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Two more rocket-makers join Pentagon's list of launch options

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:18:08 -0400

Space Force officials have tapped two startup companies to compete for future national security launch missions, expanding the service’s growing list of providers as the military’s demand for orbital capabilities skyrockets.

California-based firms Impulse Space and Relativity Federal have been added to the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 contract, reserved for its more accessible and lower-risk missions. Both companies will receive a $5 million firm-fixed-price task order, indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity contract “to conduct an initial capabilities assessment and develop their approach to tailored mission assurance,” Space Systems Command officials said Wednesday in a news release. The two firms will be able to compete against Blue Origin, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Rocket Lab, and Stoke Space for future launch contracts.

“These new awardees, together with the other providers already on the Lane 1 contract, are building the next generation of launch vehicles. This is critical at a time when our launch cadence is rapidly increasing and our customers are relying on us to deliver everything they need to provide for the security of our nation and allies,” Space Force Col. Eric Zarybnisky, the acting space access portfolio acquisition executive, said in the news release.

The additions of Relativity Federal and Impulse Space come amid a growing demand for national security launch capabilities. Space Force officials expect upwards of 100 such missions over the next five years, according to the latest budget request. Over the next decade, service leaders speculate that demand could swell to upwards of 3,000 launches from its two launch sites by 2036, according to an April service document. The Lane 1 contract method, aimed at expanding the number of qualified providers, “focuses on rapid contract award, streamlined integration phases and reduced timelines from award to launch,” according to the news release.

“The increase to seven providers in the third year of our NSSL Lane 1 contract is exactly the kind of result we envisioned when we developed our dual-lane strategy to address the changing needs of our customers,” Zarybnisky said in the news release. “We have numerous upcoming missions that the Lane 1 launch providers will be able to compete for as soon as they’ve successfully launched at least once.”

Relativity Federal’s Terran R reusable, two-stage rocket is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral later this year, according to the company’s website.

Impulse Space’s approach differs from the other providers. The company’s Helios vehicle would be used aboard another provider’s medium lift rocket, transporting payloads from low earth orbit to “high-energy orbits like Geosynchronous Orbit (GEO) in less than one day,” according to the company’s news release. The vehicle is scheduled to take its first flight in 2027, according to Impulse’s website.

“Pairing Helios with a standard medium-lift launch vehicle offers a more operationally flexible and cost-effective path to high-energy orbits than other solutions,” Eric Romo, president and COO of Impulse Space, said in a news release. “We look forward to providing a new option for assured access to space for the Space Force.”

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Navy teases next step in key drone boat program

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:05:11 -0400

The Navy plans to launch the next phase of its marketplace for high-capacity, medium-sized drone boats on August 1, according to a contract notice.

The medium unmanned surface vessel, or MUSV, program “uses modular design principles to create adaptable and resilient solutions that can effectively counter evolving threats,” the July 7 notice states. “Interested parties with expertise in vessel construction, autonomy, perception systems and complex maritime problem solving experience are invited to participate in this opportunity.”

Earlier this year, the Navy changed its approach to buying medium unmanned surface vessels, favoring a marketplace format and spurring a competition and sea trials.

The coming request for prototype proposals will have “detailed requirements for high-capacity MUSV solutions used for logistics support and capable of transporting containerized payloads,” the Navy wrote in the notice.

The announcement comes as the Pentagon stands up new oversight for autonomous systems across all the services, with MUSVs as an exception.

“The MUSV continues to be a strictly Navy-led program,” a Navy spokesperson told Defense One. “We will evaluate all requirements and release recurring marketplaces as the fleet demand signal evolves, ensuring our warfighters maintain an operational advantage.”

The Navy is working with the new Pentagon office for non-MUSV programs.

“The Navy is partnering with the [Pentagon’s direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned and autonomous systems] to streamline acquisition, enhance joint interoperability, and accelerate delivery of autonomous capabilities to the warfighter. While transitioning decision authority for select unmanned vessels to the DRPM, the Navy maintains stewardship over major programs of record,” the spokesperson said. “To ensure operational readiness and theater compatibility, Navy leaders are aligning all remaining programs with joint data standards, providing the critical personnel, resource support, and technical expertise required for a swift and successful stand-up."

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Unions sue to restore Pentagon workers' collective-bargaining rights

Erich Wagner — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 12:00:00 -0400

A pair of federal employee unions last week sued Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his April directive that the department terminate most of its collective bargaining agreements, alleging he violated the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeded his statutory authority when he sought to implement President Trump’s anti-union executive order.

In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order citing a seldom-used provision of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act to strip roughly two-thirds of the federal workforce of their collective bargaining rights on national-security grounds. Unions and the Justice Department have engaged in pitched legal battle ever since, across more than half a dozen court cases.

Agencies have since moved to implement the order, along with an August 2025 sequel banning unions at more agencies, in fits and starts, in part due to the litigation. While many agencies took informal steps to comply, such as cancelling the automatic collection of union dues, they largely refrained from terminating their contracts with labor groups until last August.

At that point, the Office of Personnel Management changed its guidance regarding the executive orders and suggested agencies could “choose” to terminate their CBAs. OPM again changed course in February, recommending that agencies “should” take that that step.

A new lawsuit filed by the American Federation for Government Employees and the National Federation of Federal Employees in the U.S. District Court for Maryland accuses Hegseth of violating the Administrative Procedure Act for ordering the department to cancel its union contracts with just 24 hours’ notice and no plan to carry it out in an orderly fashion. The result, the unions say, was “chaos.”

“DOD did not have any uniform process for implementing the termination of CBAs, and in many cases there were virtually no notification or communication at all about what actions were being taken, if any,” the lawsuit states. “Some local union leaders were informed by phone that their unions’ CBAs were being terminated; others were informed by email, or by letter; others received no communications at all—their agency counterparts just went ‘radio silent,’ or started refusing to answer routine questions. Beyond these ‘official’ notifications (or lack thereof), Secretary Hegseth’s memorandum begat a firestorm of confusion and misinformation at facilities nationwide—about who still did or did not have collective bargaining agreements, and why, and since when.”

The unions argued that the slapdash rollout also resulted in employees losing their union rights despite being ostensibly exempt from Trump’s executive order. While the order states that the “local employing offices” of police officers, security guards and firefighters will continue to be covered by federal sector labor law, in practice the Pentagon has continued to recognize the union rights only of first responders, not the dispatchers, IT workers and other staff they work alongside.

“Yet DOD failed to prepare any list of subdivisions that are not covered by the EO because they employ police officers, firefighters or security guards before issuance of the Hegseth memorandum, nor did the Hegseth memorandum provide for such a list to be created before implementation of the memorandum,” the unions wrote. “[Thus], across DOD, subdivisions have declared that employees who work alongside police officers, firefighters and security guards—workers in the same ‘local employing office’ within the meaning of the EO—no longer have the protections of their CBAs or any rights under the [federal labor statute], in direct contradiction of the EO.”

AFGE and NFFE’s lawsuit mirrors a similar legal challenge filed last year by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Employees, which successfully resulted in a court order blocking the Defense Department from terminating their contracts. It sets aside the broader question of whether Trump’s executive orders are lawful and focuses on how the Defense Department sought to implement them.

The unions argued that since Hegseth neither moved to terminate CBAs either last August when OPM first said agencies could elect to do so, nor in February when OPM said they “should” take that step, he was required by the Administrative Procedure Act to explain the change in policy.

“For nearly a year after the issuance of EO 14251, DOD continued its longstanding policy of honoring the CBAs into which it has entered,” they wrote. “The DOD’s April 9, 2026 decision to terminate those CBAs within 24 hours irrationally and improperly failed to explain why the DOD would no longer honor existing CBAs, or why termination was necessary within 24 hours notwithstanding the agency’s prior honoring of CBAs and the predictable chaos that would result from DOD’s abrupt reversal.”

They also asserted that by stripping employees who work alongside departmental policy officers, firefighters and security guards of their collective bargaining rights, Hegseth exceeded the authority granted him by the executive order, since the edict exempted those employees’ entire offices from its coverage.

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Defense Business Brief: Rocket engine startup eyes production; NATO Summit Day 1; Anduril’s first NATO contract

Lauren C. Williams — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 22:44:45 -0400

Rocket engine startup Venus Aerospace only has one major test flight under its belt, but the company just raised $91 million from investors ready to bet on future production demands.

The Series B funding round was led by the venture capital firm Mercury Fund and with participation from other investors, including Lockheed Martin Ventures, which noted the company’s rapid development of its rotating detonation rocket engine—which uses continuous supersonic detonation waves to generate thrust—calling it a welcomed addition to the defense ecosystem.

“Since our initial investment, Venus has progressed very quickly in its technology development. Our reinvestment in Venus recognizes Venus’ accomplishments to date and focus on speed to manufacture, cost management and reduction of supply chain constraints. Venus is working effectively to position its propulsion system for the production scale required by defense programs,” Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures, said in a statement.

And setting up the building blocks for growth is the six-year-old startup’s chief focus.

“We are really focused on growing the foundation that we have to be able to scale to meet the commercial and government demand that we're going to have for this system,” including hiring more talent and increasing manufacturing capacity, Tom Barron, chief operating officer for Venus Aerospace, told Defense One. That also means growing “the mundane but super important sort of business process and architecture required to meet high-consequence government contracts.”

Barron wouldn’t specify when its rotating detonation rocket engines might enter production, what the company’s manufacturing targets were, or how many people they plan to hire. Hinting at forthcoming announcements, he said the plan is to hire “technical and business talent” while “growing our in-house manufacturing capacity” and testing.

Last year, the Houston-based startup finished a flight test of its engine, which uses a continuous supersonic combustion process to burn fuel and is made up of 3D-printed components: “it's literally a rotating detonation wave inside the engine. The engine body itself is only three pieces,” Barron said.

The engine promises to be more efficient and travel further, faster, than traditional rocket motors by 15 percent, the company said of the test flight results. It takes about two weeks to produce through machining and 3D printing. And key to future production, and development, is being able to test and integrate changes quickly.

