US defense chief visits Cambodia seeking reset amid China concerns

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA — Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin entered a room with the U.S. and Cambodian flags. He was there to shake hands with a dozen Cambodian military officers — all of whom had studied at American military schools as part of an exchange program between the two governments.

One officer who attended the U.S. Naval Academy joked about the annual Army-Navy football game. Austin, a former Army general, laughed.

“As secretary, I want everybody to win,” he said.

This is a new tactic in America’s relationship with Cambodia: a charm offensive. Austin’s visit marks the first time a U.S. defense secretary has traveled to the country just to meet with its leaders on defense issues. And it’s coming at a critical time.

Just before, Austin had attended the Shangri-La Dialogue, the region’s top defense summit. His speech outlined a partnership of Indo-Pacific states who share values like respect and sovereignty. The subtext, later shown in sharp questioning of Austin’s Chinese counterpart, was that those values are different than China’s.

But Cambodia is an exception. Phnom Penh has deepened its military ties with Beijing in recent years, and could soon host China’s second foreign military site.

Hence the visit. American defense officials framed it as a reset in ties with Cambodia, which has a new prime minister. A hallmark of foreign policy for many countries in Southeast Asia is that they want to keep their options open and not pick between two competing great powers. Still, it’s not clear whether the U.S. can convince Cambodia that Washington is an open option.

This may be a chance “for us to sit down and talk about how our relationship might have a more positive and optimistic path,” said a senior defense official, briefing reporters before the trip on the condition of anonymity.

‘Leaps and bounds’

All hope aside, the official acknowledged a host of challenges surrounding the visit.

For years, the U.S. has warned Cambodia against allowing China to build a permanent military site on Ream Naval Base, which sits in the south near the Gulf of Thailand.

The Center for Strategic and international Studies, which monitors satellite images of the site, said in April that Chinese military ships have docked at Ream for several months.

“Construction in the rest of Ream Naval Base has progressed by leaps and bounds” since the think tank last studied it, the report said.

The facility would help China, whose coast sits behind U.S.-aligned island nations like Taiwan and Japan, project its navy farther beyond its shores and into a critical waterway for world trade.

According to the Pentagon’s annual report on the Chinese military, Cambodia’s defense minister claimed in 2021 that China would be allowed to “modernize and expand Ream” but not be the only country with access to the site. The next summer the two countries opened the Chinese renovations, which now include warehouses, a fresh pier and a dry dock for maintenance.

Since then, the relationship with the U.S. has soured. Last year, Washington sanctioned the country for holding rigged elections. In a statement, the State Department said the ruling party had a chance “to improve the country’s international standing” by permitting real opposition parties and restoring democracy.

The red carpet

Such tension wasn’t on display in Phnom Penh.

Austin held a day of meetings with military and political leaders in the country. The defense ministry flew American and Cambodian flags alongside each other. At the country’s ornate senate building and ministry of defense, Austin walked on a literal red carpet.

Still the U.S. defense official speaking before the trip tried to manage expectations.

“This isn’t a visit that is about significant deliverables,” the official said.

According to a Pentagon statement, Austin discussed restarting military cooperation on issues like disaster relief and de-mining — a legacy from decades-old wars in Southeast Asia.

The topics alone are a sign of U.S. strategy: to smart small and try to grow their partnership over time.

Another bet is that America may now have a better partner. The new prime minister, Hun Manet entered office last summer after his father, a longtime authoritarian, officially stepped down. Hun is a former general, and in the 1990s he attended West Point — Austin’s alma mater, as the secretary’s social media account mentioned in a video of the two.

That said, Hun has done little to make Cambodia more democratic. The government represses opposition parties and polices dissent. It’s not clear whether his time in office represents continuity or change.

U.S. officials often say that there is no substitute for person-to-person meetings and list Austin’s travels to the Indo-Pacific — this is number 10 — like a scorecard. The meetings in Cambodia may test that argument.

Without officially confirming whether Austin discussed the naval site in his meetings, a Pentagon spokesperson was coy.

“There are no doubts about where our concerns are,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

The senior defense official speaking before the trip previewed that approach.

“We’ll be very direct and articulate about how we see U.S. interests,” the official said. “But nonetheless that’s no reason we can’t sit down and talk together.”

US, Philippines expand exercise to territorial edges amid tension with China

BASCO, Philippines — A Philippine fishing vessel was traversing Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea when two Chinese Coast Guard ships fired water cannons at both sides of the boat.

The incident, which took place April 30 during the Balikatan exercise with American and Philippine armed forces, is just one example of what has become a commonplace occurrence — Chinese aggression in areas the Philippines considers its territory. Although, notably, the two Asian nations are among several others asserting sovereignty over local geographic features.

Still, China’s military activities in the area are bringing the U.S. ever closer to the Philippines, America’s oldest ally in the Pacific region since 1951.

The U.S. is continuing to find ways to fortify defenses across the Pacific to deter China and counter its influence. The Philippines, a nation made up of more than 7,000 islands and islets, is situated in a prime location.

