Page 39 – Defense Daily

Northrop Grumman Opens Facility To Expand IBCS Production Capacity

Northrop Grumman [NOC] announced Monday it has opened a new 175,500-square foot facility in Madison, Alabama to increase production capacity for the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS).

The company said it invested $20 million into the Enhanced Production and Integration Center (EPIC) project, which will enable it to now build up 96 Engagement Operation Centers, 96 Integrated Collaborative Environments and 192 Integrated Fire Control Network (IFCN) relays for IBCS annually.

An IBCS Engagement Operations Center (EOC) loaded onto a M1085 Long Wheel Base truck at the Huntsville Manufacturing Center in Alabama. (Photo Credit: Northrop Grumman)

“Our investment in American manufacturing with this new facility enables us to continue supporting critical modernization efforts such as producing capabilities like IBCS at scale and speed. With this investment, we’re doubling our integration space and significantly enhancing our storage and classified testing capabilities, ensuring America leads the world in military strength,” Kenn Todorov, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and general manager for command and control and weapons integration, said in a statement.

IBCS is the Army’s future air and missile defense command platform, designed to integrate and connect a wide swath of “sensor to shooter” capabilities, with the service to date having integrated a range of capabilities with the system to include the Sentinel A3 radar, Patriot radar, the new RTX [RTX]-built LTAMDS radar and the Indirect Fire Protection Capacity effector.

The Army in December 2021 awarded Northrop Grumman a potential $1.4 billion deal for IBCS low-rate production and the program was then approved for full rate production in April 2023 (Defense Daily, April 12 2023).

Northrop Grumman announced last June it had completed delivery of the first full set of IBCS equipment to the Army, which includes an Engagement Operations Center, IFCN Relays and an Integrated Collaborative Environment (Defense Daily, June 17 2024).

Bill Lamb, Northrop Grumman’s IBCS director, told reporters this past August the Army will start fielding the system “in a larger way beginning in 2025” and that the service plans to spend about $5 billion over the next five years on IBCS-related efforts (Defense Daily, Aug. 27 2024).

Northrop Grumman said the EPIC facility is double the size of the previous integration center for IBCS work, to include 129,500 square feet of “flexible production space.”

“This addition grows the company’s fully digital approach to streamlining the design and build process,” Northrop Grumman said. “The facility will ensure delivery of cutting-edge solutions and meets fielding quantities and objectives for both domestic and Foreign Military Sales production.”

Poland signed on to become the first international IBCS operator after agreeing to a $4.75 billion deal with the U.S. in March 2018 to purchase the Patriot missile defense system along with the new Northrop Grumman-built battle command system in support of the first phase of its WISLA air and missile defense modernization program (Defense Daily, March 28, 2018).

Last March, Poland and the U.S. signed a separate agreement worth approximately $2.5 billion for additional future deliveries of IBCS for the NAREW short-range air defense modernization program and the second phase of WISLA air and missile defense upgrade effort (Defense Daily, March 1 2024).

In February, Northrop Grumman said it has received $1.4 billion in new deals related to IBCS efforts, to include an Army contract for expanded software development and capability integration work with Poland (Defense Daily, Feb. 11).

NATO Acquires Maven For Military Planning And Operations Office

NATO on Monday said has acquired the Maven Smart System (MSS) from Palantir Technologies [PLTR] for use by the alliance’s office that conducts military planning and operations.

The value of the contract was not disclosed. The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) said the contract was awarded six months after requirements were outlined and that Allied Command Operations will begin using MSS NATO within the next 30 days.

The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency manages MSS for the Department of Defense with a focus on constantly improving the platform, which applies artificial intelligence-based computer vision technology against imagery to rapidly detect potential targets for users on a single pane of glass. Use of NGA Maven by the U.S. military services and combatant commands has increased by a factor of four the past year to around 20,000 users (Defense Daily, April 10).

Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) said that MSS NATO “should not be confused with the NGA Maven Warfighter Support System.” The MSS NATO system is the Alliance’s own version of the technology, supporting different workflows than NGA Maven. The DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office awarded Palantir a contract last May to transition MSS from prototype to production and dramatically increase the supply of licenses (Defense Daily, May 30, 2024).

“NCIA is pleased to team up with Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and Palantir to deliver MSS NATO to the warfighter, providing customized state-of-the-art AI capabilities to the Alliance, and empowering our forces with the tools required on the modern battlefield to operate effectively and decisively,” Ludwig Decamps, NCIA general manager, said in a statement.

