The U.S. Space Force is examining whether to move ahead on a possible program for Commercial and Military Satellite Communications Operations Support (COSMOS) for Space Operations Command and Schriever Space Force Base, Colo.’s Space Delta 8, which focuses on satellite communications.
COSMOS would follow the Wideband Satellite Communications Operations and Technical Support II (WSOTS II) program.
More than a year before the creation of the Space Force in December 2019, the U.S. Army awarded Harris–now part of L3HarrisTechnologies [LHX]–a nearly $218 million contract for WSOTS II (Defense Daily, Nov. 28, 2018). That contract is to end on Jan. 31, 2027.
COSMOS requirements may change over time.
“Based on mission needs, the government anticipates upward and downward adjustments of its requirements throughout the lifetime of the contract,” according to a Space Force business notice on Wednesday. “Examples include: Product Manager Wideband Enterprise Satellite Systems (PdM WESS) currently manages the acquisition, fielding and lifecycle sustainment of strategic satellite communication and satellite control systems for the Department of Defense users (including the Wideband SATCOM Operational Management System (WSOMS). PdM WESS is currently under the United States Army. However, the program office is anticipated to be moving to Space Systems Command [SSC] in the near future.”
In addition, Space Force launch of Boeing‘s [BA] Wideband Global SATCOM satellite 11 (WGS-11) is expected this year. “WGS 11 will have more communications flexibility than the entire existing WGS constellation and will provide combatant commanders with twice the mission capability in contested environments,” Wednesday’s business notice said.
In March last year, Boeing said that SSC had awarded the company a nearly $440 million contract to build the 12th WGS satellite (Defense Daily, March 6, 2024). WGS-12 is to deter adversary jamming through the Protected Tactical Waveform with antenna nulling in the Ka-band. Military forces are to connect over WGS-12 through the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service ground system.
Both WGS-11 and -12 are to have nearly 100 times the number of beams as the most recent WGS, WGS-10, which has 18 beams–eight in the X-band and 10 in the Ka band.
Another factor that may change COSMOS requirements is the mission delta reorganization of Space Operations Command. “SpOC’s organizational Structure continues to evolve,” the business notice said. “The Mission Delta construct was created to increase unity of command for readiness and
unity of effort for capability development. Current functional alignment of deltas will change.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Amid the Army’s unfolding transformation plan, a Boeing [BA] official said Thursday the service’s commitment remains on intending to moving ahead with the Block II version of CH-47F Chinook heavy-lift helicopter.
Heather McBryan, Boeing’s vice president and program for cargo helicopter programs, told Defense Daily the company still anticipates that a Milestone C decision for the program is likely to be made this year.
Boeing conducts the first flight with a production CH-47F Block II Chinook on April 8, 2024. Photo: Boeing.
“We have been supporting them very closely as they march toward Milestone C,” McBryan told reporters here at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference. “We have not been provided any specifics that anything has changed in terms of continuing to move toward Milestone C for Block II. We continue to deliver aircraft off our production line for Block II and we continue to submit proposals and continue to negotiate contracts for Block II.”
As part of the Army’s aviation rebalance detailed in February 2024, which included canceling development of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, the service announced a commitment to eventual full-rate production for the CH-47F Block II Chinook (Defense Daily, Feb. 8 2024).
“Nothing has changed since last year’s decision to move forward with Block II,” McBryan told Defense Daily following a briefing here.
The Army has been rolling out a new transformation initiative which includes moving on from Boeing’s AH-64D Apache as well as cutting “obsolete” programs such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Humvee, the M10 Booker combat vehicle, and Gray Eagle drones, and ending development of the Improved Turbine Engine Program, the Future Tactical UAS and the Robotic Combat Vehicle (Defense Daily, May 1).
McBryan told reporters Boeing has now delivered four CH-47F Block IIs to the Army. Five more are in production, with two close to coming off the production line.
Block II upgrades for Boeing’s CH-47F Chinook include an improved drivetrain, increased range, a redesigned fuel system and an ability to lift an additional 4,000 pounds.