The U.S. and the Philippines have held Balikatan, a Tagalog word for “shoulder to shoulder,” almost annually for nearly 40 years. Yet the scope and size of the exercise has been relatively limited until the last few years. The exercise’s expansion is a direct reflection of the Philippines’ acknowledgment its territorial defenses are lacking.

“Exercises are like a second language that, as you are performing the exercise, you are also sending a message to both your adversaries, your likeminded partners and other stakeholders,” Col. Michael Logico, director of the joint and combined training center of the Philippines Armed Forces and the executive agent of Balikatan, told Defense News.

The exercise used to be confined to central military locations within the main island of Luzon, but now events are spread across the country from the most northern islands all the way to the southwestern island of Palawan.

The expansion of the exercise to places like Ilocos Norte, along the northwestern coast of Luzon island, “sends a message of confidence in our ability to protect as north as possible. It’s also a message of deterrence. So if any of our adversaries have any designs that involve the areas up north, we are saying that we are challenging your maritime and air presence in this area by our presence alone, or by our bilateral presence alone,” Logico said.

The exercise series, which typically focused on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as well as counterterrorism mission sets, is now centered around complex operations across domains.

While Balikatan was previously a bilateral event, the exercise now includes over a dozen more countries as observers or direct participants, and that number is expected to grow.

‘Comfortable with the discomfort’

Over the two weeks of Balikatan beginning in April and ending in May, 233 Chinese vessels were spotted in the West Philippine Sea — a term the Philippine government sometimes users in reference to its exclusive economic zone — according to a front-page story in the May 8 edition of The Manila Times.

The Philippines is “getting their teeth kicked in once a month by the Chinese in the Spratly [Islands],” Gregory Poling, an Asian maritime expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Defense News.

Tension may be greatest in the Second Thomas Shoal, where there is a Philippine marine contingent aboard a World War II-era tank landing ship, the Sierra Madre. The ship has been on the reef since 1999, Poling said.

The Sierra Madre keeps Chinese forces off the strategic spot, but “in the next storm, it could be gone,” according to Mark Montgomery, an Asia-focused analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

“If that thing blows off, the Chinese will take over the Second Thomas Shoal. [It will] never have a Philippine footprint again,” he told Defense News.

China has been “getting wildly reckless” there in recent months, according to Poling, who said the country regularly sends at least 50 boats around the shoal every time the Philippines resupplies the Sierra Madre, harassing the crew with high-pressure water cannons, acoustic devices and military-grade lasers.

The previous president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, distanced his government from the U.S. and temporarily canceled a visiting forces agreement between the two nations. According to the Pentagon, the agreement’s activities “range from expert exchanges to ship visits to component exercises and major joint/combined training exercises.”

Duterte had also paused the Balikatan exercise in 2020 in an attempt to improve relations with China. However, the situation in the South China Sea did not improve.

The new president, Bongbong Marcos, has worked to rapidly strengthen relationships with the U.S. and some other countries in the Pacific since his election in 2022.

“The Philippine military is now focused on territorial defense operations, and that shift from counterinsurgency is in support of our allies and in support of our treaty allies. That defense matters,” Gen. Charles Flynn, the head of U.S. Army Pacific, said in May. “We help defend terrain, we help defend people, and … we help them protect and defend their territorial integrity and national sovereignty.”

During Balikatan in 2023, the Philippine Army wanted to conduct a littoral live-fire drill in the Ilocos Norte province, but instead was instructed to move the event south to Zambales, where there is already a military installation, due to political reasons, Logico said.

“At the start of the planning conference [for 2024], I made it my personal goal to bring the exercise back to Ilocos Norte,” Logico said. Not only does it send a message that the Philippines can project military power, but “it is a way for us to be comfortable with the discomfort of the area.”

Previous instances of the exercise took place within military camps or naval training facilities, such as Fort Magsaysay located in central Luzon, Logico noted. “Some of them are a little bit restrictive,” he said. “It’s a controlled environment.”

Logico also had two more goals previously prohibited by the Duterte administration: to conduct live-fire drills and other exercises at sea beyond 12 nautical miles of the Philippines; and to train in the West Philippine Sea. (An exclusive economic zone typically extends 200 nautical miles beyond a country’s territorial sea.)

The Philippine military, along with its American and Australian partners, held a large, live-fire exercise that sank a ship off the coast of Ilocos Norte on May 8. And this year, Balikatan extended 300 nautical miles into the West Philippine Sea, Logico said.

American-style deterrence

While the Philippines is focused on its own defense, America is trying to strengthen its Pacific partnerships. It sees the archipelago nation as key to building a network of land forces that can deter those who would threaten regional stability, according to Flynn, the chief of U.S. Army Pacific.

Not only is the Philippines the United States’ oldest ally in the region, but it’s also positioned closely to Taiwan, an island China considers a rogue province and has threatened to take back by force.

Part of the U.S. Army’s strategy in the Pacific, Flynn said, is to build a strategic land power network. That network “must get in position to defend our sovereignty, to protect our people and to uphold their rights under international law,” he said in May at the Association of the U.S. Army’s LANPAC conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The Army does not have the same type of setup in the Pacific region as it does in Europe when it comes to pre-positioned stock, and there is no NATO member from Asia. As a result, the U.S. aims to establish relationships with individual island nations in the Pacific so it can assume a stronger regional posture.

