Defense One - Business

Tough choices, uncertainty, and scrutiny may lie ahead for defense contractors

Lauren C. Williams — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 08:00:00 -0500

New and existing defense programs may face funding delays or challenges, and companies could see a flurry of Congressional anti-corruption inquiries when the new Democrat-majority Congress takes office next year, experts say. Until then, industry can expect a push for funding by the current majority.

“There'll be a lot of pressure on the Republicans to get something passed during the lame duck [session] because they know how hard it will be after that. And defense hawks will be pushing very hard,” said Mark Cancian, a government budget expert and senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

While Republicans being able to amass enough support to pass $350 billion in reconciliation funding for defense “looks iffy,” he said, passing the base budget of around $1.1 trillion is “quite doable.”

But that reduced funding ceiling—along with the possibility of another continuing resolution—means the Pentagon will need to choose what gets funded.

“At $1.5 trillion, [the Pentagon] could do everything. In other words, they could fund a lot of legacy systems, but also fund a lot of new systems. And a $1.1 trillion dollar budget will require them to make some trade-offs—which [ones] get protected will be an important question,” Cancian said.

Defense spending, overall, typically garners bipartisan support. But this year, the U.S.-Israel war on Iran has been a source of political contention—from the Trump administration starting it without Congressional approval to the downstream economic effects.

Also, the administration has, again, tethered funding for several prominent national security programs to a supplemental funding bill instead of the regular defense budget. Those programs include the White House’s massive missile defense effort dubbed Golden Dome, some shipbuilding, and munitions production.

A failure to secure that extra funding could constrain some of the Pentagon’s modernization programs, said Shaun McDougall, lead defense analyst for Forecast International, a sister brand of Defense One.

If Congress passes a long-term continuing resolution instead of a new budget for 2027, the Army would not be able to start building its MV-75 program, to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk, or its Bradley replacement, XM-30.

“They're wanting to start production on those using FY27 funds,” McDougall said.

Navy shipbuilding programs that would take a hit include “new submarine tenders [and] work on the new frigate,” while the “Air Force has several missile programs, and…the collaborative combat aircraft.”

And, when that potential stopgap funding expires, it may be replaced by another continuing resolution—or result in a government shutdown.

“You have the possibility of a government shutdown if there's disagreements over using the Iran War as a bargaining chip or something like that. So there's a lot of potential for budget disruptions, and that's been one of the big struggles for the Pentagon in general,” McDougall said.

However, Democrats could opt to pass the more-than-trillion-dollar defense budget to cover big expenses like munitions.

And in that case, “the war funding is essentially covered” if the base budget includes “a little flexibility to move money around,” CSIS’s Cancian said. “The biggest piece is munitions,” though it likely would also include other operational costs of the Iran war.

Plus, even as polarizing as the Iran war is, stockpiles of the exquisite munitions that were used must be replenished.

“Democrats obviously aren't happy with the war and how it's going, but replacing all those munitions, it has to be done, whether you support how those munitions were used up in the first place,” McDougall said.

Under the microscope

A Democrat-led Congress will likely focus on anti-corruption, with probes into companies that have close ties to the White House and broader Trump administration, said Kristina Moore, a partner with Womble Bond Dickinson law firm in Washington, D.C.

The “first wave of investigations” would likely explore “where there is evidence that a family member close to the president or the administration had an unfair advantage, or somehow benefited directly financially because of a transaction—an acquisition, a merger, a government loan or a contract,” Moore said. “Was a contribution made, say to the White House ballroom, and—close in time—a policy outcome or a contracting decision, right?”

Then, Congressional oversight and defense committees may examine individual policies for potential wrongdoing.

Venezuela, Iran, drones, AI use: “What is that oversight angle there? Was there a no-bid contract awarded in one of those scenarios? What influenced the administration's policy? Who benefited from a change in the administration policy? And then there's just simply who holds information,” which could be interesting to investigators, said Moore, who was previously a Congressional investigator and has advised clients undergoing such probes.

“You kind of get there either because you were involved in a transaction that looks suspicious, or you were involved in a policy area that is of interest and under scrutiny.”

That means companies must know how to navigate public opinion, and the risks that arise because Congress is investigating.

“They operate in the court of public opinion. Who are those third parties that might be amplifying this? What is that specific risk that exists because Congress cares about us? And what's our fact pattern…our narrative?” she said. “Is there any alignment between what the Congress is looking for in our actions or activities?” and is there “internal awareness of what people were saying to the administration?”

Moreover, a company’s general counsel, regardless of size, “might not be fully aware of conversations that were happening or reasons why things were happening, and you have to do due diligence.”

And the new wave of freshman lawmakers will likely want to make a splash, Moore said.

“You're going to have different personalities brought to bear…House Oversight is aggressive. It's going to be populated with freshmen that want to show a win…they want to use social media to amplify their tough questioning,” she said.

“The goal for Democrats is going to be ‘how do we coordinate and not step on each other,’ but the tension is going to be, ‘this needs to be investigated and I want to do it now and I've got this pressure to do it now.’”

‘A mixed bag’ for Golden Dome

The new Congress may also force the Pentagon to make tough choices about what to spend money on—and work more collaboratively across the aisle to secure funding.

“There'll be a lot of pressure to work with Democrats, particularly with the Pentagon. The current team has not been very good at that. In fact, they've been quite outspoken in their contempt for Congress. But now, if they want to get any bills through, they're going to have to talk to Democrats and make deals,” Cancian said. “That will add pressure to get a new team in there…because they need a team in there who can deal with the Democrats.”

And while missile defense, like munitions, can be a bipartisan issue, parts of the Trump administration’s Golden Dome effort could see more scrutiny under a Democrat-led Congress.

“It's kind of a mixed bag. Some portions of Golden Dome, before it was called Golden Dome, were already well underway under the Biden administration—missile interceptors, space-based tracking, space-based communications to support connecting the interceptors and the sensors. So there's generally broad support for that,” McDougall said.

But “implementation of their space-based interceptor layer, that's one of the controversial areas where Congress could put up some roadblocks. And we've already seen some pretty big contract movement on that space-based interceptor layer.”

Probing Golden Dome’s space-based interceptor layer could bring SpaceX, which is run by Elon Musk, under the Congressional microscope.

“SpaceX’s involvement at such a large scale could be something that lawmakers will want to examine further,” McDougall said. “Democrats are going to have a much closer eye on some of that work because they've received a couple real big contracts for their space-based air moving target indicator, and then their space data network. And now those are part of the broad sensing layer and communications layer that has already been worked on.”

]]>

Defense Business Brief: The DIB vs. 2027’s Democrat-led Congress

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 02:41:44 -0500

Newer defense companies should prepare for potential Congressional anti-corruption probes and examine ties to the Trump administration before the new Democrat-led Congress goes into session next year, said Kristina Moore, a partner with Womble Bond Dickinson law firm in Washington, D.C.

Companies should take stock of their board and think about “preparedness,” which means “understanding what oversight is and is not,” Moore, who was previously a Congressional investigator and has advised clients undergoing such probes, told Defense One. “There is a lot of uniqueness to this space.”

How Congress handles privileged communications can be a common surprise, she said.

“Congress's position is that common law privileges, attorney-client privilege, work product privilege—they recognize that at their discretion. And so that's going to be surprising, where a lot of general counsels might be under the operating assumption that ‘that's a privileged conversation [because] I was in the room, outside counsel was in the room. That's privileged, right?’ That might not be the case,” Moore said, adding that it’s important for companies to understand how Congress works, what they’re looking for, and the tools they use.

“If you get a letter from Congress, generally there's a two week timeline—and that's actually if Congress is being generous. That's a very short clock to respond to before pressure goes up in terms of threatening the compulsory process or actually implementing the compulsory process.”

Moore said the hot topics ripe for Congressional investigation are Iran, Venezuela—including boat strikes to curb alleged drug imports to the U.S.—and AI policy and use.

“That is in the zone of great interest. And then the question is: Are you in that zone? Do you have any interesting information? Were there any talks with the president?” she said. “Definitely now is a time to take and assess what your risk is and how do you organize the business around that risk in order to navigate what may come.”

Welcome

You’ve reached the Defense Business Brief, where we dig into what the Pentagon buys, who they’re buying from, and why. Send along your tips, feedback, and song recommendations to lwilliams@defenseone.com. Check out the Defense Business Brief archive here, and tell your friends to subscribe!

Zooming in on foreign military sales. The Trump administration has pushed for more foreign military sales, and ushered in reforms last year. That could lead to more scrutiny in 2027 with Democrats leading Congress, said Shaun McDougall, lead defense analyst for Forecast International, a sister brand of Defense One.

“The administration has been very open with trying to push or get sales as high as possible. And so you have maybe more controversial deals with places like Saudi Arabia or Turkey, where Democrats might try to put up some roadblocks,” he said.
“Those are things that could also impact U.S. companies…from high-end stuff like the F-35, to munitions, to smaller components.”

Could demand for some military equipment stay relatively level? It’s possible, McDougall said: “Things like the Iran war, aid to Ukraine—there's some overlapping requirements with both of those that could impact acquisition and contractors.”

“Demand for missile defense, [counterdrone] capabilities, low-cost interceptors, low-cost munitions. There's demand for that type of stuff…but depending on how those conflicts proceed and how the U.S. approaches it could impact near-term demand.”

One company’s ‘blue wave’ outlook: Bipartisan work on the Hill should prevail.

“The push to modernize and equip the military has support on both sides of the aisle. The next Congress can continue making headway to find new defense technology,” Ben Kesling, Chariot Defense’s government relations head, told Defense One via email.
“A unit operating at the edge still needs weaponry, comms, sensors, [command and control], and power, whoever chairs the committee in January. The next Congress will have hard debates over budgets and policy, but getting affordable, durable capabilities into the hands of American troops has already drawn support from both parties…That work should carry forward.”

In Hawaii last week, the Defense Information Systems Agency completed its Olympus Fires exercise alongside foreign partners and military components in the Pacific, with the goal of everyone using the same digital environment to share the data needed to find and precisely shoot a target.

“To bring those teams together in a common environment with common data to deliver those capabilities—that was the demonstration we were able to deliver. No swivel chair,” said Col. Michael Hlad, commander of DISA’s Pacific regional field command.
For example, a Marine Corps Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company, or ANGLICO, team was able to locate and pinpoint a target that could then be “executed by a Canadian shooter,” Hlad told Defense One following his TechNet Indo-Pacific session.
Being able to take data, share it to locate and track and fire on a target “all in the same environment, is something we haven't been able to demonstrate before,” he said.
A full analysis is pending, but one early takeaway was “a clear understanding of what's capable from a coalition environment” and a plan to expand the series to evaluate other areas, including logistics and maneuver, Hlad said.
Related: GDIT’s Vion Edge was also tested during the exercise to demonstrate “a tactical kit that provides all of your core [mission partner environment] services…when a network may go down temporarily,” Jason Myers, vice president of defense agencies for GDIT, told Defense One. For example: “We had one military service [where] their network had gone down. They moved all their logs onto our platform and used our AI capability to diagnose and identify what needed to be fixed…to be able to get it back up within a matter of hours.”

Making moves + other news

Rear Adm. Jonathan Rucker will be the Navy’s program acquisition executive for maritime.
Shield AI unveiled its X-BAT prototype and plans to buy radar-maker Echodyne for $5.3 billion.
Oshkosh Defense, known for making military trucks, is teaming up with Grid Aero to build aerial drones.

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Tech at the edge; PACFLEET talks cyber; and more

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 06:53:47 -0400

HONOLULU—Soldiers in the Pacific need technology that works when networks are attacked and connectivity isn’t guaranteed, said Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea.

“If the service tells you who they are and what they're going to do, and you choose not to try to meet the requirements of how they're going to fight—that's going to be a problem. Because in the future, our networks will be fully under attack. I think in the future we'll have to operate disaggregated and distributed. I think in the future, things will happen so fast, they'll happen so fast that we won't know sometimes what's happening to us,” Brunson warned during a keynote Tuesday at the TechNet Indo-Pacific conference here.

“There will be plans that will change before we even get in the theater…And if your product can't operate on the edge, then it's not a product that's going to be able to help the Army fight the way the Army's going to fight, much less the joint force.”

Brunson’s comments come as what’s known as the Davidson window, a 2027 timeline for when China’s leader has told its military it must be ready to invade Taiwan, draws near.

But while there’s no expectation of a war with China next year, it’s something the military is still preparing for, Gen. Ronald Clark, commander of U.S. Army Pacific Command, said in his keynote address.

“There are 157 days between today and 2 April. So that mark on the wall for us in our headquarters is to ensure that we are in position, postured forward to deter war in a window in which our adversary may find it to their advantage to attack Taiwan. But again, it's not a date that we think that conflict will happen…But we'll continue to prepare. We'll continue to modernize. We'll continue to posture ourselves for the business of deterred war well beyond [2027].”

Congress and the lack of a 2027 budget could stymie some of those modernization efforts unless lawmakers pass a full budget by December.

Working under stopgap funding is the “biggest challenge” that affects “plans for new starts and being able to fund some of the programs that we know are going to yield benefit to the soldier,” Clark told reporters earlier this month.

Examples include experimentation and some efforts to improve the mission partner network, he said: “You can't start that contract if you don't have new money. So it's a challenge that, again, we have to overcome…we have more experience operating under a [continuing resolution] than we do with an appropriation.”

Aloha!

You’ve reached the Defense Business Brief, where we dig into what the Pentagon buys, who they’re buying from, and why. Send along your tips, feedback, and mai tai recommendations to lwilliams@defenseone.com. I live here now. Check out the Defense Business Brief archive here, and tell your friends to subscribe!

PACFLEET’s cyber needs. The Navy needs more continuous monitoring solutions for systems on ships and ashore, including products that scan for vulnerabilities, Richard Williams, who manages command, control, communication, computers, and intelligence platforms for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said Tuesday.

