Saronic Marauder. Dino Mavrookas, co-founder and CEO of Saronic, on Nov. 3 announced the company has put its second Marauder unmanned surface vehicle to the water at its Franklin, La., shipyard. In a social media post, he said the hull took eight percent fewer labor hours to produce than the first and that “that’ll continue to get better, every build needs to be more efficient than the last.” He reiterated as they ramp up, the company projects the shipyard to be able to produce up to 20 Marauders per year at its peak. Saronic is one of the three winners of the Navy’s Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel family of systems phase one testing program and was set to receive orders for 10 more MUSVs for further testing and operations.
Navy Threat Briefing. The Navy’s Rapid Capabilities Office plans to hold a Global-21 threat outbrief alongside the U.S. Pacific Fleet to give industry partners information on the current maritime threat environment in to “support their internal investments in the development of “mission-critical solutions,” according to a Nov. 2 notice. The event is set to occur on Nov. 13 at Ft. Belvoir, Va., and a single representative with active top-secret clearance from each vendor will be permitted to attend. Subject matter experts from the Pacific Fleet will attend to answer industry questions about the briefing. Interested parties must register by Nov. 6.
CVN-65. The Ex-Enterprise (CVN-65) aircraft carrier started its last transit on Nov. 2, leaving HII Newport News Shipbuilding for Mobile, Ala., where it will be dismantled. CVN-65 was commissioned in 1961 and served in the Navy for over 50 years as the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The carrier was first inactivated in late 2012 and the Navy finished defueling its reactor plants in 2017, when the first nuclear carrier was officially decommissioned. CVN-65 is the eighth naval vessel to bear the name and it was built by Newport News Shipbuilding. The name is set to continue in the Ford-class future USS Enterprise (CVN-80).
1,000th ESSM. The Navy’s NATO Seasparrow program (PMX-312) marked the delivery of the 1,000 Evolved SeaSparrow Missile (ESSM) Block 2 produced for the 12-nation NATO SEASPARROW Consortium, on Nov. 2. ESSM Block 2 is a ship-launched surface-to-air missiles that provides ship self-defense and local area defense against airborne and surface threats. RTX’s Raytheon is the prime contractor for the missile. The SEASPARROW project consortium was established in 1968 and is one of the longest cooperative weapons programs, made up of 12 countries: the U.S., Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey.
British Carrier Drones. The Royal Navy launched the BAE Systems Nyan One-Way Effector (OWE) uncrewed air system from the deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier for the first time in October, the company said on Nov. 5. The Nyan is a small uncrewed aircraft with a 9.5-foot wingspan and is designed for precision strike and designed and built by BAE’s Callen-Lenz. In the tests, four Nyans were launched from the carrier while in the North Atlantic during the Royal Navy’s Exercise Neptune Reach B and they all hit designated strike points. This follows Nyan’s first seaborne launch from the Royal Navy experimental vessel XV Patrick Blackett during Exercise Neptune Reach earlier this year. This exercise fell under Project Vantage, a collaboration among the Royal Navy, British Army and the Royal Air Force focused on accelerating the testing and fielding of maritime strike drones. “Through Project Vantage we are generating the evidence, operational insight and confidence required to inform future capability decisions while supporting the wider Defense One-Way Effector program. Conducting these activities from HMS Queen Elizabeth allows us to explore how uncrewed strike drones might operate alongside other crewed and uncrewed capabilities within a maritime task group. The lessons identified will directly contribute to Maritime Aviation Transformation and our vision for a Hybrid Navy that delivers greater operational choice and effect,” Lt. Cmdr. David Burton, Capability Sponsor at the Royal Navy, said in a statement.
Big on OTAs. Leidos CEO Tom Bell last week said the company is “leaning into” Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) contracts to take advantage of the faster procurement timelines with the Defense Department than the traditional Federal Acquisition Regulations allow. “OTAs are increasingly of interest to our customers as they want to field critical capabilities quickly,” Bell said on the company’s third quarter earnings call. “And in OTAs, it’s a little known fact that Leidos is actually a market leader here. We have currently 212 OTA contracts, includ[ing] 33 that were awarded just this year for a $6.6 billion ceiling,” he said.
