Archive: September 5, 2024

Germany receives first IRIS-T antimissile system for its own forces

BERLIN — Germany’s military has received the first IRIS-T SLM air defense system for its own forces after prioritizing the weapon’s production for Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2022.

“A new chapter of European air defense is shaping up,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at an inauguration ceremony for the equipment on a military base in Todendorf, northern Germany. “This is, without exaggeration, about maintaining security and peace in Europe,” he added, using the occasion to defend a decision from the summer to deploy American intermediate-range missiles to Germany.

The system inaugurated on Wednesday marked the first of six IRIS-T SLMs to be delivered to the Bundeswehr. It is part of an effort by the German government to fill in a longstanding gap in the air defense capabilities of the country’s military – and the European continent more broadly.

IRIS-T has proven itself in Ukraine, the chancellor said, where “it has served as a bulwark against the countless missiles that Russia shoots at Ukraine every day,” having shot down over 250 projectiles of various sorts. Scholz claimed a hit rate of 95% and expressed hope that the system would become the backbone of European air defense beyond Germany’s borders.

Originally developed as an air-to-air missile, IRIS-T was modified for air defense with the Surface Launch Standard (SLS) variant and the Surface Launched Missile (SLM) version, which is significantly altered.

Ukraine has received four IRIS-T SLM and three IRIS-T SLS to date. A further 17 IRIS-T systems are yet to come, four of which are still scheduled to arrive in 2024.

Taking steps to strengthen European air defenses had been “long overdue,” Scholz said, pointing to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The attack sparked renewed focus on military and dense under the banner of term “Zeitenwende” in Germany – the dawn of a new era.

One of the products of this new era is the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative, which strives to coordinate the procurement and operation of air defense systems throughout the continent. First announced by Scholz just months after Russia’s invasion, 22 countries now participate – including Switzerland and Austria, which are outside of NATO, and Turkey, which is not a part of the European Union.

Another response will be the deployment of American intermediate-range missiles to Germany starting in 2026, a move announced during the NATO summit in Washington in July. This class of weapons had been banned by a Cold War-era disarmament treaty between Washington and Moscow until recently. The U.S. withdrew from the pact during the Trump administration, alleging Russian violations going back almost a decade.

“[Putin] has deployed rockets to Kaliningrad,” said Chancellor Scholz, “just 530 kilometers from Berlin. Not reacting adequately would be negligent.”

Just this past weekend, Kremlin-friendly opposition parties of the extreme right and left, critical of the missile plans, won landslide electoral victories in two east German states, Thuringia and Saxony.

Scholz emphasized that the deployment decision has been enshrined in the national security strategy since last year and will be implemented as a gesture of deterrence. “Every attack on us must mean a risk for the attacker,” he said.

NATO hosts Icelandic exercise to monitor vital north Atlantic passage

MILAN — Seven NATO countries completed an Iceland-based exercise aimed at defending vital underwater lines of communication and sea routes against conventional military threats and acts of sabotage.

The annual exercise Northern Viking wrapped up on Sept 3. after 11 days of joint operations in the maritime transit route known as the GIUK gap, an acronym for Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom.

The area forms an important naval chokepoint, a passage that connects two stretches of open ocean to the three land masses, vital to naval and air traffic between Europe and North America.

Led by the U.S. Naval Forces Europe, the training brought together 1,200 participants from Iceland, Denmark, France, Norway, Poland and Portugal, according to an Iceland government statement.

Missions were based on a simulated threat to Iceland’s national security in order to test NATO’s ability to respond to crises threatening strategic lines of communication in the GIUK gap. It included anti-surface, anti-submarine warfare, maritime surveillance as well as search-and-rescue operations.

Allies deployed an array of drones, maritime patrol aircraft, surface vessels equipped with radars and sensors as well as ships from NATO’s Standing Maritime Group One, part of the alliance’s high readiness maritime capability.

The exercise was further aimed at “facing traditional military threats on land, at sea and in the air, but also multi-faceted threats and acts of sabotage, which will test the Icelandic authorities,” the government of Iceland said in the notice.

The GIUK gap is located at the edge of the eastern Arctic, a region that remains at the center of geopolitical tensions as many states have contended for greater ownership and control over the resources it offers.

Due to climate change, sea ice covering the Arctic ocean has melted at an alarming rate and new shipping lanes have emerged, fueling a race between Arctic states – the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden – and non-Arctic countries like China for control over them.

“In a region that is a focal point for geopolitical competition, maintaining robust surveillance capabilities is essential for early warning and rapid response to potential threats,” NATO’s Allied Maritime Command said in a statement.