“I would offer that we are in a zero day today. We do need more continuous monitoring, both at the shore and our ship nodes,” Williams said during a panel discussion. “We struggle with scanning and patching vulnerabilities within our networks, and having that partnership with industry and academia on how we can move quicker to do that, I think will really help us.”
Adding to that complexity is the need to tailor cybersecurity to different ships: Destroyers and aircraft carriers “have very various mission sets. So we need to be cognizant of what those missions are and how we can support them with cybersecurity,” he said. “So I think from industry and enterprise level, with regards to cyber, helping us with supporting us with technology to do continuous monitoring, patches and scanning, and allowing us to move quicker to keep pace with our adversaries.”

Allies + AI. Each nation has a different approach to large language models, or LLMs, which adds another layer of complexity to the work required for the U.S. military to be on the same page as allies and partners.

“We've got different approaches to LLMs in our respective countries,” including planning with a different ecosystem and decision-making process, said Australian army Brig. Chris Alder, the vice director for intelligence at Indo-Pacific Command.
The first challenge is engaging with partners, he said during a panel Wednesday: “Understanding how [an ally’s] respective partners are approaching their own challenges is a key start point. So working through our liaisons that we've got within PACOM to get the right points of contact to have those discussions has been really important. And to be frank, knowing which industry partnerships countries are pursuing has often been accommodating for discussions.”
A little more: Nations in the Pacific have varying levels of AI adoption and implementation—and many are not using frontier models, said Scott Brunstetter, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s chief AI officer.
“There are some exceptions to that,” where some are building “their own smaller capabilities. So each journey has been a little bit different…it comes back to starting with foundations and how do we understand everything from governance and workforce training, things like that,” Brunstetter said.
He requested that companies proactively help bridge the divide to help the U.S. understand where partner nations are, technologically: “You all have some very interesting and insightful tools, and as you engage with partners out there, circle back with us. Help us understand where that partner was. Because the other side of this is partners don't have a whole lot of money in some cases, and so they're looking for…cheaper options. So there's a wide open opportunity there.”
A related, haunting thought: When it comes to AI, there’s a lingering concern around data security. And there’s one question senior leaders should be asking themselves more: “How would they know if the models and AI systems that they are using have been poisoned? And it's giving them subtle and incorrect answers over time—how would you detect that?” Brad Christ, the University of Hawai’i’s chief information officer, said in a separate panel. “And I don't think that there's an answer.”

Making moves + other news

The Army expands testing sites for commercial drone use.
SAIC has a quantum portfolio.
General Atomics completed flight testing with Saab’s LoyalEye, an advanced early warning system, on the MQ-9B Reaper drone.
Energetics and propulsion startup Firehawk is now valued at more than $1.4 billion after closing a Series D funding round of $150 million. The round was led by Advent and Rochefort Asset Management.
Beacon AI’s autonomous pilot tech took flight with KC-46 tankers.

]]>

The US space industry will suffer for Ukraine’s Starlink outage, experts say

Patrick Tucker — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:09:55 -0400

Elon Musk’s decision to hobble satellite services to Ukraine’s military, and his shifting explanations for doing so, have undermined the U.S. space industry and the country’s diplomatic and intelligence partnerships, say lawmakers, foreign officials, and former senior members of the U.S. military.

“I'm an American. You're an American. We want American companies to be the most competitive,” said one former senior military official who worked in space policy, operations, and acquisitions. Episodes like the Starlink scandal “create an environment where you make more competitors.”

On Oct. 14, amid a Russian missile barrage, military operators across Ukraine found themselves unable to direct drones traveling faster than 100 mph, causing “the failure of several missions,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov wrote on Facebook. Without warning, Musk’s SpaceX had imposed limitations on Ukraine’s use of Starshield, the military-grade data network that runs on the company’s Starlink constellation. The service reduction, which lasted ten days, reduced Ukraine’s ability to fend off Russian missiles and jet-powered drones.

“People were killed because [there was] not enough destruction, not enough interceptors, including interceptors with Starlink, which didn't work, of course," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said later on Oct. 14.

It’s not clear why SpaceX reduced service to Ukraine. Musk and President Donald Trump have been increasingly critical of Zelenskyy in recent weeks. Trump, who has reversed war-related sanctions on Russia and sought Moscow’s help to bring down domestic fuel prices, has complained about Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy plants. Musk, whose relationship with Kyiv has soured since the departure of former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, has asked for sympathy for Russian conscripts.

Musk, who promised last year that “Starlink will never turn off its terminals” in Ukraine, blamed Trump for the slowdown.

“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” he tweeted on Oct. 14.

That didn’t smell right to at least one former U.S. general.

“I honestly believe Musk thought he was acting in line with what the White House wanted. I can’t prove that, of course. But all the actions and everything people say tell me this was intentional,” said Ben Hodges, a retired general and former commander of U.S. Army Europe.

The inability to rely on SpaceX is sure to affect military decisionmaking, the former senior military official who worked in space policy said.

“From a planner perspective, obviously, you need to have confidence in your kill-chain capabilities, and so that introduces doubt, which must be incredibly difficult for the planners of the Ukrainian military.”

Congress’ concerns

In letters to SpaceX and the Pentagon, U.S. lawmakers expressed several concerns about the interruption of service, including its effects on allies.

On Oct. 19, a group of senators reminded SpaceX officials of their “contract obligations with the Federal Republic of Germany, which funds Ukraine’s access to Starlink,” and asked: “When did you notify the German government of the decision to degrade Starlink capabilities?”

Representatives from their offices did not respond to questions regarding any answer they may have received.

In an Oct. 22 letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, another group of senators noted that Ukraine relies on Starlink for intelligence-sharing. They urged the Pentagon to “expand its existing Starshield contract to ensure Ukraine has the satellite communications capacity, coverage, and reliability necessary to sustain its military operations and renew Starshield’s unlimited-speed service.” Pentagon officials did not respond to questions about the letter.

Allied government officials also expressed alarm.

"I search for the right adjective to describe whoever took this decision or group of people took this decision against a country that is literally fighting for the lives of the citizens against naked aggression," Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Oct. 23.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Oct. 16 put the issue plainly: "Germany is paying SpaceX and that's why we naturally insist that it works if we're paying for it."

Facing mounting pressure, Trump called Musk on Oct. 23 to ask him to lift the restrictions.

On Friday, Trump said, “If there’s a problem, I'll get it straightened out.”

That same day, Musk admitted that SpaceX had put a speed restriction in place but he blamed Ukraine, which he said had used the satellite network for offensive drone strikes and thereby “violated Starlink terms of service and [the military] used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people.” Ukrainian leaders have denied this.

But as the Oct. 19 letter points out, any real or imagined Starlink terms-of-service violation should not affect the Starshield service, which is under the control of the U.S. government. Like many, the senators were confused.

“SpaceX owns and operates the underlying Starlink network and infrastructure upon which certain Starshield services rely. These circumstances raise important questions...”

By Oct. 24, Ukrainian leaders said, full Starlink service had been restored.

What next?

For Ukrainian operators, the issue is resolved for now. But one former senior military official who worked in space systems acquisition told Defense One that the episode will undermine trust in U.S. satellite capabilities.

“Flipping the switches over a combat operation, it’s definitely a significant data point… The question is: Are we making the right decisions?”

U.S. dominance in space-based imaging and satellite communications, both military and commercial, is real. Europe does not have either a private or public satellite communications system capable of replacing Starlink overnight. Starlink’s importance in helping Ukraine achieve battlefield gains is also beyond dispute.

But Musk’s actions will accelerate the development of foreign alternatives to Starlink, said the formal official. More established, smaller competitors to Starlink, such as Eutelsat OneWeb, SES, Iridium and others, could also see increased government business or support.

It’s not the first time that a U.S. decision to withhold satellite services has convinced a security partner to reduce its reliance on Washington. In 1999, India was denied access to GPS during its Kargil conflict with Pakistan.

“The request that was denied to India drove them to build their own GNSS [global navigation satellite system] capability,” the former official said.

The European Union launched its own quest for a navigation system that same year, and the Galileo navigation system went operational in 2016.

From the perspective of U.S. space firms, “You risk your momentum by giving other competitors a reason to go build their own Galileo GPS system,” the former official said.

The urgent need for sovereign satellite capability led Kyiv to sign a development agreement with Denmark’s GomSpace in April and, on Oct. 22, a letter of intent with Finnish space technology company ICEYE and Nokia.

For U.S. military operations, that’s not all bad news, the official said, as it means a more resilient network with more providers of services such as global positioning and communications.

But the United States will never again enjoy a position of near-dominance in space, they said.

“Your Apple iPhone right now takes in GPS, Russian GNSS, and Chinese GNSS, yeah. So, in one way, it makes your system more resilient. In other ways your little phone is reliant on other things, systems that probably we would not have planned to be reliant on many years ago.”

]]>

Defense Business Brief: A little bit of MOSA; Netherlands-U.S. industry days, and more

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 20:40:07 -0400

Military buyers want to move quickly, which can mean companies need to add new tech to vehicles after they’re built. Now, Oshkosh Defense is building a dedicated center to test those modifications.

“We call it the Vehicle Integration Center. It allows us to prove out and test conformance in the real world. So that's work that we'll be doing in ‘27,” Logan Jones, Oshkosh Defense’s chief growth officer, told Defense One.

“The question of ‘does it work?’ is still left way too late in the process,” Jones said. “We want to shorten that from like a year and a half to weeks.”

While the focus is on their own offerings, Jones said the integration center could help other combat vehicle makers test their products.

“The primes are going to be interested,” he said. “The signal in the market that we've seen is we would be taking risk out of their program—and that's what they want. They want speed, and they want low risk, so they can predict when it'll be available.”

The aim, at least in part, is to make the process easier on engineers. For example: Let's say you're an engineer doing the counter-UAS solution. You said ‘I'm going to bolt it on.’ You need to know where the mounting locations are,” Jones said, noting that information is usually in an interface control document, or ICD. “We don't make that easy today…But in the future, it should be a turnkey system” where the ICDs are easy to access.

Oshkosh is cleaning up ICDs and aims to start work at the center early next year.

Welcome

How the Dutch are rethinking weapons buying. The U.S. isn’t the only nation with procurement woes. The Netherlands has spent recent years trying to revamp its acquisition system, and there’s a push to incentivize manufacturers to stay ready, Derk Boswijk, the minister for arms procurement and personnel, told reporters.

“We can buy 1 million drones, but I know one thing for sure: that weeks from now they are outdated. So we have to come up with a new model, and we are already working on it,” Boswijk said.
That model would have the government pay commercial companies to be on-call, in a way, to produce certain military products during a conflict.
For example, the government could pay an automaker to make drones. “In the meantime, you do the research, you build prototypes,” and order supplies, he said. But when a conflict “breaks loose, they put everything aside and…produce the drones instead of the automobiles.”

Boswijk spoke with a sense of urgency to try something different: “The most dangerous thing we can do is play [it] safe …I have to take [risks] because otherwise, when I want to have 100 percent certainty, then I know for sure…it will be too late.”
A bit more: Two U.S. companies inked deals during last week’s annual Netherlands-U.S. defense industry event: Bell Textron and Lockheed Martin.
Bell had two memorandums of understanding: one with PhotonFirst to explore the use of fiber optic sensing to monitor aircrafts’ structural health and another with the Netherlands Industries for Defense & Securities.
The latter agreement is “really to facilitate relationships on how they can help us and find other partners in the Netherlands,” Robbie Yarbrough, director of international industrial cooperation at Bell Textron, told Defense One. “And next month, we'll be signing a few more MOUs, and we're really looking for research and technology.”
Lockheed Martin Skunk Works signed an agreement with the Royal Netherlands Aerospace Center in support of the Dutch air force. The deal expands an existing agreement and broadens industrial base access.

MQ-25 Stingray progress report. The Navy successfully synced the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan to an unmanned tanker located more than 2,100 miles away via satellite as part of a series of preliminary sea-trial tests “to validate procedures, networks and interfaces,” the service said in a news release.

“Once the satellite link was up, air vehicle pilots aboard USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) connected to the MQ-25A air vehicle on the ground in Mascoutah, Illinois,” the Navy told Defense One via email. “Using the MD-5C [unmanned air command and control station] aboard the ship, the AVPs gave the air vehicle multiple commands to exercise various subsystems of the aircraft and verify an established connection.”
Context: The Navy has made several strides with its drone tanker program this year. The program is considered to be a “pathfinder” effort designed to relieve F/A-18E/F aircraft from their refueling duties to focus more on strike missions.
Related: The Navy awarded Applied Intuition a contract for AI data infrastructure “across the manned and unmanned fleet,” the company announced. The service previously awarded the company a contract for its data engine solution and will build on that.
“Its Intelligent Perception System will be the first fleet-scale capability deployed, starting with five Arleigh Burke-class destroyers under the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Robotic and Autonomous Systems and PAE Mission Systems initiative,” the company said in a news release.

Making moves + other news

BAE Systems bought about 13 acres in Weld County, Colorado, to expand manufacturing related to space-based hardware and sensor systems.
The Army expanded its enterprise contract with Striveworks tenfold to $700 million for fullstack AI solutions. The company also has a separate $200 million Army contract for the service’s Next Generation Command and Control program.
Electra plans to demonstrate its hybrid-electric Ultra Short aircraft in Lower Manhattan on Friday. The event is expected to be the “first-ever landing at the heliport by a fixed-wing aircraft without vertical takeoff capability,” the company said in a news release.

The National Armamfents Consortium added new members and elected James Miller of the Practical Energetics Research as its executive chairman.
The Pentagon awarded Nikon Advanced Manufacturing a contract with an unspecified amount for “customized additive manufacturing systems targeted for production of Tomahawk Land Attack Missile mid-bodies, and other similar potential applications,” the company said in a news release. The award is part of the Defense Department’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program.
Defense tech firms like Palantir are getting more attention—from Wikipedia editors, the Guardian reported. Fun fact: Once upon a time, I wrote “a long article” about that very unique world.