Drone Sales. AIRO Group Holdings has made its first U.S. sale of its drones, the RQ-35 and RQ-70, to a government customer “in support of a specific mission requirement,” the company said last week. The company said the sale “marks AIRO’s entry into the U.S. drone market.” The RQ-35, which is on the Defense Department’s Blue UAS List, is a hand-launched, fixed-wing aircraft with 150 minutes of endurance, and the RQ-70, which comes in a Group 1 and longer-range Group 2 variant, can stay aloft for eight hours.
AI Funding Raise. Ocient, a Chicago-based startup whose artificial intelligence technology is designed to help enterprises leverage Petabyte-scale data environments, has closed a $100 million Series C round co-led by BOKA Capital and OCA Ventures. The company’s OcientAIQ Solutions platform that provides the governance around access, policy and controls to give organizations confidence in the data their AI agents access and the resulting answers. “Turning advanced technology into dependable operational capability is now the critical test across defense and national security environments,” John James, the CEO of BOKA, said in a statement. Ocient does not disclose its government customers. The company has less than 250 employees.
Armada in Action. Armada, the startup developing and supplying edge compute and networking infrastructure, recently participated in a North Dakota National Guard disaster response exercise, bringing its 20-foot containerized, mobile Cruiser Galleon to the site to support real-time radio transcription and analysis. “Radio traffic was turned into text in real time,” Tony Schwarz, head of federal business development for Armada, told Defense Daily in an email reply to questions. “AI models then summarized it into commander-level updates using AI speech-to-text and language models.” The rapid radio transcription and summaries was combined with other feeds such as signal messages, participant geotags and video—including drone feeds—to create a common operating picture, he said. “Two minutes after the exercise ended, the AI had produced a full after-action summary: what worked, the gaps, lessons learned and next steps. Before this, debriefs were manual and took days,” he said.
People News. Recently retired Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has been appointed chairman of Voyager Technologies’ board of advisers, and “will provide strategic counsel for the company’s space and defense efforts, customer needs and the evolving threat environment.” Hanwha Philly Shipyard, Inc. (HPSI) has named Hyuk Kim as president, effective immediately, reporting to retired Navy Adm. Tom Anderson, who is the president of shipbuilding for Hanwha Defense USA, the owner of the Philadelphia shipyard. Anderson said Kim “brings deep experience with building ships at scale from Hanwha Ocean’s flagship yard in South Korea,” which will benefit HPSI as it expands into Navy and commercial shipbuilding.
…New NRO Deputy. Space Force Brig. Gen. Robert Schreiner on Friday began his duties as the new deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and commander of the Space Force Element. Schreiner succeeds Space Force Maj. Gen. Christopher Povak who will be the deputy chief of space operations for operations at the Pentagon’s Space Force headquarters. Schreiner previously was commander of Space Forces Northern at Peterson Space Force Base, Colo.
Air Force Funds for Joby. Joby Aviation, which is developing an autonomous, fixed-wing, all-electric air taxi and logistics aircraft that can take-off and land vertically has received about $17 million more from the Air Force to expand its autonomy work for defense needs and conduct more operational testing in the Pacific, the company said last week. Joby had previously received nearly $20 million from the Air Force. The contract expansion follows Joby’s autonomous cross-country flight campaign this year with its autonomy system flying a Cessna Caravan from California to North Carolina. The additional funds raise the ceiling value to $50 million.
New Command. U.S. Space Force Special Operations Command was activated on Nov. 2 at U.S. Special Operations Command Headquarters, MacDill AFB, Fla. U.S. SPACEFOR-SOC is now the dedicated Space Force service component to SOCOM.
USMC/Ripsaw M3. Textron Systems and its Howe & Howe subsidiary said on November 5 it’s received a contract from the Marine Corps to deliver two of its Ripsaw M3 robotic ground vehicles to serve as experimentation and integration testbeds. “Pairing the M3’s proven capability and reliability with the [Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory’s] mission to drive future operational concepts and capabilities will enable the Marine Corps to advance uncrewed force design and battlefield utility,” Sara Willett, Textron’s vice president of programs, said in a statement. Textron previously delivered Ripsaw M3 prototypes to the Army for the service’s now-scrapped Robotic Combat Vehicle development effort.
