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Europe Must Provide ‘Overwhelming Share’ Of Future Aid To Ukraine, Hegseth Says

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that European partners must provide “the overwhelming share” of future weapons aid to Ukraine, signaling a new direction for the Pentagon’s approach to the ongoing conflict under the new Trump administration.

Attending his first meeting of the international coalition coordinating security assistance efforts for Ukraine, Hegseth said Kyiv’s goals to join NATO and regain all territory seized by Russia since 2014 were unrealistic and reiterated a call for European nations to increase their defense spending obligations.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth meets with Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 12, 2025. (DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander C. Kubitza)

“Members of this Contact Group must meet the moment. This means donating more ammunition and equipment, leveraging comparative advantages, expanding your defense industrial base and, importantly, leveling with your citizens about the threat facing Europe. Part of this is speaking frankly with your people about how this threat can only be met by spending more on defense,” Hegseth said.

The 26th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, which once again brought senior defense officials from around 50 countries to discuss Kyiv’s battlefield needs, was the first not to be led by the U.S., with U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey overseeing the gathering (Defense Daily, Feb. 7).

“Secretary Hegseth, we hear you. We hear your commitment to NATO, to Article 5, to a sovereign Ukraine and to your defense partnership with Europe. We also hear your concerns. On stepping up for Ukraine, we are and we will. On stepping up for European security, we are and we will,” Healey said.

Trump said last month he plans to ask NATO nations to increase their defense spending to five percent of gross domestic product, an increase from the current two percent burden sharing requirement that 23 of the 32 member nations currently meet (Defense Daily, Jan. 23).

Hegseth echoed Trump on Wednesday and said the two percent target is “not enough,” and added the new administration is seeing “promising signs that Europe sees this threat, understands what needs to be done and is stepping up to the task.”

“Increasing your commitment to your own security is a down payment for the future, a down payment…of peace through strength,” Hegseth said. “We ask each of your countries to step up on fulfilling the commitments that you have made and we challenge your countries and your citizens to double down and recommit yourselves not only to Ukraine’s immediate security needs but to Europe’s long-term defense and deterrence goals.”

“The United States remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But, the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency. Rather, our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security,” Hegseth added.

Hegseth’s remarks at the UDCG meeting signals a sharp turn from the Biden administration’s approach to Ukraine, which had typically announced new weapons packages to coincide with each gathering and was supportive of a “pathway” to potential NATO membership for Kyiv.

In the last weeks of the Biden administration, the Pentagon confirmed that the incoming Trump White House would have “a few billion dollars” remaining in Presidential Drawdown Authority to use for Ukraine security assistance packages (Defense Daily, Jan. 8).

The Trump administration “does not believe” NATO membership for Ukraine “is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said, and added that U.S. troops will not be deployed to Ukraine as part of any future security guarantee.

“Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission and they should not be covered under Article 5,” Hegseth said.

Jens Stoltenberg, the prior NATO secretary general, and former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin previously cited substantial Ukraine package and commitments announced at last July’s NATO summit in Washington, D.C., as a key marker for continuing to build on Ukraine’s “bridge” to NATO membership at some point in the future (Defense Daily, July 11 2024).

“Ukraine’s future is in NATO. I welcome [Ukraine’s] progress on reforms. And as [Ukraine] continues this important work, we will support you on your irreversible path to NATO membership,” Stoltenberg said during a press conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the summit.

UCS Questions ‘Rush’ to Los Alamos Pit Production

A representative from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) Tuesday said government urgency for plutonium pit production at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is “unnecessary” —and increases risk to workers.

Dylan Spaulding, a senior scientist researching nuclear weapons production at the Union of Concerned Scientists, laid out his case in prepared comments for a hearing held by DoE and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). DoE and NNSA are drafting a site-wide environmental impact statement (SWEIS) as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

Spaulding addressed two commonly used justifications for producing plutonium pits: the aging of the plutonium in the nuclear weapons stockpile, and “what is said to be an urgent need to bolster US nuclear deterrence.”

