Defense Innovation Unit embed to connect INDOPACOM to commercial tech

WASHINGTON — A Defense Innovation Unit embed will serve as the Chief Technology Officer for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s new Joint Mission Accelerator Directorate, helping the organization connect with the commercial sector.

Adm. John Aquilino, commander of INDOPACOM, announced the creation of the directorate at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense conference in Washington. The office will work to ensure the command’s top priority programs have a network of support within the Defense Department and industry.

As the Pentagon’s liaison to commercial companies, the DIU official embedded in the directorate will play a key role in making sure the connection between technological needs and industry solutions is strong, DIU Director Doug Beck told reporters Aug. 29 on the sidelines of the conference.

“The person will be somebody who is that dual-fluency talent, who combines deep expertise in relevant technical areas from the commercial sector as well as doing it live at DIU in a leadership role for a while, working with concrete commercial solutions to DoD problems,” Beck said.

The leader, who will serve as the Joint Mission Accelerator Directorate’s deputy director as well as the CTO, will be joined by a team of DIU staff working throughout INDOCPACOM, he added.

Through its Defense Engagement Team, DIU has officials embedded in other combatant commands and units throughout the military services, including U.S. European Command and U.S. Special Operations Command. Beck said the arrangement with INDOPACOM is part of an effort to “dramatically” build the commercial innovation organization’s presence within existing offices.

“This is about taking that capability and going to a whole other level,” he said. “This is an embed role that’s about being part of the team to help solve a problem . . . help identify where the places are that commercial technology can make a difference.”

In a separate speech at the conference, Beck said the expansion of DIU’s partnerships within the Defense Department is part of a deliberate shift toward fielding military-relevant commercial technologies at a larger scale.

That means “being disruptors of the team to disruptors on the team,” he said. While DIU will maintain its focus on finding commercial capabilities and “serving them up,” Beck hopes that building deeper relationships within the department will help the organization “understand the demand signal and then make sure that we can help find the solutions to those problem.”

“There was a time when disruptors of the team was what was needed,” Beck said. “Now, what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to be disruptors on the team. And that’s about disruption at scale.”

DIU has crafted a plan for this expanded role, which Beck said is awaiting review and approval from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

US State Department approves JASSM-ER missile sale to Japan

MELBOURNE, Australia — The U.S. State Department has approved a possible sale of stealthy air-launched standoff cruise missiles to Japan.

Under the potential deal, the U.S. ally would buy 50 Lockheed Martin AGM-158B/B-2 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles with Extended Range through the Foreign Military Sales program, according to an Aug. 28 announcement by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.

The planned sale, which the DSCA said is worth $104 million, will also include JASSM anti-jam GPS receivers, training missiles, as well as other spares and support equipment.

“The proposed sale will improve Japan’s capability to meet current and future threats by providing stand-off capability via advanced, long-range strike systems for employment on Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) fighter aircraft including but not limited to the F-15J,” the agency added.

The proposed sale now goes before Congress, during which quantities and price tags can change.

Japan plans to upgrade 68 of its Mitsubishi-built F-15J Eagle interceptors with new radars, mission computers and a standoff land-attack capability. The country had specifically planned for the JASSM weapon to provide the latter capability for its upgraded jets.

The Asian nation also plans to operate a future fleet of 147 F-35 jets that can employ the JASSM. Japan is currently on track to be the largest non-U.S. operator of the fifth-generation stealth fighter.

The AGM-158B JASSM-ER can deliver a 1,000-pound warhead up to 575 miles away, while the longer-range AGM-158B-2 has a warhead weighing 2,000 pounds with a range of 1,200 miles.

Other Japanese media outlets have reported the country is considering fitting a standoff missile capability on its Kawasaki C-2 airlifters, with the JASSM and the U.S. Air Force’s Rapid Dragon system cited as a possible option.

Japan has sought to acquire long-range land-attack capabilities in recent years as it seeks the capability to strike at potential threats as well as counter North Korean ballistic missiles or attempts by an adversary to seize Japan’s southern islands.

It had previously avoided acquiring such capabilities, as it deemed them too aggressive and in violation of its pacifist post-war constitution, which limited Japan’s self-defense forces to possessing capabilities required only for defending the Japanese mainland.

Future fighter program poses key test for US Air Force’s design method

DAYTON, Ohio — The futuristic Next Generation Air Dominance fighter platform now in the works is likely to be one of the most complex, highest-stakes weapon acquisitions in the U.S. Air Force’s history.

The sixth-generation fighter jet is expected to include new technologies ranging from cutting-edge adaptive engines to an autonomous drone flying alongside its wings. If NGAD works as the service hopes, it could prove critical in a potential war against China.

