Page 10 – Defense Daily

Kilby: HELIOS Laser Weapon Problems Delayed Testing, Not At Full Power

The Navy’s top officer revealed a laser weapon installed on a destroyer to test an ability to disable drones and small boats has had problems in testing and is still not up to its full advertised 60 kW power output.

“We had some problems with testing, but now we’re up to one-third of the power, and we’re going to continue to test that weapon system to make sure it works,” Acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby said about the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system during a May 14 House Appropriations Committee hearing.

HELIOS is installed on the

Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Preble (DDG-88). The Navy means to use it to test disabling unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and small boats with its laser weapon. It has a secondary use as a counter-UAS intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) dazzler that blinds or confuses UAS sensors. HELIOS also feeds more ISR data into the destroyer’s combat system.

HELIOS is also fully integrated with the Aegis Combat System.

Lockheed Martin [LMT] first delivered the 60+kW-class laser system to the Navy in 2022, ultimately installed on the Preble (Defense Daily, Aug. 18, 2022).

Kilby’s note about HELIOS delays adds more details to what a former Navy and current company official said in January during the WEST 2025 conference (Defense Daily, Jan. 30).

At the time, Vice President of Strategy and Naval Systems at Lockheed Martin’s missile and fire control division Thomas Copeman underscored HELIOS was on the Preble for 25 months by then but with very limited test time.

“The problem is the prioritization of everything else that’s going on in the world and the maintenance and operations and stuff has limited the amount of underway test times, test days that we’ve had with the system,” Copeman said. Copeman previously served as a former commander of Naval Surface Forces.

Last year, Commander of Naval Surface Force (SWOBOSS) Vice Adm. Brendan McLane said he wants to see the Navy significantly accelerate deployment of directed energy systems like HELIOS to deal with the kind of weapons Houthis forces have used in the Red Sea (Defense Daily, Jan. 9, 2024).

At the time, McLane expressed frustration that there have been few deployed advanced in the past decade, since he saw the Afloat Staging Base Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) test with a 30-kW Laser Weapons System (LaWS) while commander of Destroyer Squadron 50 in Bahrain.

In 2021, Joe Ottaviano, then-director of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Product Solutions business division, said while HELIOS is targeted for a 60kW output, it is classified at 100-kW and the modules can be popped out to make it capable of delivering a higher power output level upward of 150 kW to target some kinds of missiles (Defense Daily Jan. 11, 2021).

The original Navy contract with Lockheed Martin would have allowed production for up to nine HELIOS systems, but the Navy never executed those orders.

During the hearing, Kilby repeated his recent argument about having “buyer’s remorse” about choices while serving as the deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities (OPNAV N9) earlier in his career. N9 serves as the fleet architect and integrator for warfare systems requirements, including procurement.

“I was focused on a laser between 500 kilowatts and one megawatt, because that’s what it takes to knock down an anti-ship cruise missile. I wish I had been a little bit more thoughtful and taken a lesser power weapon that would have been capable against UASs,” Kilby said.

While the Navy is continuing to test HELIOS, he reiterated they are also strapping several cheaper systems for the counter-UAS mission on the Ford Carrier Strike Group, set next to deploy from the East Coast. This may include the Coyote missile, high velocity projectile from the five-inch gun, or Longbow missile.

“So we’re going to put those on that system. They’re not fully integrated with the combat system, but I think they’ll be very effective. And we’ll test them out at sea, and then we’ll procure them at scale if we need to,” Kilby said.

As USAF Looks to Future Requirements for CCA Radars, Raytheon Announces First Flight of PhantomStrike

RTX‘s [RTX] Raytheon said this month that its PhantomStrike radar had a first flight test on the Raytheon Multi-Program Testbed (MPT) aircraft in Ontario, Calif. The MPT–known as “Voodoo One” for its call sign–is a converted Boeing [BA] 727 airliner that Raytheon uses for avionics testing.