]]>

Fast-flying Shahed drones spur new class of interceptors

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 07:00:00 -0400

WASHINGTON—A surge in Russia’s use of jet-powered Shahed drones in Ukraine has spurred the need for super fast interceptors to defeat them. And it’s a problem U.S.-based dronemaker Powerus hopes to solve.

“We constantly need to move ahead of the threat. The next threat that we see to get in front of is the jet-powered Shahed drones,” Brett Velicovich, cofounder and president of the dronemaker Powerus, told Defense One. “Jet-powered Shaheds are very difficult to defeat because of how fast they are, and so to defeat those, we need jet-powered interceptors. So that is one of the things that we're looking at…to be able to fly an interceptor at 600 kilometers per hour, 700 kilometers per hour. That's going to require a lot more automation. It's going to require a lot more R&D.”

Newer versions of Shahed drones propelled by jet engines have increasingly been appearing on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield in recent months, pushing Ukraine to fortify its air defenses. Those fast flying Shaheds require interceptors that can match those speeds—around 370 mph, or 600 kilometers per hour. Other versions of the Shahed fly just over 100 mph. There’s also concern that other security risks could crop up as other nations adopt the newer Shaheds.

Powerus is just about a year old and has former Pentagon and first Trump administration officials on its board.

Velicovich doesn’t have a target date for developing its rocket or jet-powered interceptor, but the goal is to move quickly.

“I spend a lot of time in Ukraine. There's a good chance that by the end of this year, the majority of Russian drones that are sent into downtown Kyiv will be jet-powered,” he said, “so we really need to move at that timeline.”

But churning out rocket- or jet-propelled interceptors at the same rate as the upgraded Shahed drones can be costly and difficult.

“They can build these things for $20,000-$30,000, and they can turn them out in massive, massive quantities. And so, to do that in an interceptor is very difficult,” Velicovich said. “But the technology is getting cheaper and cheaper, so we'll find a solution for that I think pretty soon. The entire industry is racing to figure that out.”

Powerus, which recently went public, has been busy in recent months.

The Rock Hill, S.C.-based company unveiled its fully autonomous interceptor, Guardian 3, during the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference here. The anti-drone tech is the latest addition to a family of interceptors, including the semiautonomous Guardian 2 and remotely piloted Guardian 1.

“Guardian 3 takes that final terminal phase of a manual operator out of the loop, and it is fully automated, similar to how you might fire a Patriot missile. The difference between us and the Patriot missiles is that…you can build these Guardian 3 systems in the thousands very easily,” Velicovich said.

The company aims to produce 5,000 interceptors per month by November, with an ultimate goal of being able to deliver 10 times that.

“We want to get to that point where it's just massive, massive scale because these things are a lot like artillery rounds, and we need to build them like artillery rounds. So we need more companies out there that have the industrial capacity…to turn these things out,” he said.

Also at the conference, Powerus signed a deal with Parsons on the showroom floor to pair its radar systems with Guardian interceptors to detect oncoming drone threats.

Earlier this year, the Air Force tapped Powerus in an $82 million deal for counterdrone systems, which includes the Guardian family of interceptors. The company has also branched out to international buyers, striking an unspecified deal with the Pakistan army for unmanned aerial systems.

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Wrapping up AUSA

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:31:35 -0400

WASHINGTON—Six anti-war protestors disrupted an autonomous warfare discussion featuring Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and the military service secretaries Wednesday at the Army’s annual conference. By the time the third protester shouted denouncements of the U.S.-Iran war, some members of the audience had begun chanting “USA, USA.”

The politically charged atmosphere isn’t typical at the show. But this year, it served as a contrast for what appeared to be a more prominent international presence than previous years—from the number of international companies represented to the size of the displays.

Ukrainian companies made their debut with a massive tent just two blocks from the convention center. Overall, there were 165 international companies and nine international pavilions on the showroom floor, representing Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Korea, and Norway, the Association of the U.S. Army, or AUSA, told Defense One.

The roughly 2,000-member international delegation was about average, representing 92 countries—including 27 army chiefs, 14 sergeants major of the Army, 17 ambassadors, and two ministers of defense, according to AUSA.

But the ambassador count this year was also higher, AUSA said. That could be an indication that while political tensions rise, there’s still an appetite for diplomacy—and foreign military sales.

Welcome

1:1 with Mike Wior, CEO + co-founder of Allen Control Systems. ACS was one of 10 companies to land a counterdrone IDIQ contract with the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force-401 last month, and things haven’t slowed down since. The company makes a robotic turret, called Bullfrog, that can turn machine guns into a counterdrone weapon using AI and autonomy.

“We just got our $500 million IDIQ. We are, obviously, working on getting funds into that as quickly as we can…getting to that point where we can prove on the battlefield, yes this works, and we should be replicating this across all the different services that need this type of capability,” Wior told Defense One during a break from the bustling AUSA conference showfloor.
But the lack of a budget could stymie progress the Pentagon is trying to make in cultivating a tech-forward industrial base, he said.
“Is the military going to be able to sustain this new ecosystem of defense tech companies? Can companies survive in this environment? What do they need to survive in this environment…when the military ultimately doesn't have full control over their own budgets?” he said. “It's a challenging environment as a startup.”
But ACS is still pushing forward with a new facility.
“We just opened a 200,000 square foot facility in North Austin” with the goal of increasing production capacity beyond 50 turrets a month once the orders come in, Wior said.
“Whenever the orders come in, we start to fill out that IDIQ, and we can expand pretty quickly…by leveraging commercial off-the-shelf components, we have a lot of flexibility there, and then it's just a matter of expanding the workforce.”
And they’re eyeing international deals.
“We want to see more of an international economy for defense products…and we want to make our technologies available to other countries. Because that's needed, I think, in this environment where if it's just the United States government and they have a two-year appropriations problem, you might lose some really, really great technologies to attrition—just the ability to stay around long enough and participate.”

Up, up, and away. The Army Space and Missile Defense Agency wants “a family of stratospheric systems,” such as high-altitude balloons, in a range of platform sizes that can provide “space-like capabilities” closer to Earth, Col. Joseph Mroszczyk, who leads the agency’s transformation integration directorate for space superiority, told reporters Wednesday.

“From about 60,000 feet to 100,000 feet is what we focus on in the stratosphere. That operational space allows some persistence and broad coverage in an area where you can deliver space-like capabilities in terms of payloads” while also being able to “take advantage of winds that are pushing you where you want to go already…to get either launched effects or other types of payloads for sensing and communications.”
The agency hopes to start multiple experiments in the coming year.

Bonus: The agency is also “working on a virtual space training environment,” Mroszczyk said. “We're building the virtual space layer to be able to visualize and understand how space effects can play in modern operations.”

Biodefense prep. The Army wants biothreats to be a routine feature in major military exercises, as outlined in its updated biodefense strategy released last month.

Turning that doctrine into actual readiness requires incorporating biothreats into “big” military exercises where it's “an operational constraint, and the whole of staff has to come to bear against it,” Alison Tamasi, the Army Nuclear and CWMD Agency’s chief of survivability and effects analysis division, told reporters Monday.
“Our next target on the wall is looking toward some of those routine things like [Army warfighter exercises] where we can start to put bio defense in as one of the injects.”
Context: These can be tabletop exercises, typically at the corps level or lower, where commanders and subject-matter experts map out responses to proposed scenarios, such as a viral outbreak at a port.

Making moves + other news

Anduril will let employees sell shares through a tender offer, bringing the company’s value to about $90 billion.
BAE Systems now has two new counterdrone systems: a multi-domain artillery cannon system and high-power microwave.
Leonardo DRS landed a $500 million IDIQ contract with the Pentagon’s counterdrone task force, JIATF-401, for tactical expeditionary sensing tech.
Merlin Aerospace completed the first flight test of its new autonomous pilot, which is being designed to aid in missions like “maritime search and patrol,” the company announced on social media.
The Pentagon signed an agreement with the Small Business Administration to increase access to strategic capital to help “defense-critical manufacturers, suppliers, and innovators.” In the deal, the Pentagon will identify companies that need financing through its Business Operators for National Defense (BOND) initiative and refer potential candidates to SBA.

]]>

Shield AI expects to fly its unmanned fighter jet within months

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:15:33 -0400

Shield AI expects to start flying its X-BAT prototype unmanned fighter jet by year’s end—and is getting $150 million from the Navy to keep developing it, officials said.

“We've been building two prototype vehicles—they're full scale. The first one will be done in the next couple of weeks here,” said Armor Harris, Shield AI’s senior vice president of aircraft. “And then we'll be getting into flight testing at the end of this year…going straight to the vertical takeoff and landing tests as the final de-risk of the [technology].”

Shield AI also secured $150 million from the Navy to continue developing the X-BAT, a modification to an other transaction agreement. The venture-capital-backed company promised to match the investment with its own funds. That brings total planned development spending on the project, which also received $50 million from the Navy and the Defense Innovation Unit in August and a dollar match from Shield, to $400 million.

“We really developed X-BAT in collaboration with NAVAIR and NAWCAD, which is the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division—the experts for naval aviation,” Harris said. “The Navy has been funding the development through the newly created Rapid Capability Cell. So there was an initial $50 million investment earlier this year. This is basically the next round of investment, which is $150 million to continue the development of the platform.”

The company also recently named two sites for production and flight testing of the autonomous jet.

Under the X-BAT contract, the Navy money will be released to Shield AI as it meets developmental milestones.

“There will be a follow-on phase in the future if Shield AI and X-BAT continue to perform well—all leading up to fielding an early operational capability in about 2029. So basically, the way that the OTA is structured is that there's milestone-based payments for Shield achieving specific objectives along the way,” Harris said.

The company also aims to export the aircraft as well as sell it to the Pentagon.

“There's been a tremendous amount of international interest in X-BAT because of its multi-role capabilities, its ability to be runway independent, and basically what's called the cost-per effect,” he said. Particularly interested countries are “looking to augment F-35 and F-16 capabilities” and those “that don't necessarily have the infrastructure and the size of an air force needed to operate a jet like the F-35.”

]]>

Defense Business Brief: 1:1 with Gabe Camarillo; Tariff ripple effects?, and more

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 04:55:32 -0400

Peraton wants to bring AI-fueled project management to the Pentagon and beyond—while also changing the perception that it’s just an IT company.

It’s true the company has “a rich history of doing IT services and IT modernization across

government customers,” Gabe Camarillo, the company’s new defense sector president, told Defense One.

But Peraton is also big on defense prototyping and engineering: “We do Tomahawk theater mission planning support for the Navy,” he said, plus “modeling and simulation for Aegis. Also, sonar analysis and acoustic analysis for the Navy at Carderock. And then we also provide engineering support to some Army programs, like, for example, those that do aircraft survivability equipment.”

And those are areas ripe for growth, he said.

“We're looking to expand that footprint across the department, particularly at a time where new capabilities allow you to reduce risk in modernization programs, identify technical risks on system designs…achieve test and evaluation much more quickly. And bring that experience to bear to our customers to help them modernize at the pace they want to,” Camarillo said.

The former Army undersecretary stepped into the role this summer and said his overall vision is for Peraton to become the “go-to provider to manage and modernize enterprise IT across the department” which includes using AI to manage networks effectively.

And part of the vision is to bring what Peraton’s been doing with the $1.5 billion contract to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration’s aging air traffic control system to other government customers.

“One of the key aspects of that work that we're doing for the FAA is introducing AI-enabled program management, where it gives the leadership of the agency much better insight into how the program can be executed,” Camarillo said, adding that AI can spot cyber risks and map out an organization’s modernization plan.

“That kind of applied AI usage…[can] enable not just an end user to ask queries of an AI tool, but to really allow an enterprise to use the tool effectively for its own modernization. That’s where I think there's some secret sauce that Peraton has brought to the table, and we're looking to expand that across all of our customer sets, whether it's defense and non-defense.”

Welcome

On a waterfront near Baltimore during a shipbuilding announcement Tuesday, President Donald Trump brought up tariffs, which he now calls his “fourth” or “fifth favorite word.” The comments weren’t new, but they were a reminder of simmering concerns about how U.S. trade relations, particularly with close allies, could affect national security.

“Our drug industry is coming back. Our car industry is coming back. They're leaving Canada. They're leaving Mexico. They're leaving Japan, Germany, South Korea. We're building car plants,” he said. “It's all because of my favorite word, my fourth favorite…tariff,” the president said. (Context: There are multiple reports that U.S. tariffs on imported goods, such as automobiles from Canada, create uncertainty and the U.S. trade deficit is worsening.)
The president’s comments reminded me of exchanges last week during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Golden Dome, in which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised concerns that the escalating U.S. trade war with Canada could spill into defense.
“They're a good ally. They're a good neighbor. They are modernizing NORAD right now…It's my understanding, though, that an agreement hasn't been reached with Canada yet on Golden Dome,” Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, said during the hearing last week. “I think as we progress along there, my hope would be that we can continue to have a good working relationship there to really protect both of our countries.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., agreed, saying tensions between the neighboring allies have necessitated multiple “peacekeeping visits to Ottawa” and that it’s “unrealistic to expect that you can treat an ally badly in one domain, on the economy, but expect…to work cooperatively in terms of our defense.”
Some background: The senators’ concerns echo those circulating since last year when the White House issued hefty tariffs on Canada and threatened to make the sovereign nation the 51st state. Those qualms have resurfaced as U.S.-Canada trade talks faltered in August and as a new batch of tariffs—and retaliatory tariffs—took hold this week. On the defense side, Canada has been reviewing its decision to buy 16 F-35As for months. And even if the trade war is resolved, there’s concern about an overall cooling in U.S.-Canada relations.