“We co-located our rocket-engine testing, our manufacturing, and our design engineering all in one place,” Barron said in an interview. “We test rocket engines 500 feet behind me, whereas if you go to basically any other major rocket engine designer, builder, they're doing it in the desert somewhere. And so you have this enormous lag driving eight hours into Mojave or into another remote area. So being able to test is a critical component of what we do.”

The funding announcement comes as the White House pressures weapons makers to speed up production amid supply chain delays and skyrocketing demands for solid rocket motors needed to propel munitions and space architecture.

And as geopolitical tensions highlight near-term shortfalls, there’s a longer play Venus is hoping to make.

“Solid rocket motors are a 70-year-old technology,” Barron said. “We still need that technology to rebuild our capacity to produce those propulsion solutions. But we're at the margins of their performance.”

“We deliver performance that doubles the range relative to solid rocket motors for several classes of munitions. And then in space, which is a massively growing market…that can either quadruple your payload or massively reduce the cost to launch. And so being able to deliver what our future capabilities, not just supply shortfalls of current capabilities, is what makes our engine different. It's a fundamentally new, novel, transformative technology.”

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U.S.-NATO tensions remain, but there are still deals to be made. NATO leaders announced a flurry of new weapons deals Tuesday, estimated to be in the “tens of billions”—a demonstration of the increased defense spending President Donald Trump demanded last year. But while European countries have made strides to meet the 5 percent of GDP spending targets, there’s still work to be done, especially with the domestic industrial base, said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

“By next year, the alliance will have the capacity to produce around four million artillery shells annually. Almost twice as many as last year. That’s scale. So yes, we have made real progress. We are moving in the right direction,” Rutte said Tuesday in his keynote address at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum in Ankara, Türkiye.
“The money is there and much more is coming. But this cash must be put to work,” he said, noting that Russia puts about half of its national budget into defense.
Rutte ticked off figures: European allies and Canada increased defense spending by nearly 20 percent, or $139 billion more, from 2024 to 2025. That number is set to increase again for 2026 to more than $250 billion in additional spending year-over-year.
A new ‘front door’: NATO also released a consolidated demand signal, detailing the organization’s defense needs and opportunities for companies in a single portal.
“To meet the challenge, we need a transatlantic defence industrial revolution. The hum of machinery must become a roar,” Rutte said. “At the same time, industry across all of the nations represented here must be ready to take more risk.”

Making moves + other news

Anduril landed its first NATO contract—and it’s for the company’s AI platform, Lattice.
Fairbanks Morse Defense bought the Rolls-Royce Naval Handling facility in Ontario, which will become the company’s new Canadian headquarters.
Ships that were part of America’s birthday celebration in New York, called the International Naval Review 250, will depart Wednesday: USS Arlington (LPD 24); USS Nitze (DDG 94); USS Kearsarge (LHD 3); and USS Farragut (DDG 99), the Navy announced.

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How Ukraine won the first great robot war

Patrick Tucker — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:02:31 -0400

In the spring and summer of 2026, the story about Russia's war in Ukraine changed. The defenders are combining air and ground drones, autonomy, and swarming to re-capture territory with robots while risking fewer humans—increasing casualties for Russia while decreasing them for their own forces. Some four and a half years after confidently launching his invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dwindling military options.

In this short documentary, analysts, entrepreneurs, European experts, and NATO military officials describe how Ukraine defied expectations and changed the future direction of military technology—and of war itself.

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'Shifting gears away from being just a policy shop': Q&A with the Pentagon CIO

Edward Graham — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:24:00 -0400

Pentagon CIO Kirsten Davies recently spoke with Nextgov/FCW about her efforts to update IT acquisition and move beyond policy to operational effectiveness, warfighter readiness, and more. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nextgov/FCW: What are some of your office’s priorities under the current administration?

Kirsten Davies: President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth have given us a tremendous opportunity with a mandate for change. What you're seeing out of the Department of War now is enormous enthusiasm and momentum around that.

For example, the secretary has been very clear that we will take acquisition risk today in order to reduce operational risk tomorrow. Operational risk, in this case, means that at the core of everything we do is our work to enable and empower our warfighters. When I came into this role, I really wanted to bring the cause of the warfighter straight into the DNA of the Office of the CIO.

We're shifting gears tremendously away from being just a policy shop. Policy work is extraordinarily important, but operational effectiveness, warfighter readiness, and empowerment from a digital perspective are critical. Through the work of the Office of the CIO, what we're able to do is really shift gears and transform how we think about that.

It's not IT for the sake of that “T.” It's developing a technology footprint that enables and empowers our warfighters from the core all the way to the edge.

Nextgov/FCW: How are you changing your office to do that?

Davies: We have four pillars for the transformation we are undertaking. The first is establishing an enduring digital foundation, so thinking of all the things we do when it comes to network transport and data centers. We are modernizing our data transport ability across this space and transforming the way we think about it from undersea to celestial, so satellites and everything in between. We obviously have a lot of work we're doing to build out the infrastructure for artificial intelligence and modernize the way in which we think about that.

Pillar two is the agile digital capabilities. I say agile very specifically because we are not going to do "fast waterfall." We are going to get after agile delivery and agile development, so truly get into industry best practices when it comes to the software development life cycle and when it comes to the totality of the agility we need to get digital capabilities to the warfighters faster, more securely and more resiliently.

The third pillar is cybersecurity of the warfighting ecosystem. What you will be seeing out of my office is a much more holistic and transformative approach to cybersecurity, and that includes operational technology and the internet of things. When it comes to OT, we can’t treat it like IT, and we can’t neglect it as if it doesn't exist. So you're going to see a lot more focus on OT out of my shop as well.

And then pillar four is upskilling, cross-skilling, and partnering. We can talk about people all day long, and we can talk about the fact that everyone owns security. We need to embrace that as an ethos for us and work across our defense industrial base and across our allies and our partners internationally as well. And then also work with our interagency partners at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, FBI and the National Security Agency.

Nextgov/FCW: What are you doing about operational technology?

Davies: Everything is connected, so the digitization of our industrial base is critical for us. The secretary has talked about reinvigorating our industrial base. From a cybersecurity perspective and from a technology perspective, all these devices are connected. There's more than automation involved. Now it's machine learning and also AI that are being more and more deliberately rolled out and leveraged in industry and in government.

When we talk about the OT aspect of these things, that's everything from building management systems to the critical infrastructure that supports our installations here in America and abroad. It is working with our defense industrial base partners.

All of this is foundational operational technology. We must have appropriate availability, resiliency and security in order to ensure our warfighters have what they need when they need it. And this is underpinned by our technology footprint that goes from the core all the way to the edge.

What we're working through now is setting up an OT council. The notion of this is to have industry expertise, department use cases and defense industrial base partners come to the table and say, “How do we get after this better?”

Nextgov/FCW: How do you want to increase private-sector engagement and technology modernization?

Davies: We are transforming from what has been a back-office IT function into a forward-leaning strategic department function that includes, by necessity, very strong collaboration across the building.

I’ve got great partnerships with Emil Michael, undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, where the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office is, and with Undersecretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Mike Duffey’s shop, where he is radically transforming the way in which we approach acquisition and procurement.

You'll see there’s no daylight among us as a leadership team as we move forward with the secretary's vision to enable and empower our warfighters and to ensure the lethality, resilience and readiness of our warfighters from a very specific perspective.

Acquisition at the department has historically been a very long process and was often focused on massive capital investments like ships. We have to shift gears when it comes to technology, when it comes to software, when it comes to cloud, when it comes to infrastructure buildout. Technology changes at a much more rapid cycle than planes and ships and all those things.

What we're working on inside the building and across the leadership is how do we drive not only a more agile approach to developing and delivering capabilities, but how do we drive a more agile approach to acquisition for things that can shift every six months? Infusing that kind of methodology into our thinking is what we're getting after.

Nextgov/FCW: How are you trying to speed up acquisition and procurement?

Davies: We're underway right now on a refinement of our risk-management framework. The RMF and the authority to operate are legal frameworks for the ways in which industry partners can work with us. Right now, if we are testing software in one part of the department, that approval, we’ll call it, doesn't necessarily transfer over to another part of the department. And that doesn't make common sense.

We’re not just going to digitize a piece of paper to a PDF; we are actually going to refine the totality of the process itself, including moving to more automation and moving to inheritance of one [Authorization to Operate] to another ATO. We want to actually overhaul the whole ATO process in and of itself.

I think that's a very specific example of how we are getting after what the secretary's vision is, which is to reduce barriers to entry. It's to reignite our defense industrial base and really reduce these compliancy and check-the-box exercises to get at meaningful outcomes.

Nextgov/FCW: How is GenAI.mil helping?

Davies: GenAI.mil is such a brilliant example of the first of many initiatives that are to come out of the department. The adoption and usage rates have been extraordinary. We have 1.3 million users right now, which is amazing. We have over 100,000 agents that have been built by users to support their tasks and their work cycles. In some cases, they have been able to take a two-week task and complete it in two hours.

This is such a beneficial and helpful tool when it comes to day-to-day tasks that our employees and our warfighters can do much more rapidly now. What I love seeing about this is it saves our people for meaningful work. When we can leverage automation, machine learning, supervised machine learning and AI, that frees up time for people to apply their critical thinking, their analytical thinking, their skill sets, their experience and their expertise. From the warfighters to the civilians to the contractors, it frees them up to focus on work that really adds tremendous strategic value to the department, ultimately enabling our warfighters to have greater capabilities at their fingertips.

We recently announced partnerships with eight AI companies to deploy their tools on our classified networks. What you're seeing is this acquisition reform in motion.

The other thing you're seeing is the tremendous leadership from President Trump when he said he wants America to be tops in technology, in AI and in cybersecurity, and you are seeing that worked out at the Department of War. We are implementing that vision.

Nextgov/FCW: How does all this fit into DOD’s modernization strategy?

Davies: Traditional modernization can be like evolution. It can be an incremental change and take a really, really long time. True transformation goes at speed, and we are working at the speed of warfighters. We need data supremacy for decision dominance.

