ST. LOUIS—Vibrint on Monday said it has acquired Ampsight, a small company with expertise in cloud, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence that adds to its customer base in the intelligence community, including the geospatial intelligence space.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The addition of Ampsight boosts Vibrint’s employee count by about 50 percent to more than 220, Tom Lash, Vibrint’s CEO, told Defense Daily at the GEOINT 2025 Symposium.
Ampsight accelerates Vibrint’s strategy around cloud migration, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence and machine learning, areas where the company has “nascent” capabilities, Lash said. Ampsight has a tool that helps agencies understand if cloud migration is right for them, and if so, how to do it, and how much they should.
Ampsight also bolsters Vibrint’s work with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and adds new customers within the intelligence community, he said in a brief interview.
New opportunities for Vibrint following the acquisition include “Ampsight’s differentiated work in explainable AI for geospatial data and multimodal analytics, a rapidly growing priority across the federal landscape,” Vibrint said.
About 50 percent of Ampsight’s business is with intelligence agencies. The remainder of the company’s work is national security-related support such as critical infrastructure protection for federal civilian agencies followed by the Defense Department, Andrew Heifetz, Ampsight’s CEO, said alongside Lash.
In the cybersecurity space, Ampsight provides customers cyber threat hunting, including around ensuring wireless communications are secure. Vibrint is partnered with Pure LiFi, which provides light-based secure wireless communications. Lash said his company expects to leverage Ampsight’s cybersecurity expertise around secure wireless communications and apply it to the hardware and software Vibrint has developed for LiFI.
Vibrint is based in Maryland near Fort Meade, home to the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command. Ampsight is headquartered in Northern Virginia.
The acquisition is the third by Vibrint, which is owned by a consortium of private investors. The company acquired two companies in 2023, Meadowgate Technologies and Engineering Solutions Inc.
The
McLean Group and Executive Council PLC served as financial advisers to Ampsight, and Baird advised Vibrint.
ST. LOUIS—The use of geospatial intelligence to accelerate decision making from the time a potential target has been detected until an effect is put against it has been an important lesson in the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War, a NATO official said on Monday.
Having situational awareness, and then taking advantage of this to impact targeting is critical, Maj. Gen. Paul Lynch, deputy assistant secretary general for intelligence on NATO’s International Military Staff, said at the annual GEOINT 2025 Symposium.
“I think the key role that this discipline plays in ensuring that decision makers are able now to make decisions on sensor-to-shooter in minutes rather than hours, or potentially even longer, that has been honed by meticulous and necessary practice by the Ukrainians over the last three or three tragic years,” Lynch, an officer in United Kingdom’s Royal Marines, told attendees.
Knowing what your adversary is doing, and “ideally what they’re about to do,” is the goal, he said. And then having the ability to put an effect on that adversary, he said.
Ukrainian forces have relied on Western supplied GEOINT and their drones to find Russian targets in their war against Russia’s illegal invasion of their country that began in February 2022.
Lynch said the top lesson from the war has been the need for a high quality intelligence architecture followed by “sufficient stocks and material,” and then the people and training that enable all of it.
Triad National Security, the prime contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory, announced the beginning of phasing into 24/7 operations at the New Mexico lab’s plutonium facility, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report.
dated April 18 said that contractor management determined continuous operations at the facility were needed at this phase in the pit production mission. Resident inspectors at the site also reported “significant equipment changes,” including rooms where gloveboxes were removed and preparations for new installations started.
Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) told sister publication The Exchange Monitor that he gathered that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “seem[s] to be ready to produce” the fissile nuclear weapon cores at Los Alamos at the level required.
Section 3120 of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act put into law that NNSA produce 30 plutonium pits by 2026 at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Additionally, the NNSA announced plans recently for a detailed review of environmental impacts of planned plutonium pit production as part of a federal judge’s ruling last fall. NNSA will hold public hearings and meetings as part of the process.
Los Alamos would initially make cores for the first stages of W87-1 warheads, which are to top the Air Force’s planned silo-based Sentinel missiles some time next decade. The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility will make cores for the W93 warheads, which would top the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.