But in recent years, the advanced digital engineering techniques the Air Force once thought would lead to a revolution in rapid aircraft development and fielding have not always panned out. The concept allows engineers to create designs or models to test assumptions more quickly and accurately. And with digital engineering expected to play a central role in the NGAD effort, experts say the service will have to ensure the technique lives up to its promise.

This isn’t the first time the Air Force looked to a digital design revolution to usher in a new generation of aircraft. During the service’s last major new jet acquisition, the T-7A Red Hawk trainer, the Air Force and manufacturer Boeing promised the program would lead to a fresh way of designing and building future aircraft.

The service was so bullish on the potential benefits of a future built on digital aircraft engineering that in 2020 it made a short-lived attempt to rebrand the trainer the “eT-7,” and also dub future aircraft designed in this way with an “e” prefix.

Since then, a series of missteps and delays have pushed back key milestones on the T-7 — and caused a bit of the shine to rub off from its much-heralded digital design approach.

In a May breakfast, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made clear the extent to which digital engineering had lost its luster in the wake of the T-7′s troubles.

“It is a significant improvement, but it has been overhyped,” Kendall told reporters. “More integrated digital designs, better modeling all help, but they’re not revolutionary. … They don’t replace testing entirely.”

‘Not a magic wand’

Digital engineering has been around in one form or another since the 1970s, said Heather Penney, a senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Computer-aided design helped shape many aircraft in use today, including the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, F-22 Raptor jet and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The concept evolved as processing, algorithms, modeling and simulation improved, she explained. Now, Penney said, digital engineering can include everything from 3D models of individual aircraft parts — fuel pumps, hydraulic lines, electrical system bundles and more — to models of how an aircraft’s various systems interact with one another or the aircraft as a whole.

Having this type of digital model doesn’t only inform the aircraft’s design, she said, but also shapes the tooling and manufacturing of the aircraft. As an example of a significant advancement this technology can provide, she pointed to Boeing’s “amazing” ability to use digital processes to fabricate T-7 components so accurately that they fit together without needing shims. And she highlighted the B-21 and the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile as examples of complex and so-far successful Air Force acquisitions that made tremendous use of digital engineering.

But, she noted, “it’s not a magic wand that waves away any bumps [in] design,” and can’t take the place of solid engineering fundamentals.

An aerodynamic instability in the T-7 known as “wing rock,” in which its wings could have dangerously rocked back-and-forth in some flight conditions, was fixed in 2021, but was one of several factors that prompted the Air Force and Boeing to start to rethink its schedule in 2022.

Additional issues, including an escape system and ejection seat that could endanger the T-7′s pilots, as well as glitches with its flight control software, led to further delays.

For “the eT-7, digital engineering was going to make this airplane go fast, the design was going to go fast, it was going to knit everybody together, it was going to be a bumpless design process,” Penney said. “What our experience with the eT-7 has been is that digital engineering is just a tool. You still have to get the engineering right.”

Penney said blame for the T-7′s problems, like those with its ejection seat system, can’t be laid at the feet of digital engineering — but notably, digital modeling failed to catch the T-7′s issues in advance.

In roundtables with reporters at the Air Force’s Life Cycle Industry Days, held July 31-Aug. 1 in Ohio, officials described how the service is trying to expand its approach to digital engineering by spreading the benefits throughout the entire life span of an aircraft — in a concept it calls digital materiel management.

In a June whitepaper, Air Force Materiel Command said digital materiel management aims to dramatically accelerate and streamline the processes of designing, creating and sustaining aircraft or other systems by using digital methods throughout their life cycles, from the initial idea to retirement.

“We’re playing the long game,” said Brig. Gen. Dale White, the Air Force’s program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft. “That is critically important. If you just look at digital through the lens of design and development and test, you’re going to limit yourself. We all know the majority of the funding is spent on the sustainment tail.”

“And so being able to make decisions that you couldn’t normally make before, because you didn’t have that amount of information this early in the process, really is a game changer,” continued White, who oversees the NGAD program.

By having a single digital trail following an aircraft through its entire life cycle, officials argue, it will be easier to carry out techniques such as predictive maintenance, which helps track exactly how long parts have been on a plane and leads to their replacement before they are likely to fail.

Certainly, the concept can work, but the Government Accountability Office found in a December 2022 report that the military hasn’t taken full advantage of it. Technology limitations are hampering widespread adoption of predictive maintenance, such as problems with older information systems and a lack of digitized maintenance manuals.

