GE Aerospace [GE] said Monday it has been awarded a subcontract to deliver avionics systems as part of Bell’s [TXT] team building the Army’s new Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA).
The company noted the avionics work builds off Bell’s prior decision to select GE Aerospace as the “digital backbone” provider for FLRAA.
The V-280 Valor. Bell photo.
“Entering this next phase enables us to continue advancing the digital backbone for the U.S. Army’s future vertical lift programs,” Tanika Watson, GE Aerospace’s general manager for future vertical lift, said in a statement. “The digital backbone provides the framework to make aircraft system modifications and realize the benefits of Modular Open Systems Approach designs from the outset of future vertical lift programs.”
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 an eventual UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter replacement (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.
The value of the subcontract award to GE Aerospace announced Monday has not been disclosed.
Bell announced in September 2023 it had selected GE Aerospace to provide FLRAA’s digital backbone, which it said includes the “Common Open Architecture Digital Backbone (COADB), Voice and Data Recorder, and the Health Awareness System” as part of an “open, scalable, high-speed data infrastructure” for the aircraft (Defense Daily, Sept. 7, 2023).
“The digital backbone will allow customers to make changes to the weapon system without going to the systems integrator, which optimizes the cost and speed of change,” GE Aerospace said on Monday. “The digital backbone incorporates time-sensitive networking to provide a reliable, high speed data ‘highway’ to meet current and future needs for moving data through the aircraft.”
The Army last August 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).
“The maturity of the digital backbone for the U.S. Army’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft was critical to passing Milestone B and entering the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the program,” Matt Burns, GE Aerospace’s general manager for avionics systems, said in a statement.
Contracts awards are expected “imminently” as the Army moves ahead on its initiative to rapidly build out a Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) architecture, officials said, with an aim to scale up the effort over the next year and outfit a division with new capability.
Army officials on Monday detailed the service’s “blank sheet” approach to realizing NGC2, which includes breaking from traditional acquisition processes and citing an interest in having industry form “teams of teams” to deliver capability.
From right, U.S. Army Maj. Shaun Adams, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Cole Brown and Cpt. Daniel Reape, all assigned to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, monitor mission objectives during Brave Partner exercise on Ramstein Air Base, Germany Nov. 30, 2023. … (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Spc. William Kuang)
“We’re going to be able to put some stuff out for [soldiers] to be able to use in a fraction of the time, within the fiscal year, to at least start to be able to start to [build] on [NGC2]. And we’re going to do, in parallel, the scaling of what we already have and then also have other opportunities for folks to come in,” Lt. Gen. Rob Collins, military deputy in the office of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon.
The Army has previously detailed a vision for NGC2 to provide “commanders and units at echelon an open and modular C2 ecosystem across hardware, software and applications with access to a common and integrated data layer,” and has described it as a “fundamental change in how the U.S. Army conducts digital mission command.”
“The Army’s investment into Next Generation Command and Control sets the baseline for operating on today’s modern battlefield, and more importantly, this investment sets conditions for future command and control. This is one of our most important investments, it sets the conditions for AI-enabled, data-centric and software-defined warfare,” Gen. George, the Army chief of staff, said in a statement on Monday.
In recent years, the Army has shifted its tactical network modernization approach toward a more holistic effort that emphasizes flexibility and speed, to include providing industry with a “characteristics of need” document to take a less prescriptive approach to detailing technology priorities.
Joe Welch, deputy to the commander of Army Futures Command, told reporters the Army took a “totally blank sheet” approach to setting its design principles for NGC2, adding the service needed a “radical” rather than “incremental” initiative for upgrading C2 capabilities.
“In other words, we looked at the systems that we had currently in the Army and we considered incrementally changing and updating them, as we’ve been doing for many years, and we just didn’t see a way to continue to move forward under that type of an approach,” Welch said.
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, director of the Army’s C2 Cross-Functional Team, noted the Army first tested NGC2 as a “proof of concept” at last year’s capstone demonstration for the annual Project Convergence experiment.
