Page 68 – Defense Daily

Canada Turns to Australia for NORAD Radar

Canada is turning to Australia for a more than $4 billion Arctic radar for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). The Canadian Over-the-Horizon Radar would leverage Australia’s BAE Systems‘ Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), first conceived in 1984 and now consisting of three sites in Australia that provide high frequency, wide area surveillance of ships and aircraft out to 1,800 miles.

Jindalee is an aboriginal term for “bare hills.”

The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Tuesday that the Canadian-Australian collaboration will develop “Canada’s Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar system, an investment…that will provide early warning radar coverage from threats to the Arctic.”

“A key component of Canada’s NORAD modernization plan, the radar system’s long-range surveillance and threat tracking capabilities will detect and deter threats across the North,” according to Carney’s office. “Collaboration with Australia on this critical technology will further deepen our long-standing bilateral defense relationship, while supporting Canada’s commitment to strengthening North American defenses in partnership with the United States.”

The U.S. Air Force has yet to award a system development contract for its Over-the-Horizon Radar (Defense Daily, Jan. 2).

Section 138 of the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act called for the Air Force to start buying up to six of the radars–the first two to be in the United States.

“The contract for system development has not been awarded due to delays with the military construction environmental impact studies and associated processes to secure the land required,” the Air Force said in December. “The U.S. Air Force is pursuing opportunities to provide an early operational capability consistent with the needs of North American Aerospace Defense/Northern Command [NORTHCOM] requirements. The USAF plans to update the way forward in the FY26 president’s budget.”

Last year, NORTHCOM said that it wanted such radars by 2028 to counter advanced missiles, including hypersonic ones.

NATO allies are seeking to distance themselves from the Trump White House and forge their own defense paths. For his part, Trump has said he wants Canada to be the 51st state.

“Canada is strong,” Carney said at a press conference on Tuesday. “We can stand up for ourselves. We have called out those comments. They’re disrespectful. They’re not helpful, and they will have to stop before we sit down and have a conversation about our broader partnership with the United States.”

On Tuesday, Carney’s office also said that his country “will take on a greater, sustained, and year-round Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) presence in the Arctic–an investment of nearly $420 million to protect our sovereignty across land, air, and sea.”

“With an expansion of its Northern and Arctic operations and training exercises, and the deployment of more personnel, the CAF will be better placed to defend Canada’s Arctic presence and sovereignty – while enabling greater collaboration with NATO allies,” according to Carney’s office.

Anduril, Shield AI Each Partner In Singapore On Autonomous Solutions

Anduril Industries, and fellow U.S. startup Shield AI, on Wednesday announced separate partnerships with Singaporean defense agencies aimed at bringing autonomous solutions to the Southeast Asian island nation.

Anduril already has dealings with Singapore but for Shield AI this is a first.

Anduril said its partnership with the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) and the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) leverages the company’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy platform to explore autonomy in manned-unmanned teaming around situational awareness. The unmanned systems are within the RSAF, Anduril said.

The company and Singaporean partners will spend the next year doing simulation demonstrations to examine “collaborative autonomous behaviors” for integration into different autonomous systems.

The partnership is the first for Lattice for Mission Autonomy outside of the U.S. Lattice for Mission Autonomy is an evolution of Anduril’s Lattice operating system, which the company says enables the large-scale integration and use of autonomous systems under human supervision across the mission cycle.

Shield AI said it will work with the RSAF and DSTA to co-develop artificial intelligence for autonomous flight operations of drones. Shield AI’s Hivemind software uses AI to autonomously fly aircraft.

Shield AI said it will leverage its Hivemind Enterprise in its partnership, bringing a suite of tools that go beyond the Hivemind AI pilot to include software products for rapid development, and test and evaluation, “empowering developers to built and own their mission-ready autonomy solutions with unprecedented speed and flexibility.”

Ng Chad-Son, DSTA’s chief executive, said in a statement that “By working with Shield AI and RSAF, we want to drive AI innovation in drones, enhancing flight autonomy and overall effectiveness.” In a separate statement contained in Anduril’s announcement, Chad-Son said AI and autonomy will “complement our conventional systems.”

Both companies announced their partnerships during the Singapore Defence Technology Summit 2025.

