Lockheed running out of parking space amid F-35 delays, says watchdog

Lockheed Martin is running out of space to store undelivered F-35 Joint Strike Fighters as the jets’ upgrade effort remains behind schedule, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report released Thursday.

Furthermore, the F-35 program’s testing capacity is stretched thin and will worsen once the Technology Refresh 3 software upgrade and the Block 4 update are ready, GAO found.

TR-3 involves a slate of improvements for the aircraft, such as improved cockpit displays, better computer memory and more processing power. TR-3 is needed before another group of more in-depth upgrades, known as Block 4, can be installed on the F-35. Block 4 will allow the jet to carry more weapons and provide upgrades to its electronic warfare capabilities.

But TR-3 is overdue due to problems with its software and delays in the production of key parts. Test officials told the government watchdog that TR-3′s software remains “unstable,” almost a year after deliveries were supposed to start.

Since July 2023, the Pentagon has refused to accept delivery of the newest F-35s that will be enabled with TR-3. Most F-35s are built at Lockheed’s factory in Fort Worth, Texas. When a new jet rolls off the company’s production lines, they are stored at that facility until the permanent hardware kits for TR-3 and its software is ready.

GAO did not publish the number of mostly finished F-35s awaiting delivery in its report, at the Pentagon’s request.

But on Wednesday, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, told reporters that within months more than 100 jets could be “stacked up on the tarmac — unacceptable.”

GAO said storing so many critical, brand-new jets in one place is risky because some or all could be damaged. The parking space at Lockheed’s facilities is dwindling, the watchdog noted, and the company needs a backup plan if it runs out.

In a statement to Defense News, Lockheed said TR-3 is one of its top priorities and that it will work with the government’s F-35 Joint Program Office and industry partners to put GAO’s recommendations in place as appropriate.

Lockheed also said it has enough secure infrastructure and capacity to park all F-35s until delivery, but would not go into details, citing security concerns.

The F-35 Joint Program Office said in an email that the next iteration of TR-3′s software will start flight tests later this month, and that the military could start accepting aircraft as soon as late July.

“The JPO remains committed to working with our industry partners to deliver the F-35 to our warfighters to ensure they can fight and win when called to do so,” JPO spokesman Russell Goemaere said.

The Hill’s take

Earlier this week, the House Armed Services Committee released its proposed fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which would cut 10 jets from the Pentagon’s proposed F-35 procurement next year, bringing its buy down to 58.

Lawmakers say that would save roughly $1 billion, funds that would then go toward ensuring TR-3 and the jets work properly.

The bill would also prevent the military from accepting 10 of those remaining jets until the Pentagon certifies to lawmakers that several problems are fixed.

Wittman on Wednesday said lawmakers are “deeply concerned” about the delays and called them “grossly delinquent.”

He also described the F-35 as “the critical linchpin in our tactical aircraft capability,” adding that the program and Lockheed have to get the jet and its upgrades right — especially with the Air Force’s planned drone wingmen, known as collaborative combat aircraft, on the way. TR-3 and Block 4 upgrades will be needed to take the most advantage of those unmanned capabilities, he said.

The F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed are now working on a partial version of the TR-3 software. This truncated TR-3 software is intended to allow the jets to work well enough so the military can conduct check flights and accept delivery.

Even then, TR-3 jets would only be able to conduct training flights, and would not be ready to fly combat missions until 2025.

Test jet shortages

The F-35′s testing capacity is also falling short and could hamper the program’s ability to get TR-3 and Block 4 upgrades right, GAO said.

The program now has four test F-35s, all of which are more than a decade old, GAO found. Those jets frequently break and are short on spare parts needed to get them back in the air, the report said. The test jets’ troubles are so severe that there have been times when three were down for maintenance simultaneously, GAO added.

The only thing saving the F-35′s testing fleet from falling completely behind is that TR-3 and other software development is behind schedule, GAO said. But once TR-3 and Block 4 software get back on track, the report added, the current testing fleet could be severely strained, as more flights will be necessary.

Four more test F-35s are in the works, with an expected completion date of 2026, GAO said. But those will be regular F-35s, modified after production with instruments that allow them to conduct basic developmental weapons tests.

These modified jets would have to use some workarounds, and would be unable to test external weapons stations under their wings due to a lack of instruments, the report said. This will likely present a particular problem for the F-35B, which has a greater need to test wing-mounted weapons.

Nine more test jets — intended to be developmental test aircraft from the start — are also planned to replace the current fleet, GAO said. The Pentagon is so far moving forward with procuring six of those jets, the report noted, but they won’t be ready for test flights until between 2029 and 2034. And the current replacement plan will now leave the F-35 program without any test aircraft in 2028 and 2029, GAO said.

While speaking to reporters Wednesday, Wittman said the billion dollars saved by cutting F-35 purchases would help fund an integrated software laboratory, digital twin testing, and more test aircraft to try to get improvements such as TR-3 ready. Expanding the F-35′s test capacity is long overdue, he added, and is coming back to bite the program now.

