Germany’s Rheinmetall AG and Finland’s ICEYE said that they signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday to create the Rheinmetall ICEYE Space Solutions joint venture–60 percent owned by Rheinmetall and 40 percent by ICEYE–to build synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and other satellites in Germany.
“Production is to take place at the Neuss site, among others, and is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2026,” the companies said.
ICEYE has said that it owns and operates the world’s largest SAR satellite constellation. The Helsinki-based company has launched 44 satellites for its own and customers’ use and plans to launch more than 20 new satellites annually in 2025, 2026, and after. The company provides SAR imagery to the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office through a study contract.
In June last year, “Rheinmetall announced its participation in the world’s largest fleet of radar reconnaissance satellites,” Rheinmetall and ICEYE said on Thursday. “In September 2024, Rheinmetall and ICEYE had further intensified their cooperation. In the course of this, Rheinmetall had secured exclusive rights to market the SAR satellites to military and government end users in both the German and Hungarian markets. The first major milestone in the intensified cooperation between Rheinmetall and…ICEYE was reached in November 2024.”
“To meet Ukraine’s urgent need for SAR imaging satellite reconnaissance capabilities, Rheinmetall and Ukraine had signed a contract with the support of the German government,” according to the statement. “The agreement extends the SAR data and other support that Ukraine received from ICEYE during the war.”
In 2023, Lockheed Martin [LMT], Northrop Grumman [NOC], and German officials broke ground on an F-35 center fuselage Integrated Assembly Line in Weeze, Germany near the Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall.
Rheinmetall said at the time that the Weeze plant will, starting this year, build at least 400 F-35A center fuselages (Defense Daily, Sept. 6, 2023).
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions [KTOS] recently unveiled a version of its Valkyrie stealthy, aerial combat drone with internal landing gear to enable conventional takeoff and landing to give customers more options, Eric DeMarco, the company’s president and CEO, said on Wednesday.
The jet-powered fixed-wing Valkyrie is currently launched off a rail using a rocket. The landing gear variant will fly this year, DeMarco said last evening on the company’s first quarter earnings call.
Development of the landing gear variant of the tactical unmanned aircraft system (UAS) was done in “conjunction and communication with several customers,” he said. The customers are not being disclosed.
The UAS can also be trolley-launched off a runway for training and to enable maximum payload capability, he said.
The goal with the Valkyrie family is to “provide runway flexibility and runway independence to our customers,” DeMarco said.
Kratos has begun serial production of 24 Valkyrie units using company funds and is flying with “multiple customers, expanding mission capabilities and other criteria as we progress toward” customer production decision, DeMarco said. Customers can visit the factory to “see their respective tail numbers in production,” he said.
DeMarco also disclosed that that the company’s Dark Fury hypersonic vehicle successfully flew its first mission at hypersonic speed, “achieving all expectations under a customer funded contract.”
Kratos has long-lead orders for “several” Dark Furies and Erinyes hypersonic test bed, which has also been successfully flight-tested, he said.
“Dark Fury is truly an incredible system, including its speed, range and precision characteristics and at its extremely low cost point, which is positioning Kratos, similar to Kratos jet drone family, to provide affordable mass and quantities,” DeMarco said.
There are also orders for about 70 solid rocket motors, including Zeus, for upcoming and expected hypersonic missions, he added.
The orders for the vehicles and rocket motors demonstrate the pending increase Kratos expects in hypersonic-related sales that will pick-up in the second half of 2025 and accelerate into 2026, DeMarco said.
Kratos’ “hypersonic franchise” will be the top growth driver in the next few years “unless global peace breaks out,” he said, adding that this goes beyond air vehicles and rocket motors to included the company’s position on spacecraft that detect and track hypersonic launches.
The second growth driver will be the company’s engine business, which includes turbojets, rocket motors, and space propulsion systems.
Third is microwave electronics, in particular the company’s business unit in Israel that sells internationally, he said.
If and when the tactical drone business takes off, DeMarco said this will be “one of the, if not the biggest needle mover for the company.” For now, the tactical drone outlook is a “call option” until the orders flow, he said.