U.S. Air Force and Navy Brief Trump and Congress on NGAD

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) tactical air and land forces panel, said on Tuesday that he recently received a briefing from the U.S. Navy and Air Force on their Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter programs.

“We had a great briefing the other morning,” Wittman told reporters after his address to the McAleese & Associates‘ Defense Programs Conference in Arlington, Va. “I asked the Air Force and Navy to come in. They briefed the president last week too so I think that that capability is necessary, especially because it involves a family of systems concept, and we’re gonna have to be able to operate in some way in that highly contested environment.”

A Trump administration decision is nigh on the military services’ NGAD programs, as DoD finalizes its fiscal 2026 budget request (Defense Daily, Feb. 25). The Navy has called its NGAD effort to replace the service’s Boeing [BA] F/A-18 Super Hornets and Growlers F/A-XX, while the Air Force is looking to replace its Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-22s.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman [NOC] have been competing for F/A-XX, and the Air Force’s field includes the first two companies after Northrop Grumman’s exit in 2023.

The Air Force has wanted to field a mix of manned NGAD sixth generation fighters and unmanned, autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), as part of the NGAD program, but an all autonomous fighter fleet looks to be a technological bridge too far, at least in the near term, and a bridge that the service may not want to cross due to tradition and to the argued benefits of manned platforms when “analog” knife fights become necessary.

The Air Force paused a decision on manned NGAD last year to leave to the incoming Trump team, and former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said a week before the Biden administration left office that manned NGAD would require more than $20 billion extra in research and development funding (Defense Daily, Jan. 13). Kendall also had said his goal was to reduce the estimated unit cost of manned NGAD to that of a Lockheed Martin F-35–a more than $150 million unit cost reduction that the Air Force viewed as a budget exercise and one that is not feasible, though the service continues to examine how to reduce manned NGAD life cycle costs, including for low-observable maintenance.

“My concern has always been this [NGAD] capability is going to occur years and years out in the future,” Wittman said on Tuesday. “I would argue we don’t have the luxury of time. How do we field that capability quickly? These are pretty exquisite systems, but there are also parts of that family of systems, like CCAs, that we can move to the left, and that does even more to enable F-35. F-35 [is] getting up to speed, not as fast as we would like, but it’s gonna get there. We see with a lot of the studies that if you combine an F-35 with modernized capabilities–with a Distributed Aperture System [DAS], with an APG-85 radar–if you combine that with a CCA, all of a sudden that’s a pretty formidable platform in the Indo-Pacific.”

Wittman said last September that it has taken an average of 78 days to test the Northrop Grumman APG-85 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar, which is to replace the F-35’s APG-81, also by Northrop Grumman, and that he has met monthly with Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, to discuss the fighter, including reducing the radar testing time (Defense Daily, Sept. 4, 2024).

Northrop Grumman also has built the AAQ-37 DAS to provide missile warning and situational awareness to F-35 pilots.

In June, 2018, Lockheed Martin chose Raytheon, now part of RTX [RTX], to build the Electro-Optical DAS, the follow-on to the AAQ-37. Lockheed Martin builds the F-35’s AN/AAQ-40 Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS).

Wittman: Defense In Budget Reconciliation May ‘End Up’ Above $100 Billion, Cites CR Impact

The vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday he believes the final defense topline for an eventual budget reconciliation bill will “end up somewhere north” of $100 billion.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) told reporters he thinks the defense figure will likely fall between the House’s current proposal for $100 billion and the Senate’s for $150 billion, noting he’s argued that a higher topline may be required to offset impacts from the full-year continuing resolution (CR).

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) (center) of Virginia shakes the hand of Brig. Gen. Forrest Poole (right) on Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Sept. 10, 2021 (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Scott Jenkins)

“There is a cost of where we’re going right now with what is not being funded under this CR. So if we’re going to catch up in this strategic competition [with China], I think it does create a very cogent argument as to why the number needs to be north of the House number and probably closer to the Senate number. And I think you can make a pretty compelling argument for that,” Wittman said following his remarks at the McAleese Conference in Arlington, Virginia.

President Trump signed the CR on Saturday to avoid a shutdown and keep the government open through the end of September, with the stopgap funding measure having narrowly passed the House last Tuesday with a 217-213 party line vote before the Senate approved the legislation by a 54-46 vote on Friday.