NATO said that SHAPE will use MSS NATO to adopt new technologies such as emerging AI models, and modeling and simulation, being developed by companies in Europe.

B61-13 ‘Significantly Ahead of Schedule,’ NNSA Says

The National Nuclear Security Administration will complete the First Production Unit of the B61-13 this fiscal year, according to a news report last week.

With production complete in December for the B61-12 life extension program, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has now transitioned to producing the B61-13 gravity bomb, a new,

higher-yield variant of the B61 gravity bomb that would replace older B61-7s in the stockpile.

According to the 2025 Stockpile Stewardship Management Plan (SSMP), which the NNSA released in October, the B61-13’s first production unit was originally planned for fiscal 2026. An NNSA spokesperson told Fox News that the agency will complete the first production unit of the B61-13 by fiscal 2025 and “significantly ahead of schedule.”

The SSMP also projects the B61-13 will finish production in fiscal year 2028.

“One of seven warhead modernization programs to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, the B61-13 will provide additional options against certain harder and large-area military targets,” the spokesperson added. “NNSA accelerated delivery of the weapon by leveraging manufacturing processes from the related B61-12 program, whose final unit was completed in 2024, and implementing a range of technical innovations to optimize production.”

The B61 family of bombs is currently deployed from the U.S. Air Force and NATO bases, NNSA said. The gravity bomb itself is the oldest in the U.S. arsenal, with over 50 years of service.

NRO Launches Another Proliferated Architecture Mission

The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) last Saturday morning launched its ninth proliferated architecture mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.

The 8:25 am EDT launch of NROL-192 in partnership with U.S. Space Force Space Launch Delta 30 was the third proliferated architecture launch this year with another expected within days (Defense Daily, April 8).

The agency on Saturday said, “The rapid deployment of NRO’s proliferated constellation directly supports the needs of the people NRO serves, intelligence analysts, warfighters, policymakers, and first responders. Having hundreds of NRO satellites on orbit will allow for critical data to be delivered to NRO’s stakeholders faster than ever before.”

NRO also said it has launched more than 150 satellites over the past two years, “creating the largest and most capable government constellation on orbit in our nation’s history.” Overall, in 2025, NRO is planning about a dozen launches, and about half of them for the proliferated architecture.

Next Two Carriers Running Even Later, PEO Carriers Says

The next two Ford-class aircraft carriers are running significantly behind schedule than previously estimated, a Navy official told lawmakers last Tuesday.

In his opening oral and written statements before the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee, Rear Adm. Casey Moton, program executive officer for Aircraft Carriers, said the future USS

John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) is 95 percent complete but its delivery timetable, last expected for July 2025, is running late, or pressurized, due to “remaining critical path work.”

This is largely focused on issues with the Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), Moton said.

The Navy’s sole builder of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in HII Newport News Shipbuilding [HII] in Virginia.

“Initial class design challenges are resolved, as evidenced by Ford’s successful operations, however, early class production-focused challenges and associated learning continue on CVN-79. All lessons learned and improvements by both the Navy and industry teams are being implemented in construction on CVN-80 and 81. The Navy and shipbuilder [HII Newport News Shipbuilding] are hyper-focused on a CVN-79 delivery plan that results in the fastest path to a combat ready CVN, crew, and air wing,” Moton said.

Under questioning by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Moton underscored the shipbuilder’s challenges with CVN-79 are not design-related.

“The elevators and the catapults and the aircraft launch-recovery gear are performing exceptionally…this is the second in class, we’re still learning a lot of lessons on production,” Moton replied. “These are complex machines and that’s what we’re seeing.”

He added the Navy and HII are executing a variety of improvements on CVN-79 but especially the following carriers, the future USS Enterprise (CVN-80) and Doris Miller (CVN-81).

Kaine indicated his information is that CVN-79 will be delivered in March 2026, rather than July 2025.

Moton admitted the AWE and AAG issues will further delay the Kennedy without admitting a specific timetable.

“We are focused very much on mitigating that and getting to combat readiness as quickly as possible and we’re assessing that and we’ll have more details,” he said. “But we are looking at all avenues to improve the timeline that I can get JFK to the fleet.”

Moton also said that delays to “sequence critical material” for the Enterprise are forcing its existing delays to lengthen two more months from a 2024 estimate of 26 months late to now 28 months late, in 2030.

He explained this kind of major material items are causing delays to the ship construction critical path and “forcing the shipbuilder to change our build cycle. We are doing everything we can to get that equipment, intense oversight from both the Navy and Newport News Shipbuilding.”

However, he assessed that critical parts performance has “continued to degrade” such that it is a further two months behind schedule.

