GM Defense eyes $1 billion European market for tactical vehicles

PARIS — GM Defense hopes that a resurgence of the car giant’s commercial business in Europe will pave the way for sales of militarized trucks used by special operations units, a company executive said.

The company makes the Infantry Squad vehicle, based on the Colorado pickup truck, which is in production for vanguard U.S. Army formations including the 82nd Airborne Division, and is readying a slightly larger variant, the Light Tactical Wheeled Vehicle, based on the Silverado truck.

Executives now hope to find buyers in Europe, with acquisition competitions Denmark, Spain and the U.K. adding to a combined $1 billion in potential business, according to Bradley Watters, vice president of international development.

The push aims to cut into the hold of the militarized Mercedes Benz’s G-class rides popular with armed forces here, Watters explained. The key proposition is similar: The backing of an automotive industry titan means assured spare parts and scaleable pricing. Plus, he added, electrification options provide stealthy operations on the battlefield, among other advantages.

“GM is making a comeback in Europe,” Watters said in an interview ahead of the Eurosatory trade show here. Last fall, the company opened a showroom in Zurich, Switzerland, for the Cadillac brand, followed by another one here late last month. “Our customers tell us, ‘We like big U.S. trucks,’” Watters said.

Notably, GM Defense’s campaign relies on vehicle nimbleness over armor. The ISV vehicles are constructed without major protection at all, banking instead on the idea that dicey battlefield situations are best left in the rear-view mirror.

If sales materialize, they would likely come in the form of direct commercial sales, as opposed to foreign military sales through the U.S. government. That‘s because the U.S. Army is just at the beginning of outfitting its own formations, Watters said.

Anduril to build factory to increase Dive-LD unmanned systems capacity

Defense tech company Anduril Industries said it will build a new production facility in Rhode Island capable of churning out as many as 200 of its Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicles annually.

The company will use its own money, plus some support from the state of Rhode Island, to establish the factory in Quonset Point.

The factory is set to open in late 2025, being operations in early 2026, and then reach full capacity by the end of that year: 50 hulls a year, with the ability to scale up to 200 a year if customer demand calls for that.

Until the facility opens, the company will continue to build Dive-LD hulls in its Quincy, Massachusetts, maritime engineering center. Anduril in February received a contract to provide the Defense Department with Dive-LD vehicles through Defense Innovation Unit’s Commercial Solutions Opening process. The U.S. Navy subsequently awarded the company an $18.6 million award using that contract vehicle.

Anduril’s chief strategy officer, Chris Brose, told reporters June 11 the company proved the maturity and utility of its Dive-LD vehicle during a swim-off event last year that led to the DIU contract. But a remaining and recurring question from the government has been, “can Anduril ramp production to really hit high-rate manufacturing numbers?”

He said the Quonset Point factory will “show the U.S. government that we are ready to and able to deliver on large contracts, if those contracts are forthcoming.”

The standup of the 100,000-150,000 square foot production facility will create more than 100 jobs in the next five years.

It will also allow Anduril to try to realize its vision to build a massive fleet of AUVs. A company statement notes the Dive-LD family of vehicles is “designed from the ground-up for production at scale, with a heavy emphasis on commercial-off-the-shelf components with robust supply chains, a modular design, and advanced, scalable manufacturing techniques that enable rapid iterations based on customer needs.”

The company can build 12 Dive-LD vehicles at the Quincy facility today, or could scale up to 24 a year if needed by adding extra shifts.

“We’re out of space in terms of our ability in the Quincy facility to meet the demand that we’re seeing from the Navy at present, let alone where we believe that’s going in the future,” Brose said.

“This is the challenge that I think all defense companies have in terms of, how much to facilitize in order to meet a demand that is not always crystal clear,” Brose continued. “Our approach to that is, we’re going to lean forward. We’re going to invest in ourselves; we’re going to invest in our ability to produce these kinds of systems in a totally different way. And we’re going to put the facilities in place to meet a demand that that we expect to grow,” rather than wait for the government to award a contract and have to play catch-up in building a larger factory.

As for the location in Quonset Point, Brose said the region is a “phenomenal center of undersea expertise and production.”

“Nav[al] Undersea Warfare Center, other major contractors that are performing on significant undersea programs, access to the water — you just have an enormously rich environment of undersea expertise, talented workforce, and it’s phenomenal for Anduril to be a part of that and plug into that,” Brose said.

French Army head Schill talks force modernization, Ukraine war lessons

French Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pierre Schill has led the land force since July 2021, implementing a large-scale modernization effort called Scorpion that includes new connected armored vehicles in a shift to networked combat. He oversees a budget that increased 12% in 2024 to more than €10 billion (U.S. $10.8 billion) and a force of more than 110,000 military personnel.