Making moves + other news

General Dynamics President Danny Deep will take over as the company’s next CEO in 2027. CEO Phebe Novakovic will become executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.
Peraton hired two more former Army officials as vice presidents: Jennifer Swanson and Danielle Moyer.
The Army inked a $9.5 million deal to expand use of Reveal Technology’s intelligence platform Farsight with the service’s Nett Warrior system.
Ursa Major added ex-Pentagon official David Rader as its chief strategy officer.
ACMI, which builds defense production hubs, added Limitless Aeronautics to its Indiana campus.
Kaizen, the company that helped build the Pentagon’s counterdrone marketplace, landed a $49 million IDIQ deal for $43 million of classified work for the Army.
Auterion debuted a universal UAS launcher.
Tiberius Aerospace snagged a $500 million deal to build and distribute its Sceptre precision-guided missile as part of a U.S.-U.K. collaboration.

]]>

Anduril wades into traditional shipbuilding arena with major submarine play

Lauren C. Williams — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:41:46 -0400

SPARROWS POINT, Md.—Defense tech company Anduril aims to speed up Virginia-class submarine production by building components, such as torpedo tubes, at a future site outside the nation’s capital by 2030.

The new facility, to be called Arsenal-2, will be the company’s second manufacturing plant and is part of a $6.6 billion effort funded by Anduril, at $3.7 billion, and the U.S. Navy through a $2.9 billion contract award. That contract tasks Anduril with building “critical components and large scale assemblies of the Virginia-class” to be delivered to General Dynamics Electric Boat in Connecticut, and HII Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, which are the prime contractors on the Navy’s submarine programs, according to the company’s announcement.

Flanked by two of Anduril’s Dive-XL vessels, President Donald Trump spoke to a mostly Navy audience Tuesday on a range of topics, from Venezuela to tariffs, and even gave a quick endorsement of subsea autonomous vessels before he announced the U.S. government’s stake in the new shipyard.

“The ultimate proof of our commitment to ensuring the shipyard's enduring success: American taxpayers will receive a 40 percent stake in the new shipyard. We get 40 percent,” Trump said, without providing more details.

That stake is in a new Anduril subsidiary created to operate the future shipyard. The government is not taking an equity stake in Anduril, the company said.

Additional specifics on the deal were not immediately available.

Submarines are “our oceans' apex predators” that are needed “now more than ever” for deterrence, Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher, who oversees the Navy’s submarine construction, said during the event at Tradepoint Atlantic near Baltimore. But he also acknowledged the nation’s lack of shipbuilding capacity.

“As other nations challenge the rules-based order that keeps our oceans free and open, we need the deterrence and denial of our submarines now more than ever,” he said. “At the same time, we must reckon with the fact that we have lost industrial capacity. Today, we start to rebuild it.”

The shipyard is being designed with reconfigurable production lines and will be underpinned by Anduril’s ArsenalOS industrial software platform.

“What we're really focused on here is being able to build an entire shipyard with a software and digital foundation. So that covers everything from how the factory is laid out, how work moves through the factory in a logical way, how all of that work is managed,” Chris Brose, Anduril’s president and chief strategy officer, told reporters.

That means “automating things that you can automate, keeping digital records of things like precision welding, so that you have traceability back to all the work that was done and an ability to understand, in very precise detail, for the purposes of certification and other types of kind of safety critical measures, what was done at what point all along the way, and having that traceability throughout the entire yard.”

The idea, he said, is for software to make it easier for new or inexperienced shipbuilders to perform tasks because they “can come in with a modicum of training enabled by technology—with digital designs, technical augmentation—and really understand how they can [be] contributing much, much faster.”

The company plans to break ground by early 2027 on Arsenal-2, which will span approximately 40 football fields on nearly 200 acres just outside of Baltimore. Initial operations are slated to begin by 2030.

The Navy contract also ties payments to “demonstrated production outcomes,” Anduril said in its news release.

Having a non-traditional defense company like Anduril building submarine components is an example of the Navy’s strategy to increase shipbuilding throughput by distributing the workload across multiple suppliers in the industrial base.

“Today, roughly 10 percent of shipbuilding work is performed at distributed sites. Our goal is 50 percent. New hulls will prioritize modular, digital designs that enable distributed shipbuilding across multiple yards and suppliers,” the Navy wrote in its 2026 shipbuilding plan earlier this year.

The move also deepens the Pentagon’s relationship with the company, which has several contracts across the military, and its leaders. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named Anduril’s founder, Palmer Luckey, as part of an advising committee for Project Meridian, which will analyze future warfare needs.

Once operational, Anduril’s Baltimore plant is expected to increase overall Navy submarine production by 15 percent or about 9 million production hours per year. That should then translate into more ships produced through the Newport News and Electric Boat shipyards, Gaucher said: “Situated geographically between these two prime shipyards and connected to them by a network of sea, rail, and road, Arsenal-2 will take on the heavy component manufacturing.”

The facility will also build “components our prime shipyards need today, like precision torpedo tubes and impulse tanks,” he said, eventually “moving on to complex rafted module assemblies.”

The company also plans to eventually build sections of the ship’s hull.

Tuesday’s audience included about 100 sailors, and 200 midshipmen bused an hour from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and Hegseth also spoke at the event.

The USS Billings, which was recently deployed in the Caribbean, served as a prominent backdrop to the stage. Sailors aboard the Freedom-class littoral combat ship could be seen standing at attention during the president’s address.

But many high-level Maryland officials, including Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, were absent from the hourslong event. Moore apparently skipped the event after being denied a speaking slot. Four Baltimore Ravens football players attended and did not speak, but were asked to stand as part of a special shoutout during the president’s remarks.

]]>

Defense Business Brief: End-of-fiscal-year advice for founders; Navy drone boats; Powerus to go public

Lauren C. Williams — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:21:03 -0400

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon’s comptroller has a bit of advice for tech makers and founders who want to do business with the military: Make tech that troops like, find out who can buy it for them, and hire someone who knows how things work. .

“Having the users like your products is incredibly necessary. That's a given. But it's the program offices and the [portfolio acquisition executives, or] PAEs who really have the power to make you successful,” Jules Hurst, the Defense Department’s chief financial officer, said at Y Combinator’s Startup Industrial Base event Wednesday. “You have to provide the solution to them. Again, they’ve made their budget. They made it a year and a half ago. They've made a plan to execute that budget. So anything you're bringing in is, at times, disruptive to them if they have an established program. So you've got to figure out how you can fit in.”

Fitting in could mean being a subcontractor for an existing program or helping program managers “shape requirements for a future capability,” but it has to be more than just a good idea, he said.

“You've got to fit into the cycle—and I know that's not what a lot of you want to hear. And we're working on changing that by doing acquisition reform, but it's still the case in a lot of programs across the department,” Hurst said.

Hiring someone familiar with doing business with the government “will help you immensely,” he said, as will finding the right Defense Department program offices.

“Shop for the program offices and program managers that are really interested in change, and you align yourself with that person and you start to help try to solve their problems with your team. If you find the right program office or program manager, they can do immense good for you. They can open up lots of opportunities across the department. They can introduce you to people, even if you're not a good fit for their program. So part of it is also personality shopping and finding somebody who really wants to make change and isn’t fixated on just compliance.”

And once in the door, companies must be able to make the tech in large quantities.

“The best thing is to show that you can make stuff. A lot of startups right now, sometimes they're paper deep—and that's kind of a risky bet for the government. Not that we shouldn't take it, right? Because sometimes our alternative is a company that does manufacture things, but doesn't produce in the timetable we want, or the capabilities we need, or the cost schedule we want,” Hurst said.

“So again, my best advice to you is: show that you can manufacture things. And if you are not manufacturing things, hire people who have experience manufacturing things, so you can show the government that you're bringing on the talent necessary to scale your product and capability if they decide to buy it.”

Welcome

USVs wading in. The Navy will buy 30 medium-sized unmanned surface vessels at about $40 million each from three companies: Galliano Marine Services, HII, and Saronic. Each company will build 10, the first of which are expected to be delivered in the last quarter of 2027.

A little more: Six out of seven companies successfully completed sea trials for phase one of the Navy’s MUSV program. The three that didn’t get production contracts but had successful trials—Leidos, PacMar Technologies, and Sea Machines—“will automatically transfer into the marketplace and be eligible as part of phase two,” which will have broader requirements, Christopher Miller, the Navy’s acting direct reporting portfolio manager for robotic and autonomous systems, told reporters. Birdon participated in the trials and did not meet the program requirements but has a “viable path” to joining the drone marketplace in the future, he said.
Pulling up: The MUSV program has been through a lot of changes in the last year (including a lawsuit.) But the more interesting part for me is what could come out of phase two, where other services, like the Army, can share requirements they have. This could have big implications for the Indo-Pacom region, and is something USARPAC commander Gen. Ronald Clark highlighted earlier this year.
- “The Army has a mission, and they actually operate a number of ships. And I think there's a great opportunity here…and we're just trying to make sure everybody sees the state of the market in terms of the capability, what the performance is. And then we'll obviously work closely on the requirements,” Miller told reporters. “But I'm excited about that because I do think there's opportunity for a close collaboration and partnering with the other services as they think about their future programs.”
- Phase 2 is expected to start testing evaluations as early as Nov. 16 and continue over the next five years.
Related tangent: Defense tech darling Saronic broke ground on its much-anticipated Port Alpha facility in Brownsville, Texas, today. Vice President JD Vance attended the event. Also, earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the company’s Austin facility, praising the company’s USVs for aiding in the rescue of downed Apache pilots.

Making moves + other news

Michael Brasseur joined Booz Allen Hamilton as an executive vice president. Brasseur was previously Saab, Inc.’s chief strategy officer and led the Navy’s Task Force 59.
Dronemaker Powerus is expected to go public Oct. 1 as it finalizes its merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. The new company name will be Powerus Corporation.
The FBI shut down an investigation into defense contractors’ alleged bribes to lawmakers, ProPublica reports.
Time is the real constraint the defense industrial base has to contend with, Seurat Technologies’ CEO James Demuth writes in Defense One.
Boeing snags a multibillion-dollar deal to build the Navy’s next generation fighter, F/A-XX.
The Navy partially accepted the future USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier.
SpaceX launched a really big rocket and ended the flight test early.

One last thing: Happy New Fiscal Year’s Eve to all who celebrate! Out with the old and in with the new—err, continuing resolution.

]]>

Army awards counterdrone contracts worth more than $4B

Lauren C. Williams — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:10:47 -0400

Military drone and counterdrone demand is booming amid a rush to spend funds before the end of the fiscal year—but the Pentagon’s drone marketplace is making it a little easier, defense officials said.

“These contracts are available to everybody. And so what we've seen across the department is a surge of end-of-year requests for procurement,” Brig. Gen. Matthew Ross, who leads the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401, told reporters Tuesday. “End-of-year spending is nothing new inside of the department, but when you have an available contract vehicle, it makes it really easy to execute. And so, we've seen that from across the services.”

The Army issued 10 indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts Tuesday with a total ceiling of $4.15 billion for systems to disable or destroy unmanned aerial drones, including command-and-control systems, sensors, and weapons.

Seven companies received $500 million awards: Allen Control Systems, Digital Force Technologies, DroneShield, L3Harris WESCAM, Napatree Technology, RADA Technologies, and SRC.

Echodyne and PVP Advanced EO Systems received $250 million contracts, and SmartShooter received a $150 million contract. Only about $50 million was obligated at the time of award, the Army said.

But there’s room for more—up to $7 billion.

"As of today we have awarded over $5 billion, which includes previous contracts with [Aerovironment] and CACI, these 10 new IDIQs and others that we expect to sign before the end of next month. The $7 billion ceiling is in full effect today, and additional contracts will be pursued to get us to that point," Col. Tony Lindh, JIATF-401’s lead for rapid acquisitions, told reporters.

The new enterprise contracts reflect a new way of doing business for the Army, providing buyers more flexibility over time.

“These platforms are software-defined, hardware-enabled systems…so we have to be able to partner with industry and then hold them accountable over time,” said Ross, JIATF 401’s director.

The Army’s unmanned aerial systems marketplace has done about $800 million in transactions since it opened earlier this year, and the expectation is for counterdrone demand to follow a similar path—especially with allies and partners, said Brent Ingraham, who leads Army acquisitions.

“About 10 days ago, Australia successfully procured, in this case, it was a UAS off the drones.mil marketplace,” Ingraham told reporters. “We still have to use the [foreign military sales] process as we go through this marketplace. But…we've automated the tools on the back end.”

That means it now takes days from request to purchase instead of months or longer when an ally or partner nation wants to buy a system the U.S. has.

“When they see the U.S. military buying certain products, they're all in,” Ingraham said. “And so this is a way to share those technologies, share what we're doing,” and help smaller businesses “scale.”

]]>

Treat operational feedback as a strategic resource, new paper argues

Jennifer Hlad — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 16:56:43 -0400

As the Pentagon overhauls its acquisition system, it should take lessons from recent and ongoing wars, a new report argues.

From Israel, the U.S. should learn that “operational feedback should be treated as a strategic resource.” writes Barak Seener, an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, in a report released Monday. And from Ukraine, the U.S. can learn “the strategic value of competition, decentralization, and commercial innovation.”

Additionally, Seener writes, “software-defined warfare requires software-defined acquisition.” In the future, acquisition models should “treat software as a continuously developing capability, rather than a completed product.”

These changes and more are necessary, he writes, because: “Future military advantage will belong to organizations that can learn, adapt, and integrate faster than their adversaries.”

Acknowledging the reforms the Pentagon began in 2025, Seener writes that the main challenge facing the American defense acquisition process “is not simply one of speed. It is the ability to align authority, responsibility, and operational outcomes within a single decision-making structure.”

Introducing portfolio acquisition executives is a good step, he writes, but “the effectiveness of the reform will ultimately depend upon the degree to which portfolio managers are able to exercise genuine authority over requirements, resources, capability trade-offs and program termination.”

In an interview, Seener pointed to the ways militiaries are using adaptation to outflank exquisite weaponry.

