Defense Daily

Navy Leaders Tell Lawmakers Columbia Sub Two Years Late

The Columbia-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) is now running two years behind schedule, slower than reported earlier this year, Navy officials told lawmakers this week.

The Navy says its highest priority program is the Columbia-class, starting with the future USS

District of Columbia (SSBN-826), which it intends to gradually replace the aging Ohio-class SSBNs.

Acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on June 24 that they are currently on pace for SSBN-826 to deliver about two years late, by March of 2029, but that “we are trying desperately to claw back that schedule. I work with the PEO, as does the Secretary, on where there’s opportunities there to move that to the left.”

The two-year mark is later than what Navy officials told lawmakers two months ago.

In their written opening statement for a Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee hearing on April 8, Navy program officials said SSBN-826 was over 50 percent complete but it was running a year and a half behind schedule (Defense Daily, April 14).

Kilby said he is optimistic they will shorten the remaining timeline, but that March 2029 is the current schedule. “I’m going to try to pull it to the left to deliver it earlier.”

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) also asked if the $1.93 billion in advanced procurement funding in the fiscal year 2026 budget request is enough to get the submarines on a better schedule, given how there is no further funding in the reconciliation bills.

“I believe it will, sir. But again, we have to make the industrial base do what it’s designed to do. So that is going to require a lot of work on both sides of the government and industry to make that happen, and we’re committed to that work,” Kilby responded.

The Navy has said SSBN-826 must be ready to start its first patrol by fiscal year 2031 to make up for retiring Ohio-class submarines and in April officials estimated the the District of Columbia would be ready around 2029 before accounting for testing and certification.

The service has also looked into and is planning to extend the life of several Ohio-class SSBNs long enough to hedge against Columbia-class delays.

HII transporting the stern of the future USS District of Columbia (SSBN-826), the first Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, ti General Dynamics Electric Boat in January 2024. (Photo: HII by Ashley Cowan) — HII transporting the stern of the future USS *District of Columbia* (SSBN-826), the first *Columbia*-class ballistic missile submarine, to General Dynamics Electric Boat in January 2024. (Photo: HII by Ashley Cowan)

Previously, in 2024, the former executive director of the Program Executive Office for SSBNs said the Navy would have the boat ready on patrol in 2030 even if the path was hard and it was on track to deliver only 12 months late, up to a year faster than it is projected now (Defense Daily, Nov. 18, 2024).

Former Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro’s shipbuilding review from April 2024 noted the Columbia-class is 12 to 16 months behind schedule (Defense Daily, April 3, 2024).

In 2024, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noted persistent design and construction challenges for the new submarine led to schedule delays and argued cost growth would likely worsen in the later construction stages (Defense Daily, Oct. 2, 2024).

Reed also noted the Navy’s FY ‘26 request for Virginia-class attack submarines (SSN) is $816.7 million for one boat because it assumes $6.5 billion in another submarine from the reconciliation bill even though both Senate and House versions online include $4.6 billion for one additional SSN in FY ‘26.

When he asked if this is enough to push industry and the Navy to get to its goal of two submarines per year, Kilby said while they are “working hard to get to that build rate that we need to, right now we’re at 1.1 subs a year. We’ve got to work hard to get exactly where you want to go. I’m not satisfied with it. The Secretary is not satisfied with it.”

Kilby reiterated he thinks the congressional funding to improve the industrial base and procure submarines will help them reach the two boats per year rate, “but we need to come back and report to you regularly on where we are with that build rate.”

General Dynamics Electric Boat [GD] is the lead contractor for the Columbia-class and Virginia-class submarines, with HII [HII] a major subcontractor.

Updated Defense Reconciliation Bill Adds Industrial Base Support, Reduces Border Support Funds

The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday released an update to the $150 billion defense portion of the wide-ranging reconciliation bill, which includes adding funds for industrial base and critical minerals efforts, a cut to border operations support and removing classified programs.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the SASC chair, noted the latest version of the defense language was once again coordinated with the House and Trump administration, and arrives as Congress presses ahead with plans to finalize and potentially pass the massive budget reconciliation bill over the next few weeks.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee posture hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., March 16, 2023. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. John Wright)

“This bill is a crucial down payment to modernize our military and enhance defense capabilities amid rising global threats. It provides significant funding for key areas including Golden Dome, unmanned technology, and shipbuilding,” Wicker said. “Alongside important reforms in the NDAA process, this bill will help transform the Pentagon and strengthen our military.”