NGSRI Test Units. Lockheed Martin, at the end of October, delivered a “significant number” of test article units to the Army for the Next Generation Short Range Interceptor (NGSRI) program, a company spokesperson confirmed to Defense Daily. The update follows a recent visit by Lockheed Martin and Army officials to the company’s Camden, Arkansas, facility where it has built the QuadStar missile offering for NGSRI. Lockheed Martin is currently competing against RTX for the program to develop a Stinger missile replacement. “The visit was more than a routine checkpoint; it signaled a pivotal milestone that validates the initial hardware builds, while allowing the team to perfect manufacturing processes before full‑scale production,” Lockheed Martin said in a statement.
Driscoll To OpenAI. OpenAI said on Nov. 2 it has hired former Army Secretary Dan Driscoll as its senior counselor for national security modernization. “In this newly created role, Dan will work with OpenAI teams and leaders across governments, industry, academia and allied institutions to advance practical modernization initiatives that support the buildout of democratic AI. He will also help internal OpenAI teams understand the operational needs of global national security institutions,” the company said in a statement. Driscoll resigned from his role leading the Army in early September, with a source at the time telling Defense Daily the decision followed his move to bring up concerns “surrounding Army transformation and readiness and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth’s blocking those efforts specifically by firing the generals who were responsible.” Driscoll, in a statement, said he was joining OpenAI “to help the United States and our allies put this technology to work responsibly, for the people who keep us safe.”
LUCAS Airframes. Advanced manufacturing and robotics firm Machina said on Nov. 6 the Pentagon has selected the company to develop and qualify a “RoboCrafted airframe” for the Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Attack System (LUCAS), the one-way attack system built by SpektreWorks. Machina said it has also been tasked to deploy two pilot expeditionary robotic factories, called Edge Factories, to support airframe production efforts. “Built on a Modular Open Systems Approach, Machina’s Edge Factories can produce a family of mission-specific drone designs from a single production cell, enabling drone airframes to be made in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional composite manufacturing,” the company said in a statement. U.S. Central Command said that the Operation Epic Fury campaign against Iran has included the first combat employment of LUCAS systems, which were reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed one-way attack systems.
Sikorsky/South Korea. Sikorsky said on Nov. 6 that South Korea has selected the company to deliver the upgraded S-92A+ helicopter for its new presidential fleet. The decision builds on Sikorsky’s previous delivery of three S-92 helicopters in 2007 to South Korea. Sikorsky noted that Korea Aviation Engineering & Maintenance Service (KAEMS) “will perform in-country mission equipment completion” for the new S-92A+ helicopters. “The S-92 platform’s shared heritage in presidential transport across the Republic of Korea, the United States and other nations makes this selection especially meaningful. Together with Korean aerospace partner KAEMS’ participation in the program, this milestone reflects Lockheed Martin’s longstanding commitment to the ROK-U.S. alliance, national defense and defense industry cooperation,” Wonik Lee, South Korea country executive for Sikorsky parent company Lockheed Martin.
Airlift/Tanker Association. The Airlift/Tanker Association is holding its annual conference Nov. 5-7 in Kissimmee, Fla. Speakers include Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach; Air Force Gen. Randall Reed, the head of U.S. Transportation Command; and Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs Lt. Gen. David Tabor. Panels include advancing the Air Mobility Command mission through geospatial data and analysis; commercial support to air mobility; attributes of the next Air Force tanker; and “air refueling operations past and present: 70 years of passing gas.”
T-7A Escape System. Last month, the T-7 program office conducted the final high-speed sled test for the T-7A Red Hawk escape system, which uses the ACES 5 ejection seat by RTX’s Collins Aerospace. Boeing and Saab are building the T-7A trainer to replace the Air Force’s T-38s. “Conducted by the 846th Test Squadron at the Holloman High Speed Test Track at Holloman AFB, N.M., on Oct. 7, the [final high-speed sled] test simulated an ejection scenario at 550 knots effective airspeed,” according to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. “The primary objective was to validate critical safety enhancements, specifically a redesigned canopy fracturing system pattern and a modernized ejection seat sequencer…An initial high-speed video review indicated the modernized seat sequencer functioned as designed, deploying the stabilizing drogue parachute for an extended duration. This enhanced deployment timing stabilizes the seat during dynamic separation, significantly lowering peak loads on the neck and spine while ensuring a smoother, safer descent profile. Comprehensive seat trajectory, acceleration, and biometric sensor data remain under formal engineering analysis.”
