Defense One - All Content

Space Force needs to prepare for an ‘in-person’ moon conflict with China, new report argues

Thomas Novelly — Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0400

The Space Force should prepare to put active-duty troops on the moon and on space stations to counter China’s lunar and military ambitions, a new research paper argues.

The Mitchell Institute’s paper, published Thursday, calls for the Space Force to prioritize the creation of a “human spaceflight” program and redefine federal, active-duty Title 10 orders to compete against China’s military-focused space initiatives—such as the reported goal of putting its Taikonauts on the moon by 2030. Although Chinese officials as recently as last month have said the country believes in the “peaceful use” of space, the paper claims future “competition for control of lunar resources and territory will likely reach a tipping point” and the U.S. military must be prepared.

“With a potential ‘in person’ lunar conflict with China as the contextual touchstone, the U.S. must begin a pragmatic multi-decade effort, leveraging its Space Test Course (STC), as well as partnerships with NASA and commercial space companies, to deliver the skills, tools, and concepts needed for future Title 10 activities to enforce U.S. spacepower-enabling norms and standards,” the report said. “These efforts will require additional funding from Congress for both U.S. Space Force human spaceflight opportunities and residencies at commercial space stations.”

The 22-page policy report calls for blurring the long-standing boundaries between space exploration and militarized operations by allowing Title 10 active-duty federal orders to include “space and lunar habitation” and “warfighting authorities and a national defense mindset in the advancement of human spaceflight.” The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S. and China are parties to, calls for the governments to use the moon and other planets for “peaceful purposes” and forbids military bases, testing, and maneuvers. Kyle Pumroy, a retired Space Force colonel and the paper’s author, called for pushing back against those norms.

“Although The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) prohibits claims of lunar sovereignty and militarizing the moon, China’s habitation plans are closely aligned with their military and are inconsistent with the provisions,” the report said. “Moreover, China’s record of territorial aggression and ignoring treaty agreements must drive a strategic vision unconstrained by the OST. While upholding the OST should be the United States’ desire and priority, pragmatically, it must prepare otherwise.”

Pumory said during a webinar Wednesday that guardians on the moon wouldn’t be “necessarily a violation of outer space treaty” if they weren’t conducting maneuvers, but he also recognized that the treaty would need to be updated.

“I think at that point, once we have military members on the moon. Again, the treaty would need to be updated, because if one side does it and we say ‘well, you're violating the treaty, and we're not going to do that’ we're just setting ourselves up for disappointment,” Pumroy said. “So I don't think it's a violation to send them there, but whether we're violating the Outer Space Treaty or not is an important fact, but the greater need is for a modernized Outer Space Treaty that appreciates a lunar economy and mining resources from the moon, and mining ice from the moon, and using the moon as a launch pad to get to Mars and other locations.”

Victoria Samson, the Secure World Foundation’s chief director of space security and stability, said the Mitchell Institute’s report is an example of how the norms of space exploration and militarized operations are being challenged.

“It used to almost be a separation of church and state between the two,” Samson said. “Now, that line is being blurred, and I think it’s more a matter of, we have an administration that is supportive of a very active and expanding Space Force.”

The Mitchell Institute teased the idea of putting guardians in space last year. In a report titled “A Broader Look at Dynamic Space Operations,” the authors pitched the idea of putting troops on critical Space Force assets, to raise the stakes if an enemy decides to strike and to allow for flexibility and responsiveness in high-stakes situations.

The Space Force hasn’t sent any of its uniformed personnel into space for active-duty operations, but it has loaned its officers to NASA’s exploration missions. In 2020, astronaut Mike Hopkins transferred from the Air Force into the Space Force while aboard the International Space Station. In 2024, Space Force Col. Nick Hague commanded NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which lasted 171 days. He was the first active-duty guardian to ever launch into space.

The report also calls for Congress to fund future commercial space station residencies, or even the purchase of “a Space Force-dedicated space station” in future national defense authorization act legislation to help build guardian training and skills on orbit.

“Space station-based operations provide Guardians a trailblazing opportunity for the realistic testing and experimentation of future military concepts,” the report said. “Nothing compares to in-domain, first-hand experience to inform the development of future military requirements. Furthermore, taking this decisive step will send a strong message about the commitment of the United States to maintain space superiority.”

]]>

The Pentagon’s $54 billion bet on autonomous warfare

Anna Miskelley — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:59:41 -0400

The Pentagon announced the Replicator Initiative with fanfare in 2023, aiming to field vast numbers of affordable, expendable drones as a strategic counter to China. However, by 2025, the program was limping along due to congressional criticism over stalled progress and the absence of a permanent institutional home or consistent funding.

The Pentagon officially dissolved Replicator in late 2025, absorbing it into the newly minted Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, or DAWG. Originally allocated a modest $225.9 million in the fiscal year 2026 budget, DAWG was widely expected to be just another iterative defense working group.

But the Trump administration’s FY27 budget request has shattered those expectations. The White House is requesting a staggering $54.6 billion for DAWG—a near 24,000 percent increase in a single fiscal year. Reflecting on the scale of the surge, retired general and former CIA Director David Petraeus noted that DAWG represents the “largest single commitment to autonomous warfare in history.”

This is no longer a pilot program. The Pentagon has stopped treating autonomous warfare like a startup project and is now funding it like a permanent branch of the American military apparatus.

Why did Replicator fail?

The unprecedented scale of DAWG’s budget is a direct response to the limitations that stalled its predecessor.

The Replicator Initiative rushed to procure specific, ready-built drone platforms. However, Replicator’s chosen drones suffered from persistent technical issues, struggled to integrate with existing military command-and-control systems, and were far too expensive and slow to manufacture in the quantity needed.

Furthermore, the Pentagon was paralyzed by its own procurement process. It struggled with up-front vetting, finding that many systems were entirely unfinished or purely conceptual. Perhaps most critically, Replicator failed to procure software able to orchestrate and command massive swarms of different drones.

Compounding these technological hurdles was an institutional homelessness. Because Replicator never possessed its own dedicated line-item budget, defense officials were forced to constantly reprogram. Frustrated by the lack of transparency regarding long-term lifecycle costs, Congress increasingly pushed back.

Managing the $54 billion operational whiplash

DAWG is designed to rectify the past mistakes of the Replicator Initiative, but its sudden financial windfall has only introduced more questions. How does an office that managed $225 million last year suddenly oversee $54.6 billion?

Pushing this massive sum through traditional Pentagon procurement pipelines risks a bottleneck. DAWG simply does not possess the infrastructure (contracting officers, lawyers, program managers etc.) to obligate that volume of capital in a twelve-month cycle. To prevent this, the Pentagon divided DAWG’s funds.

Of the $54.6 billion request, only $1 billion sits in the standard, highly restricted base budget. The remaining $53 billion has been tucked away into a flexible future reconciliation pot. This gives DAWG up to five years to obligate the funds. Instead of being forced to frantically dump billions into obsolete hardware before the fiscal clock runs out, DAWG can instead dole out cash incrementally as autonomous technology matures. To ensure long-term viability, DAWG will emphasize procurement, operations, maintenance, training, and sustainment over the first few years before scaling back to ensure active manufacturing lines while avoiding the risk of overproduction.

Will DAWG be different?

There are some early signs that the institutional shift to DAWG will be different from the Replicator experience. Unlike Replicator, which sat precariously under the Defense Innovation Unit as a pilot program, DAWG is getting more permanent institutional teeth. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently announced the impending creation of a dedicated Sub-Unified Command for Autonomous Warfare. Simultaneously, U.S. Southern Command has established its own autonomous warfare command, which will work closely with DAWG to identify available expertise and capabilities required for operations.

Architecturally, the focus has shifted from hardware to software. Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst describes DAWG as a “pathfinder,” embedded with private tech firms, live-testing “orchestration tools for autonomy” and providing real-time combat feedback. This software-focused mentality is demonstrated by the recent announcement that Shield AI has been tapped to integrate its Hivemind AI pilot software into the military’s new Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS. Unlike Replicator, DAWG has introduced a new divergent priority to develop sophisticated software that can be flashed onto any cheap drone frame.

Yet, lawmakers are starting to raise major red flags. There is a growing anxiety in Congress that the Pentagon’s foundational policy on AI weapons, DoD Directive 3000.09, is completely unequipped for this scale of deployment. The directive mandates “appropriate levels of human judgement,” but when orchestrating thousands of autonomous systems simultaneously, human-in-the-loop oversight becomes a mathematical impossibility. An uncomfortable reality is beginning to emerge: the Pentagon is throwing a military-branch-sized budget at autonomous swarms before deciding on the rules of engagement.

Ultimately, the creation of DAWG represents a structural shift rather than a guaranteed technological revolution. By shifting the ad-hoc, hardware-first approach of the Replicator Initiative to a permanent, software-focused funding line, the Pentagon is attempting to fix a broken acquisition pipeline that has historically been unable to move at the speed of commercial technology.

However, funding and execution are different. DAWG’s ambitious plans still heavily rely on a congressional reconciliation process that faces a complicated and uncertain political path. Even if the $54.6 billion request is approved, the Pentagon must still solve the immense logistical challenge of integrating thousands of autonomous systems into a joint force that lacks established doctrine for swarm warfare.

The Pentagon has clearly signaled where it believes the future of warfare lies. But as DAWG moves from a budget proposal to an operational reality, its success will not be measured by the size of its funding pot, but by whether the military can safely and effectively integrate these algorithmic tools into the reality of modern combat.

]]>

Gabbard to resign as director of national intelligence, citing husband’s health

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 22 May 2026 14:08:00 -0400

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard will resign from her role in the coming weeks, her office confirmed to Nextgov/FCW on Friday.

Gabbard’s husband, Abraham Williams, was “diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, and she is stepping away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an email.

In a Truth Social post that included Gabbard’s resignation note, President Donald Trump said she would be leaving June 30. It marks the fourth major cabinet departure of his second term.

