Pillar Two Expansion. A State Department Official recently said the administration sees AUKUS Pillar Two eventually expanding to others, but not yet. “I think right now what we want to do is make sure that we have a good solid basis amongst the three countries in terms of the emerging technologies, and where we are with emerging technologies, two, three years from now how they might be integrated into our military and how we can work together and focus on interoperability,” Ambassador Bonnie Jenkins, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said during an Atlantic Council event on Nov. 27.
Future Firefighter?
Anduril Industries says its new Roadrunner jet-powered unmanned system, which looks like a mini-rocket and comes in two variants, one for air defense and the other for traditional unmanned aircraft missions such as surveillance and reconnaissance, has non-defense applications. Anduril Founder Palmer Luckey told reporters last week Roadrunner is part of the company’s solution for the XPRIZE Foundation’s challenge to defeat wildfires. Roadrunner’s low cost—Luckey said the current unit cost for Road Runner is several hundred thousand dollars—and rapid response time—the system can launch in seconds from a cold engine—and speed to target—the system flies at high-subsonic speeds, make it a candidate for wildfire detection and response, he said. Roadrunner has vertical take-off-and-landing capabilities, making it operable for tight spaces and recoverable.
…DoD Buy In? Anduril developed Roadrunner on its own dime without responding to specific Defense Department requirements, particularly for air defense. Still, the system has gone through flight-testing and operational evaluation and the company said it has a U.S. government customer to shortly begin low-rate initial production. Capital Alpha Partners defense analyst Byron Callan in a client note last Friday said that while there is no DoD requirement for Roadrunner the Pentagon’s “culture is changing with an assist from DIU.” The Defense Innovation Unit, which reports directly to the secretary of defense, is working to help startups and non-traditional defense contractors gain traction in the department’s acquisition efforts. “Ultimately,” Callan said, DoD acquisition of Roadrunner may depend on young “troops” having the chance to use it to judge performance.
Kratos Targets. Kratos said it provided the targets to the Vigilant Wyvern/ Flight Test Aegis Weapon System-48 (FTM-48) last month, wherein a destroyer successfully intercepted two Short-Range Ballistic Missile (SRBM)type targets via two Standard Missile 3 Block IA interceptors. Kratos said it used variants of the BQM sub-sonic aerial target, which is capable of speeds greater than .09 Mach and minimum altitude of 6.6 feet. The test occurred at Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) in Hawaii.
CUSV Test. Textron said its Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle (CUSV) participated in a Navy-sponsored Foreign Comparative Test to demonstrate capabilities for a surface warfare mission set over the summer. In the test, a CUSV was outfitted with a South Korea LIG Next1 Co. Ltd. PONIARD rocket. The CUSV performed multiple fast inshore attack craft missions against moving targets in five scenarios. The company boasted this was the first time a small USV engaged multiple surface targets in one salvo. The CUSV was developed to support mine countermeasures missions or the Littoral Combat Ship and helped the Navy experiment on those capabilities for years until the service selected Bollinger Shipyards over them to ultimately produce the Navy’s Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MCM USV).
…October Test. Textron also worked with the U.S. Navy and LIG Next1 Co. Ltd. in an October 2023 4th Fleet-sponsored Fleet FLEX demonstration in Key West, Fla. During the latest test, CUSV launched six PONIARD rockets to hit all targets. The company highlighted that marked 10 consecutive hits with PONIARD rockets from the CUSV.
AARGM-ERs. The Navy awarded Northrop Grumman’s subsidiary Alliant Techsystems Operations LLC a $236 million contract to produce and deliver another 118 low-rate initial production Lot Three AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missiles – Extended Range (AARGM-ER). The order includes 84 AGM-88G AARGM-ER All Up Rounds (AURs) for the Navy; 34 AGM-88G AARGM-ER AURs for the Air Force; six AGM-88G AARGM-ER Captive Air Training Missiles; eight Telemetry/Flight Termination System kits for the Navy, 10 dummy air training missiles for the Air Force, and associated supplies and support. Deliveries are expected to be finished by February 2027.
Navy 3D Printing Models. The Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division said its Naval Architecture and Engineering Department is conducting a feasibility study to see if using a large-scale additive manufacturing (LSAM) model will be usefully accurate for future experiments. The study is asking if AM models can withstand the typical kinds of stresses of a carriage test and match results from model hulls built with fiberglass. Carderock Division said if this experimentation is successful it could provide “significant cost and time savings in manufacturing, rigging and testing capabilities” and change how Carderock designs its models for testing and change later model making. The hull that will be tested will be a pre-contract representation of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which the Navy said is used as a “benchmark geometry for engineering and scientific investigation in the naval hydrodynamics community.” Carderock contracted out the 3D printing of this model to Airtech international, Inc., in Springfield, Tenn. The model is over 20 feet long. The Navy said in preliminary results the LSAM model compares well to the standard fiberglass model.
Hot Fire Test. Firefly Aerospace last week said that it completed the first hot fire test of its 230,000-pound Miranda rocket engine that will power the first state of Northrop Grumman’s Antares 330 launch vehicle and the Medium Launch Vehicle the companies are co-developing. Firefly said the test “further validates the design of Miranda’s startup sequence, transient conditions, and tap-off engine architecture at a larger scale.” Next up will be a full-duration hot fire test that will last 206 seconds. The first Antares 330 launch is scheduled for mid-2025. The first MLV launch is slated for late 2025.