“All in all, production’s really looking great and moving along,” McBryan told Defense Daily.
Boeing has also submitted proposals related to the Army’s plan to buy up to 11 more aircraft, plans of which were included in the service’s fiscal year 2024 and 2025 budget.
“We’re currently working with the Army on those contracts. They’re in various stages of the contracting process,” McBryan said.
In late March, Boeing was awarded a $240 million contract covering five remanufactured MH-47G Block II Chinook heavy-lift aircraft for U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command (USASOAC), with the latest deliveries of that aircraft scheduled to begin in 2027 (Defense Daily, March 27).
Germany has also previously agreed to a deal worth potentially $8.5 billion to purchase over 60 of the aircraft, Japan signed a deal in February to acquire 17 of the extended-range version of the aircraft, and the State Department on Tuesday approved a potential $1.32 billion deal with the United Arab Emirates that includes six CH-47F Block II Extended Range Chinooks (Defense Daily, May 13).
McBryan noted Boeing has also been developing the Active Parallel Actuator Subsystem (APAS) for U.S. Special Operations Command that would provide “supervised autonomy-like capabilities,” comparing it to a car’s lane assist feature.
“That is kind of the first step as you think about autonomy for the Chinook. That’s the foundation. But then we’re also investing a lot of research and development dollars on what’s the next step when we think about autonomy for the Chinook and how do we take it a step further with collision avoidance cueing and beyond just that tactile cueing for the pilots,” McBryan said.
“APAS is a stepping stone to broader autonomy…[the Army] has been monitoring its progress as we’ve been moving forward,” McBryan added. “Very far in the future, I think the Chinook will provide the capability for two pilots, one pilot or full autonomy. So I think that’ll be depending on the mission set. I think near term it’ll be a supervised autonomy where we’re really kind of taking advantage of where we can automate and reduce pilot workload.”
Boeing has already demonstrated “a landing without any pilot intervention” using APAS, according to McBryan.
Northrop Grumman [NOC] on Thursday introduced a new command and control (C2) system designed to easily integrate with existing and future sensors and effectors, rapidly manage the fight against drone swarms, and be user friendly.
AiON is the company’s solution to the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Forward Counter Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) C2 solicitation issued last December (Defense Daily
, Dec. 11, 2024). DIU and the Army are planning four events this year to demonstrate bidders’ Forward CUAS C2 offerings.
Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the Army’s existing Forward Area Air Defense C2 capability, which is used for short-range air defense, C-UAS, and counter rocket, artillery and mortar missions. AiON is built to replace the C-UAS mission of FAAD C2, John Myers, director of global growth and capture for Northrop Grumman’s Strategic and Mobile C2 business, told reporters.
AiON is designed to counter hundreds and thousands of drones, Myers said. Northrop Grumman said the system is designed to help defeat threats from Group 1 through 4 UAS, which includes those weighing more than 1,320 pounds.
AiON already integrates with existing sensor and effectors that FAAD C2 is interoperable with and have been accredited by the Army, which means less testing going forward and no need to “start from scratch” as with a new system, Josh Sagucio, director of the Strategic and Mobile C2 unit, said during the virtual media roundtable. This helps keeps the system affordable, he said.
Myers added that AiON is designed for rapid development with a build, test, iterate approach that also helps keep costs low, and enables the company to respond quickly to customer feedback and keep pace with evolving threats.
The new system can be deployed to the cloud or to the tactical edge. Some capabilities might be lost at the edge such as only being able to identify targets using still imagery versus instead of full motion video depending on local processing power, Myers said.
Like FAAD C2, AiON enables warfighters to conduct fire control missions and can integrate with new sensors, effectors, and share data to other C2 systems, Myers said. Unlike the legacy system, “AiON is going to allow other C2 systems to contribute information to AiON for consideration in its processing, as well as allow the injection of third party algorithms or even parallel functions, which is indicative to what the Army is looking for in their Next Gen C2 architecture.”
In operation, AiON will allow human-in-the-loop and human-on-the-loop use.