During Gabbard’s roughly 16-month tenure overseeing the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, the former Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate sought to reshape ODNI around Trump’s priorities while facing persistent scrutiny over her past comments on Russia, Syria, Edward Snowden and surveillance authorities. She was narrowly confirmed to the position in February 2025.

In office, Gabbard launched a sweeping restructuring effort aimed at shrinking ODNI, including plans to cut staffing and consolidate or eliminate several offices tied to cyber, foreign influence and intelligence integration functions. Supporters framed the moves as long-overdue reforms, while critics warned they could weaken coordination across the intelligence community.

Gabbard also became a central figure in Trump’s efforts to target former intelligence officials viewed as political adversaries. Last year, she revoked security clearances for dozens of current and former national security officials, accusing some of politicizing intelligence and leaking classified information, which drew sharp criticism from Democrats and former intelligence leaders.

Her tenure was additionally marked by renewed disputes over U.S. intelligence assessments, including intelligence findings involving Venezuela.

Gabbard’s political rise was built in part around opposition to U.S. interventionism and what she called “regime change wars,” a posture that at times appeared increasingly at odds with White House actions involving military operations in Iran and Venezuela.

In March, a Senate hearing highlighted growing tensions between intelligence community assessments of the war in Iran and the administration’s framing of the conflict. It also came a day after the departure of then-aide and National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who said he could not agree with the Trump administration’s premise for the war, which was launched alongside Israel in February.

In the hearing, Gabbard told senators that it’s “not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat” and that the president has authority to make such conclusions.

In a Friday statement, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said his thoughts were with Gabbard and her family.

“Anyone who has watched a loved one go through a serious illness understands the toll it takes, and I wish him strength and hope for a full recovery in the difficult days ahead. I also appreciate her willingness to serve her country in a variety of different roles,” he said.

“The Director of National Intelligence is entrusted with one of the most serious responsibilities in government: providing objective, fact-based intelligence to policymakers and the American people, regardless of politics or pressure from the White House,” added Warner, who often sparred with Gabbard over issues involving her office.

“At a time when the boundaries between verified intelligence and politically convenient claims have too often been blurred, it is critical that the office remain grounded in facts, independence, and the rule of law,” he said.

“I thank Tulsi Gabbard for her service in this administration and in uniform, and I wish her the very best as she supports her husband Abe in his battle with cancer. Please join me in sending them prayers for a full and fast recovery,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., the intelligence committee chairman.

]]>

General Atomics resumes drone-wingman flights after mishap

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 21 May 2026 17:55:15 -0400

Nearly seven weeks after an autopilot problem crashed a General Atomics collaborative combat aircraft, the company announced Thursday that its drone wingmen are back in the skies.

On April 6, a YFQ-42A “Dark Merlin" crashed at the company airport in California, prompting a joint investigation by the company and the Air Force. General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley said flight testing resumed on Wednesday. The company continued ground testing and other evaluations while flight testing was paused. A software problem identified during the investigation has been fixed.

“A thorough safety review isolated the cause to an autopilot miscalculation for the weight and center of gravity of the aircraft, prompting a software remediation,” General Atomics said in a news release. “Following a stringent evaluation, technical authorities endorsed the software changes and YFQ-42A has returned to the air.”

No one was injured in the April 6 crash, but the company said the aircraft was a “total loss”.

It was one of several production-representative CCAs being made for the Air Force’s drone wingman competition. General Atomics is going head-to-head against Anduril and Northrop Grumman for the service’s business. An Increment 1 production decision is expected before the end of September, and the Air Force is requesting nearly $1 billion to buy its first CCAs, 2027 budget documents released last month show.

“It’s been said that you learn more from your setbacks than your successes,” General Atomics President David R. Alexander said in the news release. “We are applying what we’ve learned to our growing fleet of CCAs, as we continue building the most dependable and cost-efficient unmanned fighters in the world.”

Air Force Col. Timothy Helfrich, portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, said the incident showed the service’s new willingness to accept risks.

“The USAF and General Atomics response to the YFQ-42 mishap validates our approach to accept acquisition/test risk instead of operational risk allowing us to accelerate the program towards fielding,” he said in an emailed statement. “We pushed the envelope, identified a risk, learned from the data, and have cleared the YFQ-42A to return to flight.”

Helfrich stressed that the crash didn’t pause progress on the CCA program. He said the service’s Experimental Operations Unit at Edwards Air Force Base in California flew several sorties with Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury aircraft the same week General Atomics paused test flights.

“Despite the pause on one platform, we executed this critical exercise that same week using the YFQ-44A to validate core operational and deployment concepts,” Helfrich said in the statement. “Because of this momentum and our resilient, multi-vendor approach, overall CCA progress never missed a beat as we drive toward delivering advanced capability to the fleet."

]]>

Key Army efforts pinned to lawmakers’ taste for a new reconciliation bill

Meghann Myers — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:30:07 -0400

The White House decision to seek about one-quarter of its gargantuan $1.5 trillion defense-spending request as reconciliation funding leaves some of the military’s top priorities—munitions, industrial-base upgrades—up to lawmakers’ appetite for another precedent-breaking budget maneuver.

The Army, for example, is asking for $24.5 billion to fund purchases through DOD’s Munitions Acceleration Council, according to budget documents. The service is also asking for $206 million to expand and upgrade its own weapons factories—ten times the amount requested in last year’s reconciliation bill.

“We have all of these incredible things that we're trying to do and move forward, but acceleration is only as good as our counterparts on the Hill are able to push it forward as well, right?” Maj. Gen. Rebecca McElwain, the Army’s budget director, said Thursday during an Association of the United States Army event. “So, if we get our funding halfway through a fiscal year, that could complicate things.”

Last year’s reconciliation bill is a case in point. After months of back and forth, the bill finally passed in July, with just weeks left in the fiscal year. Then it took the Pentagon another seven months to produce its plan to spend the money, including $2.6 billion for Army procurement.

And there is no guarantee that Congress—which broke precedents to pass last year’s reconciliation bill—will approve the administration’s request for a new one worth twice as much to the Pentagon.

“When we're looking at reconciliation, you can see very clearly what will not be accelerated, and a lot of that is in our munitions and our industrial base,” McElwain said. “I would say that would slow it down, especially some of the multi-year programs that we have that are vested in there with the munitions.”

The Army doesn’t decide which parts of its funding request will go into which bill, and the administration hasn’t been open about its strategy to fund so much of the government through reconciliation.

The difference in funding types means that an appropriations bill has line-by-line mandates for how each dollar is spent, while a reconciliation bill is a big check that the department can ultimately divvy up as it sees fit, though Congress makes recommendations and agencies report back their spending plans.

“Mr. Secretary, the administration is taking an enormous risk by asking for $350 billion in priorities through reconciliation,” Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this month. “As we told you in our last meeting, reconciliation is not the best way to fund the department. Last year, reconciliation created broken glass—funding holds for vital programs that the appropriators had to fix. And that's why we need the information in a timely fashion.”

Her concern is a bipartisan one. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who chairs the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, railed against the reconciliation bill last year and recently lamented the administration’s request for a new one.

“The distinction between base and reconciliation really matters,” McConnell said during a hearing earlier this month. “Base funding is what creates budget stability for the services and sends consistent demand signals to industry, and base funding is what gets extended by short-term continuing resolutions when work on full-year appropriations is unfinished.”

McConnell cautioned against a Republican administration relying on a Republican majority to get its budget requests funded, especially for money that goes toward longer-term investments.

“As I said last year, reconciliation should be a supplement to, not a substitute for,” he said. “Political realities will not always allow for party line, budget reconciliation, and if the department's top priorities aren't built into annual appropriations. We're actually taking a big risk.”

There are also concerns about the timing of how separate pots of money are distributed, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., SAC-D’s ranking member, said at the same hearing.

“Last year, $150 billion was provided to the department, but the mismatch between base year and one-year, between long-term and short-term, caused tens of billions of dollars in errors,” he said. “Errors in how shipbuilding was handled, errors in how new munitions are being acquired. And working together on a bipartisan basis, we fixed many of those problems.”

Coons warned that this year’s near-tripling of that amount could result in even more of those errors.

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Hybrid sky drones; Amphibs; Mobile data centers and a bit more

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 21 May 2026 05:23:19 -0400

Hybrid engines are in the news as consumers seek relief from gas prices boosted by the war on Iran, but military customers are also looking beyond internal combustion.

“There's a lot of interest in battery-operated, electric-driven drones…but there's also a lot of interest in heavy, fuel-based drones” that use JP-8, says Greg Thompson, president of Survice Engineering. “Batteries are great, they're very clean, they're very efficient. But transporting them, maintaining them, storing them, charging them—all that can be a little bit of a growth phase…and so there's still this hunger for a fuel-based drone, and so we're trying to marry that together. Think of it like a hybrid car, like a Prius.”

For the past year, Survice Engineering has been developing a hybrid-powered drone that it hopes to show defense customers later this year. The plan is to have a suite of electric only, fuel-based hybrid, and fuel-only drones in the Group 3 and above category.

“We are looking at maybe late summer, early fall timeframe to be able to demonstrate to our customers at least a concept of what we can bring to market,” Thompson said of the hybrid option. “That hybrid gen set is part of what's next for us…and also continuing to develop the next higher-level platform that gives them the next class up in terms of lift, something that does hundreds of pounds and gives them more, more mission capability in terms of things like [casualty evacuation] and bigger payloads.”

Hybrid-powered drones are quieter and can have a longer flying range compared to gas-only ones.. And their military use could be beneficial for surveillance operations or ferrying cargo long distances, such as across the Indo-Pacific. They could also serve as an alternative for purely battery-powered drones, which can lose precious energy capacity in different temperatures.

And drone companies are increasingly spending capital to build hybrid offerings, said Michael Robbins, president and CEO of the drone trade group AUVSI.

“You are seeing a lot of companies investing in research and innovation in hybrid propulsion, particularly as the focus increasingly shifts, at least in theory, to the Indo-Pacon region, where “In the Indo-Pacom theater, range is always a challenge. With the exception of maybe some very niche use cases like pre-positioned assets on Taiwan, virtually every other use case is going to not rely upon battery technology alone. And it's going to be some combination of jet-powered or some sort of hybrid propulsion,” Robbins said.