“All those things are [capabilities] that should have been done years ago and haven’t been done,” Wittman said. “That’s why we’re so far behind where we are today.”

Megan Eckstein contributed to this report.

House passes bill to undo Biden’s partial Israel weapons hold

The House on Thursday passed 224-187 a bill aimed at forcing President Joe Biden to reverse his recent hold on a shipment of some 3,500 air-to-ground munitions for Israel.

Biden withheld the munitions transfer, which includes 2,000- and 500-pound bombs, in April in protest of Israel’s decision to move ahead with its ongoing offensive in Rafah, which has already displaced an additional 450,000 Palestinians of the roughly 1.4 million people who have fled to the southern Gaza city since October.

The Israel Security Assistance Support Act, introduced by defense appropriations chairman Ken Calvert, R-Calif., would ban all presidential holds on arms transfers to Israel. It would withhold funds from the offices of the defense secretary, secretary of state, National Security Council and the White House’s Homeland Security Council until Biden certifies the U.S. has transferred the withheld weapons.

The bill also requires the prompt approval and delivery of all weapons transfers to Israel in fiscal 2024 and 2025, “including those for the Ministry of Public Security,” which is headed by far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir on Tuesday called for Israeli settlements in Gaza and the expulsion of Palestinians from the strip.

“The Biden administration is defying the will of Congress and withholding weapons shipments to Israel,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at a Thursday press conference ahead of the vote. “We want the president to hear this loud and clear.”

“He said just not long ago that we had to have ‘ironclad’ support for Israel. Well, that’s what he previously proclaimed, but his actions are doing exactly the opposite,” he added. “This is a catastrophic decision with global implications. It is obviously being done as a political calculation.”

Despite a White House veto threat, some House Democrats joined forces with Republicans to vote in favor of the bill.

The White House’s veto threat argued the bill infringes on the president’s constitutional authorities.

“We strongly oppose attempts to constrain the president’s ability to deploy U.S. security assistance consistent with U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives,” the White House said.

“The bill is a misguided reaction to a deliberate distortion of the administration’s approach to Israel. The president has been clear: We will always ensure Israel has what it needs to defend itself. Our commitment to Israel is ironclad.”

The bill is also unlikely to pass the Senate, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., declining to hold a floor vote on it.

“The president has already said he’d veto it, so it’s not going anywhere,” Schumer told reporters Wednesday.

Biden told CNN last week “civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” referring to the withheld shipment of roughly 3,500 heavy air-to-ground munitions. He added that he’s “not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah” as Israel scaled up its offensive and seized the southern border crossing with Egypt.

Other arms transfers continue

Still, Biden continues to provide other offensive weapons as well as air defense systems to Israel. The Biden administration has transferred tens of thousands of munitions to Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Most of those were purchased through direct commercial sales, a portion of which are subsidized with U.S. cash assistance.

For instance, the State Department on Tuesday told Congress it wants to proceed with a roughly $1 billion foreign military sale to Israel consisting of around $700 million in tank ammunition, $500 million worth of tactical vehicles and $60 million of mortar rounds. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the pending sale.

While the delivery would not arrive in Israel for another two to three years, the sale could replenish many of the weapons now being used in Gaza.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, has placed his own hold on a separate $18 billion sale of Boeing-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. If that sale is approved, Israel would not receive the aircraft until the end of the decade.

Meeks told Defense News he is still reviewing Biden’s proposed $1 billion sale for tank shells and armored vehicles, noting he has not yet decided to approve it.

“It’s best for me to go through it before making any comment or anything else,” said Meeks. “I had been concerned, as the president was, about 2,000-pound bombs.”

“That’s not contained therein as far as what they’re looking at. But I take all of these things very seriously.”

The Biden administration submitted a report to Congress last week on Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law and U.S. human rights laws in its Gaza operations.

The report found Israel may have used U.S.-supplied weapons to violate international humanitarian law, but stopped short of a conclusive determination. A conclusive determination would have required the Biden administration to suspend offensive military aid to Israel, as required under U.S. human rights laws.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who pushed the Biden administration to issue the report, said “it largely fails to meet the mark” of what was required in the White House’s February executive memorandum seeking assurances all U.S. military aid recipients — including Israel — would comply with human rights laws.

Van Hollen said in a statement the “report also indicates a disturbing pattern where the expertise and analyses of those working most closely on these issues at the State Department and at USAID have been swept aside to facilitate a predetermined policy outcome based on political convenience.”

Congress in April overwhelmingly passed an additional $14 billion in Israel military aid. Israel also receives an annual $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid via the regular appropriations process.

Airbus developing an unmanned Lakota helo for Marine resupply mission

Airbus U.S. Space and Defense is pitching a version of its UH-72 Lakota helicopter as a potential unmanned resupply aircraft for the Marine Corps and will continue to develop it under a Marine Corps contract.

Airbus announced this week Naval Air Systems Command awarded it an other transactional authority agreement to develop a prototype for the U.S. Marine Corps’ Aerial Logistics Connector program.

