Biden’s pick to lead the Marine Corps helped design its new vision

WASHINGTON — Before Gen. Eric Smith first walked the Pentagon’s E ring as a top Marine Corps leader, the career infantry Marine led forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, South America and the Pacific.

And beginning in summer 2019, as the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, he started working with Commandant Gen. David Berger on a plan to transform the Marine Corps.

In that role, and then as the No. 2 Marine, he helped draft blueprints for a complete overhaul of the service ― known as Force Design 2030 ― with the goal of turning a Corps shaped by two decades of land wars into one able to compete against Chinese forces in particular.

Now, he could carry on the Corps’ transformational trajectory.

The White House nominated Smith to serve as the next commandant of the Marine Corps, ensuring stability for the force modernization vision that Smith himself helped craft.

The Biden administration sent its pick to Congress Tuesday, according to a congressional website.

Several of Smith’s former colleagues described the general as a personable, down-to-earth leader who cares deeply about the Marines under his command.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Watson, the commanding general of 1st Marine Division, said, “Gen. Eric Smith is an extraordinarily positive and engaged leader, with an emotional IQ well above the average.”

“I found him to be one of the most supportive bosses I’ve ever had.”

From Texas to the Pentagon

Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Plano, Texas, according to his official Marine Corps biography. Even now, he often makes reference to his Texas upbringing, and he is a fan of the Texas Rangers and country music.

He attended Texas A&M University — a public school with a strong emphasis on preparing military officers — on a Navy ROTC scholarship, following in the footsteps of his older brother.

In August 1984, in the first days of Smith’s sophomore year, a new member of the university’s Corps of Cadets, Bruce Goodrich, died after three juniors hazed him for an hour in the hot Texas weather. The tragedy stunned the campus.

While there’s no public record of Smith discussing Goodrich’s death, it’s an event that would have shaped his experience at the university and his formative years as a midshipman.

As a senior, Smith served as the commander of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band, a precise marching band made up of the university’s Corps of Cadets, according to the university’s yearbook.

He met his wife, Trish, on a blind date at the football stadium, according to a profile on the Texas A&M fundraising foundation’s website.

After receiving his commission in 1987, Smith became an infantry officer — a path that most commandants have taken. He served in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm before returning to his alma mater as an NROTC instructor, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

He has made several other deployments: to Liberia and Venezuela early in his career, to Iraq twice and to Afghanistan for a one-year deployment.

On his first deployment to Iraq, he was shot at least once, in the leg while moving from one base to another, he told NBC News in 2005.

But, as he prepared for a second deployment to Iraq, he told the interviewer he was more concerned about maintaining the Corps’ legacy than about getting shot at again.

“We have a saying that the Marine Corps is like a little glass Christmas ornament, if you will,” he said. “You can drop it, but only once. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

“And the people who built the legacy that we live on, this eagle, globe and anchor, from Iwo Jima, they’re gone,” he continued. “You can’t apologize to them for soiling the reputation of the Marine Corps.”

As a general officer, Smith went on to lead Marine Corps Forces Southern Command, in 2015; 1st Marine Division, from 2017–2018; and III Marine Expeditionary Force, from 2018–2019.

He also had stints as the senior military adviser to the defense secretary and as the assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations.

Retired Marine Col. Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense who worked closely with Smith when the general served as Work’s senior military adviser nearly a decade ago, said, “Eric Smith is the consummate professional: Intelligent, knowledgeable, empathetic and civil.”

“He was unafraid to tell me when I was about to do something wrong or had done something wrong,” Work said.

Force Design 2030

As the commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, headquartered in Okinawa, Japan, Smith got a first-hand look at the forces at the heart of the Corps’ Force Design modernization.

The Force Design 2030 overhaul started with a basic premise: China is the United States’ pacing threat and is making great strides in boosting its maritime forces.

If the Marine Corps, itself a maritime force, wanted to play a role in deterring China, the Corps needed to reshape itself.

Smith played an integral part in the plan’s development and early execution while serving as deputy commandant for combat development and integration.

Jeopardizing national security: What is happening to our Marine Corps?