Based “on the available science,” plutonium in existing stockpile weapons would not be vulnerable to aging effects for decades, Spaulding said. He added that “even the oldest pits in the stockpile are expected to be viable into the 2040’s at least.”

Even if aging were a concern, pit production was not to “maintain the safety, security, or reliability of the existing US stockpile,” Spaulding said, but to “furnish the first new nuclear warhead to enter the stockpile since the end of the Cold War,” referring to the W87-1 that would go on the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. He added that given the U.S. deploys 1,770 nuclear weapons and has 2,000 in strategic reserve, “new weapons are not an urgent requirement.”

“For these reasons, the current rush to produce pits is unnecessary,” Spaulding said. “The Lab’s plans outlined in the Environmental Impact Statement only serve to increase risk for workers and insufficiently consider protection of the public in the event of a severe accident.”

DoE and NNSA announced a 60-day public comment period, which would include four public hearings to receive comments on the draft, through March 11.

On Tuesday, there were two hearings out of the four that were held in Santa Fe, N.M., and broadcast virtually. The hearings started with presentations on the SWEIS from leadership from the lab, including field office manager Ted Wyka, and ended with comments from the public until time was up.

U.S. Space Force Looks to Accelerate Shift to Fixed Price Contracts

The U.S. Space Force is moving to shift a traditional 50-50 cost plus versus fixed price development contract split even more toward the use of fixed price contracts with low non-recurring engineering costs and two to three year development cycles, a top service official said on Tuesday.

“If fits in the modality of getting us into a good space of good acquisition principles–short, sweet, quick, rapid, and delivery of that capability,” Space Force Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, told a National Security Space Association (NSSA) conference in Reston, Va. on Tuesday.

“If anything, think of us continuing those efforts, but doing it more aggressively,” he said.

The White House has yet to announce a nominee to replace the Biden administration’s space acquisition executive, Frank Calvelli, and Purdy has stepped into the role.

In a discussion with reporters after his address at NSSA, Purdy said that Calvelli had moved to the use of more fixed price contracts but “left a few as cost plus, and I’m re-looking at some of those, not because he made the wrong choice but because life has changed and the situation has changed.”

“There’s not too many cost plus programs left,” he said. “There are some big ones that are in the cost plus realm that we never did switch out. Everything is screaming, ‘We need to get faster. We need to make sure that we get commercial, that we don’t get locked in.’ That’s what I’m asking, to step into each one of those and talk to the requirements side to figure out if there’s some kind of requirements that’s driving it and see if there’s something we can do. Sometimes, the requirement is such that, if you need a post-nuclear exchange communication–there’s a lot of requirements like RAD-hardened; etc. there’s not a lot of commercial for that. That’s a straight up military domain. That’s fine. We understand that, but I want to be able to explain it to any senior leader coming along, that we’re going down a cost plus [path] and here’s the reason why we couldn’t go down a commercial [path because of military-specific requirements] or because we couldn’t break it apart and get commercial sub-pieces. I want to double down and make sure we’ve done all the rigor that we can. ”

Before the NSSA audience, Purdy also brought up Calvelli’s stress on accountability.

“Accountability is a two-way street,” Purdy said. “As of May, 2022 to today, we’re at about 14 major acquisition programs that have had contracts or entire programs restructured or cancelled. Why? Typically, due to performance. Costs have skyrocketed. We aren’t getting the capability we need. Unlike the Space Force acquisition of old, we’ve stopped just piling money into that. We’ve stopped these contracts and re-competed them, for the most part, across the board. This includes unclassified and classified activity.”

“We’re also looking at taking action against poor performing U.S. government program managers–first to give them help and provide guidance and additional acquisition help, and then, if it’s not making it, get rid of the roles,” he said.

The Space Force acquisition executive oversees a more than $24 billion research and development portfolio. The latter includes 59 unclassified major acquisition programs–38 traditional Major Capability Acquisitions, 12 Middle Tier Authority, 8 software pathways, and one Quick Start–the Resilient Global Positioning System (R-GPS) by Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) to launch up to eight R-GPS satellites by 2028 (Defense Daily, Sept. 24, 2024).

