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| Tuesday, March 11, 2025 • 67th Year • Volume 305 • No. 44 | |||||||||||||||
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NGA’s Latency For Imagery Improves But More Data Requires More Compute, Whitworth Says The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is processing imagery 80 percent faster than it did a year ago. However, as satellite constellations and the amount of related data increase, the latency gains could diminish without more computing power, NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth said on Monday. Whitworth described the drop-in latency times in terms of “running inference,” which refers to running the agency’s artificial intelligence models against the imagery data to automatically find targets of interest for warfighters and decisionmakers. The 80 percent decline is a dramatic boost considering a year ago Whitworth boasted that its analysts have sifted through 40 percent more sensor imagery since 2023 because of NGA Maven, the agency’s computer vision-based technology that finds potential targets to attack (Defense Daily, March 21, 2024). Despite a cascading deluge of data that NGA is processing and expects to process more of in the years ahead, Whitworth feels good the agency’s resource needs will be met. “I’m confident in our discussions with both on the DoD and on the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) side, that we’ll find those resources and we’ll make sure that we keep up with that demand,” he said at the annual SATELLITE Conference in Washington, D.C. This year NGA’s theme is accelerating AI, which Whitworth described as “NGAI.” One of the agency’s goals to help accelerate AI is around leadership organization, some of which was done last year and some this year. NGA last fall formalized the role of Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, a role filled by Mark Munsell, who is also director of the Data and Digital Innovation Directorate (Defense Daily, Oct. 30, 2024). Munsell is the “director of AI standards,” Whitworth said. In addition, Trey Treadwell, NGA’s associate director of capabilities, is also the chief acquisition executive, and is in charge of AI programs, Whitworth said, adding that this fits with the agency’s move to a program executive office approach to acquisition management. More recently, in January, NGA hired Joe O’Callaghan, a retired Army colonel who was the fires coordinator for the 18th Airborne Corps. He was an early adopter of the Maven Smart System. O’Callaghan is the director of AI Mission and will continue to work from Fort Bragg, N.C. Whitworth said that he is a Defense Intelligence Senior Leader and a senior leader of NGA, “So he is able to make decisions about operations.” He said that O’Callaghan “has hit the ground sprinting.” This “task organization recognizes the significance of AI” and is the first of Whitworth’s New Year’s Resolutions Whitworth has for accelerating NGA’s approach to AI. “We will have ops integration teams with all of the people who do normal, structured observations as part of their normal trade craft to ensure that they’re thinking through and processing opportunities for AI,” he said. Ensuring NGA has the resources, particularly around computing power, which “doesn’t come cheaply,” is his second resolution, Whitworth said. Next is accreditation and certification. Certification is about responsible AI training, and the former is Accreditation of GEOINT AI Models, which is assessing the quality of AI training data and models. “The idea here is to allow the standard to be established for accreditation so that you can decentralize the development of these models,” he said. He added, “And if there’s one thing that’s really, really important in this business, it’s having proper PID, positive identification. So, to ensure that those standards are set, when we make a model that helps us with the PID process, we find that the fastest way will be to accredit the model so that then business can be decentralized.” Whitworth’s fourth resolution is a having his analysts mentor the models, essentially creating a “team approach” to responsible AI. “Don’t forget, these are some of the best people we have in the world at generating PID, generating warning, generating targeting,” he said. “We need to keep them in a place of constantly training through machine learning, structured observations, data labeling, what’s responsible and a good approach to the model.” In the past year AI models are already automating imagery collection of things in the past that NGA’s did not hold on to, he said. “And that’s a very powerful thing,” he said. The final resolution is GEOINT AI Assurance, which is ensuring that the nation’s adversaries are not able to manipulate the data, he said.