Two days prior to the start of Northern Viking, the Chinese Premier Li Qiang met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss how to bolster their countries’ cooperation.

A communique released by China’s State Council following the meeting, highlighted that the Arctic is an area where the two partners want to expand their collaboration specifically related to “shipping development, navigation safety, polar ship technology and construction.”

In July, the U.S., Canada and Finland announced a new trilateral initiative, the so-called “Ice Pact,” to deepen cooperation in the manufacturing of polar icebreakers.

Space Development Agency’s first satellites demo key capabilities

Following a successful optical communications test this week, the Space Development Agency’s first batch of data-transport and missile-tracking satellites have met all of the agency’s demonstration targets, according to director Derek Tournear.

The agency started launching its Tranche 0 demonstration satellites in April 2023 and today has 27 spacecraft in orbit. The systems are meant to observe and collect information on missiles launches and transport data in space and with users on the ground. They’ll also reduce development risks for future SDA satellites.

This week’s test involved two satellites, built by SpaceX, connecting via a laser-communication link through SDA-compliant terminals. The test met the agency’s requirement that the spacecraft make a connection in less than two minutes, Tournear said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference in Arlington.

In essence, the demo showed that SDA’s transport satellites can form an optical network in low Earth orbit.

“From my perspective, we have demonstrated all of the big rocks and burned down all of the risk for Tranche 1 in Tranche 0 based on that success,” Tournear said.

Among the other demonstration hurdles was demonstrating the ability to establish a Link 16 connection from space. Link 16 is a tactical communications system that U.S. forces, NATO and international allies rely on for real-time data exchange. During a demonstration last November, SDA used three satellites from its Transport Layer, all built by Denver-based York Space Systems. The Air Force’s 46th Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, supported the mission from the ground.

In early August, SDA pushed the capability further, making a Link 16 connection with an aircraft carrier and a plane on its deck.

Both Link 16 tests were over international waters or airspace as the agency awaits approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration to use Link 16 to broadcast signals from space through the National Airspace System. Tournear said SDA hopes to have those approvals and conduct U.S. tests this year, adding that the FAA’s conservative approach, while prudent, has created schedule issues for the agency.

“It has an impact and it will impact Tranche 1 as we go forward, when we actually want to be able to do a lot of demonstrations after launch to be able to get operational acceptance,” he said.

The other major test for SDA’s Tranche 0 satellites concerns the ability to track missile launches from low Earth orbit. Skeptics thought the clutter in LEO, which is about 1,200 miles above Earth, would make it too hard to spot a dim missile target. However, Tournear said, the agency has used its first handful of tracking satellites to spot a variety of missiles and rocket launches, including SpaceX’s Starship.

The SDA satellites have yet to detect a U.S. hypersonic flight test, but Tournear said his team is working closely with the Missile Defense Agency to find opportunities for the spacecraft to track a flight.

Air Force going ‘line by line’ to bring down nuclear missile costs

The U.S. Air Force “underestimated” the complexity of building a sprawling network of launch centers and other ground infrastructure for its next nuclear missile, which led to severe projected cost overruns, the service’s acquisition chief said Wednesday.

Most of the Air Force’s and industry’s attention was initially focused on the missile portion of the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, and the program “really neglected the complexity of the ground infrastructure,” Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia, on Wednesday.

The Air Force wants to replace its arsenal of roughly 450 aging Minuteman III nuclear missiles, which are nearing the end of its life, with the Northrop Grumman-made Sentinel. But the projected future costs of Sentinel’s infrastructure — which include building new launch control centers across the Plains region, refurbishing existing silos for the new missiles and replacing about 7,500 miles of copper cable connecting the facilities with modern fiber optics — have skyrocketed.

The Pentagon originally expected to spend $77.7 billion on Sentinel, but the program is now likely to cost about $160 billion if it stays on its current course. The projected cost overruns alarmed lawmakers and Pentagon officials and incurred a process known as a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach.

After a review announced in July, the military decided Sentinel was too important to cancel but must be restructured to bring those costs back down. But the Pentagon said even a “reasonably modified” version would still probably cost $140.9 billion, or 81% more than the original estimate.

The Air Force is now going “line by line” through Sentinel’s requirements to look for places to bring its costs down, Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife said, and the “exhaustive” process will take months.

“The undersecretary (Melissa Dalton), Mr. Hunter’s team and I are deeply, deeply involved in looking at our requirements (and) making sure that we revalidate all the requirements,” Slife said. The Air Force needs to “trace every single one of them back to either presidential guidance, or departmental guidance for things like safety, security, surety, survivability — all the things that you would want in a system that you’re going to rely on to keep the nation safe,” Slife said.