“It was basically heavily reliant on commercial architecture. It was all commercial transport, largely at the unclassified level. We just wanted to see if this made sense,” Ellis said.
After continuing to iterate on the prototype architecture over the last year, the Army then tested NGC2 out as a “proof of principle” at the Project Convergence-Capstone 5 (PC-C5) event earlier this month.
“We gave the real equipment to an entire armored battalion with all their enablers that came with it…Real soldiers were really employing the technology. There wasn’t an army of contractors following all the vehicles around. The soldiers were actually using it and we got a lot of really quality feedback there,” Ellis said. “I realized we hadn’t once talked about how complicated it was to access that data, how hard it was to log in, the transport problems that they were having. We were talking about what they’re actually doing with the data, which is exactly what our goal is.”
Alex Miller, chief technology officer to the Army chief, said going from a “proof of concept” to testing out a NGC2 architecture 12 months later at PC-C5 is an “astronomically fast” pace for the Army.
“We went from a characterization of need to with industry, government and industry together, to things in the hands of soldiers that I am actually pretty confident if war broke out tonight that they can use in real time, in about 12 to 18 months, when normally that process would have taken five to seven years,” Miller told reporters.
The Army in January released a Request for Information to industry for NGC2, which included details of a potential plan to award contracts in May to be followed by initial prototypes deliveries expected within six months (Defense Daily, Jan. 16).
While Army officials on Monday didn’t provide a concrete timeline for planned awards, Welch said the service is likely to spend “billions of dollars” achieving the NGC2 vision.
“We don’t believe [NGC2] is going to cost any more than we’re spending currently on disparate command and control systems and multiple different programs,” Welch said. “This technology commercial base is available now. Instead of pausing and refining our requirements and building a plan on how to move this forward, we’re continuing under the momentum that we have right now. So we’re going to experiment again with [the NGC2 architecture] next year, but we’re also outfitting our units. We’re starting now to maintain the momentum coming out of what we just did.”
Miller noted that Army leadership has set a goal to have a division and corps “squared away” with the NGC2 architecture, adding that the integrated data later will “ideally” be fully operational at the division level by PC-C6 next year.
“As soon as that’s live, other units will be able to log in,” Miller said.
“What we’re really working on now for Next Gen Command and Control is how do we break ourselves out of these legacy processes…and [thinking about] how do we acquire and how do we make sure that the funding goes to things that are useful for soldiers and we actually have soldiers in the loop, rather than doing big requirements documents and throwing them over to acquisition and then thinking that’s going to be figured out,” Miller added. “Having the teams in place means that [industry] can actually self-organize and pick the right components.”
Welch said with NGC2 the Army aims to change its relationship with industry, to include a focus on shifting from “this concept of an industry integrator into more a team of teams [approach].”
“Instead of telling [industry] what we need them to deliver, we’re presenting them with a problem statement and asking for their help. And we’re working with the best tech companies in the world, American companies that are absolutely positioned to deliver capability to the U.S. Army, both large and small companies,” Welch said. “This is a very software-driven capability. We’re talking about the ‘app store,’ the integrated data layer, AI marketplaces, cloud computing, local computing, mesh network, satellites, all of this working together. There’s a piece for everybody in here.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier in March signed a memo directing the Pentagon to “maximize” the use of existing rapid acquisition authorities to speed up the delivery of software capabilities, including the Software Acquisition Pathway as the “preferred” tool for software development and using Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreements and Commercial Solutions Openings (CSO) as the “default solicitation and award approaches” for acquiring capabilities (Defense Daily, March 7).
Miller said the new memo was “jet fuel” to get after procuring “software in a software way,” adding that an implementation is likely to follow soon.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced a new Multiple Authority Announcement (MAA) vehicle to let the DoD quickly pursue non-traditional acquisitions under one announcement, as it looks to address the Trump White House’s Golden Dome initiative.
Individual solicitations under the MAA will ask offerors to recommend the best instrument type for the best solution and MDA underscored it will use the instrument type best suited for the nature of the proposed work. The agency said it anticipates pursuing a mix of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and non-FAR instrument types.
