooperation in the past two years. In June, they signed a major defense deal requiring both countries to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.

The NIS said last week that North Korea had sent more than 13,000 containers of artillery, missiles and other conventional arms to Russia since August 2023 to replenish its dwindling weapons stockpiles.

Reports that the North is sending troops to Russia stoked security jitters in South Korea. South Korean officials worry that Russia may reward North Korea by giving it sophisticated weapons technologies that could boost the North’s nuclear and missile programs that target South Korea.

South Korea said Tuesday it would consider supplying weapons to Ukraine in response to the North’s reported troop dispatch. South Korea has shipped humanitarian and financial support to Ukraine, but it has so far avoided directly supplying arms to Ukraine in line with its policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflicts.

North Korea has 1.2 million troops, one of the largest standing armies in the world, but it hasn’t fought in large-scale conflicts since the 1950-53 Korean War. Many experts question how much North Korean troops would help Russia, citing a shortage of battle experience. They say North Korea wants to get Russian economic support and its help to modernize the North’s outdated conventional weapons systems as well as its high-tech weapons technology transfers.

The next-generation sensor will be based on the existing Raytheon GhostEye family of radars, with one of the key upgrades focused on increased range, according to company representatives.

“We can’t provide performance specifics, but the radar’s capabilities will far exceed NASAMS’ current sensor configuration – this is largely driven by the active electronically scanned array and gallium nitride (GaN) technology featured in the GhostEye family of radars,” Mike Mills, executive director of GhostEye programs at Raytheon told Defense News.

The GhostEye is a medium-range air and missile defense radar that was first showcased by the company in 2021, designed to detect and identify a wide-range of threats including cruise missiles, drones and rotary-wing aircraft.

While the radar’s range information is not available on the manufacturer’s website, observers have estimated that it may be able to observe targets as far as 120 kilometers away.

This will be the first project developed under the NASAMS Capabilities Collaborative Agreement, which was signed in 2023 by the Norwegian MoD, Kongsberg and Raytheon.

The production of the radars’ components will be carried out in both Norway and the United States, Mills said, declining to say when deliveries would begin, as discussions about that aspect of the systems’ development are still ongoing.

In June, Norway signed a $440 million contract with Kongsberg to acquire new NASAMS air defense systems with expected deliveries from 2027 to replace equipment previously donated to Ukraine.

The Nordic nation initially sent two batteries of the air defense systems to Kyiv in March of 2023, followed by additional shipments in December, and plans to order more for the war-torn country.

“Norway has decided to build their future Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) with the NASAMS architecture as the backbone,” Hans Christian Hagen, vice president for business development of air and coastal defense at Kongsberg said in an email statement to Defense News.

“The development of the next-gen radar is a natural step for Norway as the lead nation and will address requirements to meet the mobility aspects for a flexible and agile system,” the company executive added.

NASAMS are in operation in 13 countries, as they are able to use a wide variety of air-to-air missiles, including the AMRAAM, which a considerable number of NATO countries already possess.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday its Office of Strategic Capital approved 13 private funds to participate in the first installment of its Small Business Investment Company Critical Technology Initiative, or SBICCT. Established last fall, the effort aims to draw private capital funding to companies advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space and advanced materials that could have significant implications for national security.

Along with the funds’ expected private capital investments, the funding the Small Business Administration is making available through the SBICCT loans could bring the total investment amount to approximately $2.8 billion. The program has additional proposals in the pipeline that could increase that to more than $4 billion.

Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has seen a drop in private capital investment into the technology areas it deems critical. Many of those areas are hardware intensive and require significant funding to generate a meaningful return for investors. Jason Rathje, who leads the Office of Strategic Capital, told reporters the SBICCT Initiative is specifically targeting that challenge.

“The ‘so-what’ of this program is it allows us to incentivize the capital markets to start investing more into our critical technology areas because it changes the return profile,” he said.

By partnering with the Small Business Administration, the Defense Department wants to take advantage of the organization’s track record of directing venture capital funding toward projects that have significant economic impact.

“This first group of SBICCT Initiative funds represents a consequential milestone in demonstrating the power of public-private partnerships to build enduring advantage by growing and modernizing our supply chains, strengthening our economic and national security, and benefiting the development and commercialization of critical technologies that are key drivers of our U.S. industrial base,” Heidi Shyu, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a statement.

The Office of Strategic Capital was established in 2022 to drive private sector capital toward defense technologies. Tuesday’s announcement follows the Pentagon’s establishment last month of a $1 billion fund to provide direct loans to companies that make in-demand defense component technologies. The effort aims to help companies fund the construction of equipment needed to scale production across 31 technology areas it has deemed critical to U.S. national security.

“In our 2024 investment strategy, we talked about how we needed to build different strategies for different parts of the capital market and different parts of our critical technology space,” Rathje said. “What we have been able to do over the last year is really accomplish the programs, the financial products that OSC is offering.”

Lending tools like these are new to the Pentagon, but federal agencies like the Energy and Commerce departments have a long history of using credit programs to support key industries. OSC projects its SBICCT Initiative will continue to grow. More than 100 funds have expressed interest in the effort, and the Pentagon will now accept applications on a quarterly basis.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Oct. 23 to correct information provided by the Pentagon about the total investment amount.

Called the Trinity House Agreement, the pact amounts to a comprehensive reboot of defense relations between London and Berlin that had lacked structure since Britain formally exited the European Union in early 2020.

The jam-packed agenda touches all military domains – air, land, sea, and cyber – showcasing Rheinmetall as a linchpin of industrial cooperation for land forces, and MBDA, with its Storm Shadow cruise missile, as the nucleus for a future, joint long-range strike weapon.

Stationing long-range missiles in Europe, including from the United States, has become a key pillar in NATO plans to deter Russian aggression against the continent.

Under the new plan, German defense contractor Rheinmetall and its British subsidiary will open a factory for making artillery gun barrels using locally made steel, re-establishing a capability given up by the British a decade a ago, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defence statement. The first barrels are slated to roll off the production line in 2027.

Rheinmetall unveils UK’s upgraded Challenger 3 battle tank

British and German troops, with their growing presence in eastern Europe aimed at securing NATO’s eastern flank, are slated to intensify their joint training, using their forward position as a “catalyst for developing new ways of fighting,” the British statement reads.

In the maritime domain, the two nations pledge to cooperate on new technology for monitoring vital undersea cables and pipelines in the North Sea, a key concern for defense planners in Europe amid Russian espionage against such targets.

“The UK and Germany are moving closer together,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius was quoted as saying in a statement circulated to reporters on the eve of the Trinity House Agreement’s signing.

“With projects across the air, land, sea, and cyber domains, we will jointly increase our defense capabilities, thereby strengthening the European pillar within NATO,” he added. “We can only strengthen our ability to act together. This is why our cooperation projects are open to other partners.”

The British statement characterized the new defense pact with Germany as an example of the new Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer “resetting” relations with European allies.

An impending, overarching cooperation agreement with Germany beyond military matters is meant to complete a trio of separate bilateral pacts linking Britain and France, France and Germany, and Britain and Germany.

“The Trinity House Agreement is a milestone moment in our relationship with Germany and a major strengthening of Europe’s security,” British Defense Minister John Healey was quoted as saying.

As for support to Ukraine, an immediate step under the new pact will be outfitting donated German Sea King helicopters with “modern missile systems,” the British statement reads. In addition, the U.K. will play a bigger role in a Polish- and German-led armor support coalition for Kyiv, while Germany will do the same in a British-Latvian-led group devoted to drones.