Vanderberg Space Force Base announced that the U.S. military will test-launch an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in Santa Barbara County, Calif., on May 21.
The Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) said it will launch the nuclear missile between 12:01 a.m. and 5:01 a.m. Pacific Times to “demonstrate the readiness of U.S. nuclear forces” with aims to prove the “lethality and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent,” according to television station KTLA.
AFGSC and Vanderberg Space Force Base recently did a Minuteman III test launch
The ground-based Boeing Minuteman III, which uses the W78 and W87 warheads, is set to be replaced by the Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel, a nuclear-tipped missile, in the mid- to late-2030s. The last Minuteman III is set to be decommissioned by 2050 or later, an AFGSC leader told the Exchange Monitor in January.
The Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) last Friday awarded LeoLabs a $14.1 million contract to build an ultra-high frequency phased array radar in the Indo-Pacific region to provide space domain awareness of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO).
The award includes government funds as part of a $60 million Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) opportunity that LeoLabs announced in March with the Space Force’s SpaceWERX innovation arm to deploy a larger version of its fixed-site, Seeker 3D pulse doppler direct radiating array in the Indo-Pacific to augment the service’s space domain awareness sensors (Defense Daily, April 7). The site location has not been disclosed.
LeoLabs previously said the radar deployment is planned for 2027 under the fixed-price contract. SSC’s award notice says work will be completed by May 2029.
The initial obligation is for $8.7 million and includes $3.5 million in fiscal year 2024 research and development funds, and $5.2 million in FY ’25 R&D funds, SSC said.
Under a STRATFI program, an industry awardee is responsible for matching government funds.
“The STRATFI will enable LeoLabs to fill a critical operational gap in radar coverage in the western Pacific for the U.S. and its allies, improving our ability to detect and characterize adversarial space activity,” Tony Frazier, the company’s CEO, said in March.
In April, LeoLabs introduced its new Scout mobile S-band radar for rapid global deployment of space domain awareness capabilities. In addition to Scout and Seeker, which is deployed at a site in Arizona, LeoLabs also offers the Tracker phased array radars that are deployed at five locations worldwide.
ST. LOUIS—The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has awarded initial task orders under its new commercial analytics service programs and has more to come in the next few weeks and months, the agency’s deputy director said on Sunday.
The upcoming awards under Luno A will for petroleum, oil, liquefied natural gas, storage and pipeline monitoring, raw area search, and facility monitoring, Brett Markham said in a keynote address at the opening day of the annual GEOINT Symposium.
NGA last September selected 10 companies to compete for task orders under the $290 million Luno A contract. So far, awards valued at less than $10 million each have been given to Maxar Technologies for facility monitoring, and
Electromagnetic Systems Inc. (EMSI) for feature identification with the aim being to “test out a specific new commercial analytics capability,” an agency spokesperson told Defense Daily last week.
In addition to Luno A, NGA in January awarded the $200 million Luno B contract.
“Luno A is focused on facility monitoring, feature identification, infrastructure and high cadence network monitoring and general change detection,” Markham explained. “Luno B is focused on human domain monitoring, and domain awareness, and custody services. Both contract vehicles also provide the GEOINT community access to emerging products, data and services.”
Vendors selected to compete for work services under Luno A and B are Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Booz Allen Hamilton [BAH], BlackSky’s [BKSY] Geospatial Solutions business, BlueHalo, which is now part of AeroVironment [AVAV], CACI International [CACI], EMSI, Maxar, NV5 Geospatial, Royce Geospatial Consultants, and Ursa Space Systems. BAE Systems, Deloitte, and Planet Labs [PL] won spots on Luno B.
In the next few months Luno B task orders will be made for human geography, maritime domain awareness, and damage assessment and change detection mainly related to disaster response, Markham said.
One of NGA’s core missions is “expanding analytics services,” he said.
