Sierra Nevada wins $13B contract to build Air Force ‘doomsday plane’

The Department of the Air Force on Friday said it awarded Sierra Nevada Corp. a $13 billion contract to replace the service’s aging E-4B Nightwatch “doomsday planes” that would fly during a nuclear war.

The company will develop and produce the Survivable Airborne Operations Center, the name for the aircraft that will succeed the E-4B, and is expected to finish the work by July 10, 2036. The Air Force is obligating $59 million in research, development, test and evaluation funds to Sierra Nevada to start work on SAOC right away.

“The development of this critical national security weapon system ensures the department’s nuclear command, control, and communications capability is operationally relevant and secure for decades to come,” an Air Force spokesperson said in an email.

The E-4B, officially referred to as the National Airborne Operations Center, is designed to allow the president to direct forces in the event of a nuclear war or other devastating emergency that destroys command-and-control centers on the ground. The Air Force’s four E-4s have been flying since the 1970s and are approaching the end of their service lives.

Sierra Nevada’s contract to develop and produce SAOC will cover the delivery of engineering and manufacturing development aircraft, production aircraft, associated ground systems, and interim contract support, the Pentagon’s contract announcement said. The company will perform work on SAOC in Englewood, Colorado; Sparks, Nevada; Beavercreek, Ohio; and Vandalia, Ohio.

The Air Force said Sierra Nevada will build SAOC out of a hardened and modified version of a commercial derivative aircraft. And it will use a modular open system approach to include modern secure communication and planning capabilities.

SAOC’s ground support systems will include trainers for aircrew, mission crew, and maintainers, as well as ground support equipment, test and sustainment system integration laboratories, and other systems.

The contract includes cost-plus-incentive-fee, fixed price incentive and cost-plus-fixed-fee components, the Pentagon’s contract announcement said.

Austin calls European allies, seeking more Patriots for Kyiv

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he has been speaking with allies in Europe about how to send Ukraine more air defense systems.

He discussed the conversations in a Pentagon press conference Friday, referencing a series of one-on-one calls held this week. Pentagon readouts say Austin spoke with defense officials in Romania, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece, among others.

“Going forward, we’ll be able to, hopefully work with a number of countries to put together additional Patriot capability” for Ukraine, Austin said.

His remarks came after the 21st meeting of a coalition the U.S. convened to support Kyiv’s self-defense. Friday marked the two-year anniversary of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, or UDCG, an occasion that prompted Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy to address the summit virtually.

“We urgently need Patriot systems and missiles,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, accompanying his remarks. Ukraine, he argued, is seven batteries short of what it needs.

Throughout the war, Pentagon officials have said Ukraine needs a steady supply of air defense interceptors to stop volleys of attack drones and missiles. The urgency for those missiles rose when American aid ran out at the start of this year, and Ukraine began rationing its stocks.

After waiting for half a year, Congress approved a $48 billion refresh of security aid to Ukraine, and the Pentagon rushed Kyiv a $1 billion batch of aid, which includes air defense interceptors

Austin also announced a separate $6 billion package Friday. While it will include air defense, this tranche is part of a longer-term pool of funding and the weapons may not arrive for years.

Meanwhile, Russia has increased its production of one-way attack drones and missiles that can fire deep into Ukraine.

Germany said this month that it will send Kyiv another Patriot battery, though other European leaders have been more cautious.

“We’re going to ask them to accept a little bit more risk so that we can do what’s necessary in Ukraine,” Austin said.

Defense Innovation Unit moves to ease commercial drone certifications

SAN DIEGO — The Defense Innovation Unit wants to improve its process for vetting commercial drones, with the goal of making it easier for companies to sell their systems to the U.S. military.

Director Doug Beck said April 23 the organization will host a competitive effort this fall aimed at onboarding more commercial drones through its Blue UAS certification, which validates that the systems are cybersecure and include no technology made by Chinese suppliers.

“It’s all about adding more capability and also finding ways to help reduce costs while do that so we can help go increase scale and also give more opportunities to more folks out there to be on the list,” Beck said during the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International conference in San Diego.

Small commercial drones, a broad category of uncrewed aircraft that includes those weighing less than 55 pounds, have played a more prominent role in military conflicts in recent years — including in Ukraine and Russia as well as the Middle East. As the market for these capabilities has grown, particularly in China, the U.S. government has been increasingly concerned about the security of the technology and the possibility that data collected by these systems could be shared with adversaries.