Within a user-defined operating area, the operator can designate the threats and AiON will “automatically calculate an engagement solution” that would be activated by a “single-click, Myers said. Alternatively, AiON can automatically develop the engagement solution in a battlespace and then counter threats, he said.
“The operator’s role in that scenario then is to monitor those engagements,” he said.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – As the Army moves on from the AH-64D Apache and looks to operate a fleet of entirely E-models, a Boeing [BA] official said Thursday it’s too “early” to know about a final decision on another multi-year procurement contract for the aircraft.
“Ultimately, we want to get to another multi-year contract to be able to support all the international opportunities that are coming into that. It’s probably a little early to say, yeah, that’s a guarantee going to happen with the changes in the number of aircraft,” Mark Ballew, Boeing’s senior director of business development and strategy for vertical lift, told reporters. “But we continue to deliver on our existing multi-year. We’ve got international customers coming in. And then if you talk through what that’s going to be, we’ll figure out what’s the smartest contracting process to be able to do that to give the best value to the U.S. government and our international allies.”
AH-64E Apache Version 6.5. Photo: Boeing
The Army earlier this month announced it was moving on from the AH-64D Apache as part of its new transformation initiative, which also includes cutting “obsolete” programs such as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Humvee, the M10 Booker combat vehicle and Gray Eagle drones and ending development of the Improved Turbine Engine Program, the Future Tactical UAS and the Robotic Combat Vehicle (Defense Daily, May 1).
“Maintaining two models of the Apaches, the Delta and the Echo complicates training, supply chains, logistics and maintenance. [As] a result of divesting Deltas, we will have enough Echos to purefleet our Army,” Gen. James Mingus, the Army vice chief of staff, said in remarks here at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference on Wednesday.
Mingus told reporters after his remarks the Army has enough AH-64Es to “pure fleet” its Apache inventory with the latest model and that the Army doesn’t plan to remanufacture any more AH-64Ds to the newer E-model.
Kathleen Jolivette, Boeing’s vice president and general manager for vertical lift, said at a briefing here that work on the current multi-year Apache contract has not been impacted by the transformation initiative plans, noting the Army is “still going through the decision process” on what it will do with its AH-64Ds.
“We want to help them with those decisions. Perhaps there might be a [Foreign Military Sales] customer who would be interested in taking some D-[models] and converting them to E-[models], as one thought,” Jolivette said.
Christina Upah, Boeing’s vice president and program manager for attack helicopters, said conversations are “always happening” with the Army on the next multi-year deal for Apache.
The Army signed the second and what was at the time the expected final multi-year contract for AH-64E Apache attack helicopters with Boeing in March 2023, which will run through 2027 and could be worth up to $3.8 billion (Defense Daily, March 17 2023).
Upah told Defense Daily last April that Boeing was “confident” there will be another procurement deal for Apache, adding that details on the next multi-year award were already “in the works” (Defense Daily, April 24 2024).
Boeing has also been working on the new Version 6.5 upgrade for Apache, with Upah confirming to reporters that the final software build for the aircraft will be complete within “the next month or so.”
“Subsequent to that, we’ll do the final flight testing of that software build and receive the [Army Airworthiness Release] so the Army can determine, ultimately, when they’ll field Version 6.5,” Upah said.
Upah added Version 6.5 will bring an “open systems interface” to Apache, and that it’s “the pathway to that [Modular Open Systems Architecture] environment, getting to that plug and play.”
Plans to eventually build a Version 6.5 upgrade would not be built into the current multi-year and require a subsequent contract action, Upah noted.
Boeing has also detailed its work on a Modernized Apache concept, with Upah having previously said the company continues to work with the Army to inform design priorities and anticipates that a first flight with the future platform would likely occur in the 2030s.
The Senate Tuesday voted 52-to-44 to confirm James Danly, a former member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to be deputy secretary of energy.
Danly, an attorney and U.S. Army veteran from Tennessee, was nominated to the position by President Trump on Jan. 22. Last month, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee supported his nomination 13-to-7.