Astranis, Axient, L3Harris Technologies [LHX] and Sierra Space have been working on the R-GPS concept design phase.

Troy Meink, the principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office who spurred acceleration of the use of fixed price contracts at the agency, is Pres. Trump’s pick to become Air Force secretary (Defense Daily, Jan. 16).

“We’re really looking to explore risk exposure on our programs,” Purdy said on Tuesday. “There are a couple of programs that we have that I would declare are nearly unbounded risk exposure–they’re sitting in a cost plus environment, there’s really difficult technology, and, basically, this is like future Nunn-McCurdys.”

“We’re gonna look hard at figuring how to get out of that,” he said. “That’s gonna be painful on all sides. We’re gonna have discussions like how do we convert this to fixed price? How do we start breaking this apart. I wanna give a fair warning to industry out there because we’ve already given it to our program managers, and I’ve already started diving on a couple of key programs that are in that shape. That’s a multi [step] evaluation process. We’ve got to look at the requirements. A lot of times that’s one of our key problems.”

Last March, SSC released a request for information (RFI) that sought companies’ feedback on their ability to furnish space situational awareness for geosynchronous orbit–an envisioned “constellation of free flyer, Rendezvous and Proximity Operations space vehicles (SVs) with an Electro-Optical (EO) payload(s).”

Purdy said that “that’s one [RFI] where we tend to have a lot of pretty harsh requirements.”

“We’re looking to draw some of those back,” he said. “I’ve got tentative approval by leadership in U.S. Space Command and Space Force, and we’ll see if we can get that to accomplishment and move that into the commercial realm.”

Northrop Grumman Nabs $1.4 Billion In Software Work, Poland Integration Deals For IBCS

Northrop Grumman [NOC] has said it’s received $1.4 billion in new deals related to Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) efforts, to include an Army contract for expanded software development and capability integration work with Poland.

The new award from the Army is a five-year, $481 million deal for software work, split between $347.6 million related to Poland’s defense initiatives and $133.7 million for the U.S. military and the Guam Defense System, according to Northrop Grumman.

The first IBCS engagement operations center for Poland’s WISLA air and missile defense program leaves Northrop Grumman’s Huntsville production facility. Photo: Northrop Grumman.

“Under this award, Northrop Grumman will lead collaborative efforts with specialists in [artificial intelligence] and model-based systems engineering to boost the software development capacity of IBCS,” the company said in a statement.

The second contract is an $899.6 million deal related to “integration and installation of IBCS into Poland designed command and centers and mobile communications centers employing a componentized Major End Items delivery model,” according to Northrop Grumman.

“This modular delivery approach will allow Poland greater customization and enable constant and rapid upgrades across hardware integrations and software,” the company said in a statement.

“Northrop Grumman continues to support the U.S. Army’s interoperability vision for a single integrated air picture to modernize air and missile defense through innovative development and deployment of IBCS software and hardware. Expanding IBCS capabilities will keep the U.S. Army and U.S. allies, such as Poland, ahead of evolving threats and capabilities, giving warfighters more decision time to save lives,” Kenn Todorov, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and general manager for global battle management and readiness, said in a statement.

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

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

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

Bill Lamb, Northrop Grumman’s IBCS director, told reporters this past August the U.S. Army will start fielding IBCS “in a larger way beginning in 2025.”

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

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

IBCS is also a major component of the U.S. military’s planned Guam Defense System along with the Lockheed Martin [LMT] Aegis combat system, RTX [RTX] Standard Missile (SM)-3 and SM-6 missiles and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

Lamb has said the Army plans to spend about $5 billion over the next five years on IBCS-related efforts (Defense Daily, Aug. 27 2024).

“As we’re fielding, the Army is continuing to invest. Over the next five years, the Army will continue to invest about $1 billion annually [in IBCS]. And that’s not just in production, but that’s also very significantly into future research, development and testing around integrating new sensors and new effector capabilities,” Lamb told reporters previously.

HASC Seapower Leaders Urge Prompt DoD Australian AUKUS Funds Plan

The chairman and ranking member of the House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Tuesday, pushing for quick action on Australia’s recent submarine industrial base investment payment.