The military reported “predictive maintenance has enabled pilots to avoid helicopter aircraft accidents and identify failures that were undetected by mechanics, avoid maintenance costs, and redirect maintenance personnel to other work creating cost efficiencies,” GAO said in the report. But “the examples are from limited experience. [And] in order to implement predictive maintenance more broadly, changes will be necessary to mainstream business processes to address resource challenges from personnel, parts, and technology.”

“According to military service officials, unplanned maintenance — which adversely affects costs and operations — can be reduced through greater use of predictive maintenance,” the report read. “Military service officials acknowledge that, while they have examples of improvements they attribute to predictive maintenance implementation, the examples are from limited experience, and the military services generally lack metrics to evaluate the results of predictive maintenance.”

Next-gen propulsion

In May, the Air Force took its most significant public step forward to date on NGAD when it announced it had sent industry a classified solicitation for an engineering and manufacturing development contract for the secretive program. The Air Force also said it plans to award the contract in 2024, with Lockheed Martin and Boeing widely expected to be the two remaining bidders. The Air Force hopes to have NGAD in production by the end of this decade.

And with Kendall estimating each fighter’s price tag at hundreds of millions of dollars, the service can’t afford to get it wrong.

So far, little has been said about how digital engineering is contributing to NGAD. During the May roundtable, a few days after the Air Force’s solicitation announcement, Kendall described a situation where service engineers and other NGAD program officials at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio were “living in the same design space as the bidders.” Program officials have direct access to the databases that the two firms vying for the program use to hone their NGAD designs, Kendall said, and use that access to offer their own suggestions.

In Dayton, Ohio, White — who oversees the creation of NGAD — and other officials offered more insight into how the Air Force and contractors are using digital engineering as they ramp up work designing the aircraft and propulsion systems.

When past fighters were designed, White explained, they were sketched out on paper in two dimensions. As the designs went through one iteration after another, he said, those sheets multiplied until reams of paper tracing each step in an aircraft’s evolution piled up.

But as NGAD takes shape, White said, those mountains of paper have been replaced by a constantly evolving digital design. In years and even decades to come, he added, that will make it easier for NGAD to evolve to stay ahead of the threats it will face.

“It’s a living thing,” he said. “You can constantly make informed decisions about where you’re going and where you think you need to be. … It’s not enough to be digital just from an engineering perspective. You’ve got to have a good foundation to understand what the threat is doing. And that’s going to allow us greater flexibility.”

“What it’s allowing us to do is become more informed buyers,” he added. “In this world, there are a lot of things you don’t have to do physically because you have greater visibility and a better grasp and command of the knowledge because of the digital [tools] we didn’t have before.”

And the NGAD’s propulsion system will be the first entirely new military propulsion system to be digitally designed and produced, according to John Sneden, director of the Air Force’s propulsion directorate.

The companies working on the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion system, or NGAP — primarily GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney, alongside Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman — are just now getting into a place where they can start designing it in a completely digital, 3D environment, he said. Given the last fighter engines designed for the Air Force were created decades ago for the F-35 and F-22, Sneden said, this is a new approach.

“All of that predated the digital environment,” he explained. “There really hasn’t been a requirement that’s out there for [digital engine designers] to really sink their teeth into until we got to NGAD.”

Having the propulsion system digitally designed and built, from the ground up, will make it easier to update and further develop at pace with evolving threats, Sneden added.

NGAP is still in the early design stages, he said, but as it moves into the testing phase, the digital-based modeling will help fine-tune digital tests and combine various models to see the second- and third-order effects of design changes.

“When you start getting into testing models, you might have one that’s different for structures, you may have another one that’s different for thermodynamic properties of the engines,” Sneden explained. “Can we pour those together so we can better see, when you make a change here, here’s how it impacts you downstream?”

When the time comes to start prototyping or building the engines, he added, the contractors can send 3D digital blueprints to their own suppliers to make components, instead of relying on 2D drawings.

‘Physics gets a vote’

Penney stressed that for digital engineering to yield benefits, a program must take the time and effort from the start to understand exactly how it will use digital tools.

“If you don’t have that foundation, that will leave you with technical debt as you begin to move forward,” Penney said, and could inadvertently cause problems further on down the road. “You have to get it right at the beginning.”

In Dayton, officials agreed with Kendall’s comments that advancements in digital modeling — while important — can’t entirely replace real-world testing. They described how they hope future programs can use both techniques to fill in the gaps a single approach would provide.

The Air Force, along with GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney, already conducted a great deal of design and development on adaptive engines that were considered as replacements for the F-35 under the Adaptive Engine Transition Program, or AETP.