Moton said the Navy is doing everything it can with HII to improve the 28 month delay prognosis.

In contrast, Moton confirmed the following carrier, the Doris Miller is still on track for delivery in 2032.

The future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), the second Ford-class aircraft carrier, under construction at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding. (Photo: HII) — The future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), the second Ford-class aircraft carrier, under construction at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding in 2023. (Photo: HII)

He said CVN-81 is on schedule because they bought the material earlier than for Enterprise to prevent these critical path challenges and worked with HII to modify their drydock such that it can build Enterprise and Doris Miller at the same time.

When pressed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Moton noted CVN-79 is now projected to cost $12.9 billion, CVN-80 $13.5 billion, and CVN-81 $14 billion.

The original USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) was procured using a cost-plus contract as the lead ship, while he said CVN-79 to 81 are fixed-price contracts with incentive share lines, where shipbuilder profit degrades as building costs go up.

Moton was unwilling to provide HII’s expected initial and delay-adjusted profit figures for these carriers in an open hearing, but confirmed the Navy has the figures and can share it with the committee separately.

Army Plans To Award Prototype Deals For IVAS Follow-On Effort In Late August

The Army plans to award prototype agreements in late August for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) follow-on effort, recently rebranded as Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC).

A new notice published last week lays out an estimated timeline for the planned open competition for SBMC prototyping, with the Army looking to solicit white papers and then hold hardware demonstrations in late May before releasing a request for prototype proposals in mid-June.

IVAS 1.2 will be the IVAS variant fielded to the close combat force. Photo: Frederick Shear, PEO Soldier

“SBMC is a new effort to develop a fused digital awareness system optimized to emerging modular sensor technologies while backwards compatible to the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) architecture. SBMC will be the Army’s future day/night situational awareness and mission command platform for company-level and below dismounted operations,” the Army writes in the notice.

After releasing a Request for Information for the IVAS Next effort in January, the Army published an update in March noting the rebrand to SBMC and detailing an intent to award prototype details with an expectation to have test systems delivered seven months later (Defense Daily, March 11).

The Army said it plans to award “one or more” vendors Other Transaction Authority agreements for SBMC prototyping and that the number of deals “will be dependent on available funding.”

In the update published in March, the Army said it would assess industry’s sample hardware systems against technical requirements for low light sensor performance, thermal sensor performance, display performance, human factors, power requirements, weight and weapon systems compatibility.

After evaluating white papers, the Army said it will invite select vendors who detailed solutions “of high technical merit” to conduct in-person solution demos and presentations at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

“Following evaluation of white papers, solution demonstrations and oral presentations, favorable vendors will be requested to submit formal technical and cost prototype proposals and to enter negotiations for OTA terms and conditions,” the Army writes in the new notice. “The [Army] reserves the right to limit the number of companies invited to submit a proposal.”

In March 2021, the Army awarded Microsoft [MSFT] a deal worth up to $21.9 billion over the next 10 years to move the IVAS augmented reality headset program from rapid prototyping into production (Defense Daily, March 31, 2021).

Following an operational test with the initial 1.0 version of IVAS in June 2022, Army officials detailed a plan to adjust the program’s timeline to address reliability, low-light sensor performance and form factor issues identified during the evaluation, and in early January 2023 awarded Microsoft a $125 million deal to work on developing an upgraded IVAS 1.2.

Anduril Industries, in a new agreement announced last month with Microsoft, is set to take over as the prime contractor for the current IVAS program (Defense Daily, Feb. 11).

Under the arrangement, Anduril would be responsible for building IVAS 1.2 and leading future hardware and software development of the new mixed-reality headsets while Microsoft would shift over to managing the cloud computing and artificial intelligence-related aspects of the program.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, told reporters at the time he believes the Army is looking at taking a “family of systems” approach with IVAS Next, now SBMC, that could involve building out an ecosystem with a “proliferation of different devices that share a common architecture and common application layer.”

“My personal vision for IVAS, and one that I have walked through with Army leadership and they are very supportive of, is that IVAS as a whole, whether it’s through this contract, IVAS Next or something else, is it is going to become a family of systems made by a variety of different companies,” Luckey said.

Luckey added he had already discussed the opportunity with potential partners in the AR/VR space, including some that would “normally never consider” working on programs such as IVAS or IVAS Next.