“We used to think that you needed very expensive platforms that took a decade to create, like the F-35, to create strategic impact on the battlefield,” he said. “But look what Ukraine is doing in Russia. Look what the Houthis are doing, just by deploying mass.”

“Technology is evolving much faster than traditional defense acquisition timelines,” he said, “so expensive platforms that take years to develop can leave capabilities outdated by a rapidly changing battlefield landscape before they are fielded.”

Instead of developing bespoke technologies from scratch, “the Pentagon can increase its flexibility by tapping into technologies already developed by the commercial sector—particularly AI, software, cloud computing, autonomy, sensors, and data analytics,” he said.

The need for further reform is clear, Seener said, when you look at how existing systems “have failed to make a strategic impact in Iran.

“You know, in the first couple of days, America and Israel together were able to decapitate the regime, eliminate their command and control, with this rapid tempo, this high velocity of strikes against a huge number of targets, which was unprecedented. And yet it made no strategic impact. Everybody was dazzled; they were awe-inspired at the impact it made…but look, the regime remains intact. Their missile capability remains intact. So this operational wowing effect that it has is not the same as having the strategic impact.”

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Here comes the quantum boom; GDIT’s perspective; and Sec. 889

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 06:15:00 -0400

The benefits of quantum technology could hit the mainstream sooner than you think—at least that’s what one company is aiming for.

“We’re actually really hoping in the next year or two [to] release these as products that people can buy and integrate into their cybersecurity protocols,” said Mehdi Namazi, co-founder and chief science officer of the quantum networking company Qunnect. But the products aren’t “that futuristic.”

Quantum is usually discussed as being able to one day break encryption and help discover new drugs. But Qunnect is betting that commercial quantum technologies for telecommunications networks could be ready sooner rather than later, according to newly released research.

Several focus on authentication, including a quantum position verification process that allows you to verify the position and time of a transaction, providing a physical receipt, Namazi told Defense One ahead of the Quantum World Congress event outside of Washington, D.C.

That could unveil the true source of a phishing call that is pretending to be your bank, for example.

Another example is quantum channel protection, where “entanglement networks can supplement post-quantum encryption to perfectly protect and monitor the communication networks to make sure no one is eavesdropping, no one is harvesting the data,” he said. It also protects against redirecting traffic on the network.

Qunnect counts In-Q-Tel, an investment firm focused on intelligence and national security needs, as one of its backers.

Background: DARPA has previously explored entanglement networks through its Quantum Augmented Networks effort, but has recently become more vocal about it. Following a White House executive order, the Pentagon released its quantum strategy, which focuses on network modernization, such as integrating secure commercial products and using quantum-resistant devices. It also named 2030 as the deadline for all Pentagon systems to support post-quantum cryptography.

That method of using entangled photons or particles, known as quantum entanglement, can also aid in precise time synchronization, which could be used for future telecommunications networks, including 6G. Precision would drill down to one trillionth of a second, “which you usually need for financial transactions, defensive systems—places that you really, really care about the security and the accuracy of your network,” Namazi said.

But there are challenges, particularly in making sure the technology is compatible with existing telecommunications infrastructure.

“These are hardware-based technologies. So, as much as we build everything to be compatible with the telecommunications infrastructure—which they are—this still means that you do need to go and add devices to different locations,” Namazi said. “And when it [comes] to devices that you use for your cybersecurity, you usually want them to be manufactured [domestically]…in very large quantities, in form factors that make sense. That's definitely still a challenge.”

Welcome

Bigs v. littles: quantum edition. Last week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Amy Gilliland, president of GDIT, onstage at NDIA’s Women in Defense conference. When I asked her how GDIT was navigating a changing dense industrial base with startups getting more interest, in some cases, than primes, she said: “It is our job to go out and find these companies and to show them how we can bring them to the mission.”

Gilliland, who received a “Service to the Flag” award at the event, named the quantum company IonQ as an example.
“These are companies with great ideas. A lot of times they have no certification or accreditation, but they have really great ideas,” she said. “They have a lab at the University of Maryland…They have a big clock in there that’s ticking down to when they think Q-Day is,” the day quantum technology would be able to crack the encryption protecting some of the world’s most secure systems.
“They’re making great progress. And it is our job to bring the big brains that are in this quantum company to bear on programs.”
That includes an intelligence contract in which GDIT is using quantum computing to look through imagery and “detect the tiniest of changes…so we can see what the enemy is doing in ways that conventional computers can’t today,” she said.

Remember the Huawei ban? The Pentagon and General Services developed processes and tools to comply with Section 889 of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, including a search function for contracting officers to find out how companies “represent their compliance,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in a report released Tuesday. But they don’t routinely share those insights with the rest of the federal government.

“GSA and DOD do not broadly share their insights from implementing Section 889 prohibitions with other government agencies,” the report states. “For example, based on its experience with Section 889 prohibitions, GSA has plans to expand its use of customs data to identify the origin of goods, which GAO previously reported is difficult to do. By sharing information about their experience with current prohibitions, GSA and DOD could help other agencies address additional upcoming statutory prohibitions, such as on semiconductors. Sharing information could also help improve compliance.”
The GAO issued four recommendations, two for DOD: to share “subsidiary and affiliate information it collects with relevant federal agencies,” including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; and coordinate with federal agencies on Sec. 889 implementation.

Making moves + other news

AEVEX has a new jet-powered drone called Scepter.
Holland & Knight added Ike Blanton to its national security team. He previously led global investment and economic security out of the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment office.
John Roche, Accenture’s managing director for defense, joined the Professional Services Council’s board.
The Space Force awarded Impulse Space a $28 million contract for space domain awareness.
BAE Systems delivered two prototype combat vehicles to the Army. The “Infantry Fighting Vehicles” are based on the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle chassis and are designed to combat drone threats.
The Special Competitive Studies Project released its tech scorecard on biotechnology and the U.S. competition with China.

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Dispatch from AFA’s Air, Space, & Cyber 2026

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:58:47 -0400

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—The Air Force Test Center is prepared to keep up with the Pentagon’s calls to buy, develop, test, and field technology quickly—but safety remains the top priority, the center’s commander said.

“We always want to proceed safely forward. The work that we do, as I've noted, is, can be dangerous. So we don't want to take risks that are unnecessary and unsafe. So that's always something that we're on the lookout for,” Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, who leads the Air Force Test Center, told reporters during this week’s Air, Space & Cyber conference hosted by the Air and Space Forces Association.

Some context: Massaro’s comments come just three months after eight airmen died during a test flight of Boeing’s B-52 Stratofortress at Edwards Air Force Base in California. They also come nearly a year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pushed for sweeping acquisition reform, which includes “being open to buying the 85 percent solution” while achieving the more perfect solution over time. Separately, the Pentagon has slashed staff and reorganized its weapons testing organization, which raised oversight concerns, according to a Government Accountability Office report released earlier this year.

“There's a lot of capabilities out there today that might not be—from a technology perspective—exactly what it looks like in our minds at the end state. But it's at least the same, if not better, than what might be out there today,” Massaro said. “So there's a risk calculus there from an operational and acquisition risk when you do your cost schedule performance and then overlay that on the effectiveness and employability for the combatant and for the operational warfighter.”

The Air Force is currently testing system upgrades for the B-52, one of the service’s oldest aircraft, that could keep it operational through the 2050s.

The center works with program acquisition executives and operators to “understand where those balances are, and design our test programs to accommodate for more rapid” testing and integration, Massaro said.

“A clear example was our rapid integration of Falco, the [Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System], on the F-15E. Our people, processes, and test assets were postured to respond through integrated developmental and operational testing,” he said.

“The Falco was a little bit over a year ago…We had F-15E's. We had the rockets. We just had never connected them together in that way. So we had one technical risk to really get through, and [it] allowed us to go very quickly. So that's balancing the risk of the programmatic side when an operational warfighter needs it really quick, and understanding where you can make those trades. And with safety always as a backdrop.”

Welcome

Here come the MMAs. The Air Force wants Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMAs, to replace General Atomics’ storied MQ-9 Reaper drone, Troy Meink, the service’s secretary announced earlier this week. It’s a call that Swarm Aero has been waiting for—and building toward for the past four years. On Monday, the company unveiled its autonomous Gamera aircraft, a long-range strike aircraft that boasts seven connection points for payloads like missiles and sensors. The UAS is powered by the company’s Legion autonomy software.

“We thought there would be a need that ultimately…to carry a very large payload like the LRASM that we see here, a long distance, and do so as cost effectively as possible,” Peter Kalogiannis, Swarm Aero’s CEO, told Defense One. “The $10 million listed in the solicitation, that really enables those volumes. And again, we've designed from the very beginning for those volumes, and quite frankly, for that price point, we're very very competitive against them.
The company is building “several” prototypes in its Oxnard, California, facility and expects the first flight by the end of 2027.
“This is something that makes the rest of the force—the bombers, the fighters, the B-21s, the F-47s—it makes them more lethal and more survivable. By being able to take some of the mission sets that they would otherwise potentially have to do, and freeing them up where they can be most effective,” Oliver Palmer, the company’s co-founder, told Defense One.
And while it’s early, the company is looking forward to what the Air Force has in store and the innovation it could spark.
“Frankly, we need competition in large aircraft production. There has historically been a monopoly structure of awarding programs that are intended to be around for 20-, 30-plus years,” Palmer said. “There have been a lot of really great reasons to do that, but increasingly we need competition because the cycle of technology competition with adversaries like China and others is changing so fast…and the model has to change. They started that with CCA. It sounds like they're gonna do that again with MMA. We absolutely welcome this.”

AI integration station. The technology has had a big week in national security, so it’s only natural that the topic surfaced in chatter throughout the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center.

The Space Force’s newly appointed top buyer, Erich Hernandez-Baquero, said the military has to “lean in” to the technology.
- “We cannot afford to lose this race for artificial intelligence,” he said. “The answer is not to shy away from the technology, but to lean into it, understand it, and apply the right guardrails in place. And I think those AI experts have approaches for how to ensure those guardrails are in play, and we need to continue to support development of those guardrails in a way that supports our space missions.”
The Air Force Test Center is also keen to collaborate with the tech industry, and now has a dedicated senior leader role for AI.
- “We have an artificial intelligence expert with us on staff now at the Air Force Test Center. So we are stepping into that world. We are looking to build and maintain those partnerships with tech in that space,” AFTC’s Massaro said.
Air Mobility Command wants a more data-link connected fleet, which could allow for some AI use.
- “The ability for air crews to communicate, to coordinate tanker orbits and rendezvous, to pass threat information, to save lives and save aircraft has been everything we expected it to be,” Lt. Gen. Daniel Tulley, who leads the command, told reporters.
- The command is “well down the path” of having a quarter of its fleet data-link connected despite missing its original 2025 goal. But the strategy has “evolved.” The service is pursuing MAF NEXUS and “the goal is to have this on all mobility aircraft, whether they're future builds and it's incorporated, or it's an add-on capability to existing aircraft.”
- The system “brings edge compute, the ability to then deploy AI and much more computing horsepower forward on the aircraft, and it does network with the rest of the joint force and the Air Force's battle management system.”

One last, fun exercise: If you Google “Air Force MMA” you’re definitely going to get UFC-type content.

]]>

Lockheed’s Skunk Works plans to build four more of its multirole combat drones

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 06:00:00 -0400

Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin’s secretive research arm, plans to build four more of its experimental, multipurpose drones as the firm attempts to sell its futuristic platform to the U.S. military.

Last year, Skunk Works unveiled Vectis—a concept for a group 5 drone that’s capable of a wide range of missions. Now, on the first day of the Air & Space Force Association’s defense conference near Washington, D.C., company officials announced they’re making significant progress on the prototype and are already planning to expand the fleet for more tests.

“We are moving forward with a plan to build an additional four vehicles, bringing a total of five to include the original prototype,” said Ron Fehlen, Skunk Works’ vice president and general manager. “Development work on those additional aircraft is already underway, and we'll have more specifics to share soon.”

Company officials shared new images of the Skunk Works combat drone with reporters ahead of this week’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference. Vectis will be roughly 34 feet long and have a 38-foot wingspan, and will feature a submerged engine inlet and a tail-less body to reduce drag and mission flexibility,” Fehlen said. While Lockheed was eager to talk about the aircraft’s design, the Skunk Works vice president was tight-lipped about who the specific customer for the new aircraft could be, and didn’t provide details on the weapons loadout, propulsion system, or estimated cost of the platform. The Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy are all aiming to field collaborative combat aircraft.

“From an affordability standpoint, which we're always looking at, and, of course, are targeting to be the CCA competitive price. So we're very cognizant of it and make trades associated with that, Fehlen said. “It's obviously, I think, focused more on the CCA side of the house, and obviously the price points that are highly relevant in that regime.”

Fehlen said the company remains on track to fly Vectis by “the end of 2027.” He said Skunk Works feels confident in that timeline, due in part, to the use of digital designs and “minimal tooling determinant assembly”—which the Skunk Works vice president likened to ready-to-assemble furniture with pre-drilled holes.

“It's a technique that really enables an increased level of affordability and speed through really reducing the amount of touch labor required and increasing the first pass yield,” Fehlen said. “We've seen in many cases an 80 percent reduction in labor hours to build up the aircraft itself.”

While Fehlen wouldn’t specify one specific U.S. program or customer Vectis is geared toward, he did say it could work with any of Lockheed Martin’s fighter jets, which are also flown by other nation’s militaries.

“I'll point to the fact that we have a long history in crewed tactical systems that, you know, Vectus is going to need to integrate with, in addition to other fighter aircraft that are produced around the world,” Fehlen said. “So, from our perspective, this is in line with our heritage and what we're producing today and delivering to the field. It has incredible capability, and now we're going to be able to add this to it.”

]]>

Defense Business Brief: AI manufacturing; Skilled trades; Arms transfer oversight

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 02:31:22 -0400

Could AI- and robot-made missile components and airframes be the future of aerospace manufacturing? That’s the bet, Machina Labs CEO Edward Mehr said.