In April, Carl Forsling, Airbus’ senior manager of business development and strategy for Marine Corps programs, told Defense News the company had already been developing its UH-72 Unmanned Logistics Connector using internal company funds.

Forsling said the Marines are looking at light and medium unmanned aerial systems to resupply squads and other small units operating away from ships and logistics hubs. This effort aims to create a large platform that can resupply larger units, such as the Marine littoral regiments the Corps is establishing in the Pacific to conduct expeditionary advanced base operations.

He said the UH-72 Unmanned Logistics Connector would leverage the Lakota platform — its mature airframe, its low flight hour costs, its well-understood maintenance needs — but would be built on the production line to be autonomous.

The biggest physical change to the aircraft would be a fly-by-wire capability, so the helo’s hydraulic actuators are commanded by an electronic signal rather than a pilot physically moving a control stick.

But Forsling said there are two challenges the company will tackle under this Marine Corps contract: adding autonomy such that the aircraft can make flight decisions on its own, and integrating the system into the larger Marine Corps command-and-control network.

The Marine Corps briefing slides showed at the Modern Day Marine conference note this Aerial Logistics Connector will be the aviation contribution to a larger contested logistics effort. Service leaders signed an acquisition decision memorandum in March to begin this prototyping phase, and the slides show four companies will be awarded contracts to build prototypes.

NAVAIR spokeswoman Megan Wasel told Defense News only one contract, the Airbus agreement, has been awarded to date.

These vendors will demonstrate their prototypes in late summer into early fall of this year, according to the slides.

Forsling told Defense News that basing its offering on a helicopter with a “huge number of flight hours and platform maturity” will help it create a successful prototype.

Military’s novel floating pier arrives in Gaza amid security concerns

Since President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union address that the U.S. military would build a humanitarian aid pier on the Gaza Strip, and that “no U.S. boots will be on the ground” in Gaza, Keith Robbins and other retired military logistics officers have been watching.

And on Thursday, after weeks of preparation, security planning and weather delays, the Pentagon announced that a trident pier had been stabbed into the Gaza beach.

The pier is essentially an erector set-like assembly of metal pieces built at sea and sitting close to the water that can assume a variety of lengths depending on the mission requirements.

Retired logisticians like Robbins are seeing a long-neglected but nonetheless vital military capability getting its time to shine, even as concerns remain about the security of the sailors and soldiers handling the undulating, 1,600-foot pier.

The capability, known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, will be used to help bring aid to civilians in Gaza as Israeli operations to destroy Hamas continue in the wake of the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and is expected to cost at least $320 million.

Before his retirement as a lieutenant colonel in 2007, Robbins spent the last tour of his career as the JLOTS program manager for U.S. Transportation Command, and oversaw three JLOTS exercises, including one in Guatemala before he got out.

Military Times also spoke with two retired senior Army officers, a retired senior Navy supply officer and an active-duty Army officer, who all spent years of their service focused on JLOTS.

Except for Robbins, the retired and active-duty officers all requested anonymity to speak candidly about the capability and the Gaza mission. Military Times confirmed their identities and their military service.

“So few people know what a JLOTS entails,” one retired Army transportation officer told Military Times. “You can’t go walk the halls of the Pentagon and find two people who know what they’re talking about, because it’s such a small niche capability that’s very, very specialized.”

JLOTS is a feat of military engineering, in which 1,000 soldiers and sailors first build a massive floating platform at sea, where ships carrying screened cargo from Cyprus can be offloaded.

Trucks are then ferried to the trident pier by vessels that are essentially motorized pier sections, and driven from there onto the beach, where U.N. relief workers will oversee distribution.

Ashore, Israeli military engineers guided the pier into place, according to Navy Vice Adm. Bradley Cooper, deputy command of U.S. Central Command, which oversees all U.S. forces in the Middle East.

“IDF engineers prepared the beach at Gaza and secured the temporary pier to the beach,” Cooper told reporters Thursday. “This group of engineers were specially trained for this mission by U.S. Army engineers in the preceding weeks on a beach in Israel.”

And while the trident pier has purportedly been attached to the beach without U.S. service members setting foot in Gaza, retired military logistics officers who spoke with Military Times questioned the use of the “boots on the ground” term by the White House and the Pentagon.

A retired Navy supply captain, the equivalent of a colonel in the other services, called the term “code talk in Washington for no risk to U.S. forces.”

But even if the Gaza mission can be pulled off without a single American service member setting foot on the beach in Gaza, those soldiers and sailors will still be at risk, he said.

“I just want honesty, that’s all,” the officer said. “The military is trained for this, they understand it. But let’s be honest about boots on the ground, and that they will be at risk.”

“It’s an inherently risky endeavor when you’re not in complete control of the land and sea and air around it,” he added.

During the JLOTS exercises he partook in, the Navy officer said there were “hundreds” of U.S. troops on the beach.

“Or they’re in very close proximity to the shore, because that’s where all the stuff operates,” he said.

Cooper said Thursday that 500 tons of aid could be flowing off the pier and into Gaza in the coming days, and he emphasized that U.S. and Israeli forces were in close coordination to keep the U.S. troops taking part in the pier mission and the U.N. aid workers safe during the mission.