DIU established Blue UAS in 2020, after a series of congressional mandates blocked the Pentagon from buying or using certain drone components — like cameras, data transmission devices, radios and flight controllers — made by Chinese companies. At the time, the only option for units that wanted access to private sector drones was to go through a labor-intensive exemption process to secure a waiver that lasts only six months before needing to be re-submitted.

Blue UAS was designed to create another avenue for validation through a more streamlined process. Drones verified by DIU are included on its Blue list and made available for the military services to buy as well as other government users. Over the last four years, DIU has added 15 systems to the list and has created a parallel inventory of approved components and software through an effort it calls framework.

The process has since become the de facto government standard, with many agencies outside of DOD deferring to the list for their own small, uncrewed system purchases. As a result, demand for Blue has far surpassed DIU’s resources, limiting the number of systems it can process and making it harder for private sector drone companies to sell to the government.

Trent Emeneker, who leads Blue UAS for DIU, told C4ISRNET the organization has heard feedback from DOD and commercial firms alike who say the process is lacking on multiple levels. Military units say the list doesn’t provide the types of systems the military most urgently needs and companies — even those trying to reach non-defense agencies — say there are too many financial and procedural hoops to jump through to get on it.

“We’re not delivering what the warfighter needs today, period,” he said. “But we’re doing everything we can to fix that, to try to solve the problem.”

Refreshing the list

This fall’s refresh of the Blue list is one way to do that, Emeneker said, noting that he expects it to become an annual opportunity for new systems to join the list and for those not providing military utility to be taken off.

“The list does not need to be static because, frankly, the market is going to tell us what’s good — the market being the end users. If they’re not buying it and using it, then it’s not what they want and we don’t need to keep it around,” he said.

As it looks to reopen the list, Emeneker said DIU will consider factors like cost, capability, modularity and security as well as a company’s willingness to work with other partners.

“Closed, proprietary solutions are in generally not going to be looked at very favorably,” he said during a speech at the AUVSI conference. “This is a place where modularity and interoperability — you just can’t succeed in this space without them. Nobody has the one solution to everything.”

He noted that while the refresh is open to any company, Blue will continue to process other drones sponsored by military units or that are part of a program of record.

Another change DIU is making is to its process for approving software updates to Blue systems. Today, it can take between 30 and 45 days to sign off on software changes, but the organization wants to reduce that to four days or less, according to Emeneker.

To do this, DIU is working with a third party vendor to validate a company’s software code as it’s being written and updated.

“96 hours is still too long,” he told C4ISRNET. “But we are listening.”

DIU is also growing its list of certified Blue components to give companies more options for what they can install on their drones and to provide greater transparency about which hardware has been approved.

The organization this week signed a memorandum of agreement with the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, a trade organization that last year created a Green UAS process designed to offload some of the demand for Blue.

Green UAS targets civil and commercial drones that are designed for non-DoD customers that don’t have the same stringent, defense-specific requirements. The MOU will allow better information sharing between AUVSI and DIU and creates a pathway for including Green-certified hardware on the Blue list.

While the Green list has been in place for more than a year, many federal and local agencies still want the uncrewed systems they buy to be certified through DIU’s process. Emeneker said the hope is that a stronger partnership with AUVSI will help communicate that the Green List is a viable option for these agencies.

“Part of our goal is to help communicate that it is a standardized and solid verification process,” he said. “The Blue list is a stamp of approval. We also want to help encourage the Green list to be thought of in the same way. These are different market segments to a certain extent, different people, but they all help achieve the same goal.”

Senators push to update nuclear military might in defense bill

A key group of senators is pushing to include their bill on nuclear modernization when the Armed Services Committee drafts its annual defense policy legislation in June.

The Restoring American Deterrence Act, introduced by Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., would create a new Pentagon position to oversee deterrence policy, deploy up to 50 extra intercontinental ballistic missiles, require an assessment of U.S. sites suited to host highly enriched uranium facilities, and increase Defense Production Act grants for the industrial base.

“It’s clear that the flawed, outdated assumptions from 2010 that underpin our current strategy will not be enough to address the long-term threats we face,” Fischer told Defense News in a statement. “The Restoring American Deterrence Act is the landmark legislation our country needs to effectively deter our peer nuclear adversaries like China and Russia in the future.”