The Los Angeles-based company plans to break ground on its third manufacturing facility this year, Mehr told Defense One at the Space and Missile Defense Conference last month.

That facility, which hasn’t been named yet, is expected to be up to 250,000 square feet—more than double the size of Machina Labs’ two existing facilities.

The company builds large metal structures like airframes and drone bodies using AI and robotics with less specialized tooling and equipment.

“If you think about traditional metal structure manufacturers in defense, they have to go build a very custom factory for every product they want to deploy. There [are] facilitization costs that go for each product and then there's a lead time associated with that. For us, the same factory that makes, let's say, [Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile] fuel tanks, can switch and make UAV airframes.”

Last year, Machina Labs raised $124 million in a Series C round, much of which will be used for that third facility: “This year—and next—is about focus, about scale,” he said.

The company, which has Toyota, Nvidia, and Lockheed Martin as investors, plans to significantly increase production of its manufacturing system, RoboCraftsman.

“Today, we manufacture five of these manufacturing systems a year. We're ramping that up,” he said.

Several of those systems are slated to outfit Machina Labs’ upcoming facility, which will produce cruise missile products. The company has not yet announced where it will be located.

“As long as you have a ground that can hold the system, they can be shipped to it, they open up, you connect them to power, and within the same day, they self-calibrate and start manufacturing,” Mehr said.

Welcome

Help needed: Natsec’s skilled trade crisis. For more than a generation, the rhetoric and overall advice for young adults mulling their future was to go to college, get a four-year degree, maybe learn to code, and land an office job—or at least one that is secure and not too dangerous. But that societal rhetoric may have helped fuel a dearth of skilled trade and craft workers, lawmakers and government officials argued during a pre-Labor Day hearing.

“We assume that critical manufacturing inputs such as minerals, sub tier suppliers, [and] skilled labor will always be available. This assumption is false,” Rep. Ken Calvert, who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said during opening remarks for a Sept. 4 field hearing on the industrial base. “According to the American Welding Society, approximately 20 percent of the welding force are approaching retirement and in 2025 they estimated the need for 320,000 new welders by 2029. These estimates are prior to the data center boom, which relies heavily on welders and fabrication.”
The Pentagon’s head of industrial base policy Michael Cadenazzi echoed those sentiments in written testimony:
- “Decades of government policy and societal pressure have driven millions of talented young Americans towards degrees which haven’t delivered the benefits they were promised and have left defense manufacturers with few skilled workers waiting in the wings. There are as many as 400,000 unfilled skilled trades jobs in the DIB today, and that number could grow to 2.5 million by 2030.”
Cadenazzi also highlighted the Pentagon’s award of a $10 million grant to BuildFreedom.us, which aims to bolster the skilled workforce by linking jobseekers with scholarships, apprenticeship programs, and “AI-proof jobs”.
- “We’ve now rolled out Build Freedom in three states, with plans to expand the program nationwide. This national awareness will drive individuals to our new Buildfreedom.US website, a one-stop shop where their interest can be converted into scholarships, training, credentials, and job opportunities,” he said of the effort, which was launched in partnership with the National Labor Exchange, Mike Rowe of “Dirty Jobs” reality TV fame, and his mikeroweWORKS Foundation.
- That $10 million grant will pay for more than 9,000 scholarships, Cadenazzi said.

Improving oversight of mishandled defense articles abroad. When the U.S. provides security assistance, the State Department is in charge of investigating incidents in which U.S. allies and partners fail to properly secure or transfer defense articles—from weapons to components or technical data. But the department's “investigations, documentation and reporting on potential violations were inconsistent,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in a letter that was publicly released on Sept. 8.

The watchdog agency made those concerns, which appeared in a 2025 report, a “high priority” issue for the State Department.
“We recommended [the State Department] document the status and findings of its investigations and develop guidance for determining when to report an incident to Congress. Doing so could inform congressional oversight of future assistance,” the letter states.

Making moves + other news

The Army picked Boeing and Anduril for its Integrated Fires Protection Capability (IFPC) Increment 2 Second Interceptor.
Allen Control Systems is beefing up its manufacturing capacity with a new 191,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. The facility will churn out the company’s signature robotic turret.
Kongsberg selected Echodyne to provide radars for its counter-UAS system.
Former NGA Director Frank Whitworth is now president of Satellogic, a geospatial data company. Whitworth will lead the company’s operations and direct strategy for its defense and intelligence products.
The Navy and MARTAC demonstrated refueling of autonomous vessels at sea.
Ex-Pentagon weapons buyer Ellen Lord joined Chariot Defense’s advisory board with two former Army generals, James Rainey, who led Army Futures Command, and Samuel Peterson, the Army’s former buyer for combat support and sustainment portfolio. Defense investor Stephen Rodriguez also joined the board.

A final stray thought: BuildFreedom.us rings very similar to BuildSubmarines.com. Coincidence? Perhaps.

]]>

Back to life: How Shield AI’s future unmanned fighter made decades-old tech new again

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 06:00:00 -0400

LYNN, Mass.—Three decades ago, GE Aerospace tested a technology that could’ve made the F-16 more agile. It worked, but was never fielded. Instead, it sat in a box in a warehouse—until defense tech startup Shield AI called.

“They reached out to us and said…‘Do you still have that capability? And the truth is, we hadn't fielded it. After we did the demonstration, it basically went into storage,” said Steve “Doogie” Russell, VP and general manager of GE’s Edison Works. “And the solution that we've offered to Shield on that is an F110 engine with a nozzle in the back that we call the axisymmetric vectoring exhaust nozzle, or AVEN.”

Not having to start from scratch on the technology was critical for saving time and speeding up flight testing for its collaborative combat aircraft, X-BAT, an autonomous fighter jet designed to take off and land vertically, Shiva Vallabhaneni, senior propulsion engineer for Shield AI, told Defense One.

“X-BAT always needed to have a thrust vector controlled capability to do vertical flight,” Vallabhaneni. “So we really went out and said…where can we get one? Is there technology that already exists?”

The aircraft “needs to be able to move quickly…in any direction,” GE’s Russell told reporters during a visit to the company’s factory here in Lynn.

That comes with a special set of propulsion requirements, so GE paired its 30-year-old AVEN nozzle with its F110 engine found in the F-16 fighter jet for the X-BAT.

The aircraft needs a high-thrust propulsion system “because you've got to be able to have that aircraft take off vertically and then, when it comes back, land at high thrust mode. It also needs to have really good gas mileages. So [thrust-specific fuel consumption], once it's up and away, needs to be able to hit the range requirements that they're trying to get,” Russell said.

And, he said, when it lands, it needs a nozzle “on the back that can move around to balance the aircraft as it's coming in to maneuver into position to dock back up. That's a pretty significant propulsion challenge and pretty unique.”

In under a year, the companies dusted off the AVEN nozzle, refurbished the original hardware, completely rewrote the software code, and have been testing it with the engine.

The hardware was in very good condition, and AVEN One, which is being used for the X-BAT prototype, has “close to 100 percent of the same hardware that was flown from the 90s,” Vallabhaneni said. “That was the biggest key unlock for getting us to an X-BAT prototype flight test this year—100 percent. In some ways, building that thrust vector control nozzle, verifying its technology, and doing it at the speed that we needed to is probably harder than getting an engine.”

The companies recently completed testing the engine integrated with the full AVEN nozzle at GE Aerospace’s test facility in Peebles, Ohio.

Now, the goal is to complete a tethered vertical flight test of the aircraft by the end of the year, to demonstrate that it can hover and remain stable.

Through data collected during testing, engineers can create models that will help develop vertical flight control laws, Vallabhaneni said.

During the planned test, the prototype aircraft will hang from a 180-foot crane to minimize risk. The test will be successful if slack in the tether is created during the hover.

“Shield AI—much like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, all of these other new space companies—the mindset is: be hardware rich, take risks because the faster we get to test, the faster we can learn what the real problems are. And so the tether gives peace of mind that we're buying off risk, but we're not buying off risk irresponsibly,” Vallabhaneni said.

But the AVEN nozzle won’t just be in the prototype—Shield AI plans to make more and eventually tweak the technology along the way. Building additional AVEN nozzles that keep the legacy design will help increase testing effort. And any future changes will likely focus on performance, Vallabhaneni said.

“Lighter, faster, more performance, right? Those are the things that we're going to go and chase and achieve on the future version of AVEN. So the journey doesn't stop here. This is the starting point, and it's really great that GE gave us a pretty great starting point back in the '90s,” he said.

“AVEN sat on the shelf for 30 years. I was born in Cincinnati, so I drive by the hospital I was born in every time I'm at GE—and…AVEN was built before I was born. So for me, it's very important to recognize all of the people who went and did that and built that within a year…We are giving those people their flowers and being able to pay that forward.”

]]>

White House pressure for US firms to skip French space summit is ‘unfortunate,’ insiders say

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:08:13 -0400

A White House official warned U.S. space companies last week that if they attend an upcoming international summit in France, it might appear they’re supporting policies that go against their own country’s interests. Space advocates say the move discourages needed cooperation.

An industry insider told Defense One that Charles Powell, the assistant director for space and spectrum in the White House’s Office of Science and Technology policy, said in a call on Aug. 27 that space companies that attend next week’s International Space Summit in France “might be used as a prop to support policies counter to U.S. interests.” Politico, citing industry and Congressional sources, first reported the news on Thursday, and detailed that SpaceX, Stoke Space, K2 Space and Astra, which compete for civil and military space contracts, were among the companies on the call.

“This is all very unfortunate because France is a country we should be doing more space cooperation with, not less,” the industry insider said.

Space policy experts said the White House warning doesn’t make much sense because the U.S. government is attending the summit, France is a longtime NATO ally, and it is also investing in growing its military space capabilities. More than 120 countries are scheduled to attend next week’s summit in France, according to a government website.

White House spokespeople did not confirm whether Powell gave the warning and did not respond when asked for the rationale behind the call with U.S. space companies.

“The Trump administration continues to collaborate with allies and partners in space,” an Office of Science and Technology policy official told Defense One in a statement. “We look forward to productive conversations at the Space Summit on key priorities including science missions, exploration programs, and space security.”

SpaceX and Blue Origin are among the companies no longer attending the summit, French newspaper LeMonde reported.

"It's hard not to link it to the rumours of pressure," a ministry spokesperson told Agence France-Presse, LeMonde reported. "We obviously want to continue working with our US partners and allies, even though strategic about-turns and political pressures sometimes make the task needlessly complex," the spokesperson added.

Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a nearly $5 billion increase in military space spending. Victoria Samson, the Secure World Foundation’s chief director of space security and stability, told Defense One that U.S. companies want to get in on that investment.

“I think it's a head-scratching decision, given that OSTP, State, Commerce, and NASA are all attending. Also given the huge recent investments by France and Germany in their military space capabilities, you would think U.S. companies would be falling over themselves to get in front of European decision makers,” Samson, who is also attending the summit, said. “This just reads like another short-sighted effort by the Trump administration to stir the pot with long-time European allies.”

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Takeaways from America’s first jet engine test site

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 04:24:20 -0400

LYNN, Mass.—Rosie the robot and her automated compatriot Thomas are the stars of GE Aerospace’s automated manufacturing line at the company’s factory here. Decked in yellow, the towering machines are reminiscent of the Transformer Bumblebee’s dislocated arms. They move in concert seamlessly to collect tools, machine parts, and assemble components for the T700, which are found in Boeing’s Apache and Sikorsky’s Black Hawks, and, in the future,T408 engines for the Marine Corps’ CH-53-K King Stallion.

It’s part of a multiyear $100 million investment in the plant, which is hyperfocused on upgrades—from machines to workflows—to make more engines and deliver them faster.

“This was historically a bottleneck for our businesses,” Dan Martin, who manages manufacturing engineering and leads a team charged with integrating robotics and automation inLynn plant, said of the piece of the business that makes rotating parts, like cooling plates. “We had quality issues here. We had capacity issues here. The robotics piece now comes online, and these lines are no longer constrained for us.”

That need to go fast will be key once the military starts putting in high-volume orders for collaborative combat aircraft, or robot wingmen for fighter jets.

“We're designing from the very beginning to meet the right production,” starting with small engines, Amy Gowder, GE Aerospace's president and CEO for its defense and systems division, told reporters Monday. For example, “we did a seven-way exercise, and we're like, ‘no, we need a tack time of 100 seconds for each [screw], not an hour and a half,” for 70 screws.

In addition to changing techniques and design practices, Gowder said the company is looking for suppliers that are “used to the high volumes we need.”

For the F404/F414 engine, which is found in the F/A-18, “we're trying to move to a different supply base that has different commercial off-the-shelf type standards that have operated at this volume,” she said. “And when we tell them we want to go from one engine a month to 20 engines a month in like six months or a year, that doesn't phase them because they're used to handling the volumes. Only when you get to like 100 engines a month do they start to say, ‘hey, I might need some some investments or capacity to meet that.’”

GE is also conducting “producibility reviews” as it brings on suppliers, she said.

“So we think we designed it correctly. We think we've chosen the right types of suppliers that have the capacity and processes we need, but as they actually get the drawing and figure out how they're going to make it for the first time, we're there with them [to review] other changes before we lock in that final design.”

Welcome

Next up: Hypersonic testing. The Pentagon’s innovation arm tapped GE Aerospace to develop a hypersonic test bed as part of the Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities, or HyCAT, program. The award follows one for a prototype in 2023. The first flight is targeted for 2028.