The CR includes a slight boost to defense spending, contains a provision allowing the Pentagon to initiate new start programs and adds $1.5 billion to support the Navy building a potential third Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (DDG), while the measure otherwise largely locks in funding at FY ‘24 levels (Defense Daily, March 12).

The House and Senate have both approved separate budget resolutions that set a blueprint for passing Trump administration priorities via the reconciliation process.

The Senate’s version supports a two-step approach to reconciliation that would start with a defense-border security-energy bill, to include $150 billion defense, before taking on a second measure focused on tax and spending cuts (Defense Daily, Feb. 21).

Trump, however, has endorsed the House’s proposal which takes a one-bill, all-encompassing approach that supports $300 billion in total new spending related to defense and border security priorities and includes a $4 trillion debt limit increase and an extension of the 2017 tax cuts instituted by the first Trump term (Defense Daily, Feb. 19).

“It’s really going to revolve around how do you get the two budget resolutions resolved. And those numbers are $100 and 150 [million]. So if I had to guess, I’d say negotiations would probably take place somewhere along those guardrails,” Wittman told reporters.

The reconciliation process would allow the Senate, when the bill gets there, to pass billions of dollars in budget-related Trump administration priorities without requiring the 60-vote threshold needed to break the filibuster, while the House will require a near-unified GOP caucus to support the measure facing likely unanimous Democratic opposition.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters last week that a minimum of $175 billion for defense could be required in the reconciliation bill to mitigate CR impacts (Defense Daily, March 12).

“I understand [Wicker’s] issues there to try to push the issue to get to the higher [number], but it’s all part of the ongoing conversations. We won’t know with any sort of certainty until the differences between the two budget resolutions get worked out,” Wittman told reporters.

The House and Senate’s competing budget resolutions both don’t provide a specific breakdown of how the additional funds should be spent over the four years covered by the pending reconciliation bill, tasking committees to determine how the spending would be authorized.

“The challenge for us is how do we make sure we properly allocate that. I want to assure that when those dollars get operationalized that we prioritize those systems, those capabilities, those capacities that can get to the warfighter the fastest. I’d like to push more resources down to the [combatant commands], more resources down to the operational commands,” Wittman said during his remarks.

Wittman, who chairs the HASC Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, earlier this month discussed the idea of pushing more acquisition authority to the COCOMs and said their unfunded requirements lists highlight where “the threat” is “most immediately identified,” rather than in the longer-term budget planning documents compiled by the services (Defense Daily, March 5).

As HASC takes up looking at how to allocate the defense money in the reconciliation bill, Wittman said he would focus on how to address capability gaps rather than directing it to specific programs.

“Where are the things that we need to close gaps quickly and make sure that we get money to those places,” Wittman said in his remarks. “I want to make sure too that it’s not all about big programs. Obviously, we need to be building submarines, ramping those things up. But it’s also about getting those dollars out there for these attritable, expandable systems.”

DoD Officials Discuss Progress In Workforce Reductions

Nearly 21,000 Defense Department personnel have opted to voluntarily resign from the civilian workforce and about 6,000 slots open each month are not being filled due to a hiring freeze in effect, senior DoD officials said on Tuesday.

DoD is targeting a 5 to 8 percent reduction in its civilian workforce to save funds that can be applied to mission critical priorities (Defense Daily, Feb. 21).

The “vast majority” of employees that applied for the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) were approved, the officials said on background during a virtual media roundtable. Those employees are on paid leave and will be rolling off the DoD payroll in the last quarter of 2025, they said.

The DRP, also called the “Fork in the Road” initiative, was rolled out by the Trump administration on Jan. 28 and gave federal employees about two weeks to decide whether to resign and still receive full pay and benefits through the rest of the fiscal year or risk being let go as part of job cuts aimed in part at reducing government spending.

The officials said the DoD personnel team worked with the armed services to ensure resignations could be accepted “without negatively impacting the department’s lethality and readiness.”

DoD in February also announced plans to eliminate 5,400 probationary employees, which are personnel typically on the job less than two years. However, a lawsuit filed by the federal employee union AFGE led a federal district court judge to rehire terminated employees at six departments, including DoD. The senior DoD referred questions about the status of the rehiring to the Justice Department, citing ongoing litigation.