The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have been responsible for crafting the defense portions of the reconciliation bill, which covers a total of $150 billion in defense spending over four years, to include $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense system, tens of billions to boost shipbuilding and production of munitions and drones and increases for a wide swath of defense priorities.

After the House narrowly passed the initial version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last month and the Senate then began its consideration, Wicker unveiled initial compromise defense language with some slight adjustments from the lower chamber’s version such as a $5.7 billion reduction in shipbuilding and adding over $4 billion for readiness priorities (Defense Daily, June 4).

The latest update to the defense portion of the bill includes some further adjustment to include adding in $5 billion for funds to support critical minerals supply chain efforts and $3.3 billion for industrial base support efforts.

Meanwhile, the bill now adjusts the amount of funding available for military support to border security operations to $1 billion, a $2.3 billion cut from the most recent version of the language.

All language related to classified programs has also been removed from the bill, to include $5.13 billion for classified military space superiority programs, $550 million for classified Air Force programs, $480 million for classified Navy programs, $300 million for the Strategic Capabilities Office’s (SCO) classified space-related efforts and $96 million for classified nuclear deterrence-related programs.

The updated legislation also adds $2.55 billion for “military missile defense capabilities,” while removing $2.4 billion for development of “non-kinetic missile defense effects” and $183 million for Missile Defense Agency special programs.

The latest version also adds $3.65 billion for military satellites and efforts to protect those assets, $1 billion for the X-37B military spacecraft program, $600 million for Air Force long-range strike aircraft, $500 million for Navy long-range strike aircraft, $350 million for military space command and control systems, $150 million for nuclear weapons delivery programs and $125 million for military space communications.

The bill also includes $600 million for accelerating SCO programs, an increase from the original $250 million, and adjusts a $100 million shipbuilding line to cover advanced procurement for the light replenishment oiler program rather than for procurement of commercial logistics ships.

Lawmakers, including Wicker, have pushed back on the Trump administration’s inclusion of anticipated reconciliation funds to achieve its proposed $1 trillion defense request for fiscal year 2026 (Defense Daily, June 4).

Startup Developing Reusable Satellite Bus Emerges From Stealth

Lux Aeterna on Wednesday emerged from stealth and announced a $4 million pre-seed funding round that will go toward a demonstration mission in 2027 for launching a satellite that will return to Earth to be refurbished for later use, which the company said would mark the first ever reuse of a satellite.

The pre-seed round was led by Space Capital

The Denver-based startup’s Delphi spacecraft is planned to launch in early 2027 on a rideshare mission aboard a SpaceX rocket and will host a payload, conduct on-orbit tests, and then return to Earth. The company said its reusable satellite bus will meet Defense Department demand for responsive space capabilities and lower costs.

Participants in the pre-seed raise include Dynamo Ventures, Mission Once Capital, Alumni Ventures, Service Provider Capital, and angel investors that include the co-founders of Dive Technologies, which was previously acquired by Anduril Industries.

AeroVironment Posts Strong Fourth Quarter, Sees More Of the Same In New Year

AeroVironment [AVAV] on Tuesday evening reported strong fourth quarter results driven by record revenue and a handsome bottom-line.

Sales in the quarter grew 40 percent to a record $275.1 million versus $197 million a year ago, while net income soared 180 percent to $16.7 million, 59 cents earnings per share (EPS), from $6 million (22 cents EPS) a year ago. Excluding acquisition-related expenses, goodwill impairment, and other non-operating items, adjusted per share earnings of $1.61 topped consensus estimates by 21 cents.

The results include an $18.4 million (65 cents EPS) pre-tax goodwill impairment charge stemming from the unmanned ground vehicle business.

Results for the quarter and AV’s fiscal year 2025 that ended on April 30 exclude any results from BlueHalo, which the company acquired on May 1. AV did record $5.2 million in pre-closing deal expenses related to BlueHalo.

The Loitering Munitions Systems segment led the sales gains, up 87 percent to $138 million, followed by MacCready Works, up 24 percent to $24 million, and Uncrewed Systems, up 9 percent to $113 million.

Going forward, AV has realigned into two operating segments to account for the BlueHalo merger, Autonomous Systems and Space, Cyber and Directed Energy (Defense Daily

, May 1).

For all of FY ’25, sales increased 14 percent to a record $820.6 million and net income fell 27 percent to $43.6 million ($1.55 EPS).