Finding places to cut costs is challenging, Slife said. Sentinel’s top-level requirements — the big-picture blueprint of what it needs to do — were fairly straightforward, he said.

But the “derived requirements” that spell out how Sentinel will do its job “actually can become problematic,” he said. Those can include spelling out how many facilities will be needed to carry out Sentinel’s mission and how much concrete those facilities will need to build and how large a workforce they will require, Slife said.

The Air Force has not built a new ICBM and accompanying infrastructure since the Minuteman III, which was deployed in the early 1970s.

And because it has been so long since the Air Force undertook a major acquisition of this scale, Hunter said, the Air Force underestimated Sentinel’s complexity.

“We’re having to relearn some of those skills and up our game,” Hunter said.

That “striking” complexity of Sentinel’s ground infrastructure is crucial to making the ICBM system an effective nuclear deterrent, Hunter said.

“We have to have a missile where we can respond instantly, at all times, without fail, and in the context of the highest of high-intensity conflicts, a potential nuclear exchange,” Hunter said. “And we ask our ground infrastructure to provide most of those capabilities. The missile is only a small piece of that puzzle.”

The Air Force also has to “bring a lot more engineering focus on the ground infrastructure” to simplify Sentinel and bring its costs under control, Hunter said.

Elbit eyes Nordic market for its ‘Iron Fist’ vehicle-protection system

KIELCE, Poland — Israel’s Elbit Systems hopes that three Nordic states will buy the company’s Iron Fist active protection system for their military fleets after Sweden-based BAE Systems Hägglunds ordered it for installation on CV90 infantry fighting vehicles in various European countries.

“We started by signing a contract to supply our APS to the vehicles ordered by the Netherlands, and later, other countries,” Rami Sokolower, senior director for marketing and business development at Elbit Systems, told Defense News at the MSPO defense industry show here. “In the near future, we hope that further Iron Fist deals will be signed for the vehicles operated by Denmark, Sweden and Finland.”

“We have also received an order to supply Iron Fist to the United States for Bradley infantry fighting vehicles,” the executive said.

Sokolower said that, while presenting its system at the leading Polish industry event, the Israeli producer is also pitching its product to the Polish armed forces.

“We see great potential in Poland, and our APS is suitable for both wheeled and tracked vehicles, light or heavy,” the official said.

Elbit Systems says Iron Fist ensures high-level protection against anti-tank threats, increasing the survivability of military vehicles and offering 360-degree protection.

How the Marine Corps is testing a ‘narco-boat’ for resupply efforts

ARLINGTON, Va. – The U.S. Marine Corps is testing out an autonomous system inspired by a “narco-boat” to bolster resupply efforts, as the service focuses on island hopping and projecting power from land to sea, according to the head of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.

In addition to delivering two Naval Strike Missiles for the Corps’ anti-ship missile system, the autonomous low-profile vessel the Marine Corps is experimenting with also aims to better get critical supplies like food to forward deployed and distributed Marines, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Simon Doran said at the Defense News Conference on Wednesday.

“Truth be told, this is just a narco-boat,” Doran said. “We stole the idea from friends down south. And so this is 55 feet long, completely autonomous. It’s able to go hundreds or thousands of miles. It’s able to carry weapon systems that we have that are new. … It can carry pretty much anything you want to put in it.”

Marines expect ‘big year’ for drone, ship and logistics testing

Inspired by narco-boats, which are used by traffickers to smuggle illicit substances across bodies of water, the unmanned vessel remains close to the water-surface level to cut down on the likelihood of detection as it assists with logistics capabilities.

The service tested the logistics supply drone at the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone in February at Camp Pendleton, California, where the Marine Corps trained a cook in 21 days to operate the system off the islands of Japan.

The Army spearheads the Project Convergence to test out advanced technology and capabilities in modern warfare as part of a joint, multinational exercise.

The autonomous low-profile vessel is particularly important because it allows forces to resupply food, fuel and ammunition without jeopardizing the safety of Marines, Doran said.

“If you have that unit located inside a weapons engagement zone, contested logistics and the ability to maneuver in the littorals becomes key,” Doran said. “And for that, what we’re looking at is trying to acquire systems that we deem risk worthy, meaning that we don’t necessarily want to just waste them, but we’d rather put something in there that’s autonomous, that doesn’t have humans on it that can do some of these higher risk missions without having personnel put in that riskier situation.”