Danly will hold the No. 2 position at DoE, second only to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.
President Trump’s three nuclear-related nominees are still awaiting Senate action.
National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nominee Brandon Williams has undergone a hearing from the Senate Armed Services Committee and DoE Office of Nuclear Energy nominee Ted Garrish has also had a hearing. Garish testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Trump’s nominee to head the DoE’s Office of Environmental Management, Tim Walsh, is still awaiting a hearing.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), a vocal nuclear critic and member of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, told sister publication The Exchange Monitor Los Alamos National Laboratory “ought to be able to produce” 100 pits in four years.
Garamendi spoke to the
Monitor last week about Secretary of Energy Chris Wright’s comments in late March that “we’ve built one [plutonium pit] in the last 25 years, and we’ll build more than 100” during the Trump administration.
“The production capability at Los Alamos is supposed to be… 20 or so, maybe 30 a year, when they get up to operating,” Garamendi said. Based on a recent meeting with acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Teresa Robbins, “they seem to be ready to produce,” the lawmaker said.
“In which case, [Los Alamos] ought to be able to produce 100 in four years if my math is correct and they are correct about the production capability,” Garamendi added. “So then that begs the question: what’s Savannah River for?”
The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina is not scheduled to open until at least the early 2030s, NNSA has said. A smaller companion plant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico was to start making pits this year and ramp up to 30 a year by 2028, but Robbins said at the Nuclear Deterrence Summit in January that the goal was now to have the “capability” to make 30 pits at Los Alamos “in or near 2028.”
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. Savannah River will make cores for the W93 warheads, which would top the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. NNSA produced a “diamond-stamped,” or war-reserve quality, first production unit of a W87-1 plutonium pit in October, but has not publicized how many pits have been produced since then.
When the Exchange Monitor asked the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) and Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, STRATCOM Commander, for their thoughts on Wright’s comments, a STRATCOM spokesperson responded, “STRATCOM has been advocating for an increase in plutonium pit production for years. Faster modernization of our nuclear assets allows us to maintain nuclear deterrence, which is foundational for our national security and a top priority for the Department of Defense.”
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, where plutonium pits were first produced during the Manhattan Project in 1945.
Additionally, the NNSA announced plans last week 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.
Several members of the House Appropriations Committee this week voiced concerns that the Navy’s sixth generation fighter program could be awarded three years later than currently planned.
“I will not parse my words here. We need sixth generation fighters. The U.S. Navy needs sixth generation fighters. I’m concerned that any hesitancy on our part to proceed with the planned procurement of the sixth gen fighters for the Navy will leave us dangerously outmatched in a China fight. We cannot wait,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said in his opening statement during a Navy/Marine Corps oversight hearing May 14.
Calvert continued that the industrial base needs a clear projection to work efficiently.
Artist rendering of F-47 NGAD. Air Force image.
“Aviation programs that rely on highly specialized supply chains and skilled labor cannot be turned on and off like a switch. If we continue sending mixed signals through delayed buys, program instability or shifting requirements, we risk hollowing out the very industrial base we need for future readiness. We must treat this sector as a strategic asset, not as an afterthought.”
His and other members’ concerns were spurred by a recent Reuters report that some members of the Trump administration are looking to delay the Navy’s F/A-XX program, its planned sixth generation fighter, by up to three years due to unspecified engineering and production capacity concerns.
Ranking member Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) explained that, according to the report, Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) officials are looking to shift $454 million in fiscal year 20225 funds Congress allocated to F/A-XX would be shifted to other programs while the Pentagon also plans to ask Congress to not provide $500 million for F/A-XX in the pending reconciliation bill.
Secretary of the Navy John Phelan responded that all the budget issues are still being internally deliberated.
“The budget numbers are all over the place, to be perfectly honest. And we’re sitting down, having meetings daily on different topics and different things. I don’t have a great answer for you as it relates to it. A number of different programs we’re going through is being debated, just like we went through with the Virginia-class contract.”