In an interview ahead of the Eurosatory conference in Paris, which runs June 17-21, the general commented on the changing security situation, capabilities the Army will demonstrate at Europe’s largest defense show, and how the armed forces must adapt to the “hyper-lethality” of the modern battlefield and evolving warfare.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Given the evolving security landscape in Europe, what are the most critical areas of ground combat where increased European cooperation in the field of defense can help meet common military challenges?

Meeting common military challenges means being able to fight side by side and, ideally, together. Here I won’t go into the aspects of mutual knowledge and officer exchanges, which are vital but are part of a different time frame.

The first challenge is that of equipment interoperability — that is, the capacity to act in concert in spite of different equipment. This is about designing and producing natively interoperable equipment. On that point, communication networks are key. In this respect, the level of ambition of the CaMo partnership between the Belgian and the French units of the motorized brigade is remarkable. The units in the field will be interchangeable, without any technological or operational obstacle.

In addition to the combat system, Belgium and France collaborate in the field of operational concepts, education and training. This partnership is a model to follow to increase European defense cooperation.

France orders €1.1 billion of cannons, vehicles and helicopters

The second challenge is the capability to have military equipment designed and produced by several European countries. We have experience in this area: The Tiger and NH90 helicopters as well as the Milan and HOT missiles have been produced in cooperation between European partners.

The project for the future Franco-German heavy tanks, the Main Ground Combat System, is a vector of dynamism in Franco-German relations in terms of the defense industry. The MGCS will be more than just an improved successor to the Leclerc or Leopard tanks; it will be a new-generation system that will benefit from the best technologies of each of the nations involved in the program.

The third challenge is that of shared experiences. Cooperation is expressed in joint deployments in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and in the Sahel, which have led the European armies to share, interact and coordinate; the deployment of the French-German brigade in Mali in 2018 strikes me as particularly illustrative. Today, we are committed in a common support to the Ukrainian army.

Which key capabilities will the French Army present at Eurosatory? How do they align with France’s defense priorities?

Eurosatory will be showcasing the Scorpion range of vehicles, the variety of unmanned aerial vehicles used in the units and the network-enabled capability — the first steps toward collaborative combat. You’ll have the opportunity to see the Jaguar vehicle, the renovated Leclerc tank, the Griffon vehicle and the Serval vehicle.

The French army is an army of operational deployment and is a reference in Europe owing to its skills in aerocombat, the quality of its equipment and its operational experience. The NH90 Caiman, the Tiger and the Guepard helicopters will be presented to illustrate this air-mobile capability.

The Caesar Mk1 howitzer as well as the new-generation SAMP/T Mamba air defense system will demonstrate the Army’s determination to increase its combat power by speeding up the decision between intelligence collection and deep fires. Moreover, numerous UAVs and anti-UAV solutions will demonstrate our ambition in the field of aerial drone employment in air-ground combat.

Other items of equipment will be presented. You’ll discover how the Army is transforming itself to win tomorrow’s air-land battle.

The war in Ukraine has highlighted new tactics and technologies used on the battlefield. From France’s perspective, what are the biggest surprises or confirmations about modern warfare revealed by this conflict? Consequently, what adjustments is the French Army making to training doctrines and equipment priorities?

Let’s remain modest at this stage in the analysis of lessons learned from this conflict. We should try to discriminate the elements that are situational from what is structural. The extensive use of UAVs, like that of civilian technologies adapted for military use, has changed the dynamics of combat. The vital importance of electronic warfare, intelligence superiority, and the need to control information to influence both national and international public opinion has been confirmed.

Four structural priorities can be identified. The first priority is connectivity. To outclass the adversary, it is necessary to understand the tactical situation, design a plan, give orders, and carry out the maneuver by controlling and reorienting this cycle. Ensuring a smooth and rapid functioning of this cycle makes it possible to be quicker than the enemy and keep one’s freedom of action. The network-enabled combat developed in the framework of the Scorpion program has enabled us to be ahead in this area.

The second priority is the transparency of the battlefield. The use of UAVs and satellites increasingly makes it possible to pierce the fog of war. It makes it more difficult [for adversaries] to conceal intent, setups and movements. To enhance its in-depth detection capabilities, the Army is developing its UAV range, developing its means to analyze the images from all the sensors and is focusing its effort on electronic warfare.

The third priority is lethality. In the context of high-intensity warfare, lethality is characterized by tactical targeting through the use of increasingly powerful, accurate and sophisticated means of destruction — and in sufficient numbers to be able to cause considerable damage in a very short amount of time.

The fourth priority is protection. Hyper-lethality puts increased pressure on the survival and resilience capacity of high-value targets, including command posts, which are particularly easy to detect due to their electromagnetic footprint. Their protection must be enhanced; the command methods must be diversified to ensure their operational continuity in case of attack.

For the Army, this translates into the use of armor in the framework of the Scorpion vehicles; the entry into service of the ARLAD armored personnel carriers as of this year; and the development of ground-air defense through the modernization of the PAMELA vehicles.