“Drones grew primarily as a commercial technology. And for a long time because of FAA regulations, the drones were limited to a fairly narrow operation area, typically within line of sight of the operator. So range wasn't a top consideration in the same way it is for military missions. And now the Pentagon is getting very serious about drone acquisition and different use cases…I think there is a growing market for companies to enter into that space.”

Welcome

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

More amphibs please. The Marine Corps needs at least 40 amphibious ships—nine more than statutorily required, Navy officials told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. And if funded, it’ll take six years to get there.

That figure came out of an internal Amphibious Forces Readiness Board report that Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao recommended to the defense secretary ahead of Tuesday’s hearing. The vice chief of naval operations and assistant commandant of the Marine Corps lead the board.
The report has “two courses of action and the course of action that we would like to pursue would be able to extend the [Optimized Fleet Response Plan] up to 56 months, allowing us to have two work up cycles, two integrated training cycles, as well as two deployments for every ship,” Cao testified. “So, for that, we would require 40 amphibious ships. Right now, we're at 31.”
Adm. Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations, said, “Forty just makes a lot of sense. It's going to take that to give me the friction in there necessary to have a persistent 3.0”—that is, to have three ARGs ready at any time. Caudle echoed Gen. Eric Smith, Marine Corps commandant, who argued the same in Defense One, and Lt. Gen. Jay Bargeron, deputy commandant for plans, policies, and operations, speaking at this year’s Modern Day Marine conference.
Background: Just about half of the Navy’s 32 amphibious ships are in deployable shape, the Government Accountability Office found in 2024.

The 2026 procurement budget for amphibs is about $4.6 billion, according to budget documents. The request for 2027 is about $8.3 billion for two amphibious ships and six Medium Landing Ships or LSMs.
Over the next five years, the Navy plans to spend $29.3 billion for five LPDs, two LHAs, and 23 LSMs, according to the Navy’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan released last week.

Making mobile data centers. Armada, which makes mobile data centers in shipping containers, secured $230 million in a series B funding round, which will be used to expand manufacturing in its Arizona facility. The company’s valuation now sits around $2 billion.

“This is really how we need to go about winning this AI race,” CEO Dan Wright told reporters. “First and foremost, it's a manufacturing and infrastructure production problem: we have to be able to deploy AI both domestically and with allies faster than our adversaries or potential adversaries.”
The company plans to increase production in its Arizona facility of its largest offering, the Leviathan data center, which is configured with three shipping containers. “We're going to start with two units per month, scaling up to six units per month,” Wright said.
The company is currently “producing dozens of Galleons a year,” which are what Armada calls its ruggedized data center modules. The goal is to multiply that and make hundreds by the end of the year, “then next year to thousands and then to tens of thousands,” Wright said.

Lightning round

The Space Development Agency has a permanent director, Gurpartap Sandhoo, who has been acting in the role since September. Sandhoo is also the Space Force Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Missile Warning and Tracking.
Firefly Aerospace added a new lab and is doubling its Texas manufacturing facility to support its aim of multiple moon landings.
James Mingus, retired general and former Army vice chief of staff, joins the board of directors for cyber defense company REDLattice.
Acma, which develops defense and aerospace components, landed a $300 million Series B funding round led by Caffeinated Capital. The round puts the company at unicorn status after just 18 months in the business.

]]>

F-35, F-15 may take A-10’s combat-search-and-rescue role: USAF chief

Thomas Novelly — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:30:53 -0400

F-15 Eagles and F-35 Lightning II fighters may take on future combat search and rescue missions, as the Air Force aims to retire the last A-10 Thunderbolt IIs by 2030, service officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

The A-10 “Warthog” has been the cornerstone close air support aircraft of the military’s combat search and rescue formations, or “sandy package,” for decades. Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the Air Force’s top uniformed leader, faced questions from several lawmakers during a House Armed Services Committee hearing about how the service will maintain that capability.

“The reason why the A-10 is really good at that is because it's a core mission of that platform, and as we transition with putting the A-10 in the retirement phase, there will be other platforms that it will become their core mission,” Wilsbach said. “So F-35s, F-15s, other platforms have the capability."

Warthogs have been used heavily in the Iran war, from strafing boats in the Strait of Hormuz to the daring rescue operation of a downed F-15 airman. Last month, the Air Force announced it will keep three squadrons flying: one through 2029 and the other two through 2030. But as the service eyes replacement platforms, other pilots will have to be trained on how to do the combat search and rescue mission.

"The A-10 pilots are specifically trained for combat search and rescue,” said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga.. “Are we going to specifically train F-35 and other pilots for combat search and rescue?”

“We’ll have to,” Wilsbach said. “It’s our mission.”

In response to similar questions from Rep. Sarah Elfreth, D-Md., Wilsbach said the fiscal year 2027 budget asks for $10 billion in flying hours, which would cover additional combat search and rescue training for the service’s pilots.

“The mission of the A-10 is close air support, but part of that subset of close air support is combat search and rescue,” Wilsbach said. “And we can do close air support, and we can do combat search and rescue support from other platforms, and it's unacceptable to have a gap if you have somebody down behind enemy lines, like you saw with Dude 44 Bravo, you have to go get them.”

The White House, Congress, and Defense Secretary’s work to extend the A-10’s retirement to 2030 “allows us to make sure that we don't have a break in that capability,” said Air Force Secretary Troy Meink.

Dan Grazier, a Stimson Center senior fellow and the director of the nonprofit's national-security reform program, is skeptical.

"Firstly, it is highly doubtful that neither the F-35 or the F-15 will ever be able to match the A-10's capabilities,” Grazier said. “Secondly, Gen. Wilsbach said the quiet part out loud. He admitted that the F-35, even though it was sold as a replacement for the A-10, still isn't a viable replacement."

The F-35 was first pitched as a substitute for the A-10’s close air support mission. Internal tests involving the two aircraft raised concerns about whether it could be an effective replacement, according to a report obtained by the Project on Government Oversight. Additionally, during the F-15’s development, the phrase “not a pound for air-to-ground” was used to describe the program’s pivot away from bombing missions. But both platforms have been significantly upgraded and have been branded as multirole fighters capable of numerous missions, including close-air support, ISR, and air-to-air operations.

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., pointed out that the F-35’s price tag, loiter time, and flight hour costs are all significantly higher than the A-10.

“So having been on the ground as a United States Naval SEAL in combat, loiter time matters,” Van Orden said. “We cannot have a gap in close air support, a close air support platform, that will be able to kill the enemy that is in that hallway, vice dropping something from an F-35.”

]]>

‘Everybody is going underground’: CENTCOM head calls for new tech to hit buried targets

Thomas Novelly — Tue, 19 May 2026 21:02:48 -0400

More money to counter drones and attack underground targets is necessary for future fights, the head of U.S. Central Command said on Thursday, as lawmakers praised and grilled the four-star admiral about the war in Iran.

In his first House Armed Services Committee appearance since the Iran war began, Adm. Brad Cooper said the U.S. military has changed even in the past eight weeks, leaning on LUCAS drones as well as land-attack missiles and finding cheaper ways to fight off Iranian drones and other weapons.

But when asked by Rep. John McGuire, R-Va., what additional support was needed, the four-star admiral had a wish list ready.

“I’d put three things: more electronic warfare, keep counter-UAS on the leading edge—tactics change very quickly—and we need to invest more in hard and deeply buried targets,” Cooper said. “Everybody is going underground.”

A CENTCOM spokesperson later told Defense One the CENTCOM commander was referring to munitions that can destroy more hidden and hardened targets.

Cooper’s HASC appearance followed his testimony before the Senate last week, when some members criticized the administration’s shifting justifications for the war. Nor wereHouse Democrats reticent to criticize the conflict’s launch and conduct by the White House.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., criticized Cooper and Daniel Zimmerman, the Pentagon’s assistant international security affairs secretary, for the Trump administration’s continued military operations despite an avowed May 5 ceasefire and the legal limits on wars without Congressional approval. Garamendi said that U.S. forces fired on Iranian tankers after the administration said it halted military actions.

“It's incredible to me that this department has such disregard for the Congress and the U.S. Constitution, that the U.S. military forces are not still engaged in hostilities and still deployed against the war and ignoring the War Powers Act and the Constitution,” Garamendi said. “The fact of the matter is that hostilities continue.”

In one exchange, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., peppered Cooper with rapid-fire questions—including whether the military’s war plan had anticipatedrising gas and oil prices, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the lack of a nuclear deal.

“We achieved all our military objectives, we're presently in a ceasefire, we're executing a blockade, and we're prepared for a broad range of contingencies,” Cooper said.

“Well, it doesn't seem to be going well,” Moulton replied. “And I would like to know, how many more Americans have to ask to die for this mistake?”

“I think it's an entirely inappropriate statement from you, sir,” Cooper said. “With all due respect.”

Other members, such as Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., praised the admiral’s leadership and the “remarkable” military achievements.

Lawmakers also asked for updates regarding the investigation into the Feb. 28 airstrike on an Iranian girl’s school, which preliminary inquiries reportedly show the U.S. was responsible.

Cooper said that investigation “is coming to the end” and said he was committed to releasing an unclassified version to the public.

]]>

Navy greenlights low-rate production of drone refueler

Lauren C. Williams — Tue, 19 May 2026 18:14:12 -0400

The Navy’s drone tanker, the MQ-25A Stingray, is cleared for low-rate initial production—just weeks after a production-ready model took its first flight.

“MQ-25 reached Milestone C, which is huge because now we have inflight refueling that is unmanned...it's a great capability,” Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said at the end of an hourslong Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday.

The service plans to order three aircraft as part of a Lot 1 contract, which should be awarded later this summer, the Navy said in a news release Tuesday. Priced options for two subsequent lots with a combined eight aircraft are also expected in the contract.

“Integrating unmanned refueling extends the lethality of our Carrier Strike Groups and equips our force with a decisive advantage to fight and win against any adversary,” Cao posted on X.

