Archive: September 26, 2024

Meet the Afghan general who wants to take on the Taliban

In rural Mason Neck, Virginia, among homes with Confederate flags hanging out front and towering pickup trucks occupying driveways, a stately brick mansion makes for an unexpected neighbor.

In the home’s front lawn, sitting amid manicured shrubs, rises an even more unusual sight: the flag of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. It is one that has not flown in its own country since 2021, when U.S. forces departed and top leaders fled, ceding control to the Taliban.

Former Afghan Lt. Gen. Sami Sadat believes he’ll once again see that flag ascend in Afghan skies.

This is his home, and also the hub for the Afghanistan United Front, an organization he founded — and largely self-funds — to “unite Afghans and return Afghanistan to the constitutional order, ensuring that Afghans can enjoy freedom, peace, and prosperity.”

Inside the house, behind Sadat’s desk, is another Afghan flag, one he took from the compound of the provincial governor of Helmand province when Sadat ordered the evacuation of the province’s capital city of Lashkar Gah on Aug. 12, 2021.

“We made a promise to take this flag back,” Sadat said in an interview with Military Times.

While few Afghan generals over the course of the 20-year war became internationally known, Sadat’s profile rose higher than most.

He was prominently featured in the 2022 National Geographic documentary Retrograde, which followed the officer, then in control of the entire Afghan Army, as he sought to hold the line amid crumbling order in the final days before the fall of Kabul.

Sadat, 39, is a polarizing figure. In his memoir “The Last Commander,” published in August by Bombardier books, he admits his blunt and combative manner garnered powerful enemies — including Ashraf Ghani, the last president of Afghanistan — and sometimes put him at odds with the U.S. generals ostensibly there to support Afghan military efforts.

In one of the book’s scenes, he describes telling off a U.S. Army one-star who demanded he and other Afghan soldiers be searched and turn over their weapons before entering their own headquarters for a mission briefing.

Ultimately, Sadat said he threatened to shut the general out of the meeting entirely.

“I walked in with all my combat gear on, carrying my M-4 rifle,” Sadat writes. “I hated myself for being so rude, but we needed to make a point. This was our war. America was a supporting partner.”

By Sadat’s account, the months prior to the 2020 Doha Agreement, a peace deal with the Taliban that set the stage for U.S. withdrawal, had yielded significant victories by the Afghan military in holding and retaking key territory.

Sadat felt the deal hamstrung Afghan forces, limiting their ability to engage with and pursue the Taliban just as their military efforts were gaining momentum. It was a feeling of betrayal, Sadat says in his book, that would only be compounded the following year as American forces began to withdraw.

In May 2021, all the contractors responsible for the Afghans’ fleet of Black Hawk helicopters left at the same time, without the handoff process needed to keep the aircraft maintained and flying, according to his memoir.

Sadat describes the pain of listening to U.S. troops blow up their remaining caches of ammunition, leaving none behind for Afghan allies. It makes his frustration and helplessness visceral.

“As a time when we were rationing every round, the sight of mortar shells being fired uselessly into the desert, one after another, was demoralizing,” he writes.

The Afghanistan United Front, or AUF, is itself something of an act of defiance. It shares many common aims with the National Resistance Front (NRF) of Afghanistan, led by former Afghan politician Ahmad Massoud and headquartered in Tajikistan.

Sadat said he reached out to Massoud soon after the fall of Afghanistan with interest in joining his movement, but the NRF had adopted an approach — and older Afghan flag — associated with mujahideen factions of the 1990s. Sadat insisted on standing behind Afghanistan’s last constitution, and its final flag.

NRF leaders perceived a power struggle, and Sadat ended up on his own. He now says he’s open to changes to the Afghan government once the people are back in control, but believes the guiding documents and symbols of the country must remain constant until then.

“We need something for now to bind our legal claim, and that is the constitution and a constitutional order,” he said.

The extent of Sadat’s network of allies is hard to ascertain. His book features advance praise from H.R. McMaster, a former U.S. national security advisor and retired Army lieutenant general who calls it “an invaluable perspective on the American self-defeat in Afghanistan.”

Sadat has also toured with Australian counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen and Thomas Kasza, a U.S. Army veteran who founded an organization to support Afghans who assisted special operations troops.

In 2022, Sadat met with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and became a contributor to the Republican-led committee report on Afghanistan’s fall released in September.

Sadat said he aligns with the report’s perspective on President Joe Biden, whose “abandonment” of Afghanistan speaks, he believes, to Biden’s longstanding contempt for the country.

And while he remains in friendly communication with other U.S. military leaders he once worked with in Afghanistan, those individuals have made clear they are unable to get involved in his cause, he said.

Where he has the most support, meanwhile, is at the ground level of his home country, among the scattered Afghan military forces.

“We could mobilize tens of thousands of soldiers in a matter of months,” he said, adding that the Taliban’s suffocating rule in Afghanistan was also stirring up the fight in young men who’d never previously served. “We believe that thousands and thousands of fresh recruits will also rush to the call.”

Before that comes to fruition, lessons must be gleaned from failures of the past.