How will emerging technologies influence the role of the French soldier in the coming decade? What measures are taking place to prepare Army personnel for an evolving battlefield?

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous systems will profoundly transform the soldier’s environment in the coming decade. AI will enhance decision-making by providing rapid, synthetic and accurate analyses of the combat situations. As for robotics, it will take on dangerous or repetitive tasks, such as mine clearance or reconnaissance in hostile terrain. Autonomous systems, such as UAVs and unmanned vehicles, will provide continuous surveillance and a rapid-reaction capability; our soldiers will therefore be less exposed.

In short, these technologies will provide greater security and an increased operational efficiency, redefining the missions and the required skills of the French soldiers in an increasingly technological operational context.

The French Army started to deploy Scorpion in 2021, one of the most ambitious modernization programs among Western land forces. What were the initial lessons learned, what challenges are being addressed and how has all this modified the way the service fights?

The Scorpion program is aimed at renewing and modernizing the contact combat capabilities of the Army with new platforms — such as the Griffon, Jaguar and Serval vehicles, as well as the MEPAC mounted mortar — and a single combat information system, known as SICS, over the 2020-2030 time frame. It ensures consistency between the capabilities of the combined arms battle group all the way to brigade level.

To achieve this, it federates and connects the platforms and combatants to promote collaborative combat, called “Scorpion combat,” consisting of understanding, deciding and acting more quickly than the enemy. The current development of Scorpion corresponds to a first level of collaborative combat, thanks to the modernization of the combat units around a command and information system bringing all the stakeholders of the combined arms battle group into a network.

Next, Scorpion will extend interconnection to all the players of the third dimension and to support units. A division-level experimentation exercise, Capstone 4, took place last March in the United States. It demonstrated our ability to implement “Scorpion combat” in an allied context. It highlighted the need to speed up our data transmissions at the joint level as well as with our allies.

Modern warfare is taking place across more domains — land, sea, air, space and cyberspace. How is the Army adapting to this multidomain battle space?

Modern warfare takes place in all the environments — land, air, sea, cyberspace and space — and fields —nonphysical and electromagnetic. We talk about multidomain, multi-field operations. In addition to the ground environment, the Army plays its part in the cyber domain and in the nonphysical fields.

To achieve that, in the framework of the Army transformation, I created the command for ground, digital and cyber support, known as CATNC, in January 2024. This command ensures the coherence of the organization as well as the overall functioning, operational deployment and evolution of the digital and cyber support fields in the defensive information technology warfare domain.

The Army also plays a crucial role in the information domain. Without the capacity to convince and to counter adverse influence, any military engagement can fail. The emergence of social networks has reinforced this notion and has significantly accelerated the dissemination of information, whether true or false, while increasing its volume, reach and resonance.

France has played a leading role in strengthening NATO’s eastern flank. What have you learned regarding the mobility and readiness of the French forces? Where is there room for improvement?

In response to the war in Ukraine and at the request of the allies, the armed forces deployed on Feb. 28, 2022, just four days after the Russian invasion, as the “spearhead” battalion of the NATO rapid reaction force to Romania. This rapid deployment made it possible to mobilize more than 500 French Army soldiers in a few days.

Since May 1, 2022, the deployed force has evolved into a multinational battalion, of which France is the framework nation. The French Armed Forces have also deployed a Mamba air defense detachment since May 16, 2022, a national support element, and a brigade forward command element. In total, more than 1,000 French soldiers are present in Romania.

These successive deployments show the reactivity and preparedness of our troops. The difficulties in the administrative, customs, interoperability and training domains have been overcome. We’re drawing the lessons with our European partners.

What to look out for at Eurosatory, Europe’s biggest defense show

PARIS — Europe’s largest defense show kicks off in Paris on Monday, and this year’s edition of the Eurosatory exhibition will reflect feedback from two years of war in Ukraine, said Charles Beaudouin, the retired major general and former head of the French Army’s equipment office who is running the show in his role as CEO of COGES Events.

The 2024 show takes “the full measure” of the conflict, after a 2022 edition marked by the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beaudouin said in an interview with Defense News. European governments have raised their defense budgets “so the business is there,” and military planners attending the show will be focused on drones, anti-drone systems, air defense, long-range fires and mine clearing.

Exhibition space is fully booked with more than 2,000 exhibitors compared with 1,750 in 2022, and the show is on track for a record number of visitors, with weekly registrations in early June more than 40% above the prior edition, which had around 32,000 unique visitors.

1. Drones

Small unmanned aerial vehicles have become ubiquitous on the Ukrainian battlefield and they’ll be omnipresent at Eurosatory, according to Beaudouin, with the conflict confirming the “supremacy of small drones,” from nano to micro and mini drones. “The small drone remains unstoppable today, making the battlefield transparent.”