Defense Watch: Golden Dome, DOGE Cuts, Sub Production, Razin In

Golden Dome Summit Delay. The Missile Defense Agency updated a federal notice that an upcoming summit on Golden Dome-affiliated next generation missile defense technologies has been pushed back “due to overwhelming response from industry.” MDA last week said the summit is being moved to a later date and location, but still in Huntsville, Ala. MDA will later provide updated information when the new date and location are finalized. It was originally planned to occur at Redstone Arsenal’s Von Braun Complex III on April 29.

More DOGE Cuts.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signed a memo on April 10 directing the termination of $5.1 billion in contracts for IT and consulting services, the latest step in his effort to “cut wasteful spending” at the department. Hegseth noted this now brings DoD’s total to nearly $6 billion in spending cuts that the Department of Government Efficiency found over the last six weeks. “[DOGE’s] job is to go out and find the stuff that we can get rid of and then flow back into, drive back into warfighting capabilities here at the Defense Department,” Hegseth said in a video statement. The newest round of cuts include a Defense Health Agency contract for consulting services with Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen Hamilton “and other firms that can be performed by our civilian workforce,” an Air Force contract with Accenture to re-sell third party Enterprise Cloud IT Services “which we can already fulfill directly with existing procurement resources,” a Navy deal for business process consulting services for administrative offices, and a DARPA contract for IT help desk services, according to the memo. Hegseth also directed cutting 11 more contracts across the department for services related to diversity, equity and inclusion, climate, Covid-19 response, and “non-essential activities.”

…Hegseth Directive. Hegseth’s memo also directs the Pentagon’s chief information officer to prepare a plan over the next 30 days, in coordination with DOGE, detailing the department’s plan for in-sourcing IT consulting and management services for the civilian workforce and negotiating “most favorable rates on software and cloud services, so the DoD pays no more for IT services than any other enterprise in America.” The memo also calls for an audit by April 18 of DoD software licensing “to ensure we are only paying for the licenses we actually use, the features we actually need, at the most favorable rates.”

…Virtual Participation. Hegseth on April 11 also participated virtually in the latest meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG), led by the United Kingdom and Germany. The virtual participation is a marked change for the U.S.’ participation in the UDCG, with the Pentagon during the Biden administration having led and hosted each of the near-monthly meetings of senior defense officials from around 50 countries to discuss Kyiv’s battlefield needs. “They discussed progress towards achieving an enduring peace to the war in Ukraine and European nations leading efforts to support Ukraine’s defense,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. At the most recent UDCG meeting in February, the first during the Trump administration and which was hosted by the U.K. for the first time, Hegseth said European partners must provide “the overwhelming share” of future weapons aid to Ukraine.

1.13 Sub Rate. Navy officials on April 8 told the Senate Armed Services Seapower subcommittee that Virginia-class attack submarine (SSN) production dropped to 1.13 at the end of calendar year 2024. In a written statement delivered as part of their testimony, the officials argued that while SSN construction performance reached a build rate of nearly 1.9 boats per year for three years in the 2010s, the post-COVID-19 pandemic performance rate has dropped to under 1.2. They said the key drivers of this are workforce challenges, first time quality, material and supplier delays, and lead ship issues associated with the Virginia Payload Module variant. The testifying officials included Matthew Sermon, program manager for the Maritime Industrial Base program, Rear Adm. Jonathan Rucker, program executive officer (PEO) for Attack Submarines, Rear Adm. Casey Moton, PEO for Aircraft Carriers; and Rear Adm. Todd Weeks, PEO for Strategic Submarines.

…Ramp-Up Too Slow. However, the officials wrote that despite the submarine PEOs and shipbuilders establishing a production execution plan in early 2023 to ramp up to serial production rates of one Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine and two SSNs per year by the end of 2028, “we have not observed the needed and expected ramp-up in Columbia Class and Virginia Class submarine production rates necessary to keep pace with the 1+2 strategy.” They said relevant parties underestimated the “effort required to transition from the peace-dividend era, low-rate submarine production and sustainment to the increased 1+2 production needed for an era of near-peer competition.”

Colby Confirmed. The Senate on April 8 voted 54-45 to confirm Elbridge Colby as under secretary of defense for policy. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the upper chamber’s top defense appropriator, was the sole Republican to vote against his confirmation, citing concern over his view that Colby will prioritize reducing the U.S.’ role in Europe and the Middle East to shift DoD’s focus more to the Indo-Pacific. “Abandoning Ukraine and Europe and downplaying the Middle East to prioritize the Indo-Pacific is not a clever geopolitical chess move. It is geostrategic self-harm that emboldens our adversaries and drives wedges between America and our allies for them to exploit,” McConnell said in a statement. Colby, who has previously argued in favor of such a policy, served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development during the first Trump administration and most recently launched the Marathon Initiative policy research organization.