Sadat said he believes the HFAC Republicans’ report provided “a sense of accountability” for the U.S. government’s mistakes and failures in Afghanistan leading up to the country’s collapse. But he wishes the report probed deeper into the risk the Taliban pose today, not only to the Afghan people, but also to the Western world as the extremist movement gains strength and lends support to other radical Islamist groups.

“Another 9/11 attack and major global attacks is not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when, because they’re preparing,” Sadat said. “So, there are two ways the Americans can do this. One way is to support us, so we can go and … destroy them inside Afghanistan. The other way is, the Americans wait and fight them in Europe and the Middle East and inside America.”

It remains unclear when the time will be right for AUF to launch its planned political and military offensive against the Taliban. Sadat said he can’t discuss the timeline, but made clear the group can’t afford to wait forever.

An upcoming book tour that will usher him to locations across the United States — including stops in Texas, Arizona and New York — will, he hopes, raise more resources and awareness for the AUF to continue its work.

“As soon as we have enough resources, we’re going to go and start our campaign,” Sadat said.

“And in this, we’re not asking anyone’s permission.”

Space Force picks four firms to design ‘Resilient GPS’ satellites

The Space Force announced this week the four companies that will compete to build its first batch of Resilient GPS satellites, aimed at ensuring military and civilian users have access to reliable positioning, navigation and timing signals.

The service’s acquisition arm, Space Systems Command, chose L3Harris, Astranis, Axient and Sierra Space to create design concepts for the program. From that pool, it will select a subset to finalize their designs and build prototypes and then will pick one or more firms to build the first eight satellites. Command officials wants those spacecraft to be ready to launch by 2028.

The Pentagon has become increasingly concerned about GPS signals — used to guide weapons and help units navigate — being jammed or spoofed by adversaries. Russia has taken advantage of this vulnerability in Ukraine, using electronic warfare to jam signals on a regular basis.

The Resilient GPS program, or R-GPS, is meant to augment the Space Force’s current constellation of GPS satellites with a fleet of smaller spacecraft that will transmit a set of signals widely used by the military and civilian agencies.

The service used an accounting tactic provided by Congress to shift funding from elsewhere in its budget to award initial contracts. Known as a quick-start, the transfer authority came in the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, allowing the Defense Department to reprogram up to $100 million in funding to start high-priority programs before they are approved as part of a formal budget cycle.

“Thanks to the Quick-Start authority that was approved by Congress, we were able to field and award contracts for these low-cost satellites in less than six months,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a statement. “This authority allows us to move faster and start new Space Force and Air Force programs.”

The early funding has allowed Space Systems Command to conduct market research, host an industry day, release a solicitation and award the first round of contracts in less than six months.

The Space Force did not disclose the value of those awards. However, it has told Congress it expects the program to cost $1 billion over the next five years. To date, it has shifted $40 million in FY23 funding to support he effort and has asked lawmakers to realign another $77 million in FY25 toward R-GPS.

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee has cast doubt on whether the effort will be as resilient as the Space Force hopes. In its version of FY25 defense spending legislation, the panel proposed denying the service’s request to realign FY25 money and questioned whether quick-start authorities should be used for the effort.

“While proliferation may provide some advantages, it is not clear how these additional satellites increase the resilience against the primary jamming threat to GPS, compared to alternative concepts for position, navigation, and timing systems being pursued elsewhere in the Department of Defense,” lawmakers said in a report accompanying the bill, released in June.

They also took issue with the program’s focus on resilient satellites versus improving the GPS ground systems and user equipment. The Space Force has said the goal is for the satellites to use existing devices.

Once the first R-GPS satellites are fielded, Space Systems Command officials envision updating the constellation with new technology on a regular cadence, similar to the Space Development Agency’s approach to fielding missile warning and data transport satellites as part of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

The service said each new batch of R-GPS capability will include up to eight satellites, but didn’t disclose how regularly it plans to field those spacecraft.

What will the surge of US forces to the Middle East cost the military?

SUBIC BAY, PHILIPPINES — The day the Middle East almost erupted into a full regional war this summer, Lloyd Austin was touring an Asian shipyard.

Just before the defense secretary visited Subic Bay, Philippines, the former site of a massive U.S. Navy base, Israel killed the political leader of Hamas, who was visiting Iran.

Austin’s July visit was meant to show his focus on Asia, the region America says is its top priority. Instead, he ended the trip distracted by the Middle East, spending hours containing the crisis on a flight back to Washington.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we keep things from turning into a broader conflict,” Austin told reporters that day.

The U.S. military has spent much of the past year backing up that sentiment.

Since Oct. 7, when Hamas’ attack on Israel provoked all-out war in Gaza, the Pentagon has been on call. When the region has approached a wider war, the Defense Department surged forces there to calm it down. But after a year, some in Congress and the Pentagon are growing concerned about how to sustain that pace, and what it will cost the military in the long term.

Call it the U.S. Central Command squeeze. The Pentagon insists its surge has helped stop the Middle East from falling into chaos. But the longer the region borders on conflict, the more the U.S. tests its endurance for crises later on, most notably, a future conflict with China.

The pressure on the military increased even further this week. After their most intense attacks in almost 20 years, Israel and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah are close to a larger war. On Monday, Austin yet again ordered more troops to the region, joining 40,000 other American personnel there, 6,000 more than normal. Another aircraft carrier may soon follow.

