The Air Force’s proposal to cut the F-22s is part of a broader plan to divest 150 aircraft in fiscal 2023 to free funds for higher priorities such as the B-21 bomber, hypersonic weapons programs and Next-Generation Air Dominance systems.

The House Armed Services Committee’s defense policy bill offered a sharp rebuke of the strategy and of the planned F-22 retirements in particular. Not only did lawmakers reject the plan to cut the aircraft, they called for the older-model jets, which are used primarily for training missions, to be upgraded to the newest F-22 configuration.

The White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement to Congress last month it “strongly opposes” House efforts to block aircraft and ship retirements. Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s top acquisition official, told reporters this week that preventing the service’s divestment plan would slow progress on the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which aims to field a fleet of unmanned aircraft to augment NGAD and other fighter aircraft during combat missions. The program is one of Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s top priorities.

“The concern I would have would be on our ability to deliver on a Collaborative Combat Aircraft system to complement NGAD. That’s where I think we start to see impacts,” Hunter told reporters during an Aug. 11 briefing at the Air Force’s Life Cycle Industry Days conference in Dayton, Ohio. “It would limit our ability to dedicate people and resources to an aggressive effort to field that capability.”

The Air Force requested $51.5 million in fiscal 2023 to transition technologies matured through the Skyborg program — the service’s effort to demonstrate the utility of teaming fighters and unmanned aircraft — to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft effort.

Asked whether additional funding from Congress would allow the Air Force to keep the F-22s and stay on track with the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, Hunter said there are infrastructure and manpower constraints that can’t necessarily be addressed with more money.

Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, told reporters during a separate Aug. 11 briefing the service is working with F-22 manufacturer Lockheed Martin to develop a cost estimate for modernizing the 33 older aircraft. A 2019 analysis projected it would cost about $50 million per jet, but White said a number of variables, including supply chain constraints, could change that estimate.

“We’re trying to put our arms around what has changed since the last time we did this,” he said.

The service plans to provide that data to Congress within the next month to inform budget deliberations, he added.

The U.S. aerospace company headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, will demonstrate the balloons’ capabilities as part of a U.K. Ministry of Defence’s Project Aether assessment phase contract, according to an Aug. 10 press release from the company. The contract is valued at as much as £100 million (U.S. $121 million) and comes amid similar investments in the technology from U.S. lawmakers.

The U.K. project looks to address the country’s need for communication systems that are rapidly maneuverable for long-duration missions that require minimal resupply or maintenance. Ayse Caglar, a spokesperson for Sierra Nevada did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

“SNC has a long history of rapid development, integration and worldwide deployment of C5ISR systems across all domain environments,” said Tim Owings, the company’s executive vice president, in a statement. “We are very pleased to demonstrate SNC’s legacy of success with these types of autonomous systems to the MOD and continue expanding our footprint within the U.K.”

The U.K. ministry announced the project in December, saying it was seeking “an uncrewed stratospheric communications and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capability with a global reach in near-real time.”

With their minimal weight, high-altitude balloons have attracted attention for their ability to remain in the air for long periods of time while conducting surveillance operations as well as their potential capability to track hypersonic weapons.

Across the pond, U.S. lawmakers have also signaled their interest in the technology. The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY23 puts $15 million toward stratospheric balloon research. The bill also includes an additional $10.2 million for high-altitude balloons for SOUTHCOM as an “unfunded requirement” — or wish-list item — under its classified programs list.

Gen. Laura Richardson, commander of SOUTHCOM, told the House Armed Services Committee in March that the command is interested in operationalizing resilient, energy-efficient platforms that reduce emissions, such as high-altitude balloons.

The U.S. military has been exploring potential uses for balloons for years. In 2019, the military conducted surveillance tests using high-altitude balloons made by SNC across midwestern states, according to documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission.

The balloons, which could reach the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 65,000 ft, were said to be tested to see if they could be used for the surveillance of narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats. According to Pentagon budget justification documents, the U.S. project that tested the balloons concluded in FY 2021.

The Army has also explored the possibility of using high-altitude balloons to provide beyond-line-of-sight capabilities and has tested the technology at its White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Demonstrations of SNC’s surveillance balloons for Project Aether are expected to take place later this year.

The service’s cutters stationed in Hawaii have used naval exercises and deployments over the last year to show how it can punch above its weight while the U.S. Navy implements its distributed maritime operations vision.

During the recent Rim of the Pacific exercise, which ran from June 29 to Aug. 4, the Coast Guard cutter Midgett commanded an international task force overseeing maritime interdiction operations, while also providing its deck to a U.S. Navy helicopter in a display of joint service collaboration.