Big tactical drones and medium-altitude long-endurance drones such as General Atomics’ Reaper and Safran’s Patroller “have a real problem” in a non-permissive conflict, as they’re easy to spot, slow, not armed for self defense and very expensive, says Beaudouin. Look out at Eurosatory for hardy, expendable tactical drones, as well as stealthy drones that can operate close to the battle.

Reticence around offensive drones has disappeared, from Eurosatory 2018 having no armed drones to around half of the UAVs at the 2022 edition being armed, while for this year’s show “everyone has made the jump to loitering munitions.” Suicide drones had previously been somewhat of a red line for some countries including France, “so it’s the effect of war.”

2. Mobile air defense

Airborne threats on the modern battlefield make troops in the operating theater “extremely vulnerable,” creating a need for systems than can operate alongside troops and provide autonomous air-defense capability in the field at the infantry-section level. The ubiquity of drones means the threat is everywhere, and for the first time since World War II, Western soldiers need to look to the sky.

In addition to specialized ground-air defense systems to cover larger areas, typically expensive and few in number, Beaudouin expects Eurosatory this year to feature air-defense and anti-drone systems that can be mounted on armored personnel carriers and infantry-fighting vehicles, as well as support vehicles to provide troops with close-in air defense.

A solution such as a truck-mounted version of the RapidFire air-defense gun developed by KNDS and Thales may be too expensive for what it does, while laser-based solutions aren’t not yet mature, meaning missiles remain the go-to technology, though that doesn’t rule out new concepts being on show, the general said.

3. Deep fires

With artillery being key on the Ukrainian battlefield, cannons and rocket artillery will be a major topic at Eurosatory 2024, with at least 10 manufacturers showcasing their systems, Beaudouin said. Artillery needs to be long-range, increasingly mobile to deal with the drone threat, and increasingly precise, as illustrated by systems such as the French Caesar howitzer and guided artillery shells such as the U.S.-developed Excalibur and the Katana by KNDS.

The show will feature a M142 HIMARS rocket launcher, and Beaudouin said he’s looking forward to seeing what equivalent solutions will be showcased by European companies including France’s Safran and Thales.

4. Dealing with mines

The war in Ukraine has also put mine clearance back in focus, after European armies had overlooked that capability in the context of a ban on anti-personnel mines and minefields becoming socially less acceptable, according to the Eurosatory boss. While anti-personnel mines are banned at the show, as are cluster munitions, there is “real demand” for capabilities to detect mines and breach minefields.

Beaudouin expects to see mine-clearing solutions at Eurosatory, and will be looking out for technologies such as ground-penetrating radar, as well as more mundane methods such as plows to allow tanks to clear a path through mine fields. He said the problem of both mines and drones is their ubiquity, and armed forces will need solutions at company or infantry-section level to deal with the buried explosive devices.

5. Electronic warfare

With electronic and cyber warfare increasingly part of modern conflict, expect Eurosatory to showcase more systems that are resilient against such attacks, and equipment able to operate in environments where use of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) is denied.

In the context of the “operational comfort” of the past 30 years, Western armies increasingly switched to satellite-based positioning, navigation and timing, which is cheaper and more precise than using inertial measurement units. With systems increasingly have to be able to work in GNSS-denied conditions, one development to watch is hybrid navigation that couples inertial measurement and GPS, according to Beaudouin.

Communication will have to become more flexible to deal with a contested environment, with “very agile” radios that can switch between low bandwidth and broadband depending on the level of threat and interference. One concept that may appear is a “proximity 4G bubble” to allow broadband communications between an armored infantry vehicle and its dismounted troops, Beaudouin said. The growing amount of data on the battlefield will require channels beyond VHF or UHF, so “broadband is a real issue.”

6. Armor for high-intensity warfare

The asymmetrical conflicts of the post-Cold War period resulted in vehicles that were much higher than the preceding generation of armor, with heavy anti-blast shields to protect against mines and improvised explosive devices. Surviving the battlefield in Ukraine requires a return to more stealthy armor at odds with tall MRAPs, which in addition are unstable due to their high center of gravity, according to Beaudouin.

The Eurosatory boss expects “a step backwards” to lower vehicles, with specialized equipment taking care of mines rather than relying on thick bottom armor for protection, and will be on the lookout to see whether this year’s event confirms that trend. The show will also reflect that heavy armor continues to be relevant, with the French Leclerc and the American M1 Abrams main battle tanks on display.

The future may bring armored vehicles with a lower profile, stealthy materials and reduced thermal and radar signatures, and a focus on protection against drones instead of IEDs, according to Beaudouin. Armor will have to take into account ground-to-air defense, while being stealthier may require the vehicles to be less like “a Christmas tree of tricks” covered in sensors and equipment.

“We’re at the dawn, but only at the dawn, of a new definition of armored vehicles,” Beaudouin said. “War always takes us by surprise, and forces us to adapt.”

