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| Wednesday, March 5, 2025 • 67th Year • Volume 305 • No. 40 | |||||||||||||||||||
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USAF Will Likely Fare Well in Budget Reconciliation, Service Official Says AURORA, Colo.–The U.S. Air Force will likely fare “extremely well” in a GOP budget reconciliation bill, a service official suggested on Tuesday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium here. Last week, the House narrowly passed a budget resolution that sets a blueprint for passing Trump administration priorities via the reconciliation process, to include spending an additional $100 billion on defense over four years, while Senate Republicans said that they want $150 billion more over those four years (Defense Daily, Feb. 26). Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has called for an 8 percent annual cut in DoD funding over the next five years for a possible reallocation to higher defense needs. “The reconciliation is gonna be just part of what gives us opportunities to start new programs,” Maj. Gen. Joseph “Solo” Kunkel, the Air Force director of force design, integration, and wargaming, said here during a Tuesday panel discussion on future air superiority. “I think the Air Force is gonna do extremely well in those [reconciliation] discussions. I think you’ll see the Air Force on top.” “I think that also goes into this 8 percent budget cut,” he said. “We’re not doing the 8 percent budget cut because we’re gonna cut the military. We’re doing an 8 percent budget cut because we realize there’s gotta be a shift in TOA [total obligation authority] between organizations, between [military] services so I think we’re also gonna do well when you take a look at the 8 percent budget cut and how it’s reallocated among the services. The Air Force provides easy policy options for decision makers. We always will. More Air Force makes sense, now more than ever.” Budget reconciliation would allow the Senate, when the bill gets there, to pass billions of dollars in Trump administration priorities without requiring the 60-vote threshold needed to break the filibuster, while the House will require a near-unified GOP caucus to support the measure facing likely unanimous Democratic opposition. During Tuesday’s panel discussion on future air superiority, Air Force Gen. Kenneth “Cruiser” Wilsbach, the head of Air Combat Command, said that manned fighters, such as the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-22 and F-35, will continue to play a significant part. While General Atomics and Anduril are soon to deliver their Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) prototypes to Creech AFB, Nev., for flights under the direction of the Air Force CCA Experimental Operations Unit at Nellis AFB, Nev.’s 53rd Wing, “in 2025, we don’t have the artificial intelligence [AI] that we can plug pilots out of aircraft and plug AI in them to the degree that the AI can replace a human brain,” Wilsbach said. “Someday we will have that, I trust, but right now, we don’t so it does require this manned and unmanned teaming, as we go forward,” he said. “In the future, maybe not. It would be great not to put humans at risk in the battlespace, but for right now, the human brain is the best intelligence that we have.” Top Trump adviser Elon Musk has suggested a near-term end to manned fighter aircraft, such as the F-35 and the Air Force’s manned Next Generation Air Dominance fighter–now on hold, and their replacement by AI-enabled drones (Defense Daily, Dec. 19, 2024). “The American way of war is always advancing, always putting the knife on the throat of the enemy, always having options,” Kunkel said on Tuesday. “In the history of war, fights always collapse, and eventually you end up fixing bayonets. I think the same is gonna be true with this future fight. You’re gonna wanna be in a position where there is someone that can continue to take the fight to the enemy when the autonomy breaks down, when the links break down. I think you want someone there that can continue to put the knife on the enemy’s throat. I don’t see us fully stepping away from manned aircraft ever.”
AURORA, Colo.–If the balloon goes up or if significant new orders for the F-35 materialize near-term, could Lockheed Martin [LMT] ramp up its annual global production of the fighter above 156? “We look at several different things when it comes to making the 156,” Chauncey McIntosh, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of the F-35 program, said in an interview after a briefing to reporters on Tuesday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium here. “First, we wanna make sure in any production system as you go out and build and design a system, consistency and making sure as we have the right tooling, and then we manage that with affordability; what does it take from the acquisition of parts going into the system for the rate there; and then also the customer delivery schedules that we have,” McIntosh said. “We wanna make sure we strike affordability there,” he said. “I think it would be a bad decision for both the services as well as for, particularly if you think about our small businesses, if we say, ‘Ramp up to 190, then ramp back down to 120,’ as you look in the future. We wanna make sure that we cut a nice number that supports both our customers as well as all of our business partners to produce an output. The 156 number is one that I feel comfortable in and sticking with. If the number of our customers continues to surge, and we see a need to go up, we’ll definitely have those dialogues with our customers and then with our supply base to say, ‘Hey, we think we’re gonna be at this for another 10 years, and let’s go make that change.'” Supply source diversification would also be key to increasing F-35 production above 156 annually. In 2023, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman [NOC], Rheinmetall AG, and German officials broke ground on an F-35 center fuselage Integrated Assembly Line in Weeze, Germany near the Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall. Rheinmetall said that the Weeze plant will, starting in 2025, build at least 400 F-35A center fuselages (Defense Daily, Sept. 6, 2023). Lockheed Martin delivered 110 F-35s in 2024, including new aircraft and those parked awaiting upgrades. The company said that it expects to deliver 170-190 aircraft in 2025 and again in 2026. The Technology Refresh-3 (TR-3) effort for the fighter, which allows Block 4 sensing and weapons upgrades continues, as TR-3 adds data processing, storage, and multipath connectivity to DoD’s classified cloud computing environment. As the U.S. Air Force moves out on its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, Lockheed Martin said that it had demonstrated last fall the ability to control eight autonomous drones from the F-35. At the AFA Warfare Symposium here, the company said that it has delivered more than 1,130 F-35s and that the fighter has surpassed one million flight hours.