As part of Force Design 2030, the Corps has made changes, such as shedding heavy gear like tanks, upgrading to longer-range weapons, building a web of sensors, empowering small unit leaders, investing in the lift and logistics to support distributed operations, and more.

Though Force Design 2030 generally has found acceptance at the top levels of the Defense Department and in Congress, it sparked an extraordinary — and public — backlash from retired Marine leaders.

Several retired generals penned opinion essays decrying Force Design and urging the Marine Corps and Congress to halt the overhaul, which they said would leave the service less prepared to confront a range of crises.

Despite the criticism, Berger repeatedly has said that classified intelligence supports the direction the force is moving in. The ascension of his No. 2, Smith, to the No. 1 job in the Corps would confirm the service will continue on that path.

Despite the inherent complexity of the Force Design effort, Smith often simplifies the message with his signature Texas anecdotes.

In a panel discussion at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference in April, Smith compared the lack of deployed Marine expeditionary units on amphibious ships to the lack of security at his hometown convenience store.

Smith spoke of the Mr. Ed food store that he and his brothers would visit, which had a sign in the window that read, “This establishment is protected by an armed security guard three nights a week. You guess which three.”

“Sounds like Texas bravado,” Smith said. “It sounded like deterrence — I didn’t know what deterrence was then, but the older I got, though, and in my current job, I realize that’s not deterrence, that’s an invitation, because that’s four nights a week” without protection.

Smith has spoken repeatedly about the need to maintain a fleet of at least 31 amphibious ships, and the fight over the future of that ship fleet would certainly follow Smith into the commandant’s seat.

During the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security May 9, Smith was asked to preview what else was upcoming for Force Design 2030 — items he himself would oversee if confirmed as the next commandant.

He spoke of standing up a second Marine littoral regiment, a new kind of unit that emphasizes Force Design principles, which will be based in Japan. He also mentioned increasing the number of Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System anti-ship missile batteries, and fielding loitering munitions, or suicide drones, to make distributed forces more lethal and survivable.

Asked if he was worried about the success of Force Design 2030 once its chief architect retires, Smith said no.

“It’s fact-based and threat-informed,” he said.

Watson noted Smith was “the quarterback behind the initial implementation of Force Design 2030″ but also “has also been the driver behind the wargaming, experimentation and analysis that has led the Corps to Force Design 2030 refinements over time.”

Smith’s ‘No. 1 priority’

Smith also has made a name for himself in the way he’s cared for Marines, his former senior enlisted advisers said.

Soon after Smith took command of III Marine Expeditionary Force, he tasked Sgt. Maj. Mario Marquez with improving the quality of life for troops and their families.

The changes to long-standing policies that Smith made as part of this effort boosted morale, said Marquez, who is now retired.

The general loosened restrictions on how late Marines could stay out after work, he made it easier for junior enlisted Marines to get authorization to drive, and he drove changes that made it cheaper for families to move to and from Okinawa, Japan.

“Taking care of people is his No. 1 priority and always has been,” Marquez said.

The retired sergeant major said he believed Smith, if confirmed, would bring that attitude and focus to the Corps’ top job.

Even as Smith made some rules more lax as the head of III Marine Expeditionary Force, he still cared deeply about discipline, according to Marquez.

“Customs, courtesies and iron-clad discipline is what keeps you alive on the battlefield,” Smith said on the BruteCast podcast in August 2022.

Smith himself previously has spoken about the importance of looking out for the men and women he leads.

In a November 2018 Marine article, a Marine asked the then-commanding general which superpower he’d want to have.

“I’d probably want to be able to read minds so I know what people are really thinking,” Smith said.

“It’s hard, the older you get and the more senior you are, people don’t want to tell you stuff. I ask them, ‘Hey, Marines, how’s it going? Everything’s fine? You’re getting all the repair parts you need?’ and they say, ‘Sir, everything’s fine. Yeah, we got everything,’ when it’s not good and they don’t.”

As the two-star in charge of 1st Marine Division in 2017, he led a crackdown on hazing that ended with nearly 30 Marines confined to the brig and at least 18 administratively separated. A Marine Corps Times investigation later confirmed the division had a serious hazing problem.

Judges from the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals in February 2018 rebuked Smith for showing “personal interest” and bias in going after those accused of hazing.