…‘Razin’ Caine Confirmed. The Senate on April 11 then voted to confirm retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine as the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Senate first voted 59-26 to approve Caine’s return to the Air Force and promotion to major general, then voted 60-25 to approve his nomination to serve as the president’s top military adviser. Caine, a former F-16 pilot and deputy commanding general of a joint task force that fought ISIS in Iraq, retired from the military in December and was most recently the associate director for military affairs at the CIA from 2021 to 2024. During his confirmation hearing, Caine told lawmakers the Pentagon needs a “sense of urgency” to get “real purchasing growth” with its budget and said he’d lean on his private sector experience for improving tech innovation at the department.

PrSM Test. The Army on April 10 conducted a successful production qualification test of Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missile, launching it from an M270A2 launcher. The test included engaging a target “with precision and lethality,” according to the Army, adding “the missile’s performance was nominal for all parameters.” “This test is another significant milestone for the PrSM program and demonstrates the missile’s ability to integrate with the Army’s M270A2 launcher,” Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space, said in a statement. The test follows the Army’s recent award of a nearly $5 billion PrSM Inc. 1 production contract to Lockheed Martin, which began with an initial order for 400 missiles.

CNO Readiness. Acting Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. James Kilby last Monday revealed the surge readiness levels of the service’s fleets for the first time since former CNO Adm. Lisa Franchetti detailed the new goal of reaching 80 percent surge readiness by 2027 to prepare for potential conflict with China. Speaking to reporters at the annual Sea-Air-Space expo, Kilby said the submarine fleet is at 67 percent surge readiness, surface ships at 68 percent, and aviation components at 70 percent. The aviation goals cover six carriers and related air wings. Kilby underscored he agreed with Franchetti’s direction to use 80 percent as a stretch goal because “it’s got to be aggressive to push us out of our comfort area, and that’s what we found on our journey with aviation. We needed a goal that was not easy to obtain and it forced us to look at our processes differently and maybe make some changes.”

Danish Saildrone. California-based Saildrone on April 9 announced it will establish its first European subsidiary in Denmark for European clients. The company announcement occurred at the Maritime Industry Symposium at the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC. This will be the company’s hub for all European operations and use local staff to cover support, training and mission planning capabilities, but not production. Saildrone’s persistent maritime domain awareness and intelligence capabilities are particularly needed in light of “recent sabotage of critical undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea,” company founder and CEO Richard Jenkins said in a statement. The company also noted its sensors can provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance above and below the surface, “enabling the detection of anomalous behavior, monitoring of vessel traffic, and the protection of national interests in strategically sensitive waters.”

Serco Frigate. Serco on April 11 announced it won a one-year recompete contract to provide technical services for the planning, design, construction, delivery and testing of the Constellation-class (FFG-62) frigate program office. The contract has a one-year base period and four one-year options that could reach up to $96 million, if all options are exercised. The company has supported the Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants, which covers the frigate, since 2016. The frigate program awarded the initial detail design and construction contract to Fincantieri Marinette Marine in 2020.

Aussie F-35 Support. Australian companies now provide $5 billion in equipment for the F-35 program, the Australian Defense Ministry said last Friday. The “significant milestone” includes the contributions of more than 75 Australian companies in “a wide range or critical capabilities, including the supply of components for the F-35 sophisticated avionics and propulsion systems, as well as providing ongoing maintenance and upgrades,” the ministry said.

OOD Progress. The Space Force last week announced its first strategy to outline the path to stronger collaboration with allies and partners but the service has already made strides on this front. In the past year U.S. Space Command has added France, Germany, and New Zealand to the multi-national force Operation Olympic Defender (OOD), which is now at initial operational capability with seven nations, Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, said last week at the Space Symposium. Requirements have been “conceptualized for our multinational force,” the first OOD concept of operations (CONOPS) has been developed, the national-level contributions have been outlined for the operations board, and a CONOPS has been created for space domain awareness, he said. The fist multi-national force OOD campaign plan was also signed the week of the symposium, he said.

Orbital Watch. The Space Force’s Space Systems Command Front Door office last week said it launched Orbital Watch, an unclassified threat information sharing initiative with commercial space providers to improve the security and resiliency of assets in space. Orbital Watch is in the beta phase and will distribute quarterly assessments to industry on risks in the space domain. Over time, information will be shared more frequently to be actionable. On March 21, Front Door released an unclassified threat sheet to more than 900 commercial providers in its catalog.