Fischer, the top Republican on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, promised to work with the bill’s co-sponsors to include it in the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

Subcommittee Chair Angus King, I-Maine, and Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the full committee, have co-sponsored the legislation.

The bill is a response to bipartisan recommendations from the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which released a report last year calling for increased nuclear assets beyond the military’s current modernization plans.

The legislation would establish an assistant secretary of defense for nuclear deterrence policy and programs as well as require the Pentagon to develop a national integrated air and missile defense architecture compatible with NATO and Indo-Pacific defenses.

It would also require the Pentagon to develop a plan for the acquisition and deployment of up to 50 Sentinel ICBMs on top of the 400 Minuteman III ICBMs already deployed.

The bill also requires the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to send Congress force-size requirements needed for both nuclear and conventional deterrence of major adversaries like China and Russia. Furthermore, it requires them to submit a plan to modernize the integrated tactical warning and attack assessment system, including a strategy for incorporating nontraditional sensors.

Additionally, it would require the Energy Department to assess two to four locations in the country suitable for uranium enrichment, including highly enriched uranium.

On top of that, it raises the caps on Defense Production Act subsidies for the industrial base to $1.5 billion from the current cap of $750 million. A summary accompanying the bill noted the increase is to address “the impact of inflation on overall costs and the expected need for increased use of this tool to bolster our defense industrial base and nuclear security enterprise.”

Lastly, it requires an interagency plan “to promote the development of a skilled manufacturing and high-demand vocational workforce” to support the expansion of the “industrial base and nuclear security enterprise.”

The strategic posture commission had sounded the alarm on the industrial base’s failure to keep pace with nuclear modernization requirements, citing the delayed Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program, among other examples.

The Congressional Budget Office released a report last year stating the military’s current nuclear modernization plans will cost $756 billion from 2023 to 2032. But the strategic posture commission said the “current modernization program should be supplemented to ensure U.S. nuclear strategy remains effective in a two-nuclear-peer environment.”

The commission’s report stated that current modernization programs were developed under the 2010 security environment, mainly with Russia on the mind and China as a “lesser-included case.”

Army officials question plan for future attack reconnaissance

DENVER — After canceling the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program earlier this year, the U.S. Army has yet to earnestly invest in its manned attack helicopter or other capability to fill the armed recon role, and service leaders warn that without a clear plan, its ability to fight as effectively in future wars could be in jeopardy.

The Army has talked about how unmanned systems and sensors will largely perform such a mission along with the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter when required, but little money is programmed to be spent on the aircraft in the coming years.

While there are plenty of ideas streaming in from industry, the service is still working through technology that will be critical to integrate pilots, drones and soldiers on the ground to fill the mission and has yet to present a clear upgrade plan for the Apache.

And even four-star combatant commanders have questions.

“The Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA, was to deliver the capability to identify and destroy [anti-access, area denial] bubbles to create advantages for [the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft] to exploit,” Gen. Laura Richardson, U.S. Army Southern Command commander and an Army aviator, said in an April 25 speech at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference here.

“FARA intended to combine our pilots with high end capabilities that unmanned systems provide and create advantages against adversaries. What is going to meet that requirement?” she asked. “What is going to replace the Apache that we’ve taken risk in, in order to field FARA?”

The Army should at least be upgrading and matching sensors to the firepower in the Apache to keep pace with rivals, Richardson said.

“While the Army has not announced any investment in our current attack helicopter, our strategic adversaries are doubling down,” she said.

What’s the plan of attack?

When the Army canceled FARA – citing the changing character of war and observations made in Ukraine – it argued a manned helicopter was no longer survivable against near-peer adversaries in a high-end fight. The Army said it would make investments in other aviation capability and touted the performance of the Apache in the armed scout role.

AH-64s teamed with Shadow unmanned aircraft systems have filled that role since the Army canceled the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter in 2013.

Even so, the initial investment, the Army said at the time it killed FARA, would be to buy more UH-60M Black Hawk utility helicopters and CH-47F Block II Chinook cargo helicopters. It’s working toward multiyear contracts for both aircraft, with a goal of minting a new UH-60M deal in fiscal 2027. But neither of those aircraft will fulfill the armed scout mission.

Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, the director of the Army aviation in the G-3/5/7, emphasizing the continued need for manned aviation, told the same audience at AAAA that unmanned aircraft in armed reconnaissance is needed, but “we need them to team with our crewed aviation to be decisive.”