The judges pointed in particular to Smith’s sharply worded emails to other leaders, including one in which he complained, “I’ve just been flipped the bird by lots of” lance corporals.

Despite the reproach Smith received from the appeals court, he soon pinned on a third star and served as the leader of some of the most prominent commands in the Corps.

Smith earned a reputation for being a skilled, hard-working Marine, in addition to being kind, according to retired Sgt. Maj. Tom Eggerling, who served as the top enlisted Marine for Combat Development Command while Smith was its commanding general.

Well before they met or worked together, Eggerling heard other Marines say of Smith, “He’s going to be the commandant one day.”

Now, that may finally happen. But all Defense Department nominees currently face a hurdle: Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, is blocking a list of military nominees that will grow to include service chiefs for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and dozens of other flag and general officer positions for commands around the globe.

Tuberville is protesting a Pentagon policy related to abortion and has thus far not shown any signs of backing down and allowing the Senate’s vetting and confirmation process to continue.

Eggerling recalled walking through the barracks at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, with Smith when they came across a young Marine on duty who mentioned that he had just gotten promoted to corporal that day.

Smith asked the corporal, “Can you call your mom?”

Smith and Eggerling spoke with the young Marine’s mother on FaceTime, telling her how proud they were of him, Eggerling recalled.

“Eric Smith is as genuine as they come,” Eggerling said.

Auditors: Over 1 million F-35 spare parts lost by DoD and Lockheed

WASHINGTON — More than 1 million F-35 spare parts worth at least $85 million have gone missing over at least the last five years, according to a new Government Accountability Office report criticizing the program’s supply tracking.

Auditors said that because the government doesn’t have its own system tracking those parts, officials may not truly know how many spare parts are actually in the global spares pool, where they are, or their total value.

As a result, “the full quantity and value of these [lost] spare parts may be significantly higher” than the 1 million tally determined by the main contractor, Lockheed Martin, the document reads.

And disagreements between Defense Department offices and the main F-35 contractor, Lockheed Martin, over how to categorize missing parts are holding up the government’s effort to create its own reliable system to keep track of the parts, the GAO report states.

In short, the F-35 program can’t know whether contractors are properly managing spares, according to auditors, who have tracked losses going to back to 2018.

In a statement to Defense News, Lockheed Martin said the tally of spare parts listed as lost in the report cover the last two decades of the program.

Lockheed Martin said it is working with the F-35 Joint Program Office and the Defense Contract Management Agency to make sure they have the documentation needed to support disposing of components that staff judged to be “excess, obsolete or unserviceable.”

“Lockheed Martin manages F-35 spare part inventory in compliance with contract requirements,” the company told Defense News. “We continue to partner with the Joint Program Office to increase insight into spare part availability and support fleet readiness.”

The F-35′s program office said in an email to Defense News that it also agreed with GAO’s recommendations on ways to improve tracking of spare parts — but said “we know where the vast majority of F-35 spare parts are in the global supply chain.”

The Defense Department office pointed to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement rules that said programs should strive to have their recorded inventories accurate about 95% of the time, and said the F-35 program exceeds that goal.

“At this time, our error rate is around 1%,” the program office said. “While this is considered much better than the government goal of 5%, we will continue to work with the services and our industry partners to improve spare parts accountability and drive readiness for our warfighters.”

The JPO also said that F-35 spare parts are now being tracked through a non-government system, but that it is working with industry to move the data to a government system.

The international F-35 program, which includes the United States and other nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Canada, Israel, Japan and South Korea, has what GAO called a “unique” system for managing its spare parts. All participants in the program worldwide have access to a global pool of spare parts — everything from engines, tires, landing gear and support equipment down to bolts and screws — that the Defense Department owns until a part is installed on a fighter.

But while DoD owns the spare parts that all nations flying F-35s rely upon, Lockheed Martin, which builds and repairs most of the F-35′s air frame, and Pratt & Whitney, which handles the F-35′s engines, manage the global pool. Those parts are stored in more than 50 domestic and international facilities run by contractors other than Lockheed and Pratt.

Part of the problem with parts tracking lies in the Pentagon’s decision a decade ago to shift course on who owns them, GAO said. Originally, the U.S. military didn’t intend to own those parts, GAO said, but in 2012 the F-35 program issued a memo that said they belong to the U.S. government until they’re installed on a fighter.