Another RIMPAC participant, the fast response cutter William Hart, last fall deployed to American Samoa for a mission with a 10-day transit time that well exceeded the typical range of that ship class. During last year’s Large Scale Exercise, the vessel embarked with Marines to establish a joint force communications node — showing across the two events how small cutters can play a pivotal role as the eyes and ears of the military in places the Navy visits less frequently.

The Navy envisions a network of joint and coalition assets scattered around the Pacific to contribute to an overall common operating picture of the region. The more of these assets that are lethal, the better, the thinking goes: given a single adversary couldn’t target all the coalition assets that pose a threat, these distributed lethality and distributed maritime operations concepts could provide a deterrent effect.

But the Navy can only keep so many ships sailing around the Pacific at any given time, which means partners and allies are key, as are Coast Guard ships and aircraft, something that was highlighted in the 2020 Tri-Service Maritime Strategy. The document specifically asks the Coast Guard to conduct freedom of navigation operations to challenge excessive maritime claims; conduct law enforcement operations against terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime and piracy; and enforce sanctions through maritime interdiction operations.

Vice Adm. Andrew Tiongson, who commands Coast Guard Pacific Area, told Defense News the service implemented that strategy by deploying Coast Guard liaisons on Navy ships as well as training with and operating the Navy’s equipment to bolster interoperability.

“As we prepare for high-end joint operations in the maritime domain, we will support naval efforts with complementary capabilities throughout the Indo-Pacific with port security units, strategic asset escorts and other unique strengths to augment capacity. The more intertwined our services are prior to conflict, the easier we will adapt when needed,” Tiongson said.

Commanding a task force

Midgett and William Hart, along with other cutters based in Honolulu, are going beyond requirements of the tri-service strategy.

The former’s RIMPAC experience was unusual, achieving several firsts for the Coast Guard and pushing its own boundaries in terms of lethality and joint force interoperability. For example, Midgett commanded a RIMPAC task force — something no Coast Guard cutter has ever done. Its commanding officer, Capt. Willie Carmichael, led Combined Task Force 175 ships, including U.S. Navy destroyers Chafee and Gridley, French Navy frigate Prairial and Peruvian Navy frigate Guise.

This task force oversaw maritime interdiction operations for the combined maritime force at RIMPAC, and it also conducted anti-submarine warfare drills — something a Coast Guard cutter cannot do, but that Midgett was able to oversee through advanced Link 16 network connectivity.

“These national security cutters are built to interface with — from the technology, and the command and control, and the communication links — to fall right in line with the Navy and [Defense Department] counterparts. So these RIMPACs are awesome opportunities to exercise that,” Chief Matt Masaschi, a spokesman for Coast Guard Pacific Area, told reporters during a tour of Midgett.

Carmichael said during the tour that he spent nearly four weeks preparing to take command of the task force, which involved hosting Navy subject matter experts on the ship ahead of RIMPAC “to help us integrate more at a higher level for those higher-warfare areas.”

Midgett will soon depart Hawaii for a Western Pacific patrol under the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet, highlighting the importance of that service interoperability.

Hunting submarines

Midgett also carried a Navy MH-60R helicopter for predeployment training, and then for the whole duration of RIMPAC. This was the first time that helicopter type embarked on a Coast Guard ship.

Carmichael said the MH-60 can fit in a national security cutter’s hangar if it folds up its blades and tail. The capability and range of the MH-60 could be of great value to the ship during law enforcement missions. And the Navy could benefit from this experience by conducting MH-60 anti-submarine operations from a cutter’s deck.

This experiment was partly meant to determine how to “sustain that particular airframe, how do you support it for a long-range, two-month or three-month deployment,” Carmichael said.

Midgett also showed off its lethal traits, taking what it learned from the MH-60 and Link 16 system to serve as an adversary in another at-sea scenario of RIMPAC.

The cutter collaborated with other opposing force ships to track and hunt vessels, earning nine “constructive kills,” which involved providing targeting data to allied assets that resulted in immediate simulated strikes.

Midgett also participated in a shooting competition among RIMPAC participants. Though a cutter would typically employ its weapons for self-defense or in a law enforcement context, this shoot-off gave participants a GPS coordinate for a simulated island and asked them to conduct a land-attack mission.

“That’s not typical for us, island targets,” said the ship’s weapons officer, Ensign Matthew Pindell, adding that the ship used its 57mm MK 110 cannon with an 8-mile range to go after the target.

Pindell said the crew recently used its Phalanx close-in weapon system to shoot at a missile target towed by a Learjet, noting that this type of experience is important for the upcoming deployment to 7th Fleet’s area of responsibility.