US Army names air defense system after soldier killed in Vietnam

In Vietnam, on March 12, 1970, U.S. Army Sgt. Mitchell William Stout grabbed an enemy grenade thrown into his bunker and used his body to shield the blast from his fellow soldiers. Now the service’s new Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense system will take his name.

Stout’s bunker position came under heavy enemy mortar fire and ground attack, the Army’s acquisition chief told reporters during a recent press briefing.

“As the attack subsided, an enemy grenade was thrown into the Bunker. Sgt. Stout ran to the grenade, picked it up, held it close to his body and started to get out of the bunker. Upon reaching the door, the grenade exploded,” Doug Bush said.

Sgt. Stout is the only Army air defense artilleryman in history to earn the Medal of Honor.

“The heroism of this soldier demonstrates the Army’s exact need for the Sgt. Stout vehicle,” Bush added.

Record pace

Seven years ago, then-head of U.S. Army Europe, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, was sounding the alarm over the lack of short-range air defense capability on the continent. In an interview flying over the Polish countryside, Hodges told Defense News he was worried about traditional threats but also new ones like drone swarms.

He said air defense was one of the biggest capability gaps and was desperately needed to counter possible threats from an increasingly aggressive Russia.

Some Avenger air defense systems from the U.S. Army National Guard could be spotted around exercises in Eastern Europe in 2016 and 2017, but assets overall were scant, even among the armed forces of European countries.

The Army heeded the warnings from commanders in the European theater, and the Sgt. Stout SHORAD system’s development took place in record time. The service identified an urgent operational need in theater in 2016, received the requirement to build the system in February 2018, and then took 19 months to select an integration team and deliver prototypes for testing in the first quarter of 2020.

The first platoon to receive the Sgt. Stout, a Stryker combat vehicle-based platform that includes a mission equipment package designed by Leonardo DRS with Moog’s Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform and RTX’s Stinger vehicle missile launcher, deployed to Europe in 2021.

The Army is now fielding its third Sgt. Stout battalion at Fort Cavazos, Texas. The first battalion remains in Germany, and the second is based at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The Army plans to begin fielding its fourth Sgt. Stout battalion at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, in the third quarter of fiscal 2025 and is aiming to complete it by the second quarter of FY26, Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano, the Army’s program executive officer for missiles and space, said in the media briefing.

The service’s potential acquisition objective is 361 systems, Lozano said. The Army approved a directive requirement for the first 162 vehicles that outfits the first four battalions and allows for some training battalion assets at Fort Sill, he added.

Another four battalions could eventually be on order for the National Guard, Lozano said. “That will likely occur over the next [program objective memorandum] cycle.”

The Army is “now well into production and fielding in a very short time,” Bush said. “Those early decisions were made before the war in Ukraine, and it’s really good that they were because we now are actually fielding short-range air defense systems that, among other things, provides counter-[unmanned aircraft system] capability to forward forces, which everyone can see are in increasing danger from UAS and other threats. I think we really got this one right, and we did it really fast.”

Evolving capability

Two more variants of Sgt. Stout vehicles are coming. The Army has concurrently been working on a 50-kilowatt laser weapon version and deployed a Stryker-based capability to U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility recently.

Bush would not detail how it is performing, but noted there are “challenges” when it comes to putting a high-kilowatt laser on a moving vehicle as opposed to a fixed site. And he said the Army is still considering the right platform and the right power levels to go with the maneuver force.

A decision on what a directed-energy SHORAD capability might look like is expected sometime across the next five fiscal years, he added.

Another variant would focus on providing a next-generation Stinger missile and a 30mm proximity fuse ammunition, which will help gain capability within the counter-drone space.

The service wants the Stinger missile replacement for SHORAD to be faster, survive jamming and more easily hit tougher targets like drones, Lozano told Defense News last fall.

In September 2023, the Army awarded RTX and Lockheed Martin contracts to competitively develop the Stinger replacement.

The Army is conducting efforts for the improved Stinger and proximity fuse ammunition using a rapid prototyping strategy; the service is roughly one year into the program.

The intent is to carry a couple of vendors forward for the next two years to get to a shoot-off, Lozano said. “Then based on affordability aspects that have yet to be determined, we may continue to carry two vendors, or we may downselect to one and go into a three-year, very intense, aggressive developmental effort to try to get to a material solution that I can transition into potentially a major capability acquisition pathway.”

The Army anticipates it will reach the decision point for production in the second quarter of FY28, Bush noted.

A fourth increment for the system is also under consideration. The Army released a request for information this year asking for ideas on how to evolve the capability for lighter forces.

“We’re really in the infancy of understanding what that program increment might look like,” Lozano said, with the goal of making a lighter force more “effective, but also as agile as they need to be on tomorrow’s battlefield.”

No 30-year-old drone wingmen: US Air Force eyes regular CCA overhauls

The Air Force’s aircraft fleet is replete with fighters, bombers, tankers and other aircraft that are still flying after decades or even generations.