Lead Aviation Platform for MGUE Increment 1 Changed from B-2 to Gray Eagle
AURORA, Colo.–Last fall, U.S. Space Force decided to switch the lead platform for the Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) Increment 1 aviation card from the Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to the Army Gray Eagle drone, the head of Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) said on Monday. “The biggest thing on MGUE 1 is the lead platform changed to the Army’s Gray Eagle,” Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant told reporters here at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium when asked about the latest developments in MGUE. “The card-level certification is anticipated this summer. The Army program manager…tells me his test is on track for this year for the aviation platform.” Northrop Grumman [NOC] is the B-2 contractor, General Atomics the Gray Eagle. The MGUE Increment 1 program had planned to begin a year-long combined developmental and operational testing on the B-2 in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 (Defense Daily, Jan. 31, 2024). L3Harris Technologies [LHX], RTX [RTX] and BAE Systems have received MGUE contracts. Since the late 1990s, the Pentagon has been developing the GPS M-code to have a stronger signal and more advanced encryption to counter jamming and spoofing, and the first GPS M-code capable satellite went aloft in 2005. But GPS M-code initial operational capability has seen delays due to required upgrades of ground and user equipment for hundreds of vehicles, ships, and aircraft. Turning around satellite ground system program performance was a primary, stated focus area of former space acquisition chief Frank Calvelli, and MGUE was one of three programs he said were of particular concern (Defense Daily, Dec. 9, 2024).
Startup Mach Industries Flight Tests Vertical Take Off Cruise Missile Under Army Award
Mach Industries in January successfully flight-tested its Viper vertical takeoff cruise missile under an Army contract for Strategic Strike, showcasing the startup’s speed in developing the man-portable long-range weapon that is designed for use by maneuvering forces against in GPS and communications-denied environments. The jet-powered Viper currently has a 290-kilometer range but as the cruise missile is refined its range will far exceed that threshold, Ethan Thornton, the 21-year-old CEO and founder of California-based Mach Industries, told Defense Daily last week ahead of the announcement. The carbon fiber airframe carries a 22-plus pound warhead that combined with the long-range can hit “high-payoff targets, such as radar arrays and artillery pieces, well beyond the forward line of troops,” the company said on Tuesday. Strategic Strike is designed to “launch beyond enemy radar range, reducing the probability of detection, and increasing launch team survivability,” it said. The Army Applications Laboratory (AAL) last September awarded the company a contract to develop Strategic Strike, which Mach Industries used to redesign its Viper missile and conduct the Jan. 25 flight test in 14 weeks to meet the service’s requirements. The value of the award was not disclosed. The objective in the first test was achieving vertical takeoff and transition to flight. In the coming months, additional tests are planned for terminal strike and munitions integration, and eventually kinetic testing this year depending on access to a government test site, Thornton said. By year-end, the goal is to get Viper to a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 8, which is flight qualified, and also integrating the global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-denied navigation capability, and be ready to deploy, he said. The contract calls for Mach Industries to build and kinetically test five airframes this year, conducting a demonstration for the Army, and achieving TRL 8, which includes designing the system for manufacturing, Thornton said. Mach Industries is working “through a variety of channels” to be ready in 2025 “to bring Viper into low-rate initial production and procurement,” he said. The company will also be partnering with international customers, Thornton said. Soon, the company plans to announce plans for increasing manufacturing capacity, not only for Viper, but also for two other late-stage development efforts by Mach Industries. One is Glide, a high-altitude-dropped transonic glider for deep strike in GNSS-denied environments that can target specific radio frequency signals, and STRATUS, a stratospheric balloon. Thornton said the company wants to be able to produce its products in the “high hundreds or thousands” monthly. Flexibility in how Viper can be launched is important, Thornton said. Whether from the back of a truck, the ground, or sea-based, “the goal is to be very flexible and decentralized” and essentially “launch it wherever you want to,” he said. The company was founded several years ago and in fall 2023 announced it had closed a $79 million Series A funding round. Mach Industries currently has 110 employees. AAL is the innovation organization of Army Futures Command, charged with leveraging the commercial and non-traditional defense industry to quickly get technology to soldiers. “This is the model we look to have as a company is to align venture dollars around critical warfighter needs and very rapidly bring important unmanned systems into the fight on behalf of the country,” Thornton said.