The Stingray, which is launched by catapult, is designed to integrate with aircraft carriers and take over the role currently fulfilled by the F/A-18 Super Hornets. Once in production, it is poised to be the Navy’s first carrier-based aerial drone tanker.

“Stingray will provide the Carrier Air Wing with essential organic refueling, allowing more F/A-18E/F aircraft to focus on strike missions,” the service said in the release. “This will expand the operational reach of the air wing while preserving the service life of F/A-18E/Fs, improving readiness across the Super Hornet fleet. The Stingray is also at the forefront of integrating unmanned systems alongside manned platforms within the [carrier air wing].”

But the program, which plans for 76 aircraft—67 operational and nine test aircraft—has faced significant delays, with watchdog concerns around the production schedule, its effects on costs, and the reliance on a single supplier. The program’s estimated costs have risen about 4 percent, to around $16 billion overall, with each unit costing around $209 million, according to a 2025 Government Accountability Office assessment of Pentagon weapons programs.

The Pentagon wants $1.75 billion in 2027 for the MQ-25 Stingray, to fund the “three Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) MQ-25 aircraft and advanced procurement supporting LRIP Lot 3 (five MQ-25 aircraft) long lead materials,” according to budget documents. The money would also be used for the aircraft’s mission control system, or UMCS program, “that builds, integrates, installs, and sustains the systems (control station, communications, and networks) required to operate the MQ-25 and performs ship installations associated with the MQ-25.”

The move comes just weeks after a successful two-hour test flight from Boeing’s facility in Southern Illinois.

“Boeing is honored to work alongside our U.S. Navy partner in achieving this historic milestone in the MQ-25A Stingray’s development life cycle,” Troy Rutherford, vice president of the Boeing MQ-25 program, said in a statement. “We remain focused on getting this game-changing unmanned aircraft into the hands of the fleet and integrated into the carrier air wing.”

]]>

One year in, Army’s transformation efforts are under fire

Meghann Myers — Tue, 19 May 2026 17:52:16 -0400

A year after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Army to take on a long list of tasks—including jettisoning unwanted vehicles and aircraft and re-focusing on unmanned systems—the Army Transformation Initiative is on uncertain ground.

Hegseth has said he’s giving the document “another look,” but has declined to be more specific, frustrating lawmakers who want a detailed roadmap and timeline they can fund—or not.

“We'd like to see a concrete plan on how the Army intends to modernize, where it invests, where the investments will be made, what risks to readiness will be absorbed, and what impact it will have on the industrial base,” Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., told the Army secretary and acting chief of staff on Friday during a House Armed Services Committee.

Those comments came three days after the defense secretary acknowledged that ATI might need a revamp.

The Army always intended ATI to be a living document, a U.S. official told Defense One, but the defense secretary’s office hasn’t reached out to the service to discuss any changes.

“No plan is designed to survive first contact with the enemy, and as conditions evolve, as things change, we must be willing and able to transform and change quickly with it,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to comment because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

The Pentagon refused to answer a query from Defense One about which parts of ATI Hegseth would like to revisit, or whether his office had discussed them with the Army.

Officials instead pointed to the secretary’s May 13 remarks, which included a response to a question from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., about the Army’s proposal to slash helicopter procurement. DeLauro’s district includes the Sikorsky factory that manufactures the UH-60 Black Hawk.

“There are some very good things in the Army Transformation Initiative, and there are some things that we needed to get another look at,” Hegseth said. “And so I think you'll see a review of some of those things, and we’ll get back to you.”

The conciliatory tone of the response was a departure from Hegseth’s customary ripostes to lawmakers’ questions, especially Democrats’.

“I don't know all the depth of what was implied, but I absolutely agree that we will take a hard look with the Office of Secretary of War and make sure that we are synced with their strategy and their plans as they look across the joint force and balance their requirements and needs of the military as a whole,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told the House Armed Services Committee on Friday when asked about Hegseth’s remarks.

Though many of ATI’s items include initiatives the Army had been pursuing for months or years, Hegseth took ownership of the plan by unveiling it in a memo issued last April. The plan quickly drew questions from lawmakers during the Army’s budget hearings last year.

Many of the questions appear to remain unanswered, as Driscoll and acting Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve make the rounds of the armed services and appropriations committees this month. LaNeve is on track to replace the ousted Gen. Randy George, who had relentlessly promoted the Army’s many “transformation” efforts.

“We want to make sure the Army has done a careful analysis of how transformation will affect our capabilities and force structure,” Rogers said Friday. “We want to understand how the Army intends to sustain the legacy capabilities our service members still need and use. We want to avoid spending this historic influx of money ineffectively and wasting the opportunity to bolster the [defense industrial base].”

Lawmakers’ questions reflected particular concern about how the Army’s plans to buy fewer aircraft might throttle production lines and supply chains, which can’t necessarily rebound a year or two later if the Army decides it wants to start buying again.

“Nobody's saying we don't need Chinooks or Black Hawks or Apaches,” the U.S. official said. “We need to modernize them, etc. But we have so many, based on the force structure side, that we think it’s what is required to fight a conflict.”

Instead, service leaders have been told to “tighten their belts,” the official said. So they are making trade-offs, spending that helicopter money to refill munitions stockpiles and buy, attritable drones, new weapons and cyber capabilities.

That appears to contradict Hegseth’s congressional testimony May 13, when he announced he wants to restore funding for the Air Force’s E-7 Wedgetail, which was not in the original fiscal year 2027 Pentagon budget request.

“I think that mindset was indicative of a mindset that we’ve shed, which is the divest-to-invest mindset,” the secretary said.

Ultimately, final budget decisions go through the White House’s Office of Budget and Management, so the U.S. official couldn’t comment on why the Army is making these specific tradeoffs.

The service has sent many experts to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers on ATI, the official said, and will continue to do so.

Still, Congress wants more.

“What exactly is it that you intend to do? What are the top three or five parts of that initiative?” Rep. Jim Garamendi, D-Calif., asked Friday. “We're going to have to give you the authority—or maybe we disagree and don't want you to go in that direction—but what we're seeing here is enormous inconsistency in direction, and that is not going to suffice as we put together the future direction and laws that the Army is going to have to carry out.”

A spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee declined to provide a more detailed example of what lawmakers would like to see on ATI.

]]>

A Ukrainian ground robot defended a position from Russian assault for six weeks

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:42:42 -0400

A single remote-controlled Ukrainian ground combat vehicle defended a “key intersection under constant adversary attack” for 45 days last summer, according to a 3rd Army Corps spokesperson who called it “Ukraine’s first fully robotic defensive operation of a position.” It likely won’t be the last.

The robot—a Droid TW 12.7 armed with a machine gun—and its operator, some 10 kilometers away, “disrupted every attempted breakthrough and prevented enemy infiltration,” with no loss of Ukrainian life, the spokesperson said in a recent interview.

As the United States and other militaries work to catch up, Ukraine is putting remote-controlled air and ground systems to uses the world has never seen.

“Drones in the air provided continuous surveillance” for the operation, the officials said. “They detected enemy movement and transmitted information in real time. Once a threat was confirmed, the operator received the signal and engaged the target with the machine gun.”

Olena Kryzhanivska, a defense analyst who was first to report on the operation, writes that Ukrainian ground robots now perform 80 percent of logistics tasks on the front lines— from carrying explosives into enemy positions to evacuating the wounded. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense hopes to bring that up to 100 percent.

Kryzhanivska writes that unmanned ground vehicles, which can cost $10,000 to $30,000, will soon take a much larger role in combat.

“There is an expectation that we might see the first encounter between Ukrainian ground drones and Russian ground drones.”

But practical challenges stand in the way of the fully roboticized front line, the Ukrainian army spokesperson said.

“Battery charge is a major factor. There is never enough of it. The main solutions are either installing higher-capacity batteries on the systems or equipping each platform with two to four batteries. The same applies to ammunition load. There is never enough,” one said.

Another hurdle is the amount of training it takes to produce a ground-robot operator.

“Planning and executing an operation with an [unmanned ground vehicle or UGV] is significantly more difficult than, for example, operating a UAV, because the number of obstacles is substantially higher,” an official said, adding that it requires a deeper understanding of terrain, navigation, and other nuances that also bedevil self-driving cars. “It is a misconception to think that any UAV pilot can simply sit down and successfully carry out an operation with a UGV.” .

As autonomy improves, a single soldier might be able to control multiple robots on different missions. But Ukraine limits what its lethal robots can do.

“Ukrainian forces are still operating in the territories that are populated by civilians. There are children. They are elderly. So just giving ground robots that ability to make decisions, to engage, to strike and kill, that would be a very dangerous development, and Ukrainians are against that,” Kryzhanivska said.

The Ukrainian officials emphasized that humans will remain part of the decision-making process.

“Everything that happens in war must be controlled and coordinated by a soldier. The missions performed by our systems carry a high level of responsibility,” one said.

Still, new concepts of “predictive intelligence” could enable ground drones to make more decisions as part of a network of sensors and intelligence nodes. They might, for example, predict where or how enemy forces might move in order to get into position.

It’s a concept that Lt. Col. Eric Sturzinger, who leads research and engagements at the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center, is exploring via the Tactical Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, or JEPA—a framework to enable drones to predict how adversaries might plan an attack, potentially making ground robot operations even more effective.

]]>

Why the Iran war is breaking the US‑European strategic alliance

Farah N. Jan, The Conversation — Tue, 19 May 2026 14:45:55 -0400

Days after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, 2026, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez denied American forces the use of the Naval Station Rota and the Morón Air Base – installations that had hosted U.S. troops for more than 70 years.

“We are a sovereign country that does not wish to take part in illegal wars,” Sánchez said. U.S. President Donald Trump responded by threatening a full trade embargo against Spain.

Weeks later, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – Trump’s closest European ally and the only EU head of government invited to his second inauguration – broke publicly with Washington.

“When we don’t agree, we must say it,” she said. “And this time, we do not agree.” Rome then refused to refuel U.S. bombers at a base in southern Italy.