But the service’s planned collaborative combat aircraft — drones that will fly alongside crewed fighters — probably won’t last even a single generation before they need to be replaced or heavily overhauled, Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said Thursday.

Allvin, speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association in Arlington, Virginia, said planning from the start to regularly replace CCAs is the best way to keep their missions simple and costs down, so the service can field them in significant numbers.

“I don’t want a set of collaborative combat aircraft that’s going to last for 25 to 30 years,” Allvin said. “If it’s going to last 25 or 30 years, then it’s gotta do everything but make you toast in the morning.”

Making CCAs into complex, multi-mission aircraft will inevitably drive up the cost, Allvin said, meaning the Air Force could only buy a limited number of them. ‘

Air Force officials have regularly talked about the need for CCAs to augment its crewed fighters and provide what they call “affordable mass.” A smaller fleet of more expensive drone wingmen, as Allvin is trying to avoid, would make achieving that affordable mass goal harder to reach.

Allvin instead envisions technology advancing quickly enough that after a decade, a class of CCAs might be outdated and ready to be replaced – or heavily updated with new technologies.

“That CCA won’t be as relevant — but it might be adaptable, and that’s why we’re building in the modularity,” Allvin said.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has told the service to plan for a CCA fleet of about 1,000 drones to fly alongside the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and the service’s planned Next Generation Air Dominance fighter. The missions CCAs would carry out will likely vary and include strike operations, gathering intelligence and reconnaissance, conducting electronic warfare, and serving as decoys.

Kendall also made affordability a requirement for the CCA program, and has said each drone must cost a fraction of an F-35′s price tag.

In April, the Air Force announced it had selected Anduril and General Atomics to further develop designs for their CCA concepts, and then build production-representative test aircraft.

At Thursday’s event, Allvin noted the financial stresses the Air Force is facing, including inflation and limited budgets.

“All of those pressures are coming to bear against us, and we do have to ask the fundamental question: What does an effective Air Force look like in the future and how much of that is dependent on external resources?” Allvin said.

But when asked if the service will be able to produce NGAD as it has planned, Allvin did not explicitly commit to the sixth-generation fighter.

“We’re going to have to make those choices, make those decisions across the landscape,” Allvin said. “That’s going to probably play out in the next couple of years.”

Congress’ defense fight to focus on pay raises, total military spending

House and Senate lawmakers on Friday offered a preview of this summer’s fight over defense policy changes for next year, with overall military spending and troop pay raises hanging in the balance.

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee unveiled their draft of the massive defense authorization bill Friday morning, just as House lawmakers narrowly adopted their version of the measure, mostly along party lines in a 217-199 vote.

After the full Senate amends its committee’s draft over the next few weeks, the two chambers will begin negotiations over a compromise bill to send to the president’s desk later this year.

The legislation, which has passed Congress annually for more than 60 years, includes a host of pay authorizations, program changes and policy updates that impact almost every corner of the Defense Department. As such, the bill is closely watched by Pentagon planners and military advocates all year long, and it commands significant attention from lawmakers both on and off the military oversight committees.

Here’s a look at the major differences in the House and Senate bills, and the debates ahead.

Total defense spending

While the authorization bill doesn’t provide direct funding for military operations (the annual appropriations bill does that), the overall spending levels prescribed in the measure typically set the tone for debate over how much money the Defense Department will get next year.

In the House, that total is about $884 billion, in line with a debt ceiling agreement between the White House and Congress last summer to cap spending increases for fiscal 2025 at 1%.

The Senate authorization bill comes in at $923 billion, a 5% boost in overall defense spending, including $12.5 billion in emergency funding for military disaster recovery construction in Guam following Typhoon Mawar last year.

The roughly $25 billion extra in non-Guam funding provided in the Senate bill would allow the Defense Department to pursue several additional shipbuilding, procurement and military construction priorities.

“If you look at this bill overall, you would definitely see that the pivot to the Indo-Pacific is also a pivot to sea power, and more and more focus is going to be on the sea power investments,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who chairs the committee’s sea power panel, told reporters after the markup.

For instance, the extra spending in the bill partially helps fund a second Virginia-class attack submarine against the Navy’s wishes; the service requested a single attack submarine for FY25 due to production delays in the industrial base. The Senate bill authorizes $1.1 billion in partial funding for the second submarine, slightly more than the House version.

The Senate bill also allows for an extra $4 billion in munitions procurement across the services, including to expand capacity for production lines for items like the Precision Strike Missile as well as the Standard Missile-2 and -6 weapons.

Another $3.1 billion would go toward military construction projects for the unfunded priorities lists submitted by various services and combatant commands.

Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the committee, successfully offered the amendment to increase defense spending beyond the FY25 debt ceiling caps, arguing that the U.S. needs to spend more on the military to compete with China and Russia. However, the increase was less than the extra $55 billion he initially sought for FY25.