‘Filling a gap’

As Midgett pushes the boundaries of what a Legend-class national security cutter can do, the service has found areas that require improvement, Carmichael said. For example, the ship and its crew lack “the ability to plan and execute long-range planning efforts that are very complex in a maritime environment. So we’re learning some of those lessons from our Navy counterparts as well and their best practices. We actually brought some of their subject matter experts onboard” so the crew could learn and then share those lessons with the other ships in the class.

The Coast Guard’s fast response cutters in Honolulu — roughly a third of the length of national security cutters — have taken on presence missions in Oceania that were once conducted by much larger vessels.

Cmdr. Cynthia Travers, the commanding officer of William Hart, said her ship and crew of 24 — along with the two other fast response cutters based in Honolulu — have had an outsized impact on American presence in Oceania.

Though the ship class is usually called for law enforcement, search and rescue, and environmental protection missions around the Hawaiian Islands, “last fall we operated between Oahu and American Samoa. It’s about a 10-day transit for us, so it’s sort of doing a larger-ship mission with a small Coast Guard cutter,” she said.

That transit was uncomfortable for the crew, she acknowledged, and the cutter had to sail at just 10 knots (12 mph) to conserve fuel and ensure it could make it to American Samoa without refueling at sea, given no assets were available to sail with William Hart or link up midway.

Fast response cutters out of Hawaii and Guam are more likely taken on these longer-range transits.

During William Hart’s trip to Oceania last fall, it operated alongside ships from the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and France to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Though the mission itself wasn’t high end, it put the cutter in a location in which U.S. Navy ships were unlikely to operate, creating an opportunity for the joint force.

And during Large Scale Exercise 2021, William Hart and a team of Marines combined their sensors into a single, common-operating picture of the battlespace. Ships and aircraft the Coast Guard saw with its sensors were shared to the Marine Corps network, using both the Coast Guard’s Rescue 21 system and the Marines’ satellite communications technology, building a clearer picture for maritime domain awareness.

“We’re sort of filling a gap that exists right now. There are some larger cutters that are under construction that we’re hoping will be able to take on this mission in the years to come, but for right now the fast response cutter is the tool that we have here that can respond to that need,” Travers said.

The British company’s latest agreement with Israel Aerospace Industries and its subsidiary Elta Systems is aimed at proposing a long-range radar for the Defence Ministry’s Serpens program.

The program, valued in excess of £400 million (U.S. $486 million) is for the British Army’s next-generation weapon-locating system that needs to be able to detect and find hostile mortars, artillery and rockets.

The agreement will see Elta’s battle-proven Compact Multi-Mission Radar offered by Babcock in the U.K. Babcock said in an Aug. 11 statement that the system will be partly produced and integrated in the U.K.

Britain wants to replace its current capability, the Saab-supplied Mamba, around 2026. The Swedish company was awarded a £46 million deal in 2020 to extend the life of the program until Serpens is ready for deployment.

The agreement with IAI comes about two weeks after Babcock inked a deal with another Israeli company to propose technology to the British Army — on this occasion to offer a battle management, command, control, communications, computers and intelligence capability for a new ground-based air defense capability.

Babcock signed the memorandum of understanding with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to offer the latter’s Micad platform for the Defence Ministry’s Sky Sabre GBAD program, which is based on the Common Anti-Air Modular Missile built by the European consortium MBDA.

Babcock and Rafael have worked together in the delivery and maintenance of the Sky Sabre system since 2017, with the first units introduced to British forces in the Falklands.

“It makes clear sense for both parties to further develop the collaboration so that Micad can be readily offered into the wider land GBAD program,” Simon Holford, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance director at Babcock, said during the Farnborough Airshow last month when the tie-up was announced.

The program, dubbed Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser, or AMP-HEL, would serve as a means to protect infantry brigade combat teams from small drones, L. Neil Thurgood, the tech office’s director, said Aug. 10 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

SAIC is the lead integrator per an other transaction authority agreement that allows for rapid prototyping over a five-year period, according to Greg Fortier, the company’s vice president of fires, aviation and missile defense. The company is also involved in integrating a palletized high-energy laser capable of defeating small drones, he added.

That palletized laser system was developed in conjunction with the Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, and it has already been demonstrated and deployed, Jeannie Sommer, deputy director of the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, said at the symposium.

That office is also preparing to field its first directed-energy short-range air defense systems — a 50-kilowatt laser mounted on a Stryker combat vehicle — by the end of the fiscal year, Sommer added.

The office is also preparing to deliver the first prototypes of the Army’s Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser system, which features a truck-mounted, 300-kilowatt laser, by the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024.