Net income in the quarter more than tripled to $4.5 million, 3 cents earnings per share (EPS), from $1.3 million (2 cents EPS) a year ago. Excluding taxes, acquisition and restructuring costs, interest and other expenses, per share earnings of 12 cents beat consensus estimates by three cents.
Sales rose 9 percent to $302.6 million from $277.2 million a year ago, with 7 percent of the gain organic.
Growth drivers in the quarter were defense rocket systems, microwave products, C5ISR-related products, and target vehicles. Weighing on earnings was an operating loss in the Unmanned Systems segment due to increased material, subcontractor, and labor costs on multi-year fixed-price production contracts awarded in 2020 and 2021. DeMarco blamed higher subcontractor costs on a couple of companies that are increasing their prices.
The outlook for 2025 is unchanged, with organic sales still forecast to increase 10 percent, and then another 14 percent in 2026.
Orders in the quarter were robust at $365.6 million and backlog stood at $1.5 billion, up 4 percent from just over $1.4 billion at the end of 2024. Free cash flow was negative $51.8 million.
Lithium-sulfur battery developer and manufacturer Lyten on Thursday said it is launching an initiative to bring its lightweight, domestically-sourced batteries to the drone industry.
Battery cells produced by Lyten were used to power a Titan Dynamics unmanned aircraft system (UAS) for more than three hours in a test that included various maneuvers and speeds up to 86 miles per hour, the California-based company said.
Toward the end of the second quarter, Lyten plans a new battery platform intended for longer endurance drone flights and broad commercial use, and also expects to conduct another flight test on Titan’s UAS lasting up to eight hours, the company said. That test will occur late in the second, or early third, quarter, Keith Norman, Lyten’s chief marketing officer, told Defense Daily in an email response to questions.
For the recent flight-test, Lyten’s battery cells were packaged into a pack by Upgrade Energy and flown on Titan’s 3D-printed Blackbird drone, which as a range of more than 300 miles, a payload capacity of nearly six pounds, and can be carried in Pelican cargo case.
Lyten said it is dedicating production capacity in its California manufacturing facilities to meet demand for its high-endurance drone propulsion batteries to meet defense applications.
The Lithium-sulfur batteries are free of nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite, materials the Lyten highlights are “dominated by Chinese supply chains.” Upgrade Energy integrated the battery cells in Los Angeles, where Titan also 3D-prints its drones.
“This creates a full, end-to-end, U.S.-sourced and manufactured drone, making it fully National Defense Authorization Act compliant and supply chain secure,” Norman said.
Lyten is also working to integrate its batteries into AEVEX Aerospace’s UAS, and the lithium-sulfur cells are slated to be demonstrated aboard the International Space Station following a launch later this year.
Quantum computing company IonQ [IONQ] has signed an agreement to acquire Capella Space to accelerate its plans in quantum networking. IonQ, based in College Park, Maryland, announced the move on Wednesday.
Capella operates commercial satellites that capture X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. The company offers imagery, monitoring, and analytics for use cases in defense and intelligence, maritime awareness, disaster response, and more.
Capella has four satellites in operation, with several more set to launch this year. The company provides satellite imagery to the U.S. government.
IonQ plans to launch a global space-to-space and space-to-ground satellite quantum key distribution (QKD) network. The company said acquiring Capella will “deepen and accelerate IonQ’s quantum networking leadership,” and expand quantum computing partnerships with U.S. agencies through Capella’s facility security clearance.
“We have an exceptional opportunity to accelerate our vision for the quantum internet, where global quantum key distribution will play a foundational role in enabling secure communications,” said IonQ CEO Niccolo de Masi.
Also on Wednesday, IonQ announced plans to acquire Lightsynq Technologies, a company founded by former Harvard University quantum memory experts, focused on interconnected quantum systems.
Earlier this year, IonQ acquired quantum networking company Qubitekk, and entered an MoU with satellite antenna and gateway developer Intellian Technologies to explore a partnership that would merge quantum computing with future Intellian products.