The committee’s chairman, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., voted against his panel’s authorization plan because of the high spending total. But a majority of Republicans and Democrats on the committee backed the increase in a 22-3 vote. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also voted against it.

Negotiating a final defense spending total will likely involve input from the White House and chamber fights over nondefense program funding, potentially complicating and lengthening the compromise process.

Junior enlisted pay raises

House lawmakers made quality of life for younger service members a major focus of their authorization bill, highlighted by a 15% average pay raise for troops E-4 and below. Supporters say the move will raise basic pay for all troops above $30,000, an adjustment meant to ensure military families aren’t facing financial strain while serving.

But the White House has strongly opposed the targeted pay boost, which could cost about $3 billion next year and more than $24 billion over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Administration officials back a 4.5% pay raise across the board for all troops (both the House and Senate also support that) but advised waiting on extra money for enlisted troops until next year, after a Pentagon study on military compensation is complete.

Despite including more overall defense funding in their bill, Senate lawmakers only offered an extra 1% boost for troops E-3 and below on top of the across-the-board pay raise.

That would give most junior enlisted troops a few hundred dollars extra next year, as opposed to the several thousand dollars in salary increases in the House plan. However, Senate officials also added an extra $1 billion to potentially boost junior enlisted pay even further. The committee still needs to work out the details of those pay table changes.

Sorting out which plan survives congressional negotiations could have a major impact on young military families’ finances.

And that’s not the only pocketbook issue to be discussed by negotiators. House lawmakers also backed increases to service members’ housing stipends that were omitted by Senate bill authors. And the House draft includes an expansion of the military Basic Needs Allowance, money designed to provide additional support to families struggling to cover food and household costs.

Social issues

Most of the social issues expected to cause controversy in bill negotiations this summer come from the House draft of the authorization bill.

In floor work this week, Republican lawmakers added riders ending the Pentagon’s abortion access policy for troops stationed in states where the procedure is outlawed. They also included provisions to freeze hiring for diversity jobs in the military, limit care for transgender troops, and bar discussion of “radical gender ideology” or ”critical race theory” in training sessions.

Those moves drew the ire of Democratic lawmakers in the House, many of whom backed the bill when it came out of committee but opposed it because of what they called tangential social issue fights.

Republicans did not need Democratic support to advance the bill out of the House, but will need to reach a compromise on those issues in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Similar provisions included in last year’s House drafts were ultimately stripped out by negotiators.

The Senate draft again includes a push to require women to register for the Selective Service System, currently only mandated for men aged 18 through 25. House members have opposed that idea in recent years.

Missile Defense Agency satellites track first hypersonic launch

The Defense Department’s advanced missile tracking satellites logged their first views of a hypersonic flight test this week, according to the Missile Defense Agency.

MDA didn’t disclose the date of the flight, which took off from Wallops Island in Virginia.

“Initial reports show the sensors successfully collected data after launch,” the agency said in a June 14 statement. “MDA will continue to assess flight data over the next several weeks.”

The two Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor satellites are part of the Space Development Agency’s constellation of spacecraft designed to detect and observe hypersonic weapons or vehicles, which can travel at speeds of Mach 5 or higher.

The agencies have 10 missile tracking satellites in orbit — eight from SDA and two from MDA. SDA did not immediately confirm whether its satellites also tracked the launch.

While the MDA and SDA sensors were developed through separate programs, future tranches of SDA spacecraft will combine the capabilities, incorporating the medium-field-of-view sensor featured on the HBTSS satellites. The HBTSS sensors are can track dimmer targets and send data to interceptors.

The constellation will eventually include 100 satellites providing global coverage of advanced missile launches. For now, the handful of spacecraft offers limited coverage. SDA Director Derek Tournear told reporters in April that coordinating tracking opportunities for the satellites is a challenge because they have to be positioned over the venue where missile tests are being performed.

He noted that along with tracking routine Defense Department test flights, the satellites are also scanning global hot spots for missile activity as they orbit the Earth.

The flight the satellites tracked was the first for MDA’s Hypersonic Testbed, or HTB-1. The vehicle serves as a platform for various hypersonic experiments and advanced components and joins a growing inventory of high-speed flight test systems. That includes the Test Resource Management Center’s Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed and the Defense Innovation Unit’s Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities program.

MDA hasn’t disclosed much detail about HTB, including what company or companies developed the system. In a statement, the agency’s director highlighted the capability the testbed will offer across the hypersonic enterprise.

“This test was a huge success for MDA and our partners, marking the beginning of an affordable test bed to conduct hypersonic experiments. HTB-1 represents a significant step forward in hypersonic testing capability,” Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said. “HTB will allow the U.S. to pursue a broad range of state of the art technologies able to operate reliably in hypersonic flight environments.”

Romania’s second Patriot system operational after drone-destroying drill

Constanta, ROMANIA — Romania’s second Patriot air defense system is now ready for combat following its successful intercept of a target simulating a cruise missile during a live-fire exercise on the banks of the Black Sea.