Dynetics, a Leidos company, is the integrator for the IFPC-HEL effort. Major test events are expected for the system later this year.

The Army’s pursuit to counter small drones is heating up through directed-energy solutions, among other means, including a new development: The service’s Air and Missile Defense Cross-Functional Team has taken on an effort to develop a capability that can detect, track and defeat small drones, Col. Pat Costello, the team’s new director, said on a panel at the symposium.

These drones can remain airborne until a target is identified ― at which point they set a course for that target and go out in a blaze of glory.

While substantial funding for acquisition and development of these systems is already built into 2023 budget plans, the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps said the service is already making plans to ask for even more.

“So, would I seek more munitions?” Gen. Eric Smith told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in July. “Yes … the ‘23 budget just went across, and the ‘24 budget is working through the department right now.”

Building loitering munitions into newly reorganized Marine Corps infantry battalions has been part of service strategy since 2021, when Commandant Gen. David Berger published his annual Force Design 2030 update.

In that update he referred to the success of the weapons systems in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, a 2020 conflict waged heavily with drones and long-range artillery in which Azerbaijan prevailed over breakaway state Artsakh and Armenia.

The Russia-Ukraine war has intensified focus on loitering munitions.

The U.S. has sent Ukraine hundreds of Aexev Phoenix Ghost and Aerovironment Switchblade tactical unmanned aircraft systems to counter Russia’s own systems, like the Lancet.

Like much in that conflict, it’s not fully clear yet what the impact of these systems has been. But those familiar with the systems say they bring to the battlespace both an inexpensive missile capability and the psychological element of fear and uncertainty: You never know when you’re being tracked by an eye in the sky that’s just waiting for the signal to strike.

Smith said the presence of loitering munitions in that fight and future ones was changing how all parties had to act.

“The ability of those drones to be nearly ubiquitous across the battlefield, because they’re so inexpensive, you have to contend with that,” he said. “And you have to drop your signature. If you’re seen, either because you radiate, or because you’re physically seen, you’re targeted almost immediately.”

Smith mentioned two specific developmental loitering munitions capabilities the Marine Corps is testing out: organic precision fires-mounted, or OPF-M, and organic precision fires-infantry, or OPF-I.

In 2021, the service awarded Bethesda, Maryland, based Mistral Inc. a contract as part of a deal valued up to $44 million to design, build and test OPF-M in partnership with UVision LTD and integrate a launcher into three land and sea platforms: the joint light tactical vehicle, the light armored vehicle-mortar and the still-in-development long-range unmanned surface vessel.

In his speech, Smith revealed the outcome of an OPF-M live-fire test that he said took place in 2021.

“We struck five for five moving targets, that means armor killers, at ranges in excess of 80 kilometers,” Smith said. “So, test done. Now it’s about, how much can we procure using the budget we have, because we have to balance the Marine Air-Ground Task Force.”

Requested in the 2023 defense budget is funding to continue building out loitering munition capabilities.

Inside the nearly $12 million allocated for the Futures Directorate are resources for experimentation with an advanced, “fully autonomous, remotely operated” loitering munition unmanned aircraft system that can seek and engage targets by day or night. Plans for 2023 include an “unmanned kill-chain” demo using small unmanned aircraft systems to further prove this concept.

For organic precision fires-mounted, 2023 will see the completion of integration and testing for a JLTV variant and groundwork laid for testing with 122 mm munitions, according to Marine Corps and Navy budget materials.

The year 2023 will also be the launch of the man-portable version of the system, to be known as OPF-Light.

The Marine Corps has yet to pick a maker for OPF-Light, described in a 2020 contract solicitation as a man-portable system with at least 90 minutes of endurance, a munition range of up to 20 kms and the ability to swarm with other systems.

The 2023 budget request includes $7.5 million to conduct market analysis, plan vendor demos and begin integration of a miniaturized command-and-control system, scaled, like the system itself, to fit into a backpack for easy transport.

Beginning in fiscal 2024, budget documents note, the Marine Corps will start developing additional munitions capabilities.

Notably absent from the funding list is a multiyear research effort that the Marine Corps appears to have quietly concluded: the low-cost UAV swarming technology, or LOCUST, designed to launch both intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones and loitering munitions “from air, surface, ground, and sub-surface platforms to conduct both singular and swarm operations across battlespace.”

While the Navy and Marine Corps released some impressive demo footage of the concept in 2016 and 2017, development of the program appears to wrap up in 2022, with $8 million in research funding.

No research dollars are allocated for 2023, and no acquisition strategy is outlined.