We have modernized the architecture to be deployed. We are getting after the defense business systems rationalization. In the midst of all that, in parallel, we’re seeing great advancements not only in the core enterprise technology aspects that I oversee, but also the edge use cases that are worked out by our service members and our joint forces and supported by our Office of Research and Engineering and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

You're seeing that change at pace. And one of the things I’ve been really vocal about across the department and especially with our defense industrial base is that their innovation is our warfighter innovation. Their strength is our warfighter strength. Their security is our warfighter security. So we are really getting after these things in a partnership way that is with speed. It is with agility. When we find barriers, we are breaking them down. When we find unnecessary burdensome check-the-box exercises, we're tackling them at pace.

Nextgov/FCW: How are you expanding the department’s IT and cyber workforce?

Davies: We are working on an extended plan rollout to build on the great work this office has already done. The president and the secretary have given us a mandate to really get after skills-based training, which is what we’re pursuing.

Throughout my entire career, I have been trying to eliminate the requirement for degrees before people can get a job because if threat actors can be script kiddies and teenagers, then we need to be employing great skills where the skills are and figuring out how to incorporate them. You’re going to see a full life-cycle approach out of my office, which is also working with Katie Sutton, who is the assistant secretary of war for cyber policy.

We are working on a full life-cycle approach to skills-based hiring, cross-skilling and upskilling. We're looking at how we can develop a much more fulsome model for our warfighters who go into veteran status to ensure they are well trained to continue to support the national-security mission wherever they go next. You're going to see a lot more of that coming out of my office.

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NATO snubs Boeing, picks Saab to build alliance’s next radar plane

Thomas Novelly — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:21:42 -0400

NATO allies plan to buy 10 of Saab’s GlobalEye aircraft as the alliance’s next-generation radar plane, snubbing Boeing and its E-7 Wedgetail offering, officials announced on Tuesday.

The alliance would replace its Boeing E-3 Airborne Warning and Control aircraft with the Swedish company’s offering, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said during the alliance’s Defence Industry Forum in Ankara, Turkey.

“For decades, NATO has relied on a fleet of E3 Airborne Warning and Control Systems, that have been our ‘eyes in the skies’. They have been deployed from Northern Norway to Southern Türkiye. They have served us well and continue to do so, but they are reaching the end of their lives,” Rutte said. “Today, several Allies are announcing the joint procurement of up to 10 SAAB GlobalEye aircraft to replace them.”

Saab CEO Micael Johansson told reporters at the summit that he estimated the deal would be valued around $4.5 billion and that deliveries could begin in 2030, depending on when the deal is signed.

Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, and Sweden are joining together to procure Saab’s aircraft, NATO said in a press release.

Their choice was influenced by the Pentagon’s decision—later reversed—to request no money for E-7s in the 2027 budget, one analyst said.

“When the U.S. ‘27 budget came out, and there was no money for E-7, and NATO looked at that and said, ‘Well, if the U.S. isn't buying it, why should we?,’ and they made an announcement right then that because the administration was not behind E-7 they did not expect to be favoring it.” said J.J. Gertler, an aerospace analyst for the Teal Group. “That was both a matter of timing when the administration decided actually to buy E-7 later, but also something of an own goal.”

That “leaning toward Saab” announcement was reported in April, just days after the Pentagon’s budget rollout showed no plans to fund the E-7 Wedgetail, by La Lettre, a French publication.

Boeing defended the E-7 aircraft in the wake of NATO’s formal announcement.

“Boeing remains fully committed to supporting the mission needs of NATO allies and partners. With an active production line, the E-7A is the most capable and mature airborne battle management, command and control system fielded today,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The E-7 is a combat-proven platform already in the hands of NATO allies, delivering a family of systems approach, driven by unmatched interoperability with allied capabilities, and an industrial and sustainment framework ready to meet operational timelines.”

Saab said in a press release that the company has “not signed a contract or received an order related to the announcement.”

The GlobalEye uses a collection of sensors mounted on a Bombardier Global 6500 aircraft to detect a wide-range of threats in contested combat zones, including drones, ballistic and hypersonic missiles, according to the company’s website.

“We are confident that GlobalEye is the right choice for the Alliance, delivering proven capability, adaptability and long-term operational advantage. Today’s announcement clearly positions GlobalEye as the world-leading solution for advanced airborne early warning and control. We look forward to the next steps in the negotiations,” Johansson said in a statement.

In May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reversed course and said the initial decision to omit E-7 funding reflected an outdated “austerity” and “divest-to-invest mindset.”

Last month, House appropriators backed the White House’s $1.5-billion budget amendment to fund E-7 Wedgetail development and pushed back on an attempt to raid the Navy’s airborne early warning account in the process.

NATO delivered its own Wedgetail whiplash last fall. In 2023, the alliance announced plans to buy six E-7s. Then, in July 2025, the Trump administration withdrew from the deal. Four months later, the Netherlands and other countries declared they would no longer seek to buy the aircraft, citing “strategic and financial” woes.

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House committee wants details on DHS network hack

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:53:00 -0400

House Homeland Security Committee staff are requesting a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security on the breach of the agency’s Homeland Security Information Network, according to a committee aide with knowledge of the matter.

Staffers are hoping to be briefed on the intrusion—first reported by Nextgov/FCW last week—by Friday, said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is sensitive.

Hackers are believed to have penetrated HSIN sometime between late May and early June, though their affiliation and whether any contents were pilfered from the platform is unclear, a person familiar with the matter previously said.

Approved users lean on the network to securely access data, exchange requests with partner agencies, manage operations, coordinate safety and security for planned events, respond to incidents and share mission-critical information needed to protect their communities, according to its website. HSIN carries unclassified but sensitive information shared among federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, international and private-sector partners.

The intrusion comes as the U.S. oversees security for World Cup games across the country, placing added scrutiny on the systems federal, state and local officials use to coordinate major events. A breach of the platform may raise concerns about whether hackers gained insight into security planning, interagency coordination or response procedures surrounding one of the most visible international events hosted predominately in the United States.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said last week that the network is being used to support the World Cup and America250 events. He added that it played a key role for emergency responders during last year’s mid-air collision between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter outside Washington, D.C.

“The information in HSIN, while not classified, is highly sensitive, and its exposure risks national security,” Warner said. “DHS and DOJ must thoroughly investigate who breached HSIN, what the attackers accessed, and ensure all DHS partners are provided with timely information and the tools necessary to mitigate any associated risks from the breach.”

When asked by Nextgov/FCW about the committee briefing request, a department spokesperson sent the same statement it provided last week that confirmed the hack.

The statement said staff “immediately took action to isolate the affected systems, mitigate the vulnerability, and launch a comprehensive forensic investigation,” and added that an investigation is ongoing and more details can’t be provided.

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Trump wants to scrap a key framework for federal-employee discipline

Erich Wagner — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:46:02 -0400

The Trump administration last week proposed new regulations that would nullify a decades-old legal framework agencies use to mete out and justify federal employee discipline in favor of what critics say will be a vaguer and less fair standard.

In a proposed rule published in the Federal Register, the Office of Personnel Management and Merit Systems Protection Board jointly called for “retiring” the Douglas factors, a list of 12 criteria agencies are expected to employ when they consider disciplinary measures, developed in a 1981 MSPB case shortly after the implementation of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. They include, among other things, the severity of the offense, an employee’s past performance and conduct and their potential for rehabilitation.

But OPM and MSPB argued that rubric had grown too restrictive, and that agencies had taken a “mechanical” approach to apply each factor to a given disciplinary case, disincentivizing managers from pursuing adverse actions against their employees.

“In proposing this departure from the 12-factor Douglas test, MSPB acknowledges that Douglas has long been a cornerstone of federal employment law,” the agencies wrote. “However, over the ensuing decades, agencies and, occasionally, MSPB, have applied Douglas in a rigid, mechanistic way that the original decision never contemplated or prescribed. For the reasons set forth in this proposed rule, and in conjunction with OPM’s streamlining of performance management policy, the board proposes to correct this rigid application and reaffirm the board’s commitment to adjudicating disciplinary action appeals under a more flexible standard in conformance with its statutory authority.”

Raymond Limon, who served as a Democratically appointed member of MSPB from 2021 until February 2025, said that while he agrees that the Douglas factors are designed to be “illustrative” rather than rigid, the administration’s description of how they are applied doesn’t jibe with his experience adjudicating employees’ appeals, particularly given agencies better than 80% success rate before the board.

“It’s possible that some agencies on their own have created a more formalistic approach requiring supervisors to complete it like a checklist and address every issue,” he said. “But to me, if they’re doing that, that’s because they’ve developed a poor policy or don’t understand the law correctly . . . I feel like the proposed regulation assumes that Douglas is the disease, but it may simply be the stethoscope.”

OPM and MSPB’s new standard—to simply consider the “totality of circumstances” when considering a disciplinary measure—is vaguer and ripe for abuse, said Michael Fallings, managing partner at Tully Rinckey PLLC, a firm specializing in federal employment law.

“’Totality’ is just a vague way of saying that we’re going to consider factors, but what they’re trying to say is, ‘We don’t have to consider certain factors that may some times be in favor of the employee,’” Fallings said. “What we’ve seen [in my practice] over the past year are employees proposed for removal for one instance of misconduct and no prior discipline. We’ve seen some where the alleged event occurred years ago, with no prior discipline and good performance since then. It’s a way to say, ‘We’ll consider the circumstances, but we don’t have to.’”

The regulations would require additional training for managers and supervisors on performance and misconduct issues, something long requested by good government groups. And it formally reintroduce a number of policies from Trump’s first term aimed at making it easier to fire poor performers, including reducing the length of performance improvement plans to 30 days, banning settlement agreements that remove documentation of poor performance or misconduct from an employee’s record, and barring the use of union official time to help an employee pursue adverse action appeals.

The that the administration’s latest proposal was jointly offered by OPM and MSPB undermines a key tenet of the Civil Service Reform Act, Limon argued.

“The MSPB was designed by Congress to be an oversight body over OPM and that also to be an independent institution,” he said. “That’s why the Civil Service Reform Act was created: to split up the Civil Service Commission. The policy wing became OPM, and MSPB would do the commission’s adjudication work. Good fences make good neighbors, but they’re collapsing that.”