Construction Halted On Last National Security Cutter Over Conformance Issues
The Coast Guard and shipbuilder HII [HII] are negotiating to resolve “material conformance” issues identified during construction of the 11th and final Legend-class National Security Cutter (NSC), the service said last week. The issue is alarming enough to raise concerns whether the ship will ever be delivered. “In addition, new problems have developed with the last hulls in the National Security Cutter program, and we could receive one ship less than what Congress appropriated,” Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Miss.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s panel that oversees the Coast Guard, said on March 5. A Coast Guard spokesman told Defense Daily the issue is just about NSC-11. The first 10 high-endurance cutters have already been delivered and are critical to the service’s global operations. NSC-11 was supposed to be delivered in November 2024. Work has been halted since at least last November with construction only 15 percent complete. The Coast Guard also told Defense Daily that HII notified the service in late 2024 that the earliest the vessel could be delivered is 2029. HII and the Coast Guard are currently in negotiations to resolve the issue, which includes the ship potentially not being completed, as alluded to by Ezell. “The Coast Guard identified material conformance concerns on NSC #11 and is working with the shipyard to reach a resolution,” the Coast Guard said in a statement to Defense Daily last Friday. Kimberly Aguillard, a spokesperson for HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division in Pascagoula, Miss., where the company builds Navy ships and the NSC, told Defense Daily on Monday that “We value our long-standing partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard and are proud of the work our shipbuilders have accomplished over the past two decades to deliver a total of 10 NSCs to the U.S. Coast Guard. We are currently engaged in active discussions with the USCG regarding NSC 11 and remaining issues under the contract, and expect the parties will reach a mutually agreeable resolution. We’ll share updates when appropriate.” The original program of record for the NSC program was eight 418-foot ships, equipped with more advanced C5ISR capabilities, to replace 11 378-foot Hamilton-class high endurance cutters, all of which have been decommissioned. Former Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), who was the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee before retiring in 2018, led the effort to increase the number of NSC’s purchased by the Coast Guard to 11. The Coast Guard resisted the push for 11 NSCs but the ships are important contributors to missions such as freedom of navigation operations in seas that China claims, maritime defense and homeland security missions, counter-drug interdiction, fishery patrols, and others. A $930 million fixed-price contract option was awarded to HII in December 2028 for NSCs-10 and -11. The Ingalls division currently has hot production lines with three Navy vessel types, the Arleigh Burke-class DDG destroyers, LPD troop and supply transports, and the America-class LHA amphibious assault ships. The company is also installing the Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic weapon system on the Navy’s Zumwalt-class DDG-1000 destroyers.
Space Development Agency Independent Review Team Begins Work
Originally to start launch last September, the U.S. Space Force Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tranche 1 satellites–the first to link to military forces in the field–are to begin orbiting late next summer, as SDA works to integrate them with ground systems and as a DoD-ordered independent review team (IRT) examines the agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). The IRT work may help inform the future of SDA, as the Department of Government Efficiency scrubs federal spending and aims to consolidate or eliminate some departments and agencies. Chaired by former House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the IRT also includes Tina Harrington, who has worked as the signals intelligence director for the National Reconnaissance Office; Randall Walden, a consultant who headed the Department of the Air Force’s rapid capabilities office (RCO), which had signature programs, such as the B-21 Raider, under the RCO purview; and Sarah Mineiro, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project and Thornberry’s former staffer on military space. Mineiro also worked as the senior director of space strategy at Anduril Industries. PWSA Tranche 1 launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., are “now anticipated to begin in late summer 2025 and continue on a pace of approximately one launch per month until the entire Tranche 1 Transport and Tracking constellations are on orbit,” SDA said over the weekend. “SDA continues to aggressively work toward the first Tranche 1 launch,” the agency said. “However, additional time is required for system readiness to meet the Tranche 1 minimum viable capability. SDA is committed to delivering the initial warfighting capability of the PWSA in early calendar year 2027, consistent with warfighter expectations.” DoD recently said that SDA has met the “minimum viable product” (MVP) standard for the agency’s PWSA Tranche 0 