Darkhive Seed Round. Darkhive Inc., which is developing lightweight tactical unmanned aircraft systems for military and public safety use, has closed a $4 million seed round to help accelerate production of its hardware and software to meet what it says are “high-profile Department of Defense initiatives.” The company’s autonomous Yellowjacket enclosed four-propeller drone weighs less than a pound. Texas-based Darkhive, which was founded in 2021, has eight DoD contracts worth a combined $14 million to develop its drones. The early-stage funding round was led by Crosslink Capital and includes Stellar Ventures, MVP Ventures, and Capital Factory. The company has 13 employees.
Peraton Gets NGA Boost. Peraton has received a $24 million, six-month modification to its Acadia contract with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) to continue providing imagery science expertise and support to the agency’s image quality and integration testing missions. The award boosts Peraton’s overall contract value to $130 million.
Graphite Supply Chain. The Defense Department’s Industrial Policy Office has awarded a $3.2 million grant to Canada’s South Star Battery Metals Corp. to conduct a feasibility study to expand battery graphite production at the company’s plant in Alabama. The funds were awarded under Defense Protection Act Title III authorities and were appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act. DoD said, “The study will cover the entire process from mining to final production of CSPG (coated spherical purified graphite), exploring both economic and environmental, social, and governance criteria.” When the study is done, DoD said that that South Star plans to build a battery-grade processing facility in the southeast U.S. that will take concentrates from its graphite project in Alabama and transform it into CSPG, which will be feedstock for U.S. lithium-ion battery anode production.
Domestic Drone Detection. The Federal Aviation Administration has selected Texas-based Pharovison and Israel-based Sentrycs to conduct a test of their complementary drone detection and mitigation technologies at Atlantic City International Airport. The companies have combined their technologies, which include Pharovision’s electro-optic and infrared detection systems and Sentrycs’ radio frequency analytics for countering unauthorized drones. Sentrycs said its technology is designed to mitigate drone threats without disrupting local airport systems. The test is for three months.
Hawley/NDAA. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has said he will oppose the final version of the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and look to “slow its passage” if the defense policy bill does not include compensation for victims of nuclear contamination in the greater St. Louis area. “There’s no way I am going to vote for billions of dollars for defense contractors if working people who were poisoned by their own government are not fairly compensated. This is basic justice,” Hawley said in a Nov. 22 social media post. The House and Senate this week began negotiations on a final version of the NDAA, with the conference report likely to be unveiled next week.
State Dept. SUVs. The State Department has awarded GM Defense a deal worth up to $300 million to deliver the department’s new Heavy-Duty armored Sport Utility Vehicle for its Diplomatic Security Service, the company said on Nov. 30. GM Defense said it received an initial $25 million task order for vehicles, training and engineering services. The production contract follows a development deal the State Department awarded GM Defense in 2021 to deliver prototype vehicles for test and evaluation. “This is a very important program for GM Defense as it showcases our ability to leverage the proven commercial platforms and world-class engineering and manufacturing processes of GM to provide a first-of-its-kind vehicle for the Department of State,” Steve duMont, president of GM Defense, said in a statement.
DOT&E Nom. President Biden has announced his intent to nominate Douglas C. Schmidt to be the Pentagon’s next Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E). Schmidt is currently the Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, and in his new role would serve as the department’s senior adviser on operational live fire test and evaluation of weapon systems and programs. “In addition to his academic research, government service, and commercial experience, over the past three decades Schmidt has led the development of middleware frameworks used in thousands of distributed real-time and embedded systems across many domains, including national defense and homeland security, datacom/telecom, financial services, and healthcare,” the White House said in a statement. If confirmed, Schmidt would succeed Nickolas Guertin, who is currently waiting for the Senate to confirm his own nomination to be the Navy’s next acquisition chief.
JLTVs/Israel. Oshkosh Defense said on Dec. 1 the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMOD) has placed two orders for Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV), to include 75 JLTVs through a Foreign Military sale case and “dozens more” purchased via Direct Commercial Scale. The Army awarded Oshkosh Defense a $29 million deal on Nov. 30 for the Israeli JLTV FMS case, according to a DoD contracts notice. “We are proud to support the Israeli Defense Forces with a fleet of protected and highly mobile Joint Light Tactical Vehicles,” Tim Bleck, president of Oshkosh Defense, said in a statement. “We’ve worked with the IMOD on a multitude of programs for more than a decade, and we look forward to demonstrating our continued commitment to this partnership with the JLTV.” The Israeli orders arrive as Oshkosh Defense nears the end of its JLTV contract with the U.S. Army, with AM General set to take over manufacturing the vehicles.
F-35 Munitions for Korea. The Defense Department last Friday notified Congress of a potential $271 million foreign military sale to South Koreas for a variety of munitions to be carried by the F-35 fighter. The missiles and munitions include 39 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM), two AMRAAM guidance sections, more than 200 tail kits for different Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), including Laser JDAM, more than 150 2,000-pound bombs for JDAMs, guidance sections and air foil groups for Paveway II laser guided bombs, increment 1 and 2 Small Diameter Bomb all-up rounds, and additional spares, illuminated target detectors, practice bombs, and equipment. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and RTX and the primary contractors supplying the weapons.