These are not minor diplomatic frictions. As a scholar of alliance politics and nuclear security, I see something much larger than a tactical disagreement. The Iran war’s most consequential casualty may not be in Tehran. It may be American credibility as an ally, and with it, the trans-Atlantic alliance itself.

The Iraq comparison misleads

The initial U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran were launched with virtually no advance consultation with European allies. The Trump administration treated NATO partners not as participants in strategic decision-making but as logistical infrastructure to be commandeered or punished for refusing assistance.

European governments, even those most invested with the U.S., declined to join the campaign. The Trump administration has responded with the embargo threat against Spain and the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany.

“The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social on March 31, 2026.

The reflex in Washington has been to read this as a rerun of 2003, when France and Germany opposed the Iraq War. In January 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed France and Germany as “old Europe” while courting the postcommunist “new Europe,” including Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

On the surface, the parallel is tempting: a unilateral American war in the Middle East, European refusal to participate, trans-Atlantic recriminations.

But the comparison conceals more than it reveals. In 2003, the United States wanted Europe in its coalition. The George W. Bush administration sought United Nations authorization, courted allies and treated European refusal as a problem to be managed.

In 2026, the Trump administration explicitly does not want European input. It views allies as freeloaders and threatens them with economic coercion. It treats their hesitation as cause for retribution rather than negotiation.

The deeper difference is structural. In 2003, the trans-Atlantic alliance still rested on shared commitments to collective defense, open trade and an international, rules-based order.

Today, the Trump administration does not share the commitments that traditionally bound the United States to its European partners, whether on NATO, the Russia-Ukraine war, or the rules governing trade and migration.

The shared values that papered over the Iraq disagreement in 2003, and that allowed President Nicolas Sarkozy to reintegrate France into NATO’s command by 2009, are no longer there to do the work of repair.

The April 2026 collapse of Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule in Hungary left Trump without a serious political ally among major European governments.

The real precedent is Suez

A more illuminating precedent lies further back. In 1956, Britain and France went to war with Egypt over the Suez Canal, in coordination with Israel, concealing their plans from the Eisenhower administration. Washington responded by threatening to crash the British pound, forcing London and Paris into humiliating retreat.

The crisis is remembered as the moment Britain accepted that it was no longer an independent great power.

But its more important legacy was strategic. Suez exposed the depth of Europe’s dependence on the United States. That humiliation drove Charles de Gaulle’s pursuit of an independent French nuclear deterrent. It also accelerated European integration and planted the recognition that genuine strategic autonomy would be a generational project.

The Iran war inverts the conditions of that lesson. In 1956, Europeans learned that they could not act independently of Washington. In 2026, they are learning that they cannot rely on Washington’s consent being available, and that the U.S. will act without them, against their stated interests and at their economic expense.

The pattern is the same: Dependence on the U.S. is unsustainable, and autonomous capacity is no longer optional. What has changed is that Europe is now willing to use the financial, economic and military tools it has long possessed in ways it would not have considered before.

The EU’s €90 billion joint-debt loan to Ukraine signals an autonomous European strategic stance. So do discussions of activating the bloc’s anti-coercion trade instrument against U.S. tariffs, France’s nuclear arsenal expansion and offers to “Europeanize” deterrence.

The strategic postures were debated for decades. The Iran war is making them operational.

This is not yet European strategic independence. Europe remains militarily reliant on U.S. air defense, satellite capacity and intelligence.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, for example, has forced an uncomfortable energy reckoning with American liquefied natural gas, Russian pipelines, Middle Eastern hydrocarbons and Chinese-dominated renewable supply chains. None of the available paths to energy security run through trusted partners.

France and Germany still disagree on nearly every detail of how integration should proceed. But the political condition for autonomy, a shared European belief that Washington can no longer be trusted to share strategic decision-making, has crystallized in a way that no previous crisis produced.

The post-1945 trans-Atlantic bargain traded U.S. security guarantees for European deference on global strategy. Iraq 2003 strained that bargain. Trump’s first term cracked it, and the Iran war has broken it.

What replaces it will not be a renewed partnership. It will be a parallel relationship between two powers with sometimes overlapping interests and, increasingly, separate strategic horizons.

In 1956, Europe learned how dependent it was on Washington. In 2026, it is learning that dependence is no longer sustainable.

Eleni Lomtatidze, a student in the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania and at SciencesPo Paris, contributed to this story.

]]>

Army probes Apache transmission problem as service rushes to ditch older helicopters

Thomas Novelly — Tue, 19 May 2026 06:00:00 -0400

A newly discovered problem with the Apache helicopter’s transmission is plaguing the Army’s fleet, just as funding woes have pushed the service to drastically cut flight hours and rapidly retire older variants of the combat helicopter, Defense One has learned.

An Army investigation has indicated that “some AH-64E [improved drive system] main transmissions can experience an internal failure resulting in loss of accessory gearbox drive, which can result in loss of tail rotor thrust, electrical power, and hydraulics,” according to an April internal safety document reviewed by Defense One. “The root cause is still under investigation.”

The safety document said “All AH-64E series aircraft” are affected, and instructed the service to “ground affected [improved drive system] main transmissions” until more guidance is provided. The service confirmed the investigation, but declined to say when the transmission problem was discovered and how many helicopters were affected. A spokesman for Boeing, the Apache’s manufacturer, declined to comment.

“The Army has identified a potential transmission issue involving the AH-64E helicopter,” a service spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We are actively collaborating with the manufacturer to conduct a comprehensive investigation to determine the root cause of the problem.”

The Apache transmission investigation comes as the Army leans heavily on the combat helicopter for the war in Iran, sends them to foreign militaries, transports celebrities and administration officials in them, and plans to upgrade them into high-tech drone hunters for future conflicts. At the same time, other internal documents reviewed by Defense One revealed that the service’s III Armored Corps is heavily reducing its flight hour program and is quickly divesting the older AH-64D model to overcome funding woes.

The AH-64E has been involved in several incidents stateside and abroad in recent months. One Apache pilot said the combination of the helicopter’s transmission problems and the service’s push to reduce some flight hour programs is a brutal combination, particularly amid seemingly continuous maintenance woes.

“It's a double-edged sword,” the Apache pilot said. “You're getting less money in these budgets, at the same time, you're having more maintenance problems, which cost more money, but the money's not there.”

There have been at least three Apache incidents within the last three months.

In March, an AH-64E, the latest Apache variant, crashed during a training exercise at Fort Rucker, Alabama, leaving two crew members injured, several local media outlets reported. Last month, another Apache made an emergency landing in rural Alabama following an in-flight problem, one local TV station reported. That same month, another Apache crashed at Fort Hood in Texas during a maintenance flight, according to photos and information one pilot provided to Defense One.

Last week, another Apache made a similar precautionary landing outside of Camp Humphreys in South Korea, Stars and Stripes reported. An Army spokesperson declined to confirm a timeline of recent Apache incidents and wouldn’t say whether they were tied to the transmission problems.

“While we have gathered some preliminary findings, we are currently withholding these details to prevent any unnecessary speculation while the investigation is still in progress,” an Army spokesperson said in an email.

Less money, more problems

The ongoing investigation into the AH-64E’s transmission comes as the Army works through sudden funding challenges that have pushed some units to drastically reduce flying hours and divest the older helicopter variant, internal documents reviewed by Defense One show.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., hinted at the issue during a Senate Armed Services hearing last week, and said the Homeland Security Department’s domestic missions have caused funding headaches for the Army.

“The Army is facing a nearly two-billion-dollar readiness shortfall, largely because DHS has failed to reimburse the Army for border support missions,” Reed said in his opening statement. “The committee will want to understand what that means in concrete terms. I have received concerning reports about the potential for cancelled training rotations, grounded flight hours, and reduced Guard and Reserve training resources.”

One internal memo shows that’s the case for the aviation units of the Army’s III Armored Corps.

The funding for the III Corps flying hour program was to be decreased by about $46 million, “effective immediately,” due to “operational requirements,” according to an April 26 internal memo reviewed by Defense One.

To meet minimum aviation requirements, the III Corps commander transferred $26.6 million from the funds used for armor training to its aviation units, the memo said. The formation recognizes that the sudden shift in funds comes with risks, according to the memo.

The III Armored Corps “accepts the secondary effects of degraded combined arms support for Division [Armored Brigade Combat Teams and Combat Training Center] rotations, and the long-term career stagnation for Warrant and Company Grade officers resulting from a constrained [flight hour program],” the memo said. “Rebuilding this combat proficiency is estimated to take 12+ months.”

III Corps officials will "tightly manage” the flight hour program on a monthly basis, with plans to “restrict all non-essential flying” and to issue waivers for not hitting flight hour minimums, the memo said.

Missions that are exempt from the flying-hour restrictions are the Southwest border mission, transportation for the 1st Infantry Division, cadet summer training, and flights tied to the modernization of the AH-64E and divestments of the older D models.

“The Army has issued guidance to subordinate commands – for the remainder of this Fiscal Year, make tough, sound resource decisions that optimize and prioritize resources toward their most critical requirements,” the service spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Army commanders are taking all necessary measures to prioritize critical readiness and operational requirements, ensuring we operate responsibly within the funding levels currently in place. We continuously analyze and assess funding across the force to ensure the Army remains agile, prepared, and ready to defend the nation.”

The Army’s III Corps will "divest all AH-64Ds to achieve cost saving" by June 15, the memo said. Officials must also “cancel all static displays and flyovers” for the rest of the fiscal year. The service was already retiring the older models as part of its Army Transformation Initiative and its pivot to the upgraded Apache models.

The Apache pilot said the sudden push to reduce time in the cockpit and the persistent mechanical problems with the AH-64E could be a deadly combination.

“Aircraft are going to break, that's kind of a given in this life, but it feels like a snowball effect,” the pilot said. “We have lower-hour cockpits and lower-hour piloting commands because they can't get the training they need, and then, in my own personal opinion, you see an uptick in incidents when you see a downtick in flight hours.”