That milestone, according to the U.S. Space Force’s top intelligence officer, demonstrates the evolution and growth China’s space enterprise has undergone in the last decade. But for the Defense Department, the concern is as much about the mission of the spacecraft its adversary is operating as it is about the number of satellites.

“Those satellites are meant to sense, decide and track this force. And with extensively long shot ranges, they have created a formidable weapons engagement zone in the Pacific,” Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon said Oct. 16 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington.

Gagnon earlier this year described the rapid buildup of the People’s Liberation Army’s space capabilities as a “strategic breakout.”

“An adversary arming like this is profoundly concerning,” he said in May at a Mitchell Institute event.

For the Space Force, countering China’s advancements in space is a mission in and of itself, Gagnon told Defense News in an interview on the sidelines of AUSA. The service will need more funding to build the satellites and sensors that can see, track and respond to the PLA’s growing in-orbit fleet, he said. It will also need to craft a clear operational vision from the service that the joint force and international partners can coalesce around.

While the Space Force has made progress in recent years articulating its role within DOD and building partners with industry, the service can only move fast if it has funding to maintain existing capabilities and support new missions, Gagnon said. Nearly half of the Space Force’s $30 billion budget funds “joint force enablers” like positioning, navigation and timing, missile warning and satellite communications that are critical to operations across the land, sea and air domains.

The service needs more funding to maintain those capabilities, Gagnon said, but if it’s going to protect against and respond to aggression from adversaries like China, it needs to expand its space domain awareness and counter-space systems.

“We have to change the architectures and satellites we use today to make them more resilient and effective. But in addition to that, we have to add new missions,” he said. “The aerospace forces of the PLA want to attack our capabilities in space. It’s part of their operational design and doctrine and we expect that they will do it. That’s why they’re building those weapons.”

Air Force and Space Force leaders have been pushing for the service to have a larger share of the Pentagon’s budget. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News in June that the service’s funding will need to double or triple in the coming years to support demand for space capabilities.

To garner more support from within DOD for its funding needs, the Space Force is drafting a more detailed “North Star” plan for how it will contribute to the joint fight over the next 10 to 15 years, Gagnon said. That force design work is happening now and will soon be led by the new Space Futures Command.

The plan will be informed by requirements from the other military services and will lay out what resources and capabilities the Space Force will need to meet those demands.

“We need that North Star, that plan, written so that they can see what our plan is and then be an advocate for us to gain additional money to make that a reality,” Gagnon said.

Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, told Defense News this summer that the first iteration of that plan should be completed in the fall of 2025.

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.”

The two governments finished the deal this spring but unveiled it Tuesday, Australia’s Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy said. He declined to give specific delivery numbers or a schedule, only saying that the funding would last for a decade.

“There was a strong view we needed to both upgrade the capability of air defense, but also increase the numbers of missiles we’re holding,” Conroy said in an interview while visiting Washington.

Missile defense is one of the top priorities listed in Australia’s 2024 defense strategy, published this April, which name drops the SM-6. In the plan, the government pledged to double its number of major warships and build a firmer defense industry of its own — as the country, like America, accepts competition with China as the norm.

Canberra’s defense budget, published a month after in May, committed a record $37 billion, or just over 2% of GDP, toward its military. The government aims to reach 2.3% of GDP, right now around $67 billion, by 2033-2034.

The SM, or Standard Missile, Block IIIC and 6 included in the sale will help Australia defend against advanced missile attacks and, in the case of the latter, can provide an anti-ship weapon. The American missile company Raytheon manufactures both, which have a medium and long range respectively.

“This combination of long range air defense, anti-ship strike capability ... and giving us our first ability to defend against ballistic missiles through terminal ballistic missile defense was a huge step forward for our navy,” Conroy said.

Australia became the first country outside America to fire the SM-6 from a warship this August, when the HMAS Sydney shot one during a military drill near Hawaii. The Pentagon’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget requests 125 of the missiles for its own stocks.

The Army also adopted the SM-6 as part of its mid-range missile launcher that deployed to the Philippines this year, a mission that irked China.

While in Washington, Conroy met with the deputy secretary of defense and heads of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, where they discussed work between the two defense industries and progress on the AUKUS agreement between Australia, the U.S. and Great Britain — a deal to share nuclear-powered submarines and advanced technology.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was also likely looking at the postelection scenario in the U.S. to assess the possibility of cease-fire talks with Ukraine. He assessed that if partial cease-fire deals could be reached over attacks on energy infrastructure and Black Sea shipping routes, it would signal the end of the “hot phase” of the war.

Zelenskyy spoke to journalists on Monday and his comments were embargoed until Tuesday.

He said the U.S. is analyzing his plan, but he doesn’t expect a meaningful response until after the Nov. 5 election.

“They said, yes, we’ve started working on the Victory Plan, they want to analyze everything, and so on. But it’s very clear to me that all the major partners, especially during the election period, will be afraid of Russia’s reaction,” he said. “Because they understand that with this package, we can destroy them.”

On NATO, Zelenskyy said France, Britain and Italy have shown signs of support. Germany has reservations, however, and Zelenskyy believes only a U.S. green light will convince Berlin to accept the idea.

“But the fact is that the German side is skeptical about our NATO membership — that’s a fact. I believe their stance is softer than it was before — this is also a fact.

“But when it comes to the invitation I’m talking about now, they are afraid of ... Russia’s reaction,” he said.

“I believe that their position will be influenced by a bigger alliance. A bigger alliance in supporting us — a confident “Yes” from the United States.”

Many significant issues will hinge on decisions taken following the fraught election period, the president said.

“After the elections, we hope for a more positive reaction from the U.S. — not because of a change in the president, but because the focus of the United States is now on the elections, and I believe that any sharp statements from the U.S. today might be inappropriate or carry risks. I think they don’t want unnecessary risks,” he said.

Asked if he faced pressure from allies to end the war, Zelenskyy joked, saying, “Over the years, people’s overall blood pressure rises.”

He dismissed reports of a possible cease-fire scenario in which Ukraine exchanged occupied territories for NATO membership.

“We are not discussing this. But I think that these media leaks are not accidental. Perhaps some partners may have such thoughts. They don’t communicate this directly with me, but through the media, it’s clear they’re testing its reception.”

He said the end of the “hot phase” of the war would commence if a deal could be reached with Russia to halt attacks on energy infrastructure and Black Sea ports and shipping routes. In this case, attacks on military targets would continue as well as front-line fighting, he said.

He said he plans to convince countries of the Global South to embrace Ukraine’s plan as another way to push Moscow to agree to Kyiv’s terms.

Zelenskyy said his country is not pursuing nuclear weapons to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We are not asking to be given or returned nuclear weapons,” he said. “My position is very clear. We gave them up, but we got nothing in return. And we only received a full-scale war and many casualties, so today we have only one way out. That’s why we need NATO, because we don’t have the weapons that can stop Putin.”

The Army on Monday clarified comments made by its top enlisted soldier at last week’s Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition about the service’s approved PT uniform.

“We’re redesigning the Army PTs,” Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer said last week. “We’re not going to get locked into the same T-shirt, [where] everybody is just going out and buying a new T-shirt anyway for their unit.”

But on Monday, Weimer told reporters he was referring to the Army providing additional options for soldier workout clothing, not a wholesale revamp of the iconic soldier PT gear.

Instead, the Army wants to give soldiers more comfortable options if they need them without spending Army money redesigning or issuing a new PT uniform, he said.