Capella CEO Frank Backes said in a release that Capella’s platform will integrate with IonQ’s quantum capabilities “to enhance analytics, sensors, and security to bolster commercial applications and global defense and intelligence missions.”
“Space is the next frontier for IonQ’s leadership in quantum computing, quantum networking, and ultra-secure environments,” Backes said. “Quantum technologies have the potential to revolutionize space-based operations by enabling ultra-secure communications that transmit data to and from platforms with unmatched security.”
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2025 and is subject to regulatory approval.
The Army wants to speed up fielding of its Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) by two years to 2028 but won’t commit to future plans for awarding another multi-year UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter contract, the service secretary said on Wednesday.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the service met with FLRAA developer Bell [TXT] last week and tasked them with crafting a plan for accelerating the program’s timeline, which was currently set to begin fielding in 2030.
The V-280 Valor. Bell photo.
“What we wanted to partner with them and task them [to do] is spend this week and create a plan and tell us how do you push [FLRAA] forward by years and then what do we, the Army, need to do to help you,” Driscoll said during a House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing. “We do not intend to sit back passively as [Bell] begins this manufacturing process…we are going to be a part of the process and we are going to be cutting through the red tape and doing our part, as the United States Army, to push it forward and get it in the hands of soldiers.”
Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft was named the winner of the FLRAA competition in December 2022, beating out a Sikorsky [LMT] and Boeing [BA] team’s Defiant X coaxial rigid rotor helicopter offering for the program to find a platform that will eventually replace a sizeable portion of the Black Hawk fleet (Defense Daily, Dec. 5, 2022).
The Army’s initial FLRAA deal to Bell is worth up to $1.3 billion but could total $7 billion if all options are picked up.
Last August, the Army approved the Milestone B decision to move FLRAA into the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase, to include picking up the next contract option that will cover the build of six prototype aircraft (Defense Daily, Aug. 2 2024).
Col. Jeffrey Poquette, the Army’s FLRAA program manager, told Defense Daily in March that a Critical Design Review for the future platform is expected later this year and that the Army was working with Bell on when the first prototype could be delivered.
FLRAA currently remains on track for a Milestone C decision to move into production in FY ‘28 and to meet the initial fielding goal for FY ‘30, Poquette confirmed at the time.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the HAC-D chair, specifically asked when the Army thinks it can reach full-rate production for FLRAA and the quantities it plans to build, with Driscoll responding that the service should have a better idea of those details “within a matter of weeks.”
“We don’t feel like we’re in a position quite yet to answer this question but we think within a matter of weeks we’ll have a very clear plan [for FLRAA] that we can come pitch you as a subcommittee that you can help us look at and be able to react to,” Driscoll said.
“It is an example, I think, of our own systems and failures getting in the way. When they showed me the [FLRAA] aircraft and said how fast it went and how far it went, it clearly will add capabilities that can be relevant in INDOPACOM. But when I asked, ‘When did the first test flight occur?’ And I think it was 2017 or 2018. My stomach sank that it had been seven years since we think we had found what we needed but we hadn’t transitioned to it,” Driscoll told the panel. “We are actively working on a plan to try to sync with Pentagon leadership…to move that forward as quickly as possible.”
The Army’s assurance of its commitment to FLRAA, and the new intent to speed up the program, comes as the service has rolled out a wide-ranging transformation that includes cutting “outdated weapon systems” such as the M10 Booker combat vehicle, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, Humvees, the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter and Gray Eagle drones (Defense Daily, May 1).
Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, told lawmakers FLRAA is a “much needed system,” noting the future platform will be able to fly at 350 miles per hour at a range of 350 miles making a “significant difference” offer current capability.
“It can be optimally manned which means it could fly out autonomously. You can connect it with drones. There’s a lot of things that you can do with that system. We can use it around the world. I think it’s critically important in the INDOPACOM [theater]. I think it’s also something that SOCOM is going to want to be able to use…So we want to get it moving as fast as possible,” George said.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the HAC ranking member whose district includes Stratford, Connecticut where Sikorsky builds the Black Hawk, pressed Driscoll and George on the Army’s intentions for awarding another UH-60 multi-year contract.