]]>

Advanced AI models bring government to ‘reflection point,’ CIA official says

Frank Konkel — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:00:00 -0400

Advanced AI models with unique hacking capabilities like Anthropic’s Mythos should bring federal agencies that handle some of the government’s most sensitive information to a “reflection point,” according to one of the CIA’s top tech officials.

“I think it is a reflection point and I think people need to view it in that fashion,” said Dan Richard, Associate Deputy Director of the CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate. Richard spoke on a panel Friday at the Qualys ROCon Public Sector 2026 conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

A previous version of the Mythos software was released to a limited group of tech companies in April with much fanfare, due to its ability to detect countless software bugs and defects.

Security researchers and experts reacted with a mix of excitement and caution, with some warning the software could usher in a new era for hackers and lower the barrier to entry for would-be attackers. Mythos and competing models like OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 have forced executive agencies to grapple with their capabilities and prompted emergency briefings for lawmakers.

Richard said he feels “bullish in terms of the opportunities that are out there,” largely because these AI models can help agencies like the CIA deal with the deluge of data they generate and automate responses to potential threats. He likened the current Mythos-driven moment to Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion in 2022.

“[Ukraine] had gone through a decade of the Russians infiltrating their networks and having to deal with that implication, but when the Russians attacked in 2022 the Ukrainians were prepared because they understood they couldn’t do it themselves,” he said. “Shoulder-to-shoulder with them were the private sector vendors to support what they were doing and to help what they’re doing.”

Richard said the U.S. government is in the “same position” now, and public-private partnerships will be key to ensuring the nation gets it right.

“80% of our nation’s critical infrastructure is in private sector hands, so there is no solution that does not include private sector partners,” Richard said. “We talk about partnership all the time, but this is really different. This isn’t transactional. This is us, as a country, figuring out with the academic community, with the private sector community and with our public sector partners working together to be able to defeat and take advantage of what I see as an optimal opportunity for the agency, but for the country.”

Joe Kelly, division director of the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland, said advanced AI models are going to lower the barrier to entry for would-be hackers.

“The real danger when we look at something like Mythos — whether you believe the hype or not — is it certainly creates what we already see with Claude Code, the ability for script kiddies to cause real damage even without knowing what they’re doing,” Kelly said. “It’s going to lift all those. I do worry about the complexity that we’re entering in this era.”

‘It’s moving so fast, it’s scary’

IonQ Chief Information Officer Katie Arrington, who spent most of 2025 serving as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said the influx of advanced AI tools — and the speed at which they’re emerging — will test government to the extreme. Existing governance requires IT security vulnerabilities be patched within 30 days, and 15 days for vulnerabilities designated “critical.”

“You don’t have time like that anymore,” Arrington said during a panel at the Qualys event. “We’re talking about a tool that can find every vulnerability in seconds on a platform.”

Arrington said these kinds of advanced AI models weren’t a discussion item even 12 months ago. At that time, the Pentagon was just trying to improve the speed that it could bring general AI tools into its networks.

“It’s moving so fast, it’s scary,” Arrington said. “It scares me and it excites me how fast Mythos came alive.”

Qualys CEO Sumedh Thakar said federal agencies may need to take a more proactive — rather than reactive — approach to risk management to deal with the growing range of threats from advanced AI tools. His company is using its AI-powered cybersecurity tools, including TotalCloud, which recently received authorization to operate in the government’s FedRAMP High environments, to allow customers to automate vulnerability patching, reducing some of the manual processes and “dashboard tourism” cyber professionals otherwise deal with.

Thakar said autonomous remediation allows savvy customers to “battle AI with the speed of AI.”

“Now with attackers leveraging AI, as soon as a patch comes out, they can reverse engineer the patch and they can start to figure out the exploit. Your 30 days has become 30 hours, or three hours,” Thakar said. “What we really focus on is to get over the fear of autonomous remediation. It’s not an option.”

]]>

AI-powered cyber effects are 'moving so fast, it’s scary': a former Pentagon CIO

Frank Konkel — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:00:00 -0400

AI models with advanced hacking capabilities like Anthropic’s Mythos should concern federal agencies that handle sensitive information, a top CIA tech official said.

“I think it is a reflection point and I think people need to view it in that fashion,” said Dan Richard, associate deputy director of the CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate. Richard spoke on a panel Friday at the Qualys ROCon Public Sector 2026 conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

An early version of the Mythos software was released to a limited group of tech companies in April with much fanfare, due to its ability to find long-hidden software bugs and defects. Security researchers and experts reacted with a mix of excitement and caution, with some warning the software could usher in a new era for hackers and lower the barrier to entry for attackers. Mythos and competing models like OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 have forced executive agencies to grapple with their capabilities and prompted emergency briefings for lawmakers.

Ukraine "had gone through a decade of the Russians infiltrating their networks and having to deal with that implication, but when the Russians attacked in 2022 the Ukrainians were prepared because they understood they couldn’t do it themselves,” he said. “Shoulder-to-shoulder with them were the private sector vendors to support what they were doing and to help what they’re doing.”

Richard said the U.S. government is in the “same position” now, and public-private partnerships will be key to ensuring the nation gets it right.

“80% of our nation’s critical infrastructure is in private sector hands, so there is no solution that does not include private sector partners,” Richard said. “We talk about partnership all the time, but this is really different. This isn’t transactional. This is us, as a country, figuring out with the academic community, with the private sector community and with our public-sector partners working together to be able to defeat and take advantage of what I see as an optimal opportunity for the agency, but for the country.”

‘It’s moving so fast, it’s scary’

IonQ Chief Information Officer Katie Arrington, who served last year as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said the influx of advanced AI tools — and the speed at which they’re emerging — will test government to the extreme. Existing governance requires IT security vulnerabilities be patched within 30 days, and 15 days for vulnerabilities designated “critical.”

“You don’t have time like that anymore,” Arrington said during a panel at the Qualys event. “We’re talking about a tool that can find every vulnerability in seconds on a platform.”

“It’s moving so fast, it’s scary,” Arrington said. “It scares me and it excites me how fast Mythos came alive.”

Thakar said autonomous remediation allows savvy customers to “battle AI with the speed of AI.”

“Now with attackers leveraging AI, as soon as a patch comes out, they can reverse-engineer the patch and they can start to figure out the exploit. Your 30 days has become 30 hours, or three hours,” Thakar said. “What we really focus on is to get over the fear of autonomous remediation. It’s not an option.”

]]>

Even as drones usher in an era of ‘cheap kill,’ Army leaders look to what’s next

Jennifer Hlad — Sat, 16 May 2026 02:30:57 -0400

WAIKIKI, Hawaii—Drones are everywhere U.S. Army Pacific forces go these days. Last week, the 25th Infantry Division used uncrewed vehicles, vessels, and aircraft to fight a simulated battle on a Philippine beach. This week, two more buzzed about the USARPAC commander’s head as he delivered the keynote speech at AUSA’s Land Forces Pacific symposium.

“For us, innovation is not something we simply talk about, it’s what we put into action every day,” Gen. Ron Clark said.

“This drone, the Kestrel, was produced by our soldiers at The Forge,” he said, indicating a first-person-view quadcopter that can be adapted to drop munitions or for one-way attack. The other was a Skydio X10, which is used for short-range reconnaissance and surveillance.

“In today’s fight, we should never send a soldier when we can send an unmanned system,” Clark said.

Protecting against enemy drones is also a high priority, I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane told a small group of reporters here.

“As we’re seeing the absolute proliferation of drones, the importance of passive defense measures can’t be overstated,” McFarlane said.

That includes things like putting command posts underground, or covering them so they are not easily detectable from the air, he said. “We’re very conscious of making sure we’re protecting ourselves from the real air threat that we’re seeing around the world.

Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Samuel Paparo highlighted the proliferation of drones in his keynote speech, describing one of three “meta-trends” he believes are reshaping warfare as “the commoditization—and by commoditization, I mean everybody has it—of small, cheap unmanned systems.

“It's expanded access to core capabilities once reserved for great powers,” he said. “Proliferated unmanned systems have made cheap kill, at scale more possible, more probable. Has made a traditional assault—ground assault, air assault, airborne assault, amphibious assault—much more costly than is in our formal doctrine,

In Ukraine, the Russians lose “approximately 100 human beings per square kilometer of ground that they take and that then they subsequently lose,” Paparo said, calling the Ukraine war “a wide laboratory of the commoditization of cheap kill.”

But while the U.S. Army, and the defense industry, have wasted no time applying lessons from Ukraine about unmanned systems, they must not stop there, Gen. Xavier Brunson warned.

“People will tell you that the lesson from the fight in Ukraine is drones, drones, drones, drones. I beg to differ,” said Brunson, the commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea.

“That's surface, and that's easy. Don't Occam's razor strategic things. Don't just say the simplest solution is going to be the solution. That's not it.”

Brunson urged attendees to think about “the next thing,” which he believes will be commercial space.

“Oftentimes we learn the wrong lessons and we get stuck with them because it’s easy,” he said. “Listen, I am not against…the development of drones. I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is we can’t be stuck there. We have to keep going forward. Warfare, if nothing, is about offset, and what I continue to think about when I’m awake at night in the bed is, what is the next offset? Because if we don’t think about that, if we don’t give ourselves to the thought of the next offset, we’ll be doing drones 10 years from now, and thinking that’s still the way.”

]]>

HASC leader threatens Pentagon with ‘pain’ over canceled Europe deployment

Meghann Myers — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:12:44 -0400

Lawmakers ripped into Army leaders on Friday, asking why the service this week canceled the imminent deployment of a brigade combat team to Poland.

But Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and acting Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve had few answers about the decision. It wasn’t theirs, LaNeve told lawmakers at the House Armed Services Committee hearing.

The general said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered U.S. European Command boss Gen. Alexus Grynkewich to reduce forces.

“I've worked with [Grynkewich] in close consultation of what that force unit would be, and it made the most sense for that brigade to not do its deployment in theater,” he said.

The cancellation, which was first reported by Military Times, means that the number of U.S. troops in Europe will drop below the legal mandate of 76,000 if the Pentagon completes its recently announced withdrawal of some 5,000 soldiers from Germany.

