Page 13 – Defense Daily

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.”

Defense Watch: Right-To-Repair, Golden Dome Study, Space Budget Growth, Lockheed NGA Award

Department of the Air Force Posture Hearing. The Senate Armed Services Committee is to hear from newly minted Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman on Tuesday at an FY 2026 and future years posture hearing for the Department of the Air Force. One item for discussion will likely be “right-to-repair” provisions that may become part of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act—provisions first proposed last December by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) in their Servicemember Right to Repair bill. This month, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said that he would ensure that right-to-repair provisions are in future Army contracts and that he would propose modifying existing contracts to include those guidelines. According to Warren, “commanders in the field should never have to beg a contractor to come repair a plane that the Air Force owns or that soldiers could fix themselves.” During his January nomination hearing, Driscoll said that the “type of innovation happening in the private sector at scale in a lot of ways seems to have not trickled into the Army as much” and that “if we think about engagement with a peer like China, being able to repair our parts in areas around the world will be crucial to that.” Driscoll testified that “if we are having six-month delays in CONUS and paying 100x the rate, that is not scalable in an actual conflict.”

CH-53K Maintenance.

Fleet Readiness Center East (FRCE) at Cherry Point, N.C., on April 17 inducted the first CH-53K King Stallion helicopter for depot-level maintenance. The helicopter arrived on April 4 from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 461 (HMH-461) onboard Marine Corps Air Station New River. This is the first of 15 helicopters FRCE will perform routine maintenance on as part of the Age Exploration Program, Depot (AEPD). AEPD collects information on an aircraft’s condition via controlled testing and analysis and assists in the development of effective and efficient maintenance schedules for new aircraft. Jeff Warren, CH-53K capability establishment lead at FRCE, also noted the 14 CH-53K industries at this facility will help determine the aircraft class’s overall planned maintenance interval. The second CH-53K is planned to arrive for maintenance in late 2026, with the third and fourth aircraft in fiscal year 2027.

AUKUS Office. Rear Adm. Richard Seif assumed management of the AUKUS Integration and Acquisition Direct Reporting Program Management Office on April 21, according to a May 14 Navy announcement. Seif previously served as commander of the Submarine Force at the U.S. Pacific Fleet and commander of Task Force 34 in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Seif succeeds Rear Adm. Lincoln M. Reifsteck, who now serves as commander of Submarine Group Seven, Task Force-54 and Task Force-74. This office is responsible for executing the trilateral AUKUS agreement to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines with high nuclear stewardship and nonproliferation standards.

Golden Dome Study. During a May 13 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, acting principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Space Policy Andrea Yaffe confirmed the Defense Department delivered the initial 30-day review on Golden Dome development pathways to the White House in line with the original Jan. 27 executive order. She said DoD officials worked with stakeholders to work on the different design options and “we matured them to a place that the technical experts took over and really refined them into a few different options to bring to the secretary.” She added DoD leaders have engaged with the president on this “and the hope is that there will be an announcement soon, certainly tied with the budget.”

…Includes Current Systems. Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of Northern Command and NORAD, said he does not know what Golden Dome will ultimately look like “but I suspect that it would be able to use a lot of the systems that are already in place and currently in development, which would give us a full capability in probably something closer to zero to five years, as opposed to something a decade out into the future.” he said this includes Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), space-based Air Moving Target Indicator (AMTI) with prototypes on orbit now, over the horizon radars, and the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft.

Doubling the Budget. The U.S. Space Force’s fiscal 2025 funding of about $29 billion is about 3.4 percent of the nearly $850 billion DoD pie, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has called for another $10 billion for the service soon. Now, Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, the deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs, and requirements, says that a doubling of the Space Force budget is warranted, especially given the service’s new space warfighting mission, and that such a doubling would not account for areas like Golden Dome, cislunar missions, or satellite refueling. Bratton says that the service “costed out” OSD’s Defense Planning Guidance requirements on the Space Force. “To do all the things that the department is telling the Space Force they expect us to do, it about doubles our budget,” he says. “That’s an over time thing, though quite honestly they’re asking us to do it today. I think we’ve laid out a pretty good case with a lot of space superiority. The warfighting stuff is new kit that didn’t exist, and we’ve tried to stop doing some of the old stuff and been told pretty directly you will keep doing missile warning/SATCOM/positioning, navigation, and timing. You have to keep doing these old missions. This new mission requires new money.” A congressional DoD reconciliation bill may provide the Pentagon with $113 billion more funding, and it looks as if the overall DoD budget request for fiscal 2026 may be flat.