McCollum responded to the report that, “Mr. Secretary, but when we appropriate money, $453 million in [FY 2025] just for that, that’s what that money’s for. And Congress doesn’t make it fungible for it to be used in other places. So that’s why you’re getting the question. We’ll follow up with you on that.”
In March, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said the Air Force and Navy had briefed President Trump and Congress on the next Generation Air Dominance programs of both services, including F/A-XX for the Navy (Defense Daily, March 18).
Only days following the briefing, the Air Force awarded Boeing [BA] the contract to build that service’s sixth-generation manned fighter, dubbed the F-47 (Defense Daily, March 21).
The Navy is expected to ultimately pick between Boeing and Northrop Grumman [NOC] for the eventual F/A-XX contract, which would succeed the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) was one of several members saying he is concerned that the the Navy has not moved forward with its next generation fighters despite the Air Force’s actions and said he is concerned about how that positions the Navy for a potential conflict with China.
“I’m concerned about the risk associated with delays and without getting too far down in the weeds, can you help me understand how we mitigate risk and when we might expect a downselect, on that platform, because if everybody understands that there’s a move out date for China on Taiwan of 2027. Those are the kinds of things that cause us to have to look at our acquisition process and wonder if we’re operating from behind.”
The Boeing MQ-25A T-1 test asset conducts the first refueling between an unmanned aircraft and a manned F/A-18E/F Super Hornet on June 4, 2021. (Photo: Boeing)
Womack was referring to China’s government putting 2027 as a goal for a level of modernization analysts say could mean being ready to attempt an invasion of Taiwan and DoD officials looking to counter that potential action.
Phelan said the Defense Department and Navy is still looking at the force structure for the future manned-unmanned force “and understanding what is the right balance…so we are committed and I am committed to making sure that we have the ability to fight in the future and meet next generation threats and that’s what we look to do.”
“We’ve learned a lot from Ukraine, we’ve learned a lot from some of these other conflicts in how we should fight and I think that needs to inform the posture moving forward,” he added.
Adm. James Kilby, acting Chief of Naval Operations, added that the “sixth gen fighter is key to the air wing of the future. So to me, the carrier is the most survivable airfield we have, period, and stop. The sixth gen fighter is a keystone of our air wing of the future, which includes, as the Secretary indicated, manned and unmanned aircraft.”
However, Kilby noted the F/A-XX will take time to develop and would not be fielded by 2027 regardless of a procurement delay.
“So the three-year part is a delay, if we start the program late, but it would deliver far in the future. But we’ve got to commit to that, because we’re going to have aircraft carriers. They’re going to live in this contested environment, and that’s my operational assessment, that we need an air wing of the future that does everything the Secretary just described, for the reasons he described it, to pace the threat. So in three years, we’re going to deliver the fleet we have to be as capable as it can be to counter the [People’s Republic of China], and then we need to build that future fleet moving forward.”
Womack reiterated the committee view that “we’re going up against a world class adversary, potentially, and we got to have world class equipment and for the aviation component of air wing in the future, that’s a sixth gen fighter.”
Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas), vice chair of the subcommittee, argued he is a “fervent supporter” of the Air Force’s F-47 and said the Navy needs its equivalent without delay.
“Industry is ready to do this, no matter what anybody says. I’m kind of getting tired of the bureaucratic brigade delaying our mission to provide for the warfighters. We win with both the F/A-XXs and [Air Force F-47] NGAD. Not one or the other. A three-year delay is a de facto cancellation and a win for China and Xi Jinping is watching. One of the reasons we’re even having this conversation is because of a broken acquisition system and systems commands that slow us down,” Ellzey said.
While the U.S. Space Force’s first Space Warfighting Framework, released last month, highlights the importance of satellite maneuver to complicate adversary surveillance and targeting, in-space refueling to ease such maneuver is not a done deal for the service.
U.S. Space Command “usually talks about dynamic space operations [DSO], which is much bigger than just refueling,” Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs, and requirements, told a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies’ virtual forum on Thursday.