Balikatan and the Salaknib exercise, which took place in April and May, are part of that. This year saw U.S. military presence push deeper into the Philippines’ northern islands.

For example, the U.S. Army’s 1st Multi-Domain Task Force set up a company command post in Basco, a small island in the northern island chain, to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. On a clear day, Taiwan is visible from points on the remote island.

Also on Basco, Army divers helped dredge a harbor area and construct a new pier capable of accommodating larger ships.

On Itbayat, Basco’s neighbor to the north, the service’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command was building a warehouse to support humanitarian assistance.

The Army also practiced the rapid deployment of its High Mobility Artillery Rocket System throughout the Philippines, from Palawan to La-Lo Airport on northern Luzon to Port Irene further north.

Meanwhile, the multidomain task force for the first time deployed its nascent Mid-Range Capability missile launcher. The weapon traveled to Laoag on the northwest coast of Luzon from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.

Three of the four sites under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement were used in varying forms during Balikatan. The agreement allows the U.S. to fund infrastructure improvement and construction efforts at existing Philippine military bases, among other locations, and to rotationally deploy troops. The deal was signed in 2014 and originally established six sites. In 2023, four more sites were added.

One of the largest undertakings is the U.S. Army’s deployment of an exportable version of its Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center. The Army brought the capability to Fort Magsaysay, one of the agreement’s sites, to conduct a training rotation with the Philippine military as the Pacific nation looks to establish its own high-level training capability akin to the center.

Shoulder to shoulder

In preparation for Balikatan, Maj. Gen. Leodevic Guinid, the Philippine Army’s vice commander, said he told participating forces to focus on being able to fight side by side and to consider whether “you think that we are ready, that we are interoperable.”

Indeed, this effort to ensure the nations’ forces can work together seamlessly is fresh, Guinid said, and there is room for improvement on, for example, tactics, data sharing and the distribution of certain capabilities.

But there’s been progress. For instance, during a live-fire drill as part of Salaknib, a U.S. fires team flew an unmanned aerial system that was taking full-motion video of targets on the range, while Filipino soldiers remained in a concealed position, according to Brig. Gen. David Zinn, the deputy commander of the U.S. Army’s 25th Infantry Division.

“That video was viewed from the U.S. battalion command post, and the Philippine company commander was at the U.S. command post looking at the video to see that intelligence,” Zinn told Defense News. The Filipino commander then used a U.S. radio to communicate to his fires team using Philippine radios to move forward and destroy targets.

Watching the demonstration looks simple, Zinn said, because it’s a radio call. “But having been part of working to gain technical interoperability with partners in the past, it was pretty significant what they did, and we only achieve that by working together and spending time doing it,” he noted.

Beginning during last year’s Balikatan drills in the northern part of Luzon, the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force helped develop a Combined Information and Effects Fusion Cell that would allow the U.S. and the Philippines to see the same information and coordinate actions, which previous iterations of the exercise lacked.

“One thing that we realized quickly was oftentimes we try to increase classification when we build these command-and-control nodes based off of sharing agreements,” Brig. Gen. Bernard Harrington, who commands the task force, told Defense News in an interview at LANPAC.

“We found that the best thing to do was to drive this down to an unclassified level,” Harrington said. “We have human interoperability by being in the same room together. We had technical interoperability to rebuild this network with the system, and then we have procedural interoperability.”

Harrington said they continued to improve the capability during this year’s Balikatan events and now want to provide it to other regional allies and partners.

Logico said still more can be done to benefit interoperability at future exercises, adding that they ought to focus on information warfare, the cyber domain, and low-tech solutions to high-tech problems.

“If we are slow to the learning curve, we would find ourselves being outmaneuvered, so this is something that we have to pay attention to now,” he said.

NATO to unveil Ukraine security package as ‘bridge’ to membership

NATO plans to offer Ukraine a security package when the alliance convenes its annual summit this summer in Washington, though it’s expected to stop short of accepting the nation’s long-standing request for membership amid Russia’s invasion.

In addition to unveiling the package in July, an estimated 32 countries are finalizing a series of bilateral agreements to support Ukraine ahead of the summit, with 13 finalized so far, according to Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO.

“Allies will be putting forward a whole package of deliverables that will serve as a bridge to their membership inside the alliance,” Smith said at a Defense Writers Group roundtable on Monday. “Part of the package will be the language we use to describe Ukraine’s membership aspirations in the declaration itself.”

“Part of it will be an institutionalization of some of the bilateral support that’s currently being provided [to] Ukraine, and tucking it under NATO command. Part of it will be working to identify new resources for our friends in Ukraine, and ensuring that we send a signal to Moscow that the NATO alliance isn’t going anywhere,” Smith added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked for fast-tracked accession into the alliance shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 — a request NATO rebuffed at last year’s summit in Lithuania. Instead, NATO offered Ukraine a multiyear assistance package meant to bolster its defenses and help it transition away from Soviet-era equipment.