“We’re caught in this kind of never-ending quagmire of having to divert resources, and we’re burning [out] on the back end,” a senior congressional aide said.

This story is based on interviews with analysts, current and former defense officials and congressional staffers, many of whom were allowed to speak anonymously either because they weren’t permitted to talk to the press or because they were discussing sensitive topics.

Their message was that America’s military wouldn’t exhaust itself anytime soon, but that a year of unplanned deployments and spent missiles come with a cost. Even more, they said, the longer the crisis continues, the more the Pentagon will have to manage tradeoffs between the urgent needs of the Middle East and the rising challenges of the Indo-Pacific.

Merging

The way American military leaders in the Middle East describe it, they woke up to an entirely new world on Oct. 7.

For the last several years, the narrative around U.S. forces in the region had been one of decreased focus, with adversaries in the Europe and the Pacific taking priority.

That changed when Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds more hostage. For the short-term, at least, the U.S. was refocused on the Middle East.

“We didn’t know what this was the start of,” an American military official told Defense News. “We immediately started to go to worst-case planning.”

Within weeks of Oct. 7, in support of Israel, the U.S. sent two carrier strike groups, the Gerald R. Ford and the Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and Middle East. It doubled the number of Air Force fighter squadrons in CENTCOM. And to defend its forces already in the region, the Pentagon rushed valuable air defense batteries nearby.

“Our advice to those who might seek to exploit the situation or amplify the conflict is simple, don’t,” a senior U.S. defense official warned in an October press briefing.

This phrase, which became a cliché among senior members of the U.S. government, was still a clear statement of mission. America was sprinting to defend Israel and its own forces in the region.

That became harder the longer the war lasted. Oct. 7 brought direct attacks between Hamas and Israel, but it also upset a delicate balance among other groups.

Soon after the attack, Israel and Hezbollah — which has a formidable force, armed with over 130,000 rockets — started trading fire in a cycle of escalating skirmishes.

Militant groups armed by Iran started attacking Israeli and American forces, especially the 3,500 or so stationed between Iraq and Syria, with three soldiers dying in one such attack in January.

Meanwhile, the Houthis, a terrorist group in Yemen, started firing on commercial ships in the Red Sea, a vital economic waterway where 15% of global trade flowed before last fall.

The Navy’s running sea fight with the Houthis is the longest and most kinetic since World War II, according to service leaders.

“There’s flavors of all those activities in the past and previous rounds that I’ve been involved in, but I don’t recall a period when so many of them have merged,” said another senior U.S. defense official, describing the different attacks.

‘Bear the burden’

As the threats rose, so too did the demand on America’s military. By December, the U.S. began Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea. It devoted an aircraft carrier and destroyers to the task.

In April, when Iran lobbed hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, the U.S. and its partners helped intercept nearly all of them.

America’s national defense strategy accepts that its military can’t be everywhere in the numbers it would want. Instead, the plan is to have a movable force. Put more practically: the U.S. argues it can rush to contain crises like the Middle East after Oct. 7 while still deterring a conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.

“That’s what we were saying before Oct. 7 and we just demonstrated it,” said Dana Stroul, a top Pentagon Middle East official until early this year. “It’s been a proof of concept.”

But the plan requires these emergencies to eventually end. Despite months of intense diplomacy in the region, the administration is now showing less confidence in its proposed ceasefire deal. And now Israel — the country America has spent the last year defending — may itself be opening a new front in the war against Hezbollah.

“You can’t employ diplomacy without the backbone of military capability,” said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, who led CENTCOM until 2022. “Military capability without diplomatic messaging is not a good way to approach the problem either.”

“You need both but you have to be willing to bear the burden,” he continued.

For some in Congress especially, the concern is that the Middle East is a distraction from the Indo-Pacific.

Pentagon leaders say they calculate the risk in pulling assets from one region to another, and that the choice to move forces away from Asia is a sign that they consider the region stable enough to do so.

Not everyone in the region is convinced.

“I have relayed messages that it is better to invest in deterrence where there is no overt conflict, rather than intervene in a conflict where there is one already,” the Philippines Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an August interview. He wouldn’t specify who in the U.S. those messages have reached.

[’We had mission and purpose:’ A chat with the CO of the USS Eisenhower]

Cost and benefit

The benefit, in the Defense Department’s eyes, of such a large response in the Middle East over the last year is to contain a crisis that threatened to engulf the entire region.

The periodic surges haven’t accomplished everything the U.S. has wanted. The Navy regularly intercepts Houthi drones and missiles, but the attacks by the Iran-backed group continue, and most shipping companies have chosen to reroute rather than risk becoming a target. Nor is it certain that the militia group will stop even if there is a ceasefire — something Pentagon officials say they still don’t know.

As the recent fire between Israel and Hezbollah has shown, the U.S. is also stuck responding to the rise and fall in the regional conflict, what Pentagon leaders often liken to riding a roller coaster.

“It’s obviously lasted longer than anyone would want,” the second defense official said.

That notwithstanding, there hasn’t yet been a wider war in the Middle East. And while it acknowledges other forces at work, the Pentagon says it’s helped avoid one.

Amid Red Sea clashes, Navy leaders ask: Where are our ship lasers?