“I think [the Black Hawk] is a critical tool and I hope you agree with me that is the case,” DeLauro said. “It’s not just a constituency issue here…it’s about the Black Hawk and what it has meant to the safety of our soldiers and the national security of this country. That is my primary goal in addressing this issue.”
Both Driscoll and George declined to offer a firm commitment on awarding another multi-year deal for more Black Hawks, and said they would have to get back to the committee with an answer on that decision.
“Congresswoman, I appreciate that your constituency involves Black Hawk and the Americans who have made it. Our constituency is the American soldier and the taxpayer whose dollars we spend,” Driscoll said. “We’ve had this conversation with many of our largest companies in the last week. We are unwilling to make commitments that aren’t, in our opinion, in the best interests of soldiers and their lethality and keeping them safe if we deploy them anywhere in the world and to bring them home. So we can follow up with your office but right now we can’t answer that.”
The Army and Sikorsky in June 2022 signed what was expected to be the final multi-year UH-60M Black Hawk contract, awarding the company a five-year deal worth $2.3 billion for delivery of 120 H-60M helicopters (Defense Daily, June 27 2022).
With options, the Army noted the 10th multi-year deal for Black Hawks could potentially be worth $4.4 billion and cover more than 250 helicopters, to include aircraft for FMS customers.
When the Army announced its major aviation restructure in February 2024, which included canceling development of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, it detailed plans to award another multi-year contract for UH-60M Black Hawks with the newly freed-up resources and to focus on future modernization upgrades for the platform.
“This is a very, very troubling conversation and I will produce the background and information that I’ve been given about the future of the Black Hawk for our national security and the modernization and investment in that modernization,” DeLauro said during the hearing.
George said he was “not aware” of any adjustments to previously discussed plans for the Black Hawk, reiterating that the Army intends to keep upgrading its fleet to the UH-60M model.
“I see [that] Black Hawks are going to be with us for a while, but I do think we’re going to have to adapt what we’re doing. There just may be less Black Hawks,” George said.
Former Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told lawmakers in April 2024 the service planned to move “immediately” into the next Black Hawk multi-year contract upon the conclusion of the current procurement deal with Sikorsky in FY ‘27, adding it would be a five-year contract covering 24 helicopters per year (Defense Daily, April 10).
The director of the Missie Defense Agency (MDA) last week confirmed both the next homeland ballistic missile defense interceptor and first dedicated hypersonic missile defense interceptor are both running late due to earlier than planned downselects.
[LMT] to continue Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) development over competitor Northrop Grumman [NOC]. The agency previously planned to continue this competition at least through the Critical Design Review (CDR) (Defense Daily, April 15, 2024).
The NGI is planned to add to and possibly ultimately replace the current Ground Based Interceptors geared toward defending against nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that could be launched by North Korea in a conflict. They are largely deployed at Fort Greely, Alaska. MDA previously already built 20 silos at the site to accommodate the first group of NGIs.
Shortly before the decision was made public, MDA Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins told the House Armed Services’ Strategic Forces subcommittee that the change was due to both fiscal pressure from caps in the Fiscal Responsibility Act as well as positive technical development from both teams (Defense Daily April 12, 2024).
Figure 1 from the June 2024 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on the Missile Defense Agency’s Next Generation Interceptor program. (Image: GAO)
He said accelerated contractor execution schedules meant MDA had “an appreciably larger body of technical knowledge and data available to assess contractor performance ahead of a traditional systems development at this point in the design maturation process.”
Collins now told the same panel on April 30 that this downselect occurred specifically about a year and a half earlier than MDA had previously expected.
He noted while NGI is MDA’s largest and highest priority that has achieved “significant progress at the system level,” it is still experiencing 18 months or more of delivery delay.
Collins confirmed the top limiting issue with NGI remains its solid rocket motor development.