Ukrainian entry into NATO would allow Kyiv to invoke the alliance’s collective defense clause, potentially triggering a broader regional conflict with Russia. U.S. President Joe Biden said last year that the war with Russia would have to end before Ukraine enters the alliance.

Still, during an April visit to Kyiv, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg vowed that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO.”

“The work we are undertaking now puts you on an irreversible path towards NATO membership, so that when the time is right, Ukraine can become a NATO member straightaway,” Stoltenberg said.

Some defense companies from the NATO bloc have expressed interest in co-producing certain military capabilities like unmanned systems. The U.S. in May announced a $2 billion Foreign Military Financing package largely geared toward helping Ukraine grow its defense-industrial base.

“This is coming from, in large part, European or Canadian or American companies that are looking at co-production opportunities,” Smith told Defense News.

Regional plans

Smith noted the July summit, which marks NATO’s 75th anniversary, will also focus on the regional defense and deterrence plans for northern, central and southern Europe, which the alliance formally agreed to during last year’s summit.

“It’s going to mean a major shift across the alliance in how countries invest, procure, work together to implement and execute those regional plans,” the diplomat said.

The plans are partially aimed at guiding NATO members when they make military procurement decisions to ensure they’re buying the right capabilities. For instance, a country could be responsible for three core tasks within a regional plan and would be expected to make procurement decisions accordingly.

“It’s ultimately up to them on how to spend the resources, but they have to answer to the regional plans,” Smith said.

She argued that the regional plans will also help reassure defense manufacturers that NATO intends to keep procuring larger amounts of ammunition and other materiel over the long term, encouraging them to ramp up production.

“It’s not a signed contract, but helping them see what the requirements will be across the alliance that’s tagged to these regional plans will certainly assure them that the demand signals will not just be over the next 12 months, but the demand signals to industry will be for the better part of a decade,” she said.

The summit will also focus on burden-sharing. Smith expects that slightly more than 20 countries will spend at least 2% of their respective gross domestic product on defense — a goal set by the alliance.

“We have to make sure that we keep pushing and get every member of the alliance to lay out a plan to get to the 2% within the next few years,” Smith said. “And I think 99% of the allies have a plan in place.”

DIU, Air Force pick four firms to prototype modular testing drone

The Defense Department has selected four companies to develop prototypes of a modular drone that can be used to test payloads, sensors and other technology, and be produced at high rates at an affordable cost.

Anduril Industries, Integrated Solutions for Systems Inc., Leidos Dynetics, and Zone 5 Technologies will develop prototypes for the Enterprise Test Vehicle project, the Air Force Armament Directorate and Defense Innovation Unit announced Monday. More than 100 firms applied to take part in this program.

The prototypes should be ready for the first flight demonstration in late summer or fall, DIU and the Air Force said. After those demonstrations take place, DIU and the Air Force will pick at least one promising prototype to keep developing into a version that can be rapidly scaled into production.

“We are excited to partner with DIU,” Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said in the release. “The ETV presents an opportunity to leverage promising ideas from industry to create and refine affordable designs for test capabilities that can be produced on a relevant timeline.”

Cassie Johnson, the ETV program manager for the Air Force Armament Directorate, said it was important to create more opportunities for non-traditional aerospace firms to meet the program’s cost, timeline, and production quantity goals.

ETV is intended to be a test vehicle designed using an open systems architecture approach, which can be updated with modular subsystems and then used to validate whether those new components work properly.

DIU said in a September 2023 solicitation that the system should have a range of 500 nautical miles, or 926 kilometers, and be able to deliver a kinetic payload.

DIU and the Air Force said Monday that vendors will minimize the use of expensive materials and instead use commercial off-the-shelf components as much as possible to hold down costs and keep supply chains flowing.

The ETV vendors also have to make sure the drones are not “over-engineered” for their mission, use modern manufacturing and design techniques, and be able to produce at a high rate that would not be possible with a more elaborate design.

DIU and the Air Force said that ETV will be able to be deployed in large numbers and using a variety of launch methods to “create an overwhelming dilemma for any defending adversary.”

ETV is expected to be used as part of the Pentagon’s ambitious Replicator program.

The Air Force Research Laboratory, U.S. Special Operations Command, Naval Air Systems Command, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command are also collaborating on the ETV program or helping evaluate systems.

Jason Levin, senior vice president of Anduril’s air dominance and strike division, said in a statement that the company expects to be able to deliver an affordable, modular and capable prototype that can become the basis for large-scale production of future aircraft.

“Like all Anduril products, our ETV solution aims to deliver capabilities in years, not decades, filling critical capability gaps on a relevant timeline,” Levin said. “In this case, that means pioneering solutions to enable on-demand large-scale manufacturing to achieve affordable mass.”

Statements from Leidos, Integrated Solutions, and Zone 5 were not immediately available.

Russian advance on Kharkiv has ‘slowed a bit,’ US defense chief says

SINGAPORE — Just weeks after Russian forces broke through the front lines near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, the offensive has started to steady, according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

“That activity continues, but it’s slowed a bit,” he said.

Defense officials in the West had expected the attack for weeks before it arrived on May 10. That day, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that maps the front lines, Russia made “tactically significant gains.” In the fighting that followed, Moscow broke through Ukrainian defenses outside the city, which sits little more than two dozen miles from the border.