The Pentagon ultimately decided not to put AETP in the F-35, instead opting for an upgrade of the fighter’s current engines. But AETP engine technology — such as the adaptive fans that will allow the engine to shift to the most efficient configuration for a given situation — will likely be folded into NGAD’s engine development process.

Sneden said by leveraging existing AETP technology, NGAP can reap the best of both worlds when it comes to testing. NGAP will use digital modeling, he explained, but those digital tests will be shaped by real-world results from prior tests conducted for AETP.

“When we’re testing an engine, we’re actually testing a series of technologies to find out how they work so you can actually craft a testing baseline,” Sneden said. “We’ve done real-world testing [on the XA100 and XA101 engines] so we can see how adaptive engine technology runs across the portfolio, how those materials hold up, how the adaptive fan works — all of that.

“Now what you can do is take that testing baseline and start incorporating it into your NGAP understanding, and start to merge those worlds of ‘real world’ and ‘digital’ together so you have this nice fusion that happens.”

White, in his own roundtable, underscored the Air Force’s intent to use digital testing to buttress real-world testing. His office hopes that combining the two forms of testing will allow it to cover gaps and yield a much richer set of data.

“We’re using the virtual aspects of the model to make sure that we’re filling in the blanks of the data,” White said. “And then as you do that, it’s kind of like a puzzle. The puzzle starts to fill its way out, and you become more comfortable.”

Having multiple ways to conduct testing comes in handy when trying to put fledgling aircraft through some of the more extreme flying conditions they might encounter, said Col. Kirt Cassell, chief of the Air Force’s T-7 Red Hawk program office.

“No matter how good your digital engineering is, physics gets a vote,” Cassell said. “When you’re at high angles of attack … it’s still very difficult to get advanced models” to predict the real-world physics.

Sneden noted the Air Force hasn’t even begun to reach the limits of how digital tools can help keep an engine running throughout its entire life.

For example, he said, digital tools could help find ways to make spare parts for an engine more easily or efficiently with additive manufacturing. Or it could help find a new way to repair a broken part instead of taking the lengthy and expensive step of replacing it with an entirely new one, he said.

“We’re just starting to lean into that technology,” he added.

RTX readies to test new air defense radar following US Air Force deal

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force can start testing a new medium-range sensor next month for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System thanks to several recently awarded government contracts, RTX said Tuesday.

The $7 million in awards from the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Strategic Development, Planning and Experimentation Office as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Rapid Prototyping Program will help RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, move forward on the development and testing of its GhostEye MR radar.

GhostEye MR is a medium-range multimission radar that can detect, track and identify threats including cruise missiles, drones, and fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. The company said GhostEye MR can both operate as a standalone radar and be integrated with the NASAMS air defense systems used to protect overseas air bases.

The contracts’ total value is small compared to some other government deals. But Joe DeAntona, Raytheon’s vice president of requirements and capabilities for land and air defense systems, told Defense News on Tuesday that the agreements allow the firm to move GhostEye MR out of its own research and development efforts and into more of a Pentagon-involved project.

RTX said the funding will allow an AFRL-run operational test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, now scheduled for September.

In September 2022, the lab and RTX conducted an experiment in Andøya, Norway, to demonstrate how the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System, or NASAMS — made by Norwegian firm Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace alongside RTX — could be used to defend air bases against advanced aerial threats.

The operational assessment next month will build on that experiment by using the Air Force’s command-and-control capabilities to link GhostEye MR with NASAMS’ Fire Distribution Center, RTX said in a release.

GhostEye MR has been in the works for more than three years, DeAntona said. But so far, before receiving these first government contracts last week, the company has funded the system’s development, prototyping and testing through internal R&D, he explained. The company’s prototyping work on GhostEye MR took place at its facilities in New England, including in Andover, Massachusetts, DeAntona said.

DeAntona added that if the government decides it wants to fund and move forward with GhostEye MR, then RTX would be able to start producing the sensors for NASAMS within “months, not years.”

“We’re ready to move forward,” he said. “The technology is matured, the form and function of the radar is done. Now it’s a matter of taking customer feedback and either modifying or delivering what we have to this point based on the customer’s demand signal.”

“This isn’t a PowerPoint slide. We’ve bent the steel,” he added, “and we’ve produced an operational radar to meet the requirements of our warfighters.”

GhostEye MR will be easily transportable and use the latest sensor technology, DeAntona said, and be able to track incoming threats that are both high and fast, as well as low and slow. It also uses modular technologies that will allow the Air Force to operate GhostEye MR in several different configurations, he noted.