That led HASC Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., to threaten the Defense Department.

“It is not the fault of the people in front of us today that we've had this apparent deviation, but know: we are going to mandate that the department follow the statutory minimums that are set in statute on force posture,” Rogers said. “And if there are attempted deviations, we will remedy them and impose a pain when—if—they aren't complied with.”

The number of U.S. troops in Europe reached 100,000 after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but more recently has hovered around 80,000, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Multiple lawmakers expressed dismay Friday about the lack of transparency from the Pentagon about the reason for the canceled deployment, as well as the message it sends to European allies and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“If our adversaries are paying attention, is the cancellation of a deployment of a brigade combat team sending again the opposite signal in terms of our commitment to our allies in Eastern Europe?” said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn. He pointed out that Poland is spending just under the 5 percent of its GDP, as suggested by NATO and urged by President Donald Trump since his first term.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to say why the deployment of 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, was cancelled.

Joel Valdez also declined to say whether the cancellation was related to the Pentagon’s May 1 announcement that it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany. That move came as Trump lashed out against European allies reluctant to help escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz during the the U.S. war on Iran.

“The decision to withdraw troops follows a comprehensive, multilayered process that incorporates perspectives from key leaders in EUCOM and across the chain of command,” Valdez told Defense One on Friday. “This was not an unexpected, last-minute decision, and it would be false to report it as such.”

But it surprised members of Congress, who expect to be notified about force-posture changes ahead of time.

Poland’s leaders were also blindsided, according to Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who said he’d spoken to Polish officials on Thursday.

“These are some of our best allies, and they had no idea,” Bacon said.

Valdez also declined to say why the deployment was cancelled.

Last fall, the Pentagon canceled an Army deployment to Romania, with similarly thin explanations and backlash from Congress.

Canceling a rotational deployment is more straightforward than removing troops based in a foreign country, which is the case for most of the troops in Germany, who are accompanied by their families.

Over the past decade, the Army has replaced thousands of soldiers who previously spent a handful of years living in Germany with rotational deployments throughout Europe.

Recent moves to cut U.S. presence in Europe echo an even bigger slashing of troops in Germany that Trump ordered during the final months of his first term.

In that case, DOD went through the motions of planning for a withdrawal, but the plan was ultimately dropped when Trump lost his bid for reelection.

]]>

Hegseth memo calls for sweeping, open-ended review of Pentagon's legal system

Thomas Novelly — Fri, 15 May 2026 15:07:59 -0400

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who last year gutted a Congressionally-created panel that oversaw his department’s legal community, is standing up a new one with a broader purview.

Hegseth’s latest unusual move comes three months after he ordered a “ruthless” review of military lawyers that some saw as an attempt to evade accountability.

On Monday, the secretary released a video in which he said the new panel would conduct an "ongoing, long-term, department-wide review of all aspects of the military legal system as it affects our warriors.”

Hegseth ordered up the panel in a May 8 memo to service secretaries, the Joint Chiefs staff, the military’s criminal investigation divisions, and the uniformed and civilian legal offices.

The Defense Department declined to provide the memo. Defense One has reviewed the two-page document.

“The [panel] will operate on a sustained basis rather than producing a single end-of-review report,” Hegseth wrote in the memo. “It will deliver interim reports and recommendations on specific issues as they are completed, with periodic updates to me. These reports will drive immediate reforms to cut unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthen training and organization, refine culture, and professionalize military justice implementation and command advice.”

Earl Matthews, the Defense Department’s general counsel, is to convene the panel.

In his memo, Hegseth wrote that the review is “not about diminishing the essential role of our uniformed and civilian legal experts” but to provide support for “effective legal advice that upholds the rule of law while enabling maximum mission effectiveness and decisive action.”

Current and former military lawyers told Defense One that they’re skeptical.

Steve Lepper, a retired Air Force lawyer and a member of a group of former JAGs that has spoken out about the administration’s military actions, said creating the panel appears to be part of a power grab for legal oversight of the armed services.

“What the Pentagon here is doing is, they're basically wrestling from Congress this oversight of the JAG Corps and substituting his own panel for the panel they dismantled,” Lepper said.

Hegseth’s memo suggests that earlier reviews of the military justice system fell short.

“Previous assessments, including statutory reviews, GAO reports, and recent efforts to align legal functions, have provided valuable insights,” he wrote. “However, a more comprehensive and sustained examination is now required to ensure the system fully supports our warfighters, restores trust across the force, and delivers the legal support our commanders and troops deserve in an era of great-power competition.”

The new panel is Hegseth’s latest unusual move regarding the department’s legal community. In his first weeks on the job, he fired the Army, Navy, and Air Force’s top lawyers, claiming they were “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief.” The next month, he commissioned his personal lawyer into the Navy’s JAG corps.

In March, Defense One first reported on the contents of a memo that ordered a split of duties between the Judge Advocate Generals and the general counsel offices, which raised fears among military lawyers and other experts that it would gut the legal oversight of the Trump administration’s actions.

A Defense Department spokesperson said Hegseth’s latest memo differsfrom his March directive but declined to say how or to describe findings produced in response to the earlier memo.

At least one of the service branches submitted its plan last month to deconflict duties between the uniformed and civilian to the Pentagon, the defense legal insider told Defense One.

Those lawyers that haven’t been ousted or removed from the services or civilian offices have been stretched thin. In the Trump administration's first year, it greenlit the temporary assignment of more than 600 JAGs to work for the Justice Department as immigration judges. Earlier this year, Defense One reported that the administration had temporarily assigned dozens of military lawyers as federal prosecutors to support law-enforcement surges in Minneapolis and other cities.

Yet Hegseth, who authorized the assignments, complained in March that “military lawyers are sometimes stuck doing civilian side work” and called it evidence that the legal shops are being mismanaged.

This week’s announcement comes amid a war on Iran that some experts have argued is illegal, and during international and domestic missions that have been criticized by former JAGs.

Lepper said it appears that the guidance of uniformed lawyers has been pushed aside during those operations.

“What I'm hearing from other JAGs is that they're simply not being asked to provide input on the legal opinions that are being handed down by the executive branch that apply to things like the Iran conflict and the boat strikes,” he said.

Lepper said current military lawyers have told him that most legal opinions are being written by the White House Office of Legal Counsel, then handed to JAGs for implementation.

“It's one thing not to consult JAGs, or not to give JAGs an opportunity to voice their views on the legal opinions that are being rendered by the executive branch,” he said. “It's another now again to put them under a microscope and suggest that somehow they're not doing their jobs.”

]]>

Trump says he and Xi talked US, Chinese cyberattacks, spying

David DiMolfetta — Fri, 15 May 2026 12:30:00 -0400

President Donald Trump said on Friday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed cyberattacks and espionage activities carried out by both nations during their bilateral meeting this week.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One during his return flight to the United States, Trump, when asked if he raised the topics in their discussions, said, “I did. And he talked about attacks that we did in China. Y’know, what they do, we do too.”

“They’re talking about the spying. Well, we do it too,” he said. “We spy like hell on them too.”

“I told him, ‘We do a lot of stuff to you that you don’t know about and you’re doing things to us that we probably do know about,’” Trump added.

The president didn’t describe specific cyber campaigns that were discussed. China has made waves in recent years for its sweeping intrusions into telecommunications systems, government agencies and other infrastructure in the U.S. and around the world.

U.S. officials say the Volt Typhoon group has burrowed into critical infrastructure systems, such as power grids and water treatment plants, to be able to disrupt or sabotage them if China invades Taiwan.

Asked about these intrusions, Trump said, “Well, you don’t know that. I mean, I’d like to see it, but it’s very possible that they do.”

The remarks offer a rare public acknowledgment of U.S. clandestine efforts to monitor Chinese officials and networks. Intelligence agencies such as the NSA and CIA use covert tools, capabilities, and secret partnerships to track foreign adversaries.

CIA officials have said they have used video campaigns to recruit Chinese officials as intelligence assets.

Trump’s remarks also reveal a notable diplomatic posture on the issue, particularly given how difficult cyber operations can be to publicly attribute or verify.

Chinese officials routinely deny allegations of hacking and espionage, though Trump’s description of his conversation with Xi appeared to suggest some acknowledgment from Beijing that it has sought to infiltrate U.S. computer networks and recruit American assets of its own.

The White House and the Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Suspected Chinese spies sought out a former senior State Department officer late last year, requesting they draft an assessment of U.S. policy priorities in Venezuela in exchange for payment, Nextgov/FCW reported in January. Such recruitment efforts have resurfaced amid a wave of departures from the federal government over the last year, as the administration has pursued various measures to shrink the federal workforce.

In Trump’s second term, U.S. officials have been seeking a more hardened approach against foreign hackers and cybercriminal groups. In doing so, they have created a budding market for offensive cyber capabilities that government and industry are still grappling with. Offensive cyber operations would be among the tools the administration plans to use against groups deemed threats to the United States, according to a counterterrorism strategy released earlier this month.

]]>

Golden Dome defenders push back on $1.2T cost estimate

Thomas Novelly — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:28:38 -0400

Golden Dome’s defenders are downplaying a new $1.2 trillion estimate for Donald Trump’s ambitious missile-defense plan, though they declined to detail just how they disagree with the Congressional Budget Office’s report.

Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program’s leader, said the CBO report released Wednesday relied on outdated cost estimates for existing technology and didn’t account for the missile shield’s undisclosed mix of technology and weapons.

“They did not estimate the architecture that we're building. Why is that? Well, first of all, they didn't come and ask us what we're building,” Guetlein said Thursday morning during the Inside the Dome event in Washington, D.C. “More importantly, we have not been putting a lot of information out in the public [about] exactly what we're doing, because the intelligence threat is so high.”

CBO officials declined to comment when asked whether they reached out to Guetlein, the Pentagon, or the Golden Dome office when working on the report.

The report says its $1.2 trillion estimate is based on the Golden Dome vision laid out in a January 2025 executive order, which President Trump said would cost about $185 billion: “Because DoD has not provided details about its objective architecture for GDA, CBO used the language in the executive order as a guide to determine what components to include in its notional NMD [national missile defense] system.”