Those options will be presented to Army senior leaders by the end of 2025, the service clarified.

Either way, Weimar said, the black and gold design is here to stay.

Army to expand holistic health and fitness program to all soldiers

Weimer said the goal of providing additional options emerged after frequent soldier feedback regarding the comfort and fit of the existing PT clothing.

“It really comes down to fit,” Weimer said. “It’s about performance and functionality.”

Sgt. Maj. Rob Haynie, senior enlisted soldier at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, began leading the service’s review of options about two months ago and will continue that through next year.

So far, Weimer and Haynie said, some of the biggest complaints are about how the shorts fit, including problems with fabric bunching.

Small features also mean a lot, and soldiers griped about a lack of shorts pockets for stowing ID cards.

As Haynie gathers soldier feedback, his team will review existing, available options from the clothing industry, he said. A finalized list of types of PT clothing that meet the Army’s regulations and standards and maintain uniformity among the troops will then be delivered to Army senior leaders for review.

Soldiers will still get their PT uniforms issued at basic training and use that clothing through their Advanced Individual Training, Weimer said. But once they join their unit, they could have the option to get some different gear.

The 2025 review could wind up giving soldiers additional options for each of their basic PT gear clothing items, officials said.

The current basic gear includes short-sleeve and long-sleeve T-shirts, shorts, pants and a jacket, all in the black and gold color scheme, according to Army regulations.

Additionally, soldiers may wear calf or ankle-length socks, athletic shoes, a fleece watch cap, a compression shirt, shorts and a reflective belt for inclement weather conditions.

The service previously changed the PT uniform in 2017 when it switched from the black and gray design it had used for years to the current black and gold color scheme, among other changes.

Whatever gear gets approved for soldiers to add to their training wardrobe should provide options that better-fit soldiers’ comfort and performance needs while maintaining a uniform appearance, Weimer said.

The potential workout clothing options fall in line with several non-issue items that are approved for wear. The Army allows soldiers to select from an approved list of protective eyewear, and to choose between different types of combat boots to find the best fit.

Some units also allow soldiers to wear unit-specific, command-approved T-shirts that showcase the specific unit for their PT uniform.

Kosiniak-Kamysz said Boeing’s CH-47F Chinook is a considered option because its capabilities “are unique and immense.” He did not disclose the number of copters that would be acquired under the program.

“I believe that [the Polish military] also needs larger helicopters which could provide efficient support by transporting ‘big bags,’ or soldiers, into locations that are difficult to access,” the minister said in an interview with local news site Portal Obronny. “I have not talked about it anywhere else, but, at the ministry, we are thinking about it because … we need such gear.”

In addition to their use for military operations, the new copters could also be used by the armed forces for disaster relief operations, according to Kosiniak-Kamysz. The politician was referring to the widespread floods which hit Poland’s south-western regions last month. On Sept. 18, the Polish Ministry of National Defence announced that around 14,000 soldiers were involved in the response to the floods.

With the potential purchase in mind, Boeing, the manufacturer of the Chinook, has intensified its efforts to promote the helo in the Polish market. The company presented the aircraft at the MSPO defense industry show, the country’s largest annual industry event, which was held between Sept. 2 and 5 in Kielce, central Poland.

Should Poland decide to purchase Chinook copters for its military, this would mark another major deal to be awarded by Warsaw to Boeing. In August 2024, the Polish ministry signed a contract with the United States government to buy 96 AH-64E Apache attack copters with related gear and weapons. The deal is worth around $10 billion.

The assistance includes artillery and other munitions, armored vehicles and anti-tank weapons like the shoulder-launched Javelin system.

Austin announced the aid in a meeting with Zelenskyy, who last week outlined a proposal to end the war.

This “victory plan,” as Zelenskyy calls it, would require enduring Western support, particularly NATO membership and the long-term commitment of security aid. The U.S. has so far resisted issuing an immediate invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance, along with another top priority for Kyiv: the permission to fire Western weapons deep into Russian territory.

In a social media post after the meeting with Austin, Zelenskyy said that the two discussed air defense and “the expansion of long-range weapon use against Russian military targets.” In a $425 million package announced last week, the White House committed to sending “hundreds” of vital air defense interceptors in the coming months.

Despite such support, Zelenskyy’s proposal is a sign of how Ukraine views the state of the war. The Ukrainian president still publicly calls for regaining all territory lost to Russia, going back to the 2014 seizure of Crimea. But as Moscow’s forces steadily advance in eastern Ukraine and reclaim territory lost in Russia’s Kursk province, the future of the war looks increasingly bleak for Kyiv.

In an October briefing, senior Pentagon officials said Russia’s casualties were accelerating in the east and had reached 600,000 throughout the war.

Austin’s trip to Kyiv marks his fourth visit to Ukraine and likely his last as secretary of defense. Aiding Ukraine’s defense has been a signature achievement during his tenure. The U.S. has sent Ukraine over $61 billion in security aid in the last two and a half years, and Austin has helped coordinate the assistance of other countries through a monthly forum held in Ramstein, Germany.

Capt. Zaldy Valenzuela, the CO, and Cmdr. Art Palalay, his second-in-command, were removed from their respective positions on Sunday due to a “loss of confidence in their ability to command,” according to the Navy.

Capt. Dan Lannamann, the former commanding officer of Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center in Norfolk, Virginia, is now leading the facility while Cmdr. Timothy Emge, the center’s operations officer, is filling in as executive officer until a permanent replacement is identified.

“The Navy holds commanding officers and others in authority to the highest standards,” the Navy said in a statement. “Naval leaders are entrusted with significant responsibilities to their Sailors and commands.”

Navy ousts CO of Hershel ‘Woody’ Williams amid soft grounding probe

The Navy rarely shares any rationale behind firing commanding officers aside from the “loss of confidence” statement, and no additional details were provided on Valenzuela and Palalay’s reliefs.

Valenzuela’s previous assignments include ship superintendent and carrier type desk officer at SRF-JRMC, electrical division officer aboard the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, and the combat and communications officer aboard the amphibious command ship Blue Ridge.

Palalay, who enlisted in the Navy in 1993 and commissioned in 2006, previously served as the readiness officer at Commander Naval Surface Forces Pacific before becoming the XO of SRF-JRMC in 2023.

The maintenance center, equipped with six dry docks, conducts intermediate and depot-level maintenance and repairs for Navy ships across the 7th Fleet.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 Kyiv has prohibited the export of military goods to other countries to guarantee that the Ukrainian armed forces are supplied with the equipment they need to continue defending their territory.

While the ban has allowed smaller local defense companies to grow at a fast rate, thanks to an initial boost of orders by the state, the policy is now hurting their business, Anatolii Khrapchynskyi, deputy director general of Piranha Tech said.

“It has opened up opportunities for private companies to produce weapons and led to the emergence of numerous firms that, in two and a half years, have grown from garage-based startups to stable companies capable of fulfilling a large number of orders,” he told Defense News. “At the same time, as firms have scaled up their capabilities, they’ve accelerated to a level the state cannot fully procure from.”

Piranha Tech has specialized in the development and production of electronic-warfare systems, radio-jamming as well as drones and counter-drone systems since 2014.

Khrapchynskyi noted that most of the investments in research and development came either from the companies’ own funds or small grants provided by platforms like Brave1, a Ukrainian government entity responsible for fast-tracking the delivery of weapon samples to the frontlines.