Turkey FMS. The State Department on May 14 approved two potential Foreign Military Sales with Turkey, a $225 million deal for AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and a $79.1 million sale of AIM-9X Sidewinder Block II missiles. The former deal includes 53 of RTX’s AIM-120C-8 AMRAAMs and six guidance sections, while the latter covers 60 of RTX’s AIM-9X Sidewinder Block IIs and 11 tactical guidance units. Both deals also include missile containers and support equipment. “This proposed sale will provide Turkey with a critical air defense capability to assist in defending its homeland and U.S. personnel stationed there,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said of both deals.

SASC Advances Noms. The Senate Armed Services Committee this week advanced several pending nominations for senior positions, to include Michael Cadenazzi to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, Vice Adm. Scott Pappano to be Principal Deputy Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, Matthew Lohmeier to be Under Secretary of Air Force, Justin Overbaugh to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, Daniel Zimmerman to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Anthony Tata to be Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Katherine Sutton to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, Michael Obadal to be Under Secretary of the Army and Sean O’Keefe to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. The nominations were reported to the full Senate floor for consideration.

…Michael Confirmed. The Senate last Wednesday confirmed former Uber executive Emil Michael to be under secretary of defense for research and engineering. The 54 to 43 vote included Democrat Senators Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and Mark Warner (Va.), and Angus King (I/D Maine) voting in favor.

JetWave X. Honeywell said this week its JetWave X satellite communication system has been selected by L3Harris as an upgrade for the Army’s Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES). “With JetWave X, the U.S. Army will be able to transmit mission-critical information at higher data rates than currently available while ensuring a constant connection through JetWave X’s resilient, multi-network architecture,” Honeywell said in a statement. The L3Harris-led ARES is a technology demonstrator aircraft that’s informing the Army’s development of the future HADES intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance jet program. “Today’s pilots need access to real-time data with uninterrupted connectivity to make mission-critical decisions,” Matt Milas, Honeywell Aerospace Technologies’ president for defense and space, said in a statement. “Honeywell is proud to provide ARES with JetWave X, the only multi-network satellite communications system for government aviation that seamlessly connects to the Inmarsat Global Xpress, ViaSat-3 and other Ka-band constellations.”

DARPA Ventures. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking private investment to advance the technologies it is developing, and to help transition technologies into defense and commercial markets. “DARPA Venture Horizons will provide access to certain DARPA portfolio and subject matter experts through engagements that may create investment opportunities in high-impact DARPA technologies,” according to a May 12 information request. “Potential investment opportunities strengthen the Agency’s partnerships with investors, to help productize, scale, and transition DARPA-funded technologies for Department of Defense, commercial, or dual-use markets.”

Schemata Surfaces. Schemata, an artificial intelligence company focused on converting two-dimensional images into photorealistic 3D environments to enhance training, last week emerged from stealth with a $5 million seed round. The funding is to accelerate development of its training platform, which is focused on the defense and enterprise sectors. Schemata uses 3D reality capture—a process that employs laser scanner, drones, and photogrammetry to digitally reconstruct physical spaces in 3D—to allow its customers to quickly and inexpensively create photorealistic and interactive training programs. The San Franciso-based company’s system is being piloted by the 97^th Air Mobility Wing and the 11^th Logistics Readiness Squadron, and others, James Brown, co-founder and CEO, told Defense Daily. Schemata also has contracts with the 97^th and the Air Force’s AFWERX innovation unit, he said.

Rocket Engine Success. Venus Aerospace last week said it successfully completed the first U.S. flight test of its next-generation Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), which the Houston-based startup is developing to enable hypersonic vehicles to take off from conventional runways. The rail-launched engine test from Spaceport America in New Mexico may have been the first RDRE flight in the world, the company said. “We’ve proven that this technology works, not just in simulations or the lab, but in the air,” Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus, said in a statement. “With this milestone, we’re one step closer to making high-speed flight accessible, affordable, and sustainable.”