Ramstein Flag. U.S Air Forces Europe-Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA) said that 15 allied nations participated in the NATO Ramstein Flag 2025 exercise, which wrapped up last Friday. The exercise included agile combat employment, integrated air and missile defense, and counter anti-access/area denial operations. Ramstein Flag 2025 included “a cross-servicing mission with U.S. Air Force and Royal Netherlands Air Force F-35 Lightning II aircraft,” USAFE-AFRICA said. “Both nations were refueled and serviced by crews from the opposite nation before being relaunched during counter anti-access/area denial trainings.” Among the participating platforms were the Dutch F-35s, MQ-9 Reapers, NH90 helicopter, and the HNLMS Tromp naval frigate, F-35A fighters from the 48th Fighter Wing at Royal Air Force (RAF) Lakenheath, KC-135R Stratotankers from the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall, and the 19th Electronic Warfare Squadron from the USAFE-AFAFRICA Warfare Center at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

Hunt Forward. Members of U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) “have deployed more than 85 times to over 30 countries in partner-enabled missions to hunt on host networks,” U.S. Army Gen. William Hartman, the acting head of CYBERCOM, said last week in prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “They conducted more than two dozen hunt forward missions in 2024, generating insights and constraining adversary freedom of maneuver…These missions have led to public releases of malware samples for analysis by the global cybersecurity community. Such disclosures have made Internet users around the world safer on-line, and frustrated the military and intelligence operations of authoritarian regimes.”

GA-ASI/Hanwha. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) on April 8 announced a new agreement with South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace to collaborate on UAS development and production for the global defense market. The companies noted the agreement builds on a demo GA-ASI conducted in partnership with Hanwha this past November that involved having the MQ-1C Gray Eagle Short Takeoff and Landing (STOL) drone take off from a South Korean warship and land at a ground base, the Pohang Navy Airfield. GA-ASI said Hanwha plans to invest more than $203.5 million “in the development and production facilities for GE STOL and UAS engines, expand research and development activities and provide production infrastructure in both South Korea and with GA-ASI in the U.S.”

Sensor Suite Upgrade. The Army has awarded Teledyne FLIR Defense a four-year, $74.2 million deal to develop an expanded sensor suite for M1135 Strykers, the variant of the vehicle used for nuclear, biological and chemical detection and surveillance. Teledyne FLIR noted the new contract follows a $168 million production award from last year for sensor suites, with the new deal covering work on a further enhanced version of the capability. “Among its many improvements, the upgrade will include advanced sensing capabilities, autonomous SkyRaider flight control and hazard prediction software upgrade,” Teledyne FLIR said in a statement.

Hadley Deal. Rocket motor and engine developer Ursa Major is selling 10 of its Hadley small, launch, liquid engines to Sirius Technologies, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Japan’s Innovative Space Carrier (ISC), Denver-based Ursa said last week. The company said the engine deal follows the approval by the U.S. State Department of the purchase in March 2024 of some Hadley technical data by ISC and delivered to Sirius. ISC and Sirius want the Hadley for a test launch later this year in the U.S. of the ISC/Sirius ASCA reusable space vehicle. Ursa plans to develop a medium-launch engine, scaled from its Arroway model, as part of its arrangement with ISC.

Advances And Adjustments Are Needed To Bring Space Communications To The Edge

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — As the commercial space industry is investing in space communications with satellite constellations, terminals, and networking technologies, the U.S. military is working through how to bring space communications to the tactical edge.

In a Space Symposium panel on April 10, Ricky Freeman, president of Amazon Kuiper Government

Solutions [AMZN], compared it to the U.S. military having a lineup of basketball legends like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and LeBron James on the same team, but running the risk of losing the game because technical capabilities operate in siloes.

“As a country, we are leading the development of space. However, when it comes to integrating space as an operational domain, I think we all agree we are at par with our adversaries,” Freeman said. “We have developed unprecedented capability to capture, analyze, and exploit information — but our ability still to transport that data at speed, particularly to the tactical edge — lags behind what is needed to compete.”

The military needs to enhance its relationship with the commercial sector, and integration is lacking, said U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Heidi Berg, deputy commander Fleet Cyber Command, deputy commander, Navy Space Command.

“We don’t have the level of expertise that we need in the Navy or in the Joint Force to be able to truly integrate space capabilities across the board,” she said. “It’s a real risk.”

The Navy has a particular reliance on space operating over the horizon, and needs to have the same level of understanding for the space domain as the undersea, maritime, land, and air domains. This can be done through better integrating space capabilities into troop education at every level from entry level through senior level courses, and improving modeling and simulation, Berg said.