Sales to Ukraine fell, accounting for 18 percent of sales for the year and 12 percent for the quarter. In FY ’26, the company expects to generate less than 5 percent of sales to Ukraine, with revenue from that country being driven by upgrades to their fleet of Puma UAS and Switchblade loitering munitions, Kevin McDonnell, AV’s chief financial officer, said on the company’s earnings call.

The primary drivers for the earnings decline were the UGV impairment charge and $17.2 million in pre-closing integration costs related to BlueHalo.

AV is bullish on its outlook and FY ’26 prospects. Sales in the new fiscal year are expected be between $1.9 billion and $2 billion, representing 15 percent organic growth at the mid-point of the range based on pro-forma sales of $1.7 billion for the combined company in FY ’25.

Adjusted income in FY ’26 is expected to be between $300 million ($2.80 EPS) and $320 million ($3 EPS).

Orders in FY ’25 amounted to a record $1.2 billion, with the Loitering Munitions segment garnering nearly $477 million in contract awards from the Army, the Defense Department’s Replicator Initiative, and international customers, Wahid Nawabi, AV’s chairman, president, and CEO said on the call.

The U.S. Army’s new Transformation Initiative should benefit AV, Nawabi said. Loitering munitions, UAS, counter-UAS, and directed energy are all areas Army leadership is interested in modernizing, Nawabi said.

AV also has the production capacity to produce and deliver the Army’s and DoD’s priority needs now, he said.

Funded backlog in the quarter increased 82 percent to $726.6 million versus $400.2 million a year ago.

NATO Releases its First Commercial Space Strategy

NATO released its Commercial Space Strategy on Tuesday, aimed at integrating commercial solutions more flexibly, and creating more business opportunities while simplifying how space companies engage with NATO.

The “Commercial Space Strategy,” the first of its kind for NATO, was developed in consultation with industry. It supports NATO’s “Overarching Space Policy,” released in 2019 about NATO’s approach to space. The treaty organization is not an autonomous actor in space, but rather looks to complement the work of NATO allies in space.

The strategy includes three strategic objectives — to leverage commercial solutions, ensure continuous access during peacetime, crisis and conflict, and to build coherent relationships with the commercial sector.

In terms of leveraging commercial solutions, the strategy addresses contract opportunities to integrate commercial space services to complement NATO and Allies’ space systems and service requirements. It also addresses more flexible contracting and financing models to access commercial innovation, and calls for space to be more prominent in NATO exercises, trials, and demonstrations.

It also discusses accessing services through commercial agreements. NATO plans to “explore establishing agreements with pools of commercial providers to ensure rapid and persistent access to commercial services in times of peace, crisis and conflict …. This will help commercial partners to better understand NATO’s needs, invest and meet necessary security measures, including for cybersecurity, and expand manufacturing capabilities.”

In addition, NATO plans to establish a new Space Capabilities Group as a single venue to promote cooperation and standardization in space. “the group will support the development of NATO and national operational capabilities and will aim to enhance capability, interoperability, availability, maintainability and affordability,” the strategy says.

$250 Million for Penetrating Munitions in DoD Reconciliation Bill Takes on New Light After Strikes on Iran

Last year, in their versions of an FY 2025 defense bill, Senate and House appropriators proposed reductions for the U.S. Air Force’s Hard and Deeply Buried Target Defeat System (HDBTDS) research and development program.

Yet, the DoD reconciliation bill released early this month may mitigate that, as the bill has $250 million for “expansion and acceleration of penetrating munitions production.”

The service asked for $154 million in fiscal 2025 for HDBTDS. Senate appropriators advise cutting that by $77 million due to “unjustified growth”– nearly $63 million less for a new “direct strike penetrator” and $14 million less for the Boeing [BA] GBU-57A/B 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The MOP has 25,000 pounds of steel for penetrating several hundred feet underground and protecting the MOP’s 5,000 pounds of explosives.

In the June 21 strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, DoD has said that it used 14 MOPs dropped on Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment plant and the Natanz nuclear plant by seven Air Force B-2A Spirit stealth bombers built by Northrop Grumman [NOC].

On the night of June 21, President Trump told the nation that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” and on the morning of June 22 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the strikes an “incredible and overwhelming success.”

Yet, Congress still awaits a detailed read-out from the Pentagon on Operation Midnight Hammer. “We’ve gotten nothing,” said a congressional GOP staffer.