PhantomStrike–an air-cooled, gallium nitride-powered fire control radar for long-range detection, tracking, and targeting–“tracked several airborne targets and accurately mapped the terrain,” Raytheon said. “At nearly half the cost of a typical fire control radar, it delivers superior radar capability due to its faster, more agile digital beam, advanced target detection and resistance to jamming.”

Bryan Rosselli, Raytheon’s president of advanced products and solutions, said in the Raytheon statement that PhantomStrike “can make enhanced situational awareness available to a broader set of our partners and allies – offering unparalleled performance and potential U.S. weapons integration – at an affordable price.”

Designed for fighters, light-attack aircraft, helicopters, ground towers, and drones, PhantomStrike “harnesses the fire control power of a fighter in its lightest form factor ever – weighing nearly half of a modern active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.”

As part of a Block 20 upgrade, 36 Korea Aerospace Industries

‘ FA-50PL light combat aircraft for Poland are to have PhantomStrike. In 2023, KAI chose the 150-pound PhantomStrike over the Northrop Grumman [NOC] APG-83 AESA radar.

Raytheon said that it builds PhantomStrike in Forest, Miss.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Scotland.

“For most of the fighter fleet, the Department of the Air Force recently pursued fire-control radar (FCR) modernization to meet contemporary requirements,” the U.S. Air Force said in response to a question on whether the service is considering PhantomStrike for use on platforms, including manned fighters and Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

“While RTX’s announcement on PhantomStrike appears to indicate it is achieving advancements in FCR technology, whether the system can provide the right capability, at the right time, at the right price to meet emerging requirements is something that must be determined through Air Force acquisition processes,” the Air Force said.

In December 2019, the Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman an up to $1 billion contract for 372 of the Northrop Grumman APG-83 scalable agile beam radars (SABR), including those for 72 Air National Guard (ANG) F-16s in response to a Joint Emergent Operational Need from U.S. Northern Command in 2017 for homeland defense to provide better detect and track capability against Russian cruise missiles (Defense Daily, Aug. 31, 2020).

Electric Boat And UAW Union Avoid Strike In Tentative Agreement

General Dynamics Electric Boat [GD] and the Marine Draftsmen’s Association (MDA) UAW Local 571 union reached a tentative agreement Sunday night, avoiding a strike by the 2,500 draftsmen, designers and other technical workers that would have started at midnight on May 19.

First announced to union members in a Facebook video minutes after concluding the agreement, UAW Region 9 director Brandon Mancilla said the agreement “forced the company to put some real money on the table…[and it includes] unprecedented wage increases of 30.6 percent, compounded over the life of the agreement. That right there is worth over three times the value compared to the last contract.”

Mancilla added the wage increase value to members is worth $225 million compared to $70 million in the previous contract agreement.

He said beyond “historic” wage increases, there are changes to the membership’s progression grid.

Ultimately, Mancilla said members “will see an increased value of $115,000 per member on average over the life of the agreement.”

This works out to a total of upwards of $286 million more money for union members over the contract period.

Other benefits include supplementary retirement security for all members including new ones, additional Flexible Time Off, other new wage step opportunities for those working for 20-plus years, and it will not introduce new tiers for retirement security.

Ultimately, the majority of union makers must vote for the contract to approve it, but they continue working through the process.

“Electric Boat and the Marine Draftsmen’s Association (MDA) have reached a tentative deal on a five-year contract. The bargaining committees worked diligently to find common areas of interest that resulted in wage and benefits enhancements that positively impact employees’ quality of life, and achieve fair and equitable results. This package recognizes the essential role of the MDA members in the production of submarines for the U.S. Navy,” the company and union said in a joint statement.

In April, the union announced over two-third of members voted to approve a potential strike, if an agreement was not met by May 19. The previous five-year contract for Local 571 expired on April 4 (Defense Daily, April 15).

Union officials said the negotiating committee “unanimously endorses” the new agreement.

Local 571 president Bill Lewis said both the union and company did not want a work stoppage, but these were the “hardest negotiations we have been through, at least in my time.”

“I have not ever been as proud as I am today to represent this local union and all of you for what you’ve done to this point,” he added.

Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), whose district covers Electric Boat’s shipyard, applauded the agreement.

“As Local 571’s bargaining committee led by President Bill Louis pointed out, the agreement contains both an historic increase of wages and reform of the wage structure – which will achieve greater fairness for this highly talented, unique group of employees.”

Courtney boasted the wage package “reflects the goal of special funding Congress approved last December to help submarine shipyards recruit and retain the talented workforce required to execute our nation’s aggressive submarine construction plans. This has been a challenging, arduous process and all the principals deserve the respect and admiration of the community for their perseverance.”

He was referring to the December Continuing Resolution that extended funding into March and added $5.68 billion to fund fiscal year 2025 submarines and workforce wage and non-executive salary improvements for the submarine workforce (Defense Daily, Dec. 18, 2024).

Electric Boat is the prime contractor for Virginia-class attack submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, with HII‘s Newport News Shipbuilding [HII] as the major subcontractor that shares production work.

Intelligence Community-Focused Vibrint Acquires Ampsight Adding New Customers

ST. LOUIS—Vibrint on Monday said it has acquired Ampsight, a small company with expertise in cloud, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence that adds to its customer base in the intelligence community, including the geospatial intelligence space.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The addition of Ampsight boosts Vibrint’s employee count by about 50 percent to more than 220, Tom Lash, Vibrint’s CEO, told Defense Daily at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium.

Ampsight accelerates Vibrint’s strategy around cloud migration, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence and machine learning, areas where the company has “nascent” capabilities, Lash said. Ampsight has a tool that helps agencies understand if cloud migration is right for them, and if so, how to do it, and how much they should.

Ampsight also bolsters Vibrint’s work with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and adds new customers within the intelligence community, he said in a brief interview.

New opportunities for Vibrint following the acquisition include “Ampsight’s differentiated work in explainable AI for geospatial data and multimodal analytics, a rapidly growing priority across the federal landscape,” Vibrint said.

About 50 percent of Ampsight’s business is with intelligence agencies. The remainder of the company’s work is national security-related support such as critical infrastructure protection for federal civilian agencies followed by the Defense Department, Andrew Heifetz, Ampsight’s CEO, said alongside Lash.

In the cybersecurity space, Ampsight provides customers cyber threat hunting, including around ensuring wireless communications are secure. Vibrint is partnered with Pure LiFi, which provides light-based secure wireless communications. Lash said his company expects to leverage Ampsight’s cybersecurity expertise around secure wireless communications and apply it to the hardware and software Vibrint has developed for LiFI.

Vibrint is based in Maryland near Fort Meade, home to the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. Ampsight is headquartered in Northern Virginia.

The acquisition is the third by Vibrint, which is owned by a consortium of private investors. The company acquired two companies in 2023, Meadowgate Technologies and Engineering Solutions Inc.

The

McLean Group and Executive Council PLC served as financial advisers to Ampsight, and Baird advised Vibrint.

Key Geospatial Intel Lesson Of Ukraine War Is Closing Kill Chain, NATO Official Says

ST. LOUIS—The use of geospatial intelligence to accelerate decision making from the time a potential target has been detected until an effect is put against it has been an important lesson in the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War, a NATO official said on Monday.

Having situational awareness, and then taking advantage of this to impact targeting is critical, Maj. Gen. Paul Lynch, deputy assistant secretary general for intelligence on NATO’s International Military Staff, said at the annual GEOINT 2025 Symposium.

“I think the key role that this discipline plays in ensuring that decision makers are able now to make decisions on sensor-to-shooter in minutes rather than hours, or potentially even longer, that has been honed by meticulous and necessary practice by the Ukrainians over the last three or three tragic years,” Lynch, an officer in United Kingdom’s Royal Marines, told attendees.

Knowing what your adversary is doing, and “ideally what they’re about to do,” is the goal, he said. And then having the ability to put an effect on that adversary, he said.

Ukrainian forces have relied on Western supplied GEOINT and their drones to find Russian targets in their war against Russia’s illegal invasion of their country that began in February 2022.