Last week a senior Space Force official, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, warned that cutting the DoD civilian workforce will challenge his service’s acquisition offices because they rely heavily on civilians (Defense Daily, March 12). Purdy, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, also said there are opportunities for offering early retirements rather than eliminating new hires.

Achieving a 5 to 8 percent reduction in civilian personnel at DoD means eliminating between 50,000 and 60,000 jobs, the officials said.

“So, the number sounds high, but I would focus on the percentage,” one official said. “Five to 8 percent reduction is not a drastic one, its one the secretary [of defense] is confident can be done without negatively impacting readiness in order to make sure that our resources are allocated in the right direction.”

The officials did not provide an estimate of the money saved, or expected to be saved, through the workforce reductions.

HASC To Emphasize Acquisition Reform In Next NDAA, Vice Chair Says

The House Armed Services Committee will emphasize acquisition reform in its work crafting the next defense policy bill, the panel’s vice chair said Tuesday.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said HASC will specifically look to focus on including policies in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to help get after rapidly fielding innovative technologies, to include those from the Defense Innovative Unit and Office of Strategic Capital pipeline.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) speaks with Culinary Specialist 1st Class Naomi Jackson, assigned to USS Gerald R. Ford‘s (CVN 78) supply department, during a tour of the ship. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Connor D. Loessin)

“We want to make sure we’re doing more to enable places like the Defense Innovation Unit, to get dollars and resources quicker to the [combatant commands]. That’s really where the rubber hits the road. And we want to find different ways to do that. We want to make sure we compress the acquisition cycle,” Wittman said during remarks at the McAleese Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We want to make sure, too, that as technology and innovation comes to the surface, we want to encourage our small companies to be part of the defense industrial base enterprise.”

Wittman, chair of the HASC Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, said both DIU and OSC have shown success in identifying non-traditional firms working on promising technologies, while adding investments need to be increased to deliver that innovation at scale.

“I’m not wed to a particular concept or the other. What I am wed to is we have to make much larger investments to get this innovative technology into the hands of the warfighter,” Wittman told reporters following his remarks.

As HASC continues working toward marking up its version of the FY ‘26 NDAA, Wittman offered a preview of potential acquisition reforms that could be proposed in the months ahead.

“I think we’re going to operationalize, to a greater extent, dollars getting in a faster way down to the operational level,” Wittman said. “Our challenge in acquisition reform is going to be how do we make sure we get technology, we get the ability to close the gap with the Chinese, in a much faster way into the hands of the warfighter.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the HASC chair, has previously said the panel is planning to hold hearings on DoD acquisition reform to get after fielding innovation faster to inform its NDAA work (Defense Daily, Jan. 15).

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has previously detailed his own wide-ranging proposal for improving the Pentagon’s acquisition process, to include “aggressively” cutting regulations, reducing reliance on cost-plus contracts and implementing budgeting reform (Defense Daily, Jan. 6).

Wittman Says OMB Director Seems Open To SAWS-Type Shipbuilding Workforce Effort

The vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee this week said the new director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) seems open to a Navy and industry shipbuilding workforce proposal to increase wages.

“We had a great conversation with the new director. So he was just getting up to speed on those issues. We provided him some additional information because he said, ‘Listen, I’m very willing to listen and understand more about it. So those conversations continue,’” Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), told reporters Tuesday during the McAleese Defense Programs Conference.

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.),Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and Chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. (Photo: Wittman Congressional Office) — Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and Chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. (Photo: Wittman Congressional Office)

Wittman characterized the meeting as between OMB Director Russell Vought and an unspecified group of lawmakers supportive of the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support (SAWS) effort.

SAWS, developed by the Navy and shipbuilding industry last year, seeks to redirect money previously obligated for future submarines to instead boost current pay and incentives for shipyard workers to rebuild a better shipbuilding workforce to produce ships more efficiently.

Wittman said there are a few pathways to redirecting money to improve shipyard wages, one of which is having OMB allowing the money in current contracts to be moved up with the SAWS strategy.

He said while he understands issues with moving money around, congressional SAWS supporters are focused on “how do we get workforce issues addressed in the fastest way possible? If it is up to Congress to do that, it has to go through the authorization and appropriations process, which is a much longer term process.”