Anduril, Zone 5 Tapped By Air Force, DIU For Next Phase Of Enterprise Test Vehicle Project
The Air Force and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in January selected Anduril Industries and Zone 5 Technologies to move into the second phase of the Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) prototype project that will provide affordable air vehicles that feature modularity to enable subsystem testing for future air launched weapons, and can be built at high rates. Under the six-month second phase of the ETV contract, Anduril said on Tuesday it will demonstrate autonomous teaming capabilities of its long-range Baracuda-500 autonomous air vehicle, continue improving the manufacturability of the system, and highlight its modularity for adaptability to different missions. The Air Force Armament Directorate and DIU last June awarded first phase ETV prototype contracts to Anduril, Integrated Solutions for Systems, Leidos [LDOS], and Zone 5 (Defense Daily, June 3, 2024). Zone 5 said it has selected Scientific Systems Company, Inc. to provide the Collaborative Weapon Autonomy software suite to be integrated onto the company’s ETV prototypes. The California-based company said the software enable multi-vehicle operations through decentralized operations to increase the chances the air vehicles will hit their targets. “The software allows weapons to adapt to changes in target prioritization in real-time and enable opportunities to optimize weapon employment playbooks,” Zone 5 said. The prototype project includes the companies taking an open architecture approach for rapid subsystem integration. In the first phase, the companies had to conduct a flight-test of their respective air vehicles. Anduril said that later this year it will conduct more flight tests to demonstrate the collaborative autonomy capabilities of its system, “including simultaneous vertical launch of multiple Barracuda-500 systems, in flight system-to-system communications, and how Lattice for Mission Autonomy enables the execution of novel collaborative autonomous behaviors designed to increase effectiveness in contested environments.” Lattice is Anduril’s artificial intelligence-based open systems platform for large-scale integration and use of autonomous systems under human supervision. Anduril last September introduced its family of modular Barracuda turbojet powered air vehicles, all of which include cruise missile variants (Defense Daily, Sept. 12, 2024). The software-defined systems are designed for high-rate production because it is made with fewer parts, relies heavily on a commercial supply chain, and non-specialized labor and tools. Over the next few months Anduril will produce ETV prototypes “using manufacturing processes and equipment that are representative of future full-rate production techniques, continuing development towards a production variant capable of rapidly scalable manufacture in 2026,” it said. Barracuda is designed for launch from air, ground, and sea-based platforms.
Gambit and Fury CCA Offerings Get USAF Designations; Flights on Track for This Summer
AURORA, Colo.–The U.S. Air Force has bestowed “mission design series” (MDS) designations on its two Increment 1 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) prototypes. The General Atomics Gambit offering is the YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries‘ Fury is the YFQ-44A, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin told the Air and Space Forces’ Warfare Symposium here on Monday. “Y” signifies prototype aircraft, “F” fighter/air-to-air mission, and “Q” a drone. First flights are on track for this summer, Allvin said. David Alexander, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI), said in a statement that the “YFQ-42A continues a long and distinguished history for GA-ASI that dates back to the 1990s and the debut of the RQ-1 Predator, which later changed to MQ-1 Predator.” “The YFQ-42A designation follows the Air Force’s decision to designate GA-ASI’s highly common predecessor aircraft as the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station [OBSS],” GA-ASI said. “The XQ-67A was ordered by the Air Force Research Lab to support the development of concepts necessary to implement the vision for CCA.” OBSS had its first flight in February last year, GA-ASI said, and the Air Force decided to narrow the CCA Increment 1 field to GA-ASI and Anduril last April, as the service moves to a possible competitive production decision on CCA Increment 1 in fiscal 2026 (Defense Daily, Apr. 24, 2024). “This MDS represents the first aircraft type of a YFQ designation, signaling a new era of uncrewed fighter aircraft,” Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering, said in a statement. “It reinforces what we already knew. Our CCA is a high performance aircraft designed specifically for the air superiority mission, acting as a force multiplier for crewed aircraft within the real constraints of cost and time.”