Transport Layer communications satellites and Tracking Layer missile warning satellites, but a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said that four evaluated contractors for the Tranche 0 satellites have only met standards four times out of 32 in eight optical communications terminal (OCT) categories (Defense Daily, Feb. 27). SpaceX hit the mark three times–in the category of Tracking Layer space-to-space laser links among SpaceX satellites in the same orbital plane, Tracking Layer space-to-space data transmission among SpaceX satellites in the same orbital plane, and Tracking Layer space-to-ground laser links. York Space Systems passed muster in the Transport Layer space-to-space laser links among York satellites, while Lockheed Martin [LMT] and L3Harris Technologies [LHX] did not hit any of the marks, according to the GAO report, Laser Communications: Space Development Agency Should Create Links Between Development Phases (GAO 25-106838). “SDA has met the MVP for [Tranche o], which is to demonstrate the feasibility of the proliferated architecture in cost, schedule, and scalability towards necessary performance for beyond line of sight targeting and advanced missile detection and tracking,” the Pentagon wrote on Feb. 6 in response to the GAO report. “SDA’s MVP for the [Tranche 0] Transport Layer includes periodic regional access for low latency data connectivity, data directly to tactical elements, and data disseminated to theater targeting cells.” “[Tranche O] validates our approach and achieved stated objectives: Link-16 from space-to-ground, air, and sea; and forming an optical network in low Earth orbit for both the Transport and Tracking Layers,” DoD said. “SDA continues to incorporate lessons from [Tranche 0] into [Tranche 1], Tranche 2, and future tranches.” Yet, former SDA Director Derek Tournear, who is on administrative leave, said in October “that SDA is no longer planning to develop an MVP, rather that the agency considers the MVP to be equivalent to the MVC [minimum viability capability].” GAO said that an example of MVC would be the amount of global coverage expected for a satellite constellation, while MVP would be the number of satellites required to provide such coverage. OCT laser links among satellites built by different companies has been a point of concern and one that DoD has sought to alleviate with the Enterprise Management and Control effort (Defense Daily, March 19, 2024). SDA developed an OCT standard of 2.5 gigabits per second data transmission–“relatively lower than some commercial technologies that transmit data at 100 gigabits per second,” according to GAO. SDA said that its Tranche 0 satellites were not meant to be operationally tested and that it is working with industry and the DoD Directorate of Operational Test and Evaluation to test the Tranche 1 satellites. Tranche 0 follows the Air Force Research Laboratory’s work starting in 2019 on the $10 million XVI cube satellite by Viasat [VSAT]–a satellite that was to demonstrate Link 16 from space. SDA said that Tranche 0, by contrast, is to represent a scaling up of such advanced tec.
Anduril Wins $642.2 Million Marine Corps Deal For Capability To Protect Bases From Small Drones
The Marine Corps has awarded Anduril Industries a $642.2 million contract to provide capability for protecting installations from small drone threats. Anduril beat out nine other competitors to win the Marine Corps’ Installation-Counter small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (I-CsUAS) deal, according to the Pentagon. “The awardee will be awarded its first order for system procurement, site survey, program management and engineering services, physical configuration audit, new equipment training immediately following contract award,” the Pentagon said in a March 7 notice, noting the deal begins with an initial $9.5 million delivery order. The Marine Corps last year detailed plans to address a capability gap related to the “detection, tracking, identification, and defeat” of small UAS at its installations, with plans to hold a full and open competition (Defense Daily, Jan. 22 2024). “Failure to deliver this capability places personnel, covered facilities and assets at unnecessary risk. The Marine Corps requires a modernized C-sUAS capability to counter the evolving threats. To address this capability gap, the Marine Corps intends to use advanced technologies incorporated throughout the full ‘kill chain’ to successfully detect, track, identify, and defeat sUAS,” the Marine Corps wrote in a pre-solicitation notice. “This ‘kill chain’ will encompass integrated and networked sensor nodes along with the ability to protect the defended asset both non-kinetically and kinetically as laws and policy allow.” Anduril has not yet specified what specific capability it offered and will be providing for the I-CsUAS program. The Marine Corps this past October awarded $200 million contracts to Anduril and Invariant Corp. $200 million each to provide Counter-UAS Engagement Systems for integration into the existing Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) to be mounted on a Joint Lightweight Tactical Vehicle trailer (Defense Daily, Oct. 18 2024). Anduril then confirmed it would supply its Anvil autonomous drone to kinetically defeat Group 1 and 2 small unmanned aircraft threats as part of the new MADIS work (Defense Daily, Nov. 22 2024).