DSO includes in-space refueling, on-orbit repair/upgrades, satellite maneuver among orbits, and rapid launch/deployment of cheaper satellites.
“Those concepts of movement and maneuver are built into the concept of dynamic space operations,” Bratton said. “We’re trying to understand the value proposition of refueling and the trades that come with it. We are investing in demonstration of capability. We’ve got some studies going on with some of our teammates who are peeling this apart on the cost side and the military advantage. That’s really what I’m trying to understand–mostly in my S-5 hat on setting the force design–what’s the military advantage of refueling? It’s very clear in the air domain when you refuel an airplane. It extends the range of the aircraft to reach targets you otherwise couldn’t.”
“It’s a different use case on orbit, and mainly we’re talking about GEO [geosynchronous orbit],” Bratton said. “With refueling, you can get more use out of the spacecraft maybe. Sometimes it could extend the life of the spacecraft, but I don’t think that’s the main use case. Usually, other components will fail on a spacecraft over time. And so, if that [enhanced satellite use/life extension] is the advantage that refueling brings, let’s put that into some war gaming, run it through a conflict. How much of a difference does going to war with [satellite] refueling or without refueling make, and how do I quantify that advantage? Then we can measure that against the budget choices we gotta make. We’re in the middle of that work within the service right now.”
Bratton said that he expects to have the data this fall on satellite refueling and the opportunity costs of pursuing it to present to Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman and Air Force Secretary Troy Meink.
Space Force’s Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) is one example of future tradeoff considerations for the service. Five of six Northrop Grumman [NOC]-built GSSAP satellites are still in operation. Four were launched between 2014 and 2016, and two in January 2022. The satellites maneuver to conduct rendezvous and proximity operations to monitor and inspect other satellites.
The Department of the Air Force is examining the insertion of commercial features in GSSAP to reduce cost and construction times (Defense Daily, May 14).
“Of those use cases, GSSAP’s a great example” of refueling tradeoffs, Bratton said. “Is there enough of that out there where now I’ve got to sort out a refueling infrastructure and defend it, or do I go to a smaller, proliferated GSSAP that maybe are lower cost and easier to get on orbit, and I just use a replenishment strategy rather than refueling. I think there’s a place for refueling at some point in the future is sort of where I’m landing right now. We’ll see how far in the future. Is it we need this in [a] three-year, five-year, or 10-year time horizon?
Northrop Grumman, Astroscale U.S., a subsidiary of Japan’s Astroscale, Arcfield‘s Orion Space Solutions/Redwire Corp. [RDW], and Lafayette, Colorado-based start-up Orbit Fab are to demonstrate satellite refueling for Space Force (Defense Daily, Apr. 2).
Space Force is to demonstrate Northrop Grumman’s refueling payload on the service’s Tetra-6 mission in 2027.
In February, Redwire said that it had received a contract from Arcfield’s Orion Space Solutions to build a Mako satellite to support the Tetra-6 mission to demonstrate different refueling methods for geosynchronous orbit satellites; cooperative and prepared inspection; docking; proximity operations; autonomy techniques to enable future on-orbit servicing; and sustained space maneuver.
Redwire is also building two Mako platforms for Tetra-5, which was on track for this year, but is now scheduled for June next year.
Last August, Orbit Fab said that SSC had qualified the company’s Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface (RAFTI) as a refueling interface for in-space refueling of military satellites.
“Orbit Fab has priced the RAFTI refueling port at $30,000 to make it easily accessible for missions of all sizes,” the company said.
In January last year, Astroscale U.S. said that it had received a nearly $26 million award from Space Force to deliver the Astroscale Prototype Servicer for Refueling (APS-R) satellite by next year. APS-R, which will use Orbit Fab refueling interfaces, is to provide on-demand hydrazine to increase satellite mobility.
The surge Defense Department equipment and personnel to the southern border to help staunch the flow of illegal crossings and related activity has played an important role in the Trump administration’s success in its goal in improving border security, the acting chief of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Thursday.