“This is a significant milestone for our hypersonics team,” where “we're the prime, but we're also providing a dual-mode ramjet,” which can make the vehicle go faster and further, while “working with a number of other platforms to provide an all-up round to support this high-cadence hypersonic testing capability,” Steve “Doogie” Russell, VP and general manager of GE’s Edison Works, told reporters.
But the company isn’t interested in developing a weapons system, Russell said.
“This is a case where we do have the ability to be the full integrator for this test bed project, but we're really focused on being a propulsion solution provider across this spectrum of activity. Same thing with the low-cost small-engine side of things.”
The engine-maker is working with several other companies, but declined to name them or discuss product ranges.
GE Aerospace also plans to use the solution to test other payloads, including engine upgrades, said Dean Modroukas, general manager of hypersonics.
“The best way to assess hypersonic systems is to make sure that you've got plenty of time in an operating mode that's relevant for things like thermal equilibrium, maneuverability,” Modroukas said. “HyCat is the second step of what we're doing to develop a test bed and test capability that allows us to bring our engines into flight. So we're always looking forward in terms of ways that we can learn quickly and through testing both on the ground, but end of the day, in a relevant environment, is [that] you want to be in the air.”

One more engine-related thing: The Navy certified Rolls-Royce’s mtu series 4000 and 2000 marine engines to power autonomous surface vessels.

]]>

Defense Business Brief: A day at DIBX 2026 in Philadelphia

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 06:36:43 -0400

PHILADELPHIA—The Trump administration is dialed in on increasing domestic production of critical minerals needed for military weapons. But getting private investment in the industry is tough because of how long it can take for companies to start making money.

“We all know the critical minerals issue is front and center. It's the president's maybe No. 1 issue for the defense industrial base and for national security—and it takes a lot,” Kyle Bass, who leads Rochefort Asset Management, said during the Defense Industrial Base Accelerator conference here Wednesday. “The way that we have looked at it—and the reason we haven't done any critical mineral deals yet, and we've looked at a bunch of them—is that duration mismatch,” when the timeline to access liquid capital is constrained.

The firm has put about $450 million in the past 18 months into “companies that have products, customers, and some revenue,” Bass said. “They're right in that acceleration phase where they're still losing money, typically, but their revenues are growing and they're still staffing. That's where we plug in and help catalyze their growth.”

But private investment can follow once the government puts in capital—or sends a strong demand signal. A recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report looked at how publicly traded companies increased their capital expenditures 31 percent in the second quarter year-over-year after signing long-term framework agreements with the government.

And the Pentagon has made several investments in critical minerals companies in recent years.

For example, last year, the Pentagon took a 40 percent stake in Korea Zinc as part of a $7.4 billion move to build a new critical mineral processing plant in Tennessee, part of a broader push to reduce U.S. foreign dependency on rare earth and critical minerals. That deal also included private investments.

“That capital was asked to come in by the offtakers and the U.S. government because of that duration mismatch, it's too long,” Bass said.

The Pentagon has about $5 billion in reconciliation funds to invest in critical mineral supply chains through fiscal year 2029. And there’s no shortage of domestic critical minerals companies, but they’re destabilized by China’s much-cheaper market, Michael Cadenazzi, the Pentagon’s head of industrial base policy, said while onstage with Bass.

“In putting our RFIs out constantly, we find there are lots and lots of companies that are in the space. They're just undercapitalized because people struggle with a market where our No. 1 strategic competitor undercuts us,” he said.

Bass agreed and said “predictability”, such as with orders or pricing, will be key to getting more private capital investment in critical minerals.

“We have plenty of critical minerals in North America. We just need to build big processing facilities. And that Korea Zinc facility in Tennessee is going to be huge—but it won't be operational for another four years, or five years,” he said. “So that, again, that mismatch is the hard part because…it's a race at the moment, and we have to win that race.”

Welcome

Hello from the city of brotherly love—and defense industry reinvigoration! This week, the Pentagon’s industrial policy shop kicked off its first Defense Industrial Base Accelerator event in Philadelphia’s city center. It was an easy Acela ride up for day two of a three-day conference where attendees seemed cheery! Eager to mingle and make new connections. I had great impromptu conversations about manufacturing—specifically forging!—quantum sensors, computing, and the changing dialogue around the field.

Besides the vibes, here were my key takeaways:

Critical minerals was a major theme.
The event drew about 2,500 registered attendees. And the sessions were packed, some with standing room only.
This was not a heavily government attended event—fewer than 400 registrants were from the government.
Attendees hailed from the aerospace and defense industries, consulting, engineering, software, manufacturing, and venture capital.
Cadenazzi told Defense One the aim was to “unify” all of the separate industry policy efforts into a singular “voice.” And they hope to do it again.

An easy button for financial documentation? The Energy Department is spearheading a pilot program that aims to streamline how businesses looking for financing submit their data.

“From the financing perspective, one of the things we struggle with is you have borrowers, U.S. businesses, who are going to multiple agencies and sort of shopping their materials because they don't know a better front door,” Asad Akram, managing director of the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, said during a panel at the DIBX event.
“So one of the things that DOE has started piloting—that's not fully live yet—is essentially the college common app version of financing.” The tool could cut down on red tape for businesses that want to work with the government.
“Roughly all the financing agencies are looking for the same info…So we're trying to make it better for borrowers, where they can upload it once all of us can have access to it, and then work off of that versus them having to repeat their pitch 12 times across DC.”

And one last DIBX thing: The Pentagon awarded six out of nine companies a total of around $25 million during Wednesday’s event. Several tackle critical mineral harvesting and processing—5N+ Semiconductors, $7.3 million, Graystone Resources, $6.75 million, and Kunin Technologies, $1.9 million. Two winners immediately stood out: Senra Systems, $4.4 million, with their wire harness manufacturing in a box technology, and Neya Systems’ autonomous fuel transport offering that aims to use unmanned ground and maritime vehicles from AM General and Textron, respectively. Their award was for $5.9 million.

]]>

Army selects 5 companies to build nuclear microreactors on bases, under new $2 billion deal

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0400

Army officials have selected five firms to build nuclear microreactors at U.S. military bases as a bid to create energy independence, though the nation still relies heavily on imported enriched uranium for such projects.

The service and the Defense Innovation Unit unveiled the initiative, dubbed “Project Janus,” at last year’s Association of the U.S. Army Conference in Washington, D.C. Now, officials are awarding up to $2.2 billion to the pool of five companies through a milestone-based Other Transaction Authority contract with fixed-price milestones to build out their microreactor technology on Army bases. Those firms and bases, announced on Wednesday, are:

Antares Nuclear, Inc. – Fort Bragg, North Carolina
BWXT Advanced Technologies, LLC – Fort Campbell, Kentucky
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems – Fort Hood, Texas
Radiant Industries, Inc. – Fort Benning, Georgia
Westinghouse Government Services – Fort Drum, New York

“We now know that our domestic electric grid is potentially at risk in a conflict. We also know that we will not necessarily be able to move fossil fuels easily wherever we need them to go,” said Jeff Waksman, the Army’s principal deputy assistant secretary for installations, energy and environment. “Right now, all critical infrastructure that the Army has is backed up by some form of liquid fossil fuel, primarily diesel. So that makes nuclear energy just a natural game changer for the Army.”

Janus project officials said with additional private investment from the firms, they anticipate up to 20 microreactors across the bases. The service competition paves the way for a program of record to deliver a small nuclear powerplant to an Army installation by 2028. Currently, the U.S. doesn’t have operational nuclear microreactors, and the country only enriches a very small percentage of the world’s uranium supply. Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration efforts to grow the supply and produce high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, are still underway. However, service officials remain optimistic the supply chain problems will not set back their microreactor plans.

“We expect sufficient prioritization to ensure that we have the uranium that we need for our fastest moving reactors,” Waksman said, acknowledging that the microreactor effort is “probably going to push beyond what our supplies are as a nation.”

“This is really an all-of-government effort. We are tied in very closely with the folks at DOE and NNSA, trying to stand up new enrichment capability, and we will do what we can to deliver what we need through stockpile, and then to hopefully have fresh enrichment capable of delivering some of the HALEU for the later reactors in this program.”

In November, the Army named nine bases as finalists for the microreactors, but excluded Fort Wainwright, Alaska; Holston Army Ammunition Plant, Tennessee; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; and Redstone Arsenal, Alabama; from the final five.

Waksman said it was a “matching process” between the firms and the sites, and some contractors prefer to work in certain areas due to their relationships with utility companies near the bases they were paired up with. While one of the goals of the Janus Project is to cut down on energy supply chain issues for U.S. bases overseas, planners said they want to prove the technology can work stateside first.

“The intent here is to choose the lowest hanging fruit, we want to choose sites that we think are going to be the cheapest and fastest to deploy and the easiest,” Waksman said. “This is already very difficult. There's a reason no one has actually built a fully operational commercial nuclear microreactor before, so we don't want to make this harder on ourselves by trying to deliver this to some island or some foreign country. We want to demonstrate that we can do this here in the 50 U.S. states, and then if this is a success, then we can talk about possibly deploying somewhere else in the future.”

Project Janus is not the first military microreactor initiative. The Army is taking lessons from Project Pele, the Defense Department’s mobile reactor project, and based the contracting mechanism off of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.

The Army’s selection of firms also follows an Air Force initiative to build a nuclear microreactor at Eielson Air Force Base, near Fairbanks, Alaska. Waksman said the Army should have an announcement in the “not too distant future” about how the services are working together on those projects.

]]>

New contract aims to keep Space Force’s multi-billion-dollar projects on budget

Thomas Novelly — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:55:16 -0400

As the Space Force takes on new, multi-billion-dollar national security programs, the service has awarded a new contract to keep those projects on track and on budget, Defense One has learned.

The service’s Space Systems Integration Office awarded Integrate, a Seattle-based firm, a multi-million dollar contract for its AI-enabled project management program. Last year, the company netted a $25 million contract with the Space Force’s Mission Manifest Office to manage the service major multi-payload launch operation project. Now, as the service embarks on massive programs such as building the Space Data Network and the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator, the service is expanding its use of the company’s software to help keep program managers on the right track.

“SSIO serves as the central nervous system for the Space Force and the singular integrator

across the majority of the national security space enterprise,” Integrate told Defense One. “To maintain the U.S. advantage in space, the office is actively pursuing technological advancements to ensure programs are executed within cost and schedule constraints, and to provide leaders with real-time visibility into the entire Space Force portfolio.”

The Space Systems Integration Office, which is within Space Systems Command and oversees its acquisitions programs, has a growing list of national security projects. So far, seven of the nine newly-established Space Force Portfolio Acquisition Executives are using the program, with the others to be onboarded in the near future. The service’s $71.3 billion budget request this year, if passed, would mark the largest percentage increase for any military branch since 1952, according to the Aerospace Corporation. Service leaders say the new program is necessary to keep everything on the right track.

“As the speed of acquisition becomes increasingly critical to the success of our programs, the

Space Force is prioritizing technologies that equip our leaders with more timely, data-driven

decision-making capabilities,” Helen Ying, the Space Force’s system of systems engineering lead, said in a statement. “Integrate’s project management platform strengthens our capacity to visualize the minute details and track broader objectives within the Space Force’s programs.”

The existing—and antiquated—project management system can lead to mismanagement, miscommunication, and missed deadlines, the company said.

“They might get a hand-drawn PowerPoint with triangles on it sent over in an email or a table in an email with Gantt bars colored in, literally to show this is happening in September and this is happening in August. They don't have any granularity. It's like the minimum that meets the contract requirements in some cases,” John Conafay, Integrate’s CEO, said in an interview. “The most advanced is Microsoft Project Server, which, Microsoft Project was released the same year as Tetris.”

Conafay said his program differs from the current workflow dominated by sending emails and downloading files, and instead offers a clear single schedule that is modified in real-time and across multiple organization levels and classification levels to easily manage sprawling national security work.

Integrate’s contract with the Space Systems Integration Office comes as one of the Trump administration’s major programs, the Golden Dome missile defense shield, is facing budgetary headwinds. Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program's direct reporting program manager, warned attendees at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, this month that if Congress doesn’t sort crucial supplementary funding, the program will be in dire straits.

Golden Dome is not a Space Force program, but the service is helping develop key technology for the architecture. Conafay said Integrate’s system helps in budget-controlled environments to ensure "things are done on time and within budget” and holds contractors accountable. He said the service’s adoption of an upgraded project management system shows they’re taking those budget constraints seriously.

“It shows an incredible amount of responsibility to the taxpayer to use a software that can fundamentally modernize something that hasn't been since 1984,” Conafay said.

Correction: An earlier version of this report misstated which organization wrote about the the service’s budget request. It was the Aerospace Corporation.

]]>

There’s no shortcut to replenish US munitions stockpiles

Lauren C. Williams and Thomas Novelly — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 06:00:00 -0400

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — As the U.S. military’s critical munitions are quickly used in the Iran war and slowly produced at home, companies are eagerly pitching new low-cost solutions, and the Pentagon is keen to make big deals. But defense experts say those new, cheaper missiles—and the push to accelerate production of existing weapons—won't soon overcome problems exacerbated by the Iran war, even though they will eventually provide the military much-needed options.

At the Space and Missile Defense Symposium last week, Boeing unveiled a low-cost seeker missile, with crucial hit-to-kill guidance technology used on the PAC-3 missile, made of commercial, off-the-shelf components. At the same conference, Northrop Grumman released its “cost-effective” 50-millimeter gun-based drone defense system to “address a critical short-range air defense gap.”

And last month at the Farnborough International Air Show, Lockheed Martin announced a more affordable, proximity-detonation version of its Patriot missile. But those solutions will likely only boost the Pentagon’s stockpiles if the Iran war drags on and if officials quickly award contracts.

“The push for low-cost munitions is unlikely to have a material effect on the Iran War—at least not anytime soon,” said Becca Wasser, Bloomberg Economics’s defense lead.

And, she said, making enough new weapons, at the right cost, is only part of the problem.

“Getting to a lower cost for exquisite munitions will take time. It requires developing new weapons or adapting old ones, which means going through new testing and evaluation processes,” she said. “If the Iran war drags on for years, that’s when the drive for lower cost interceptors and munitions could have an impact,” because “wars of attrition require enormous amounts of material—and the lower price tag helps.”

Right now, the Pentagon is blowing through its prized Patriot and Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missiles, and they won’t get replaced anytime soon, defense analysts say—even with novel framework deals.