NGA Award to Lockheed. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) last week said it awarded Lockheed Martin a potential $615.7 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract under the Geospatial Intelligence Collection Next program. Under the seven-year contract, Lockheed Martin will continue sustaining the legacy GEOINT Information Management Services (GIMS), and support modernization of GIMS capabilities, according to a pre-solicitation notice NGA published in April 2024.

Amid Uncertainty On ITEP’s Future, Black Hawk Hovers For First Time With New Engine

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – While the status of Army’s program to develop a future helicopter engine remains uncertain, a lead official confirmed a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter integrated with the new GE Aerospace

[GE] T901 engine lifted off the ground for the first time this week.

“This week, the [Black Hawk] aircraft was ready to fly and we were able to come to a hover with the aircraft,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer for aviation, said during a briefing here at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference on Thursday.

Sikorsky receives the first two GE Aerospace T901 engines at its West Palm Beach, Florida facility for integration on a UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter. Photo: Sikorsky.

GE Aerospace, which developed the T901 engine for the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), also confirmed the test in a statement to Defense Daily.

“GE Aerospace’s T901 engines successfully powered a U.S. Army Black Hawk flight for the first time this week and demonstrated the performance needed to deliver critical warfighting capabilities to the U.S. military to keep us ahead of our adversaries,” a company spokesperson said.

The Army has been rolling out a new transformation plan which has included cutting “obsolete” programs such as the AH-64D Apache, Gray Eagle drones, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, Humvees and the M10 Booker combat vehicle and potentially ending development of the the Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS) and the Robotic Combat Vehicle (Defense Daily, May 1).

Two senior defense officials also confirmed to Defense Daily that the service also planned to cease development of ITEP as part of the Army Transformation Initiative (Defense Daily, May 8).

Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, the Army aviation branch chief, at the briefing described the ITEP decision as “pending,” and Gen. James Mingus, the Army vice chief of staff, said the future of the program is “largely going to depend” on how fiscal year 2026 funding shapes out.

“I would tell you, not to get ahead of any of the courses of action, but we’re presenting all those [options]…on how we could get Army senior leaders to meet their intent but get the most out of the dollar investment,” Phillips told reporters.

GE Aerospace was awarded a $517 million contract in February 2019 to develop the T901 engine for ITEP, with an aim for it to eventually power the Army’s AH-64 Apache and Black Hawk helicopters and the since-canceled Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA).

Along with canceling FARA a year ago, the Army noted at the time it would also delay moving into production of the T901 engine and invest in further research and development efforts.

“When FARA was ended, we were able to look at that from a priority perspective. The Black Hawk was still a priority. Apache was going to be a later integration. And, based on the resources available, we replanned the schedule, moved the Milestone C [decision] three years to the right and then we continued down the path of testing,” Phillips said.

To inform Black Hawk efforts, Sikorsky [LMT] integrated the T901 engine into its Raider X prototype developed for the Army’s FARA program and ultimately conducted three ground runs on the platform (Defense Daily, Sept. 6 2024).

After receiving the first two T901 engines for the Black Hawk from GE Aerospace last June, Sikorsky [LMT] confirmed in January it had begun ground runs with the new engines on a helicopter to prepare for an eventual first flight test (Defense Daily, Jan. 29).

“The data we are gathering through this test program is validating the capabilities that an upgraded engine can bring to the Black Hawk, which will continue to be a vital tool in military, tactical and rescue operations worldwide for the next 50 years,” a Sikorsky spokesperson said in a statement to Defense Daily on Friday.

Phillips said the Army learned a lot from the test data gathered from the ground runs of the T901 engine on Sikorsky’s FARA prototype and that the service has been working “intensively” on Black Hawk integration efforts over the last nine months.

“We have those ground runs under our belt. We have the aircraft ready to go. We’re looking at the path ahead in real time on the options to be finished. Because there’s not just the aircraft integration going on, there’s the engine qualification testing that is going on in the test stands. We’ve had engines in test stands now for several years gathering…data. All of that data is very rich and informing the path ahead,” Phillips said.

Phillips said joint and international partners have expressed interest in the ITEP program and also addressed the Army’s view on if it still needs a new engine for Black Hawks and Apaches or if modifications to current engines can meet requirements.