“The force posture does matter,” Secretary Austin told reporters this month. “In some cases, Iran can see … many of the capabilities that we have available. In many cases, they can’t.”

That said, the cost of this posture is also becoming clearer.

The first, and perhaps the most important, part of that tally is the military’s ability to meet future needs, known as “readiness” in defense jargon. By sending more forces to the Middle East, the Pentagon is accepting what amounts to a mortgage: higher costs on its forces to avoid an even bigger bill.

There’s no more pressing example of this trade than aircraft carriers.

These ships are the Navy’s most powerful, most visible weapon, and they’re a primary way the U.S. often flexes its military muscle.

That said, carriers need a lot of maintenance, and spend about two-thirds of their life in port undergoing some kind of repair. The Navy calibrates their time at sea and their time for maintenance, allowing for some margin, but not much.

Central Command spent two years without a carrier after America left Afghanistan in 2021. But since Oct. 7, the U.S. has rotated four of them into the Middle East. Most of them have also been deployed longer than their scheduled seven months at sea.

“If we delay a carrier from going back into port and going back into a maintenance period by a month, it causes an even longer period” of disruption, the third defense official said. “It’s not a one-for-one delay.”

Without specifying the impact of these extensions so far, multiple defense officials and congressional aides said the U.S. is already having to manage “tradeoffs” between the needs of the Middle East today and other areas in the future.

Still, in an interview, the head of readiness for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, which oversees the East Coast-based fleet, argued that the schedules and ships themselves have proved resilient and aren’t yet showing higher wear.

“Sailing those ships in harm’s way for more months certainly will put stress on that, but I really don’t see that process breaking,” Rear Adm. Paul Lanzilotta said.

Close calls

This February, the Houthis shot a ballistic missile at the Navy destroyer Gravely in the Red Sea, one of many times the militia group targeted American ships in the waterway.

But this one came close. In fact, the ship used a short-range weapon — rather than the typical missile — to intercept the attack. The Houthis came within a nautical mile of success, according to Navy officials.

This is an example of the other two costs involved in the Pentagon’s response. One is to personnel, who are being targeted by militia groups more often and are, in some cases, being deployed longer than planned. The other is the military’s own weapons needed to respond.

The Navy estimates that between Oct. 7 and mid-July, it fired $1.16 billion worth of munitions while on station in the Red Sea.

Many of these are older versions of missiles — such as Tomahawks and Standard Missile 2 interceptors — that wouldn’t be as useful in a fight against China, said a second congressional aide.

Still, as long as the Navy is around the Red Sea, it will need to fire weapons that cost more than what they’re shooting down — an equation known in the military as an “exchange ratio.” That deficit has fallen as the U.S. escorts fewer vessels and experiments more with other ways to stop these attacks, multiple officials and analysts told Defense News. But there’s only so many ways the military can adapt, and it won’t risk losing sailors or ships that cost billions.

“We’ve dodged disaster so far, but that doesn’t really mean it’s mission accomplished,” said a third congressional aide.

In April, Congress passed a $95 billion addition to the Pentagon budget, with $2.44 billion in extra money for Central Command. That funding was designed to last six months, according to the first congressional aide, which would mean it’s almost out today.

The Pentagon comptroller office declined to offer an estimate of how much more the surge in forces is costing and whether the Defense Department was still running a deficit to pay for it.

Multiple staffs in Congress said the bill for the last six months will be about the same number as in April: $2 to $3 billion.

Lawmakers can either pay the bill down in another supplemental or by folding the total into their overall defense spending bill, as the Senate did with $1.75 billion for Central Command. That said, lawmakers will soon start the year on a short-term budget called a continuing resolution, which freezes Pentagon spending at last year’s level.

‘Still in the crisis’

Meanwhile even as funding runs out, the war in Gaza shows no sign of ending.

In August, after Austin returned to Washington from the Philippines, he sent a fighter squadron, a submarine, destroyers and a second aircraft carrier rerouted from the Indo-Pacific this year to CENTCOM. Iran didn’t attack, and Hezbollah’s response to an Israeli strike was limited. After a month and a half of relative calm, one of the two carriers in the region left.

During regular briefings, the Pentagon even started arguing that it had gotten in the “headspace” of Iran.

Then, earlier this month, Israel detonated thousands of devices belonging to Hezbollah and launched airstrikes in Lebanon — prompting the group to vow revenge. The two sides are now exchanging heavy fire across the border. Austin postponed a trip to Israel and Jordan this week, containing yet another flare up.

Between the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and CENTCOM, the U.S. now has at least one submarine, an aircraft carrier, three amphibious warships and nine destroyers, a defense official said. Two of those destroyers are in the Red Sea and were once slated to exit, the official said. After the attacks last week, the official continued, the Pentagon ordered them to stay.

In a call with reporters after Israel and Hezbollah’s latest standoff began, a senior administration official yet again said that the U.S. had helped avert a wider war and that a ceasefire was the best option for all in the region.

In the days after, Israel continued striking Lebanon killing hundreds in attacks that escalated their conflict further.

Another carrier strike group deployed for Europe this week on a previously scheduled deployment. The defense official said the Pentagon is drawing up plans in case it needs to divert into CENTCOM and transit the Red Sea.