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Iran War supplemental deepens FY27 budget uncertainty

Shaun McDougall — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 21:27:12 -0400

A recent $87.6 billion supplemental funding request from the White House to pay for the Iran war and other expenses complicates an already tense budget process in Washington. The supplemental follows the release of a record $1.5 trillion defense budget request in April, putting additional pressure on Congress to sort out what has become a complex three-part defense budget comprising a $1.1 trillion base budget request, a $350 billion reconciliation request, and the new supplemental request.

Most of the new supplemental funding, $67.1 billion, or 77% of the total, would go to the Pentagon. Other investments outside of the Pentagon include $11 billion for the Department of Agriculture, $3.4 billion for the Department of State, and $2 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, among others.

Within the defense portion of the supplemental, most of the funding is allocated toward direct costs of the war in Iran. The single biggest item in the entire supplemental is $21 billion for munitions, which would help rebuild stockpiles after thousands of offensive and defensive missiles and bombs were expended during the opening months of the war. The rapidly growing demand for munitions was already highlighted in the FY27 defense budget request, which sought $76.3 billion for munitions, up 185%over the $26.8 billion allocated in FY26. Combined with the supplemental, the administration has now asked for $97.3 billion for munitions across multiple military services this year. For context, that figure is more than three times the size of the Army's entire FY26 procurement budget of $30.5 billion.

The next largest item requested by the White House is $17.3 billion for operational costs of the war. The initial campaign against Iran included a wide array of aircraft, ships, and ground assets that require fuel, maintenance, and repairs. The subsequent naval blockade sustained many of these logistics expenses, which were exacerbated as fuel costs rose due to Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. In May, military leaders warned that they would have to begin curtailing some regular training exercises and operations this summer if Congress didn't backfill the operations budget with supplemental funding.

Infographic by Jorge Morejon

The White House is also asking Congress for an additional $2.4 billion for drones, which could be used to replace one-way attack and interceptor drones used during the war, as well as at least two dozen MQ-9A Reapers lost in combat. The Air Force faces a problem with the Reaper, however. The MQ-9A is no longer in production, leaving the service with a capability gap. The Air Force could try to accelerate a follow-on capability, but that could take longer than desired to meet immediate replenishment needs. Alternatively, the service could procure the larger MQ-9B, which features a 79-foot wingspan compared to the 66-foot wingspan of the older MQ-9A. It's also possible that some of this funding could be used for other emerging drone programs.

The fragile state of the conflict also raises questions about ongoing war costs. A fragile ceasefire has been interrupted by sporadic skirmishes, and the recent Memorandum of Understanding intended to help end the war lacks substance and relies on further negotiations that have already faced several roadblocks. For the time being, the cost of the Iran war will continue to escalate slowly upwards if the status quo remains unchanged, but the shortfalls and need for additional resources could spike if all-out hostilities resume. A true lasting peace agreement would avoid additional war costs down the road, but that outlook is far from certain.

Beyond the War

The defense supplemental is more than just an Iran war request. While most of the defense portion of the request does support items like operational costs and equipment replenishment related to the war, it also includes other priorities that aren't directly related to the conflict. For example, the White House wants $4 billion for Airborne Moving Target Indication (AMTI) and the Space Data Network (SDN) Backbone, which are related to the president's Golden Dome homeland air and missile defense effort.

The Space Force is pursuing a space-based AMTI capability that would allow satellites to track airborne threats. This program would complement the Air Force's future E-7 Wedgetail fleet, which is replacing the legacy E-3 AWACS. The service requested $7.1 billion in FY27 to begin procurement of a space-based AMTI system, but all the funding was allocated in the reconciliation portion of the request. The Air Force did lose one of its E-3 AWACS to an Iranian strike at an airbase in Saudi Arabia, but this AMTI funding is more of a long-term follow-on than a direct replacement for a particular E-3 aircraft.

Meanwhile, the Space Data Network Backbone represents part of the communications layer of the planned Golden Dome architecture. The SDN, formerly known as MILNET, is being pursued in place of Transport Layer Tranche 3 satellites, which would have been competed among several contractors. SpaceX is working on both of these programs, and in May the company was awarded a $2.3 billion SDN contract and a $4.2 billion AMTI contract. The Space Force requested around $3 billion for the SDN through the FY27 reconciliation request. Other vendors will continue working on earlier Transport Layer tranches, which will be integrated with SDN. Officials have also said that additional AMTI awards to multiple vendors are planned later in the year.

The supplemental also sets aside $12.1 billion for classified programs. The original FY27 request included $98.7 billion in classified funding, split between $61.5 billion for research and $37.2 billion for procurement, according to Forecast International's U.S. Defense Budget Forecast database. If approved by Congress, the supplemental would increase the classified topline by more than 12%, which is a sizeable change. Naturally, we're unable to determine how much, if any, of that classified funding is directly related to the war.

The administration also wants $5.1 billion to support cybersecurity and autonomy, which appears to be a request for emerging tech rather than direct war costs, but the supplemental lacks transparency and doesn't allocate funding to individual line items in the budget.

A Complicated Budget Outlook

Even before considering the new supplemental, the administration's approach to mixing base and reconciliation funding in its FY27 request creates risk and uncertainty for the Pentagon. The defense budget process involves four defense committees (the House and Senate Armed Services Committees and the House and Senate Appropriations Committees) releasing markups of the budget request that contain line-item adjustments that add or remove funding at the program level. So far, three defense committees have released markups of the FY27 defense budget, and none of them have addressed the $350 billion reconciliation portion of the request. That funding will have to be considered during a separate process, but some GOP lawmakers have expressed doubt about passage of another reconciliation bill.

Adding the supplemental bill to the mix further complicates an already fraught legislative landscape. The supplemental has faced resistance in Congress. Democrats largely oppose the bill, arguing it pays for a war that Congress did not authorize. This position is bolstered by passage of resolutions against the war in both chambers. While mostly symbolic, the resolutions underscore the difficulty of getting a controversial war spending bill through both chambers. Rep. Mark Harris, R-NC, suggested Republicans may have to use the reconciliation process to pass a war supplemental in the face of Democratic opposition, but that approach won't necessarily guarantee success.

The Pentagon would still be left with a $1 trillion budget even without the $350 billion reconciliation package and the new supplemental, but it would still face challenges. The most immediate impact would be the reduced training and operations this summer. New efforts to dramatically scale up munitions procurement, which are heavily reliant on supplemental funds, would also be significantly curtailed. Other key initiatives, such as Golden Dome and new investments in autonomous systems, would similarly be affected. These programs would have to be slowed or reduced in scope in the near-term in the absence of reconciliation or supplemental funding.

Several legacy programs would also be negatively impacted due to how the administration structured its request. For example, 53 out of 85 F-35 fighters requested in FY27 were allocated to the reconciliation portion of the budget, while nearly one-third of the Navy's KC-130J request is tied to the reconciliation package.

The administration has set high expectations for its FY27 budget request and its new supplemental proposal, but the complex realities of the budget process could result in a final spending plan that looks very different from the original request.

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Lightweight cells powered by nuclear waste could drive tomorrow's drones

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

How many missions could a drone or satellite fly with a battery pack that can last decades? And what if that battery could be fueled by nuclear waste?

That’s the future scientists are working toward in DARPA’s “Rads to Watts” program, which aims to create lightweight batteries with a high energy density. And a recent $3.37 million contract award aims to fund a viable proof-of-concept device that can produce more than 10 watts per kilogram with a yearslong shelf life.

“Solar cells directly convert sunlight into electricity…Ours directly convert radiation into electricity,” said Stafford Sheehan, CEO and founder of Project Omega, which describes their radioisotope power sources as mini-generators that replace traditional batteries.

“We already have some of these small devices running; the ones that are specifically designed to meet the DARPA figure of merit are going to come out early next year.”

Several organizations are participating in the program, with Morgan State University serving as the prime contractor and handling basic research and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory handling nuclear materials and testing. Northrop Grumman and ARA will bring computational modeling to make sure the prototype meets performance standards.

Project Omega will build the nuclear power generator based on a radioisotope found in nuclear waste, and Widetronix is designing the semiconductor power converter. The goal is to produce a working prototype by early 2027 at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The power cells could be used in “any application where a battery dying is a pain point,” Sheehan said. “One example is on satellites: if you lose power on a satellite, you lose the satellite, it's gone…if your batteries die and you don't have any sort of backup power.”

These power sources use isotopes separated from nuclear waste and convert radiation directly into electricity.

“At a high level, we take nuclear waste, we recycle it into two products: one is fuel for reactors…the other are power isotopes, so isotopes you can use to power things,” Sheehan said.

Radioisotope power sources have been used in everything from smoke detectors to space systems. But Project Omega hopes to do it on a larger scale.

“There are over 100,000 metric tons of nuclear waste sitting in the 52 reactor sites around the country; so there's plenty of nuclear waste currently. The federal government gets sued for billions of dollars every year just because they haven't dealt with the nuclear waste,” Sheehan said. “It's very valuable to have a battery that lasts.”

Omega’s power cells consist of a solid state, or “chunk,” of isotope that will be layered with the semiconductor to generate power. They also work in extreme temperatures—something that would benefit military operations using unmanned systems in harsh environments.

“We have been using these radioisotope power systems in space for decades,” Sheehan said. “We're just taking the systems that we use for space and we're using a different isotope,” Strontinum-90, which is less hazardous than the Plutonium-238 isotopes used in similar systems.

The award comes as the Pentagon grapples with increased demand and use of drone systems

that have to be charged and the persistent need for more power generation on the battlefield.

“Over the next 18 months, the program will focus on reducing technical risk, testing system performance under realistic conditions, and generating the data needed to inform future development and transition pathways,” a PNNL official wrote in a statement to Defense One. “Key challenges include improving energy conversion efficiency, validating long-term reliability, managing radiation effects, and ensuring safe, secure handling and deployment.”

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Does Space Force have enough lawyers for tomorrow’s wars? Senators want to know

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:45:28 -0400

As Space Force leaders push for more orbital warfighting capabilities and even potential moon operations, senators want to make sure they have enough space-focused military lawyers for future conflicts.

The Defense Department would be required to assess its “space law requirements” to face rising threats and examine “options for establishing a dedicated legal organization within the Air Force, Space Force, or Space Command,” under the Senate Armed Service Committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, released last month.