“We’re always looking at new ways to provide more performance to the aircraft, whether it’s making components lighter, whether it’s adding more power or whether it’s adding additional fuel consumption capabilities. We’ve always looked at that and I think we’ll continue to look at that regardless of the outcome with the ITEP engine,” Phillips said.

Official: Army’s Aviation Cuts ‘Deeper’ Than Expected, Still Working Details On Planned Divestments

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A lead Army aviation official said the service is still working through the details on carrying out planned divestments as part of its new transformation initiative, some of which could be adjusted, while adding that further changes are “absolutely” expected.

Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, the Army aviation branch chief, told reporters the cuts announced over the last couple weeks as the service rolled out the new Army Transformation Initiative “were “maybe deeper than we thought they were going to be.”

U.S. Army Sgt. Hector Valadez, left, an AH-64 attack helicopter repairer assigned to Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Aviation Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Armored Division, briefs Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, right, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Novosel, on AH-64 Apache phase maintenance operations in Powidz, Poland, April 28, 2025

“We only got [the ATI] two weeks ago, so we don’t know all the details of it. And I think our job collectively, and as is the case for the rest of the Army, is to do mission analysis on what we were told to do and then provide options to senior leaders,” Gill said during a briefing here at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference on Thursday.

“I think there’s probably more fidelity that we’re going to get out of the decisions that were made and we might even walk something back, if appropriate,” Gill added. “Like I said, we’ll provide options. [We could] say, ‘Hey, maybe we don’t want to divest this deep or we don’t want to do it this quickly.’ Then they’ll say we’re either doing it or haven’t considered that. I know there’s more clarity to come.”

The new ATI plan includes cutting “obsolete” programs such as the AH-64D Apache and Gray Eagle drones as well as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Humvee and the M10 Booker combat vehicle and potentially ending development of the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), the Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS) and the Robotic Combat Vehicle (Defense Daily, May 1).

“I think the Army Transformation Initiative is kind of the reality of where we are as a service. The Defense Department and the Army acknowledge that we need to make some wholesale change. We need to divest old [equipment] faster and we need to iterate and procure and probably continue to iterate and procure on newer technologies that we think are emerging given the context of the operating environment that we see,” Gill said.

Gill noted that ATI cuts were “not targeted” at Army aviation specifically, while adding “it certainly did hit us pretty significantly.”

“[ATI] was a little bit abrupt. Some of the decisions that were made were not exactly what we had proposed but they were decisions, in the context of the folks at the Pentagon who are looking at the entirety of the Army budget,…[that with] a fixed budget there’s only so many things that they can do with that money. So we’ve been looking at ways that we think we can be helpful,” Gill told reporters.

“Do I think there’s more to come? Absolutely,” Gill said.

On the potential for more planned cuts, Brig. Gen. Matt Braman, director of Army aviation, said there’s “no definitive ATI 2.0” but Army senior leaders have communicated they’re “looking to find ways to innovate” within a constrained budget environment.

“At the end of day, it’s about resources. And we’re looking for ways to free up resources for higher priority items within the force, and some of that could be in the aviation portfolio and some of that could be in other places,” Braman said.

Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer for aviation, said officials are now working through “courses of action” that will be presented to Army senior leaders on how to carry out each of the planned divestments.

Braman added he expects there will be “small, iterative moves back and forth” on “what makes sense” with carrying out the decisions from the first wave of ATI-related announcements.

“We always joke that two things change the outcomes of programs, elections and wars, right? And we just had an election and we’ll have another one in four years. And we’ll have a change of Congress in two years. All those things [have an] impact on our ability to do what the Army wants to do and we have to work within those constraints,” Braman said.

Gill noted that assessing the future of ITEP and FTUAS specifically was “always on the table,” saying a final decision on both programs is “pending,” adding he didn’t think FTUAS was “as much at risk” since the Army has placed an increased emphasis on moving ahead in the UAS space.

“Army aviation is really expensive. I hate this term, but the value proposition that we have to offer the Army is that [a program has] got to be worth it. If you’re going to spend that much money, then we’re going to have to deliver an outsized impact,” Gill said.

The FTUAS program has attempted to find a replacement for the legacy Shadow drone, with the Army having selected Textron Systems’ [TXT] Aerosonde Mk. 4.8 Hybrid Quad UAS and Griffon Aerospace’s Valiant for a competitive prototyping effort to inform a production award that had been planned for late fiscal year 2025.