“On the force protection side, I’m not going to be able to talk about specifics, other than to say that we’ve been coordinating very closely, as I mentioned, with the Israeli Defense Force to address any potential issue in every domain that exists,” he said.

U.S. and Israeli forces have had “extremely close coordination” in the past six weeks “to work out every single operational detail,” Cooper added.

The officers interviewed by Military Times noted that keeping a trident pier stable and in place involves using heavy anchors buried in the sand, as well as Army tugs that look nothing like a traditional tugboat and are generally used to keep the pier in place as it bobs in the water.

Such an arrangement inevitably requires U.S. troops to be close to shore, if not technically standing on the beach.

They also noted how doing a JLOTS evolution is inherently risky for troops involved, even under the best conditions.

“You’re moving 40-ton and 20-ton containers on an environment that is moving, so anything can happen,” the retired Navy captain said. “Somebody gets crushed, falls overboard or gets run over.”

Despite the security risks and challenges, several of the officers said they think JLOTS is tailor-made for the Gaza mission, delivering much-needed relief via the sea where no port is available.

How they stab the beach

To stab the trident pier into the beach, a platoon’s worth of soldiers first use military bulldozers to dig a massive slot trench on the beach, which leads the pier into a so-called “duck pond,” basically a water-filled entry point for the pier to mate with the beach, the officers said.

After the duck pond is established, which usually takes a day or so, the pier is rammed at four or 5 knots into the sand, and must get at least 40 feet in, according to one retired Army officer who spent decades in the transportation corps.

After that, a mix of buried anchors and Army tug vessels keep the pier in place as trucks start rolling on and off.

“Those anchoring systems need to be constantly maintained, to hold the pier in place, securely and stable so that they can do discharge operations safely,” Robbins said.

It remains unclear whether U.S. or Israeli forces will be in charge of keeping the pier stable.

Security concerns

The retired Army transportation corps officer said JLOTS is “built for a less-kinetic environment,” and using it in Gaza could come with risks, and additional challenges.

Typically, a JLOTS deployment would follow a Marine Corps amphibious assault on a given location, he said, referring to JLOTS as “LOTS” for short.

“Forced entry, they secure the ground and they move inland and create standoff,” he said. “After the Marine Corps provides the ground or the space, the Army then moves in for a long, enduring operations, where we bring in LOTS capability.”

“It’s usually not the kinetic environment we see now in Gaza,” the officer added.

Already, aid groups ashore were mortared last month, and Hamas has said the group will resist any foreign presence associated with the project, The Associated Press reported.

Several of the officers interviewed worried about the Israeli and U.S. militaries’ ability to counter lower-tech threats, such as mortar rounds.

There’s also the matter of keeping the pier safe.

The military has limited JLOTS sets, the Navy officer noted, and one being used in Gaza can’t be used for something else.

The capability has been neglected and underfunded over the years, particularly Army watercraft, the officers said, but a conventional war with China has resurrected a desire for such capabilities, he said.

“There’s plenty in the military that are clamoring for more JLOTS-type enablers,” he said. “This is a great opportunity for the U.S. military to show why the investments in technology like this matter.”

How to do JLOTS

The JLOTS system involves several parts: a massive discharge platform, where cargo ships can offload aid, the trident pier, or causeway, and a series of pier sections-slash-boats that will move the aid from the platform to the pier.

All the parts are built from the same sectional modular pieces, which are put together like an at-sea erector set, the retired Army transportation officer said.

“We just build an acre of causeways all connected together” for the discharge platform, he said. “And then you build the causeway ferries, which are built from causeway sections, causeway pieces … with a powered section at the end. Kind of looks like a pier, but it’s powered and you can use it like a boat and you can build them, 300, 400, 800-feet long.”

“They almost look like a piece of causeway section with a pilot house on it,” the Navy officer said.

Those ferries can then “marry up” at the trident pier, allowing trucks to drive off and toward land.

“It’s all made from the same parts and pieces, it’s just how you erect it,” the Army transportation officer said.

Trident piers sit just a few feet above the water, and are susceptible to volatile and choppy sea states, the transportation officer said.

Other officers recalled how trident pier missions had to be scrapped because of uncooperative waters in past JLOTS exercises.

The Pentagon said earlier this month that the pier was delayed due to weather, and the retired Army officer said that opposing winds and currents can whip up that stretch of the Mediterranean Sea, but that bad weather passes relatively quickly.

Cooper, the deputy CENTCOM commander, said Thursday that how weather affects using the pier will be “situationally dependent.”

“One variable we cannot control here is the weather,” he said. “So we’ll just see what that looks like. It’s very favorable here in the coming days and week or so. And our goal is to move as much humanitarian assistance as possible during that period, and then we’ll make assessments going forward, as we would with any military operation and the weather.’

The Pentagon has indicated that contractors will drive the aid trucks down the trident pier and onto the beach. Officers who spoke with Military Times questioned whether a non-military truck driver would be up to the daunting task.