Northrop Grumman graphic representation of how Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites are meant to operate and enable targeting of enemy missiles. (Image: Northrop Grumman).
This potentially includes acquisition types like Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), Procurement for Experimental Purpose (PEP), and Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) all under one “versatile vehicle.”
The notice highlighted the MAA announcement will be the landing site for notices and is meant to provide a comprehensive acquisition strategy for a variety of specific missile defense technical efforts, the agency noted.
MDA called this a “competitive approach targeted towards disruptive technologies and rapid capability development from non-traditional sources.”
The notice said it envisions individual solicitations will be issued under the MAA as areas of need, capability gaps or technical attributes/objectives are identified.
While MDA did not explicitly tie this new acquisition framework to the Trump White House Golden Dome project, it names technologies specified in the original January Iron Dome for America executive order for a next-generation missile defense shield, like space-based interceptors (Defense Daily, Jan. 28).
“The authorities under this announcement should provide avenues for maturation and transition of applied research and advanced technology development, prototype and demonstration, and experimentation and testing efforts,” the notice added.
This follows an initial MDA Request for Information seeking capabilities industry could demonstrate or delivery in two-year windows from 2026 to past 2030 (Defense Daily, Feb. 3).
Concept image of Lockheed Martin version of Next Generation Interceptors (NGI) in flight. (Artist rendering: Lockheed Martin)
The notice also underscored MDA is “Actively pursuing prototype capability and breakthrough demonstrations” in all parts of missile defense to include planning, detection, identification, tracking, tasking, engagement and assessment. It summarized MDA’s objectives as both focusing on near-term enhancements and “revolutionary leaps” in further term capabilities.
The MAA covers all the main MDA topic areas like kinetic and hypersonic defense, command and control battle management, integrated non-kinetic and electronic warfare, space-based sensors, interceptors and effectors, digital revolution, international missile defense system cooperation and disruptive technologies.
The notice said disruptive technologies means prioritizing innovations ready for immediate or near-term transition like AI, directed energy, hypersonic defense, resilient networking and cybersecurity.
“This could include novel concepts in the areas of satellite ground Telemetry, Tracking and Commanding (TT&C) capabilities, effectors, high-performance sensor algorithms, space-based tracking phenomenologies and discrimination, space-based off-board sensing concepts for weapons guidance and AI/machine learning (ML) for space/ground applications,” the notice said.
The notice listed this MAA vehicle lasting at least through March 2030. It did not disclose when MDA plans for initial solicitations under this vehicle.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in late March announced a new missile defense summit focused on next-generation missile defense for the Trump White House Golden Dome initiative.
According to a notice, the summit will be a collaboration with U.S. Space Force and held at an unclassified level on April 29 at Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala.
Missile Defense Agency logo.
“The goal of the Summit is to equip non-traditional and industry partners with the knowledge and understanding of MDA’s and Space Force’s role in Golden Dome for America, empowering them to take concrete actions that support and align with government requirements,” MDA’s notice said.
The agency emphasized the summit will not include panels or planned one-on-one sessions but also non-traditional contractors are “highly encouraged” to attend because the agency is particularly interested in “outside the box” thinking from them to help shape the future of missile defense.
The event will feature general sessions with presentations on subjects like acquisition, contracting and prototyping.
Invitees include elements of the military services, other DoD agencies, Combatant Commands, industry, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), and University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC)
Registration requests are due by April 4.
Golden Dome was originally called Iron Dome for America in an executive order President Trump signed in January. It is directed to be a next-generation missile defense shield that includes space-based interceptors (Defense Daily, Jan. 28).
While the U.S. Air Force may buy 26 Boeing [BA] E-7 Wedgetails to replace its fleet of 16 1970s-era E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes, also by Boeing, the service is also examining how much it could save in AWACS maintenance costs.