But the Pentagon didn’t draw up a plan to maintain accountability over those F-35 parts and equipment, GAO said, as Lockheed and Pratt continued to be responsible for them and provide data on them.

Auditors also said the vast majority of lost F-35 parts don’t get adjudicated to review the circumstances behind their loss, figure out whether the government or a contractor was responsible and identify the root causes of what caused a part to go missing.

Of those 1 million lost spare parts over the last five years, Lockheed Martin submitted about 60,000 parts worth about $19 million to the JPO to be adjudicated, GAO said. The JPO finished adjudicating fewer than 20,000 missing spare parts.

Lost parts that were not reported to the JPO include 35 actuator doors worth more than $3.2 million, and 14 batteries worth more than $2.1 million, which were lost in the last three months of 2019, the report said.

A debate that has been going on since 2015 between several Pentagon offices and the two main contractors over how these parts should be categorized is also hampering efforts to better track parts. The JPO, Pratt, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, and the Defense Contract Management Agency’s aircraft propulsion office believe these spare parts should be considered government-furnished property, GAO said.

But Lockheed and DCMA’s office in Fort Worth, Texas, disagree, GAO said.

The JPO wants Lockheed Martin to report lost parts in a system called the GFP Module, which tracks government-furnished property, GAO said. The JPO said it is working with the Pentagon and Lockheed to figure out how to make that happen, considering Lockheed doesn’t consider these parts to be government-furnished property — but those talks “are in the early stages,” GAO said.

The F-35 program also has more than 19,000 parts in the global spares pool that are unusable because they are either extra, obsolete, or unserviceable, GAO said. Those parts have been sitting anywhere from a few months to five years while the site personnel have awaited instructions on how to dispose of them.

Some of these parts can be reused elsewhere within DoD, donated to other organizations such as state governments, sold as scrap, or destroyed, GAO said. But because Lockheed is not using the GFP Module to ask the JPO for instructions on what to do with these parts, it is instead informing the JPO about unusable parts on an “ad hoc” basis, the report said.

GAO auditors recommend in their report that William LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, take steps to make sure all spare F-35 parts worldwide are categorized in the right way and are accountable under a contract, and update policies to make it clearer when parts are considered government-furnished property.

Auditors also said LaPlante should work with the F-35 program executive officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, to issue a process for contractors to report lost spare parts, and to make sure instructions are issued on how to get rid of excess or otherwise unusable spare parts, until those parts are entered into the GFP Module to be adjudicated or track their disposal.

Poland buys 800 Hellfire missiles to arms its new attack helicopters

WARSAW, Poland — The Polish government has signed a deal to purchase 800 Hellfire II missiles that are to be carried by a new fleet of attack helicopters, with a request to buy Boeing AH-64E Apaches still in the pipeline.

The contract for the sale of the missiles, which are manufactured by Lockheed Martin, was inked by the ministry’s Armament Agency and the United States Army Security Assistance Command (USASAC).

The deal is worth about $150 million, according to officials. Deliveries are slated to begin this year and stretch through 2029.

Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said in a tweet Tuesday that the weapons are meant to arm “our AW149 support helicopters, and, eventually, the AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters.”

In July 2022, Poland’s government signed a deal to acquire 32 AW149 helos produced by Italy’s Leonardo. Deliveries of the aircraft are scheduled for the years 2023 to 2029. The contract includes a logistics package, as well as training and simulators.

Also last year, the Polish defense ministry sent a letter of request to the United States government to purchase 96 Boeing AH-64E Apaches. Under the plan, the copters would first be deployed to the military’s 18th Mechanized Division. Based in Siedlce, about 91 km (56.5 miles) east of Poland’s capital Warsaw, the division has been designated a bulwark against a potential Russian invasion, according to local defense officials.

Maxar explores new uses for Earth observation satellites

ST. LOUIS — Maxar Technologies, which provides satellite imagery to the Defense Department and intelligence community, is considering how its Earth-facing spacecraft sensors could serve a dual-purpose in observing objects and activity in orbit.