Under a separate commercial analytics program for maritime domain awareness (MDA) called Project Aegir, NGA last July awarded Privateer $2 million using a rapid acquisition vehicle called a Commercial Solution Opening (CSO) (Defense Daily, July 23, 2024). Testing under that pilot contract gave NGA the “knowledge to inform future MDA-related acquisitions in record time,” Markham said.
In a parallel effort last year also under Project Aegir, NGA awarded the Automated Analysts for Maritime Law Enforcement and Security (AA MLES) contract to a small business “to satisfy an ongoing U.S. Coast Guard, commercial joint need in the MDA space,” he said. That award was also part of Project Aegir.
NGA has not disclosed the AA MLES awardee.
Markham said the AA MLES contractor applies artificial intelligence such as computer vision to sift through imagery to detect vessels and compare the detections with other data “to identify anomalies, including dark or unattributed ships, spoofing, and ship-to-ship or bunkering events.” Bunkering refers to supplying ships with fuel.
“With our industry partners, we will process over 12 billion square kilometers of imagery resulting in over 11 million detections,” he said. “And we’re growing this effort to support over 300 customers at this point, from 16 government organizations. Because of the success demonstrated during our initial six-month pilot, we extended the contract for another six months and are continuing to invest in delivery and enduring operational impacts.”
Palantir [PLTR] has won a nearly $218 million delivery order from U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) under a data software services umbrella contract–the Space C2 Data Platform, the command said on Friday.
The company is “to provide Space C2 Data Platform solutions capable of operating in secure environments and providing data products and advanced analytics to the DoD and joint force,” SSC said. “The Space C2 Data Platform harnesses the power of data to enable military leaders to make decisions more quickly, efficiently and with greater confidence resulting in real world mission impacts. It is a configurable enterprise data management and operations software solution that enables the integration and management of data from various disparate data sources. It supports application delivery, in-depth analysis, and data-driven decision-making across echelons and functional communities, including users who operate on multiple security levels across multiple networks.”
Palantir’s Maven Support System (MSS), managed by the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, uses artificial intelligence-based computer vision to sift through imagery to identify potential targets. Maven’s use by the U.S. military services and combatant commands has increased 400 percent in the last year to about 20,000 users, defense officials said.
Space Force Lt. Col. David Williams, materiel leader for SSC space defense and theater support, said in SSC’s Friday statement that “we’ve transitioned to an agile commercial approach toward software development so that we can quickly deliver advanced warfighter capabilities that require the aggregation of massive amounts of data from disparate sources and systems.”
Department of the Air Force Posture Hearing. The Senate Armed Services Committee is to hear from newly minted Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman on Tuesday at an FY 2026 and future years posture hearing for the Department of the Air Force. One item for discussion will likely be “right-to-repair” provisions that may become part of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act—provisions first proposed last December by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) in their Servicemember Right to Repair bill. This month, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said that he would ensure that right-to-repair provisions are in future Army contracts and that he would propose modifying existing contracts to include those guidelines. According to Warren, “commanders in the field should never have to beg a contractor to come repair a plane that the Air Force owns or that soldiers could fix themselves.” During his January nomination hearing, Driscoll said that the “type of innovation happening in the private sector at scale in a lot of ways seems to have not trickled into the Army as much” and that “if we think about engagement with a peer like China, being able to repair our parts in areas around the world will be crucial to that.” Driscoll testified that “if we are having six-month delays in CONUS and paying 100x the rate, that is not scalable in an actual conflict.”
CH-53K Maintenance.
Fleet Readiness Center East (FRCE) at Cherry Point, N.C., on April 17 inducted the first CH-53K King Stallion helicopter for depot-level maintenance. The helicopter arrived on April 4 from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 461 (HMH-461) onboard Marine Corps Air Station New River. This is the first of 15 helicopters FRCE will perform routine maintenance on as part of the Age Exploration Program, Depot (AEPD). AEPD collects information on an aircraft’s condition via controlled testing and analysis and assists in the development of effective and efficient maintenance schedules for new aircraft. Jeff Warren, CH-53K capability establishment lead at FRCE, also noted the 14 CH-53K industries at this facility will help determine the aircraft class’s overall planned maintenance interval. The second CH-53K is planned to arrive for maintenance in late 2026, with the third and fourth aircraft in fiscal year 2027.