On Feb. 7 Australia sent the Defense Department a $500 million

payment to invest in the U.S. domestic submarine industrial base as part of the AUKUS agreement (Defense Daily, Feb. 10). These funds are aimed at helping the industrial base ramp up production and capabilities to ultimately accommodate Australia buying at least three used and new Virginia-class attack submarines in the 2030s.

In the 2040s Australia plans to be producing its first SSN-AUKUS boats domestically.

“We look forward to receiving the required notifications detailed in the FY24 NDAA so that funding may be expeditiously made available for obligation to the U.S. submarine industrial base,” Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) and Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), the leaders of the subcommittee, wrote.

The FY 2024 defense authorization act included several provisions allowing the U.S. to accept payments from Australia, both to bolster the domestic industrial base and in payment for ultimately selling the two used and one new SSNs. Australia may ultimately buy up to five total Virginia-class submarines as a hedge to delays in SSN-AUKUS.

The law specifically says within 30 days of receiving contributions from Australia the administration must submit an unclassified report to Congress on the amount received, description of its intended use and any other related matters. The report may include a classified annex.

These Australian contribution funds were specifically directed only into a new “Submarine Security Activities Account” at the Treasury.

The law states the account can be used “for any purpose authorized by law that the President determines would support the AUKUS submarine security activities; to carry out a military construction project that is consistent with the purposes for which the contributions were made and is authorized by law; to develop and increase the submarine industrial base workforce by investing in recruiting, training and retaining key specialized labor at public and private shipyards; or to upgrade facilities, equipment, and infrastructure needed to repair and maintain submarines at public and private shipyards.”

The lawmakers reiterated these contributions should not be used to offset current or future cost growth in U.S. submarine procurement.

“Instead, we hope that these funds will be used to supplement ongoing efforts to increase submarine production, adhere to the enabling legislation, and reaffirm the United States’ commitment to the Australian government,” the lawmakers wrote.

The government expects this to be the first of several payments by Australia that will reach up to $3 billion total to help expand the U.S. submarine industrial base capacity.

The FY 2024 defense authorization act provided other limitations on this kind of funding, including that it can be transferred to other DoD or Department of Energy appropriations as long as they are used for submarine and AUKUS purposes; can only be used for military construction projects following a presidential notice with detailed cost estimates; and can be invested in securities with investment accrual deposited in the account.

However, most activities require a report to Congress detailing plans and the administration is instructed to provide annual accounting of contributions to and usage of the Submarine Security Activities Account by November 30 until one year after all funds are expended.

Space Force Prepares to Release International Partner Strategy for Allied Collaboration

The U.S. Space Force will roll out its International Partnership Strategy in the coming months, laying out a plan to integrate its capabilities more tightly with its closest allies, a senior adviser to Gen B. Chance Saltzman, the service’s Chief of Space Operations, said Tuesday.

The Space Force’s partnership strategy is “focused on incorporating allies and partners at every stage. We’re not just building the United States Space Force, we are shaping a coalition force that must work together seamlessly in space to be successful,” said Royal Air Force Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, who serves as the Space Force’s assistant chief of space operations for future concepts and partnerships. Godfrey spoke at the National Security Space Association’s Defense and Intelligence Space Conference in Reston, Va., on Feb. 11.

Unlike some other military strategy documents, the International Partnership Strategy doesn’t define a goal but is rather about developing an effective process for allies to work together more closely, Godfrey said.

“Given the rapidly changing threat environment within the space domain and the speed technological change, the strategy won’t have a static end state,” he said. Instead, the goal is to put in place a “repeatable process,” so that U.S. partner nations know who they should speak to, in order to develop a common understanding of their capability and where they want to go, and, crucially “how the U.S. Space Force might be able to use that partner’s capabilities in the force of the future,” he said.

Three enduring goals guide the strategy, Godfrey continued:

Securing the collective national interest in, from, and to space.
Enhancing interoperability of space assets and maximizing information sharing with allies across classification levels.
Integrating allies and partners across every aspect of force design, force development, and force employment.