“Some of that’s a little dicey for a commercial truck driver that probably has never driven on a causeway section before,” one officer said.

‘It’s very risky even to put the damn causeway together’

But even without the security threats that a mission like the one in Gaza poses, JLOTS is a potentially dangerous undertaking for troops involved, even under the best of circumstances, the officers said.

“It’s very risky even to put the damn causeway together,” the active-duty Army officer said.

The massive ships at sea crane-load and dangle massive platform and pier sections over the side, and everything is assembled via human labor.

“We’re talking about building and erecting an erector set of equipment in the water,” the retired Army transportation officer said. “There’s just a huge risk in doing that, and the processes have to be done in ideal conditions.”

Rolling out JLOTS requires “relatively good weather, good sea conditions, to be able to put and stitch all of that stuff together,” one officer said.

The sections used to assemble the discharge platform, the ribbon bridge ferries and the trident pier are all massive and heavy, and soldiers have been crushed carrying out the mission in the past, the officers said.

Once everything is in place, moving the cargo can be equally harrowing, the officers said. Cargo trucks have to drive down a 50-degree sloped ramp from the cargo ship to the floating discharge platform, and those soldiers may not be trained in JLOTS.

“It’s usually the soldier driving his own tank, or his own truck, who’s not a watercraft soldier, he’s not a causeway soldier, this is not his environment, and you’re directing him to get him to shore so he can get back into his environment,” the officer said. “Those soldiers who are unpracticed or inexperienced at that tend to be just frightened to death, operating in the water like that.”

Going down that sloped ramp requires particular leaps of faith for the drivers, even with soldiers on the ground guiding them, and it all gets “exponentially worse at night,” the retired senior Army officer said.

Drivers generally take a right turn to get off the cargo ship and onto the ramp, with little visibility regarding where they’re going.

“They see nothing except water, they cannot see the discharge platform and they have to trust in their skill, and they go off this thing and then down and make a left-hand turn onto the discharge facility,” he said. “That in and of itself is a scary thing — where’s the edge?”

Once onto the ribbon bridge ferry or trident pier, the path back to land is undulating in three dimensions.

“It’s up, it’s down, it’s sideways,” the officer said. “It’s a really dynamic operational environment.”

The pier itself is about 24-feet-wide and “way smaller when you’re driving on it,” the senior officer said.

One section goes one way, while the one ahead goes the other way.

“They’re all connected but they move to some degree independently,” he said. “Everything’s moving, nothing is stable, and until you get used to that and trust your own ability to just go straight and not worry about it, that’s an interesting experience.”

Military Times Editorial Fellow Riley Ceder contributed to this report.

Four ways US Army’s Pacific chief plans to boost regional land forces

HONOLULU — America and its Pacific partners are building a network of land forces to deter those who would threaten regional stability, but there are four building blocks to make this joint effort a success, according to the head of U.S. Army forces in the area.

Gen. Charles Flynn’s comments at a gathering of regional military leaders in Hawaii comes as China clashes with nearby nations over territorial disputes, and as North Korea continues to build its nuclear arsenal.

The U.S. Army and its allies and partners in the theater are finding more ways to come together and build relationships, Flynn said, some of which have endured since the end of World War II.

Regional countries must come together and “do so with a sense of urgency often only reserved for the most demanding situations,” Flynn said during his speech at the Association of the U.S. Army’s LANPAC conference.

“The situation now demands it, but we need not go it alone,” he added. “In this region, campaigning for land power provides something that no other foreign military power can. It is something that only land forces deliver. It’s called positional advantage.”

The strategic land power network, which is still taking shape, “must get in position to defend our sovereignty, to protect our people and to uphold their rights under international law,” he said.

There are four steps to accomplishing this, Flynn noted.

“First,” he said, “reorganize the most battle-winning mix of capabilities.”

The U.S. Army’s regionally focused multidomain task forces, Australia’s 10th Brigade, and the cross-domain formations Japan is creating serve as examples of how to reorganize forces to strengthen formations with high-end capabilities, Flynn told Defense News in an interview. In addition, countries in the theater should share their concepts among each other to ensure interoperability, he added.

The U.S. Army has also deployed a security force assistance brigade, a theater fires element and an information warfare directorate into areas near China.

Flynn’s second building block is to regenerate combined joint warfighting capabilities. In other words, “training together, rehearsing together,” he said.

Central to that is bringing the U.S. Army’s Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center from Hawaii to other countries in the theater as an exportable version, dubbed JPMRC-X. Australia and Indonesia hosted such versions last year; the same is expected to happen in the Philippines this month, where the JPMRC-X will help inform how the country plans to create its own high-level training events.

There’s “an increasing thirst from the region on that, in large measure because they go to our schools and then they have also been to our training centers. Only now, JPMRC is closer and it looks like the environment in the region,” Flynn said.

That type of effort also applies to Flynn’s third building block, which is to reapply land power to create unity of effort, and the fourth block, which is to build enduring advantages through regional posture, “allowing our Army forces to control decisive points.”