“This is a new booster, a new development, and we have experienced delays and issues with that development, and are expecting 18 months or more delay into the delivery of that initial capability.”
He said in an attempt to reduce that delay, MDA has taken unspecified “actions to shore up the development as well as bring in an additional source to help buy down the schedule risk of the development.”
In his written statement to the subcommittee, Collins elaborated that beyond expected design challenges to NGI, its complexity is driving “unanticipated programmatic, technical, and producibility challenges that are driving increases to the estimated development and deployment schedule.”
He added there that the earlier-than-planned downselect most significantly impacted NGI’s supply chain. This means after learning of the incoming early downselect, suppliers moved to limit fiscal exposure and even stopped some development work on “critical NGI components.” These supply chain impacts were further exacerbated by the “post-COVID-induced inflation.”
Beyond those supplier issues, Collins explained there have been “significant” development and manufacturing issues with the solid rocket motor cases set to be used for qualification testing. The motors themselves are properly on the path to execute the first NGI flight test, he said.
“These development and supply chain challenges required us to develop a comprehensive NGI re-plan schedule. The result is key milestones have shifted to the right.”
Given all of the supply chain, inflation and development delay issues, Collins said MDA plans for the NGI program to execute its All Up Round Critical Design Review in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027, followed by two “rigorous flight tests” in FY 2029.
This schedule translates into providing U.S. Northern Command “with an opportunity to declare an Initial Operational Capability no later than FY 2030.”
Collins said MDA is also looking into adding a potential NGI flight test demonstration in 2028 to “demonstrate confidence” and reduce program risk.
Raytheon Missiles & Defense concept art of a potential ship-based Glide Phase Intercept hypersonic defense system. (Image: Raytheon Technologies)
Separately, Collins told the subcommittee the Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) hypersonic defense program is also dealing with repercussions from the selection and downselect “years earlier than planned” due to similar DoD priorities and resourcing decisions.
Last September, MDA selected Northrp Grumman over RTX [RTX] to continue developing GPI (Defense Daily, Sept. 25, 2024). In November, MDA then awarded Northrop Grumman a $541 million contract to continue GPI development (Defense Daily, Nov. 15, 2024).
He said while hypersonic missile defense is still a ‘key area” that needs additional focus, delivery of the first GPI units was pushed back from 2032 to 2035 as a result of the earlier GPI selection.
Notably, Collins’ written statement to the committee said this shift to 2035 also marks that “the overall programmatic risk is high.”
However, he told the committee that if acceleration options that MDA is currently evaluating work out, they could recover back to the previous 2032 delivery plan.
“It is primarily a resourcing at this point. There are some technological things that need to happen in the next three to five years, but then there is a resourcing and alignment issue that could accelerate that. We believe we could recover to 2032 with no increased level of programmatic risk across the program, but that’s about the fastest we could do today,” Collins told the committee.
According to FY 2025 budget request documents published last year, the GPI timetable milestones were pushed back a year from the FY 2024 plans following Budget Control Act-forced funding reductions. The Preliminary Design Review was said to be set for FY 2030 instead of 2029, Critical Design Review in 2033 instead of 2032 and delivery starting in 2035 rather than 2034(Defense Daily, March 18, 2024).
Previously, the FY 2024 defense authorization act pushed PDA to develop and field GPI faster than the agency expected it would be able to: reaching Initial Operating Capability with 12 interceptors by the end of 2029 and Full Operating Capability of at least 24 interceptors by 2032 (Defense Daily, Dec. 21, 2023).
In his written statement, Collins elaborated that MDA is working with RTX and co-development partner Japan to “shore up the program” and look for opportunities for acceleration and to “burn down risk as soon as possible.”
Beyond potentially getting the GPI program back on track to 2032, he reiterated the agency is still exploring other alternatives and options to add “residual” or partial hypersonic defense capability to other weapon systems currently in use.
However, for now Collins reiterated the only other “hypersonic maneuvering target defense capability we have is in the fleet with the SM-6 and the Sea-Based Terminal capability.”