SASC Presses DoD Policy Chief Nom Colby On Ukraine, As Trump Pauses Further Military Aid
A day after the Trump administration’s decision to pause further military aid to Ukraine, the president’s pick for the Pentagon’s top policy job was pressed during his confirmation hearing on his position regarding further support to Kyiv and his view on Russia’s invasion. Elbridge Colby, the nominee for under secretary of defense for policy, cited the “very delicate diplomatic process” underway when asked for his views on the topic, to include whether Russia had invaded Ukraine. “I would hate to be in a situation of disrupting or inhibiting progress on peace. I think the president and vice president have been very clear that words matter and I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be commenting on these delicate topics,” Colby said during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Colby, who has previously argued in favor of shifting U.S. defense resources from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific to focus efforts on China, served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development during the first Trump administration and most recently launched the Marathon Initiative policy research organization. “I know some of you will have different views on important issues, but I can assure you of several things; that I am deeply committed to a foreign and defense policy that realistically protects and advances all Americans’ security, freedom and prosperity, that I am willing and ready to engage with those who disagree with me and adapt my views based on persuasive arguments and the facts, that I value our alliances deeply even as I think they must be adapted and that I love our great country and will put its interests first and foremost,” Colby said in his opening remarks. The Pentagon on Tuesday confirmed a pause has been issued on providing further military aid to Ukraine, which followed a tense meeting between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last Friday. Zelenskyy was then asked to leave the White House early and plans to sign a new agreement establishing a framework granting the U.S. greater access to critical minerals in Ukraine were scrapped, with Trump having accused the Ukrainian leader of not expressing sufficient gratitude for the U.S.’ support providing aid to assist in its fight against Russia (Defense Daily, Feb. 28). SASC Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) opened the hearing addressing the “elephant in this hearing room today” regarding the recent developments around Ukraine amid Putin’s “continued barrage of attacking apartments, civilian targets and other areas in Ukraine” and his concern with the failure to sign the U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal. “[This was] not a good weekend for peace in Ukraine or world peace,” Wicker said. “The president’s trying to get a peace deal in Ukraine and I certainly hope we’ll be able to get this back on the rails.” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the SASC ranking member, called the move to pause further security assistance to Ukraine a “callous decision.” “President Trump seems eager to strike a deal with Vladimir Putin at any cost, even conceding our most valuable points of leverage before reaching the negotiating table. His recent claim that Ukraine, not Russia, started this war is offensive, and his attacks against President Zelenskyy are badly misguided,” Reed said. “Frankly, the spectacle in the Oval Office last week was a failure of American leadership.” 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). Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last month that European partners must provide “the overwhelming share” of future weapons aid to Ukraine (Defense Daily, Feb. 12). Wicker noted Colby has worked on defense policy for more than two decades and played a “pivotal role” in crafting the 2018 National Defense Strategy, which placed an emphasis on strategic competition with China. “Mr. Colby and I have been ringing the same bell on military unpreparedness for years, particularly as it relates to China,” Wicker said. “We should build a larger U.S. military footprint in East Asia and we should accelerate the most important weapons programs to deter China.” “Given the threat environment facing us, I strongly believe that we cannot simply pivot our attention and resources from one threat to another. That is an approach the Obama administration tried and it did fail. We must be focused and strategic,” Wicker added. “Beijing is not pivoting between theaters or among theaters. Significant American withdrawal in Europe, Africa, South America or the Middle East will allow the Chinese Communist Party to overcome us strategically.” Reed further added that Colby has argued against continuing the same level of U.S. support for Ukraine and for “steep reductions to America’s role in Europe,” and asked the nominee for his views on balancing priorities across multiple theaters. Colby told the panel one of his longer-term top priorities is to “revivify” the defense so it’s capable of resourcing what’s required in multiple theaters “at the level that we need.” “My arguments about Ukraine have been based on the need for strategic prioritization. I don’t contest the fact that the Chinese are looking at what we’re doing with Ukraine at all,” Colby said. “We have to have the military capabilities in Asia or relevant to Asia to be able to conduct a local defense of Taiwan at a cost and a level of risk that the American people are prepared to tolerate. And that has been my main focus.” Colby was pressed by several Democratic senators to state outright whether Russia had invaded Ukraine, often sidestepping the question but stating that it was a “factual reality” that is “demonstrably true” when asked whether Russian forces crossed the border in 2022. “From a military point of view, from a defense point of view…Russia presents a significant military threat to Europe and there are significant military threats to the homeland as well. And I think from a defense point of view, we need to regard that in a very clear-eyed way. At the same time, as an overall strategy, I think that can support and be compatible with an effort to diminish the potential for direct confrontation with Russia, in the same way with China as well,” Colby said.