National Defense Department spokesman Arsenio Andolong said in a statement carried by the Philippines’ national news agency that the government is currently formalizing the termination of the contract with Russia’s Sovtechnoexport for 16 Mi-17 helicopters.

“We are also preparing to initiate a diplomatic dialogue with the Russian side regarding matters arising from the project’s cancellation,” Andolong said, adding cryptically that “changes in priorities necessitated by global political developments resulted in the cancellation of the project by the previous administration.”

He also said efforts are being made to retrieve the $48.2 million down payment for the helicopters made in January.

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana previously told The Associated Press that the government was canceling the $322.3 million deal due to concerns over potential U.S. sanctions. He also said the decision was approved by then-President Rodrigo Duterte, whose administration had signed the contract for the helicopters in November 2021.

The Philippines insisted as recently as March 2022 that the procurement would go ahead despite the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began Feb. 24.

Those buying Russian arms could be hit with sanctions under the U.S. law Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. The law was passed in 2017 and is meant to discourage governments or entities from acquiring weapons as well as military hardware and parts from American adversaries like Iran, North Korea and Russia.

Without the Mi-17s, the Philippines would be left with an outstanding requirement for heavy transport helicopters. The Mi-17 was chosen because of its relatively spacious cabin as well as its rear ramp or clamshell doors (depending on the variant).

Transport helicopters are a vital component of the Philippine military; the country is an archipelagic nation made up of more than 7,000 islands and is beset with natural disasters and ongoing insurgencies. Its existing fleet of transport helicopters are often engaged in relief operations or transporting troops and equipment.

The Mi-17 has similar payload capabilities to several Western transport helicopter types, but its price was a draw for the Philippines, with the country seeking to modernize its aging and modest military in the face of a tight budget.

The triad concept is to integrate and converge inherent capability from U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Army Cyber Command and Army Special Operations Command to provide campaign options to commanders globally.

“We know Army space capabilities will become even more formidable when used in concert with cyber and special operations,” Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler, commander of Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said Aug. 9 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. “This new triad allows us to leverage individual strengths to maximum effect, providing flexible options to counter mis- or disinformation, cyberattacks and irregular asymmetric threats. These options include striking anywhere and anytime with surprise and retaliating or responding to adversary attack.”

In looking at the Army’s warfighting concept — multidomain operations — which lays out how the Army approaches adversaries and threats across all domains, the triad has a role to play whether that is in competition, in crisis or in conflict, Lt. Gen. Jon Braga, commander of USASOC, told reporters in a briefing at the conference.

“Information operations are extremely important, influence operations are extremely important, contributing to integrated deterrence is extremely important,” Braga said, but should operations move into conflict, the triad would have a different role to play, possibly “a combination of non-lethal effects like information operations, then perhaps a more kinetic [option], denying a capability or affecting a certain capability of an adversary — that would be a different flavor of approach.”

The idea for the triad was, in part, born out of Karbler’s previous experience at U.S. Strategic Command where he started to see the power of global integration. Karbler reasoned that Space, Cyber and Special Operations are similarly integrated.

But it wasn’t until Karbler’s deputy commander for operations, Brig. Gen. Isaac Peltier, a special operations officer, brought in that unique perspective that he realized the utility of space, cyber and special operations coming together regularly.

And while each brings its own unique capabilities, there are similarities.

“We all leverage intel extremely well for everything we do,” Braga said, “but there was more and more as we thought about it, a similarity, in a way, of our uniqueness, we are all transregional, we all work for multiple bosses. We all bring effects to try and have larger outsized effects for relatively small forces that contribute to a much larger joint force. We all approach it philosophically the same way.”

“We see this globally,” Lt. Gen. Maria Barrett, US Army Cyber Command commander, said. None of the triad participants are restricted to a particular region even though they support specific COCOMs. “It enables us to deliver more options across the spectrum of competition, crisis and conflicts,” she added.

Additionally, as the triad establishes a framework, “we can turn these things more quickly than done before,” Barrett said, and share data more easily “in an age where data is absolutely paramount.”

The triad leaders have formed a campaign plan to implement the new concept, but one of the ways it is already operating together is through exercises.

The triad is participating together in Project Convergence which is set to begin later this fall and is a wider campaign of learning the Army puts on annually to experiment with emerging concepts and capabilities.

While space capabilities will be used in the exercise, Karbler said, “it’s not just going to be a sole space solution in a particular use case. We’ve got to drive toward SOF, cyber, space integrated solution to that case study.”

That experimentation with combined capabilities will help teach the triad what works best and what it has to go back and tailor, he added.