Since then the offensive has lost momentum for two reasons, Austin argued.

The first is that Russia is hitting firmer Ukrainian lines, which Kyiv rushed to prepare while awaiting the attack.

And the second is a recent policy change from the administration. To this point in the war, the U.S. hasn’t allowed Ukraine to fire American-provided weapons into Russia, fearing escalation. That recently changed, in large part because Russia was using the policy to its advantage and stationing its forces just outside Ukrainian reach.

Ukraine can now hit Russian positions preparing to attack across the border and use American kit to do so.

”If someone’s shooting at you, then certainly this gives them the opportunity to counter-fire,” Austin said.

The rules haven’t totally changed. Ukraine only has permission to shoot across the border around Kharkiv and can’t use longer range weapons to hit inside Russia.

“Our policy with respect to long-range strike into Russia has not changed,” Austin said.

His comments came at a press conference after the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest defense summit. While there, Austin met with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, who addressed the crowd and later discussed the policy change in front of reporters.

“Is that sufficient, no,” Zelenskyy said.

While thankful for the change, he argued that there are still too many airfields in Russia that can safely launch attacks into Ukraine. To wit, Moscow has been pounding Kharkiv and other cities with glide bombs, or dumb bombs tweaked to be more precise. These are notoriously difficult to intercept, and many are dropped from aircraft based farther into Russia than the Kharkiv region.

Still, speaking with Defense News earlier in the conference, Estonia’s Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said he doubted Russia will be able to take the city.

But that’s little comfort to Ukraine, Pevkur said. The new offensive has pinned more Ukrainian soldiers to one part of a sprawling 600-mile front.

“The end goal, from the Ukrainian point of view, is the same,” Pevkur said.

AI regulators fear getting drowned out by hype of wars

BERLIN — A fighter jet hurtles toward an adversary head-on. Mere moments before a collision, it swerves — but not before dealing a lethal blow to its opponent.

This risky maneuver would be reckless even for the most skilled pilot. But to artificial intelligence, such a simulation scenario showcases one of the most effective dogfighting techniques, scoring kill rates of nearly 100% against human pilots.

In a warfighting revolution turbocharged by the conflict in Ukraine, autonomous decision-making is quickly reshaping modern combat, experts told Defense News in a series of interviews.

Weapons that can decide for themselves whom or what to target — and even when to kill — are entering military arsenals. They have experts worried that an uncontrolled arms race is emerging, and that warfare could become so fast-paced that humans cannot keep up.

It is the speed, in particular, that may prove a “slippery slope,” said Natasha Bajema, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a nongovernmental organization. As the speed of conflict increases with greater autonomy on the battlefield, the incentives to delegate even more functions to the machines could become ever stronger.

“Do we really think that in the middle of a battle between China and the U.S., someone is going to say: ‘Hold on, we can’t let the machine do that’?” Bajema asked, referring to the allure of what she described as war moving at machine speed.

“It’s the most competitive race for advantage that we’ve seen since the race for nuclear weapons,” she added.

The appetite for more autonomy in weapons, fanned by combat in Ukraine and Gaza, has drowned out long-standing calls for limits on AI in military applications. But they still exist.

Ambassador Alexander Kmentt, the director of the Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Department of the Austrian Foreign Ministry, called the scenario of trigger-pulling, AI-enabled robots a true “Oppenheimer moment,” a reference to the birth of the atomic bomb in the 1940s.

Austria has been leading an international push to bring governments from around the world to the table to draft the rules of war for a new era.

In late April, the country’s government hosted the first global conference on autonomous weapon systems in Vienna’s grand Hofburg Palace. Kmentt said it exceeded his expectations.

“At times during the preparations, I was concerned about attendance, that the room would be half empty,” the ambassador recalled in an interview with Defense News. Instead, there were more than 1,000 delegates from 144 countries present in Vienna.

“Even those states that used to see the topic as some sort of sci-fi now perceive it as being incredibly timely,” he said.

Much of the Global South — a term sometimes used to couple countries that reject the hierarchy of world politics — now seems interested in restricting the technology, according to Kmentt, though little could be achieved without buy-in from the major global powers.

Unintended consequences

For all their military appeal, AI-enabled weapons come with the flaws of a technology still in its infancy. Machine vision, in particular, is still too prone to errors, said Zachary Kallenborn, lead researcher at Looking Glass USA, a consultancy that deals with questions surrounding advanced weapons systems.

“A single pixel is enough to confuse a bomber with a dog, a civilian with a combatant,” he said.

In the coming years, experts expect to see an accumulating number of autonomous weapons on the battlefield with increasingly sophisticated abilities. Even without technological mishaps, this might lead to a heightened risk of misunderstanding.

The disposable nature of drones, for example, could lead to more aggressive or risky behaviors, said Bajema. Intercepting an autonomous system would likely elicit a different reaction among adversaries than downing a crewed plane, she said, but where precisely the line falls is hard to determine.

The race toward AI is governed by what she called the “terminator problem” — if one state has it, all believe they need it to feel secure — an environment that makes regulating the technology so difficult.