At the rate defense systems have evolved on the battlefield, research and development has become more expensive, and having the state as the sole customer is no longer sufficient for many firms, the argument for lifting the export ban goes.

According to Ukrainian media, a government working group on arms exports has been working since August on assessing risks that would come with the country re-entering the global arms market, and setting conditions that could make this possible.

Khrapchynskyi told Defense News he supports the initiative, saying reconnaissance drones could serve as a test case because they are useful in military and civilian applications alike.

“Security and the end-user are of the utmost importance – we could also consider selling earlier versions that are not cutting edge, but companies must guarantee that state contracts remain a priority and be fulfilled on time,” Khrapchynskyi said.

A requirement to invest some of the profits into company research and development also should be on the table, he added.

One of the biggest issues associated with lifting the wartime ban on these weapons is the possibility for Russian forces to get their hands on information and technology.

“We see how Russia circumvents sanctions, so we understand that they will certainly start looking for ways to obtain certain means for copying [weapons] or developing countermeasures against them,” Khrapchynskyi said.

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.

But that day heralded the start of a great upending for the U.S. Navy, after Hamas militants streamed into Israel and murdered more than 1,200 people, sparking a war that continues to threaten to engulf the Middle East to this day.

All the Houthi-US Navy incidents in the Middle East (that we know of)

The moment that would change the Navy forever actually took place aboard the Carney 12 days later, on Oct. 19, when it became the first American warship to take out a barrage of Iran-backed Houthi rebel missiles and drones fired from Yemen.

Such intercepts have since become a harrowing, near-daily occurrence for destroyers in those waters, and the year that followed Oct. 19, 2023, has irrevocably changed the Navy for the foreseeable future, Navy leaders and outside analysts say.

On this day one year ago, starting around 4 p.m. local time, Carney took out a Houthi attack the Pentagon later said was headed for Israel, downing 15 drones and four land-attack cruise missiles over 10 hours.

While their pre-deployment training prepared them for anything, the Carney was not expecting to find itself taking on the Houthis in a near-daily battle to keep the claustrophobic Red Sea lanes open for commerce, Cmdr. Jeremy Robertson, the ship’s commanding officer for that cruise, told Navy Times this week.

“None of us really could have known what we were going to get into once Oct. 7 happened,” he said.

Since those fateful 10 hours a year ago, the Red Sea has become the arena for the longest sustained “direct and deliberate attacks at sea” that the fleet has faced since World War II, Fleet Forces Command head Adm. Daryl Caudle said in a statement to Navy Times.

“While I could not have predicted the complexity and interrelationships of all that has transpired since [Oct. 19, 2023], I am not surprised,” said Caudle, who commands the Navy East Coast-based fleet.

Inside the USS Carney’s harrowing and unprecedented deployment

“The world is a very tense place right now given the vast range of power-seeking agendas between peer competitors and opportunistic regional proxies. Any small spark can have serious consequences, which is why we take every situation so seriously.”

Since Carney’s first victory, the surface fleet has subsequently honed its tactics and tuned its radars for such a fight, instances when a ship’s Combat Information Center sometimes has mere seconds to ascertain and take out a Houthi attack.

Combat lessons are being routed back to schoolhouses and training centers, giving the Navy real-time knowledge on its combat systems and how to best use them.

Skippers also report that their crews have been galvanized by such experiences, finding meaning to their seemingly endless training in the life-and-death minutes they endure in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

“This really gave our sailors the why,” Robertson said. “Why do we train so hard, why do we do all the reps and sets.”

“The stage was not too big, the lights were not too bright. They were able to draw a connection.”

These successes at sea “validate our readiness to respond, our Sailors’ warfighting spirit and the technological superiority of our exquisite combat systems,” Caudle said.

But despite the tactical successes and demonstrated proficiencies, some question how fast the Navy is burning through munitions, sometimes to take out cheap Houthi drones, and whether a drawdown of missiles could one day impact a long-feared war with China in the West Pacific.

The Houthi menace in the Middle East has also caused the Navy’s aircraft carriers to be run hard, and some have been scrambled to the region when others weren’t ready to go, further raising readiness alarms in some corners.

And while tactical battles have been won, strategic wars have not, according to James Holmes, a retired Navy gunnery officer and professor of maritime strategy at the Naval War College.

“The tacticians have done their work magnificently … and the combination of sensors, fire control and weaponry has performed as advertised against an array of threats similar to what [Iran, Russia and China] field,” Holmes told Navy Times. “Bringing down anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles is no easy feat, but they have done it.”

What the Navy is learning from its fight in the Red Sea

And while such successes will reverberate on other maritime battlefields, the Navy to date has been unable to stop the Houthis from attacking merchant vessels traveling through the vital economic waterway that is the Red Sea, he said.

“The failure part is that the mission has fallen short of its strategic goal, namely allowing merchant shipping through the Gulf of Aden, Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and Red Sea to resume unmolested,” Holmes said. “We can flip strategic failure to success when shipping firms — and the all-important maritime insurance companies — feel comfortable enough to start using that route again.”

A year in, the Navy is getting more judicious about how it fights Houthi attacks, according to Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst at the Hudson Institute think tank.

Navy ships threw the “kitchen sink” at incoming drones and missiles after the Carney’s first intercept a year ago, but the fleet is becoming more adept at using electronic warfare, guns and less-expensive interceptors to counter such Houthi attacks, Clark said.

Questions of sustainability of effort are now arising, he said, noting that the Navy has in some instances used carrier-based fighter jets to shoot down Houthi drones and missiles, an expensive and inefficient approach.

“The challenge going forward will be how to sustain this level of presence in the region,” Clark said. “The Pentagon may need to consider putting missile defense systems on barges or ashore so [destroyers] can deploy elsewhere or return home for maintenance.”

Robertson left the Carney after it returned to Mayport, Florida, in May, and is now the Navy’s Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training, or SWATT, director, passing on his hard-earned knowledge.

“It’s certainly surreal,” he said of his time commanding Carney. “I love every one of the sailors and officers and chiefs I worked with. Just a great crew. They’ll remember this for the rest of their lives.”

As the one-year anniversary of Oct. 19 comes and goes with no end in sight for the Navy’s Red Sea fight against the Houthis, Caudle noted that it’s difficult to forecast how the conflict will end.

“While I won’t speculate on how our involvement with the Houthis will culminate, I can tell you that I’m laser-focused on readiness, sustainment and lethality,” he said. “We’re ready for this fight, no matter how long it lasts.”

As senior members of the House Armed Services Committee, we are concerned that unless we recalibrate our approach to defense technology acquisition, we will continue on the slow, costly and unsustainable path that threatens our national defense and the rules-based international order.

Over the last 10 years, through numerous National Defense Authorization Acts, Congress has passed a variety of authorities to help streamline research and development and acquisition. These include more flexible other transaction authorities, mid-tier acquisition authorities, the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program and protections for commercial technology to help better attract nontraditional companies to the defense sector.

Similarly, DOD has taken some steps of its own. The efforts of the late Defense Secretary Ash Carter, continued and expanded by leaders in subsequent administrations on a bipartisan basis, led to the creation of the Defense Innovation Unit, the Strategic Capabilities Office and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office. Current efforts — such as Replicator and the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve — show promise in accelerating acquisition and development for certain capabilities.

These legislative and policy efforts intended to streamline, enhance and wring efficiencies from the acquisition system have left a dizzying array of authorities available to program managers and procurement officials. However, rather than fully utilizing these authorities, DOD still largely follows a slow and costly acquisition process hamstrung by a focus on the process and rigid requirements rather than fielding a capability and achieving results.