General Atomics Showcases Autonomy Of UCAV At Air Force Test Event
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) last month demonstrated its MQ-20 Avenger unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) flying with a government furnished reference architecture that enables air vehicles to integrate with compliant autonomy software, in this case Shield AI’s Hivemind artificial intelligence pilot that flew the aircraft. The demonstration was part of the Air Force Test Center’s Orange Flag-1 exercise at Edwards AFB, Calif., and was the first of several planned autonomy flights in 2025 between the two companies, Shield AI said. GA-ASI, a business of General Atomics, said the MQ-20 was equipped with the government’s Autonomy-Government Reference Architecture, a pilot interface for autonomy software, for operations focused on air-to-air engagements. The company uses the jet-powered UCAV as a testbed for future autonomous collaborative platforms. GA-ASI, and Anduril Industries, are both developing autonomous air vehicles for the first increment of the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program (Defense Daily, March 4). The A-GRA is designed to enhance interoperability across autonomous military platforms and help the government avoid vendor lock through open and common interfaces. “This flight showcased how advanced autonomous systems can seamlessly operate on open-architecture platforms without vendor lock, ensuring warfighters have access to the best mission autonomy solutions available,” Mike Atwood, vice president of advanced programs for GA-ASI, said in a statement. “GA-ASI is building an open platform that supports these kinds of industry collaborations, which is key to accelerating the future of autonomous aviation and ensuring mission-ready autonomy solutions.” GA-ASI also said the recent flight demonstrated the ability to transition between autonomy systems in flight over proliferated low Earth orbit satellites using Shield AI’s pilot software. The Avenger switched between GA-ASI’s software, government software, and Shield AI’s software “as needed,” proving out the aircraft can upgrade software as fast as it is developed, the company said. Shield AI has also flown its Hivemind AI pilot on its unmanned aircraft system platforms, a test variant of the Air Force’s F-16 fighter, and unmanned aircraft built by Kratos Defense & Security Solutions [KTOS]. Hivemind is designed to enable autonomous flight in contested environments with limited or now communication, and where adversaries are trying to jam the aircraft. “Hivemind flying the MQ-20 is a major step forward in demonstrating operational autonomy at scale and a proof point for the power of industry-led innovation,” Christian Gutierrez, VP of Hivemind Solutions at Shield AI, said in a statement. “We’re investing our own resources into this to accelerate our larger goal, flying autonomy on as many platforms as possible.”
EU Unveils ‘ReArm Europe’ Plan To Boost Defense Spending By Nearly $850 Billion
The European Union has detailed a new plan to boost defense spending by nearly $850 billion in the coming years, with some of the investment to go toward supporting Ukraine security efforts. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, unveiled the five-part “ReArm Europe” initiative, which arrives as the Trump administration has ordered a pause on further U.S. military aid to Kyiv. “We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defense spending. Both, to respond to the short-term urgency to act and to support Ukraine but also to address the long-term need to take on much more responsibility for our own European security,” von der Leyen said in a statement “This set of proposals focuses on how to use all of the financial levers at our disposal – in order to help member states to quickly and significantly increase expenditures in defense capabilities. Urgently now but also over a longer time over this decade.” The Pentagon on Tuesday confirmed a pause has been issued on providing further military aid to Ukraine, which followed a tense meeting between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office last Friday (Defense Daily, March 4). U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said last month that European partners must provide “the overwhelming share” of future weapons aid to Ukraine (Defense Daily, Feb. 12). A key part of the plan includes a proposal to provide $159.2 billion in loans to EU member states for defense spending, to include investments in air and missile defense, artillery systems, missiles, ammunition drones, counter-drone systems, cyber and military mobility. “It will help member states to pool demand and to buy together,” von der Leyen said. “This approach of joint procurement will also reduce costs, reduce fragmentation, increase interoperability and strengthen our defense industrial base.” The ReArm Europe plan calls for steps to “unleash” more public funding in defense, with von der Leyen noting she will propose activating “the national escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact, which will allow Member States to significantly increase their defense expenditures without triggering the Excessive Deficit Procedure.” “Member States are ready to invest more in their own security if they have the fiscal space. And we must enable them to do so,” von der Leyen said. The proposal also calls for “mobilizing private capital by accelerating the Savings and Investment Union and through the European Investment Bank” and utilizing the EU budget to support defense investment efforts. “There is a lot that we can do in this domain in the short term to direct more funds towards defense-related investments. This is why I can announce that we will propose additional possibilities and incentives for member states that they will decide, if they want to use cohesion policy programs, to increase defense spending,” von der Leyen said.
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