“The committee recognizes that operational demands in the space domain have grown, including reliance on commercial integration, allied and partner cooperation, and dual-use

technologies,” says the SASC’s NDAA report. “The committee is concerned that current legal, policy, and institutional structures within the Department of Defense may not have kept pace with the complexity of space operations.”

The newest military service branch is aiming to increase its budget, double its troop strength, and boost its role in operations such as those in Venezuela and the war in Iran. Advocates for the Space Force talk about extending its reach to the Moon’s orbit—and maybe even putting troops on the lunar surface.

Senators said that lawyers well-versed in outer space will be needed for those complex missions.

“The U.S. Space Force lacks its own legal corps, formalized training pipeline, or enduring mechanism to develop a specialized space law expertise,” the SASC reporting language reads. “The growing complexity of international space law, civil-military partnerships, commercial integration, dual-use technologies, and industrial base considerations require enhanced, domain-specific legal capacity.”

It’s time to reconvene the JAG-related discussions that fizzled out as the Space Force was being formed, said Aaron Brynildson, a University of Mississippi law professor and retired Air Force judge advocate general. Currently, the service shares uniformed lawyers with the Air Force. Now, he sees creating a space-specific JAG corps as essential for future operations.

“Space is going to be the most important domain in the next 20 years, and it's the one domain where I think U.S. dominance isn't guaranteed,” Brynildson said. “If you're going to grow the Space Force from 6,500 people to 20,000 in the next couple of decades, you need to treat it like a real branch, and part of that is having their own JAGs advise on domain-specific space warfare.”

In April, the Space Force identified legal maneuvering from China and Russia as a major concern for space operations.

“China and Russia have long used international and domestic legal frameworks and regulatory mechanisms to degrade their opponents’ capabilities, weaken opposing coalitions, and obtain international sympathy and support from third parties,” reads the ambitious “Future Operating Environment 2040” document, which examined growing space threats. “With international space law having remained essentially unchanged since the 1960s and 1970s, when the four foundational United Nations treaties were established, lawfare presents an asymmetric approach to restricting U.S. freedom of action in the space domain.”

The SASC NDAA calls for the chief of space operations, the Air Force secretary, the head of Space Command, and the Defense Legal Services Agency to examine “current and projected requirements for space law expertise” and to submit a report to the Senate and House Armed Services Committees by Dec. 1

Lawmakers want to know how many legal personnel currently support space operations, any gaps in legal readiness related to international space law, options for establishing a dedicated space legal organization, the requirements for advanced domain-specific legal education, and opportunities for academic and research partnerships relevant to “national security space operations.”

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Trump says Pulte can declassify ‘whatever’ he wants, sparking fears of exposing intelligence secrets

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:00:00 -0400

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that acting spy chief Bill Pulte can declassify “whatever” records he wants and can declassify “almost everything,” a sweeping green light that has alarmed former intelligence officials, who warn that careless releases could expose sensitive intelligence capabilities and sidestep standard review processes with other spy agencies.

Trump said Wednesday that acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte would only serve in the job for “a month or two months or something,” but has his permission in the interim to release classified records.

“Bill is there just for a fairly short period of time,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “But while he’s there, I said you can declassify whatever you want.”

Under U.S. law, records declassification is usually handled through a structured review process meant to identify national security risks before materials are released. Trump’s comments appear to give Pulte political backing to move aggressively, but they don’t necessarily address how agencies with involvement in any records would be consulted first.

“My guess is that NSA and CIA are losing their minds at the idea of Pulte declassifying a lot of stuff,” said a former official, who, like others for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid and for fear of retribution.

“If Pulte actually runs the traps and considers damage and balances, he won’t declassify much. If he doesn’t care about blowing up cyber exploits, putting foreign relationships at risk, or getting people killed, he could declassify a lot,” the former official added.

Intelligence records are typically reviewed by the agency that produced them before release, particularly if disclosure could expose that agency’s operations, but that consultation might be skipped entirely under Pulte, a second former official said.

An ODNI spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Trump has placed Pulte at the center of a wider declassification push that began under former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who used her role atop ODNI to release records tied to Trump-era grievances over alleged weaponization inside the intelligence community. ODNI’s own public releases under Gabbard included documents the office claimed exposed efforts by intelligence officials to undermine Trump’s 2016 victory and material it said showed a conspiracy used during his 2019 impeachment proceedings.

The declassification push is part of a broader campaign to challenge an intelligence community the president has long accused of working against him. Since the 2016 Russia investigation, Trump and his allies have argued that intelligence and law enforcement shops have used their powers to damage his presidency.

“Trump’s statement alone saying that Pulte has this authority is damaging to national security because any person thinking about volunteering or working with the United States might think twice now, and is more likely to go to the Brits or another service,” a third former official said, adding that if Pulte moves to declassify intelligence involving other agencies, he would be in violation of the law.

The president “just signaled to any person providing intelligence to the United States that their intelligence can be released at Pulte’s whim, thus putting their entire security and safety in jeopardy,” the third former official added.

The White House has assembled a task force collecting thousands of pages of intelligence and law enforcement documents, mostly related to the 2020 election, with plans to declassify some of them in ways that could support Trump’s claims about election irregularities and fraud, NBC News reported Tuesday.

Trump’s declassification plans land against a long-running backdrop of concerns over his administration’s handling of sensitive intelligence. During his first term, officials said he shared highly classified information provided by the Israelis with Russian officials in the Oval Office. Separately, Russian and U.S. news reports later identified Oleg Smolenkov, a former Russian government official living near Washington, as a possible CIA source who had disappeared from Russia in 2017 after allegedly providing information on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s role in the Kremlin’s 2016 election interference efforts.

Trump was later indicted in June 2023 over classified records kept at Mar-a-Lago, including documents prosecutors said involved highly sensitive national defense information, though the case was dismissed and later dropped after he returned to office. Former President Joe Biden also faced a classified documents investigation, but a special counsel declined to charge him on grounds that there was not enough evidence to convict him of “willfully” retaining the sensitive materials.

Pulte’s short tenure has already produced early staffing changes at ODNI that have removed around 50 career and political staff from their roles in the office. The moves follow a broader downsizing campaign started under Gabbard.

The personnel churn included the sidelining of Will Ruger, the deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration. Pulte also brought in a new chief of staff, Christina Norton, who served as Pulte’s chief of staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency and as the RNC’s election integrity director, helping oversee its 2024 poll-watching operation. Her move into ODNI has sharpened concerns that the office could be drawn further into Trump’s push to revisit election-related claims.

Trump’s comments come after he slowed a Senate push last month to quickly confirm Jay Clayton as permanent intelligence chief, allowing Pulte to take over the office on a temporary basis. Trump said Wednesday that Clayton would get his Senate hearing in two weeks.

Clayton’s nomination has drawn a generally positive response from senators. But Democrats have reacted furiously to Pulte’s elevation, and even some Republicans have expressed concern about installing someone with no prior intelligence community experience as acting DNI. The fight has already affected Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a key spying authority that had appeared headed for reauthorization in early June before Democrats balked in protest of moving forward with Pulte at the head of ODNI.

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GenAI.mil records almost 1.7M users, plans new model additions

Alexandra Kelley — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The Department of Defense plans to bring new models onto its internal, department-wide artificial intelligence marketplace and deploy them at higher classification levels, part of its updated procurement policy that aims for “commercial-first” in its deliverables.

Cameron Stanley, the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at DOD told attendees at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday that as GenAI.mil reached a record 1.7 million users—along with the creation of over 100,000 custom agents—even more models will soon be made available on the platform.

“We're looking forward to advancing, getting new models on to GenAI.mil, we're looking at GenAI.mil going to higher classification levels,” Stanley said. “It's just a really exciting time for generative AI in the department.”

GenAI.mil already hosts capabilities from SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, Oracle, and Amazon Web Services that are available at Impact Level 6 and 7, as the Pentagon announced in May.

OpenAI confirmed in mid-June that its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, will be eligible for controlled, unclassified information through GenAI.mil in July.

One major use of AI for the DOD has been to aggregate data for warfighters, resulting in faster decision-making. While Stanley said that “well-trained” soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardians and marines traditionally make these critical military decisions, AI is helpful in parsing through large volumes of data quickly

“Human cognition is just not going to be able to keep up in a lot of battlefields,” he said. “So what we've done—very successfully—is identify ways where we can accelerate certain identification of the right pieces of data or information in order to make that better decision.”

Stanley clarified that the addition of agentic tools to support analytics is deliberate, and features “very tight guardrails” to accelerate the analyses that he estimates would take two to three human analysts operating in disparate systems to identify.

“So we go from—instead of having six or seven systems we have to go across in order to make that decision—we're now doing it instantaneously, or nearly instantaneously, with humans appropriately managing the entire workload process and actioning it from the same system that we identified the decision from,” he said.

The goal of Stanley’s office, he said, is to be a “commercial-first organization.”

“We're trying to put the vendor next to the warfighter and have the vendor have one goal, one job, that's it, and that is to deliver exactly what the warfighter’s needs are,” Stanley said. “What we do is we create the environment with the right tools and the right environments with the right security in place with the right contracts in place.”

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Under new management: the Pentagon’s autonomous systems get new oversight

Lauren C. Williams — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 21:10:48 -0400

All of the Pentagon’s drone and counterdrone efforts for air, land, and sea will now fall under a new organization and director who will report to the deputy defense secretary, according to a memo released Wednesday.

“Unmanned and autonomous systems are a strategic priority” and “essential to maintaining decisive military advantage,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a memo dated June 29 that was released Wednesday.

The new czar, called the direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned offensive and defensive systems, or DRPM-UxS, will oversee all the Pentagon’s unmanned and autonomous initiatives, including the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, plus efforts under the Defense Innovation Unit, military departments, and components.

Leaders of JIATF-401 and DAWG will be “dual-hatted as elements under the DRPM-UxS,” whose director will steer “all missions, functions, and associated programmatic funding lines currently assigned,” effective immediately, the memo states.

DIU will be the Pentagon’s primary liaison with commercial companies for all “unmanned and autonomous systems programs within the DRPM-UxS portfolio,” the memo states. The DRPM will also serve as the head of the sUAS Industrial Base Working Group.