Furthermore, officials are more reliably punished for failures than rewarded for creativity and adaptability. Worse yet, they are incentivized to make decisions that may look good during their tenure but create unacceptable risks, cost growth or program management problems for successors. Cultural risk aversion drives a dangerous and costly tendency — one that too often results in cutting-edge technology becoming stale and outdated by the time it is put into play, if not earlier.

We also need to change how DOD interacts with Congress. Bold ideas require early collaboration which does not fit into the model where nothing can be disclosed or discussed with Congress until the president’s budget is released. Surprising Congress with new ideas historically has not benefited any part of the government. No one should be surprised when those ideas go unsupported.

Even when empowered offices overcome these structural disincentives, the efforts tend to be narrowly scoped. Large programs of record for complex systems or large services contracts are built around onerous requirements or meaningless metrics rather than problem-solving ideas or desired outcomes. Narrow technical requirements need to change to broad capability requirements.

The fiscal 2024 NDAA tasks DOD with modernizing the requirements process by avoiding prescriptive language, focusing on mission outcomes and assessed threats, enabling a more iterative and collaborative approach with the services and maximizing the use of commercial products. We expect to be briefed on an interim implementation report in the coming weeks. Getting this right is an absolute imperative.

We are likewise concerned that our research and development proving grounds are dangerously overtaxed. Years of chronic underinvestment have created unacceptable delays in test schedules. Rigorous exercise and experimentation, vital to transitioning technologies into capabilities, are hamstrung by the lack of facilities needed to develop disruptive technologies.

Finally, Congress itself is part of the problem. Parochialism, overly restrictive and inflexible appropriations, risk aversion and an unfortunate habit of killing messengers — to say nothing of the corrosive and wasteful use of continuing resolutions — create dangerous barriers to agility and innovation. The final report of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform Commission lays out many of these issues in more detail.

We cannot legislate cultural change, nor can the Defense Department implement it by policy. But we can adjust the incentives, behaviors and signals that drive cultural change over time and our ability to do so is unparalleled.

We have the most innovative economy in the world. We have the best universities, capital markets and entrepreneurial spirit. It is our duty to make sure the government can access that unmatched advantage in an effective way to give our military what it needs to meet our national security needs.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, D-Ala., is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., is ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee; Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., is chairman of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation; and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., is ranking member of the Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation.

That’s one of the preliminary findings from Army researchers conducting baseline cognitive screenings in an effort to better track — and prevent — brain injuries among troops.

The project, which kicked off in August, created a database of troops’ normal brain functions to provide health officials with a baseline to compare against soldier brains following long deployments, head trauma or other potential damaging incidents. Officials are currently screening new enlistees and individuals in some high-risk jobs, with the goal of reaching all troops by fall 2026.

The service also plans to re-screen soldiers every few years.

“There are times that service members may sustain or have a cognitive change that they have not even recognized yet,” Dr. Steven Porter, a neuroscientist at the U.S. Army Office of the Surgeon General working on the project, said Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “What the testing will be able to do for us is to identify that change and catch it early, so we can prevent any sort of ongoing or continued injury.”

Army launches cognitive screening to track new soldiers’ brain health

The project is still in its early phases, so plans for new training schedules, new equipment development and new recovery programs for injured troops are still mostly theoretical.

But Sgt. Maj. Chris McNamara, human weapon system expert at Army Special Operations Command, told reporters during a presentation at the AUSA conference that preliminary data from blast sensors and brain screenings have started to show activities that cause low-level problems in troops’ heads, giving commanders tools to intervene early.

“When we used to go to our shooting ranges, we would stack [those sessions] all together so that you got training density,” he said. “Now most of our leaders, because they have better decision support tools with a blast profile, spread that out. Now it’s one day every week. And the blast density is lower, and they get more time to recover.”

Col. Jama VanHorne-Sealy, director of the Army’s Occupational Health Directorate, said officials hope to release a new servicemember brain health strategy next spring.

“What that strategy seeks to do is to address the brain health needs of the warfighter, to optimize brain health in multiple environments … and to address the readiness of the force and force health protection against known and emerging hazards,” she said.

“It’s important for the Department of Defense and for the Army to have solutions that really allow us to do the best that we can, to triage personnel, to diagnose folks in austere environments so that we can make smart practice decisions about how to best take care of warfighters.”

From 2000 to 2022, nearly 460,000 servicemembers were diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury during training or in combat, according to the Defense Department Inspector General. Officials said finding ways to treat those issues earlier could result in long-term benefits for individuals and force readiness.

The tests come as Taiwan is seeing Chinese military activity in the waters around the island, including drones flying within the country’s air defense identification zone. China views Taiwan as a rogue province and has threatened to take it back by force.

Tron Future, a Taiwan-based company, has been supporting the government in integrating counter-drone systems with Taiwan’s low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites through its T.SpaceRouter user terminals, expected to boost the island’s wartime communication resilience.

The T.SpaceRouter is a lightweight satellite communication terminal that uses active electronically scanned array (AESA) technology, envisioned to double as a kind of communication antenna relying on regional private 5G coverage.

“As our anti-drone systems will be able to connect with LEO satellites by the end of 2025, each C-UAS installation site can serve as a regional military communication hub with LEO satellite backbone – this will help prevent systemic collapse of the core communication network in potential future conflicts,” Dr. Yu-Jiu Wang, chief executive of Tron Future said.

The Taiwan Space Agency has launched an experimental satellite project dubbed Beyond 5G, which aims to develop two high-performance LEO spacecraft that will be deployed at an altitude of 600 kilometers.

Last year, Wang told Defense News that at the height of tensions, the company’s radars deteced as many as 100 Chinese surveillance drones above the island in the span of a week.

According to the vendor, the Taiwanese military also recently began testing a variety of counter-drone active and passive radars, including Tron Future systems, as well as jammers.

These include achieving at least a 6 kilometers effective detection range for drones over the sea, with one of the target references being a Mavic 3 Pro, for active and passive radars, and at least a 4 kilometer effective jamming capability for drones, Wang said.

The government is expected to sign a contract with the winning contractor within two months as part of an order that could total tens of millions of dollars.

“A total of 26 sets of anti-drone systems need to be installed, with 13 sets to be completed within five months after signing the contract, and the entire procurement to be completed within 10 – the systems will be installed on the frontline islands closest to China,” the CEO said.

He noted that the closest distance from Taiwan’s outer islands to China is roughly 2 kilometers.

Taiwan is a major producer of computer chips, which means the country’s semiconductor factories are assumed targets in a potential Chinese attack besides military sites.

“Our own Army career engagement survey shows that most officers leaving the service today are seeking more stability, predictability and a better family life,” Wormuth said in her Monday address.

“I am not suggesting that we telework to war. Don’t misunderstand me,” she said. Nor, she said, is she suggesting the British model of the regimental army, where a soldier stays with one unit for the entire career.

However, Wormuth shared some ideas on what possible changes might look like.

“Should we restructure the force to reduce [permanent change of station] moves to every five years instead of every three years? Should we modify officer career timelines and promotion criteria to give more flexibility for broadening assignments while ensuring we’re still selecting the right officers for command?” she asked.

Other ideas Wormuth floated included increasing the options for military occupational specialty transfers within the Army to make it easier to pursue a new career path without leaving the service and finding ways to better match financial compensation with responsibilities, qualifications and job performance rather than strictly basing it on rank and time in grade.