Lynch said the top lesson from the war has been the need for a high quality intelligence architecture followed by “sufficient stocks and material,” and then the people and training that enable all of it.

Los Alamos Plutonium Facility Moves Into 24/7 Operations, DNFSB Reports

Triad National Security, the prime contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory, announced the beginning of phasing into 24/7 operations at the New Mexico lab’s plutonium facility, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report.

The nuclear watchdog report

dated April 18 said that contractor management determined continuous operations at the facility were needed at this phase in the pit production mission. Resident inspectors at the site also reported “significant equipment changes,” including rooms where gloveboxes were removed and preparations for new installations started.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) told sister publication The Exchange Monitor that he gathered that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “seem[s] to be ready to produce” the fissile nuclear weapon cores at Los Alamos at the level required.

Section 3120 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act put into law that NNSA produce 30 plutonium pits by 2026 at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Additionally, the NNSA announced plans recently for a detailed review of environmental impacts of planned plutonium pit production as part of a federal judge’s ruling last fall. NNSA will hold public hearings and meetings as part of the process.

Los Alamos would initially make cores for the first stages of W87-1 warheads, which are to top the Air Force’s planned silo-based Sentinel missiles some time next decade. The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility will make cores for the W93 warheads, which would top the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.

Unarmed Minuteman III Test launch Scheduled for Wednesday Morning

Vanderberg Space Force Base announced that the U.S. military will test-launch an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in Santa Barbara County, Calif., on May 21.

The Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) said it will launch the nuclear missile between 12:01 a.m. and 5:01 a.m. Pacific Times to “demonstrate the readiness of U.S. nuclear forces” with aims to prove the “lethality and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent,” according to television station KTLA.

AFGSC and Vanderberg Space Force Base recently did a Minuteman III test launch

Feb. 19 as well. In November, the missile was launched with three test warheads.

The ground-based Boeing Minuteman III, which uses the W78 and W87 warheads, is set to be replaced by the Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel, a nuclear-tipped missile, in the mid- to late-2030s. The last Minuteman III is set to be decommissioned by 2050 or later, an AFGSC leader told the Exchange Monitor in January.

Space Force Awards LeoLabs $14 Million For Space Domain Awareness Radar In Indo-Pacific

The Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) last Friday awarded LeoLabs a $14.1 million contract to build an ultra-high frequency phased array radar in the Indo-Pacific region to provide space domain awareness of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO).

The award includes government funds as part of a $60 million Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) opportunity that LeoLabs announced in March with the Space Force’s SpaceWERX innovation arm to deploy a larger version of its fixed-site, Seeker 3D pulse doppler direct radiating array in the Indo-Pacific to augment the service’s space domain awareness sensors (Defense Daily, April 7). The site location has not been disclosed.

LeoLabs previously said the radar deployment is planned for 2027 under the fixed-price contract. SSC’s award notice says work will be completed by May 2029.

The initial obligation is for $8.7 million and includes $3.5 million in fiscal year 2024 research and development funds, and $5.2 million in FY ’25 R&D funds, SSC said.

Under a STRATFI program, an industry awardee is responsible for matching government funds.

“The STRATFI will enable LeoLabs to fill a critical operational gap in radar coverage in the western Pacific for the U.S. and its allies, improving our ability to detect and characterize adversarial space activity,” Tony Frazier, the company’s CEO, said in March.

In April, LeoLabs introduced its new Scout mobile S-band radar for rapid global deployment of space domain awareness capabilities. In addition to Scout and Seeker, which is deployed at a site in Arizona, LeoLabs also offers the Tracker phased array radars that are deployed at five locations worldwide.

NGA Plans Upcoming Commercial Analytics Awards In Several Areas

ST. LOUIS—The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded initial task orders under its new commercial analytics service programs and has more to come in the next few weeks and months, the agency’s deputy director said on Sunday.

The upcoming awards under Luno A will for petroleum, oil, liquefied natural gas, storage and pipeline monitoring, raw area search, and facility monitoring, Brett Markham said in a keynote address at the opening day of the annual GEOINT Symposium.