RTX also said GhostEye MR shares some technology with the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor — another radar in the GhostEye series that RTX is building for the Army, but one the company said has a different mission set than GhostEye MR.

DeAntona said GhostEye MR uses an active electronically scanned array, or AESA, radar made from gallium nitride. RTX has said the semiconductor material used to build radar circuits allows for a stronger and more sensitive, longer-range radar signal, while active electronically scanned array technology provides 360-degree coverage.

RTX also said GhostEye MR has a software-defined aperture, which would allow it to add more capabilities through software upgrades.

The United States uses NASAMS to guard airspace over the National Capital Region, and has sent the launcher and munitions to Ukraine as part of the effort to arm the nation against Russia’s invasion.

Pentagon’s Shyu to discuss missile defense partnerships with Australia

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s chief technology officer will meet with Australian defense officials next month to discuss opportunities for integrated air and missile defense capabilities.

Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu and Pentagon acquisition chief Bill LaPlante visited Australia this summer to talk about opportunities for the two countries to collaborate. Speaking Aug. 29 at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense conference in Washington, Shyu said the visit started a conversation between the two countries about how they might work together on air and missile defense projects.

“We’re going to start fleshing out details,” she told reporters during the conference.

Shyu didn’t divulge those details, but said she’s had conversations with the U.S. Army and Missile Defense Agency about collaboration opportunities on the Integrated Battle Command System, which will play an important role in connecting sensors and shooters for air and missile defense in Guam. The Army is the acquisition lead for the effort and is working with MDA to get the first wave of equipment for the architecture to the island in 2024. Northrop Grumman is developing the system.

“There’s significant interest from MDA and the Army, so the next steps is bringing the Australians in to figure out at what level do we integrate our system,” she said.

Australia is in the midst of its own effort to develop an integrated air and missile defense capability, the Joint Air Battle Management System. Lockheed Martin is competing for the effort alongside Northrop, which is offering its IBCS design for the Australian program.

More broadly, the country in April unveiled its new Defence Strategic Review, which emphasizes the need to counter China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region. It also makes a pivot from a hefty pursuit of vehicles and howitzers to procuring more missiles. The review singles out a need for an enhanced integrated air and missile defense system.

AUKUS announcement

Beyond missile defense, Shyu’s team has also been crafting a plan for technology partnerships with Australia and the U.K. through the trilateral security agreement known as AUKUS. The effort has two pillars: the first is focused on nuclear-powered submarines and the second centers on building deeper cooperation on advanced defense technology.

Few details on the structure or content of Pillar Two have been released, but it is expected to include technology areas like autonomy, AI, hypersonics and quantum.

Shyu said she anticipates an announcement from President Biden on the details of Pillar Two this fall, and in the meantime, she has submitted a proposal for inclusion in the agreement that would emphasize a “portfolio approach” to technology collaboration among the allies.

“The path that I proposed is linking back together to show a portfolio of capabilities,” she said.

Asked whether other countries might participate in Pillar Two, Shyu said the three governments need time to refine their own agreements before adding more partners.

“Each additional . . . country you’re bringing in, that means you’ve got to share the technology,” she said. “You have to have the network to be able to share so it doesn’t leak to your adversaries’ hands. It just complicates things a lot. So, give us time to show success first via AUKUS.”

Balloon-tracker Synthetaic partners with Microsoft for cloud power

WASHINGTON — Microsoft will supply Synthetaic, a startup that used artificial intelligence to track the Chinese spy balloon that zigzagged across the U.S. earlier this year, with digital resources that executives said will fuel advancements in computer vision and imagery analysis.

Under the five-year partnership, announced Aug. 29, Synthetaic will have access to nearly 1 million hours of cloud-computing power. The Wisconsin-based company said it will buttress its Rapid Automatic Image Categorization software, or RAIC, which lets users mine vast collections of photos and other visuals for specific items. Additional terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“Using AI to extract insights from image data is like building a fire: you need heat (AI algorithm), fuel (data), and oxygen (compute),” Corey Jaskolski, the Synthetaic founder and CEO, said in a statement. “This partnership allows us to combine Azure’s GPU compute and fast data storage running next to our algorithms, which enables our customers to process massive quantities of visual data into actionable insights and models in minutes.”

How Iranian drones found in Iraq, Ukraine reflect its growing ambitions

RAIC was built on the Azure cloud. Jaskolski in a May interview told C4ISRNET that Synthetaic had several government customers and was in talks with the Air Force “on an effort to use RAIC on things like MQ-9 drone data.”