“Standing here, I don’t have the answers,” Wormuth said, noting many of these changes would be complex and require additional resources and cooperation from Congress. “But if the Army doesn’t seriously explore these questions soon, I worry that in 10 to 15 years, we could see our recruiting challenges deepen and our historically high retention rates start dropping, placing the viability of the all-volunteer force under threat, during a time when our nation can least afford it.”

The lifestyle the Army offers hasn’t changed much since before the invention of the internet, she said.

“We still expect our soldiers to move every two to three years, uprooting children from schools and friends and upending the aspirations of spouses who want careers of their own.

“We continue to rely on our spouses and partners as a de facto, unpaid Army labor force, available to organize PCS moves and lead soldier family readiness groups, but often at the expense of work outside the home and the earnings that come with it,” she said.

For years, some have questioned if it’s necessary for military families to move so much, as a number of problems they face can be traced to moving. While many military families manage to thrive in the moving process, it often brings difficulties in finding affordable housing, affordable and good-quality child care and jobs for spouses.

Pentagon officials have discussed the challenges of frequent military moves, which are costly for both the Defense Department and families, at different times over the years.

The most recent examination of PCS moves was in a June report from the Military Family Advisory Network, in which a 2023 survey found that frequent PCS moves can make families vulnerable to a variety of difficulties.

The organization’s 109-page report questioned whether changing the frequent shuffle between bases — which military officials argue is necessary to meet operational requirements and fill empty jobs — could affect recurring issues related to financial stability, such as military spouse unemployment, and other concerns such as children’s education.

During a health care panel at the AUSA conference, a family member asked about the frequency of moves, inquiring about the best way for families to receive continuity of health care when they move every one to three years. Furthermore, military medical providers are also being transferred every few years.

Lt. Gen. Mary Krueger Izaguirre, the Army surgeon general, said the question is also being raised within the service’s medical workforce about the thought process when making decisions about moving people.

“Does it make sense for you to move, or does it make sense for us to provide you some stability?” she said.

Soldiers should have honest conversations with their leaders about whether there’s a way to make a decision that’s appropriate for both the Army mission and their families, she said.

Izaguirre shared that a few years ago, she had a conversation with the surgeon general at the time about stabilizing her own family because of her oldest son’s health care needs.

She stayed in that job for a few years, she said, and that’s a reason she is where she is today.

WASHINGTON — The Association of the United States Army rolled out its annual exposition from Oct. 14-16 in Washington, with defense industry officials, lawmakers and military personnel from around the globe huddling to discuss the future force — and what threats may await just over the horizon.

As in previous years, the service continues its aggressive modernization push, with efforts focused on next-gen weaponry and vehicles, personnel training, long-range artillery, unmanned systems, defense capabilities, network domains and much more.

Such efforts, meanwhile, continue to be influenced by evolving conflicts abroad.

Russia’s prolonged invasion of Ukraine is dragging toward another brutal winter as manned and unmanned innovations reshape the region’s tumultuous front lines. Tensions endure in the Middle East, where regional attacks by Iranian proxies remain a looming threat to U.S. troops and allies. And arsenal developments and troop movements throughout the Indo-Pacific region continue to unfold in response to increasingly bold territorial assertions out of Beijing.

Army officials attending the conference emphasized the service’s need for flexibility and quick adaptation as the technologies, policies and spending at the core of these conflicts intersect with all corners of the globe.

Defense News and Army Times covered these discussions — and much more — from the show. Catch up on all of our top stories from this year’s AUSA conference and be sure to read more of our latest coverage at defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa.

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Modernization

All the high-tech gear the Army is bringing to soldiers

As technology advances, the gear soldiers use to survive on the battlefield and accomplish their missions becomes more sophisticated. As the epicenter of all things soldier gear, Program Executive Office-Soldier works with Army laboratories, research and development commands to deliver ready-to-field kit to troops, with gear ranging from soldiers’ boots to advanced targeting and night vision.

Army Times spoke with experts at PEO Soldier ahead of this year’s Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition in Washington, D.C, about some of the more high-tech equipment they’re developing and fielding. Read more here.

Trial by fire: How the Army banks on frontline units to test new gear

When learning recently that a prototype of the Army’s new air and missile defense radar was performing significantly better in tests than the old Patriot radar, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George had an idea.

Why not send the Raytheon-made Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, to units stationed in the Pacific, the Middle East or Europe to get a sense of how the new equipment works in field, he suggested.

The process would essentially outsource service test and evaluation procedures currently confined to controlled environments in the United States to what the Army calls the “tactical edge,” one step in a wider transformation initiative that prizes change driven by the deployed. Read more here.

How the Army’s chief of staff plans to modernize the service

The U.S. Army will ramp up its efforts to transform its formations with next-level technology including capabilities to counter drone threats much faster, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George said.

“We have to buy smart and fast,” George said in a speech at the annual Eisenhower luncheon. “Our budget is tight, our numbers are lean and that requires us to prioritize and make informed investments.”

When George became Army chief a year ago, he announced he would focus on using units in the field to transform the service “in contact,” putting capability into the hands of soldiers in realistic operational environments to advance things that work and scrap what doesn’t. Read more here.

When will the Army embrace hybrid-electric vehicles?

The Army has long tinkered with the idea of making some of its vehicles electric or hybrid, and while the technology has become commonplace in the commercial vehicle industry, the service has yet to jump on the bandwagon.

As officials hedge their bets, companies have continued to put technology in front of the service in order to show the purported benefits, arguing that the technology is ready for prime time in the Army’s modernization plans. Read more here.

Take notes, a formation like this could be coming to your unit soon

In the piney woods of Louisiana, one brigade’s new approach to reconnaissance recently illustrated the Army’s plan to undertake more complex and demanding missions with new tech and fewer soldiers. The 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, or MBCT, with 101st Airborne Division carried out their rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center in August, the culmination of months of planning, new equipment training and restructuring.

The brigade is one of three selected by the Army chief of staff to be the focus of his “Transformation in Contact” initiative, which seeks to deliver new equipment to units as they increase their readiness and prepare for deployments. Read more here.

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Training

Fighting ‘dirty’ — The Army’s plan to survive, and win, a doomsday war

Daring moves by U.S. adversaries foreshadow the return of sinister nuclear, chemical or biological weapons as technological advances promise to bring new tools of destruction to strike soldiers on future battlefields. A soldier’s new best friend may not be a rifle, or altogether new weapons, but instead a gas mask, gloves and a protective suit.

As threats evolve, the Pentagon, and specifically the Army, is reimagining how units may have to fight large-scale combat in deadly, contaminated environments. But experts in Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) defense, must also fight complacency that’s existed for generations and bureaucratic red tape. Read more here.

From CamoGPT to life skills, the Army is changing how it trains troops

As the Army has adjusted its doctrine and modernized how it prepares soldiers for leadership and combat, the service’s Training and Doctrine Command touches nearly every aspect of those initiatives. Over the past year, new programs and updates to existing training have flowed across the force.

Army Times spoke with Gen. Gary Brito, head of Training and Doctrine Command, about some of these areas and what they mean for new and career soldiers. Brito took over his current command in 2022 after serving as the Army’s deputy chief of staff over personnel. Read more here.

Soldiers exposed to new combat realities with expanded training

A new approach to training brand new recruits in large-scale combat aims to prepare soldiers for future conflicts as the Army readies the force for a potential slugfest against foes like the Russian or Chinese militaries.