Moreover, today’s geopolitical climate is not very amenable to multilateral arms control, she added.

Given those odds, Kmentt said he is merely looking for a compromise.

“It’s clear that there will be no universal consensus on the topic,” he noted. “There’s hardly any issue where this exists, and certain countries seem to have no interest in developing international law. So we have to accept that, and instead work together with those countries that are interested in developing these rules.”

But he admitted to being somewhat pessimistic about the chances of success.

“These weapons will majorly define the future of armed conflicts, and as a result the voices of militaries worldwide who want these weapons will become louder and louder,” Kmentt predicted.

For now, the target date of 2026 looms large for the community of AI nonproliferation advocates; it refers to the United Nations’ mandate of setting “clear prohibitions and restrictions on autonomous weapon systems,” in the words of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

“So far, there is insufficient political will to make something happen due to the difficult geopolitical situation,” Kmentt said.

The 2026 target is not an arbitrary date, he added. “If we haven’t succeeded with anything by then, the window for preventive action has closed.”

Chinese defense head warns of ‘self-destruction’ for Taiwan supporters

SINGAPORE — After meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the first time, China’s new defense minister paused in an outdoor hallway to wipe the fog off his glasses.

Standing near the press, Adm. Dong Jun smiled. And to a member of the American delegation, he described the best place in China, in his opinion, to go see pandas. It was diplomacy in action.

Two days later, Dong had a different tone.

He gave a stern, at times strident, speech on the last day of the Shangri-La Dialogue, a defense summit in Singapore that draws officials from across the region. Dong warned that those who support independence for Taiwan — a rogue province in the eyes of China’s leaders — will face “self-destruction.”

At another point, he said that the odds of “peaceful reunification” with the island nation are “eroding.”

These two points in time were representative of China’s goals for the summit — and by extension the reputation it may be seeking in the region. It appears China came to reassure other countries it is acting responsibly; after all, it did resume top military talks with the U.S..

But at the same time, it sent a message of enforcement — specifically regarding its interests in Taiwan and the South China Sea. After facing criticism from regional neighbors during the summit, Dong’s speech showed China’s hardened position on sensitive topics.

“That was the most consistently intimidating speech we’ve heard from China at a Shangri-La Dialogue,” Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University, wrote on X.

‘Greater scrutiny’

A U.S. official agreed with the post, calling the speech “tone deaf.”

“Countries across the region and around the world continue to have serious concerns about coercive [Chinese] activities in the East and South China seas, in the Taiwan Strait, and beyond,” the official said on the condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the topic.

The reference was to China’s military activities around the Second Thomas Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea on which the Philippines has an outpost. China and the Philippines are among several nations asserting sovereignty over local geographic features.

Chinese Coast Guard vessels have spent months harassing Philippine vessels during resupply missions — at times firing water cannons and disabling ships.

Two days before Dong spoke, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. warned he would consider the death of any Filipino due to such behavior an act of war. That decision could pull the U.S., which has a mutual defense treaty with Manila, into a conflict.

But Marcos wasn’t the only speaker with harsh words for China at the conference. Austin repeated Pentagon talking points that conflict isn’t “imminent or unavoidable.”

And Australia’s defense minister, Richard Marles, said: “As China steps up to a larger role, it must accept, like all great powers, that there will be much greater scrutiny on the way it uses its strength.”

Two years ago, after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taiwan, China ended military talks with the U.S. The break worried some attending last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, when China’s defense minister at the time had declined an offer to meet with American defense officials.

Those talks restarted after a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November, and Dong spoke at length about the value of communication during his remarks.

“The Chinese military never acts from the position of strength in his relations with foreign militaries,” Dong said. “At the same time, others should not expect to impose their will on us.”

Words and actions

But as one audience member pointed out to Dong during a Q&A session, those signals often don’t match China’s actions.

The week before the conference, China launched a series of military drills around Taiwan, responding to a speech from the island nation’s new president, who some in Beijing view as a pro-independence official. China labeled these exercises a “punishment.”

In his speech, Dong cited “external interfering forces,” a euphemism for the U.S. and other allied countries, for tension in the South China Sea and Taiwan.

After his speech, the minister wouldn’t address questions about China’s role in the Russia-Ukraine war nor the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. He did, however, speak for more than 10 minutes straight about those he claimed are seeking Taiwanese independence “incrementally.”

“They keep testing China’s red lines,” he said, referencing arms sales and “official engagements,” likely a reference to the members of Congress who recently visited the island.

When the moderator at the conference took several critical questions from the crowd, Dong tried a quick joke.

“I can feel the charm of the Shangri-La Dialogue,” he said.

The question behind Zelenskyy’s visit: Are Europe and Asia converging?

Singapore — Saturday evening, a crowd gathered near the doors of the Shangri-La hotel. They were waiting for a speaker, the last one to be announced at the defense conference held there each year, and one not even from the region.

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy entered to this welcome of cameras and cell phones, wearing his usual T-shirt and fatigue-style pants. The next day, he gave the summit’s final address, casting Ukraine as a global country and Russia’s full-scale invasion as a war of global concern.