The move mimics one the Air Force made late last year when it collapsed several of its largest programs, from the B-21 to Sentinel and Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, under the direct reporting portfolio manager for critical major weapons systems role.

That change followed the Pentagon’s acquisitions overhaul and put Air Force Gen. Dale White in the Senate-confirmed seat. Air Force officials have said the new role has helped get programs back on track, such as the troubled Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program, which triggered a Nunn-McCurdy Act review in 2024 due to massive cost overruns.

It’s unclear whether the DRPM for unmanned systems will require Senate confirmation, or who will fill the position.

The new DRPM also comes as the Pentagon accelerates plans to use drones across the services to keep up with modern warfare uses, and as lawmakers propose an all-robotics combatant command.

The reorganization aims to streamline and speed up how the Pentagon and military services buy, develop, and field unmanned systems, the memo suggests.

For example, the DRPM would also be responsible for existing and future marketplaces where drones and counterdrone systems can be bought—similar to the ones operated by the Army and Navy. New marketplaces can only be created with DRPM-UxS approval, the memo states.

Some of the first tasks the DRPM for unmanned and related systems would take on:

Hiring for management, legal counsel, IT, contracting, and other roles;
Creating an organization chart delineating responsibilities and authorities across the portfolio;
Outlining all military service and component programs that would fall under the new portfolio “to include cost, schedule, resourcing, personnel, industry performance, and operational impacts;”
Developing an implementation plan; and
Providing regular progress and program updates to the deputy defense secretary.

The memo also creates an executive board chaired by the Pentagon’s no. 2, along with the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, military department heads, and defense undersecretaries for acquisition and research and engineering as members.

Thomas Novelly contributed to this report.

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Defense Business Brief: A radar-maker’s answer to the drone boom; the Army’s private capital appetite; One lawmaker’s caution for contractors

Lauren C. Williams — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:55:23 -0400

WASHINGTON—The counterdrone industry is booming. So to keep up with—and anticipate—demands, radar-maker Echodyne wants to make 30,000 units a year by early 2028.

The company, which is headquartered in Washington state, began building out a new facility near Seattle earlier this year and plans to have it up and running in July. The $40 million plant is expected to ultimately produce at least 30,000 radars a year—an approximate five-fold increase.

“Our orders are far exceeding our production capacity, which is why we've launched into this new manufacturing facility,” said Eben Frankenberg, the company’s CEO. “The whole counterdrone problem today is that you have this massive number of cheap lethal drones, and you need a massive number of cheap lethal counterdrone systems to defend against those. And so, people want high-performance radars that are cost effective and can be deployed at a big scale, so that's what we're doing.”

Echodyne’s radars can be found on all kinds of counter-UAS systems that can be affixed to combat vehicles, ships, and other devices across the defense industry.

Construction timelines, which slated the facility to be fully built by 2028, have been sped up by about a year to meet and keep pace with future demand, Frankenberg said. There’s a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new plant next week.

“We had a multi-year plan for the build up of the facility, and we're moving all that forward. So we originally had a build out in ‘26, ‘27, ‘28—and now we're doing all of [planned] ‘26 and ‘27 build out this year,” he said.

The facility will support about 200 employees and Echodyne’s operations business, including supply chain manufacturing.

By 2028, the facility should be producing tens of thousands of radars annually. And could be the “blueprint” for future plants.

“We're shipping lots of radars to Europe. We're also shipping radars to Southeast Asia, India,” Frankenberg said. “And we're seeing just demand increase globally. So, this factory, this new facility represents what we think we need from a capacity perspective in the coming few years. But the other nice thing is it gives us a blueprint to potentially open in future locations,” including internationally.

Welcome

The Army’s appetite for private capital. When asked (by me) if the service is considering public-private arrangements to build innovation centers or next-gen manufacturing facilities, Lynda Armer, the executive director of Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal said:

“Yes, that certainly would be an opportunity that the Army is interested in: companies coming in and building new capability within our [Organic Industrial Base] footprint, and then utilizing our workforce training, our workforce upskilling,” she told reporters following the Association of the U.S. Army’s acquisition and contracting event June 25.
“What we don't want is to be stuck in the 1940s. That's when most of our facilities were stood up, and they've been modernized to a small extent over time. In some cases, we might have new lines and new buildings, but we still have 1940s infrastructure that we're trying to modernize.”
Some context for the question: The Navy has inked similar arrangements near its Naval Surface Warfare Centers in Crane, Ind., and Indian Head, Md. The Pentagon’s industrial base policy chief has also suggested more private investment in the OIB.
“They don't have to go find green space and start from scratch. We have infrastructure there, but if they can add to that, modernize it, give us new capabilities and new training, that's a benefit for both sides,” Armer said. “It continues to grow our organic industrial base, and so we don't become stagnant, and we keep up with the speed at which our requirements and technology are changing.”

BONUS: The Army’s venture-capital style office FUZE is planning to release an annual report later this year, said FUZE’s private capital integrator, Lt. Col. Sam Spencer-Pittman.

The FUZE office gets about $750 million a year—merging existing Army funding lines, including about $420 million from SBIR/STTR and about $270 million for its Tech Maturation Program.
The goal: “Connect companies to capital,” Spencer-Pittman told reporters at the AUSA event. “We don't tell these private industry or the venture capital guys…[that] we want this office to work with this company. It's more, ‘hey, these companies are seeking capital. If this works for your investment portfolio or thesis, call Bill’…and see what works out.”
FUZE has only been around for about a year but is “on a glide path and moving fast,” Spencer-Pittman said.
An upcoming report is expected to detail what the office has achieved in its first year.

New Congress, new contract scrutiny? Midterms are around the corner, which means Congress could look very different in January. That could also mean more questions or probes around the Pentagon’s use of rapid acquisition tools, said Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va, who sits on the House Committee for Government Oversight.

“I'm asked a lot [about] what will next year look like if Democrats are in control of at least the House. And I say this to the contractors in my district every day: There will be very heavy scrutiny of the contracting practices in this administration—both in DOD [and] DHS, especially, and other agencies. And those companies that continue to do things by the book the way that they did before this administration, maybe they lost some business in the last couple years, but they're going to be happy that they continue to do things by the book,” Walkinshaw said, answering my question in an interview with the GovExec news team on Monday.
“Those companies that didn't…and the contracts they receive are going to face a lot of scrutiny.”
A related aside: Pentagon testing and evaluation officials raised concerns that military departments could use the middle-tier acquisition pathway to circumvent certain live-fire testing requirements, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slashed staff last year in the office of the director, operational test and evaluation, which oversees weapons testing. The GAO is studying the effects of the reorganization.

Making moves + other news

The Atlantic is diving into the second Trump administration’s use of private Signal chats— after Hegseth’s ‘war plans’ scandal.
Anduril is meshing its mobile command post with a portable Amazon data center, the companies announced Tuesday. If bought and used, that could mean more AI use and more ISR in environments where connectivity is sparse.
Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andressen joins the Pentagon’s policy advisory board. His firm a16z backs several contract-winning startups, including Anduril, Castelion, Hadrian, Saronic, Shield AI, Skydio, and SpaceX. Andressen joins Michael Pillsbury, who previously chaired the board in 2020.
The Pentagon surreptitiously hosted several up-and-coming munitions makers to talk about production, Breaking Defense reported.
Firefly Aerospace won a $144 million NASA contract and is nearing the final stages of launchpad construction at the SSC Space Esrange Space Center in Sweden. The first launch is expected in 2028.

Correction: Echodyne wants to complete its facility build out for increased production by early 2028.

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Philippine exercise showcased Marine Littoral Regiment’s growth

Jennifer Hlad — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 09:15:26 -0400

Exercise Balikatan was “a real strategic victory” that showed how far the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment has come, its commander said.

“There's a lot more growth to happen, there's a lot more work. But this was a pretty good year to kind of showcase something that went from concept to a real capability that certainly the joint force and the combined force is appreciative of,” Col. Gabe Diana told Defense One by phone from the Philippines, where he was preparing for exercise Kamandag.

During Balikatan in May, “3rd MLR basically did exactly what it was designed to do, and that’s serve as a forward distributed stand-in force that’s capable of then integrating joint and combined combat power inside of a strategically significant maritime area here.”

The Hawaii-based 3rd MLR was activated in 2022 as the first unit of its kind. The Corps in 2023 transitioned a unit in Okinawa into the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment and last year scrapped plans for an additional MLR. The units specialize in warfare in the shallow waters near the shore and were designed for operations in the Indo-Pacific.

During Balikatan, the 3rd MLR served as mission commander for the joint task force maritime strike, Diana said, which included U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps capabilities as well as troops from the Philippines, Japan, and Canada.

“We were able to synchronize sensors, intelligence, aviation, maneuver formations, long-range precision fires, from across the combined joint force,” he said. “I think for us, I think the key takeaway here is that we were able to operationalize a lot of the stuff that the commandant is talking about with ‘any sensor, any shooter.’”

The regiment also served as mission commander for maritime key terrain security operations in the northern part of the Philippines, and as mission commander for the integrated air missile defense during Balikatan.

Even getting from Hawaii to the Philippines quickly was a learning opportunity, Diana said.

“There were challenges, but it really replicated some of the fog and friction that you would see if you had to close the force in crisis,” he said. “So it was just an excellent rep, to have to close in a very short amount of time, and then integrate into a larger combined joint architecture, and then get right into the fight.”

And while the regiment demonstrated growth, Diana said the exercise was not a “spike the football” moment. Rather, he said, it was a “demonstration of capability… a data point that says, ‘yes, we can do these things,’ and we’ll continue to mature those capabilities.”

“This is a journey, not a destination,” he added.

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Marines from multiple nations train together for potential future conflict

Jennifer Hlad — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 07:50:15 -0400

MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII—On rifle ranges inside a volcanic crater, and in an urban training facility built to train for deployments to Iraq, Marines from several different countries spent the weekend alongside their U.S. counterparts, shooting rifles, clearing rooms, and practicing other tactical skills they’ll need if called to war.

The live-fire drills were part of the ongoing Exercise Rim of the Pacific, a massive naval exercise that this year brought together 30 countries with the theme “partners: integrated and prepared.”