“Some of the things we have are very unique and different, so just making sure those capabilities can talk to one another is part of the effort we’re working on,” Braga noted.

And Project Convergence and other exercises will give the triad the opportunity to show the Army and the Joint Force what it can offer when it comes together, he said.

During the June 28 test at the Andøya Test Center in Norway, the Ramjet 155 was fired from an L39 cannon and its engine successfully ignited, according to a statement from Boeing, an American firm partnered with the Norwegian company to develop and produce boosted artillery projectiles. The engine draws in air to bolster the forward motion of the projectile.

The companies aim to design their artillery round for use by L39 and L58 cannons, the statement read.

The Army currently uses the L39 cannon and is preparing to field an Extended Range Cannon Artillery weapon in fiscal 2023 that is an L58, meaning it has a longer gun tube to achieve greater range.

“We believe the Boeing Ramjet 155, with continued technology maturation and testing, can help the U.S. Army meet its long-range precision fires modernization priorities,” Steve Nordlund, Boeing Phantom Works vice president and general manager, said in the statement.

The launch followed years of research, development, and more than 450 static and short-range tests, Boeing said.

Boeing and Nammo were awarded a contract in July 2019 under the Army’s XM1155 program, an effort to further develop extended-range artillery munition. The duo was awarded a Phase II technology contract nearly two years later.

“The test results demonstrate that ramjets are viable and can fundamentally change the future of artillery,” Nammo CEO Morten Brandtzæg said. “The test — with all aspects from cannon firing, to the projectile body, fins, and trajectory all functioning perfectly — represents a real technological breakthrough in artillery.”

The test’s key achievement was to “make sure that [the projectile] was able to come out of the cannon and survive the launch, you have a lot of G-forces,” Mark Altobelli, director of Boeing Phantom Works, told Defense News in an interview at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, this week.

The industrial team also observed the ignition, verified the propulsion performance and ensured the motor burns in a stable way while maintaining good thrust, Dan Palmeter, a business development official with Phantom Works, added in the same interview.

As the Army modernizes its long-range precision fires to include adding the Extended Range Cannon Artillery weapon to its inventory, ramjet technology could be a way to solve the problem of wearing out the gun tube. Current munitions in a longer tube are wearing the cannons out earlier. The ramjet projectile doesn’t require the breach pressure in the cannon that a regular projectile does, explained Palmeter.

The development program with the Army has two years left, Palmeter and Altobelli said. The program will culminate with a guided flight.

Also among those companies working on ramjet technology for the U.S. government is Raytheon Technologies, which is partnered with the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research to design the engine. Northrop Grumman has also completed testing of ramjet technology as part of the XM1155 program.

The Air Force selected the E-7 in April to replace a portion of its E-3 Airborne Warning and Control fleet, a command-and-control platform the service has been operating for more than 40 years. The service’s proposed 2023 budget calls for retiring 15 E-3s, or about half the fleet, and includes $227 million in research, development, test and evaluation funds for the replacement.

Steven Wert, the program executive officer for the service’s Digital Directorate, which oversees the Wedgetail acquisition, told reporters this week that if Congress fails to pass a fiscal 2023 defense budget on time, it would delay the Air Force’s current plan to award Boeing a contract by February of next year.

Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to pass an appropriations bill, a fast-approaching deadline made more challenging by the August congressional recess. If Congress fails to approve a budget, it must approve a continuing resolution as a stopgap measure to keep the government funded until it does. Continuing resolutions freeze funding at prior-year levels and restrict agencies from awarding contracts to start new programs or increasing procurement quantities.

Agencies can request “anomalies” to shield priority programs from the impact of a CR, and Wert told reporters during an Aug. 10 briefing at the Air Force’s Life Cycle Management Industry Days event in Dayton, Ohio, the service plans to request protection for the E-7 acquisition.

At the same time, the service is also seeking congressional approval to shift, or reprogram, fiscal year 2022 funding from other accounts to speed up the E-7 award. If approved, the Air Force could award the deal to Boeing before February, Wert said.

“That new-start reprogramming would give us the flexibility to potentially speed it up somewhat,” he said. “It’s not going to be a dramatic speed-up, but we’re doing everything we can.”

The Air Force expects to have its first E-7 on hand by fiscal 2027. While the aircraft is an off-the-shelf solution, it will require some software upgrades as well as integration of new hardware.

The Royal Australian Air Force also flies the Wedgetail and Wert said the service is working closely with Australia to identify options to collaborate and accelerate test and evaluation. The U.K. also signed a deal with Boeing in 2018 to buy five E-7s and is considering expanding that procurement and Saudi Arabia has shown interest in the platform, Wert said.