In the last year, top officials have been pushing those deals with major defense primes and are continuing the administration’s rallying cry for the firms to build and innovate faster. Some of those are starting to bear fruit.

This week, RTX netted a seven-year, $22.9 billion Tomahawk missile contract with the U.S. Navy under a new deal, showing that the military is making big bets on legacy systems as it pursues newer options.

But those legacy munitions still take time to manufacture. In a recent report, the American Enterprise Institute think tank found that it would take 27 years for defense contractors to produce THAADs at the current maximum annual rate of 96 interceptors a year to reach quantities the Pentagon wants.

There “will be a window of vulnerability for several years until inventories return to their previous levels, and another several years before they get to the levels that war planners desire,” according to a May report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“These newer, lower-cost munitions absolutely should be part of the way we fix this. But we shouldn't be kidding ourselves that they're going to be ready quickly en masse, are operational, and our forces are trained and understand how to use them,” said Todd Harrison, AEI’s defense budget expert. “It will take years, some sooner than others. And I think it remains to be seen if they're going to be available in large quantities sooner than the reorders of the more exquisite existing weapons.”

Framework deals aren’t contracts

The Pentagon has already inked framework agreements for low-cost and traditional munitions. Overall, experts say they are a step in the right direction.

“It's not a contract, but it helps give the companies a demand signal they can take to their boards and their shareholders, and…it reduces their risks, so they can make increased capital expenditures, or capex, investments,” said Jerry McGinn, a CSIS senior fellow and the director of the Center for the Industrial Base.

McGinn teased an upcoming CSIS analysis that found publicly-traded companies with framework agreements increased their capex investment by 31 percent from the second quarter of 2025 to the same quarter this year.

“They're clearly investing more and it's hard not to tie it to those framework agreements. But the challenge is that the framework agreement is an agreement…It's a best faith effort. It's not a contract,” he said.

Congress still has to appropriate the money, the companies have to get on contract, and then they have to deliver, McGinn said. And none of that is guaranteed.

McGinn said he’s keen to watch how many contracts come out of the framework deals.

One of the first major contracts was a seven-year, $35 billion undefinitized contract with Lockheed Martin for THAADs, which leaves some aspects of the agreement open—to be finalized before the contract starts.

Undefinitized contract actions, or UCAs, require special approval and are used for urgent work that all parties “agree needs to begin before final agreement can be reached on price.”

Lockheed Martin executives said they’re up to the task.

“If you look at the framework agreements we've signed, we've leaned into the ask that the country has made of us. Lockheed Martin has never shied away from stepping up to the line and doing what's been asked,” Johnathon Caldwell, Lockheed's vice president of strategic and missile defense systems, told reporters at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. “We're in an unprecedented era where speed matters, and we're able to bring capabilities to market in weeks and months, not years and decades. We're putting our money on the table, and our commitment.”

It’s a tall order for companies to surge production capacity of those munitions, especially amid supply chain bottlenecks for major components such as solid rocket motors.

But it helps that the Pentagon’s actually allocating and committing money to those problems, Bloomberg’s Wasser said.

“The framework agreements are just that—-agreements, not contracts. Until these are on contract, you won’t see a lot of companies surging production,” she said. “All these efforts—sending the demand signal to industry, qualifying more [solid rocket motor] suppliers, ramping up missile procurement—help, but they don’t solve the problem.”

Low-cost munitions, long-term solutions

Lockheed’s more affordable version of the PAC-3 missile comes with some tradeoffs, and a timeline.

“We basically modified the front end, modified the back end, took out the [Attitude Control Motors], so it's no longer hit-to-kill,” Jason Reynolds, Lockheed’s vice president and general manager of integrated air and missile defense, told reporters during a briefing at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium, adding that it integrates with existing munitions systems “at reduced range.”

However, PAC-3 ACE isn’t expecting a first flight until early 2028, and won’t go to production until 18 months after that.

“Everybody wants more air defense interceptors as quickly as possible, and anything that is as capable or nearly as capable as a PAC-3 MSC is a very attractive offer,” Reynolds said on the sidelines of the conference.

There’s no doubt that a more affordable version of the highly-sought after PAC-3 is useful, said Tom Karako, CSIS’ director of the Missile Defense Project. But the question remains: Will the Pentagon buy it?

“PAC-3 ACE is not a contract. It's a concept that they've had for a while and they rolled it out,” he said. “I think the time is right for PAC-3 ACE, but it's a concept, and if you're really attacking the root cause problem, you know the root cause here is the customer.”

A few weeks after the PAC-3 ACE contract was announced, Boeing unveiled its Ultra Low-Cost Seeker. It’s a push to make the company’s precision-guided technology, which makes Patriot missiles deadly and expensive, more accessible and affordable.

“The system uses commercial off-the-shelf components that Boeing adapted for military use,” the company said in a news release this month. “ULCS leverages our seeker expertise developed on programs like PAC-3 MSE, but delivers a different seeker capability that can be applied at low cost to numerous defensive and offensive products to address lower-complexity threats.”

The seeker is still under development, and more flight tests are expected in 2027. Officials declined to provide exact figures on how much more affordable the new product was compared to existing technology.

Overall, there seem to be more options for cheaper replacements to hypersonic or cruise missiles than for top-tier air defense missiles like Patriots and THAAD weapons, said Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral and senior fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

New entrants are also getting in the low-cost missiles game—and landing contracts. There’s Anduril's Barracuda, Zone 5 Technologies’ Rusty Dagger, and Coaspire’s cruise missile.

“We’re seeing it in hypersonic missiles with a company called Castelion…But we're not seeing it in air defense weapons,” Montgomery said.

X-Bow Systems revealed its modestly priced $100,000 drone destroyer at the Farnborough International Airshow. The company also landed a $11 million deal this week with the Missile Defense Agency to develop and test low-cost interceptors.

And the fact that these companies are landing contracts, may be indicative of faster production and delivery in a matter of several months, opposed to years, Montgomery said.

But producing low-cost munitions isn’t necessarily a solution to the U.S. military’s current stockpile problem.

“It's about transitioning your arsenal long term to a high-low mix. But some of these things can come soon,” Montgomery said. “So it doesn't impact the next stage of the war. But it could impact a 2027 end game. And it certainly will impact being ready in 2028, 2029 for Russia or China to do something.”

Strategic shifts

While industry is answering the call to build more affordable munitions, defense experts question whether the military is willing to use them.

In March, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine declared that the U.S. military was pivoting from “from stand-off munitions to stand-in munitions” meaning a pivot from long-range weapons outside the battlefield to ones that need to be dropped within conflict zones.

But CSIS’ Karako said there’s been no significant switch to plentiful GPS-guided, freefall weapons like Joint Direct Attack Munitions in the months since that statement.

"We have 140,000 JDAMS, we have low-cost munitions today. The reason that we're not using them, and the reason that we're hemorrhaging our Tomahawks instead, has to do with extreme risk aversion,” Karako said. “That risk aversion calculus is not going to change just because you have some new entrance, low-cost, low-range missile. We have, today, plenty of munitions that we could use, but we're not using.”

A month after Caine made his comments, a F-15E went down over Iran. The complicated rescue of the two U.S. airmen pushed President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to proclaim the military had “achieved overwhelming air dominance and superiority” over the hostile territory.

Airpower experts previously told Defense One that broad terms used by the administration painted an inaccurate reality of the dangerous situation U.S. pilots find themselves in over the region. That lack of total control also limits which munitions the military is willing to use.

“Despite efforts to gain air supremacy over Iran, the U.S. was only able to gain localized air superiority over some parts. That reduced the ability to drop JDAMs instead,” Wasser said. “Switching to a strategy that relies on JDAMs would mean accepting more risk—or taking steps to further degrade Iranian capabilities to allow for greater U.S. use of the skies without threat.”

Experts told Defense One the Iran war has exacerbated long-standing problems with how the military uses and buys munitions. And while it’s possible the Pentagon could weather this conflict, the resulting mission depletion will likely make future wars—particularly with China—a struggle.

“These missiles will also be critical for a potential Western Pacific conflict,” an April CSIS report said. “Even before the Iran war, stockpiles were deemed insufficient for a peer competitor fight. That shortfall is now even more acute, and building stockpiles to levels adequate for a war with China will take additional time.”

Until production on existing munitions and interceptors ramps up and the Pentagon buys a new mix of high- and low-end missiles, Karako said the military should look at the plentiful munitions it already has—and use them.

“The more immediate thing that we could be doing is changing our tactics,” Karako said. “We've hemorrhaged our long-range stuff, and the thing that we could do is we could start using gravity bombs, but we're not willing to do that … Everytime CENTCOM fires a Tomahawk at somebody without air defense, an angel loses its wings in PACOM.”

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Arcfield’s state of play; SMD wrap up; X-Bow Systems’ MDA win

Lauren C. Williams — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 21:28:23 -0400

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—There are less than four months left in the year, but defense and aerospace company Arcfield’s plans seem to just be getting started, as they prepare for an upcoming satellite launch and explore manufacturing a highly specialized component key for optical sensors and laser communications.

“There's a lot going on at Arcfield. And what we're really focused on is bringing the government a fully-baked solution,” Dan Knight, Arcfield’s vice president for Golden Dome initiatives and strategy, told Defense One at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., last week. “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, I'm the one-trick wonder that just does sensors,’ or ‘I'm the one-trick wonder that just does architecture,’ we leverage all of our expertise across our organization to bring something that can be easily integrated and operationalized.”

Arcfield is planning to test several sensors in the coming months, and its subsidiary, Orion Space Solutions, expects to launch a very low earth orbit, or VLEO, satellite in September.

“You launch it up to the International Space Station. One of the astronauts up there takes it out, puts it in like a little Pez dispenser, and drops it down into very low Earth orbit,” Knight said. “There's a lot of sensing that happens in the ionosphere with this particular satellite—and some communications packages and other things.”

Knight said the company is forging geostationary orbit satellite plans for 2027 on top of supporting Golden Dome with mission engineering.

“We have a long history of [low-Earth orbit] satellites. We're building a GEO refueler so that the Space Force can maneuver without regret…and then we do optical and [high frequency] sensors,” Knight said, speaking about missile warning and tracking.

The company also wants to scale its manufacturing ability for a very special type of glass.

“We want to get into the manufacturing business of something called an etalon. And you're like, I've never heard the word etalon in my life!” Knight said with a laugh. “It's a highly polished piece of glass. And it's needed for a variety of optical applications—so laser communications, very precise telescopes, and very, very sophisticated optical sensors like the ones we build.”

The move comes as the U.S. military increasingly relies on sensors to garner intel, improve navigation, and fuel autonomy, all while the White House pushes for domestic manufacturing of national security technologies.

“There's a backlog based on our foreign suppliers. We really want to get that investment from the government, which is what they've said they want to do, and get that online so that we can provide etalons for the defense industrial base,” Knight said, referring to working with the Pentagon’s Manufacturing Technology, or ManTech, program.

Arcfield already makes etalons for its products but expansion would support internal growth and the industrial base overall, Knight said. The company has conducted demos and submitted a white paper to start the process with hopes of getting government funding to help build out its manufacturing capacity for a larger scale.

“We want to expand our manufacturing line for our optical sensor…and within that, that's going to require a fairly significant expansion of the etalon production. We can't [rely] on a company in Canada that produces it,” he said.

Welcome

A space-age name change. The German air force, Luftwaffe, officially changed its English name translation to the German Air and Space Force, said Maj. Gen. Michael Traut, who leads Germany’s Space Command.

“What we've seen is that the air and the space domains [are] increasingly merging,” Traut said during an international space panel at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium last week.
Germany wants to procure space surveillance radars, he said, adding that, “Of course, we know that capable missile defense radars can look into space as well. As such, I'm completely interested in the data they provide, and I'm completely interested in the integration.”
Last year, Germany committed €35 billion to space-related defense projects. The NATO nation is also interested in hypersonic vehicles, specifically space planes, presenting “an opportunity to operate in different altitudes we were used to,” Traut said.
“We are absolutely committed strategically to develop and operate space planes in high atmospheric hypersonic operations. [That] not only sets us up to defend against enemy threats, but to explore and make use of that altitude as well.”

Increased munitions options means launchers should do more with less. Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher, or CAML, represents the kind of thinking we need around launchers, Brig. Gen. Robert J. Mikesh, the Army’s capability program executive for offensive fires, said during the symposium.

“We should not think of every launcher as permanently married to a single missile or munition,” Mikesh said.
“We need to think about adaptable platforms, commonality, autonomy, payloads for both offensive or defensive environments, reduced soldier burden and the ability to integrate new capabilities more rapidly. The launcher can no longer be an afterthought,” Mikesh said.

Bonus round: NORTHCOM keeps eye on security needs for power generation and increasingly electrified military systems and command and control centers, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard, the command’s deputy commander.

“We are aware of some of the issues with respect to that,” Jarrard said during the Q&A portion of his keynote at the symposium. “Obviously some of our critical infrastructure requires some of those energy sources. And so I will say that's on our radar…But it hasn't necessarily risen to the level we consider it to be a problem that we have to deal with directly, right now.”
One thing that is top of mind: The lack of sensors to spot and protect military bases from drone attacks.

Making moves + other news

The Missile Defense Agency awarded X-Bow Systems an $11 million contract for testing and development of low-cost interceptors.
Rocketmaker United Launch Alliance names Mark Peller as CEO.
Sam Mehta takes over as L3Harris’ CEO, following the ousting of Chris Kubasik.
Auriga Space brings on former MDA Director Trey Obering as an advisor, Defense One has learned.
REGENT’s seaglider drone platform performs in the Silent Swarm defense event.
CACI opens a manufacturing center in Rochester, N.Y.
Havoc AI teams up with Red Cat.
The Pentagon is auditing academic institutions to scrutinize foreign ties. Related: Reuters looks at how U.S. military funding fueled China’s robot dog boo

]]>