She called for “modeling and simulation capabilities that accurately reflect the capabilities we have both in space and the space domain. To allow us to visualize it, as well as how that interacts with the other domains, and reflect the nuances of cyber capabilities and cyber threats, and EW [electronic warfare], as well as space kinetic maneuver and kinetic effects,” Berg said. “It is that interaction that provides the magic for us to be able to drive to the next level.”

When it comes to integrating space communications at the tactical edge, it needs to be as intuitive as possible for the warfighter, said Thomas Lockhart, director of the Capability and Resource Integration Directorate (J8), Space Command. “Just remember who the tactical edge is and make it as simple as possible.”

Lockhart recalled when he served in Iraq and Afghanistan, the radios he used were complex to deal with.

“I have an engineering degree, and in certain cases, I couldn’t figure out how to turn it on and get it connected,” Lockhart said. “We can’t do that. We have to make it simple.”

He wants to see capability that when soldiers or sailors turn it on, they don’t have to worry about how to connect, and security is already built-in, immediately available to them.

One step government can take to incentivize commercial entities to build government capabilities into commercial systems is to be more open to describing the effect the government wants to achieve with a certain capability, said Charlotte Gerhart, deputy program executive officer of the MilComm & PNT Directorate in Space Systems Command.

“If I can tell industry what I would like to do — not how to do it — they have a lot more opportunity and desire to work with us,” Gerhart said.

Different types of systems for communication require different levels of protection and classification.

“If I can describe the effects and the benefits, commercial industry would be far more interested in meeting those needs, and I have to communicate that broadly,” she said.

Predictable cash flow from the government is a key part of incentivizing commercial companies to want to work with the government.

“I have no commercial base if there’s not cash flow,” Gerhart said. “If we can set up a case where not only do I get consistent cash flow so that commercial industry can plan for it, but [also] if I can have consistent cash flow in the government, then I can set that to my industry base as well.”

Sam Mehta, president of Communication Systems for L3Harris Technologies [LHX], argued that in a shift toward hybrid commercial/military partnerships, requirements will have to change. The definition of success might change and stakeholders should not let perfect be the enemy of the good.

“We need to have the stakeholders define and [be] aligned on what’s good enough, and then be open enough to accept some level of failure,” Mehta said. “[We need to be] very, very open to the idea that we might have to change, sometimes significantly, what we’re doing to get there and not call that a failure, not call that a waste of time.”

For example, Mehta pointed out that interoperability comes with trade-offs. A radio programmed with exquisite, DoD-specific waveforms, may not also have the compute capability to also go over waveforms that allies work with.

Optimizing for interoperability, “may mean some trade-offs from time to time. That capability will not necessarily be optimized for one service or one mission in one environment. It’s going to be optimized for interoperability, which means that there might be some trade-offs in the requirements,” Mehta said.

This story was first published by Via Satellite

Blue Water Autonomy, With Plans For Autonomous Oceangoing Navy Ships, Raises $14 Million

A Boston-based startup with plans to design and build autonomous unmanned ships that can operate in the open ocean with the Navy’s fleet emerged from stealth last Friday with a $14 million seed round to help with hiring and testing.

Blue Water Autonomy, Inc. this month began testing its autonomy suite and the company’s plan is to build affordable, “relatively attritable,” multi-mission ships that are longer than 100-feet with ranges of “many thousands of nautical miles,” and can operate for “months at a time,” Rylan Hamilton, CEO and co-founder, told Defense Daily.

The autonomy technology is in testing aboard a vessel in salt water near Boston, Hamilton said. He declined to disclose the vessel size.

Blue Water is in the early stages of designing a prototype vessel, which Hamilton said will be a clean sheet approach for autonomous, unmanned operations, rather than retrofitting sensors to an existing design.
The company has 10 employees and is hiring engineers.

“And one of the reasons we raised I think a bigger seed round than most people, is because this is a hard problem,” he said. “We’re going to have to hire quickly the talents in the Boston area.”

Hamilton is a retired Navy surface warfare officer and has been in the robotics industry for 15 years, including on the leadership team at Amazon’s [AMZN] Amazon Robotics business that develops robotic systems for the company’s fulfillment centers. He also founded 6 River Systems, which designs and makes collaborative autonomous robots for warehouse operations.

Scott Miller, chief technology officer and co-founder, was one of the first employees of the former iRobot, working on the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. Austin Gray, another co-founder and chief strategy officer, is a former Navy intelligence officer who “led the intelligence watch teams on aircraft carrier strike groups, where his team built and maintained the fleet’s top secret battle map and supported combat, diplomatic, and intelligence operations,” according to his biography on Blue Water’s website.