“The potential is there for cooperative programs between the nations that are currently using the E-7,” he said. “We are hearing of a lot of interest from other nations to look to E-7 as well.”

With reporting by Stephen Losey

The scheme worked. The employees successfully had the material shipped, complete with radioactive stickers on the side, then confirmed delivery.

But the workers were actually investigators from the Government Accountability Office, the congressional watchdog, and they were testing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s ability to regulate the sale and procurement of dangerous materials.

The act, and a subsequent report from the GAO, alarmed Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who is now calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to overhaul its licensing system as a way to avoid a national security disaster.

“Anyone could open a shell company with a fraudulent license to obtain dangerous amounts of radioactive material that could be weaponized into a dirty bomb,” Torres told Defense News in an interview on Wednesday. “Disperse radioactive material in a city as densely populated as New York, and it could cause catastrophic damage.”

The commission classifies radioactive material into five categories of risk. Only categories one and two currently are subject to its independent license verification system – a loophole that Torres and the GAO fear that an individual or group could exploit to wreak havoc by building a dirty bomb that combines combines conventional explosives with category three radioactive materials.

Torres, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, is pressing the NRC to immediately expand its independent license verification system to include category three quantities of radioactive materials. He formally made the licensing overhaul request in a letter seen by Defense News on Wednesday. This request is in line with the GAO’s recommendations in what Torres called an “alarming report.”

The report notes that the watchdog “provided a copy of a license that GAO forged to two vendors, subsequently obtained invoices and paid the vendors.” It notes that the GAO did not accept the shipment at the delivery point and instead “safely and securely” returned the radioactive material to the vendors.

“While radioactive materials have legitimate medical and industrial uses, the illicit possession, purchase and use of radioactive materials poses an extreme threat to homeland security,” Torres wrote in his letter. “Without additional security protocols, including a more rigorous system of independent license verification, a terrorist could exploit current vulnerabilities to obtain radioactive material and weaponize it into a dirty bomb against a soft target in America’s largest cities.”

The GAO report notes that a malicious actor could use category three materials to build a dirty bomb. For instance, it says that someone “might be able to obtain a category 2 quantity by purchasing and aggregating more than one category 3 quantity from multiple vendors.”

Torres also wrote in his letter that the NRC should “assess the need for independent license verification for category four and five radioactive materials,” which goes beyond the scope of the GAO recommendations.

Category three materials are frequently used in fixed radiation gauges to measure things like moisture and density in soil and asphalt for industries ranging from mining to oil and gas to agriculture. The lowest-tiered categories of radioactive materials are often used in devices such as Xray machines.

David McIntyre, a NRC spokesman, told Defense News that the agency is “taking actions to address the issues identified by the GAO.”

“Upon release of the report, we immediately contacted manufacturers of these radioactive sources to ensure they are vigilant with sales, especially for new customers or unusual activities,” said McIntyre.

McIntyre noted the NRC is “expediting a rule change already in progress” that would include “consideration of multi-factor authentication” for category three radioactive materials.

“In contrast, imposing immediate additional security requirements would risk unintended impacts to important and safe medical, academic and industrial uses of these materials,” he added.

The GAO report acknowledged that “NRC is taking some steps to strengthen its licensing program” but cautioned that “current gaps will remain unaddressed until at least the end of 2023.”

The scenario at this summer’s Rim of the Pacific multinational naval exercise allowed the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment to test its ability to contribute to a future fight at sea — a significant departure from the service’s land warfare focus of the past two decades.

During this test at RIMPAC, the Corps’ newest formation scattered a few task units ashore, who spread out sensors, set up the armed NMESIS truck, and established a fires and air direction element to confirm targets and authorize strikes.

As the carrier strike group approached the strait, it ordered the 3rd MLR to strike an adversary ship attempting to block the waterway. The order and the target came from the ship to the Marines ashore, who “achieved a simulated mission kill on the adversary surface vessel, enhancing the CSG’s [carrier strike group’s] ability to transit the strait unimpeded,” Maj. Oryan Lopes, 3rd MLR’s current operations officer, told Defense News.

“The CSG strait transit was an excellent opportunity to further refine how the 3d Marine Littoral Regiment could support the Combined Maritime Force Component Commander in a future fight. On many levels, the 3d MLR learned how to better communicate within and contribute to maritime operations across multiple task forces,” he added.

A lot of technical work remains before the regiment can declare itself operationally capable: It needs to continue refining the exact number of Marines and pieces of gear it requires, and it needs to reach digital interoperability with the rest of the joint and combined force.