In March, the service launched “Forge 2.5,” another update to “The Forge,” which began as a concept in 2016 with a 96-hour field exercise for week-seven trainees. The Forge has been in place since 2018 as a regular feature of basic training. The event closely mirrors “The Crucible,” which the Marine Corps instituted in its recruit training in the 1990s. Read more here.

How the Army is improving care in the field to keep soldiers alive

The Army is revamping how it provides lifesaving care in the field, including new hospital setup gear, ways to preserve blood on the front lines and a new combat-ready respirator to keep wounded soldiers breathing. Over the past year, Program Executive Office-Soldier added medical devices to its portfolio of all things soldier, which includes clothing, weapons, body armor and a host of other items.

The 1945th Medical Detachment is slated to stand up in late 2025 and will hold three Prolonged Care Augmentation Detachments, or PCADs, officials said. Early work on the PCADs began as all U.S. service branches acknowledged that large-scale combat operations would mean wounded soldiers might have to wait longer for care. Read more here.

Training changes on the horizon for Army Guardsmen

The Army National Guard must find new ways to train in a limited number of days each year so that their formations are ready to fight large-scale combat operations when called, Army National Guard Director Lt. Gen. Jonathan Stubbs said Tuesday at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference.

Guardsmen are generally restricted to serving 39 days each year, and in that time, soldiers must practice everything from physical training and small arms marksmanship to knocking down aerial threats or planning how to move a brigade across the globe. Read more here.

Why Army divisions must prepare to get dirty

During this past year the Army sent a division headquarters and its enablers into a large-scale, on-the-ground exercise to learn how these personnel groups will approach surviving the next war.

It was the first time in decades that division headquarters and the myriad units it would go into combat with — a combat aviation brigade, sustainment, air defense brigade and division artillery — trained together in person. But it certainly will not be the last. Read more here.

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Personnel

What ‘Transformation in Contact’ means for the enlisted soldier

Over the past year, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and his top generals have merged two constant Army initiatives: readiness and modernization. Keeping soldiers ready to fight when called and delivering them new gear, updated doctrine and time to train on their equipment and tactics is a balancing act.

Although the Transformation in Contact initiative is part of an Army-wide effort, three brigades have been selected to test out many of the on-the-ground changes, including 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky; 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division out of Hawaii; and 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, New York.

The brigades are buying commercial equipment and reconfiguring their unit structures to find out what they’ll need for a future fight. Read more here.

US Army sets ambitious new recruiting goal following years of struggle

The U.S. Army is aiming to recruit 61,000 new soldiers in the coming year, an ambitious goal that is building off of the service surpassing its goal with 55,000 new recruits in fiscal 2024 after several dismal recruiting years, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth announced Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The Army recruited 55,000 new soldiers in FY24. The service’s Delayed Entry Program goal for FY25 is 10,000, which is twice the number as FY24, Wormuth said. The delayed entry program allows enlistees to sign up but leave for initial training later, often so that they can complete high school or college.

“This goal is ambitious but we believe it is achievable,” she said. Read more here.

How saving soldiers’ lives influenced the Army’s new kit options

While new night vision and advanced drones often attract a lot of attention, soldiers know that much of their comfort and survival in training and combat often depends on what they wear. Everything from boots and weapons to first aid pouches, new bomb suits for explosives specialists and even cold weather gear comes out of Program Executive Office-Soldier.

Such items — whether it’s the new Greens uniform, a better hot-weather boot, poncho or the beloved “woobie” — are all part of what soldiers wear. Army Times spoke with gear experts at PEO Soldier ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition about some of the items soldiers wear that are being fielded, developed or improved. Read more here.

Army wants all troops on new fitness program by 2032. How’s it going so far?

The Army recently announced that its all-around health and fitness program will now expand beyond a select 111 brigades to the entire Army. Since its inception in 2018 with a pilot program, the Holistic Health and Fitness program, or H2F, has sought to educate and improve soldier performance in physical, mental, nutrition, spiritual and sleep domains.

To that end, the force has built brigade-level civilian teams of nearly two dozen contracted staff members, which include an H2F program director; nutrition, injury control and mental health directors; registered dietitians; physical therapists; athletic trainers; strength coaches; cognitive performance specialists and occupational therapists. Read more here.

How Project Polaris is gearing up the brigade by targeting the squad

The home for all things soldier gear is partnering with a host of Army entities on a project to build a better infantry brigade by working from the bottom up at the soldier and squad level. Army Times spoke with Maj. Gen. Christopher Schneider, commander of Program Executive Office-Soldier, ahead of the annual Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting and Exposition about the “Project Polaris” initiative.

Coordinating the Army’s many groups that encompass all the parts of a brigade requires significant effort. The coordination between Schneider’s command and others is now considered the service’s Close Combat Integration Enterprise, or CCIE, Schneider said.

“We have never been as aligned as we are today,” Schneider added. Read more here.

Soldiers will get $240 a month for operational deployments

Soldiers deployed for more than 60 days in an Army operation will now receive an extra $240 each month. For those already deployed, the cash benefit is retroactive to Oct. 1, said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth.

The new benefit, dubbed “operational deployment pay,” is specifically for operational deployments and does not cover exercises at the combat training centers, Wormuth said. For example, the pay is intended for brigades and battalions who’ve deployed to Europe for Operation Assurance, she said. Read more here.

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Industry

Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production

The U.S. Army has started diversifying its supplier base for 155mm artillery shells, moving away from the bottleneck of a single source that has endangered the flow of fresh ammo, according to a top service official. The service is racing toward a goal of shoring up all major single sources that provide parts or materials for 155mm munitions by the end of 2025.

“There’s going to be a lot of ribbon cuttings between now and the end of the year,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told Defense News.

The Pentagon is investing billions of dollars to increase the capacity of 155mm munition production as it races to replenish stock sent to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion, which began in early 2022, and to ensure the U.S. has what it might need should conflict erupt across multiple theaters at once. The Army planned to spend $3.1 billion in FY24 supplemental funding alone to ramp up production. Read more here.

Why the Army is looking abroad to close a widening artillery gun gap

More than two years into observing an artillery war play out in Ukraine, the U.S. Army finds its own gun technology options lacking. The service’s current arsenal is either old, as is the case of the towed M777, or lacking the desired range for future conflicts against near-peer armies, exemplified by the latest version of the Paladin self-propelled howitzer, made by BAE Systems.

The recent cancellation of an effort to mount an unwieldly long barrel on a Paladin body — length determines range, generally speaking — has forced the service to start from square one yet again. The Army quietly halted the yearslong prototyping effort, dubbed the Extended Range Cannon Artillery, or ERCA, a year ago, announcing only this March that “engineering challenges” had turned out to be insurmountable, as acquisition chief Doug Bush put it. Read more here.

US Army quits plan for next-gen Patriot missile replacement

The U.S. Army has decided to back off an effort to replace its Patriot missile with a next-generation interceptor, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space.

“We are not going to move forward on what we were calling a Lower-Tier Future Interceptor,” Lozano told Defense News in an interview at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference, adding that those scrapped plans would have been “a very expensive endeavor.”

The effort would have completed the final piece of the puzzle in a new Integrated Air and Missile Defense System. Already the service has fielded its command-and-control system, and is developing and will soon field a new radar capable of detecting threats from 360 degrees. Read more.

What the Army is planning for its vehicle-protection push

The U.S. Army wants to pursue a more layered approach to protecting combat vehicles and formations, a step away from the singular push over the last decade to outfit them with active protection systems, Army officials in charge of ground combat modernization told Defense News.