“We very much will maintain that deterrent posture, because we are still in crisis,” the senior administration official said.

Dutch Navy to buy armed sidekick ships for its air-defense frigates

PARIS — The Netherlands plans to buy two support vessels that will act as sidekicks to its air-defense frigates, packing additional missiles to defeat swarms of anti-ship missiles and drones, for an investment in the range of €250 million to €1 billion (US$279 million to $1.1 billion).

The support vessels will also be able to provide fire support for amphibious operations using long-range loitering munitions, as well as equip underwater drones to track and identify suspicious activity in the North Sea, Dutch State Secretary for Defence Gijs Tuinman said in a letter to parliament on Tuesday.

The Royal Netherlands Navy needs to strengthen its air defenses and firepower for operations in the “higher violence spectrum,” as well as capabilities to protect critical North Sea infrastructure such as drilling platforms and data cables, according to the Ministry of Defence.

“These vessels are needed to better protect the Netherlands and allies in the event of a threat,” Tuinman said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, describing the two future support vessels as “sailing toolboxes” for the lead vessel. “The ships are capable of carrying a lot of equipment, such as additional firepower and long-range anti-aircraft missiles.”

Dutch shipyard Damen will build the vessels, with Israeli Aerospace Industries supplying its Barak ER surface-to-air interceptor, Harop long-range loitering munition as well as electronic-warfare equipment. Buying the missiles, long-range munitions and EW equipment from a single supplier will simplify integration work, the defense ministry said.

The vessels will have a length of about 53 meters and a beam of 9.8 meters, for a displacement of 550 tons, a MoD spokesman told Defense News. That compares to a length of around 144 meters and displacement of more than 6,000 tons for the De Zeven Provinciën-class air-defense and command frigates operated by the Dutch Navy.

The service’s air-defense frigates will continue to be equipped with RTX’s SM-2 surface-to-air missile, and the frigate’s radar and fire-control systems will handle launch and targeting for the missiles on the support vessels.

The support ships will each have a crew of at least eight sailors. While current technology isn’t sufficiently mature for fully autonomous vessels, the new ships will provide the Navy with experience in operating with small crews, as a first step toward unmanned vessels, Tuinman said.

The first iteration will be available for the North Sea in 2026, and both vessels will be fully operational in 2027. Equipment on the support vessels will be packed in containers, meaning air-defense kit can be swapped out for long-range munitions based on the specific needs of the mission, according to the letter.

The Barak ER air-defense missile that will equip the support ships has a range of up to 150 kilometers and can target anything from fighters to tactical ballistic missiles and glide bombs, with eight missiles packed in a vertical launcher, according to the company’s spec sheet.

The Netherlands also looked at MBDA’s Aster missile, which the minister said can’t be fired from a container, while Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ Stunner missile didn’t entirely fit the Dutch requirements.

The Netherlands needs to be prepared for swarming tactics, with massive and simultaneous attacks of anti-ship missiles and drones, which require larger stocks of missiles, Tuinman told parliament. Additionally, RTX is halting production of the SM-2, and the successor missile SM-2 Block IIICU isn’t compatible with the fire control on the Dutch air-defense frigates, the minister said.

Adversaries in coastal areas increasingly have access to advanced sensors and long-range weapons, which is changing doctrine for amphibious operations to a larger number of simultaneous landings, according to Tuinman. The IAI loitering munitions have a range of several hundreds of kilometers, and will be able to linger in the target area for some time before use, he said.

Meanwhile the threat to Dutch infrastructure in the North Sea remains undiminished, with Russia continuing to map the infrastructure in what appear to be preparations for disruption and sabotage, the minister said. The Navy escorted a Russian research vessel in June and July that spent several days in the Dutch part of the North Sea, with intelligence services suspecting the Russians were investigating opportunities for potential future sabotage.

The Ministry of Defence plans to buy off-the-shelf underwater drones equipped with long-range sensors to spot suspicious activity, while the support vessels will also be fitted with sensors to record suspicious vessels.

Army awards two contracts to build cargo robot prototypes

DETROIT, Michigan — The Army has picked American Rheinmetall Vehicles and HDT Expeditionary Systems to build prototypes of equipment-carrying robots, the service announced Tuesday.

Several companies were competing to build the second increment of the service’s Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport (S-MET), robot, including General Dynamics Land Systems, an Anduril and Hanwha team, and Teledyne FLIR.

GDLS won the first contracts in 2019 and 2020 to build the first increment of the vehicle.

Under the newest contract, American Rheinmetall and HDT will each build eight prototypes for a combined total of $22 million, the service said in a statement.

“S-MET Increment II addresses capability gaps associated with excessive physical burdens, recharging batteries during continuous operations, and reducing sustainment burden for semi-independent operations,” Kyle Bruner, the Army’s project manager for force projection within the Program Executive Office Combat Support & Combat Service Support, said in the statement.

Using the robot also “reduces Soldier load and enhances small unit combat effectiveness by reducing fatigue and injury caused by excessive physical loads, shifting the burden to the robotic platform,” he added.