AUKUS Office. Rear Adm. Richard Seif assumed management of the AUKUS Integration and Acquisition Direct Reporting Program Management Office on April 21, according to a May 14 Navy announcement. Seif previously served as commander of the Submarine Force at the U.S. Pacific Fleet and commander of Task Force 34 in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Seif succeeds Rear Adm. Lincoln M. Reifsteck, who now serves as commander of Submarine Group Seven, Task Force-54 and Task Force-74. This office is responsible for executing the trilateral AUKUS agreement to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines with high nuclear stewardship and nonproliferation standards.
Golden Dome Study. During a May 13 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, acting principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Space Policy Andrea Yaffe confirmed the Defense Department delivered the initial 30-day review on Golden Dome development pathways to the White House in line with the original Jan. 27 executive order. She said DoD officials worked with stakeholders to work on the different design options and “we matured them to a place that the technical experts took over and really refined them into a few different options to bring to the secretary.” She added DoD leaders have engaged with the president on this “and the hope is that there will be an announcement soon, certainly tied with the budget.”
…Includes Current Systems. Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of Northern Command and NORAD, said he does not know what Golden Dome will ultimately look like “but I suspect that it would be able to use a lot of the systems that are already in place and currently in development, which would give us a full capability in probably something closer to zero to five years, as opposed to something a decade out into the future.” he said this includes Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), space-based Air Moving Target Indicator (AMTI) with prototypes on orbit now, over the horizon radars, and the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft.
Doubling the Budget. The U.S. Space Force’s fiscal 2025 funding of about $29 billion is about 3.4 percent of the nearly $850 billion DoD pie, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has called for another $10 billion for the service soon. Now, Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, the deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs, and requirements, says that a doubling of the Space Force budget is warranted, especially given the service’s new space warfighting mission, and that such a doubling would not account for areas like Golden Dome, cislunar missions, or satellite refueling. Bratton says that the service “costed out” OSD’s Defense Planning Guidance requirements on the Space Force. “To do all the things that the department is telling the Space Force they expect us to do, it about doubles our budget,” he says. “That’s an over time thing, though quite honestly they’re asking us to do it today. I think we’ve laid out a pretty good case with a lot of space superiority. The warfighting stuff is new kit that didn’t exist, and we’ve tried to stop doing some of the old stuff and been told pretty directly you will keep doing missile warning/SATCOM/positioning, navigation, and timing. You have to keep doing these old missions. This new mission requires new money.” A congressional DoD reconciliation bill may provide the Pentagon with $113 billion more funding, and it looks as if the overall DoD budget request for fiscal 2026 may be flat.
Turkey FMS. The State Department on May 14 approved two potential Foreign Military Sales with Turkey, a $225 million deal for AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and a $79.1 million sale of AIM-9X Sidewinder Block II missiles. The former deal includes 53 of RTX’s AIM-120C-8 AMRAAMs and six guidance sections, while the latter covers 60 of RTX’s AIM-9X Sidewinder Block IIs and 11 tactical guidance units. Both deals also include missile containers and support equipment. “This proposed sale will provide Turkey with a critical air defense capability to assist in defending its homeland and U.S. personnel stationed there,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said of both deals.
SASC Advances Noms. The Senate Armed Services Committee this week advanced several pending nominations for senior positions, to include Michael Cadenazzi to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, Vice Adm. Scott Pappano to be Principal Deputy Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, Matthew Lohmeier to be Under Secretary of Air Force, Justin Overbaugh to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, Daniel Zimmerman to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Anthony Tata to be Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Katherine Sutton to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, Michael Obadal to be Under Secretary of the Army and Sean O’Keefe to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. The nominations were reported to the full Senate floor for consideration.
…Michael Confirmed. The Senate last Wednesday confirmed former Uber executive Emil Michael to be under secretary of defense for research and engineering. The 54 to 43 vote included Democrat Senators Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) and Mark Warner (Va.), and Angus King (I/D Maine) voting in favor.