This system is something the Marine Corps wanted “yesterday,” but testing is ongoing, Doran said. The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory received two prototypes in 2023.

The vessel is expected to join the III Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa, Japan, for further evaluation this fall, he said.

The service hopes to purchase the vessels in the next several years, Marine Corps leaders said at the 2023 Defense News Conference.

Expect a $833B defense budget for FY25, but not on time, lawmaker says

House Armed Services Committee Vice Chairman Rob Wittman is confident Congress will pass a short-term budget extension in the next few weeks and eventually finalize plans for $833 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2025.

But the Virginia Republican congressman acknowledged that the details of how lawmakers will get there is still a mystery.

Wittman’s comments at the Defense News Conference on Wednesday came just 26 days before a potential partial government shutdown if House and Senate leaders cannot pass a budget extension by Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

“I think we know we’re not going to get the seven remaining appropriations bills done between now and the end of the fiscal year,” he said. “In light of that, it looks like there’s going to be another continuing resolution that will come up next week, probably the middle of next week. The debate has been how long should that last.”

More Defense News Conference coverage

With the presidential and congressional elections in 64 days, lawmakers have begun debating whether to extend the budget into mid-November or early 2025, after the new Congress is seated.

Either way, defense planners likely won’t have their allotment of the federal budget until multiple months into the new fiscal year.

Wittman called the short-term budget extensions necessary, but “the worst way for us to be able to manage the defense enterprise,” given the uncertainty surrounding when new programs and initiatives will be fully funded and can start.

But he believes that Pentagon officials can count on the House-passed $833 billion target for total defense spending next fiscal year, whenever the federal budget is finally finalized.

“With the Fiscal Responsibility Act, it actually appropriates to that, and I think that’s the number you’re actually going to have to live with,” he said. “And I think that the Pentagon should be able to do most of the things that it needs to do with that number.”

White House officials have signaled they expect to request supplemental funding to deal with some outstanding defense fiscal needs. During a separate panel at the conference, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said her service will need extra money to cover the rising cost of installations services.

“Not only are our barracks and housing in need of investment, our power projection infrastructure is in need of investment as well,” she said. “It’s really hard to do that all inside the existing Army top line.”

Both the House and Senate return to Capitol Hill work next week.

Netherlands picks Israel’s Rafael to supply upgraded anti-tank systems

PARIS — The Netherlands picked Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to supply an upgrade for the country’s more than 200 medium-range anti-tank missile launchers that will boost combat range, for an investment of as much as €250 million ($277 million).

The Dutch Army and Marines plan to switch to Rafael’s Integrated Command Launch Unit, which can fire the Spike LR2 missile with a range of 5,000 meters (5,468 yards), Dutch State Secretary of Defense Gijs Tuinman said in a letter to parliament on Monday. The system is backwards-compatible with the country’s stock of older Spike missiles, Tuinman said.

The Netherlands’ medium-range anti-tank (MRAT) systems have been in use with the anti-tank units of the country’s Army combat brigades and Marines amphibious battalions since 2002 and are reaching end-of-life, with outdated targeting and guidance optics limiting the use of longer-range missiles, according to the Defence Ministry.

“Replacement of the MRAT capability is urgent, also given the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Europe,” Tuinman told parliament. “The ability to take out enemy combat vehicles at long range is essential to the safety of our military.”

The Dutch Defence Ministry is targeting contract signature in October. The ministry has a contract option through to Oct. 31, and Tuinman called on parliament to take the deadline into account in dealing with the equipment request. “Delivery times are increasingly under pressure, which means later ordering would result in a delay and higher prices.”

The deal would be for “off-the-shelf” equipment, with Rafael delivering the first launchers in 2026 and final handover expected in the first half of 2028. The investment is in the range of €50 million to €250 million, the ministry said.

Requirements for the new system include increased targeting range and non-line-of-sight firing capability, according to the ministry. The Rafael launcher is a further developed and modernized version of the system currently in use with the Dutch, and will represent a “significant” increase in the ability to target enemy tanks and other combat vehicles, Tuinman said.

The Rafael system has potential for further development to expand its combat range, and an expected near-term development is coupling the launcher with drones for target detection and beyond-visual-range engagement, according to the ministry. The Netherlands’ modernized CV90 fighting vehicles will be equipped to fire the Spike LR2, it said.

Germany has also purchased the Rafael launcher with Spike LR2 missiles, and the Dutch choosing the same system responds to a parliamentary request to consider standardization in equipment buying, the defense secretary said. The new launcher has “a very large European user group” ranging from Spain to Finland, including neighboring Belgium, Tuinman said.