“We’ve done this before in terms of making of robotic solutions,” Hamilton said. “This is just a little bit bigger with a lot more steel.”

When it comes to producing its future autonomous vessels, Hamilton said the company will leverage commercial off-the-shelf components supplied by the American maritime industrial base, including the dozens of mid-size shipyards that build ferries, tugboats, and similar boats and have capacity for more work.

Blue Water, founded last year, has yet to release timelines. Hamilton said Blue Water spent the past year understanding the Navy’s requirements so that as it designs and builds its first vessel, “they measure 10 times and cut once.”

As for a future price point, Hamilton said the cost of a vessel could be in the “tens of millions of dollars.”

SSC Official Says TacSRT Has Received COCOM Support

Combatant commands (COCOMs) have voiced support for U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command’s (SSC) Tactical, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking (TacSRT) program, an SSC official said.

The full-year FY 2025 Continuing Resolution, which became law last month, funds TacSRT at $40 million, the same as in FY 2024.

“The combatant commands love the capability that TacSRT has given us,” Col. Minpo “Po” Shiue, the commander of SSC’s Warfighter Integration Office (WIO), said in an interview.

“One of the keys is that most of our combatant commands work with our partner nations–no classification data [for TacSRT],” he said. “We can release [it] immediately to our partner nations. That’s huge for our operations, especially in a combined environment. My hope is that [TacSRT] program will continue. I do know that some combatant commanders are POM’ing for money so that they can pay for their own [TacSRT], which right now is mostly funded by Space Systems Command.”

SSC said last September that it was using a $40 million congressional add for TactSRT in fiscal 2024 to help COCOM staff and front-line military forces use commercial imagery (Defense Daily, Sept. 11, 2024).

The Space Force requested no funding for TacSRT in fiscal 2024, nor in fiscal 2025.

The two dozen employee WIO has liaison officers (LNOs) at a number of COCOMs, including U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Central Command, Special Operations Command, Space Command, and Southern Command, and is looking to add an LNO at European Command.

“My LNOs out there in most of the Combatant Command Space Force components are helping gather what does the combatant command need that we can satisfy with commercial data and commercial capabilities,” Shiue said. “Using the [TacSRT] program or the Joint Commercial Office, we’re able to get a lot of that data that the combatant commander needs that are very useful for them and tactically relevant.”

“We know a lot of times the operations out there we can conduct with our partner nations with commercial data,” Shiue said. “We don’t necessarily need the U.S. national system data or the NGA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency] data. We’ve been assisting with that effort.”

Shiue, a former uniformed crew commander for the Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built Space Based Infrared System and an international business developer with Amazon‘s [AMZN] Project Kuiper, assumed command of the WIO in May 2023. The WIO LNOs are to gain insights on the needs of fielded military forces and provide that feedback to acquisition staff. In addition, the WIO is to aid Space Force components at COCOMs to write Capability Needs Statements for future systems.

“As far as shortfalls, I don’t know that I see anything out there from combatant commanders,” Shiue said when asked about imagery. “What I do know is that at Space Systems Command we are helping with that process by using commercial imagery and commercial data to augment what is provided by national means.”

Another WIO focus area is electronic warfare (EW) and EW software upgrades, as such systems typically have a relatively quick, two-year turnaround time, versus a decade for traditional space systems.

“We’re deploying many electronic warfare systems to the field,” Shiue said. “Since we’re working directly with the warfighters–the end users–we’re SSC’s eyes and ears out there. We help with the deployment site survey, installation of those systems on behalf of the program office a lot of times. We’re feeding these requirements back to the program office and also, as we exercise those capabilities, we’re bringing those exercise after action reports back to the SSC program office to let them know how well your system did or maybe something where we’d like to see the next iteration.”

“Unlike the major space systems, like SBIRS and GPS, I can’t really influence those changes, but with something like command and control software or an EW system, I can probably influence the development for the next iteration they’re putting out in a more timely manner,” he said.

Commercial companies like Maxar Technologies, Planet Labs [PL], and Hawkeye 360 are aiding the WIO effort.

“We have all these commercial companies out there providing imagery, communications, and EMI [Electronic Magnetic Interference] monitoring that are really helping us in filling, not a gap from a U.S. perspective, but a gap from an international perspective with these partner nations that don’t have the capability, and we can provide that [unclassified] data to them in a timely manner,” Shiue said.