The U.S. Army also achieves this through extensive exercises, dubbed Operation Pathways, that continuously run throughout the year.

Flynn noted in his speech that the opportunity to increase multilateral cooperation is the highest he has ever seen. Each drill under Operation Pathways is growing as more move from bilateral to multilateral events, in some cases involving more than a dozen countries.

“Each of your armies has a duty to your nations, but also each of us has something to offer the group represented here today,” Flynn said in his speech. “The demonstration of unity and collective commitment is growing stronger by the day, and I’m very proud of the progress we’re making together because our tactical actions are having operational and strategic effects.”

Navy, Marine Corps pitched three systems for first Replicator batch

The Navy’s top acquisition official told lawmakers this week his service has three projects — including one from the Marine Corps — involved in Replicator, a Pentagon effort to quickly field large numbers of uncrewed systems.

“The Navy has been very supportive of Replicator,” Nickolas Guertin, assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said at a May 15 hearing. “We actually brought two Navy, one Marine Corps project to the first tranche of replicator in partnership with the [Office of the Secretary of Defense.]”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Guertin meant that the service had proposed three projects or that all were selected. A Navy spokesman refused to clarify his statement or comment further on the systems, as did a spokesman for Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, who’s leading Replicator.

While new details have trickled out in recent weeks, the Pentagon has been light on specifics about Replicator, which promises to create a repeatable process to buy urgently needed commercial technology. The first iteration is a push to field thousands of drones by the spring or summer of 2025, within 18 to 24 months of the program’s start.

The program has selected the systems it will buy as part of Replicator’s first tranche, which will lean heavily on existing production lines and programs that have already begun within the services. Hicks confirmed in a statement last week that AeroVironment’s Switchblade 600, which the Army is already buying, will be part of the first round of Replicator.

No other systems have been announced, though Hicks said there will be a set of counter-drone capabilities and some uncrewed surface vessels included in the first tranche. The maritime systems are part of a Defense Innovation Unit program called Production-Ready, Inexpensive, Maritime Expeditionary, or PRIME.

DIU — which is playing a key role in helping coordinate Replicator — expects to award contracts as soon as this summer.

Guertin and other Pentagon acquisition officials told lawmakers it helps to have Hicks’ office behind Replicator. However, they stressed that in order to achieve the program’s broader goals, that high-level leadership must be tightly coupled with the bottom-up elements of the military services, which control much of the acquisition and fielding process.

Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, technology and logistics, said that’s especially true given the program’s focus on fielding systems in large numbers.

“When it comes to scale, the most productive efforts are ones that are paired with the services, meaning they are collaborative and cooperative with a clear path to us,” he said. “There needs to be a service partner identified in advance before the money gets too big.”

That partnership is not only about finding a means to buy a new item, said Bill LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. There must be a plan for how a service partner will incorporate it into its doctrine and operational concepts, he stressed.

That plan should extend beyond initial procurement to long-term sustainment support, according to Guertin.

“When we’re looking at these kinds of initiatives, we want to make sure we carry forward the sustainability and support work to make sure that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, guardians can actually use this stuff in a reliable way when they need to in a fight,” he said.

Slovak defense show carries on after Fico shooting

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — It was business as usual at Slovakia’s flagship defense fair here on Thursday, less than a day after the country’s Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot and wounded in a town northeast of the capital.

A strangely normal atmosphere reigned on the last day of the IDEB defense show, shortly after news broke of the attack on the right-wing, populist leader, a mood that surprised industry executives queried by Defense News on the show floor.

Fico visited the fair on the occasion of the opening day on May 14 alongside Defense Minister Robert Kalinak, who is also the deputy prime minister.

“A strong and dynamic defense industry is a fundamental prerequisite for the security and stability for us and our allies in the transatlantic space – Slovakia is aware of its role in this area and doesn’t want to fall behind,” Kalinak said during the opening ceremony.

No security measures were added on site following Wednesday’s attack in the small town of Handlova some 190 kilometers away. Mixed groups of industry and military officers could be seen milling about between the exhibits of weaponry, discussing the news.

Slovakian leaders had banked on this fair to promote its growing defense industry and latest technology, including a new 120mm rapid-fire mortar system, unveiled on the first day. However, the event took place during an especially tense time.

In recent weeks, thousands of Slovaks have protested against a reform proposed by the Fico government that seeks to abolish national public broadcaster RTVS to replace it with an institution opponents have warned would suppress media freedom.

US announces $2 billion to help Ukraine make its own weapons

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday announced a $2 billion aid package for Ukraine largely intended to help the embattled country grow its indigenous defense capabilities and move away from Soviet-era equipment.

The $2 billion in Ukraine Foreign Military Financing mostly comes from the $60 billion economic and security aid for Kyiv Congress passed in April after months of delays. The State Department said the $2 billion will be used to establish a Ukraine Defense Enterprise Program.

Blinken, during a trip to Kyiv, said the new fund would “assist Ukraine in acquiring” additional weapons while “investing in Ukraine’s defense industrial base, helping to strengthen even more its capacity to produce what it needs for itself but also to produce for others.”