Unit costs for the U.S. Air Force B-52 Radar Modernization Program (RMP) have increased to 15 percent over the baseline–a status that represents a significant Nunn-McCurdy breach.
The Air Force has said that RMP for the 76 B-52Hs is to include a new, active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar based on RTX‘s [RTX] APG-79; a new, wide-band radome by L3Harris Technologies [LHX] on the aircraft’s nose; two L3Harris 8 x 20 inch high definition displays for the radar navigator and the navigator; two new, hand controllers by California-based Mason Controls; and new display sensor system processors by L3Harris to interface between the radar and other B-52 systems.
Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower and projection forces panel, said at a Wednesday hearing of the subcommittee that Air Force estimates “as of last month” indicate a significant Nunn-McCurdy cost breach for RMP but also suggest that the program will not surpass the 25 percent “critical” Nunn-McCurdy unit cost threshold.
Kelly then asked acting Air Force acquisition chief Darlene Costello her degree of confidence in the Air Force’s assessment that RMP will not enter the ranks of critical Nunn-McCurdy program breaches.
“I am pretty confident in this, which is why we have decided to continue with the program,” Costello said. “We believe we can find an affordable way forward to deliver the needed capability. We conducted an affordability review when we first got the information about the pricing coming in higher than we expected. We’ve refined the requirements down to a minimum viable product of what [Air Force] Global Strike [Command] really needs this to do, as opposed to possibly other items. That doesn’t mean we can’t bring in capability later, but for now we’re focusing on getting this capability to the warfighter because it’s needed.”
“We don’t believe it’s gonna be a critical Nunn-McCurdy,” she testified. “We don’t believe we’re close to having a critical Nunn-McCurdy, but we are beyond the significant threshold, and we’re working through the process to inform the Congress of that.”
Last July, an Air Force official said that RMP was abutting a significant cost breach and that the program executive office for bombers was examining cost reductions, including “relooking at some of the requirements that maybe are not operationally relevant or too restrictive that’s slowing down some of the design–things like the fidelity that the new radome has to be, or the way we do cold starts” (Defense Daily, July 31, 2024).
Costello is retiring after 36 years of service in the Navy, DoD, and the Air Force, where she has been the deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics for the last nine years. Since 2016, she has served three times as acting Air Force acquisition chief.
Teresa Robbins, acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said on Wednesday that the first production unit of the B61-13 gravity bomb is “anticipated” to be complete later this month.
In testimony to the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Robbins said the program was “almost a full year ahead of schedule.”
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.
The SSMP also projects the B61-13 will finish production in fiscal year 2028.
An NNSA spokesperson told Fox News in April that the agency will complete the first production unit of the B61-13 by fiscal 2025 and “significantly” ahead of schedule. The spokesperson attributed the accelerated delivery to “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.” Robbins reiterated in the hearing that an “existing production line” was used.
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.
U.S. Transportation Command needs some 465 tankers, according to its Mobility Capabilities Study, as the U.S. Air Force looks to fix five Category 1 deficiencies on its Boeing [BA] KC-46A Pegasus in the next year and a half.
The KC-135 Stratotanker, which first fielded in 1957, is the backbone of the strategic tanker fleet, and Boeing has delivered 89 KC-46As before stopping in February due to cracks discovered on two planes.
Congress has set the minimum tanker number at 466.
At a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel on Tuesday, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) asked Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin how many strategic tankers are needed to sustain a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
“That demand signal is derived through the TRANSCOM commander who looks to the INDOPACOM war plan,” Allvin replied. “They have their MCS [Mobility Capabilities Study], and that drives the number of tankers and strategic airlift. They are currently in the broad number of about 465. Between the KC-46 and the KC-135 recapitalization, we are still driving toward that TRANSCOM-derived number, and, as we look further into the buy of the recapitalization, this is where the Next Generation Air Refueling System [NGAS] study will tell us whether we need new tanker altogether or tankers that have better survivability mechanisms on them.”