In addition, nuclear experts have called into question the administration’s version of events and said that a concrete-buttressed tunnel complex could be immune from MOP, especially if such tunnels are off center from the bomb’s strike point.

Last week, at least 30 hours before Operation Midnight Hammer began, the Trump administration indicated that it was considering military strikes on Iran.

Trucks “showed up at the Fordow FEP [fuel enrichment plant] the day before the strike, possibly to relocate sensitive equipment, and certainly to cover those entrances with dirt,” according to Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation expert and professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

None of Iran’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) may be in Fordow or Natanz.

“The 400 kg of HEU was largely stored in underground tunnels near the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility,” according to Lewis. “Despite extensive Israeli and U.S. attacks [on] the facility, there does not seem to have been any effort to destroy these tunnels or the material that was in them.”

Some political observers contend that Operation Midnight Hammer was a “wag the dog” moment to boost domestic support for the Trump administration and/or an attempt to spur the downfall of Iran’s government.

According to Lewis, the June 21 strike on Iran “is about regime change.”

“As late as May, DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] said Iran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program,” Lewis said. “When asked about that, [U.S. Secretary of State Marco] Rubio said the intelligence was ‘irrelevant.’ It’s only irrelevant if the problem is the regime, not the program.”

The Air Force has said that its direct strike penetrator program “develops and modifies a family of advanced precision-guided penetrator munitions to include evaluation of integrated technologies for the development/integration of advanced position, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities (i.e., Global Positioning System (GPS), non-GPS, optical, passive, active, etc.) and smart fuze systems, and all penetrator components, that will provide the Air Force with improved ability to attack Hard and Deeply Buried Targets, such as bunker and tunnel facilities, using air-to-surface conventional munitions.”

“Systems developed include, but are not limited to Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), GBU-72 Advanced 5,000-lb Penetrator Weapon System (A5K), and Section 804 Rapid Prototype/Rapid Fielding activities,” according to the Air Force. “Systems developed will be integrated onto current and future platforms to reduce the number of weapons required to hold HDBTs at risk and will result in more targets engaged per mission flown. Direct Strike Penetrators will provide critical global strike capability not met by inventory conventional weapons and will hold at risk the best protected high value assets essential to an enemy’s war fighting ability. The project also provides an opportunity to quickly insert emerging technologies into existing and developing aircraft munitions and fuzes.”

Boeing builds the 5,000-pound GPS-guided GBU-72, which entered service in 2021.

SpaceWERX Announces Winners For Sustained Maneuver Challenge

The Space Force’s innovation arm last week said it has awarded contracts to 10 companies worth a combined $19 million under its Sustained Space Maneuver (SSM) Challenge that will lead to demonstration prototypes.

Each company received $1.9 million direct to Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contracts aimed at improving the Space Force’s ability to sustain operations in war during a conflict.

The awardees are Apech Labs, BlackStar Orbital Technologies, CisLunar Industries USA, Dark Fission Space Systems, Flight Works, Katalyst Space Technologies, Momentus Space, Plasma Controls, Rhea Space Activity, and Xenti.

U.S. Space Command Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting in April announced that the SSM Challenge had resulted in 10 awards but the winners were not announced until June 17 when SpaceWERX posted them on the social media site LinkedIn (Defense Daily, April 8).

The companies have 15 months to develop prototypes to demonstrate sustained maneuverability and resilience in space, SpaceWERX said.

“This effort focuses American ingenuity on forging superior, cost-effective maneuver capabilities that will equip the U.S. Space Force to seize and dominate the initiative,” Arthur Grijalva, director of SpaceWERX, said in a statement.

The Space Force ultimately wants spacecraft that can continue performing operational missions while maneuvering.

Maxar Releases Geospatial Monitoring Solution For Predictive Intelligence

Maxar Intelligence on Wednesday announced a new solution suite that applies artificial intelligence-enabled analytics to geospatial imagery for persistent global monitoring of fixed sites and vessels on the open sea to provide customers with predictive intelligence and improve the efficiency of, and outcomes for, analysts.

The company is already bringing its Sentry solution to bear for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) under the Luno program that purchases commercial data analytics to improve monitoring of global economic, environmental, and military activity. Maxar’s initial task order covers facility monitoring (Defense Daily

, May 19).

The software suite applies AI and machine learning for “building out patterns of behavior and understanding anomalies from those patterns, and how those anomalies correlate in a causal way to activity that you understand based on that doctrine,” Peter Wilczynski, Maxar Intelligence’s chief product officer, told Defense Daily in an interview.