With ITEP, the Army had selected the GE Aerospace [GE] T901 engine for development to potentially serve as the future capability to power its AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter fleets.

On moving from AH-64D Apaches as well as continuing to divest from legacy UH-60L Black Hawks, Gill said those decisions were already in the works and ATI accelerated that process.

Gill told reporters he understands why industry could be “skeptical” when it comes to the Army pursuing such major changes, noting some companies are “hugely affected” by these decisions.

“And we don’t take that lightly, those are people’s lives and livelihoods and businesses. But they’re tough decisions that the Army had to make,” Gill said. “Industry is rightly nervous when we talk about cutting a program or starting a new big program when we tell them, ‘Hey, we want you to share the risk with us,’ right?”

Gill also cited “political change” as the reasoning for driving many of the Army’s major pivots in direction.

“That’s the reality of our governmental system. And so, we might be moving down a path for a couple years and [then] things change. The world changes. Wars happen. I mean, the Russia-Ukraine war has really changed how we think about the third dimension of warfare,” Gill said.

Navy Plans Industry Day For Future Unmanned Surface Vessel

The Navy plans to host an industry day next month to brief vendors on its needs for the Future Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) program, according to a May 16 notice.

The industry day, to be hosted by Program Executive Office Unmanned and Small Combatants’ (PEO USC) Unmanned Maritime Systems Program Office (PMS 406) in the Washington, D.C., area on June 17, seeks to give industry a better idea of how it wants the Future USV to fit into the future surface force.

USS Ranger and USS Nomad SCO Ghost Fleet Overlord unmanned surface vessels underway in the Pacific Ocean near the Channel Islands on July 3, 2021. (Photo: U.S. Navy by Eric Parsons) — USS *Ranger* and USS *Nomad* SCO Ghost Fleet Overlord unmanned surface vessels underway in the Pacific Ocean near the Channel Islands on July 3, 2021. (Photo: U.S. Navy by Eric Parsons)

Although the notice did not give specific dimensions for the Future USV, it said the vessel should be built to commercial standards and non-exquisite; sail in the open ocean at 25 knots; operate autonomously; provide the interfaces, payload deck area and support two 40-foot equivalent unit containerized payloads that each weigh 80,000 pounds.

The two containerized payloads imply it may be similarly sized as the Ghost Fleet Overlord USVs that are 150 to 200 feet long and based on offshore supply vessels. Those vessels hold two such payload containers and are considered medium-sized USVs.

In January, Rear Adm. Bill Daly, Director OF Surface Warfare (N96 ), said he is focused on moving USV investment to having a single larger Medium USV similar to the Overlord vessels rather than previous plans for separate MUSV and Large USV devoted to different payloads (Defense Daily, Jan. 14).

“The change from what you’ve heard previously is that we are not pursuing large, medium and small mix. More directly, the hybrid fleet need not include large and/or exquisite, uncrewed platforms. We’ve got to get real here. Instead of different large and medium designs we need one craft that is affordable, non-exquisite, and can come off multiple production lines in an identical manner and go toward one of two payloads, either the envisioned magazine payload of the large USV or the ISR-related payload of the medium USV,” Daly said at the time.

The notice now said the objective of this industry day is “to provide Government information and solicit industry feedback to accelerate the development and procurement of future USVs.”

The Unmanned Maritime Systems Program Office also plans to issue a Request For Information (RFI) ahead of the industry day, but details were not released in this first notice.

The industry day itself will start with a Navy presentation to the whole audience in a large room presentation on June 17 followed by small room engagement sessions with individual companies on June 18.

The deadline for registration is June 6.

Drone Firms Can Use Third-Party Assessors To Speed Blue UAS Compliance, DIU Says

Drone manufacturers hoping to have their wares certified that they meet cybersecurity and non-Chinese supply chain requirements will be able to fund and use third party assessors, a move aimed at speeding up the process for getting small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) onto the Blue UAS List, the Defense Department’s lead commercial innovation unit said last Friday.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in June expects to issue a solicitation for companies that want to become third-party assessor to “expand the number of drones to be available for operator testing by simplifying the Exception to Policy process, and provide data to be used by Services for potential authority to operate (ATO). Drones and their manufacturers need the ATO to make it onto the Blue UAS List for two years.