JetWave X. Honeywell said this week its JetWave X satellite communication system has been selected by L3Harris as an upgrade for the Army’s Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES). “With JetWave X, the U.S. Army will be able to transmit mission-critical information at higher data rates than currently available while ensuring a constant connection through JetWave X’s resilient, multi-network architecture,” Honeywell said in a statement. The L3Harris-led ARES is a technology demonstrator aircraft that’s informing the Army’s development of the future HADES intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance jet program. “Today’s pilots need access to real-time data with uninterrupted connectivity to make mission-critical decisions,” Matt Milas, Honeywell Aerospace Technologies’ president for defense and space, said in a statement. “Honeywell is proud to provide ARES with JetWave X, the only multi-network satellite communications system for government aviation that seamlessly connects to the Inmarsat Global Xpress, ViaSat-3 and other Ka-band constellations.”
DARPA Ventures. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking private investment to advance the technologies it is developing, and to help transition technologies into defense and commercial markets. “DARPA Venture Horizons will provide access to certain DARPA portfolio and subject matter experts through engagements that may create investment opportunities in high-impact DARPA technologies,” according to a May 12 information request. “Potential investment opportunities strengthen the Agency’s partnerships with investors, to help productize, scale, and transition DARPA-funded technologies for Department of Defense, commercial, or dual-use markets.”
Schemata Surfaces. Schemata, an artificial intelligence company focused on converting two-dimensional images into photorealistic 3D environments to enhance training, last week emerged from stealth with a $5 million seed round. The funding is to accelerate development of its training platform, which is focused on the defense and enterprise sectors. Schemata uses 3D reality capture—a process that employs laser scanner, drones, and photogrammetry to digitally reconstruct physical spaces in 3D—to allow its customers to quickly and inexpensively create photorealistic and interactive training programs. The San Franciso-based company’s system is being piloted by the 97th Air Mobility Wing and the 11th Logistics Readiness Squadron, and others, James Brown, co-founder and CEO, told Defense Daily. Schemata also has contracts with the 97th and the Air Force’s AFWERX innovation unit, he said.
Rocket Engine Success. Venus Aerospace last week said it successfully completed the first U.S. flight test of its next-generation Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), which the Houston-based startup is developing to enable hypersonic vehicles to take off from conventional runways. The rail-launched engine test from Spaceport America in New Mexico may have been the first RDRE flight in the world, the company said. “We’ve proven that this technology works, not just in simulations or the lab, but in the air,” Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus, said in a statement. “With this milestone, we’re one step closer to making high-speed flight accessible, affordable, and sustainable.”
NGA Award to Lockheed. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) last week said it awarded Lockheed Martin a potential $615.7 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract under the Geospatial Intelligence Collection Next program. Under the seven-year contract, Lockheed Martin will continue sustaining the legacy GEOINT Information Management Services (GIMS), and support modernization of GIMS capabilities, according to a pre-solicitation notice NGA published in April 2024.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – While the status of Army’s program to develop a future helicopter engine remains uncertain, a lead official confirmed a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter integrated with the new GE Aerospace
[GE] T901 engine lifted off the ground for the first time this week.
“This week, the [Black Hawk] aircraft was ready to fly and we were able to come to a hover with the aircraft,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer for aviation, said during a briefing here at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference on Thursday.
Sikorsky receives the first two GE Aerospace T901 engines at its West Palm Beach, Florida facility for integration on a UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter. Photo: Sikorsky.
GE Aerospace, which developed the T901 engine for the Army’s Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), also confirmed the test in a statement to Defense Daily.
“GE Aerospace’s T901 engines successfully powered a U.S. Army Black Hawk flight for the first time this week and demonstrated the performance needed to deliver critical warfighting capabilities to the U.S. military to keep us ahead of our adversaries,” a company spokesperson said.
The Army has been rolling out a new transformation plan which has included cutting “obsolete” programs such as the AH-64D Apache, Gray Eagle drones, Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, Humvees and the M10 Booker combat vehicle and potentially ending development of the the Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS) and the Robotic Combat Vehicle (Defense Daily, May 1).