The company is one of three firms on contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that develops and operates spy satellites, to provide imagery over the next 10 years through its Electro-Optical Commercial layer program, or EOCL.

Maxar’s contract, awarded in 2022 and valued at more than $3 billion, is largely focused on providing imagery of the Earth but it includes a provision to experiment with using its satellites to provide “non-Earth” data, which includes high-resolution imagery of the space environment.

Tony Frazier, Maxar’s executive vice president and general manager for public sector Earth intelligence, said the company is doing “a limited collection” of this type of imagery, and is discussing with the Pentagon how its satellites could be used for this mission.

“Part of what we’re doing is we’re educating them on that and making sure they’re taking full advantage of that investment, but then also making them aware of additional capabilities that we’re adding that currently aren’t supported through the program,” Frazier told C4ISRNET in a May 23 interview at the GEOINT Conference in St. Louis. “An example that has been super interesting and has kind of led to new conversations with the Department of Defense is around what we’re doing with non-Earth imaging.”

Frazier characterized Maxar’s work in this area as being in the “study and evaluation phase,” adding that it could inform future requirements. He said that while Maxar builds its satellites “with a sense of enduring missions in mind,” it also considered the possibility that they could be used in new ways, especially as the government looks to protect satellites from new threats in space.

“It’s a way that we can actually get more utility out of the constellation,” he said.

Improving domain awareness

Satellites that observe activity in orbit contribute to what DoD calls space domain awareness. The mission is a high priority for U.S. Space Command and the Space Force as they grow increasingly concerned about congestion and debris in low Earth orbit, located about 1,200 miles above the planet, and aggression from adversaries like Russia and China.

The Space Force uses a mix of ground-based and in-space sensors to conduct the space domain awareness mission. Its fleet of radars, known as the Space Surveillance Network, observe space from the ground and feed data into command and control systems that catalog space objects.

The service also has sensors in orbit that provide domain awareness and, in partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office, will launch its newest space observation satellites this summer, dubbed Silent Barker.

SPACECOM provides the data collected by those sensors to government, civil and commercial agencies.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyses satellite imagery and turns it into usable data, also coordinates with the service and SPACECOM on intelligence it receives about in-space objects and activities.

NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth told reporters during a May 22 briefing his team is considering how it might grow those partnerships and is considering making room for more Space Force operators to serve within the agency.

“I’m really excited about where we might take the relationship,” he said. “I’ve asked the team to explore whether we have the right number of Space Force billets in our own team. And I sense that this year will be a year of definition as to our official relationship with the Space Force.”

NRO Director Chris Scolese, said during a speech at the conference that the agency is working with the Space Force to make sure the commercial satellite imagery it collects is “available as broadly as possible.”

Malaysia adds funds to troubled littoral combat ship program

SINGAPORE — Malaysia is pumping more money into its troubled Littoral Combat Ship program, despite reductions in capabilities and scheduling delays.

The government announced the move during the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace Exhibition last week, signing its sixth supplementary contract with shipbuilder Boustead Naval Shipyard on May 26.

This latest contract will see Malaysia pay an additional $430 million for the ships, which are based on the Gowind-class frigate by France’s Naval Group. Malaysia will also reduce the number of ships it will receive under the revised contract from six to five, and accept an additional delay to the ships’ deliveries.

Under the new delivery schedule, Boustead Naval Shipyard will deliver the lead ship — KD Maharaja Lela — in 2026, seven years after the originally planned date. The company will deliver the final ship, KD Tok Janggut, in 2029, five years later than initially planned.

Malaysia’s Finance Ministry will take over the shipbuilder by setting up of a special-purpose vehicle to acquire Boustead Naval Shipyard from its parent company, Boustead Heavy Industries Corp.

Malaysia selected the Gowind design for its second-generation patrol vessel program in 2011, awarding a $1.96 billion contract to Boustead Heavy Industries for the six ships, with construction to take place in Lumut, Malaysia. The government subsequently renamed the effort as the Littoral Combat Ship program.

The lead ship, KD Maharaja Lela, launched in August 2017, but the program was soon plagued by construction delays and cost overruns. A parliamentary public accounts committee launched an investigation into the program, during which members visited the shipyard and interviewed a former defense minister, among other defense and company officials.