“We found ourselves in a war that affects everyone,” he said.

Zelenskyy’s surprise arrival marked the second year of a trend. The Shangri-La Dialogue is Asia’s top defense summit, but since 2022, it’s become more European as officials from the continent see Russia’s war as an omen.

“Europe has woken up about the fact that despite the great geographical distance of the Taiwan Strait to Europe, that the impact [of a war] on Europe’s economy would be enormous,” said Bonnie Glaser, an expert on China at the German Marshall Fund.

And yet, despite this concern, it’s not clear that many Asian officials see the same warning — or that Ukraine is even the war they care about the most right now. Israel’s campaign against the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza matters more to some countries in the region calling for a ceasefire.

There lies the tension with Zelenskyy’s visit. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin the day before described a “new convergence” of countries in the Indo-Pacific that share a set of ideals, such as respect and sovereignty. European officials visiting Singapore share many of those values and are growing more attentive to the region. But the two region’s security concerns are still far from converging.

‘An interest in this region’

Austin himself made this connection in his speech the day before Zelenskyy’s.

The U.S. calls China its top challenge and Austin’s speech reiterated that hierarchy. And yet, while answering questions after his address, Austin pointed to the many European officials in the crowd.

“They’re not in the room because I invited him,” he said. “They’re in the room because they have an interest in this region.”

Countries such as the Netherlands and Germany have temporarily deployed ships to the Indo-Pacific, with a Dutch frigate transiting the Taiwan Strait just before the conference began. Britain also has a more enduring commitment to the region now as part of the AUKUS defense pact, an agreement with the U.S. on nuclear-powered submarines and advanced technology.

Zelenskyy’s arrival was like a crescendo atop these different notes.

Austin met with him and a group of Ukrainian defense officials on the sidelines of the conference. According to a Pentagon readout, they discussed U.S. assistance and pledged to stay at Ukraine’s side. Zelenskyy later wrote on the social media app X that the two discussed air defense and the delivery of F-16 fighter jets, among other issues.

Meanwhile, Austin and others at the conference had already been linking Asian and European interests in reference to China, where companies have supported Russia’s defense industry throughout the war. In a meeting with Chinese Minister of National Defense Adm. Dong Jun, Austin warned that there would be consequences if Chinese companies continued that support.

“He said quite clearly that if China’s support for Russia’s defense sector continues, then the United States with our allies will have to take further measures,” a senior American defense official told reporters afterward, declining to elaborate further.

A linkage?

Several countries in the region also see their interests in Europe.

Japan, Australia and South Korea are among the countries that have supported Ukraine during the war, whether through aid, sanctions or equipment. Taiwan sees Russia’s invasion as a potential harbinger of a potential attack from China, which considers the island a rogue breakaway province.

“This was a topic of conversation in all of our meetings in Taiwan, whether or not we stand by Ukraine,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-De., who co-chaired a congressional delegation to the island and then Singapore, in an interview.

But not all countries in the region agree with this linkage.

“Taiwan is not Ukraine and neither is China Russia,” said Singapore defense Minister Ng Eng Hen in a speech just before Zelenskyy’s.

And while many of the speakers referenced Ukraine, the war in Gaza also loomed over the conference. The president-elect of Indonesia, which has a large Muslim population, said his country was ready to send a peacekeeping force to the strip to maintain a ceasefire. The first question Zelenskyy got after his speech was about Ukraine’s stance on Israel.

Notwithstanding, Zelenskyy continued to argue that the audience should care about Russia’s war. His speech described the conflict as global, discussing partners supporting Kyiv from outside NATO and also the effects of Russia’s aggression elsewhere, such as the food scarcity it created for northern Africa.

“We need the support of Asian countries,” Zelenskyy argued.

That doesn’t mean he expects more countries to send Ukraine weapons. In a Q&A after his speech, he mentioned a “peace summit” Ukraine is holding in Switzerland later in June as an example of non-military ways to contribute. That said, he didn’t seem to be taking it for granted.

Ending his speech, he thanked Singapore for the invitation to the conference, and then he addressed the crowd.

“Thank you for your attention,” Zelenskyy said.

‘All in’: Austin defends US focus on Indo-Pacific amid global upheaval

SINGAPORE — U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin gave a legacy speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security conference, defending the administration’s approach to the region in a world consumed by war in Europe and the Middle East.

His message was twofold.

First, the Pentagon under his tenure labeled China its pace setter and the U.S. has indeed kept pace. Austin has visited the Indo-Pacific 10 times as secretary and treated the region as a team sport.

In the last three years, the U.S. has expanded its number of security partners, deepened existing agreements and encouraged them to work more closely together. The leaders of Japan, India, South Korea and the Philippines have all visited Washington for defense-heavy summits. And Austin has visited Shangri-La every year in his tenure, except for a break in 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Second, Austin argued these teams here to stay. The buzzphrase in his speech was “a new convergence,” or that there’s a closer set of partners in the region for Washington because they have a closer set of interests. These small groups working together in the region, Austin argued, are replacing the old “hub and spoke” model in which the U.S. stood at the center of a surrounding set of partners.