While the Army has stated the Apache will continue to serve in the armed scout role when necessary, it took a risk with the Apache fleet, Rugen noted, and said not only do improvements to Apache need to be made if it will fill in that role, but the service should consider replacing 16 crash damaged aircraft.

Those aircraft are not funded in FY25 or the subsequent four years of the budget cycle, he noted.

Additionally, the Army has three squadrons of Delta-model Apaches that were not going to be bought, “that now we have to look at very closely and see how we fill that in and modernize those three Delta squadrons,” Rugen, whose last job was managing the Army’s Future Vertical Lift efforts including FARA, said.

A year ago, at AAAA in Nashville, Tennessee, Boeing unveiled what it could do for the Apache beyond its latest version. The model on display featured an additional wing pylon, joining the two already there on the current version, to provide additional weapons in a greater variety onboard.

The payloads would count on the additional lift provided by the Improved Turbine Engine Program, or ITEP engine, which has long been delayed. The timeline to integrate ITEP in Apache is farther afield than the UH-60, which is scheduled to received engines in the summer for testing. The Army decided, earlier this year, to delay procurement of ITEP and keep it in research and development for now.

Boeing said it has been working with the Army through its conceptual design and modernization efforts “to ensure that we’re meeting the future needs of the fight,” Christina Upah, company vice president in charge of attack helicopters, told Defense News in an interview at AAAA.

The company is focused on ensuring a modular open system architecture environment to enable rapid integration of technology affordably when the time comes, she noted. Boeing showcased at AAAA how launched effects could be deployed with the attack helicopter.

“Even today, the last couple of days at this event, we’ve heard from a number of senior Army leaders who have communicated that this is the attack reconnaissance helicopter for the future,” Upah said.

“There is a tremendous amount of development effort afoot that we’re doing in partnership with the U.S. Army that can be a part of the modernized Apache as well as efforts that we, Boeing, are doing and spending our investment dollars to invest in this future platform along with our industry partners,” she added.

What’s the limit for UAS?

Army leaders have stressed that unmanned aircraft play an important role in the joint warfighting concept and are taking lessons from the war in Ukraine, which exhibits a change to the character of war.

“The Army plans to increase investment in FTUAS and [launched effects], which is absolutely necessary to fight and win in the air and ground littoral,” Richardson said, “but it may not be sufficient. Unmanned systems provide commanders amazing capabilities but there are limits. UAVs lack situational understanding, situational curiosity and lacks situational agility.”

Manned systems with pilots and crew is “the Army’s asymmetric advantage,” she said.

Rugen agreed. “We have a lot of people confusing swapping UAS at less-than-mortar-round range with some type of decisiveness and it’s not decisive.”

The Army can’t settle on just swarming drone capabilities, it must refine and master the concept of a “wolfpack” of unmanned systems that “goes on the hunt and kills big game,” Rugen said.

“It’s a very complex conversation, we absolutely need [UAS],” Rugen said, but “we need them to team with our crewed aviation to be decisive at the point and time of our choosing.”

The service says it is accelerating procuring modern unmanned aircraft systems like a Future Tactical UAS, launched effects and commercially available small UAS, but clear plans to rapidly get after how an ecosystem of UAS will come together, in some cases, is just beginning to materialize or hasn’t yet.

The Army decided this year to officially retire Shadow, which FTUAS would replace, but according to Rugen there is not enough funding available to accelerate its fielding timetable. The service, instead, is investing some money to buy prototypes and fly them over the next few years with two competing teams.

For UAS to work in the armed reconnaissance role particularly, Rugen said the service needs to get its modular open architecture system established across the current fleet of aircraft, which is a challenge, in order to be able to network and integrate effectively with UAS.

Within the Army’s Future Vertical Lift portfolio, the service is focused heavily on launched effects and is only beginning to flesh out exactly how it will take capability out of the concept and development realm and into fieldable systems.

The service plans to wrap up a prototyping evaluation effort for a medium-range LE in September and will weigh options from rapid fielding to low-rate initial production to more prototyping depending on how things go. The Army is also pursuing a long-range and short-range version, which are farther afield but will begin prototyping soon.

The service plans to also focus heavily on LE at its EDGE aviation demonstration event in the fall. Another focus will be autonomy.

“What has to still evolve is autonomy to completely do a reconnaissance and security mission,” Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, the Army Aviation Center of Excellence Command commander, said at AAAA. “We are still investing in that path to autonomy. Being able to see and surveil something is a component of reconnaissance, but not sufficient to perform the whole thing.”