The committee revealed in August 2022 that work on the ships had completely halted by then. It also alleged that $300 million was misappropriated from the program, which led to fraud charges leveled against Boustead Heavy Industries’ former managing director, Ahmad Ramli Mohammad Nor.

See the tech at Malaysia’s aerospace, maritime defense expo

‘Adversarial AI’ a threat to military systems, Shift5′s Lospinoso says

Josh Lospinoso’s first cybersecurity startup was acquired in 2017 by Raytheon/Forcepoint. His second, Shift5, works with the U.S. military, rail operators and airlines including JetBlue. A 2009 West Point grad and Rhodes Scholar, the 36-year-old former Army captain spent more than a decade authoring hacking tools for the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command.

Lospinoso recently told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee how artificial intelligence can help protect military operations. The CEO/programmer discussed the subject with The Associated Press as well how software vulnerabilities in weapons systems are a major threat to the U.S. military. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: In your testimony, you described two principal threats to AI-enabled technologies: One is theft. That’s self-explanatory. The other is data poisoning. Can you explain that?

A: One way to think about data poisoning is as digital disinformation. If adversaries are able to craft the data that AI-enabled technologies see, they can profoundly impact how that technology operates.

Q: Is data poisoning happening?

A: We are not seeing it broadly. But it has occurred. One of the best-known cases happened in 2016. Microsoft released a Twitter chatbot it named Tay that learned from conversations it had online. Malicious users conspired to tweet abusive, offensive language at it. Tay began to generate inflammatory content. Microsoft took it offline.

Q: AI isn’t just chatbots. It has long been integral to cybersecurity, right?

A: AI is used in email filters to try to flag and segregate junk mail and phishing lures. Another example is endpoints, like the antivirus program on your laptop – or malware detection software that runs on networks. Of course, offensive hackers also use AI to try defeat those classification systems. That’s called adversarial AI.

Q: Let’s talk about military software systems. An alarming 2018 Government Accountability Office report said nearly all newly developed weapons systems had mission critical vulnerabilities. And the Pentagon is thinking about putting AI into such systems?

A: There are two issues here. First, we need to adequately secure existing weapons systems. This is a technical debt we have that is going to take a very long time to pay. Then there is a new frontier of securing AI algorithms – novel things that we would install. The GAO report didn’t really talk about AI. So forget AI for a second. If these systems just stayed the way that they are, they’re still profoundly vulnerable.

We are discussing pushing the envelope and adding AI-enabled capabilities for things like improved maintenance and operational intelligence. All great. But we’re building on top of a house of cards. Many systems are decades old, retrofitted with digital technologies. Aircraft, ground vehicles, space assets, submarines. They’re now interconnected. We’re swapping data in and out. The systems are porous, hard to upgrade, and could be attacked. Once an attacker gains access, it’s game over.

Sometimes it’s easier to build a new platform than to redesign existing systems’ digital components. But there is a role for AI in securing these systems. AI can be used to defend if someone tries to compromise them.

Q: You testified that pausing AI research, as some have urged, would be a bad idea because it would favor China and other competitors. But you also have concerns about the headlong rush to AI products. Why?

A: I hate to sound fatalistic, but the so-called “burning-use” case seems to apply. A product rushed to market often catches fire (gets hacked, fails, does unintended damage). And we say, ‘Boy, we should have built in security.’ I expect the pace of AI development to accelerate, and we might not pause enough to do this in a secure and responsible way. At least the White House and Congress are discussing these issues.

Q: It seems like a bunch of companies – including in the defense sector — are rushing to announce half-baked AI products.

A: Every tech company and many non-tech companies have made almost a jarring pivot toward AI. Economic dislocations are coming. Business models are fundamentally going to change. Dislocations are already happening or are on the horizon — and business leaders are trying to not get caught flat-footed.

Q: What about the use of AI in military decision-making such as targeting?

A: I do not, categorically do not, think that artificial intelligence algorithms — the data that we’re collecting — are ready for prime time for a lethal weapon system to be making decisions. We are just so far from that.

Debt ceiling agreement locks in Biden’s proposed defense budget

WASHINGTON — The debt ceiling agreement negotiated between House Republican leaders and the White House would cap the defense budget topline at President Joe Biden’s $886 billion request for fiscal 2024, a 3.3% increase over this year.