Working together in this way “sets the foundation for how we actually operate in the world today, and how we might fight—we don’t fight alone,” U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. Valerie Jackson told Defense One amid the staccato rifle shots of Mexican and South Korean marines training nearby. “This is all about alliances and partnerships, and when a crisis comes, you don’t want the first time working with someone to be when you’re facing a very determined adversary…. When a crisis hits, you have to know that the person to your left and your right has the same level of competency and understanding of the operational environment.”

The U.S. Marines here and at the urban training facility at Marine Corps Training Area Bellows are from 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, the ground combat element of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Lt. Col. Colin Elsasser, commander of 2/7, said the training included different skill sets from jungle survival to how to approach “complex urban environments.” Over the course of a week, they will train on the “entire inventory of infantry weapons,” he said.

Col. Robb McDonald, commander of the 15th MEU, said things had gone smoothly so far and that the U.S. Marines were learning from the other marines, and vice versa.

“We see this as an opportunity to integrate and learn from each other,” he said. RIMPAC is “a showcase to that interoperability that we’re able to achieve.”

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Anduril and Amazon’s mobile data center venture aims to bring edge computing to the frontlines

Thomas Novelly — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:48:49 -0400

Amazon Web Services and Anduril are combining the tech giant’s on-site cloud computers and the defense contractor’s mobile data center to bring edge computing to the frontlines. Both have already been used during the Iran war.

Anduril’s containerized command and data center, Menace-I, can now be outfitted with Amazon Web Services’s Outpost, the two companies announced Tuesday. With two people, the mobile data center “can stand up in under 10 minutes and moves by truck, rail, airlift, or helicopter sling load,” the company said in a press release.

“Whether it's an intelligence analyst in the field or whether it's a flightline operator, someone who's literally trying to get information off of the system, the sensor, and making a meaningful decision about it. What's really different, and what we're seeing is this ruggedized edge,” said Liz Martin, AWS’ global defense managing director and general manager. “It takes very many shapes.”

During a panel at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, an Anduril company executive told reporters that Menace-I had been used during Operation Epic Fury and the containerized command center has been deployed with the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy. AWS Outpost has also been deployed in the region, but in protected structures, Martin said. Combining the two together would allow the U.S. military and other defense buyers to put cloud computing as close to the battlefield action as possible and cut down on the time it takes to transfer data in combat.

On Tuesday, AWS named the California-based contractor its “preferred edge provider” for defense customers.

“We're bringing that cloud capability, we're bringing it down to the edge, and then we're enabling you to run applications that may exist in the cloud down at the edge to provide data down at the edge, or to send things from the edge up to the cloud, where they can be analyzed,” said Tom Keane, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering. “What we're doing is we're providing capabilities for commanders that today they either don't have or are simply too expensive and too difficult for them to practically field and use in real world.”

Anduril’s containerized command center was first launched in 2022. Last year, U.S. Marines strapped a Menace-I onto a CH-53K King Stallion helicopter for transport.

It’s not clear how survivable the shipping container data center would be on the battlefield. During Operation Epic Fury, six U.S. Army reservists were killed when a makeshift operations center fortified by concrete walls was hit in an Iranian attack.

“I think part of what we're seeing in the world right now is a desire to be distributing many systems, as opposed to a singular, highly resilient system,” Keane said. “The idea of distribution as a mechanism for fault tolerance, having many, is becoming increasingly important, is what we're hearing from our customers, as opposed to having a singular thing that is immensely and infinitely robust.”

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AWS launches Secret Cloud for industry’s classified workloads

Frank Konkel — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:21:00 -0400

Amazon Web Services on Tuesday announced a new cloud offering designed to run contractor-owned classified workloads, a first for the defense industrial base and select research institutions that historically have had to build and maintain costly on-premesis infrastructure to support classified programs.

The AWS Secret Cloud for Industry, or ASCI, is designed to reduce the provision time for classified environments up to the Secret classification level from months to days, according to Dave Levy, vice president of AWS Public Sector. The cloud is designed for cleared U.S. defense contractors, research institutions, and other organizations in the National Industrial Security Program.

"America's defense industrial base builds the capabilities that keep this nation safe, and it's time they have the tools to match the urgency of the mission," Levy said. "AWS Secret Cloud for Industry puts the full power of cloud computing and AI directly into the hands of the engineers and scientists working on our most sensitive programs. Now, the defense industrial base can innovate at the speed the moment demands, using the same classified infrastructure trusted by the Department of War.”

AWS Secret Cloud for Industry now holds a provisional authorization at the Impact Level 6, or IL6—the standard for Secret-classified information—and leverages the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency compliance framework that cleared contractors and personnel already use for on-premesis classified systems to the cloud.

Northrop Grumman is the first defense contractor to deploy classified workloads on ASCI. Without the purpose-built cloud, their initial workload in the AWS Secret-East Region would have taken months.

“Migrating our critical classified programs to the AWS Secret Cloud for Industry solution fundamentally changes how we develop and scale sensitive programs at speed to deliver when it matters most,” Drew Barnes, vice president of IT infrastructure and operations at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement.

In a press call with reporters in advance of the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C., Levy said there has been “a lot of demand for a solution like this for a long time.”

"I’m excited that we, along with the government and the DIB, have been able to figure it out,” said Levy, crediting the Defense Information Systems Agency and DCSA for their partnership in the yearslong effort.

During a keynote speech at AWS Summit, Levy also announced the ASCI Accelerator Initiative, providing up to $20 million to qualified DIB contractors, federally funded research and development centers, independent software vendors and system integrators. Levy said the funding will help select organizations migrate classified workloads to the cloud and improve mission outcomes.

That announcement follows a $50 billion investment the company made in November to improve AI and supercomputing infrastructure for U.S. federal agencies.

“We're also investing up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing infrastructure across all GovCloud, secret and top-secret regions,” Levy said. “The goal is to provide 1.3 gigawatts of AI capacity, making a generational commitment to the future of government that government runs on secure, intelligent cloud.”

A 15-year focus on government

AWS launched AWS GovCloud (US-West) — the first cloud infrastructure designed for government customers—in 2011, providing many federal agencies with their first opportunity to shift workloads to the cloud. In 2013, AWS inked a groundbreaking $600 million contract, C2S, with the CIA to supply commercial cloud services to all 18 intelligence agencies.

The cloud provider later launched its first secret cloud region in 2017. It also operates multiple top-secret regions and has been awarded multiple major, multi-billion dollar contracts, including the C2E contract from the intelligence community, as well as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract for the Defense Department and the National Security Agency’s “Wild and Stormy” contract. Today, nearly all U.S. federal agencies are AWS customers in some capacity, along with some 15,000 government agencies across the globe.

Last August, AWS worked with the General Services Administration—through its OneGov program—to discount $1 billion worth of its software to customers across the federal government through December 2028. The discounts have provided dividends for AWS.

“We’ve seen not just new agencies [coming to AWS], but agencies already doing business with us accelerate their modernization efforts through the OneGov agreement with GSA,” Levy said in an interview Tuesday.

More investment in the U.S. intelligence community

Following AWS’ OneGov deal, the company engaged the U.S. intelligence community by proposing a similar effort, according to Levy.AWS on Tuesday announced the result of that engagement: an investment of up to $1 billion in cloud credits to help the 18 agencies within the U.S. intelligence community through October 2030 to modernize their IT systems.

“It’s like GSA OneGov, but for the IC,” Levy said. “The same $1 billion opportunity we put forth for OneGov, we wanted to do the same thing for the IC.”

Called the Intelligence Community Accelerated Modernization Framework, or ICAMF, the program makes use of AWS’ existing C2E contract with the U.S. intelligence community to provide credits for qualified workloads “to accelerate cloud migration and modernization” across the IC, according to David Appel, vice president of global government at AWS.

In a statement, Appel said “outcome-based credits based on post-migration value dramatically lower the financial barrier to moving to the cloud.” In addition, he said the investment would accelerate migration timelines, enable mission-critical capabilities and align investment with outcomes.

“The ICAMF supports the Intelligence Community's strategic priorities to modernize IT infrastructure, improve data interoperability, and adopt advanced technologies at pace with evolving threats,” Appel said. “The program enables agencies to leverage the most advanced cloud capabilities while achieving meaningful cost efficiencies—delivering improved mission outcomes with the speed and agility that national security demands.”

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Lawmaker warns of administration’s ‘fetishization’ of Silicon Valley startups

Alexandra Kelley, Ross Wilkers, Edward Graham, and David DiMolfetta — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:15:00 -0400

Rep. James Walkinshaw has big plans for the federal government’s sprawling tech stack, including scrutinizing the contracting practices of the current administration.

In an extensive sit-down interview with Nextgov/FCW and other GovExec reporters, the Democratic congressman from Virginia said that he wants to help rebuild the federal government’s capacity after sweeping disruption carried out by the Department of Government Efficiency—from strengthening civil service protections and tech talent pipelines to tightening cybersecurity guardrails on AI and reviving oversight tools like the FITARA scorecard and FedRAMP.

“I’m starting to talk to my colleagues about a comprehensive and robust agenda to rebuild the capacity of the federal government, an American capacity agenda, for lack of a better term,” he said in the Monday interview.

“We’re obviously in this post-DOGE era, where, in my view, a lot of damage has been done, 300,000 federal workers lost,” he said, adding that many of the staff lost at offices across the federal enterprise were those experienced with technology and understood how their agencies worked.

His plan, he added, is focused around three pillars—talent, technology and delivery—that center on rebuilding a battered federal workforce, speeding secure AI and tech modernization, and pushing agencies to measure success by whether people actually receive services and mission tools on time, not just whether they satisfy oversight checklists.

Contractor oversight

Walkinshaw said that if Democrats take the House majority in this year’s midterms, there will be “heavy scrutiny of the contracting practices” of the current Trump administration. Contracts with the Defense and Homeland Security departments would fall under that purview, he said.

So too would any contractors who donated to the White House ballroom renovation and other ancillary projects pushed by the Trump administration, he added.

“Those companies that continued to do things by the book, the way that they did before this administration, maybe they lost some business in the last couple years, but they're going to be happy that they continued to do things by the book,” Walkinshaw said. “Those that played by the Trump rules … those companies and the contracts they received are going to face a lot of scrutiny.”