The Future Vertical Lift cross functional team in charge of bringing modernized aviation capability to the force in the 2030 timeframe, is increasingly focused on autonomy, according to its director, Brig. Gen. Phillip Baker.

“Autonomy is a critical aspect of all of this. How do you bridge autonomy across all of these systems,” he said. “How does it get integrated? How does it get shared? How do you do mission command?”

Companies like Shield AI are dedicated to increasing autonomy on a wide variety of air assets. Brandon Tseng, the company’s president, told Defense News in a recent interview it is in the process of integrating its artificial intelligence pilot onto a seven different platforms including quadcopters, Kratos’ MQM-178 Firejet and XQ-58 Valkyrie.

“I think what we’re seeing from the drone industry, from our standpoint, with AI and autonomy, if you think about the problem differently, you can still solve a problem with lots of different small things rather than one large thing,” Tseng said.

France and Germany sign off on future battle tank system

PARIS — France and Germany have formalized an agreement to develop a future battle-tank system, with the countries’ defense ministers signing off on an industrial work-share pact here on Friday.

The countries’ defense firms – KNDS, Rheinmetall and Thales, among others – can now get to work on proposals, which are expected in the coming months, French Armed Forces Minister Sebastian Lecornu said at a briefing. Germany is leading the project and will be in charge of awarding contracts for the first demonstrator phase by the end of this year.

Lecornu and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in the past eight months have managed to reboot the project known as the Main Ground Combat System, which languished for years amid wrangling over which countries’ industries would get to work on what. The ministers, who have said they get along well, last month agreed on divvying up the workload equally between both nations.

The political agreement “will force the different industrials to work together,” Lecornu said, adding that cooperation can be decreed, or created by setting a concrete industrial target. “We can’t have this type of partnership without also creating a common culture between the industries.”

Lecornu said lessons were learned from discussions around the joint Future Combat Air System, where in some cases industrial agreement was reached before German, Spanish and French air forces were asked for their input. That is “out of the question” for the MGCS project, which is based on the needs of the countries’ two armies rather than industrial ideas, the French minister said.

Officials of the German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, have stressed the modular character of the envisioned system. Tank variants with different specializations, working in concert on the battlefield, will all share a common undercarriage, according to a statement on the Bundeswehr website. The concept has yet to be proven, and as of now there are no studies or models yet about a system demonstrator for the program as a whole, it adds.

Designing a completely new land combat weapon will entail pulling together the operational experience from tank warfare of the past years, including lessons learned from Ukraine’s defense against Russian invaders, which has seen hundreds of main battle tanks destroyed or incapacitated.

France and Germany will be designing “not so much the tank of the future, but the future of the tank,” Lecornu said. He said the U.S. hasn’t yet started considering the post-Abrams era, while Russia is experiencing “great difficulty” moving from its current generation of tanks to a successor.

Germany is counting on the future combat system to replace its Leopard tanks sometime in the 2040s, while France is looking for the MGCS to replace its Leclerc fleet.

Competition in the tank domain will become “tougher and tougher” towards 2040, with giants such as India and others “waking up” and potentially flooding the market for land-forces equipment in coming years, according to Lecornu. The focus on technological and innovative breakthroughs should position the MGCS in a different market segment that will boost its export prospects, the minister said.

Lecornu said work on the planned demonstrator will be split 50-50, as will future production capacity. Still, he said industrial distribution wasn’t at the core of the memorandum of understanding signed on Friday, but rather the two governments saying that they need the same tank in 2040.

The joint French-German tank effort is “something we very much welcome,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Germany on Thursday, before the agreement was signed in Paris. “It will make NATO stronger and it will help allies to get new and modern capabilities.” Cooperation will help overcome defense-industry fragmentation, the NATO chief said.

Multiple other countries have expressed interest in the MGCS program, including Italy as well as countries in Eastern Europe, Pistorius said at the briefing in Paris. He said making Europe stronger also means including more partners.

The project will be divided into eight pillars, including for the main platform, the turret and gun combination, new types of fires, connectivity and electronic warfare. While some of those pillars are obvious areas for French-German cooperation, for some the leadership will be “purely national,” based among other things on industrial experience, according to Lecornu.

Tanks’ vulnerability to drone attacks as well as the waning effectiveness of 120mm cannons against ever-improving armor are among the pitfalls on the German military’s radar, according to Bundeswehr.