“It’s image recognition, but it’s done differently,” he said at the time. “When we tracked the balloon, we had just come up with this new feature that we call ‘geospatial object detect mode.’ So instead of just finding an area of a map that looked like other things, we could find discrete objects in satellite data.”

Overhead imagery is a resource of increasing importance, with governments, analysts and hobbyists tapping in to monitor their respective surroundings. Photos were used to expose Russia’s materiel buildup ahead of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and, more recently, have shown the scale of devastation in Eastern Europe.

Here’s your first look at that Chinese spy balloon

Synthetaic previously partnered with Planet Labs, a provider of Earth-observation imagery.

“We’ll be working with Planet to run this across Planet data, going forward and backward,” Jaskolski said. “It’s actually a really cool use case of RAIC because Planet has a six-year archive going back across the Earth. And, with RAIC, now we can search that archive and find anything.”

Four-star panel to weigh in on Pentagon’s rapid experiment projects

WASHINGTON — A panel of military leaders will convene this fall to decide which of the Pentagon’s joint, rapid experimentation projects should transition to the field, according to U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu.

For the last two years, Shyu’s office has been leading an effort known as the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, designed to address high-need capability gaps shared across the military services through intensive prototype and demonstration campaigns. Defense Department officials haven’t talked in detail about the specific prototypes being tested through RDER, but the first round of capabilities is focused on addressing long-range fire needs in the Indo-Pacific region.

Shyu told reporters Aug. 29 that after a period of testing at Camp Atterbury in Indiana and as part of U.S. INDOPACOM’s Northern Edge exercise this summer, Shyu and her team will present the top-performing systems at a deputy’s management action group, or DMAG, meeting — a panel of four-star generals that includes Pentagon leaders, service officials and combatant commanders.

“We have a list of projects that are ready to go into fielding,” she said on the sidelines of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense conference going on this week in Washington.

Shyu declined to detail the projects but noted that one of the efforts is of high interest to the Army and Air Force. During the upcoming meeting, DoD leaders will determine which service should lead that project and others. They’ll also decide how many systems to buy based on how much near-term funding is available.

The Pentagon requested $687 million for RDER in its fiscal 2024 budget — nearly double the $358 million it asked for last year. Congress appropriated $272 million for the program in fiscal 2023, which ends Sept. 30, up from $34 million the previous year, for the effort, which helped the department start the first series of demonstrations.

As the department approaches its first decision point for RDER projects, Shyu said the process for identifying promising prototypes and testing them in a relevant environment has worked well. It’s also a way to bring in allies and industry partners. The first demonstration series included the United Kingdom and Australia.

“This seems to work well for RDER because a lot of planning needs to happen before you can bring all your assets to a location,” she said.

Getting capabilities in the hands of military users has also been critical, Shyu said. During the demonstrations at Camp Atterbury, for example, members of the National Guard helped test RDER prototypes, offering feedback on how the systems performed. The Northern Edge exercises that followed helped measure the prototypes’ operational utility in realistic scenarios.

Is the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy sustainable?

On Aug. 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered an inspirational speech in Kyiv’s St. Sophia Square to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day. His message was familiar to anyone who has heard or read a Zelenskyy speech since he became a wartime president. “We are fighting the enemy,” he told the crowd. “And we know what we are capable of. We are capable of winning! And we will prevail!”

Nearly 5,000 miles away, U.S. President Joe Biden is exhibiting clarity of his own. The White House has stated time and again that the U.S. will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” which if defined literally would mean his administration is prepared to arm and finance Ukraine’s war effort against Russia until Kyiv’s total and complete military victory. It’s a pledge Biden reaffirmed during his phone call to Zelenskyy on the same day the Ukrainian president gave his Independence Day speech.

Lofty aspirations, however, are often blunted by cold, hard reality. And the reality is that the Biden administration’s Ukraine strategy is increasingly being tested by political, policy and resource constraints.

In the weeks and months after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his full-scale invasion, the administration was able to tap into the deeply ingrained, justifiable outrage expressed on Capitol Hill to get Ukraine the military assistance it needed to defend itself. About three weeks after the first Russian missiles fell, Congress tacked on $13 billion in emergency aid for Kyiv to the 2022 omnibus. In total, Congress has appropriated $113 billion in aid to Ukraine in four tranches — about 60%, or $67 billion, was earmarked for military assistance.

But what was possible yesterday might not be possible today. Having passed the war’s 18-month mark, a growing crop of lawmakers are questioning whether the U.S. can keep up the current level of support in perpetuity.