The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies recently advised the Air Force to add more than $5 billion in its fiscal 2026 budget request to buy the 26 Wedgetails to replace the 16 E-3s “in hospice care” (Defense Daily, March 20).
The Air Force Sustainment Center (AFSC), based at Tinker AFB, Okla., is surveying industry on AWACS to find companies able to provide “depot level repair capability of Diminishing Manufacturing Sources Replacement of Avionics for Global Operations and Navigation (DRAGON) assets, since the government does not possess the technical data package,” according to a Monday business notice. “This contract shall provide DRAGON repair capability for the [Air Force]. Having an [Air Force] specific repair contract will streamline the repair pipeline and provide our combatant commanders and warfighters with battlefield situational awareness.”
Through DRAGON, “AWACS was upgraded from a four-person flight deck to a three-person flight deck by eliminating the navigator position and incorporating a modern Flight Management System Suite with robust architecture,” the notice said. “Specifically, it consists of a modern flight management computer and large multifunction displays for flight and engine instruments. Additionally, DRAGON includes safety features such as a flight guidance system, weather radar system, terrain awareness and warning system, wind shear detection and warning system, new and supplemental upgrades to navigation and surveillance equipment, an engine indication and crew alerting system.”
“The technical data required to organically repair or compete the repair is not owned by the government, and is uneconomical to acquire the data by purchase or to reverse engineer the item,” AFSC said. “No samples are available for potential suppliers to evaluate.”
Top Air Force officials in the Pacific have listed the E-7 buy as one of their needs.
The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), Boeing, and Northrop Grumman [NOC] flight tested at RAAF Williamstown improved combat identification for Northrop Grumman’s Multi-Role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) for the Wedgetail, Northrop Grumman said last month (Defense Daily, March 21).
“Rather than simulating performance via a testbed aircraft, an in-service E-7 was utilized to perform these flight tests, reflecting the technical maturity and mission readiness of these capabilities,” Northrop Grumman said. “Flying in a true mission environment with these advanced capabilities for the first time, MESA identified air threats and securely processed key intel faster than ever before.”
U.S. Special Operations Command has said that Black Arrow, flight tested from an Air Force Special Operations Command AC-130J last November, may become operational in late fiscal 2026 (Defense Daily, Oct. 4, 2024).
USSOCOM awarded Leidos a contract in December 2024 to continue expanding the flight envelope and utility of Black Arrow through 2025.
In addition to launch ejection from a C-130 or other cargo utility aircraft ramp via a customer ramp launch tube, the SCM is also designed for palletized launch, and conventional store release from fixed-wing aircraft, Leidos said.
Leidos said that Black Arrow is a 200-pound class delivery platform designed for spiral upgrades for both kinetic and non-kinetic missions.
An Air Force official previously told Defense Daily that if the Black Arrow testing program goes well, the program will transition to production (Defense Daily, Oct. 4, 2024).
A memorandum that DoD said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed on March 28 may result in significant organizational changes in the Department of the Air Force, Navy, and Army, including reductions to military department headquarters personnel.
The Pentagon said that the Initiating the Workforce Acceleration and Recapitalization Initiative memo “directs senior DOD leadership to provide ‘a proposed future-state organizational chart’ of those leaders’ respective departments.”
“A summary of all those charts — which should include functional areas and consolidated management hierarchies with positional titles and counts clearly depicted — is due from [the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness] to the defense secretary no later than April 11, 2025,” DoD said. “While the memo does not specify a targeted percentage for layoffs at DOD, it mentions that important changes are required ‘to put the department on ready footing to deter our enemies and fight for peace.'”
The Pentagon has targeted a “re-alignment” of eight percent of funds to service priorities, and the new memo portends an even higher percentage reduction in headquarters staffs–or even their elimination, as military departments may shift acquisition personnel, for example, to report directly to the given mission areas.
The upcoming changes may be particularly acute at the relatively small U.S. Space Force, including Space Systems Command and the Space Development Agency (SDA). SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) is the subject of a DoD- ordered Independent Review Team (IRT) (Defense Daily, March 10).