Two senior defense officials also confirmed to Defense Daily that the service also planned to cease development of ITEP as part of the Army Transformation Initiative (Defense Daily, May 8).
Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, the Army aviation branch chief, at the briefing described the ITEP decision as “pending,” and Gen. James Mingus, the Army vice chief of staff, said the future of the program is “largely going to depend” on how fiscal year 2026 funding shapes out.
“I would tell you, not to get ahead of any of the courses of action, but we’re presenting all those [options]…on how we could get Army senior leaders to meet their intent but get the most out of the dollar investment,” Phillips told reporters.
GE Aerospace was awarded a $517 million contract in February 2019 to develop the T901 engine for ITEP, with an aim for it to eventually power the Army’s AH-64 Apache and Black Hawk helicopters and the since-canceled Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA).
Along with canceling FARA a year ago, the Army noted at the time it would also delay moving into production of the T901 engine and invest in further research and development efforts.
“When FARA was ended, we were able to look at that from a priority perspective. The Black Hawk was still a priority. Apache was going to be a later integration. And, based on the resources available, we replanned the schedule, moved the Milestone C [decision] three years to the right and then we continued down the path of testing,” Phillips said.
To inform Black Hawk efforts, Sikorsky [LMT] integrated the T901 engine into its Raider X prototype developed for the Army’s FARA program and ultimately conducted three ground runs on the platform (Defense Daily, Sept. 6 2024).
After receiving the first two T901 engines for the Black Hawk from GE Aerospace last June, Sikorsky [LMT] confirmed in January it had begun ground runs with the new engines on a helicopter to prepare for an eventual first flight test (Defense Daily, Jan. 29).
“The data we are gathering through this test program is validating the capabilities that an upgraded engine can bring to the Black Hawk, which will continue to be a vital tool in military, tactical and rescue operations worldwide for the next 50 years,” a Sikorsky spokesperson said in a statement to Defense Daily on Friday.
Phillips said the Army learned a lot from the test data gathered from the ground runs of the T901 engine on Sikorsky’s FARA prototype and that the service has been working “intensively” on Black Hawk integration efforts over the last nine months.
“We have those ground runs under our belt. We have the aircraft ready to go. We’re looking at the path ahead in real time on the options to be finished. Because there’s not just the aircraft integration going on, there’s the engine qualification testing that is going on in the test stands. We’ve had engines in test stands now for several years gathering…data. All of that data is very rich and informing the path ahead,” Phillips said.
Phillips said joint and international partners have expressed interest in the ITEP program and also addressed the Army’s view on if it still needs a new engine for Black Hawks and Apaches or if modifications to current engines can meet requirements.
“We’re always looking at new ways to provide more performance to the aircraft, whether it’s making components lighter, whether it’s adding more power or whether it’s adding additional fuel consumption capabilities. We’ve always looked at that and I think we’ll continue to look at that regardless of the outcome with the ITEP engine,” Phillips said.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A lead Army aviation official said the service is still working through the details on carrying out planned divestments as part of its new transformation initiative, some of which could be adjusted, while adding that further changes are “absolutely” expected.
Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, the Army aviation branch chief, told reporters the cuts announced over the last couple weeks as the service rolled out the new Army Transformation Initiative “were “maybe deeper than we thought they were going to be.”
U.S. Army Sgt. Hector Valadez, left, an AH-64 attack helicopter repairer assigned to Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 501st Aviation Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Armored Division, briefs Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, right, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Novosel, on AH-64 Apache phase maintenance operations in Powidz, Poland, April 28, 2025
“We only got [the ATI] two weeks ago, so we don’t know all the details of it. And I think our job collectively, and as is the case for the rest of the Army, is to do mission analysis on what we were told to do and then provide options to senior leaders,” Gill said during a briefing here at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference on Thursday.
“I think there’s probably more fidelity that we’re going to get out of the decisions that were made and we might even walk something back, if appropriate,” Gill added. “Like I said, we’ll provide options. [We could] say, ‘Hey, maybe we don’t want to divest this deep or we don’t want to do it this quickly.’ Then they’ll say we’re either doing it or haven’t considered that. I know there’s more clarity to come.”