With a decision on a next cannon still outstanding, what’s clear is that it will need bigger projectiles with higher velocity, one unnamed German acquisition official is quoted as saying. Calibers of 130mm or 140mm are being considered.

According to the Bundeswehr statement, it is “highly probable” that MGCS will use some kind of hybrid diesel-electric propulsion system. A near-silent electric drive will be harder to hear on the battlefield, a tactical advantage during certain operations, the thinking in Berlin goes.

US to provide $6B to fund long-term weapons for Ukraine, officials say

(AP) — The U.S. is expected to announce Friday that it will provide about $6 billion in long-term military aid to Ukraine, U.S. officials said, adding that it will include much sought after munitions for Patriot air defense systems.

The officials said the aid package will be funded through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays for longer-term contracts with the defense industry and means that it could take many months or years for the weapons to arrive. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.

The new funding — the largest tranche of USAI aid sent to date – will include a wide array of munitions for air defense, such as the National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System (NASAM) and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), as well as the Patriot munitions, Switchblade and Puma drones, counter drone systems and artillery.

The announcement is expected to come as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convenes a virtual meeting on Friday of defense officials from Europe and around the world to discuss international aid for Ukraine. The gathering — created by Austin and known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group — has been meeting about monthly for the past two years, and is the primary forum for weapons contributions to Kyiv for the war.

It follows the White House decision earlier this week to approve the delivery of $1 billion in weapons and equipment to Ukraine. Those weapons include a variety of ammunition, including air defense munitions and large amounts of artillery rounds that are much in demand by Ukrainian forces, as well as armored vehicles and other weapons.

That aid, however, will get to Ukraine quickly because it is being pulled off Pentagon shelves, including in warehouses in Europe.

The large back-to-back packages are the result of the new infusion of about $61 billion in funding for Ukraine that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on Wednesday. And they provide weapons Kyiv desperately needs to stall gains being made by Russian forces in the war.

Bitterly divided members of Congress deadlocked over the funding for months, forcing House Speaker Mike Johnson to cobble together a bipartisan coalition to pass the bill. The $95 billion foreign aid package, which also included billions for Israel and Taiwan, passed the House on Saturday, and the Senate approved it Tuesday.

Senior U.S. officials have described dire battlefield conditions in Ukraine, as troops run low on munitions and Russian forces make gains.

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, the U.S. has sent more than $44 billion worth of weapons, maintenance, training and spare parts to Ukraine.

Among the weapons provided to Ukraine were Abrams M1A1 battle tanks. But Ukraine has now sidelined them in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack, two U.S. military officials told The Associated Press.

Why China axed the Strategic Support Force and reshuffled the military

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Chinese President Xi Jinping instigated a significant restructuring of the People’s Liberation Army on April 19 by axing the Strategic Support Force and replacing it with a new Information Support Force.

While it’s unclear exactly why Xi enacted this major reshuffle, analysts suspect both military capability and political control contributed to his decision.

Joel Wuthnow, a Chinese military expert with the Washington-based National Defense University, believes Xi wanted greater oversight of support forces with the People’s Liberation Army.

“PLA observations of the war in Ukraine have made very clear that an effective structure for support forces, including in the logistics and information domains, is essential for modern warfighting. My sense is that the SSF [Strategic Support Force] proved to be an unnecessary management layer that obscured Xi’s visibility into what the PLA was doing in space, cyberspace and other information disciplines,” Wuthnow told Defense News.

China created the SSF on Dec. 31, 2015. Its successor, the Information Support Force, will now handle network information systems and communications support, and possibly network defense.

The new organization operates alongside two other newly announced military arms — the Cyberspace Force and the Aerospace Force — plus the preexisting Joint Logistics Support Force. This leaves the PLA with a structure of four arms and four services, the latter comprising the Army, Navy, Air Force and Rocket Force.

The four arms are directly subordinate to the Central Military Commission, which is the top political party organ that oversees China’s armed forces. This means the commission’s leaders can directly deal with individual support forces rather than having to go through the SSF headquarters.

The latest move came as a surprise to observers, said Brendan Mulvaney, the director of the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute.

“Obviously it takes quite a bit of planning and groundwork to create a new force, much less disband another, but it appears the PLA kept these plans pretty well hidden from public view,” Mulvaney told Defense News.