Chaired by former House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the IRT also includes Tina Harrington, who has worked as the signals intelligence director for the National Reconnaissance Office; Randall Walden, a consultant who headed the Department of the Air Force’s rapid capabilities office (RCO), which had signature programs, such as the B-21 Raider, under the RCO purview; and Sarah Mineiro, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project and Thornberry’s former staffer on military space. Mineiro also worked as the senior director of space strategy at Anduril Industries.
Embracing Space Force Exceptionalism, a recent American Enterprise Institute (AEI) report by Todd Harrison, a senior fellow there, advised the elimination of SSC and SDA headquarters and a re-alignment of the agencies’ functions under mission areas.
For example, SDA’s Missile Tracking and Custody Layers would be under a Space Force Missile Warning and Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) mission area, while SDA’s Transport Layer would fall under a Satellite Communications mission area.
A Missile Warning and TacSRT mission area would also assume responsibility for space-based Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI), announced by then Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond nearly four years ago, in May 2021 (Defense Daily, May 12, 2021).
Low Earth Orbit radars would provide such GMTI.
“After years of wrangling over roles and authorities with the intelligence community, the [space-based GMTI] program did not pass Milestone B—the official start of an acquisition program—until August 2024,” according to the AEI report. “Taking over three years to start a program is not moving at the speed of innovation; it is moving at the speed of bureaucracy.”
“The Space Force should part ways with the intelligence community on this program and make moving target indication (to include ground, maritime, and airborne targets) part of the Custody Layer of the PWSA called for in one of President Trump’s executive orders,” Harrison wrote. “The Custody Layer is intended to provide commanders the ability to maintain ‘custody of time-sensitive targets to support engagement by advanced weapons.'”
L3Harris Technologies [LHX] on Monday said it has completed the sale of its Commercial Aviation Solutions (CAS) business to the investment firm TJC L.P. for $800 million, shedding a non-core unit.
L3Harris said the entire purchase price was paid at closing. When the deal was first announced in November 2023, L3Harris said the terms included $700 million in cash and a potential $100 million earnout provision base on achieving certain performance targets in 2023 and 2024, which apparently were met (
Defense Daily, Nov. 27, 2023).
The CAS unit was part of L3Harris’ Integrated Mission Systems segment. CAS provides commercial avionics, pilot training, flight data analytics, and support for advanced air mobility.
Jefferies aerospace and defense analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu said in a client note that the divestiture removes $480 million in sales from L3Harris’ revenue guidance in 2025.
Under TJC, the business has been renamed Acron Aviation and is led by Alan Crawford, CEO. Acron has facilities in Britain, the U.S., Thailand, and India.
The Army on March 28 awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT] a nearly $5 billion production contract for Precision Strike Missiles Inc. 1.
Work on the new deal is expected to be completed by the end of March 2030, according to the Pentagon.
PrSM is the next-generation, long-range precision-strike missile delivering critical capabilities to attack, neutralize, suppress, and destroy targets, supporting successful mission execution via combined Joint All-Domain Operations. (Official U.S. Army photo, Darrell Ames)
PrSM is the Army’s program to replace its legacy ATACMS missiles, also built by Lockheed Martin, with the base weapon capable of reaching ranges up to 500 kilometers.
Scott Prochniak, Lockheed Martin’s manager of business development for tactical strike missiles, told Defense Daily this week that production qualification testing for PrSM Inc. 1 was nearing completion as the Army plans to move into the initial operational test and evaluation phase in early summer.
Lockheed Martin has been building initial batches of PrSM under Early Operational Capability (EOC) contracts, with Prochniak noting the company is currently in the process of delivering missiles under the EOC 2 award.
Paula Hartley, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of tactical missiles, told reporters in October the company will have delivered an initial 26 missiles for EOC 1 by the end of 2024 and that EOC 2 will cover 50 PrSM missiles.
Prochniak, in an interview at the the Association of the United States Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, said the PrSM production rate is “going to ramp up” with the next contract and that Lockheed Martin expected that award “could be soon.”