“Finally, using this fund [will] help Ukraine purchase military equipment from other countries, not just the United States, for Ukraine’s use,” he added.

Most U.S. Foreign Military Financing in previous Ukraine aid packages has gone to eastern European countries supporting Kyiv in its war effort against Russia’s invasion. The $2 billion tranche is the largest amount of Foreign Military Financing the U.S. has ever given Ukraine.

Foreign Military Financing is cash assistance the State Department gives to friendly countries to allow them to purchase military equipment from U.S. defense contractors. Israel and Taiwan are the only two recipients who have previously been granted permission to use some Foreign Military Financing on their own defense companies through a special mechanism called offshore procurement.

The State Department said the $2 billion Foreign Military Financing for Ukraine “may also facilitate co-production between Ukrainian and U.S. industry and help support Ukraine’s defense industrial base to strengthen Ukraine’s capacity to produce weapons to defend itself.”

The Biden administration scaled up an effort to help Ukraine build defense equipment on its soil in December with the Commerce Department hosting a U.S.-Ukraine defense-industrial base conference.

Lockheed Martin and RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies, signed a memorandum of understanding in September to produce Javelin anti-tank missiles in Ukraine.

Most U.S. assistance has come in the form of arms transfers from existing U.S. weapons stockpiles and through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which allows the Pentagon to place contracts on additional weapons systems for Kyiv.

But the Biden administration has not allowed Kyiv to use long-range U.S. weapons to strike military assets in Russian territory, citing escalatory risks. The U.K. recently reversed a similar restriction on Ukraine’s use of long-range British weapons.

Those restrictions do not apply to Kyiv’s indigenous capabilities. For instance, Ukraine has used its own drones to strike Russian oil facilities — drawing protests from the Biden administration.

A group of Ukrainian parliamentarians visited Washington this week in a bid to get the U.S. to lift its ban on using American weapons to strike inside Russia, Politico reported Tuesday.

French defense committee takes swipe at German industry tack

PARIS — France’s lower-house defense committee took a swipe at what it described as Germany’s self-interested approach in European defense matters, saying the Berlin government’s promotion of domestic firms comes at the expense of the greater industrial cooperation that is needed to increase strategic autonomy in the European Union.

European defense-industry cooperation should systemically apply a “best athlete” approach, said Jean-Louis Thiériot, one of two rapporteurs of an information report on Europe’s defense industry, in a parliamentary committee presentation on Wednesday. Participating countries should stop seeing joint programs as a tool to boost the skills of national manufacturers in a given segment, and the “principle of geographic return” should be scrapped, he said.

While France and Germany have moved ahead on joint programs to develop a sixth-generation fighter and a new battle tank, the rapporteurs said that Germany torpedoed several joint programs, didn’t involve France in the launch of its European Sky Shield Initiative, and is using the war in Ukraine to expand its defense-industry presence in Eastern Europe.

“Germany is now developing a genuine defense industrial strategy to extend its sphere of influence in Europe, which tends to increase the competitive logic even more, at the expense of the cooperative logic,” Thiériot said.

The new broadside at Berlin follows a storied history of bilateral defense-industrial squabbling, based on lingering mistrust, that senior government leaders from both countries have managed to wrangle at crucial moments to ensure joint programs can move forward.

Competition between European defense companies is “very strong” and even increasing, mainly because industrial cooperation is weak. Only 18% of capital expenditure on defense by European Union member states is collaborative, against a target of 35%, according to the rapporteurs.

While lack of political will may weigh on joint programs, the committee says the main hurdles are difficulties such as excessive time frames. Thiériot highlighted the Eurodrone program, with talks starting in 2013, for an arrival in the armed forces no earlier than 2030 at best, “in a radically different strategic context, with no certainty that what will arrive will correspond exactly to the needs of the time.”

Joint programs are also marred by participating governments seeking a return on investment for local firms rather than a best-in-class approach, while the value of capability harmonization is often diminished by demands for national specifications. The report cites the example of the NH90 medium-sized helicopter, which exists in nearly 50 different versions across European countries.

Strong intra-European competition is linked to “non-cooperative national strategies,” with the European space industry the biggest victim, according the committee.

The panel said Germany is the first to reaffirm competing national strategies in Europe, torpedoing Franco-German cooperation on the Maritime Airborne Warfare System patrol aircraft, the Tigre attack helicopter Standard 3 and the Common Indirect Fire System artillery project.

It says Berlin took “full advantage” of the NATO Framework Nations Concept to establish itself as the lead nation for the European Sky Shield missile defense project, which excludes MBDA, Europe’s leading missile manufacturer, while France was not involved in its launch. The project promotes Israel’s Arrow-3 and the U.S. Patriot system, “even though our Franco-Italian SAMP/T ground-air defense system could have met German requirements,” Thiérot said.

In the wake of the war in Ukraine, Germany is also pursuing a strategy of penetrating the defense markets of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States, according to the committee report.