NGA last September selected 10 companies to compete for task orders under the $290 million Luno A contract. So far, awards valued at less than $10 million each have been given to Maxar Technologies for facility monitoring, and

Electromagnetic Systems Inc. (EMSI) for feature identification with the aim being to “test out a specific new commercial analytics capability,” an agency spokesperson told Defense Daily last week.

In addition to Luno A, NGA in January awarded the $200 million Luno B contract.

“Luno A is focused on facility monitoring, feature identification, infrastructure and high cadence network monitoring and general change detection,” Markham explained. “Luno B is focused on human domain monitoring, and domain awareness, and custody services. Both contract vehicles also provide the GEOINT community access to emerging products, data and services.”

Vendors selected to compete for work services under Luno A and B are Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH], BlackSky’s [BKSY] Geospatial Solutions business, BlueHalo, which is now part of AeroVironment [AVAV], CACI International [CACI], EMSI, Maxar, NV5 Geospatial, Royce Geospatial Consultants, and Ursa Space Systems. BAE Systems, Deloitte, and Planet Labs [PL] won spots on Luno B.

In the next few months Luno B task orders will be made for human geography, maritime domain awareness, and damage assessment and change detection mainly related to disaster response, Markham said.

One of NGA’s core missions is “expanding analytics services,” he said.

Under a separate commercial analytics program for maritime domain awareness (MDA) called Project Aegir, NGA last July awarded Privateer $2 million using a rapid acquisition vehicle called a Commercial Solution Opening (CSO) (Defense Daily, July 23, 2024). Testing under that pilot contract gave NGA the “knowledge to inform future MDA-related acquisitions in record time,” Markham said.

In a parallel effort last year also under Project Aegir, NGA awarded the Automated Analysts for Maritime Law Enforcement and Security (AA MLES) contract to a small business “to satisfy an ongoing U.S. Coast Guard, commercial joint need in the MDA space,” he said. That award was also part of Project Aegir.

NGA has not disclosed the AA MLES awardee.

Markham said the AA MLES contractor applies artificial intelligence such as computer vision to sift through imagery to detect vessels and compare the detections with other data “to identify anomalies, including dark or unattributed ships, spoofing, and ship-to-ship or bunkering events.” Bunkering refers to supplying ships with fuel.

“With our industry partners, we will process over 12 billion square kilometers of imagery resulting in over 11 million detections,” he said. “And we’re growing this effort to support over 300 customers at this point, from 16 government organizations. Because of the success demonstrated during our initial six-month pilot, we extended the contract for another six months and are continuing to invest in delivery and enduring operational impacts.”

Space Systems Command Places Nearly $218 Million Delivery Order with Palantir

Palantir [PLTR] has won a nearly $218 million delivery order from U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) under a data software services umbrella contract–the Space C2 Data Platform, the command said on Friday.

The company is “to provide Space C2 Data Platform solutions capable of operating in secure environments and providing data products and advanced analytics to the DoD and joint force,” SSC said. “The Space C2 Data Platform harnesses the power of data to enable military leaders to make decisions more quickly, efficiently and with greater confidence resulting in real world mission impacts. It is a configurable enterprise data management and operations software solution that enables the integration and management of data from various disparate data sources. It supports application delivery, in-depth analysis, and data-driven decision-making across echelons and functional communities, including users who operate on multiple security levels across multiple networks.”

Palantir’s Maven Support System (MSS), managed by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, uses artificial intelligence-based computer vision to sift through imagery to identify potential targets. Maven’s use by the U.S. military services and combatant commands has increased 400 percent in the last year to about 20,000 users, defense officials said.

NATO said last month that it is contracting with Palantir to use MSS for military planning and operations (Defense Daily

, Apr. 14).

Space Force Lt. Col. David Williams, materiel leader for SSC space defense and theater support, said in SSC’s Friday statement that “we’ve transitioned to an agile commercial approach toward software development so that we can quickly deliver advanced warfighter capabilities that require the aggregation of massive amounts of data from disparate sources and systems.”