The upcoming competition for industry-led assessments will result in a “select number of capable entities” whose reviews will be evaluated by DIU to certify compliance with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and cybersecurity requirements, DIU said.

Congressional and industry officials have been dissatisfied with the speed of DIU’s current internal processes for verifying NDAA and cybersecurity compliance of small UAS. Doug Beck, the unit’s director, in late April provided an outline of the changes coming to the Blue UAS List (Defense Daily, May 2).

“DIU is evolving Blue UAS to match the pace of change and growing variety and scale of capabilities that the commercial sector brings to unmanned systems, leveraging key authorities and budget to put the best NDAA compliant platforms in the hands of our warfighter,” Beck said Friday in a statement.

DIU is also creating a two-tiered list of approved drones, one will be the Cleared List, which is where the third-party assessments will help.

AUVSI, an association that lobbies on behalf of the drone industry, already conducts compliance reviews in line with DIU’s processes. DIU said it will leverage the AUVSI Green UAS program for the Cleared List.

A new top-tier, the Select List, will include drones that are sponsored by a DoD entity or have been selected through a competition, and receive an ATO from DIU.

Drones that are already on the Blue UAS List will populate the Select List. Some of these include Anduril Industries’ Ghost and Ghost X UAS, Neros Technologies’ Archer first person view drone, a half-dozen Skydio UAS variants, and PDW’s C100.

Following flight demonstrations last fall, evaluators from the services selected 23 drone platforms that DIU has been putting through penetration testing and NDAA compliance review. Those that pass muster will receive ATOs and be added to the Select List.

Shield AI’s V-BAT Group 3 UAS was one of these selected for compliance reviews, as was Hoverfly’s Spectre drone, Zone 5 Technologies’ Paladin, Teledyne Flir’s [FLIR] palm-size Black Hornet, and others (Defense Daily, Feb. 18). The Paladin and Spectre have already cleared the assessment and will be added to the Select List.

DIU on Friday also teased a new government funded effort aimed at fostering closer collaboration between drone manufacturers and their potential military customers. The Project GI Challenge will be launched in early June and will provide competitive opportunities for selected vendors to demonstrate their UAS with interested customers, who will provide feedback, allowing the manufacturers to iterate and tweak their designs based on customer needs and at government expense, with the ultimate goal being to relatively quickly result in purchases and increased production.

DIU also maintains the Blue UAS Framework, which is an approved list of software and components that meet the cybersecurity and NDAA requirements. DIU said it has begun using commercial best practices to continuously monitor software to quickly approve any updates for inclusion on the framework.

“These automated tools to scan code allow us to deliver updated capabilities to the warfighter in 24 to 96 hours, as compared to 12 to 18 months for traditional programs, and generate better results as well,” David Michelson, DIU’s autonomy portfolio director, said in a statement.

RTX Wins Another $581 Million Next-Gen Jammer Award

The Navy awarded RTX [RTX] a $581 million contract on May 15 for production and delivery of low-rate initial production (LRIP) Lot V Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) sets for the U.S. and Australia.

In January, the Navy

declared initial operational capability for the NGJ-MB (Defense Daily, Jan. 6).

The overall NGJ program aims to replace the legacy ALQ-99 jammer on EA-18G Growler aircraft while dividing it into low, mid and high-band frequency increments. The mid-band portion proceeded to award and production first.

RTX won the initial $1 billion NGJ-MB contract in 2016 to design, build and test the jammer pods (Defense Daily, April 15, 2016).

The DoD contract announcement said this LRIP order for NGJ-MB ship sets includes spares and data “in support of ensuring that manufacturing technologies and processes are mature and will support full rate production decisions for the Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).”

Australia entered into a cooperative development agreement with the U.S. back in 2017, so they will also use the new electronic attack pods in their aircraft.

The work will largely occur at the company’s facilities in Forest, Miss., and McKinney, Texas and is expected to be finished by November 2028.

$114 million of the funding obligated at the time of award comes from the Royal Australian Air Force.