House GOP’s Full-Year CR With Defense Boost Faces Narrow Path, Senate Dem Pushback
The House’s stopgap funding proposal to avert a government shutdown, which includes an $8 billion defense add, faces a tight path to pass the lower chamber this week but is already meeting resistance from several senior Senate Democrats over its cuts to non-defense spending. While the continuing resolution (CR) is likely to receive near-unanimous opposition from House Democrats, the bill to keep the government open through September 30 would require the support of several Senate Democrats to pass in the upper chamber. “Instead of turning the keys over to the Trump administration with this bill, Congress should immediately pass a short-term CR to prevent a shutdown and finish work on bipartisan funding bills that invest in families, keep America safe, and ensure our constituents have a say in how federal funding is spent,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. Murray noted the final funding levels in the House GOP’s CR proposal breaks with arrangements set by last year’s Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), to include cutting non-defense spending by $15 billion and defense by $3 billion relative to the FY ‘25 toplines set by the FRA. “This is a shutdown bill that’s bad for the economy—let Trump shutdown whatever he wants, hurting everyday folks to use money for tax breaks for the uber-rich. Hell no!” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. House Republicans released their CR proposal on Saturday, with plans to vote this week as Congress faces a government shutdown deadline at midnight on March 14. “Funding the federal government is a constitutional obligation, and House Republicans are acting to uphold that duty. This straightforward continuing resolution ensures the government remains open and working for Americans,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “With no poison pills or unrelated riders – the bill is simple: extend funding and certainty for the nation. Democrats have a choice to join us or display their true intentions. Should they choose to vote to shut the government for negotiation leverage and their contempt of President Trump, they are readying to hurt hundreds of millions more.” The CR proposal includes an additional $8 billion for U.S. Central Command and European Command to spend on “military operations, force protection, and deterrence” and allows the Pentagon to move out on new start programs, which are otherwise blocked while under a stopgap funding measure. President Trump has previously endorsed taking up a “clean” CR that would keep the government open through the end of September, rather than short-term CR to avoid a shutdown and allow lawmakers additional time to pass final FY ‘25 appropriations (Defense Daily, Feb. 28). The House Appropriations Committee notes that the CR proposal does not include any language related to savings found as a result of Department of Government Efficiency efforts. “As their work continues to identify government waste and abuse, the House looks forward to engaging and coordinating on recissions in the future,” HAC wrote in a statement. Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, said his firm raised their odds that Congress passes a full-year CR from 50 to 65 percent, while adding they view it as a “negative” for U.S. defense sentiment. “We see this outcome as a negative for U.S. defense sentiment because of flat spending, and it may imply another full-year CR for FY ‘26 that would sustain real declines in DoD spending,” Callan said.
Australia’s New Submarine Industry Strategy Plans For $19 Billion Domestic Investment
The Australian government on Friday released a new document setting out its vision for the future submarine industrial base, including planning for about $19 billion needed to prepare the domestic industrial base to support submarine programs and ultimately build AUKUS nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs). Australia’s acquisition of SSN capabilities is “one of the most consequential endeavors undertaken in our nation’s history…Developing the ability to build, sustain and operate conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines is also one of the most significant industrial undertakings in Australia’s history. We plan to achieve an ambitious uplift of Australia’s military and industrial capability, which has never been done under the timeframes of the Optimal Pathway announced in March 2023,” Richard Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defense and Pat Conroy, Minister for Defense Industry and Capability Delivery Minister for International Development and the Pacific, wrote in the document’s ministerial foreword. They added this effort will require “unparalleled coordination and cooperation” among government, industry, unions and academia in Australia, U.K., and the U.S. AUKUS partners. The strategy includes what is needed to ensure the current Collins-class boats are sustained and upgraded until they are replaced by U.S. Virginia-class submarines and, ultimately, the future SSN-AUKUS boats. “The opportunities presented by AUKUS are immense. The conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine program will see around 20,000 jobs created across Australia over the next 30 years, with unprecedented opportunities for Australian industry as we develop the sovereign capacity to operate, build and sustain conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines here in Australia,” they added. The document said the government identified four “major hurdles to uplifting” the domestic submarine industrial base following industry consultations: uncertainty of the scope, scale and timing of future demand for services supplied by domestic vendors, economic issues undermining private sector investment, regulatory complexity increasing costs and risks and labor and skills shortages in the workforce that cannot be overcome by isolated companies. Some of these hurdles are planned to be overcome via some financial support grants for growing their capability, grants to help make suppliers export ready to the AUKUS partners, simplifying regulation and government support to grow the workforce. Beyond overcoming those hurdles, the document noted opportunities for domestic suppliers are expected to increase over time as industry expands, so the first SSN-AUKUS boat will not have as many domestic contracting opportunities as a later boat or for sustainment activities. Last year, Australia announced state-owned domestic shipbuilder ASC Pty Ltd and BAE Systems would operate in a joint venture to ultimately deliver SSN-AUKUS in the 2040s, while ASC will sustain the SSNs (Defense Daily, March 22, 2024). Other points in the strategy include specific opportunities for domestic industry to support Virginia-class and SSN-AUKUS class submarine programs, the future Submarine Rotational Force-West, and supporting U.S. and U.K. submarine programs as qualified suppliers. The Australian government noted the domestic industrial base investment of $19 billion is expected to encompass funds through the 2050s. This is in addition to the $3 billion it is starting to invest in the U.S. submarine industrial base to help ramp up American production, $3.1 billion planned to invest in the UK to help expand the Rolls-Royce plant that builds submarine nuclear reactors they plan to use for SSN-AUKUS, the cost of buying three to five Virginia-class submarines in the 2030s and then the cost of domestically-build SSN-AUKUS boats starting in the 2040s.