Wittman argued Vought has been “very, very good in listening to the concerns and listening to different ways for us to be able to get shipbuilding capacity and capability ramped up faster. And he knows where we need to be, as far as submarine production.”

Moreover, Wittman said the last budget proposal from the previous Trump administration “was one of the strongest ship building budgets that have come out in the past decade,” when Vought was director of OMB.

Wittman asserted while Vought has made no commitments, he thinks Vought “gets it,” understands what needs to be done “and I want to make sure we continue that constructive conversation.”

Wittman’s optimism comes weeks after Sen Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said he was trying to push a skeptical OMB to accept a SAWS-type initiative that does not score on a funding cost vs. benefit analysis (Defense Daily, March 7).

“You can imagine where OMB might be on something new that doesn’t score. It’s almost like magic so there must be something wrong with it. But that debate is going on now in the White House,” Wicker said during a March 5 hearing.

USAF Wants to ‘Stop the Bleeding’ in Sustainment Accounts

One top U.S. Air Force priority is bolstering sustainment and flying hours funding, as the service moves to an envisioned fleet of cheaper to maintain, unmanned Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) in the coming years.

The General Atomics‘ YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries‘ YFQ-44A CCA prototypes are to fly this summer (Defense Daily, March 4).

“When people think of readiness, they think of mission capability and aircraft availability rates, and that’s true,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin told the McAleese & Associates’ annual Defense Programs Conference in Arlington, Va. on Tuesday. “Those are perennial issues. As you get an aging fleet that requires more maintenance and manpower, it becomes a concern because that’s a larger amount of your budget eaten up in keeping those platforms ready, but there’s ‘mission readiness’ as well.”

“It’s just not having the platforms be ready that’s important,” he said. “On the platforms, we know what the problem is–the increasing age [of aircraft] and putting [them] through depot. What we have done in the past though is when we try to preserve [modernization] programs, we take a little bit of a haircut in weapons system sustainment and the flying hours. It’s almost like we hope that next year is when the wheelbarrow full of cash is gonna come. It’s not coming, and, if it is, it’s not coming just for that.”

“Our priority is to stop the bleeding on that and ensure our weapon system sustainment and flying hour program have some predictability in them,” Allvin said. “The other part is ‘mission readiness.’ The mission is now not just ensuring that the aircraft get airborne, fly, and do the mission. It’s that ensuring that they come back, and you can rearm and refit and do that all under attack. We’ve talked about logistics under attack. We need to practice generating and re-generating combat power under attack…It’s about making sure the airmen are ready. Are they ready not only to do their primary mission, but to do rapid runway repair…to do casualty movement and things we haven’t thought about before?”

In line with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s directive to the military departments to cut eight percent of their budgets, the Department of the Air Force has faced tough choices, like its Army and Navy counterparts. It is likely that the Air Force opts to retain its manned Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) stealth penetrating fighter, yet the latter, if given the go ahead by the Trump administration, may contain revisions in light of the future CCAs and the service’s China deterrence posture.

“We need a different capability mix that allows us to have impacts early on in a way that doesn’t deplete our sophisticated, most high-end force so we can have that for a long, sustainable fight,” Allvin said on Tuesday. “Air superiority is as necessary now as ever, but what we need to break away from intellectually is, ‘We have to have air superiority the way we’ve always had it’…Their [China’s] strategy is to take low-end stuff and price us out of the market…We shouldn’t let that happen. Instead of going all high-end and then breaking the bank and not being able to sustain it, you need to have that balance of capability mix, but we do need to have high-end. Air superiority also does not have to be for days and weeks on end when the skies are clear…Air superiority is designed to enable other things so when you have air superiority, it might be temporal. It might be regional, but as long as it’s synchronized to the joint force objectives, we are still accomplishing what the joint force needs and the nation needs.”

GAO Recommended NNSA Improve ‘Decentralized’ Reporting On Risks To Industrial Base

The Government Accountability Office said in a report last week that the National Nuclear Security Administration “does not clearly communicate” its needs to Congress on risks to its industrial base.

The industrial base includes the supply chain, facilities, transportation and workforce “that combine to maintain the stockpile,” the highlights of the report said.