Force design is concerned with the future five to 15 years out, as Space Force leaders shape the service’s future. Force development, two to seven years out, is centered on integrating cutting edge capabilities into that future force. And force employment, which is how the service operates today and for the next couple of years.

To achieve these three goals, over those three stages Godfrey said, “The strategy sets the conditions for allies and partners to be integrated into Space Force planning and capability development; helps develop international standards; improves information sharing; and maximizes opportunities for allies and partners to train and conduct operations together.”

Godfrey stressed that the work would not stop with the release of the strategy. Rather the strategy is “just the start,” he said.

“Ultimately, this is about having partnership as a primary thread that runs from the national defense strategy through the daily actions that our field commands and component field commands take on a daily basis,” he said.

International partnerships are nothing new for the Space Force, he added. The

Combined Space Operations Initiative (CSPO) started in 2014 with the Five Eyes Alliance of the U.S. Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, America’s closest intelligence partners. Two rounds of expansions since, the latest in 2023, have added France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Japan.

But, Godfrey pointed out, in recent years, that cooperation has become closer and closer.

Last year, the U.S. military, for the first time ever, hosted an operational payload on a multi-national satellite. The Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission, consists of two satellites hosting multiple payloads, including military communications over the Arctic for the U.S. and Norwegian armed forces, as well as a commercial payload for Viasat [VSAT], and a radiation monitor for the European Commission. And earlier this month, a U.S. Space Force payload launched as part of Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, a navigation constellation that augments the U.S.’s Global Positioning System. The Space Force payload will monitor activity in orbit from the satellite’s Geosynchronous Orbit over the Indo-Pacific region.

As well as deepening, Space Force’s international cooperation could easily broaden as well, Godfrey said, because other nations are lining up to get involved. “There’s a number of nations knocking on the door to CSPO from Spain to Sweden to Poland, probably Korea, … South American countries. There are so many people out there,” he said.

This story was first published by Via Satellite

Redwire Tapped To Provide Mako Spacecraft For Space Force’s Tetra-6 Mission

Redwire Corp. [RDW] on Tuesday said it has received a contract from Orion Space Solutions to provide a Mako spacecraft to support the Space Force’s Tetra-6 mission.

The Tetra-5 mission, for which Redwire is supplying two Mako platforms, and the Tetra-6 mission will involve satellites in geosynchronous orbit that will be used to demonstrate multiple refueling mechanisms.

It will also demonstrate cooperative and prepared inspection, docking, proximity operations, and autonomy techniques to enable future on-orbit servicing capabilities, and sustained space maneuver. The follow-on mission will demonstrate additional capabilities, Redwire said.

Orion, a subsidiary of Arcfield, last November announced its selection by the Space Force Space Systems Command to support Tetra-6 over four years. At the time the company said the spacecraft is expected to launch in 2027 and have a two-year mission life, demonstrating an additional refueling capability than the one used by the Tetra-5 spacecraft.

Archer Raises $300 Million For Development Of eVTOL Manufacturing Capabilities

Archer [ACHR] on Tuesday said it has raised $300 million from institutional investors that it will put toward development of advanced manufacturing—to include batteries and composites—related to its hybrid-propulsion vertical take-off-and-landing (eVTOL) aircraft for commercial and defense applications.

The new funding follows a $430 million equity capital raise announced in December to support hybrid-propulsion development (Defense Daily, Dec. 12, 2024). At the time, the company said it had no additional near-term funding needs. Both funding raises are also being put toward general corporate expenses.

Now, the company sees bigger market opportunities for potential military customers.

“I believe the opportunity for advanced vertical lift aircraft across defense appears to be substantially larger than I originally expected,” Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer, said in a statement. “As a result, we are raising additional capital to help us invest in critical capabilities like composites and batteries to help enable us to capture this opportunity and more.”

So far, Archer has raised more than $2 billion in total capital and the company said it as about $1 billion in liquidity.

In December, Archer also said it has entered into an exclusive partnership with Anduril Industries to jointly develop eVTOL aircraft for defense applications. Midnight is the name of the aircraft the company is developing and has delivered one to the Air Force for flight-testing and evaluation.