The new ATI plan includes cutting “obsolete” programs such as the AH-64D Apache and Gray Eagle drones as well as the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, Humvee and the M10 Booker combat vehicle and potentially ending development of the Improved Turbine Engine Program (ITEP), the Future Tactical UAS (FTUAS) and the Robotic Combat Vehicle (Defense Daily, May 1).
“I think the Army Transformation Initiative is kind of the reality of where we are as a service. The Defense Department and the Army acknowledge that we need to make some wholesale change. We need to divest old [equipment] faster and we need to iterate and procure and probably continue to iterate and procure on newer technologies that we think are emerging given the context of the operating environment that we see,” Gill said.
Gill noted that ATI cuts were “not targeted” at Army aviation specifically, while adding “it certainly did hit us pretty significantly.”
“[ATI] was a little bit abrupt. Some of the decisions that were made were not exactly what we had proposed but they were decisions, in the context of the folks at the Pentagon who are looking at the entirety of the Army budget,…[that with] a fixed budget there’s only so many things that they can do with that money. So we’ve been looking at ways that we think we can be helpful,” Gill told reporters.
“Do I think there’s more to come? Absolutely,” Gill said.
On the potential for more planned cuts, Brig. Gen. Matt Braman, director of Army aviation, said there’s “no definitive ATI 2.0” but Army senior leaders have communicated they’re “looking to find ways to innovate” within a constrained budget environment.
“At the end of day, it’s about resources. And we’re looking for ways to free up resources for higher priority items within the force, and some of that could be in the aviation portfolio and some of that could be in other places,” Braman said.
Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer for aviation, said officials are now working through “courses of action” that will be presented to Army senior leaders on how to carry out each of the planned divestments.
Braman added he expects there will be “small, iterative moves back and forth” on “what makes sense” with carrying out the decisions from the first wave of ATI-related announcements.
“We always joke that two things change the outcomes of programs, elections and wars, right? And we just had an election and we’ll have another one in four years. And we’ll have a change of Congress in two years. All those things [have an] impact on our ability to do what the Army wants to do and we have to work within those constraints,” Braman said.
Gill noted that assessing the future of ITEP and FTUAS specifically was “always on the table,” saying a final decision on both programs is “pending,” adding he didn’t think FTUAS was “as much at risk” since the Army has placed an increased emphasis on moving ahead in the UAS space.
“Army aviation is really expensive. I hate this term, but the value proposition that we have to offer the Army is that [a program has] got to be worth it. If you’re going to spend that much money, then we’re going to have to deliver an outsized impact,” Gill said.
The FTUAS program has attempted to find a replacement for the legacy Shadow drone, with the Army having selected Textron Systems’ [TXT] Aerosonde Mk. 4.8 Hybrid Quad UAS and Griffon Aerospace’s Valiant for a competitive prototyping effort to inform a production award that had been planned for late fiscal year 2025.
With ITEP, the Army had selected the GE Aerospace [GE] T901 engine for development to potentially serve as the future capability to power its AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter fleets.
On moving from AH-64D Apaches as well as continuing to divest from legacy UH-60L Black Hawks, Gill said those decisions were already in the works and ATI accelerated that process.
Gill told reporters he understands why industry could be “skeptical” when it comes to the Army pursuing such major changes, noting some companies are “hugely affected” by these decisions.
“And we don’t take that lightly, those are people’s lives and livelihoods and businesses. But they’re tough decisions that the Army had to make,” Gill said. “Industry is rightly nervous when we talk about cutting a program or starting a new big program when we tell them, ‘Hey, we want you to share the risk with us,’ right?”
Gill also cited “political change” as the reasoning for driving many of the Army’s major pivots in direction.
“That’s the reality of our governmental system. And so, we might be moving down a path for a couple years and [then] things change. The world changes. Wars happen. I mean, the Russia-Ukraine war has really changed how we think about the third dimension of warfare,” Gill said.