Earlier CBO reports have indicated that the Defense Department, under the Trump administration, has not responded to researchers’ requests for information.

A Golden Dome spokesperson told reporters after Guetlein’s public comments that the general is looking for ways to reduce costs by using artificial intelligence and existing technology. She declined to provide details.

“You can't just take what we've done in the past and multiply it forward, or you're going to get large numbers like CBO got,” Guetlein said during the event.

During a subsequent panel, Rep. Jeff Crank, the head of the all-Republican Golden Dome Caucus, criticized the CBO’s estimates and claimed the nonpartisan research agency’s findings would be used by political enemies of the president.

“I think it's very unfortunate that it came out,” Crank, R-Colo., said. “Some of the folks that are opposed to Golden Dome for whatever reason, for whatever political reason, they can continue to bury their heads in the sand…and they will use the CBO support as a wedge, as a tool, to say, hey, look, we can't afford this. But I think, as a country, we've got to confront this.”

When asked what the biggest threat to Golden Dome is, Rep. Mark Messmer, R-Ind., agreed it was politics, but said he was optimistic the program could get support across the aisle.

“It's unfortunate that, I mean, because it's the president's idea, we have people that object and fight it just because of that,” Messmer said. “But we've got to be consistent, we've got to continue to make the real threat deterrence that our country faces.”

CBO’s two-decade estimate is larger than the nearly $80 billion the administration plans to spend in the Golden Dome for America account over the next five years. But, so far, the missile defense program has been backed through heavily partisan reconciliation funding measures.

Golden Dome netted $24 billion in Congressionally-approved reconciliation funds in last year’s budget, and another $17 billion has been requested through the same method this year.

Guetlein acknowledged that it’s unclear what future funding and final size of the project will look like, but said components of the system will still be necessary for homeland security.

“No matter what we look like, no matter how we're organized, no matter how well we are or not funded, the threat is not going away,” he said. “So when you start talking about longevity, we're here to stay. You may call me something different next month, or you may rewicker some of the funding, but we're here to stay because we have to protect the homeland.”

]]>

US infantry’s drone-warfare experiments are getting bigger

Meghann Myers — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:11:02 -0400

Flying and downing drones are becoming part of many U.S. soldiers’ jobs, so over the last few weeks in Lithuania, infantry units worked to add drone warfare to their ground-combat expertise.

During the fifth iteration of Project Flytrap, a U.S. Army-NATO exercise in Europe, members of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment joined international partners in testing more than 20 pieces of equipment with Strykers and unmanned ground vehicles.

“So what I saw from the squadron level, with my main command post and these new systems, was understanding the battlefield architecture, where things are not just on the ground, but their effects in the sky,” Lt. Col. Jason Kruck, who commands 2nd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, told reporters Thursday.

Where traditional infantry operations would send up drones to spot targets for indirect fire, they now must also have to be aware of what’s flying above them and how they might shoot it down or move around the battlefield to avoid being seen.

“Well, now with the counter-UAS detect systems, we could identify that there is an enemy air drone coming through our sector, and then we developed new [tactics, techniques and procedures] on how we counter that,” Kruck said. “What are the options, and how does that balance between intelligence collection, the fires element—who now also has to cover down on that counter-UAS viewpoint? And then over to the maneuver side, and how that synergy between those three portions of warfighting work together.”

To do that, soldiers used reconnaissance drones, first-person view attack drones, jammers, and AI-enabled operating systems to help find and target the enemy.

This most recent exercise focused on the troop and squadron level—the cavalry equivalent of a company and battalion, the regimental executive officer said.

“So I think with each one of the Flytraps, what I think we've seen a trend of is…we're always increasing scaling,” said Maj. Galen King. “So both the level of unit that we are testing, we are also talking scaling of the amount of UAS that are flying, and then we're always increasing the realism and complexity of both the scenario and the [opposition force].”

Though his unit is still gathering lessons from 5.0, the expectation is that 6.0 will be even bigger.

“We will move beyond the troop and the squadron headquarters that we were really focused on this time and continue to create an environment with a more realistic enemy, which is flying more UAS, using more electronic warfare, and continuing to provide increasing amounts of this kind of multi-layered counter-UAS approach for friendly forces as part of this scenario,” King said.

]]>

ODNI assigns two to coordinate spy agencies on election security

David DiMolfetta — Thu, 14 May 2026 18:21:00 -0400

Two leaders have been tapped by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to coordinate spy agencies' efforts to track and thwart threats to the 2026 midterm elections, according to a congressional source and a second person familiar with the matter.

Dave Mastro serves on the National Intelligence Council, which uses intelligence-community findings to produce intelligence assessments, including for Congress and senior policymakers. James Cangialosi serves as deputy director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.

Mastro and Cangialosi are part of “an expansive team of professionals at ODNI focused on carrying out President [Donald] Trump’s and [Director of National Intelligence Tulsi] Gabbard’s election integrity efforts,” ODNI spokesperson Olivia Coleman said in a statement.

The office is also “providing robust briefings, on par with efforts traditionally carried out during election years, to protect election integrity this midterm cycle,” Coleman said.

It had been unclear for months whether ODNI had named election-threats executives. Both sources requested anonymity to communicate the appointments.

The Record first reported the appointments.

The Foreign Malign Influence Center was established in 2022 to coordinate spy agencies’ efforts to identify and assess foreign influence and disinformation threats against elections. But ODNI argued that the FMIC raised constitutional concerns about coordination with social media companies. Last summer, an ODNI reorganization shifted many of the center’s responsibilities to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and the National Intelligence Council

The election-threats executive—created in 2019, during Trump’s first term—typically oversees an “Experts Group” that analyzes intelligence on foreign interference efforts.

Election threats can include cyberattacks on voting systems, foreign influence operations, and disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining public trust in elections.

Gabbard has faced criticism over her involvement in the White House’s broader review of election-security outcomes, including scrutiny from Democrats tied to her presence during an FBI raid on a Georgia election office and ODNI-led examinations of voting machines in Puerto Rico.

For the first time in nearly a decade, this year’s annual intelligence assessment of worldwide threats to the U.S. did not mention foreign threats to elections.

Trump has continued to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from him.

The appointments also come amid broader changes to the federal government’s election-security apparatus ahead of the 2026 midterms. In recent months, Democrats and state election officials have raised concerns about cuts to election-focused programs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has lost around a third of its workforce in the last year.

]]>

Defense Business Brief: Tulsa’s space draw; Cadenazzi’s wish; Anduril’s $5B round

Lauren C. Williams — Thu, 14 May 2026 14:33:06 -0400

Quantum Space is building its first satellite, but the Maryland-based company is already planning its first large manufacturing facility in Tulsa. Why there? Location and propulsion testing.

The state government is “building a hypergolic test stand in Oklahoma that will be owned and operated by Agile Space Industries—that's for in-space propulsion. And of course, those are the thrusters that we're going to use on Ranger and they're going to be tested there at the hypergolic test facility,” Quantum Space CEO Jim Bridenstine told Defense One.

“Because if you're going to sustain maneuver, you've got to have high energy thrust to get out of the way of threats…to look at threats to get out of the way of debris. This is what Ranger, our satellite, is capable of…So all of this means we need the ability to use thrust and we're going to have thrust in levels and capabilities that others in the market don't have. And all that thrust has to be tested…in Tulsa.”

Bridenstine, who is a former NASA administrator and U.S. congressman for Oklahoma, said his company already has a government customer for the Ranger Prime satellite, which will maneuver quickly in orbit using technologies currently under development. The plan is to fly Ranger in 2027.

Read a Q&A with Bridenstine here.

Welcome

As private capital flows toward defense, Michael Cadenazzi, the Pentagon’s industrial policy chief, wants some of the funding to underpin expansions of the gritty foundation of manufacturing: critical minerals, material sciences, factories, he said last week at the Special Competitive Studies Project’s annual AI Expo.

"We'd love for industry to invest in the lower tiers of the supply chain. There are a lot of things that are dirty and explosive and made of metal, that are not exciting investments and aren't going to generate your 60 percent [rate of] returns. I get that's what everybody wants. But at the end of the day, we need a certain portion of the portfolio invested in these things at the lower end, supply chain, chemicals, castings, forging, kind of old school metallic things. I can't fire [software-as-a-service] rounds and fight, sorry. Maybe in 80 years or so. Right now, I still need things that are rocket propelled and explode,” Cadenazzi said.
“So for us, seeing continued investments into the mineral space, into the material space, that is a big thing. The more of those we see in, the more commercial capital we have and unlocks there, the better off we're going to be settled for the future.”
AI should be used to fine-tune what’s happening on the factory floor, he said, “and not worry so much about giving me the next dashboard. I got plenty of dashboards.”
“We really need to get these tools deployed to the legacy factories, the organic industrial base, which have been historically under invested in,” and many of which haven’t been upgraded in decades.
“I'm really excited about seeing a focus on these sort of dirty industrial areas,” Cadenazzi said, noting that the rare-earths challenge isn’t just China dependence, but that the process is dirty and AI could help make it cleaner.
“It's chemicals. There's a lot of waste. And so what we need to do is actually get the next wave of science developed to go ahead and do that in a cleaner way. Which has always been the success of America is we come up with a dirty way to do something, and then we throw our brains at in our smartest minds, we use a combination of industrial potential on the commercial side, government funding, labs, universities, and we create a better, cheaper, faster way to do it, in this case, cleaner.”

Making moves and other news

Anduril raised $5 billion in a Series H funding round led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The company is now valued at $61 billion.
A medical brigade in the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps tested autonomous medical resupply during a recent exercise using Soaring’s M25 drones.
Former Army CIO Leonel Garciga is now a senior executive advisor at Booz Allen Hamilton. Here’s his last interview with Defense One here.
The USS Cleveland—the final Freedom-classlittoral combat ship, LCS 31—will be commissioned on May 16. Watch the livestream here.

]]>