Ukraine aid is a major topic of debate within the Republican Party writ large. While GOP congressional leadership remains largely onboard, the rank and file are either opposed to writing more checks or are tying additional aid to more stringent accountability measures such as the formation of a special inspector general.

Fifty-five percent of Americans surveyed by CNN in July said Congress shouldn’t authorize more war funding, while 51% said the U.S. has already done enough for Ukraine.

Battlefield dynamics need to be considered as well. While the war has never been easy on Ukrainian forces at the front, 2022 was a year when the Ukrainian Army vastly outperformed expectations. Helped by consistent U.S. weapons supplies and a bumbling Russian military that couldn’t shoot straight or maintain its supply lines, Ukrainian troops were able to accomplish repeated tactical successes.

In April 2022, Russian units were forced to abandon their drive toward Kyiv after weeks of being bogged down by a lumbering, poor logistical system. In September, Ukrainian forces humiliated the Russian Army in Kharkiv; two months later, in Kherson, Russian commanders concluded it was better to organize a retreat from the Dnieper River’s western bank than keep investing manpower and equipment into tenuous positions.

When will the war in Ukraine end? Experts offer their predictions.

But this year is proving to be far harder and more complicated for Ukrainian troops. The 10-weeklong Ukrainian counteroffensive along three points of the 600-mile front line can best be described as grueling. Anybody who anticipated a replay of the Kharkiv episode set themselves up for disappointment. The days when whole chunks of Ukrainian territory could be reclaimed are likely long gone, replaced with a highly intense combat environment in which those on the offensive reclaim tiny bits of land at a high cost in men and materiel.

While it’s too early to say that Kyiv’s counteroffensive has failed, neither can one assume it will eventually succeed. The Ukrainian Army has to find a way to break through three layers of Russian defensive fortifications and, just as importantly, hold those positions without atrophying its forces or degrading its ability to defend against Russian counterattacks. The U.S. intelligence community is skeptical this can be done this year, if ever.

To date, the Biden administration has managed to accomplish two objectives:

Assist Ukraine as it resists Russia’s aggression.Ensure NATO isn’t dragged into the conflict, preventing escalation with a nuclear-armed Russia.

It’s a fine balancing act that could quickly unravel depending on how the war evolves. Straddle back the aid, and Russia’s prospects on the ground improve; outsource U.S. policy to Ukraine’s maximalist objectives, particularly in Crimea, and run the risk of a desperate Putin making even more desperate, dangerous decisions.

Biden, therefore, will have to be prepared for a scenario in which Russia’s defensive lines are simply too strong to break through. This is more likely than the full Russian troop withdrawal the Ukrainian government has been aiming for over the last year and a half.

The U.S. should adjust its policy accordingly, now, by dropping its support for maximalist Ukrainian war aims and pivot toward support for armed neutrality: consistent U.S. defensive support for the Ukrainian Army so it can keep the territory it presently holds and ensure Kyiv’s deterrent against Russian aggression is intact over the long haul.

Such a pivot will require compromises, but it’s the best way of bolstering Ukraine’s defensive needs in the least costly way possible. Meanwhile, Europe, which has more of a security imperative in boosting Ukraine’s victory or at least preventing its defeat, should use the time to exhibit primary leadership over this issue.

Tough but necessary choices are around the corner.

Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

3M agrees to pay $6B to settle earplug lawsuits

NEW YORK — Chemical and consumer product manufacturer 3M has agreed to pay $6 billion to settle numerous lawsuits from U.S. service members who say they experienced hearing loss or other serious injuries after using faulty earplugs made by the company.

The settlement, consisting of $5 billion in cash and $1 billion in 3M stock, will be made in payments that will run through 2029. The agreement announced by the Minnesota company on Tuesday marks a resolution to one of the largest mass torts in U.S. history.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans and current service members have reportedly sued 3M and Aearo Technologies, a company that 3M acquired in 2008, over their Combat Arms Earplug products. The service members alleged that a defective design allowed the products — which were intended to protect ears from close range firearms and other loud noises — to loosen slightly and allow hearing damage, according to Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis, & Overholtz PLLC, one of the law firms representing plaintiffs.

In an online summary about the Combat Arms Earplug litigation, the Florida-based law firm notes that 3M previously agreed to pay $9.1 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of the government alleging the company knowingly supplied defective earplugs to the U.S. military. And since 2019, the firm added, 3M has lost 10 of 16 cases that have gone to trial — awarding millions of dollars to plaintiffs to date.

The Associated Press reached out to Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis, & Overholtz PLLC for comment on Tuesday’s agreement. In a statement to to Bloomberg and other news outlets, attorney Bryan Aylstock called the settlement a historic agreement and a “tremendous victory for the thousands of men and women who bravely served our country and returned home with life-altering hearing injuries.”