Sikorsky Details Successful ‘Full Mission Profile’ Demos With Rotor Blown Wing UAS Concept
Sikorsky [LMT] on Monday detailed recent successful demonstrations with its “rotor blown wing” unmanned aircraft system (UAS), flying its prototype in both helicopter and “winged aircraft” mode through a “full mission profile.” The work with the rotor blown wing UAS is continuing to inform Sikorsky’s continued development of a larger version for a separate DARPA program and as the company explores building a family of hybrid-electric advanced mobility systems. “We are trying to find a very nice blend between helicopters’ ability to hover and operate from confined areas or small ship decks and have, quite frankly, handling qualities that allows us to operate from ship decks at high sea states…and couple that with the range and cruise efficiency of winged aircraft,” Igor Cherepinsky, director of Sikorsky Innovations, told reporters on Monday. Sikorsky’s rotor blown wing UAS tech demonstrator is a 115-pound, twin prop-rotor prototype, which is designed to take off and land vertically like a helicopter and then can transition its rotors in-air to act as propellers in aircraft mode. “Combining helicopter and airplane flight characteristics onto a flying wing reflects Sikorsky’s drive to innovate next-generation VTOL UAS aircraft that can fly faster and farther than traditional helicopters,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky’s vice president and general manager, said in a statement. Sikorsky Innovations, the company’s rapid prototyping group, has been flying the prototype for “a little bit now,” according to Cherepinsky, before taking on the more extensive demonstrations in January The January demos with the rotor blown wing UAS included conducting more than 40 takeoffs and landings, performing 30 transitions between helicopter and aircraft mode and reaching a top cruise speed of 86 knots, according to Sikorsky. “[In January] is where the aircraft took off vertically on its tail, accelerated and flipped over into the wing [mode], achieving wing-borne flight, did a little bit of a mock mission and then transitioned back into vertical flight and landed successfully. And that pretty much proves the physics of what we are trying to do,” Cherepinsky said. DARPA in May 2024 selected six companies to continue onto the risk reduction and component testing phase for its Advanced Aircraft Infrastructure-Less Launch and Recovery (ANCILLARY) program, to include Sikorsky as well as AeroVironment [AVAV], Griffon Aerospace, Karem Aircraft, Method Aeronautics and Northrop Grumman [NOC] (Defense Daily, May 23 2024). Sikorsky has said DARPA’s ANCILLARY program aims “to develop a Class 3 UAS VTOL X-Plane that can operate in most weather conditions from ship decks and unprepared surfaces without infrastructure.” Cherepinsky noted the January demos with the 115-pound demonstrator were part of Sikorsky’s internal research and development effort for the rotor blown wing UAS, while the work is informing continued efforts to develop a slightly larger 330-pound hybrid-electric version for the DARPA program. The rotor blown wing UAS is one of several hybrid-electric VTOL concepts Sikorsky is pursuing as part of a family of new systems, along with new HEX VTOL platforms and a potential hybrid-electric, single main rotor helicopter (Defense Daily, July 22 2024). Cherepinsky told reporters Sikorsky is now working through the “full design” of a HEX VTOL testbed and then plans to build two air vehicles, with the company planning to hold discussions with potential customers interested in the platform. “We’re basically going to accelerate it as much as we can,” Cherepinsky said. “We will be making production decisions sometime in the next few years.” Sikorsky last February detailed its HEX VTOL demonstrator, which includes a tilt-wing configuration for potential commercial and military applications, noting it had partnered with GE Aerospace [GE] to integrate a 1.2 megawatt-class turbogenerator into the platform. It’s intended to have an operating range of at least 500 nautical miles and 9,000-pound maximum gross weight and would utilize the company’s MATRIX autonomy software (Defense Daily, Feb. 27, 2024). Cherepinsky last July also said Sikorsky is designing a larger version of its rotor blown wing UAS for an “undisclosed customer” that could be 2,000 to 3,000 pounds, telling reporters on Monday he could not disclose additional details “at this time” (Defense Daily, July 22, 2024). “But I can say the work is certainly still ongoing,” Cherepinsky added.
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