For example, the use of satellite imagery to observe the build-up of Russian tanks ahead of the invasion of Ukraine provided strategic intelligence and early warning to “see the change, characterize the change, and then understand the implications from a doctrine perspective of that change,” Wilczynski said.

The software suite can be used for economic indicator analysis and enable predictions based on ongoing activity at site, he said.

Sentry includes two products, Site Sentry for monitoring fixed sites such as airports, ports, shipyards, and urban centers, and Maritime Sentry to track vessels at sea over thousands of square kilometers.

Maxar’s solution takes advantage of computer vision technology the company has developed by training its models against a massive database of high resolution satellite imagery collected over more than 20 years. In addition to tasking its high resolution satellites for rapid data collection and analysis, Sentry can be leveraged against imagery collected by other vendors’ constellations.

Sentry also uses different AI algorithms for capabilities such as object detection and identification, and change detection, that work with different satellite systems.

“And then you sort of compose an orchestration that allows different instruments, different satellite systems, to basically be tipped and cued by the output of another satellite system, plus a computer vision algorithm,” Wilczynski said.

In addition to NGA, other government agencies, and commercial entities are potential customers of Sentry, he said.

“For the first time, Sentry makes it possible to use the full potential of space to deliver predictive intelligence at global scale,” Dan Smoot, CEO of Maxar Intelligence, said in a statement. “Sentry uses AI and ML to drive automation across the entire sensor-to-decision system, unlocking sensor integration at a scale that hasn’t been done before.”

House Appropriators Approve $66 Billion DHS Bill For FY ‘26

Following a lengthy session Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the Fiscal Year 2026 Homeland Security Appropriations Act, sending the $66.4 billion bill to the full House for consideration.

The non-defense discretionary portion of the bill is $63.1 billion, nearly $1.4 billion or 2 percent higher than FY ’25 levels.

The bill was approved along party lines by a vote of 36 to 27 with Republicans for and Democrats opposed. Senate appropriators have yet to mark up their version of the FY ’26 spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

The bill includes more than $14 billion for the Coast Guard, including about $1.6 billion for acquisition, $19 billion for Customs and Border Protection, $11 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more than $11 billion for the Transportation Security Administration, and $2.7 billion for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Defense Daily, June 9, June 10, and June 12).

SAIC Unseats KBR as Air Force TENCAP HOPE Contractor

Science Applications International Corp. [SAIC] has unseated KBR [KBR] as the contractor for the Air Force Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities Hyper-Innovative Operational Prototype Engineering (AF TENCAP HOPE) program run from Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo.

On Wednesday, SAIC said that the Air Force has awarded the company a five-year, up to $928 million contract for AF TENCAP HOPE 2.0 that the company plans to start next month.

Congress mandated the establishment of the overall DoD TENCAP program for the military services in 1977.

AF TENCAP is to allow the sharing of intelligence community data with aircrews, for example F-15 pilots.

Senate and House appropriators provide the Air Force’s requested $50 million for AF TENCAP in their versions of the fiscal 2025 defense appropriations bill.

“SAIC will provide comprehensive research, development, test, and evaluation mission engineering services to help AF TENCAP create near program of record ready prototypes that lead to improved warfighting superiority and decision dominance in all domains,” the company said on Wednesday. “Incorporating warfighter feedback, SAIC will support rapid prototype development and mission integration for AF TENCAP and its 65 agencies and commands across the DoD and Intelligence Community. This includes partnering with more than a dozen traditional and non-traditional defense companies to deliver the nation’s most advanced technology to DoD Combatant Commands.”

In November 2020, the Air Force awarded KBR a five-year, nearly $539 million contract for AF TENCAP HOPE. KBR’s team includes

General Dynamics [GD].

In response to questions on why SAIC came out on top in the latest AF TENCAP Hope competition, the company responded in an email statement, “In addition to being a premier mission integrator, SAIC won the contract based on our track record for rapid modernization of DoD C2 and space integration programs implementing data-centric solutions, leveraging both leading edge commercial technologies.”

“However, we do not compromise security for speed,” SAIC said. “We build in cyber-resilience from day one of the solutioning, as we know these systems will be ‘tested’ by adversary hackers. Both the C2 and space systems we have been modernizing, and TENCAP’s scope, has our nation’s most sensitive data, which make the focus on resilience all the more important to the combatant commanders and TENCAP program.”