The Air Force’s Analysis of Alternatives for NGAS–a possibly stealthy tanker–has been examining required runway size, fuel carriage for long-range missions, and the need for tanker stealth (Defense Daily, March 6).
At Tuesday’s hearing, HAC-D Chairman Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) followed Fleischmann’s line of questioning.
“All the bugs have been worked out on the KC-46?” Calvert asked Allvin. “It’s working optimally?”
“Not optimally,” Allvin replied. The KC-46 has five unresolved Category 1 deficiencies–two on the Remote Vision System (RVS), one on the mast drain, one related to the refueling boom’s stiffness, which presents problems in refueling some, lower speed aircraft, like the A-10; and one on the environmental control system.
The five is a reduction from seven KC-46 Category 1 deficiencies the Air Force reported last summer, but defects have been a problem for the tanker since 2020 (Defense Daily, July 25, 2024).
Allvin testified on Tuesday that he met with Boeing Defense Systems CEO Stephen Parker last week to review the deficiencies.
The KC-46 “is producing,” Allvin said. “It can refuel all receivers except for the A-10 and the [Boeing] E-7 [Wedgetail] because we just haven’t tested against that [yet]…The latest estimate on the pacing item–the Remote Vision System–we’re probably looking at another 18 months.”
The Air Force and Boeing agreed on the RVS 2.0 redesign of the original RVS on April 2, 2020 to fix faulty RVS depth perception, and the Air Force had said that it expected to field RVS 2.0 by this October.
Last July, Kevin Stamey, the program executive officer and the director of Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Mobility and Training Aircraft Directorate, said that the NGAS AoA work had indicated that the KC-46A “is not survivable in contested environments.”
Air Force officials have been discussing the need for “more booms,” and the service may look to other companies’ tankers to meet such demands.
Gen. Thomas Bussiere, commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., said reusing the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile siloes for the replacement Sentinel in the future might not be “more efficient” or “cost effective.”
Bussiere’s comments came at the April 30 Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center virtual forum “Modernizing the U.S. Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: Air and Land-based Legs of the Triad.”
“Part of this process, post Nunn-McCurdy, is to look at the viability of using the same landscape, but potentially looking at maybe doing a different hole for the weapon, versus using, reusing the current hole,” Bussiere said. “Now a decision hasn’t been made. We haven’t taken it to the program decision makers in the Pentagon, but the team is working very hard – operators, maintainers, acquisition professionals, industry professionals, engineers – to make sure we get this right.”
Bussiere told sister publication The Exchange Monitorin February at a forum in Washington that Global Command was looking at analysis into whether new siloes will be needed.
On Jan. 18, 2024, the Air Force said it notified Congress that Sentinel had breached Nunn-McCurdy guidelines, primarily due to construction design changes, and then DoD acquisition chief William LaPlante ordered a root-cause analysis. The latter led last summer to the DoD decision to continue the program, due to its stated importance to strategic deterrence, but also to the rescinding of the Sentinel Milestone B engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) go-ahead.
Last summer, the Air Force pegged Sentinel cost at $140.9 billion, 81% higher than the September 2020 estimate when the program was approved for EMD–a rise that DoD said has less to do with the missile than the command-and-control segment, including silos, launch centers, “and the process, duration, staffing, and facilities to execute the conversion from Minuteman III to Sentinel.”
Sentinel, being built by
Northrop Grumman [NOC], will eventually replace the Boeing [BA]-made Minuteman III as the Air Force’s silo-based, nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile sometime in the 2030s while the Minuteman III is still commissioned. At the virtual forum last week, Bussiere also said it would be a “few years” before the entire Minuteman III weapon system can be replaced by the Sentinel weapon system.
Maj. Gen. Stacy Jo Huser, commander of the 20th Air Force in the Air Force Global Strike Command, said at a workshop preceding The Exchange Monitor’s annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit there would likely be a 15-year overlap between Sentinel and the last Minuteman III. Huser told the Monitor that the Minuteman III, originally expected to be decommissioned by the mid-2030s, would now be decommissioned by 2050 or later.