Army Futures Command has been working on a Formation Layered Protection requirement and is releasing what it calls a “characteristics of need” statement to industry. The Army is looking for ways to protect dismounted soldiers, vehicles and full formations from a variety of threats. Potential approaches include masking vehicles or hardening them with both active and passive protection tactics. Read more here.

GM Defense pitches silent-drive vehicle as heir to the Humvee

Emerging rapidly out of dense foliage, a truck swings around a bend on a washboard gravel road, but the only sound is the crunch of gravel beneath tires and the occasional ping of a rock hitting its underside.

The truck is a new hybrid vehicle that GM Defense has developed to show the Army what is possible for a Humvee-type capability that meets the needs of modern warfare. The Army does not yet have a requirement for a new Humvee, or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or something else to replace the 40-year-old vehicle with 50-year-old technology. Read more here.

How the Army’s upgrading ammo to destroy targets large and small

From pistol rounds to artillery shells, the Army is developing a host of new ways to destroy targets large and small. The service is working on one-way tracer rounds for current standard rifle ammunition and reduced-range training rounds for some of the same cartridges.

Additionally, the service is testing proximity fuses for grenade launcher rounds that would help defeat enemies behind barriers and blast drones out of the sky. Meanwhile, on the larger end of the caliber spectrum, Army scientists are building new rounds for the 120mm tank rounds they expect will be needed to defeat enemy armor. Read more here.

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International

One on one with US Army Pacific Command chief Gen. Charles Flynn

The Army has spent the last year increasing the complexity and breadth of its exercises in the Pacific while trying out new capabilities that will soon be a part of formations in the theater. Relationships with Pacific nations have grown amid continuing tensions with China, and U.S. Army Pacific chief Gen. Charles Flynn has staked out a role for land forces in a region associated primarily with air and naval power.

Defense News sat down with Flynn prior to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation. Read more here.

US Army Pacific to absorb new units under ‘transformation’ mantra

The U.S. Army command for the Indo-Pacific finds itself at the front of the service’s transformation initiative, incorporating new unit types created to facilitate rapid adaptation to adversary tactics, according to U.S. Army Pacific Command chief Gen. Charles Flynn.

Several units in the Pacific, from Hawaii to Alaska, were chosen as part of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George’s initiative, dubbed “Transforming in Contact,” Flynn said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

“But there’s a whole other transformation in contact that’s going on out here at the operational and theater level.” That transformation has to do with absorbing new organizations and capabilities designed to facilitate the quick incorporation of new tactics and technologies in the field. Read more here.

Project Convergence to plant a flag in the Pacific

The military’s massive experimentation event, Project Convergence, will plant a flag in the strategically vital Pacific region next year, the first time that U.S. and allied forces will kick the tires of the Pentagon’s latest warfighting concepts at the edge of America’s sphere of influence.

“Our large experiments need to be concept-informed, and the concepts we’re talking about are the sets of capabilities and relationships that we think we’re going to need to win in the operating environments we are going to face in the future,” said Army Brig. Gen. Zachary Miller, who heads the Joint Modernization Command at Fort Bliss, Texas. “And the priority theater for the Department of Defense is the Pacific.”

The joint force has simulated Pacific scenarios in the United States during previous iterations of the exercise, which began as an Army-only event in 2020 at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. But the experimentation campaign has never been held forward in relevant theaters aside from some peripheral activities at the Army Pacific headquarters level earlier this year. Read more here.

How the US Army is helping Ukraine with front line repairs

It starts with a message on the secure messaging app Signal.

Front line units in Ukraine see an issue with their equipment and send notes to translators, who soon share those with the U.S. military. Then, operating from one of seven stations in Poland, American forces schedule video calls with the Ukrainians to help them repair the weapons.

This is the process for the Army’s virtual repair mission to help keep equipment working as long and as close to the front line as possible in Ukraine. Read more here.

Sending THAAD to Israel adds to strain on US Army, leaders say

The deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel and roughly 100 soldiers to operate it will add to already difficult strains on the Army’s air defense forces and potential delays in modernizing its missile defense systems, Army leaders said Monday.

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. Read more here.

Army weighing sending missile defense prototypes forward into theater

Tasked by the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the service’s missiles and space shop is examining the possibility of sending new air and missile defense capabilities still in the prototype phase into theater, the program executive officer told Defense News.

“The chief has challenged us and has asked us to look at opportunities, present some options, by which we would accelerate [the Integrated Battle Command System] to the field, accelerate [the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor] to the field and accelerate some of the [Indirect Fire Protection Capability] capabilities to the field,” Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano said in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

Both the Raytheon-developed LTAMDS and Leidos’ Dynetics-made IFPC have experienced successful test events over the past year. Read more here.

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Unmanned Tech

As Ukraine builds better drones, do American firms still have a role?

In mid-September, massive explosions erupted in Toropets, a city in eastern Russia near the border with Belarus. Ukraine had struck a military warehouse, igniting bombs and missiles in what Pentagon officials later said was Russia’s largest loss of Russian ammunition during the war — hundreds of thousands of rounds destroyed.

Almost as important, though, was how Ukraine conducted the strike. Toropets is more than 300 miles from the Ukrainian border, outside the range of western weapons Kyiv wants permission to fire deep into Russia. Instead, Ukraine used drones it built alone. Read more here.

How the Army plans to remove soldiers from the deadly breach

If a collection of soldiers and scientists are successful, troops may never again have to run, on foot, into a breach, swinging a grappling hook in a scene resembling medieval foot soldiers breaking through enemy fortifications.

Instead, soldiers of the future may pilot explosives-laden drones and robotic bulldozers into the tangle of concertina wire, steel barricades and landmines. Over the past nine months, the 264th Engineer Clearance Company, with the 20th Engineer Brigade at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, began its third phase of human-machine teaming experiments. Read more here.

Make counter-drone training as routine as marksmanship: Army general

Soldiers recently deployed to the Middle East often had less than a minute to decide how to take down an incoming drone. A unit detecting, intercepting and destroying a drone often took less than four minutes, said Maj. Gen. Scott Naumann, commander of the 10th Mountain Division.

To meet that threat, the two-star is working with his unit and using a soldier-created tool to prepare troops to counter drones more effectively.

“Training [counter-drone] should be as routine as drawing our rifles, going to the range and honing our marksmanship skills,” Naumann said. Read more here.

Army closes in on autonomous boats to ferry supplies into battle

The Army is developing requirements to distribute supplies to troops on the battlefield in a contested environment using a network of autonomous boats and aircraft, according to the general in charge of logistics modernization.

“Our focus is an ecosystem looking at how we improve the supply chain, but also ensuring that we could keep that supply chain in motion — given a peer adversary like China — [when] we’re not able to [establish] fixed sites and keep them there for long periods of time,” Brig. Gen. Shane Upton, the Contested Logistics Cross Functional Team lead within Army Futures Command, told Defense News. Read more here.

For Replicator 2, Army wants AI-enabled counter-drone tech

The Army is eyeing a mix of existing and new technology to potentially scale through the second iteration of the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, including systems that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to target and intercept small-drone threats.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced last month that Replicator 2 would center on countering threats from small drones, particularly those that target “critical installations and force concentration,” he said in a Sept. 29 memo. DOD plans to propose funding as part of its fiscal 2026 budget request with a goal of fielding “meaningfully improved” counter-drone defense systems within two years. Read more here.

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