The first increment of S-MET is a radio-controlled, eight-wheeled platform that can carry various payloads and generate power for electronic systems. While the first increment is capable of carrying 1,000 lbs, the Army’s goal for the second increment is to double the weight the robot can carry, the service said.

Additionally, the second increment should have higher exportable power to handle unmanned aircraft systems, run more quietly and have a dismounted wireless mesh communication network integrated into the system.

The system is also required to be modular and open in order to upgrade it easily and cost-effectively, the Army stated.

The service plans to award a production contract for S-MET Increment II following the prototyping phase and developmental testing in late fiscal year 2027. The service’s current plan is to buy up to 2,195 systems.

The Army is pursuing a different robotic combat vehicle for heavy maneuver forces, but the S-MET vehicle could be the more common robot of choice for lighter formations, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems, Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, said in an interview in late 2023.

S-MET “is a very capable, small platform, and we’re seeing a lot of value with experimentation,” Dean said.

US to send $375 million in military aid to Ukraine

The U.S. will send Ukraine an undisclosed number of medium-range cluster bombs and an array of rockets, artillery and armored vehicles in a military aid package totaling about $375 million, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Officials expect an announcement on Wednesday, as global leaders meet at the U.N. General Assembly, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses his appearance there to shore up support and persuade the U.S. to allow his troops to use long-range weapons to strike deeper into Russia. The following day, Zelenskyy meets with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington.

The aid includes air-to-ground bombs, which have cluster munitions and can be fired by Ukraine’s fighter jets, as well as munitions for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, Javelin and other anti-armor systems, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, bridging systems and other vehicles and military equipment, according to officials. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid has not yet been publicly announced.

Nearly $6B in Ukraine aid at risk if Congress doesn’t act by month-end

The latest package of weapons, provided through presidential drawdown authority, is one of the largest approved recently and will take stocks from Pentagon shelves to deliver the weapons more quickly to Ukraine.

It comes as nearly $6 billion in funding for aid to Ukraine could expire at the end of the month unless Congress acts to extend the Pentagon’s authority to send weapons from its stockpile to Kyiv. Congressional leaders announced they reached an agreement Sunday on a short-term spending bill, but it’s unclear if any language extending the Pentagon authority to send weapons to Ukraine will be added to the temporary measure as negotiations with Congress continue.

Ukrainian and Russian forces are battling in the east, including hand-to-hand combat in the Kharkiv border region where Ukraine has driven Russia out of a huge processing plant in the town of Vovchansk that had been occupied for four months, officials said Tuesday. At the same time, Ukrainian troops continue to hold ground in Russia’s Kursk region after a daring incursion there last month.

The aid announcement comes on the heels of Zelenskyy’s highly guarded visit on Sunday to a Pennsylvania ammunition factory to thank the workers who are producing one of the most critically needed munitions for his country’s fight to fend off Russian ground forces.

Including this latest package, the United States has provided more than $56.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russian forces invaded in February 2022.

Lee reported from the United Nations.

Saab to open munitions production facility in Northern Michigan

Saab will open a munitions production facility in Grayling, Michigan, the company announced Tuesday.

The Swedish company, which plans to break ground by the end of the year, said it will use the facility for final assembly and integration of shoulder-fired munitions and precision fire systems.

Manufacturing work will begin in early 2026, according to a company statement.

“We are making a long-term commitment not only to the U.S. defense industrial base, but to the local community as well,” Erik Smith, president and CEO of Saab in the U.S., said. “Saab plays a positive role in the communities where we live and work, creating jobs and investing in the local community, and we look forward to joining the Grayling community.”

The Michigan site, chosen from six possible locations, presented the “most efficient way to execute the work that we have to get done,” Smith told Defense News. The 388-acre plot is located near the largest Army National Guard training base in the country, and the region also has an experienced workforce needed for the type of production.

Smith first told Defense News of Saab’s plans to grow its footprint in the U.S. with a new facility focused on manufacturing ground combat weapons and missile systems in March. He noted six states were in the running.

The new site is part of a global manufacturing push by the company to quadruple its global capacity to produce its ground combat weapons, he said.

“As this facility ramps up, what you will see is a combination of products that Saab is very well known for and some new products that really haven’t hit the market yet.”

The new facility will create at least 70 jobs, the company statement notes. There is potential to hire even more employees as the facility gets up and running, according to Smith.

The site size “allows for expansion for when we need it,” Smith said. “I do envision engineering capacity there as well as the business evolves,” he added, but noted, “right now we are pretty laser focused on manufacturing capacity.”

The facility will feature advanced manufacturing capability and an innovation center to enhance munitions production capacity stateside, according to Smith. He also said it will support the production of components for the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, or GLSDB, system and close combat weapons.

Saab joins a wide variety of defense manufacturers in Michigan, a state with a long legacy of weapons production.

“We built the arsenal of democracy to win WWII and will keep rolling up our sleeves to protect our national defense,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in the company statement. “We are building on our economic momentum and strong reputation as a leader in advanced manufacturing.”

Saab will now have 10 facilities operating in the U.S. Other locations include West Lafayette, Indiana, for aerospace advanced manufacturing; Syracuse, New York, for radar and sensor systems; and Cranston, Rhode Island, and Quincy, Massachusetts, for autonomous and undersea systems.