In Tuesday’s announcement, 3M maintained that the agreement — which includes all claims in Florida’s multi-district litigation, coordinated state court action in Minnesota, and potential future claims — was not an admission of liability.

“The products at issue in this litigation are safe and effective when used properly,” the company wrote. “3M is prepared to continue to defend itself in the litigation if certain agreed terms of the settlement agreement are not fulfilled.”

3M has previously tried to reduce exposure to the earplug litigation through bankruptcy court, the Wall Street Journal reported. In 2022, Aearo filed for bankruptcy as a separate company, accepting responsibility for claims, but the filing was later dismissed in U.S. bankruptcy court.

Beyond the earplug litigation, 3M in June agreed to pay at least $10.3 billion to settle lawsuits over contamination of many U.S. public drinking water systems with potentially harmful compounds. The deal would compensate water providers for pollution with per- and polyfluorinated substances, also known as “forever chemicals.”

The agreement hasn’t been finalized yet. Last month, 22 attorneys general urged a federal court to reject the proposed settlement, saying it lets manufacturer 3M off too easily.

Netherlands doubles order of MQ-9 Reaper drones, plans to arm them

MILAN — The Netherlands is set to receive four additional MQ-9 Reaper drones that will carry guided bombs and missiles.

More than a decade after launching the process to buy MQ-9A Reapers from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the Dutch government announced it will not only double its order but also arm them for the first time.

“When the [Ministry of Defence] started the project in 2011, there was no need to arm the aircraft yet. However, the threat picture has changed considerably since then. The aircraft must now be able to protect the safety of its own troops,” State Secretary for Defence Christophe van der Maat wrote in a letter to parliament in May.

The Netherlands first signed a deal to purchase four unarmed MQ-9A Reaper Block 5 drones from the General Atomics division in 2018 that were solely intended for intelligence-gathering and surveillance missions. The U.S. company delivered the initial batch and associated ground control stations last year.

The MoD now plans to upgrade these systems to carry GBU-12 laser-guided bombs and AGM-114 Hellfire II air-to-surface missiles. The latter currently equip the AH-64 helicopters operated by the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

The Netherlands will buy the weapons from the U.S. government through the Foreign Military Sales program, and the package will cost between $108 million and $270 million, van der Maat said in his statement.

The aim is to have the first ammunition ready for initial deployment by 2025 so it can fully deploy in 2028.

On Aug. 21, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems confirmed in a news release that the Dutch air force was doubling the number of MQ-9As on order, taking the total quantity from four to eight unmanned aircraft. According to the manufacturer, with this new set of capabilities, the Netherlands will have the most capable set of Block 5 drones in the world.

“The expansion to eight aircraft will enable the Dutch MoD to support international missions on more than one axis, giving it the capability to operate the aircraft from one main operating base and two forward operating bases simultaneously,” Tom van Hout, a spokesperson for the ministry, told Defense News. “The sensor capacity of the platforms will also be improved with maritime surveillance radar and electronic support measures pods.”

The drones will be based and flown from the main operating location of Leeuwarden Air Base, and operated by the 306 Squadron. Van Hout noted that subject matter experts and liaison officers of the Royal Netherlands Navy will also support this squadron in specific naval operations.

The Dutch Reapers are not certified to fly in civil airspace alongside routine air traffic, but van Hout said the manufacturer “and partners” are working on this capability.

Appetite for change

European countries have wrestled with the question of buying armed drones for years. As a result, most countries’ forces were only allowed to deploy unarmed drones for reconnaissance.

But evolving threats as well as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered a wider appetite for arms and a change in defense policies.

In April 2022, Germany’s parliamentary Defence Committee approved for the first time the purchase of missiles to arm Israeli-made Heron TP drones.

In January 2023, Greece announced it is locally building its first combat drone, the Grypas, of which a scaled version is expected in 2025.

And while there has long been talk that Spain might arm its fleet of Reapers, there has been no official confirmation. Nonetheless, in July the Spanish government approved the purchase of nine Airbus-made SIRTAP packages, 27 drones total, that can conduct armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, according to Spanish website Infodefensa.

Prior to this, in 2021, Italy revealed its intention to arm its Reapers, allocating $69 million for the effort over the next seven years.

Additionally, although France operates armed MQ-9s, it unveiled its new French-made Aarok combat drone at the 2023 Paris Air Show, which could rival the Reaper.

Belgium, however, has a large number of government officials who remain opposed to arming the country’s MQ-9B fleet based on ethical issues.