Indeed, China is known for its lack of transparency. Gen. Ju Qiansheng, a former SSF commander, disappeared last year before reappearing briefly in February. Ju’s current status is unclear.

Mulvaney said corruption might have played a part in Xi’s decision. However, the SSF has not experienced corruption scandals at the level of the Rocket Force, whose leadership was detained by the authorities last year.

From an operational standpoint, the new structure is advantageous to China’s military, Wuthnow said, noting the SSF was as powerful as the PLA’s five theater commands, whereas the current four support forces are now one level lower. This means theater commanders can now more easily tap the support forces’ assets without the complication of dealing with higher headquarters.

“This should help break down silos in the PLA and improve the functioning of the joint operations systems,” Wuthnow said. The four support forces “are all functionally specialized and can focus on improving their trade without an unnecessary management layer.”

Overall, disruption to the PLA would “not be massive,” Mulvaney said.

“The new headquarters will take time to get up and running; stake out positions and roles; establish command and control as well as organizational relationships with the other services, forces and theater commands,” he explained. “But it won’t be as big of a shift as the 2015/2016 reforms, and really only affects a pretty small portion of the PLA as a whole.”

The Cyberspace and Aerospace forces will presumably continue as normal from their same locations. The Cyberspace Force succeeds the SSF’s former Network Systems Department, while the Aerospace Force supplants the Space Systems Department. In essence, these departments have been elevated, with their overarching SSF structure removed.

Senior Col. Wu Qian, a Defense Ministry spokesperson, described the Cyberspace Force’s mission as “reinforcing national cyber border defense, promptly detecting and countering network intrusions and maintaining national cyber sovereignty and information security.”

The force is also charged with carrying out offensive cyber operations. The U.S., the U.K. and New Zealand accused China last month of sponsoring malicious cyber activity.

Wu also said the Aerospace Force will “strengthen the capacity to safely enter, exit and openly use space.” Although China emphasizes the peaceful use of space, the Pentagon said in its latest annual report on China’s military that the PLA “views space superiority, the ability to control the space-enabled information sphere and to deny adversaries their own space-based information gathering and communication capabilities, as critical components to conduct modern ‘informatized warfare.’ ”

Xi has said the Information Support Force plays “a crucial role in advancing the Chinese military’s high-quality development and competitiveness in modern warfare.”

While the new structure means the four forces plug into the PLA’s joint operations system more easily because there are now fewer management layers, Mulvaney noted it’s likely a result of Xi wanting “more direct control of the information domain forces — and felt like the SSF wasn’t getting the job done.”

Ukraine pulls US tanks from front lines over Russian drone threats

Ukraine has sidelined U.S.-provided Abrams M1A1 battle tanks for now in its fight against Russia, in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack, two U.S. military officials told The Associated Press.

The U.S. agreed to send 31 Abrams to Ukraine in January 2023 after an aggressive monthslong campaign by Kyiv arguing that the tanks, which cost about $10 million apiece, were vital to its ability to breach Russian lines.

But the battlefield has changed substantially since then, notably by the ubiquitous use of Russian surveillance drones and hunter-killer drones. Those weapons have made it more difficult for Ukraine to protect the tanks when they are quickly detected and hunted by Russian drones or rounds.

Five of the 31 tanks have already been lost to Russian attacks.

US Abrams tanks for training Ukrainian forces arrive in Germany early

The proliferation of drones on the Ukrainian battlefield means “there isn’t open ground that you can just drive across without fear of detection,” a senior defense official told reporters Thursday.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide an update on U.S. weapons support for Ukraine before Friday’s Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting.

For now, the tanks have been moved from the front lines, and the U.S. will work with the Ukrainians to reset tactics, said Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady and a third defense official who confirmed the move on the condition of anonymity.

“When you think about the way the fight has evolved, massed armor in an environment where unmanned aerial systems are ubiquitous can be at risk,” Grady told the AP in an interview this week, adding that tanks are still important.

“Now, there is a way to do it,” he said. “We’ll work with our Ukrainian partners, and other partners on the ground, to help them think through how they might use that, in that kind of changed environment now, where everything is seen immediately.”

News of the sidelined tanks comes as the U.S. marks the two-year anniversary of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of about 50 countries that meets monthly to assess Ukraine’s battlefield needs and identify where to find needed ammunition, weapons or maintenance to keep Ukraine’s troops equipped.