It would also cut non-defense spending to $704 billion. The compromise legislation comes after weeks of negotiations between the Biden administration and House Republicans, who demanded non-defense spending cuts and several other concessions in order to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a U.S. default.

“We cut spending year-over-year for the first time in over a decade while fully funding national defense and veterans’ health benefits,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a statement upon introducing the compromise bill Sunday.

While the agreement grows the defense topline to Biden’s proposed $886 billion, numerous Republican defense hawks in Congress have already lambasted that proposal as “inadequate” for not keeping pace with inflation. In March, when the budget request was released, they pushed for a 3% to 5% increase over inflation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaking on Fox News on Sunday after details first emerged, said the deal “increases defense spending below inflation.”

“The Biden defense budget was a joke before, and if we adopt it as Republicans, we will be doing a big disservice to the party of Ronald Reagan,” said Graham. “I like Kevin [McCarthy] a lot, but don’t tell me that the Biden defense budget fully funds the military.”

The bill also authorizes a 1% increase for both defense and non-defense spending in FY25. That would put the FY25 defense spending topline at $895 billion.

If Congress does not pass all 12 appropriations bills by the end of December, the debt deal mandates a full-year continuing resolution to fund the government with a 1% budget cut that would apply to defense and non-defense spending alike.

The House and Senate are expected to vote on the legislation later this week. The Treasury Department has said it expects to run out of money to pay its bills by June 5. If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by that date, the government may have to suspend payments to troops, veterans and defense contractors.

Ukraine’s Kinzhal intercepts should cool hypersonic hype

In the past two weeks Ukraine reportedly intercepted seven Russian Kinzhal missiles – which travel at hypersonic speeds – using its Patriot missile defense system. It is widely believed that Patriot and other current missile defenses could not stop hypersonic weapons, which travel at speeds over Mach five, or five times the speed of sound.

So, what’s going on?

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

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

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

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

This analysis has two important implications.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swarms of AI-fueled drones, vehicles track targets in AUKUS tests

WASHINGTON — A swarm of Australian, U.K. and U.S. artificial intelligence-enabled air and ground vehicles collaboratively detected and tracked targets during testing overseas.

The trials conducted by the AUKUS partners delivered several “world firsts,” including the live re-training and international exchange of AI models, according to the U.K. Ministry of Defence, which disclosed the news May 26, a month after testing.

More than 70 military and civilian defense personnel and industry players participated in the experiment, part of the AUKUS Advanced Capabilities Pillar, or Pillar 2, established to expedite the trilateral development of critical technologies, such as AI, quantum, cyber and hypersonics. Pillar 1 — more discussed — aims to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Abe Denmark, the U.S. senior adviser to the secretary of defense for AUKUS, in a statement said the April demonstration was “truly a shared effort.”

Small drones launched from ‘wherever’ excel in US Army experiment

Together, teams developed models, directed different nations’ uncrewed aerial vehicles and evaluated performance. The joint deployments in the field featured Blue Bear Ghost and Insitu CT220 drones; Challenger 2 main battle tanks and Warrior armored vehicles; Viking uncrewed ground vehicles; a commercial FV433 Abbot self-propelled artillery gun; and a former Eastern Bloc BMP OT-90, an infantry fighting vehicle.

“By pooling our expertise and resources through our AUKUS partnerships,” Denmark said, “we can ensure that our militaries are equipped with the latest and most effective tools to defend our nations and uphold the principles of freedom and democracy around the world.”

Australian, U.K. and U.S. leaders have described AI as critical to international competitiveness in many sectors, finance, health and defense among them. By sharing AI and its underpinnings, the U.K. Ministry of Defence said in its announcement, the friendly militaries can figure out interoperability now, and not later, as well as save time and money.

https://www.federaltimes.com/federal-oversight/2023/05/25/biden-seeks-legislation-to-invest-in-australia-uk-defense-industries/

The U.S. Department of Defense’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint featured a $1.8 billion allocation for AI, with Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks describing it as a “key technology” area. The department catalogued at least 685 ongoing AI projects as of early 2021, including several tied to major weapons systems.