The “inject” of additional DoD personnel and the various systems they have brought has provided “more line-of-sight…more technology…more coverage on the border,” allowing our agents to be able to respond and intercept and actually arrest those individuals crossing our border,” Pete Flores, acting CBP commissioner, told the House Appropriations Committee’s panel that funds the Department of Homeland Security.
“So, our autonomous surveillance towers (ASTs), and that type of technology that we’re using across the border today, the increase of what we’re doing from aircraft and unmanned aircraft patrols on the border to provide additional visibility and reaction time for our agents,” he said. “So, those have significantly helped in what we’re seeing today in those numbers.”
CBP operates ASTs along certain areas of U.S. land and maritime borders. The agency also has manned and unmanned aircraft. DoD has brought additional air and aerial surveillance assets, including the mobile Ground-Based Operational Surveillance System (Expeditionary), which includes mast-mounted cameras, radar and infrared sensors (Defense Daily, April 25).
Flores also credited the steep decline in illegal activity to allowing Border Patrol agents to focus on their law enforcement mission rather than “processing, caretaking [and] transportation” functions they were doing during the Biden administration, what he called “administrative or non-LEO (law enforcement officer) type enforcements that we had agents and officers doing on a regular and reoccurring basis.”
Ensuring messaging around illegal entry into the U.S. matches the consequences has also helped, he said.
CBP’s Air and Marine Operations have also stepped up patrols long U.S. maritime borders, resulting a 71 percent increase in apprehensions at sea in Southern California, Flores said.
Amid increased security at the southern border, illegal activity has increased in the maritime approaches near Southern California, Acting Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday told the appropriations panel on Wednesday (Defense Daily, May 14).
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Bell [TXT] announced Wednesday it will look to offer its Bell 505 as a potential option for the Army’s next training helicopter.
As the Army explores potentially replacing its
Airbus Helicopters’ UH-72A Lakota as its primary training helicopter as part of the “Flight School Next” effort, Bell said its team for pursuing the effort includes V2X, DigiFlight, Delaware Resource Group and Textron Aviation affiliate TRU Simulation.
Bell 505. Photo: Bell.
“Bell and these four companies share a rich history in industrial cooperation and expertise in the various disciplines required to execute a modern, high-tech and rigorous training programs. This collaboration will be critical in delivering a comprehensive training solution to future Army aviators,” Bell said in a statement.
“The Bell 505 is a versatile, five-seat aircraft designed for reliability and efficiency, equipped with the latest technology to meet the demands of modern flight training. The aircraft features a fully integrated Garmin G1000H NXi avionics suite and a Safran Arrius 2R engine with dual-channel FADEC, making it an ideal platform for military training,” Bell added.
The four firms have signed Memorandum of Understandings (MOU) with Bell “to begin collaboration on the strategic development” for the Flight School Next effort.
“This group of companies represent a collective commitment to delivering a trusted, high-performing, technologically advanced and low-risk aviator training program to the Army customer that will ensure they are prepared for dynamic and challenging combat environments,” Jeff Schloesser, Bell’s executive vice president for strategic pursuits, said in a statement.
The Army this past October released a Request for Information for its plan to transform” Initial Entry Rotary-Wing (IERW) Flight Training at Fort Novosel, Alabama with an aim to “reduce costs, gain efficiencies and maintain or increase aviation training quality” (Defense Daily, Oct. 10 2024).
The RFI notes the Army’s effort to update its rotary wing flight training program may include “the potential replacement of the current IERW helicopter,” the UH-72A Lakota.
“We want to go to a simple, single engine basic helicopter so that our pilots, when they come out of flight school, they are expert pilots. We will teach them to be integrators and flight integrators on the back end of that. But we want them to be masters of their craft of being able to fly a helicopter in an old-fashioned way,” Gen. James Mingus, the Army vice chief of staff, told reporters following remarks at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference here.
The UH-72A Lakota has served as the Army’s primary initial training helicopter since 2016, Airbus noted in a statement to Defense Daily, adding the company plans to be “heavily engaged” with the service in its efforts to shape its future training program.