‘We need to move fast’: Pentagon sends Ukraine $1 billion in new aid

Recent aid packages, including the $1 billion military assistance package signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, also reflect a wider reset for Ukrainian forces in the evolving fight.

This week’s assistance emphasized counter-drone capabilities, including .50-caliber rounds specifically modified to counter drone systems; additional air defenses and ammunition; and a host of alternative, and cheaper, vehicles, including Humvees, Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles.

The U.S. also confirmed for the first time that it is providing long-range ballistic missiles known as ATACMs, which allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian-occupied areas without having to advance and be further exposed to either drone detection or fortified Russian defenses.

While drones are a significant threat, the Ukrainians also have not adopted tactics that could have made the tanks more effective, one of the U.S. defense officials said.

After announcing it would provide Ukraine the Abrams tanks in January 2023, the U.S. began training Ukrainians at Grafenwoehr Army base in Germany that spring on how to maintain and operate them. They also taught the Ukrainians how to use them in combined arms warfare — where the tanks operate as part of a system of advancing armored forces, coordinating movements with overhead offensive fires, infantry troops and air assets.

As the spring progressed and Ukraine’s highly anticipated counteroffensive stalled, shifting from tank training in Germany to getting Abrams on the battlefield was seen as an imperative to breach fortified Russian lines. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on his Telegram channel in September that the Abrams had arrived in Ukraine.

Since then, however, Ukraine has only employed them in a limited fashion and has not made combined arms warfare part of its operations, the defense official said.

During its recent withdrawal from Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that was the focus of intense fighting for months, several tanks were lost to Russian attacks, the official said.

A long delay by Congress in passing new funding for Ukraine meant its forces had to ration ammunition, and in some cases they were only able to shoot back once for every five or more times they were targeted by Russian forces.

In Avdiivka, Ukrainian forces were badly outgunned and fighting back against Russian glide bombs and hunter-killer drones with whatever ammunition they had left.

Army heads into competitive flight demos for future tactical drone

DENVER — The U.S. Army is moving its Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System competition into a flight demonstration phase with two teams, Griffon Aerospace and Textron Systems.

In the fall, the Army tapped the two companies from a group of five; now it has formally awarded contracts to both to move into the final two phases of competition.

“FTUAS provides transformational capabilities including VTOL for runway independence, On-The-Move command and control, Soldier led field level maintenance, and enables rapid capability insertions, further allowing the system to keep pace with technology,” according to an April 25 service announcement.

The service has completed a rapid prototyping program that included a preliminary and critical design review with the two competitors and will now focus on both the flight demonstration and subsequent phase, where the teams will deliver “production representative prototypes” for testing and operational demonstrations.

Soldiers will have a chance during demonstrations to test the prototypes’ capabilities, the announcement notes, including vertical takeoff and landing, reduced acoustic signature and rapid setup. The phase also includes Modular Open System Architecture verification efforts.

Later on, the prototypes will be tested in varying environmental conditions and the service will assess the drones’ ability to operate in places where the electromagnetic spectrum is challenged. Prototypes will also be evaluated for transportability.

The entire effort will culminate in a production readiness review, the statement notes.

While Army senior leaders have pushed to move quickly to field tactical UAS to replace the Shadow UAS, the program has long been in the works.

The Army began considering requirements for a replacement for its Textron-made Shadow drone in 2018; by 2019, it had narrowed the pool of competitors to a Martin UAV-Northrop Grumman team, Textron Systems, L3Harris Technologies and Arcturus UAV. Aerovironment purchased Arcturus in 2021, while Shield AI bought Martin UAV in the same year.

The service evaluated the four drone offerings over a year with operational units, culminating in a spring 2021 rodeo at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Army awarded Aerovironment an $8 million contract in August 2022 to provide the Jump 20 UAS as an interim FTUAS capability for a single brigade.

Now, the Army plans to field FTUAS to the first unit equipped in 2026, Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, director of Army aviation in the G-3/5/7, said in an April 25 speech at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual summit here.

And while the Army announced earlier this year it officially plans to quickly retire Shadow, “there’s no amount of money that will accelerate [FTUAS] left,” Rugen said, referring to a faster fielding schedule.

“What we in the building are doing is putting more units into the fielding process, and that’s our version of acceleration,” Rugen added, while emphasizing that with the Shadow replacement “the demand is going to be off the charts … the demand by divisions to have that tactical UAS capability in their formations at squadron echelon.”