Teresa Robbins, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), agreed to the Office’s recommendations in a letter included in the report. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommended the administrator ensure reporting to the national security enterprise’s (NSE) industrial base includes clear information on risks, and includes an assessment on any additional resources needed to address the risks, all of which GAO says are required by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of fiscal 2022.

Robbins concurred “in principle” with the first recommendation and said that starting with the fiscal 2023 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan, NNSA began reporting on industrial base risks as required by the 2022 NDAA.

“NNSA plans to describe the actions being taken to prioritize NSE industrial base risks to enhance the clarity and completeness of reporting and more fully meet the FY 2022 NDAA requirements,” Robbins said. She added that NNSA would include this, as well as an assessment of any additional tools needed, in the FY 2026 SSMP, which is estimated to go out Sept. 30.

Brits Receive First Autonomous Anti-Mine Vessel

The U.K. Ministry of Defense last week announced it received its first new end-to-end autonomous mine hunting vessel, the unmanned surface vessel (USV) RNMB Ariadne.

In a March 14 announcement, the government said this vessel was designed and built in the U.K. under a $239 million contract with Thales U.K

. The Ariadne is about 39 feet long and can be deployed from a harbor or mother ship to hunt and destroy mines on the seabed using the towed Thales TSAM sonar system.

The ministry noted this delivery is part of its Defense Equipment and Support (DE&S)-led mine hunting capability program, which aims to move the Royal Navy from conventional mine countermeasures (MCM) vessels to autonomous maritime system, akin to how the U.S. is replacing Avenger-class MCM vessels with MCM mission packages using helicopters and USVs based off Littoral Combat Ships.

The Royal Navy plans to gradually phase out the conventional crewed MCM vessels as the autonomous Maritime Mine Countermeasure (MMCM) system transitions into service in the next five years.

Thales said the Royal Navy is scheduled to receive the first four MMCM systems this year. The units include the USV, the towed sonar, a Remotely Operated Vehicle, a lightweight operations center and a command and control system.

“We are incredibly proud to deliver this world-first autonomous mine hunting system to the U.K. Royal Navy. With the introduction of AI and advanced sensor technology, this innovation represents a new era in maritime defense technology and demonstrates our unwavering commitment to providing cutting-edge solutions that enhance the capabilities of our defense forces,” Phil Sivester, CEO of Thales in the U.K., said in a statement.

Thales noted it developed a new MiMap sonar analysis application to process sonar data up to four times faster, which will allow for more precise detection and classification of seafloor mines.

“This delivery marks a significant milestone in our mine-hunting capabilities and the autonomous technology will keep Britain and our Royal Navy sailors safer by identifying & removing mines,” Maria Eagle, Minister for Defense Procurement and Industry, added.

Previously, in September 2024, the program conducted successful trials with the prototype USV, RNMB Apollo in the Firth of Clyde. Royal Navy personnel are now moving to start training with Thales’ support before conducting Operational Evaluation and starting to deploy the MCM on active duty.

Notably, this USV MCM program is part of a $468 million joint U.K.-France initiative, managed by the Organization for Joint Armament Co-operation (OCCAR).

OCCAR is a six-country group formed via a convention and finalized in 2001 that works to help manage complex cooperative defense equipment programs. Members are the U.K., France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain.

“The MMCM project, even if it takes place within separate umbrella programs– the MHC (Mine Hunting Capability) program in the U.K. and the SLAMF (Système de Lutte Anti-Mines Futur) one in France – constitutes a genuine cooperation between the U.K. and France. It has been entrusted to an able international contractual agency, OCCAR,” “Sébastien Bidaud, Deputy Ambassador of France to the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

Bidaud noted the new uncrewed MCM system is being delivered by an international team including both Thales U.K. and Thales France, alongside the contribution of subcontractors Saab, L3Harris Technologies [LHX] and EXAIL Prototyping.

Darren Ash, head of programs at OCCAR-EA, added that this limestone comes 10 years after the MMCM prototyping phase contract award as stage 2.

“It’s been a remarkable joint endeavour with Industry, National Experts and OCCAR collaboratively resolving the challenge of developing and producing this cutting-edge technology; I thank you all for your commitment and professionalism. OCCAR with its Industry Partners is committed to delivering the remaining order book and In-Service support with additional primary systems for both nations due this year,” Ash said.