The facility will follow a similar model to what Saab did with its West Lafayette site, Smith told Defense News. In that case, the first engineering and manufacturing development fuselages were built in Sweden, then, in parallel, Saab built the Indiana plant with high-end technology to produce the fuselages beginning with low-rate initial production.

European navies chase the white whale of torpedo-busting torpedoes

COLOGNE, Germany – The technology promises to be a game changer: a torpedo-seeking torpedo fired by surface vessels for head-on intercepts, missile-defense style.

Yet after more than a decade of research, lead nations Germany and the Netherlands are still years away from fitting their navies with a hard-kill torpedo countermeasure.

Germany’s navy has been toying with a product called SeaSpider, developed by Atlas Elektronik, for several years. Work on the sole technology option under consideration in Europe goes back even further, with engineers studying it for at least 15 years, according to the firm’s website.

But while Atlas has tried to market the system as ready for combat, no navy has yet taken the bait, and the Dutch Ministry of Defence has repeatedly pushed back the start of a formal purchasing program based on SeaSpider.

The German sea service did tests some years ago, but decided against adopting the system. And the Canadian navy, deemed a prospective SeaSpider launch customer due to the timing of its large-scale surface combatant program, made no mention of the capability in its initial lineup of technologies for the future fleet.

A spokesman for Atlas’ parent company, Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems, declined to discuss SeaSpider, pointing to previous requests by the German navy to keep details under wraps. A spokeswoman for the German Ministry of Defense said the technology’s classification and contractual status prohibit the disclosure of details.

Still, officials in Berlin believe that a capability to intercept torpedoes with torpedoes is a critical force-protection technology in principle, the spokeswoman told Defense News.

Torpedoes have historically been one of the main threats to surface vessels, with the weapon involved in more than half of sinkings of U.S. Navy ships during World War II, according to U.S. Coast Guard data cited by Dutch researchers at TNO, a government-linked research organization.

Defense against torpedoes remains essentially a losing proposition, according to experts, leaving surface ships relatively vulnerable once such a weapon is headed their way. The main defensive measures consist of maneuvering, or launching decoys to confuse incoming torpedoes. Yet the latter is ineffective against so-called wake-homing variants, which align their travel path to hit ships in a straight line from behind, their sonar signature buried in the acoustic noise of a ship’s own propulsion system.

The U.S. Navy experimented with an anti-torpedo interceptor installed on three of its aircraft carriers in 2017, before uninstalling the system in 2018, saying that while the hard-kill measure showed “some capability to defeat an incoming torpedo,” reliability was uncertain and lethality of the system was untested.

SeaSpider can intercept all types of torpedoes, combining data from sensors installed on the carrier ship and the interceptor torpedo to compute collision paths with the inbound weapon, the manufacturer promises on its website.

The package has been in play again since last year for further development under the auspices of a European Union program, led by Germany and the Netherlands, labeled simply “Anti-torpedo Torpedo,” or ATT.

A one-sentence description for the project on an EU website describes a desire for “bringing a developed anti-torpedo torpedo demonstrator to the production-ready design, with a qualified effector and a proven functional chain,” an apparent reference to the Atlas product that only the Dutch Ministry of Defence would confirm to Defense News.

A spokesperson there said the SeaSpider technology is still too immature to warrant setting up a formal program, though Dutch defense officials have planned to take such a step, which requires parliamentary notification, since 2022. If it all comes to pass, perhaps in 2025, budget analysts have slotted a torpedo-killing torpedo capability into a category of programs consuming anywhere between €250 million and €1 billion, according to the Dutch MOD.

That is in addition to a related effort, led by TNO and estimated at €50 million to €100 million, to sharpen the technology for torpedo detection that would go into an eventual anti-torpedo torpedo suite, a spokesperson told Defense News.

Notably, the German MOD declined to disclose even the industry team of Atlas and TNO as lead companies of the European Union program, set up under the bloc’s defense-cooperation push known as PESCO. A spokeswoman in Berlin said no contracts had been signed in the matter.

Also unanswered were questions about the shortcomings that the German navy sees in SeaSpider. Defense News has learned that the depth of the envisioned intercept sequence is at issue, with the Atlas system currently limited to hits around the water surface.

In the end, the timing of a European anti-torpedo torpedo program could line up with Dutch Navy plans for new anti-submarine warfare frigates, the first of which is expected to become operational in 2029. That is because German officials expect the PESCO program to yield a production-ready system that passes all regulatory requirements by the end of the decade, with a prototype built in 2028.

In the meantime, other European nations also have taken an interest, including Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Italy and Spain, according to issue experts.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris contributed to this report.

Australia primes local production of solid rocket motors for its ammo

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Australia will make an initial investment in a solid rocket motor manufacturing complex, showing signs that the military is eying more autonomy from global vendors when it comes to the critical technology for its ammunitions.

Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Pat Conroy revealed the plans, to the tune of AUS$22 million, or US$15 million, earlier this month as part of the government’s Guided Weapons and Explosives Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise.

Industry sources expect a request for information to occur before year’s end, and Canberra hopes the factory will be producing motors by 2030.

The move comes as Australia has attracted local subsidiaries of global defense giants to boost the production of ammunition, including their propulsion.