His argument is in part an effort reassure countries in the region concerned that the structure is brittle, and could crack if former President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

“The progress that we’ve made together is going to last, not just for the next year, but for the next decade and beyond,” Austin said.

It’s also a message to Beijing, whose government chafes at the perception that other countries in the region are teaming up to contain it.

Austin cast himself as a figure of stability in contrast to the top Chinese official in attendance. Adm. Dong Jun is China’s third minister of national defense in three years, and a separate minister refused to meet with Austin during the conference last year. The choice reflected poorly on Beijing in a region concerned with peace, especially in the two superpower’s relationship.

Austin and Dong met on the sidelines of the conference — the first time the two countries’ top defense officials spoke in person in almost 18 months.

The U.S. and China both give speeches each year at the conference and paint the other as the cause of instability. Austin did so by referencing China’s aggression in the South China Sea and its recent exercises around Taiwan, an island Beijing considers a rogue breakaway province. China launched what it called a set of “punishment” drills after an inauguration speech by Taiwan’s new president, seen as more pro-independence than his predecessor by many in Beijing.

Austin reiterated the value of “the peaceful resolution of disputes through dialogue — and not coercion or conflict — and certainly not through so-called punishment.”

The speech notwithstanding, Austin entered this year’s conference facing crises around the world.

Ukraine is defending a fresh Russian advance on Kharkiv, which sits close to the border and where Ukrainian forces made their most stunning advances of the war in 2022.

And Israeli officials continue to say the war in Gaza may continue for at least another six months, testing the limits of America’s ability to respond to such a protracted crisis and also Washington’s patience in a war where the U.S. has said too many civilians are dying.

Austin referenced both conflicts in his speech but described them as secondary to the Pentagon’s focus on the Indo-Pacific. Given the election later this year, this could be his last visit to the conference as secretary. If that’s the case, said senior defense officials briefing reporters before the trip, he would leave the region stronger than it was when he started.

“All of these relationships are at a high watermark,” the official said, “and his leadership fingerprint is all over those.”

Space Force eyes advanced tech, new orbits for narrowband SATCOM

The Space Force offered a glimpse this week of its vision for the future of narrowband satellite communications, a plan that could include a large number of spacecraft in multiple orbits with advanced capabilities.

Today’s narrowband communication satellites, part of the Mobile User Objective System constellation, provide cellular voice and data capabilities to military forces around the world. Their location in the narrowband frequency range makes them less susceptible to bad weather or tricky terrain and allows for more secure communications.

In a May 29 notice, the Space Force said it wants its future narrowband satellites to be more resilient, cost less to build and maintain, and be fielded on faster timelines. The service hasn’t finalized those plans, but is analyzing its options and plans to complete that work later this year.

“The U.S. military must preserve its asymmetrical advantage given a contested, degraded, and operationally limited space environment,” the service said. “The capabilities provided by narrowband SATCOM are critical to the US military and its allies and they must continue to evolve in order to address expanding needs, benefit from emerging technologies, and to mitigate future threats.”

The service also envisions the proliferated constellation residing in medium Earth orbit, or MEO, below geostationary orbit where the satellites are currently positioned. MEO is located between 1,200 and 22,000 miles above sea level and geostationary orbit is around 22,000 miles.

The Space Force has four MUOS satellites in orbit and one spare, all built by Lockheed Martin. Each spacecraft has two payloads — one that maintains a legacy Ultra High Frequency Network and another that offers a new Wideband Code Division Multiple Access, or WCDMA, capability.

As the service crafts its vision for what capability will follow MUOS, it plans to launch two more satellites to keep the constellation operational through at least 2035. In January, the service awarded Lockheed and Boeing each a $66 million contract to design prototypes of the two spacecraft by July 2025. The Space Force had planned to choose one of the two companies by the end of fiscal 2025 to build the satellites, but that decision has been pushed to FY26.

Those two MUOS satellites, slated to launch in FY31, will provide a bridge to the new narrowband architecture. However, the service said in the notice it may want to take greater steps to transition to the future architecture by launching spacecraft to MEO in the same time frame.

The key, it said, is whether the existing ground terminals designed to link with satellites in GEO can interoperate with MEO spacecraft without the need for major upgrades. The notice seeks feedback from companies on potential modifications.

“Continuation of these services to the current set of user terminals creates an opportunity to increase space segment resiliency on the path to a more capable and resilient architecture,” the service said. “Additionally, if there are software or hardware modifications that user terminals may have to consider in order to be supported from MEO, those should be identified in the response.”

The service also wants to better understand the technical and schedule risks that could impede its plan to launch the transitional system by 2031 and whether companies recommend any demonstrations that could help reduce that risk.

The notice does not discuss the role commercial systems may play in the future narrowband architecture, though Space Force officials have said they are considering how to integrate technology available in the private sector.

In its commercial space strategy released in April, the service highlighted satellite communications more broadly as an area of opportunity for commercial collaboration. The document says the Space Force will prioritize those capabilities that are system-agnostic and can be easily integrated into a diverse architecture.

“The USSF will look to improve resilience through the integration of proliferated commercial networks into hybrid architectures and offset future investments in government owned capabilities,” the service said.