Rheinmetall is playing a “central role” through an aggressive expansion policy in those markets, with several partnerships to set up factories in Eastern Europe and co-finance a tank development project in Hungary, “even though we all know how divergent Hungary’s strategic choices can be from those of Europe in general,” Thiérot said.

The committee’s report is based on almost 50 hearings in Paris as well as roughly 30 interviews with executives, military and policy makers in various countries, including Sweden, Italy and Poland.

Takeaways from the voyage to Gaza for the US Army’s watercraft program

When the U.S. Army’s largest watercraft, LSV-1, cast off for Gaza in early March, it marked the start of a momentous journey. This voyage, followed by the deployment of several additional ships loaded with equipment to establish a pier and parts of a modular causeway system, represents a significant portion of the Army’s mission-critical, intra-theater lift capability.

The ships are now in place, and the mission has sparked a wave of discussions, debates and potential misconceptions about the Army watercraft program’s strategic positioning and future.

The question today is: How much does the deployment to Gaza help — or hinder — the future of Army watercraft writ large?

The primary objective of this voyage was to construct a pier in Gaza, a mission that was expected to involve between at least 500 and 1,000 troops and take approximately 60 days. The task is particularly daunting, given the lack of existing port infrastructure in Gaza. Despite the complexities, President Joe Biden has assured the public that no soldier would be on shore, which is likely one reason the Army watercraft program’s specific capabilities were selected.

But this deployment is inconsistent with how AWC program missions have recently been discussed.

AWC are now a key part of a larger, cross-cutting effort on contested logistics, with a focus on the Pacific. Speaking to USNI News, Maj. Gen. Jered Helwig recently highlighted the need for such watercraft in the Pacific. Seeing several Army ships sail eastward through the Atlantic Ocean may further bury the stated demands on the other side of the globe.

Navy ship underway for Gaza pier mission suffers fire, returns to US

The deployment to Gaza showcases the pivotal role AWC can play in a humanitarian assistance mission, which may be tempting to some decision-makers to prove the AWC program’s inherent value to the Army and the joint force. However, it’s essential to remember that the Army’s force structure is not primarily driven by humanitarian missions.

The Gaza deployment echoes what some thought should have been done more extensively in Puerto Rico, and was done successfully in Haiti, to demonstrate the AWC program’s capability in a humanitarian scenario. However, a relief mission should not distract from the AWC program’s primary missions, which are based on the future warfighting demands coming from each theater.

The need for a balanced watercraft fleet that meets theater demands remains critical. And seeing several Army watercraft move east from Virginia does beg the question as to how the Army is balancing such deployments against their primary missions in the Pacific.

The deployment to Gaza may seem to validate the Army’s expeditionary role in future operations — a testament to its ability to forward-deploy capabilities where needed in a timely manner. However, this deployment is more of an administrative movement — to move critical capabilities to a theater in need — than an expeditionary one.

A report of setting up the pier on James River, then breaking it back down to be shipped on different vessels, does not make the argument for an expeditionary Army.

The mission might suffer from the time it takes, or from the fact that the watercraft and piers are being placed too far from the eventual need, or that the mission itself is not aligned to the expeditionary nature of the Army’s evolving concepts for future warfare.

The Army had moved its watercraft from U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, only to later require the watercraft to return, which raises questions about whether this intra-theater capability is being correctly allocated.

This deployment potentially underscores the importance of having AWC placed closer to the point of need, but using a humanitarian mission as validation for theater needs is a hard case to make. With finite military resources available, humanitarian assistance, while necessary, is seen as a distraction.

Army watercraft, with their unique design and ability to operate in shallower depths, are often the preferred choice for missions such as the one in Gaza. According to the Army’s website, the logistic support vessel, for example, is designed to operate in areas that are inaccessible to traditional ships, making them a valuable asset to the Gaza mission.

These vessels have a cargo deck capable of handling fully loaded military vehicles, and they can also carry up to 2,000 tons of deck cargo, including containers and watercraft. However, they are not the only provider for this capability. The Navy has similar capabilities that are not being leveraged — for reasons not entirely clear.

AWC may be subject to what some refer to as a polarity: Watercraft are useful in humanitarian assistance, but humanitarian missions don’t drive the AWC program’s existence. At the same time, AWC are critical for future Army and joint concepts, and yet those concepts lack resources. Both ideas can be true at the same time, leading to a polarity to be managed and not necessarily solved.

The Army’s ability to run operations and push forces as needed has been demonstrated in various scenarios that don’t drive their raison d’être, but do echo a long history of being internationally relevant. The deployment of Army watercraft to Gaza is a significant event, and while it is highly uncertain as to how strategy might change in the Middle East given recent developments, it is crucial to ask the right questions and avoid succumbing to the wrong narratives.

The future of the AWC program hinges on making sound, informed decisions based on a comprehensive understanding of its strategic relevance and potential. As the Army navigates these uncharted waters, it should ensure it’s steering the AWC program in the right direction.

Christopher G. Pernin is a senior scientist at the think tank Rand, where he leads the engineering and applied sciences team. Lt. Col. Joslyn Fleming is a defense policy researcher at Rand and serves in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.