Lockheed Martin Australia will begin assembling Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) next year and, on Sept. 11, the company signed a teaming agreement with Thales Australia to explore “opportunities to advance the development and production of solid rocket motors for the Australian market,” said a statement released by the firms.

Ultimately, the partners will collaborate, qualify and produce motors and other components for GMLRS. They will also explore local supply chain options, extending even to “large, complex strategic motors.”

James Heading, a director at Lockheed Martin Australia, told Defense News: “If we can build a GMLRS rocket motor in Australia, there’s no reason why we can’t use the same technology and the same skills to build other rocket motors.”

Its chosen partner, Thales Australia, has considerable explosives and propellants expertise. For example, it is investing in large-scale preparation and explosive mixing equipment at the Mulwala munitions factory in southeastern Australia, enabling a 500% increase in the size of rocket motors that can be manufactured there.

Other companies are also angling for a slice of the envisioned solid rocket motor complex.

Ben James, CEO of Nioa Australia-New Zealand, told Defense News of a strategic partnership with Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris subsidiary. “We’re proposing a model on how Australia might move to a sovereign SRM and warhead capability,” he said.

Nioa has a long-term tenancy at the Benalla munitions facility, and the company acquired 130 hectares of adjacent land where an SRM facility could be located, James noted.

Northrop Grumman is keen to get involved, too. A spokesperson told Defense News: “Northrop Grumman is the world’s largest manufacturer of SRMs, and believes we can make a significant contribution to a sovereign SRM manufacturing capability in Australia in the future.”

The spokesperson added: “Northrop Grumman has been working with Australian industry for over three years to develop plans to manufacture SRMs and the associated components and materials in Australia,” adding that a footprint there could help fill gaps in the company’s U.S.-based SRM manufacturing supply chain.

The protracted conflict in Ukraine has created a shift in the way some American weapons makers do business, as they try to de-risk their supply chains by adding capacity in places like Australia.

Simultaneous to the SRM investment, Canberra announced AUS$60 million would be spent over five years to “develop the next generation of guided-weapons subsystems and components, such as hypersonic and long-range strike.”

A Ministry of Defence statement said the funds would “deliver industry-manufactured prototypes of the critical seeker, fuse and warhead subsystems.”

Army looking to streamline and speed up helicopter refuel and resupply

The Army’s current method of rearming and refueling its helicopters worked well in past wars, but leaders fear it won’t keep pace with the faster-paced, move-or-be-killed wars of the future.

And if the service is called upon to fight across vast Asian or European territories, the service’s so-called Forward Arming and Refueling Points, or FARP, will be decisive for such operations.

FARPs involve staging ammunition and fuel at safe points along the pathway of aircraft, but such sites require manpower, are vulnerable to attack and need logistical support, especially in more remote locations, officials said.

But now, an effort known as Helicopter Expedited Refueling Operations, or the HERO project, aims to streamline the FARP process, getting support to units faster and using available aircraft more effectively, according to the Army.

Army air crew training revamp to look at aircraft and simulators

“We need solutions that enhance our agility, reduce our footprint, and ultimately keep our aviators in the fight,” Col. Ryan Kendall, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade commander said in a release announcing the initiative.

As part of this search for solutions, the 12th CAB has partnered with the Army Applications Laboratory to analyze current FARP operations and develop solutions.

Planners want to quicken the buildup, assembly, setup and breakdown of equipment, while decreasing aircraft refueling times.

They also hope to improve fueling equipment and reduce the time that aircraft have to loiter to get gassed up.

At a recent training event at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, the applications lab team worked with elements of the brigade during Exercise Saber Junction.

The next war’s FARP missions will also involve those teams having to work far forward and in dangerous locals, leaders said.

“Executing FARP operations in support of attack aviation mission requires significant manpower and experience to be conducted quickly and safely in a highly contested, near-peer threat environment,” Capt. Justin Thomas, distribution platoon leader, Echo Company, 1-3 Attack Battalion, said in a statement.

During the exercise, members of the HERO project team observed and analyzed Echo Company’s FARP planning, setup and operational procedures to better develop an application that can reduce the load on soldiers.

Some changes in the works go beyond software, such as pumping fuel faster or using robots to do soldier jobs.

The HERO team is working with Beacon Industries, a Connecticut-based manufacturing company, and robotics company IA4S on those specific tasks.

Beacon Industries provided a newly developed fuel pump that pumps fuel three times faster than the current 300 gallons per minute. The new pump also uses a sensor to inspect and test fuel in real time, according to the release.

If current HERO team experiments are successful, soldiers may be able to use a robot, built on a Bobcat skid-steer loader, a forklift-like construction vehicle, to remotely refuel the aircraft.

Such an asset would support news of 1st Armored Division training earlier this year that required “deep strike” helicopter missions.

Then-division commander Maj. Gen. James Isenhower III touted the FARPs use in a 350-mile round trip strike mission involving more than two dozen helicopters and support aircraft the unit conducted in January.

The strike saw a battalion’s worth of AH-64 Apache helicopters fly close to the terrain at night in a 7-hour mission, using the FARPs to refuel.

“FARP is the decisive point for any operation,” Isenhower said at the recent Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Moore, Georgia, when he shared details from the division’s training.