The Army completed its latest PrSM Inc. 1 production qualification test on March 19 at Vandenberg Space Force in California which was an extended range demonstration.
“The flight test assessed the PrSM missile’s ability to launch and execute stable flight characteristics throughout the predicted trajectory and range. Missile performance was nominal for all parameters and demonstrated PrSM’s contribution to the enhancement of Army long range precision fires capabilities,” the Army said in a statement.
In March 2023, the Army tapped Lockheed Martin and a team of RTX [RTX] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] for the Long Range Maneuverable Fires (LRMF) program to work on developing long-range missile concepts to inform the design of a future PrSM Inc. 4 capable of ranges up to 1,000 kilometers (Defense Daily, March 27 2023).
An Army official in December confirmed the service is exploring development of a future fifth increment of PrSM that would be fired from a larger pod to reach ranges beyond 1,000 kilometers and achieve potential hypersonic speeds (Defense Daily, Dec. 3 2024).
The Army has confirmed the three systems selected for its Launched Effects-Short Range (LE-SR) special user demonstration are AEVEX Aerospace’s Atlas,
Anduril Industries’ Altius 600 and RTX’s [RTX] Coyote.
The additional specifics on participants follows an Army official’s announcement earlier in the week that three vendors had been picked for the effort to inform future LE-SR procurement and fielding priorities.
RTX’s Raytheon launches new Coyote variant, Coyote LE SR, from helicopter. Photo: RTX.
“The LE-SR user demonstration is an important step forward in developing launched effects capabilities,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, the Army’s program executive officer for aviation, said in a statement on Thursday. “We are excited to work with our industry partners putting their systems in the hands of soldiers to evaluate their performance and identify areas for improvement.”
Brig. Gen. Cain Baker, director of the Army’s Future Vertical Lift Cross Functional Team, said on March 26 at the Association of the United States Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama that vendors will provide air vehicles and payloads for special user demo and that an an announcement would be forthcoming on the participants (Defense Daily, March 26).
“We’ll take that out to a formation here this year. [We’ll] place it in the hands of a fires element, a combat aviation brigade element and a [Special Operations Forces] element, to put that inside their formations, one, to get soldier user feedback. The other piece [of that] is within staff, in the formation how they will use, which will then drive a lot of our doctrine and our training,” Baker said.
Launched Effects is the Army’s program to field new autonomous air vehicles that can be launched from aircraft or ground platforms with a variety of payloads and mission system applications to provide a range of effects for reconnaissance, extended communications links and eventually lethal capabilities.
Army officials, including Baker, detailed plans a year ago to pursue rapid prototyping and eventual production for short, medium and long-range Launched Effects capabilities (Defense Daily, March 27 2024).
RTX’s Raytheon on Wednesday announced it recently fired the new Coyote LE SR variant, formerly known as the Coyote Block 3, from a helicopter for the first time during a recent test at Nine Mile Training Center in Texas.
The company confirmed to Defense Daily on Friday it will be participating in the Army’s special user demo with its Coyote LE SR.
“This new variant can perform reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition; electronic warfare; precision strike; and communications,” the company said in a statement. “Coyote LE SR uses collaborative autonomy allowing it to connect with other nearby sensors and systems to adjust its tactics and more efficiently and effectively achieve mission objectives based on real-time battlefield insights.”
The Army has previously experimented with an Launched Effects-Small prototype air vehicle at its EDGE and Project Convergence experimentation events, using Anduril’s Altius-600 capability (Defense Daily, May 16 2022).
The Pentagon in November also announced that, under the Replicator initiative, Anduril’s Altius-600 would be scaling up planned fielding and experimentation as part of the Marine Corps’ Organic Precision Fires program (Defense Daily, Nov. 13 2024).
The Army noted on Thursday that, in addition to the special user demo, the service will begin a separate effort later this year focused on prototyping industry’s existing solutions for LE-SR capabilities and payloads, adding the initiative has “already received interest from 12 vendors.”