BlackRock was one of the investors in the latest funding raise.

Archer also provided estimated operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2024 that will be in the $120 million to $140 million range.

Air Force Halts Parts Of Sentinel Program

Certain segments for the intercontinental ballistic missile Sentinel are being put on hold while the program undergoes restructuring, according to an Air Force statement.

“The Air Force has ordered the Northrop Grumman Corporation to suspend the design, testing, and construction related to the Command and Launch Segment,” a spokesperson said in the statement on Monday. Defense One first reported the hold.

While the Air Force earlier targeted May 2029 for initial operational capability for the Sentinel ICBM, the revised milestone will be years beyond 2029, the Pentagon said in July.

Following a Nunn-McCurdy review, the department said that it had reversed its 2020 decision to begin Sentinel engineering and manufacturing development, the phase in Pentagon management that ends with a manufacturing demonstration. Sentinel’s overall cost has ballooned to nearly $141 billion, 81 percent greater than the September 2020 estimate.

Kathy Warden, the CEO of Northrop Grumman, alluded to the pause on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Jan. 30 but spoke positively about the program. She said the project restructure is projected by the government to take 18 to 24 months, “so we are still very much in that window.”

DoD May Issue Rapid Prototyping/Defense Acquisition Reform Plan This Week

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may issue a memorandum on rapid prototyping and acquisition reform this week, as the Pentagon considers scaling up the work of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

“All the way back to, if you look at what Ellen Lord did when she was in the role [of DoD acquisition chief from 2017-2021], she started to look at different acquisition pathways,” Matthew Schlueter, the Boston Consulting Group’s (BCG) global sector lead for defense and security, told a Defense Writers Group breakfast on Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

“The last couple of years we’ve seen, especially with DIU and others, a lot of focus on how do we do acquisition better, but, if you look at innovation readiness and the top innovators, it’s not just about having the strategic intent out there,” he said. “Is the governance changing? Are the policies really changing? Are the ways people are reacting changing? Are the incentives changing? The people that need to implement this–that’s the question I’d ask. It will be exciting. We’ll see what comes from it. Whether it’s successful or not, I don’t know, but I don’t know if the actual infrastructure is gonna change to enable that.”

On Tuesday, in advance of this week’s Munich Security Conference, BCG and the MSC Security Innovation Board, released their fourth annual report on the defense innovation readiness gap–a study which surveyed officials at 59 ministries of defense, at NATO, and the European Union, and conducted 30 subject matter expert interviews.

This year’s study found that 18 percent of respondents reported that the pace of innovation is sufficient–a 25 percent decline from last year, and 49 percent reported that their organization “successfully creates impactful innovation”–a 16 percent decline from 2024.

One of the report’s recommendations is to reduce “unwieldy platform portfolios” of high-cost, often redundant systems and to pursue lower-cost affordable mass systems. The study also puts in a plug for competing programs regularly, especially in operations and maintenance, to reduce decades-long, assured “vendor lock.”

While the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 is becoming more affordable on a unit cost basis, in part because of the F-35’s overwhelming share of the 5th Generation fighter aircraft market, future, planned 6th generation fighters are unlikely to have such an advantage. Those programs include the U.S. Air Force’s manned Next Generation Air Dominance, the Global Combat Air Program among Italy, the United Kingdom, and Japan, and the Future Combat Air System effort by France, Germany, and Spain.

Investments made in those three programs to replace 11,000 4th to 5th Generation fighters “will likely produce aircraft with diminishing scale, and demand may not be sufficient to sustain all three programs,” according to the BCG/MSC Security Innovation Board report. “Furthermore, if historical buying patterns hold, governments will reduce their overall aircraft purchases, as costs increase, further reducing the returns on these investments…Rather than back competing consortiums with separate requirements, allied countries might be better served to align upfront on their requirements, invite competing developments between vendors, and plan for future down-selection.”

Schlueter said that 26 infantry fighting vehicle types in Europe represent “a lot of full programs that you need to manage, and that’s unwieldy,” whereas a better approach could be to consolidate many of them and ensure that they have common components.