The Navy first used the NGJ-MB capabilities on Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 133 when it was deployed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) during a five-month deployment in 2024. The carrier’s commanding office, Capt. Pete Riebe, told reporters in January that while it can be hard to determine effectiveness of an electronic attack, he assessed it as “so far, so good” (Defense Daily, Feb. 6)

The latest 2024 report from the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) said while NGJ-MB has had significant progress in reliability problems, most of the remaining issues are focused on software.

Muon Space Advances to Stage II on NRO Contract for Commercial Electro-Optical Imagery

Muon Space has won further business from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The newly awarded contract stage will continue to develop the national security potential of multispectral electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) data with global coverage and rapid revisit rates. Muon Space’s capabilities support persistent situational awareness of global thermal activity. Muon Space announced the new contract award, May 16.

The NRO awarded Muon Space Stage II under the Strategic Commercial Enhancements (SCE) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) framework within the commercial electro-optical (EO) capabilities focus area, to validate on-orbit performance. Stage II will include an end-to-end demonstration of Muon Space’s EO/IR capabilities, and continued testing and evaluation by the NRO.

Muon Space was named to SCE contract in late 2023

, as the NRO looked to designed to assess emerging providers and capabilities.

Muon Space has a vertically integrated technology platform, Muon Halo, that aims to provide end-to-end solutions from space-based sensing to advanced onboard processing. It is designed to support a range of government and commercial applications.

“This follow-on award signals growing confidence in our ability to deliver timely, high-quality data from space – a core requirement for national security and disaster resilience alike. We are honored to deepen our collaboration with the NRO and to demonstrate how commercial space can play a transformative role in the future of national intelligence and global response,” Jonny Dyer, CEO, Muon Space, said in a statement.

Muon Space plans to launch five Halo satellites this year. One upcoming satellite for a customer will launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-14 mission, featuring two payload capabilities with infrared and GNSS-reflectometry instruments.

Cyber Command Increasing Operations, Acting Commander Says

U.S. Cyber Command increased the number of operations in 2024 over 2023 and is on track for even more in 2025, the acting commander of CYBERCOM said last Friday.

“Deterrence is central to our strategy in cyberspace, and we are focused on maintaining a credible capability that dissuades adversaries from targeting our critical infrastructure,” Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman told the House Armed Services Committee’s panel that oversees cybersecurity. “In 2024 we executed over 6,000 successful operations, roughly 25 percent more than in 2023, and we are on pace to surpass that number in 2025. Our operations continue to grow in scale, speed and complexity.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), chairman of the subcommittee, asked whether the Trump administration is “rescoping our rules of engagement” to counter the relentless onslaught of cyber-attacks the U.S. continues to face from adversaries.

Hartman said that CYBERCOM is engaged with the nation’s adversaries “on a daily basis” and continues to change how it confronts them. The command has more work to do around policies, authorities, and capabilities, he said, noting that he would discuss this further in the closed session that followed the open hearing.

In 2024, CYBERCOM’s mission forces conducted more than two dozen hunt forward missions, “generating insights and constraining adversary freedom of maneuver,” Hartman said in his written testimony. He added that the Cyber National Mission Force has an artificial intelligence task force that is having operational success in an increasing number of pilot projects.

Hartman in his written commands also reported that after years of effort, all of the military services’ cyber components have achieved “foundational readiness standards across the forces they present to our command.”

Bacon in his opening statement said that given it took more than 12 years to get to foundational readiness, this “is not something to celebrate” and that more needs to be done to get to higher, sustained readiness levels.

Bacon and the subcommittee’s ranking member, Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), in their opening remarks criticized President Trump’s recent firing of Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, who was commander of CYBERCOM and director of the National Security Agency. Haugh was relieved of command in early April with no explanation.

The New York Times, which broke the story, reported that Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and far right conservative political activist, allegedly urged Trump to fire Haugh because he had been recommended for the role by Army Gen. Mark Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is considered disloyal to the president. The Times also reported that administration officials felt Haugh did not move fast enough to eliminate diversity programs.

“General Haugh was the most cyber experienced officer to ever hold this position,” Bacon said. “He was widely respected by his people and his peers and feared by our enemies. Removing him from the cyber battlefield in this way served absolutely no national security interest. All this did was help Russia, China, Iran and North Korea to do what they could not do for themselves.”

Secretary of Defense Hegseth “will have to answer for this” when he appears before the full committee, Bacon said.