Watchdog groups and Democrats have raised questions of late about whether companies with federal business interests are helping bankroll Trump-backed projects while also receiving or seeking government work. The White House ballroom project has become a particular flashpoint, after several reports and analyses tied some donors to major federal contractors and raised concerns about donor anonymity, conflict-of-interest safeguards and the use of public funds.

On defense contracting, Walkinshaw also took aim at what he called the Trump administration’s “fetishization” of Silicon Valley firms, saying he fears the current White House has leaned too much into startup culture to solve defense tech problems that also require sustained oversight, procurement standards and basic IT management.

“I do worry that with this administration, especially, there might be too much of a fetishization of a certain kind of company, the Silicon Valley-based startup,” he said.

The comments reflect a broader debate amid the Trump 2.0 push to swiftly bring more commercial technology firms into national security work, particularly as both defense and civilian agencies look to buy software, AI tools and other evolving technologies more quickly.

Supporters have seen that shift as a necessary challenge to slow-moving acquisition systems and legacy prime contractors. Critics, however, warn that speed and startup culture are not substitutes for procurement safeguards, cybersecurity requirements, long-term maintenance and oversight of how those tools are actually used.

Cybersecurity

Walkinshaw noted that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stands as a prime example of the Trump administration making sweeping cuts and then later having to reverse course. The agency’s workforce has been significantly cut over the past year under efficiency-driven efforts and other prevailing GOP misgivings about the cyberdefense shop.

CISA acting director Nick Andersen recently said the agency intends to hire around 330 people in the coming months. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the cyber unit likely needs around 600 hires and that it might take a year to bring them on.

But the congressman argued restaffing will be more difficult than many anticipate.

“I don’t think that there’s a lot of high-level introspection at the highest levels of these agencies about the negative impacts,” he said. Staffing up at CISA again is a “very difficult thing to do after you’ve just attacked people, abused them, denigrated their service, and then said ‘we want you to want to come back.’”

Cybersecurity has long drawn bipartisan support in Washington, but CISA has become a recurring target of Republican scrutiny over its past work countering election-related disinformation. Since last year, Trump officials have sought to “refocus” the agency’s mission, arguing that CISA had strayed too far from its core mission set.

On other government cyber matters, Walkinshaw said he’s especially concerned about shadow IT — tech and AI tools used without management approval — inside federal agencies, and he plans to introduce amendments in upcoming appropriations measures that would address basic “blocking and tackling” cyberdefense, which he says is “even more important now in an advanced AI world.”

He is also planning amendments focused on event logging—digital records that show what happened on a system and when—to “try to get agencies to actually follow the law and log those cyber incidents when they occur.”

Walkinshaw, along with Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., introduced legislation on June 25 that would require the Department of Homeland Security to provide lawmakers with a report on identified gaps that prevent the agency from fully meeting event logging requirements.

FITARA scorecard

Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., who died last year, was one of the original sponsors of the 2014 Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, or FITARA, meant to help the federal government better onboard and use new technologies. Walkinshaw previously spent over a decade working as the chief of staff for Connolly, and he was elected last September to finish the rest of Connolly’s term.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in collaboration with the Government Accountability Office, released its first FITARA scorecard in November 2015 to grade agencies’ tech modernization and oversight efforts on an A to F scale. Since then, the biannual scorecard has served as an oversight mechanism for many agencies, although the most recent iteration of the scorecard was released back in September 2024.

Walkinshaw said the committee’s current Republican leadership “has kind of walked away” from releasing the scorecard, citing the lack of hearings held by the Cybersecurity, Information Technology and Government Innovation Subcommittee panel, in particular. He attributed this to the GOP majority’s desire to avoid subpoena fights over multiple Trump-era controversies.

But that public grading system is important, Walkinshaw stressed, because “it’s necessary and valuable to have an outside forcing mechanism to push for change and innovation.”

The rapid pace of technological change, he said, means “there’s an opportunity to incorporate technologies that were not available three years ago or five years ago that could make many of our functions more effective and more efficient, but if it’s not done thoughtfully and intentionally, it could also go horribly, horribly wrong, and Congress has a huge stake in ensuring that we get it right.”

In addition to resuming the scorecard—something the congressman posited would likely happen if Democrats retake the House in the upcoming midterm elections—Walkinshaw said the current grading scale should be modernized to account for advances in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity threats.

“The question is obviously, ‘how do you develop those metrics in a way that’s objective?’ But I think that scorecard proved to be over time a good forcing mechanism to nudge agencies to modernize,” Walkinshaw said.

When it comes to further AI use across the federal government, Walkinshaw said a grade related to the adoption of the capabilities could also be helpful for better understanding if agencies are effectively leveraging the technologies and not locking themselves into potentially expensive programs, noting that it is “very hard to unwind after you’ve committed to it.”

FedRAMP modernization

Walkinshaw noted that the government’s cloud security assessment and authorization initiative—the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP—will need to be reauthorized next year. GSA is in the process of rolling out a FedRAMP 20x initiative to modernize the authorization process for cloud providers.

He said continuing the program is “100% necessary”—a process he expects to be bipartisan—and added that “if it’s not reauthorized, any administration could basically shut down the program, and then we go back to every cloud provider for every service for every agency starting their [authorization to operate] process from scratch.”

He similarly expressed concerns about the program’s long-term financial backing, pointing out that it is supported through the General Services Administration’s Federal Citizen Services Fund, which means “it’s basically what GSA decides, so it doesn’t really have stable funding.”

He also said he believes “there should be in statute stronger requirements for the FedRAMP office to engage with industry and with the public,” noting that “they do it right now but it’s been sporadic over the years.” And streamlining agency adoption of cloud services, he added, is another area where he believes the program can be tweaked for the better.

Walkinshaw noted that providers still need to receive an ATO from agencies after receiving FedRAMP authorization and said “those agencies need to retain some responsibility for what’s operating on their networks,” but added that “I’d like to explore ways to close that gap, because I still hear from businesses that feel like they’re redoing some of the work that they did during their FedRAMP certification when they’re going to get their ATO at their at their agency.”

AI legislation forecast

Despite Reps. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Lori Trahan, D-N.Y., releasing a discussion draft of AI legislation earlier this month that would, among other things, preempt state AI laws, Walkinshaw said that finalization of a national AI regulatory framework is unlikely until early next year.

“I don’t think you’ll see traction on any kind of large AI package before the election,” he said. “I think both sides are in a kind of ‘wait-and-see’ mode.”

Walkinshaw added that House Republicans are broadly happy to let the White House take the lead on developing and disseminating an AI regulatory framework, and that Democrats are not confident they can get a satisfactory bill passed at this time.

“In terms of big picture packages, it’s going to be next year,” he said. “Then the question will be, ‘If Democrats are in control of Congress, is there a compromise between what we develop––which will come out of our commission––and what the president will be willing to sign?’”

Among potential provisions that could make it into national AI regulation, he added, standards export controls placed on AI products could become a notable feature, given the federal government’s recent decision to restrict the release of certain Anthropic products, following conflict over the company’s decision to limit how its products could be used.

“Companies like Anthropic deserve to have some certainty as to what the process is going to be, so they can make investments, and the American people deserve some sense that there’s a process to ensure safety with respect to advanced models, so hopefully we’ll get there early next year,” Walkinshaw said.

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Pentagon recruiting new tech talent for AI implementation

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:04:38 -0400

The Pentagon on Tuesday announced a new campaign to recruit hundreds of young programmers for AI and engineering challenges, according to an advance notice seen by Defense One.

“War Force is a call to action for patriotic forward-deployed engineers who want to serve their country and the warfighter,” Defense Department CTO Emil Michael said in a statement viewed by Defense One.

Successful applicants, referred to in this OPM job listing for a “forward deployed engineer(s),” will work for two-year stints to implement the department’s AI Acceleration Strategy as well as other critical IT needs. Most of the positions will be based in Washington, D.C., and candidates should be able to hold a top-secret clearance.

The “War Force” is a part of a broader push between the White House and participating tech companies to bring early-stage software talent into the federal government, an effort dubbed “Tech Force.”

Those selected to participate will work with a variety of teams on implementing frontier AI, machine learning, automation, scaling new software tools and solving other critical IT needs across the military and the Department.

War Force recruits will “join a cohort of individuals that receive leadership training, get exposure to America's top technology CEOs and gain unparalleled exposure to policymaking and national-scale impact,” according to the listing. “This may include CEO fireside chats, networking events, coding training/certificates, and other opportunities.”

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Pentagon launches ‘War Force’ initiative to onboard tech talent

Edward Graham — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:45:00 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management and the Pentagon jointly announced the launch of a new initiative on Tuesday to bring top software engineering talent into the Department of Defense, part of a broader governmentwide push to hire more skilled technologists.

The recruitment effort, called War Force, operates under OPM’s larger Tech Force program. That initiative launched in December 2025 to onboard tech and cybersecurity professionals across federal agencies, although it notably followed Trump administration moves to let go of thousands of tech-focused workers and shutter several innovation-focused units.

OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that War Force “builds on the momentum of Tech Force by connecting outstanding engineers with opportunities to solve complex challenges alongside the War Department.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last September that authorized DOD to use the “secondary title” of War Department — framing that is also reflected in the initiative's name.

OPM said the War Force recruitment effort “will launch with a targeted hiring campaign,” with a focus on bringing in applicants who have experience “deploying and integrating advanced technologies — including frontier AI, machine learning, automation, and data systems — and designing, building, and maintaining reliable software solutions that directly support operational needs on behalf of the American warfighter.” Job applications will be accepted through July 10.

Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said in a statement that the War Force will help with “executing the key tenets of the War Department’s AI Acceleration Strategy.” That guidance was released in January and outlines the department’s plans for rapidly integrating AI capabilities into its operations.

The War Force recruitment effort also comes after DOD announced in April that it was launching a cyber apprenticeship program this summer to bring more skilled personnel into the agency.

During public remarks at the SAP NOW summit in Washington, D.C., last week, Pentagon Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies said the apprenticeship program “has already generated more than 70,000 inquiries,” despite the effort not officially launching until July.

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