On June 14, in cloudy conditions at the Capu Midia Training Range in the eastern part of Romania, the country’s Patriot fired a PAC-2 anti-tactical missile, successfully destroying an MQM-178 Firejet target drone.

The unmanned system, produced by the U.S.-based company Kratos Defense, went airborne using a pneumatic launcher and was propelled by two C81 turbojet engines “to simulate the flight characteristics of a cruise missile,” according to a representative of the Romanian military, who was narrating the exercise.

The MQM-178 flew over the area at a speed of roughly 200 meters per second and neared a distance of 60 kilometers (37 miles) in its attacker role against the Patriot.

Certifying the Patriot was a national objective identified by Romania’s Defence Ministry as part of the NATO-led Ramstein Legacy exercise that took place here this week. The U.S. State Department approved in 2017 the sale of seven Patriot systems and related equipment to Romania at an estimated cost of $3.9 billion.

The country has since established a dedicated Patriot unit within its army, with Romanian operators having undergone both individual and collective training in the U.S. and Romania respectively.

According to officers within this unit, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the testing period for one Patriot system here is between four to six months, which includes the last step of going through a live-fire test.

One soldier told Defense News that the most challenging part wasn’t learning how to operate the Patriot, but rather maintaining the system to ensure it is operationally ready.

A number of Romanian military participants here noted the Patriot system is effective due to the significant size of the territory the forces are charged with defending. Indeed, Romania is one of the largest countries in Europe. It shares borders with Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine — the latter of which is fighting off a Russian invasion — and features a 245-kilometer coastline along the Black Sea.

Will Russia’s Navy get the 50 ships it expects this year?

MOSCOW — The Russian Navy will receive about 50 ships of various classes this year, compared to 32 last year, according to the deputy minister of industry and trade.

The announcement comes amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine, during which Ukrainian forces have destroyed and disabled several Russian naval vessels.

Viktor Yevtukhov unveiled the forecast June 9 during an interview with the state-owned channel Zvezda TV. In total, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Navy took delivery of 40 surface ships and 24 submarines over the last decade.

In 2023, the Navy received three submarines: the Borei-A-class nuclear-powered Emperor Alexander III; the Yasen-class nuclear-powered Krasnoyarsk; and the Kilo-class Mozhaysk.

The service also took on seven surface ships: the frigate Admiral Golovko; the corvettes Merkury and Rezkiy; the missile-armed ships Cyclone and Naro-Fominsk; the minesweeper Lev Chernavin; and the repaired frigate Neustrashimy.

This year, the Navy is expected to receive four submarines and 12 surface ships, plus a collection of support vessels such as tug boats; bulk carriers; training, hydrographic, rescue and supply vessels; and other small boats, according to Pavel Luzin, a Russia defense expert with the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis think tank.

Yevtukhov attributed the large anticipated delivery to Russia’s successful efforts in finding substitutions for components blocked by international sanctions.

Sergey Smyslov, an independent analyst with an engineering background in Russia’s defense sector, said domestic organizations have begun producing the substitutions.

“Yes, it may not be of the best quality, and additional time is required to develop the missing components, but the minimum necessary requirements are [being met],” Smyslov added.

However, the outdated or low-quality technology used as a result impacts the reliability of the final product, Luzin said.

Nevertheless, a source in Russia’s naval industry told Defense News that the Defence Ministry is generally satisfied with submarine construction efforts. Still, the source added, shortcomings remain in regard to the production of surface ships, with delivery dates regularly postponed.

Indeed, Emma Rayman, a politician from St. Petersburg, said “the problems of the Navy are related to the fact that the naval industry requires significant financial investments, and budget constraints can affect the speed and scale of construction of new ships.”

For example, the Severnaya Verf shipyard was supposed to transfer the frigate Admiral Isakov to the Navy in 2022, but that is now scheduled to take place in December 2025.

Likewise, service was to receive the corvette Provorny by the end of 2022, but due to damage from a fire, the deadline was pushed to 2025. Additionally, two Steregushchiy-class corvettes were to be delivered in 2018; thus far, one was transferred in 2023.

The Admiralty Shipyards plant was also supposed to transfer a patrol ship to the Navy in 2020, but that is now expected to take place this year.

As for the Yantar Shipyard, it was expected to deliver a pair of large landing ships — the Vladimir Andreev and Vasily Trushin — around the 2023-2024 time frame. But even before this deadline passed, it was changed to 2025-2026.

The Vostochnaya shipyard has also experienced setbacks in the construction of Navy ships. In particular, the firm was to build two Karakurt-class corvettes and a small tanker, but amid financial troubles, the Amur Shipbuilding Plant, owned by United Shipbuilding Corp., took charge in August 2023.

A shortage of engineers and specialists in the domestic shipbuilding industry is also slowing down construction efforts, Rayman said, with Luzin noting there aren’t even enough personnel to crew the ships.