The Netherlands purchased hundreds of Spike missiles in recent years to bolster stockpiles, while the new system will be able to use older-generation missiles for live firing exercises, preventing those munitions from exceeding their expiration date and having to be destroyed, the ministry said.

Dutch policy toward Israel allows for the acquisition of defense equipment from an Israeli company, in this case Rafael, the defense ministry said in a note accompanying Tuinman’s letter. The armed forces procuring “the best equipment possible” is in the interest of the security of the Netherlands, its allies and its personnel, it said.

Rafael has a German joint venture with Diehl Defence and Rheinmetall called Eurospike that is in charge of marketing the family of Spike missiles in Europe. Meanwhile, Poland said last year it was buying hundreds of Spike missiles through Rafael’s local partner Mesko.

Poland to award $515 million in defense deals during MSPO trade show

KIELCE, Poland — Polish Deputy Prime Minister and National Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said he intends to sign contracts worth about PLN 2 billion ($515 million) with foreign and domestic manufacturers during the four-day MSPO defense industry show in here this week.

The announcement came shortly after the government approved the largest planned military budget in the nation’s history, forecast at around PLN 187 billion in 2025.

The forthcoming deals are to include contracts awarded to “our foreign partners, including from Spain and the United States, but also major contracts signed with [local defense industry players] Rosomak and Jelcz Polish state-owned companies, but also private and foreign ones,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

Under the plan, Poland’s defense spending in 2025 is to capture a record 4.7% share of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Funds for the military will be earmarked in the ministry’s budget, but also in the state-operated Armed Forces Support Fund, which finances purchases of new weapons and equipment.

This year, Warsaw aims to inject 4.2% of its GDP into the military. If the government goes through with its plans, this level of spending as a share of GDP will place Poland above all other NATO member states.

The show’s first day was also attended by Polish President Andrzej Duda. This year’s edition of the trade show, which has established itself as a leading industry event in the region, runs between Sept. 3 and 6.

This year’s MSPO is attended by some 769 exhibitors from 35 countries, according to data from the show’s organizers.

Space Force to field sensors for tracking air, ground targets in 2030s

The Space Force expects to start fielding satellites designed to track moving targets on the ground and in the air by the early 2030s, according to the service’s vice chief.

“I see it always being a layered set of capabilities to increase survivability, first and foremost,” Gen. Michael Guetlein said Wednesday at the annual Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “I would say you’re looking at probably the early 2030s for some of that capability to start coming online.”

The service has been working with the intelligence community to develop satellites that can perform the ground moving target indication, or GMTI, mission from space. In fact, the Space Force cleared the program to enter formal development late last month, according to a report from Breaking Defense.

However, efforts to use satellites for the air moving target indication, or AMTI, mission are more nascent. Guetlein told Defense News in an interview earlier this summer that as the Space Force builds out its MTI architecture, integrating the various sensors with new and existing command and control networks will likely be its biggest challenge.

“That requires us to now start thinking about artificial intelligence, it starts you thinking about machine learning, it starts you thinking about new communication pathways,” he said. “I now have to have processing on orbit on the sensor rather than processing on the ground. That’s a new set of technologies.”

The Space Force has started to invest in early studies of the capability, but Guetlein declined to confirm at the conference whether a program would be funded in the fiscal 2026 budget request.

“We are having those conversations about, [with the] scarcity of resources, how much can I invest in ‘26 in some of these emerging areas,” he said.

Balancing the demand for new capabilities with a budget that is projected to stay relatively flat for the next several years is a larger challenge for the service. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News in a recent interview that the Space Force’s budget, which sits around $30 billion in FY25, needs to double or triple to meet the military’s need for on-orbit support.

With no increase of that magnitude in sight, the service is working to make sure it has its priorities in order, focusing on areas like readiness, satellite communications and improving the resilience of its systems.

“We are definitely sacrificing some because there’s not enough resources to go around,” he said. “We know we can’t buy everything we need, so we are ruthlessly prioritizing all the kit that we’re buying to make sure that it’s the biggest bang for the buck, if you will, during times of crisis or conflict.”

The service is looking for ways to take advantage of partnerships with international partners and commercial companies who are also spending on the capabilities the Space Force needs, Guetlein noted.

“In the past, DOD felt like we needed to own all of our own kit, operate all of our own kit. That way we could guarantee during times of crisis or conflict that that kit was built,” he said. “When you start pivoting towards a great power competition, it becomes all of the nation and all of the world that needs to come together in partnerships, and that’s really where we are investing heavily.”