But at RIMPAC 2022, the regiment proved its value thus far to a future maritime fight, in which it would work alongside American partners of the first island chain as a stand-in force in the Pacific. The U.S. Defense Department has previously described that area as “the islands running from the Kurils, through Taiwan, to Borneo, roughly encompassing the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and South China Sea.” The regiment was designed specifically to operate inside contested areas like the South China Sea, scattering small units around islands and shorelines to conduct missions and then maneuver to a new location before being detected.

RIMPAC ran from June 29 to Aug. 4. An experimentation scheduled for this fall will work out the finer details of how to maneuver and communicate during these distributed operations.

“If you look at standing in, you’re standing in next to a constellation of allies and partners, so we’re vetting how doable this is,” Col. Stephen Fiscus, the assistant chief of staff for force development, said during an interview.

Though “other venues provide the ability to get more exquisite and detailed in how” the new stand-in forces concept will work, he said, RIMPAC proved to be a great first chance to demonstrate “the blocking and tackling level of stuff, to show that you could do this together” in real-world operations.

What is 3rd MLR?

The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment was redesignated in March to serve as a first-of-its-kind stand-in force in the Pacific. Whereas other traditional formations — Marines operating from U.S. Navy ships, or units on rotational deployments in theater — could fight their way into contested areas, the idea is that 3rd MLR as the stand-in force would already be inside that space. Rather than the joint force having to kick the door down to get in, 3rd MLR could hold the door open, the thinking goes.

Col. Tim Brady, the unit’s commander, said 3rd MLR’s very presence is expected to change the calculus for potential adversaries.

“By standing in, we are deterring the malign behavior. We’re designed to fight and operate inside the enemy’s weapons engagement zone, to conduct and support sea-denial and sea-control operations, and, ultimately, to set the conditions for those joint force follow-on actions. And we’re training and experimenting with all that here at RIMPAC,” he said in the interview.

The key to its success is the range of capabilities brought together under a single Marine colonel, he added.

In February, the Corps activated its 3rd Littoral Anti-Air Battalion. In June, just ahead of RIMPAC, the Marines redesignated 3rd Littoral Combat Team and Combat Logistics Battalion 3. RIMPAC was the first time Brady could operate with these three subordinate commands, which provide the bulk of the capabilities the stand-in force needs: “the lethality of the littoral combat team and what it provides; the air direction, air control, early warning and air surveillance that the littoral anti-air battalion provides; the tactical logistics that the CLB provides,” Brady said.

He called his new unit light, maneuverable and, importantly, tailorable to the mission. “When we actually conduct [expeditionary advanced base operations], we take elements and pieces from each one of those subordinate battalions [and] re-task-organize into different task elements that [can] contribute to the joint and combined force,” he said, noting that he can pull the right amount of people and gear from each subordinate unit based on the mission and expected duration.

For Fiscus, who oversees force modernization for Marine Forces Pacific, the ability to create the right force package for the right mission — and do so quickly — is what makes 3rd MLR interesting.

“I can’t emphasize how novel it was to redesign [the subordinate units], so Tim can now, organic to his formation, task-organize in such a way that you can have that really deep sensing and understanding of the airspace, surface space,” all within a small unit that can either hide or defend itself as needed.

Brady said his regiment would include about 2,000 Marines, though the service’s Force Design 2030 initiative may adjust that slightly as the unit continues to experiment and identify the required capabilities. Force Design 2030 aims to prepare the Marine Corps for a potential future fight with an advanced adversary, such as Russia or China, in line with the National Defense Strategy.

The 3rd MLR is expected to reach initial operational capability by September 2023, and Fiscus called RIMPAC something of a midway point. The unit is mostly done reorganizing and has ideas for how to operate as a stand-in force, but it will still conducting experiments to refine its composition and tactics.

The eyes and ears

Fiscus and Brady agree that 3rd MLR’s greatest contribution to the joint force will be sensing inside an enemy’s weapons engagement zone, which rotational forces might be unable to access without escalating a tense situation or coming under fire.

To be an effective set of eyes and ears on the inside, Brady said Marines’ sensors, communications suites and weapons must be fully integrated with the naval, joint and combined force. Digital interoperability is a primary focus.

During the scenario in which a carrier strike group transited a strait, the 3rd MLR was asked to conduct sea control and sea denial operations from a strategic ground position, making communication between Marines ashore and ships at sea pivotal to mission success.

Maj. Adrian Solis, an action officer on Fiscus’ staff who focuses on fires modernization, said Marines observed how information moved between destroyers and the 3rd MLR, and whether that info went where it was needed or if Marines had to take data from one system and type them into another.

“That’ll be the crux of it: How do we improve our digital interoperability so we take slack out of the kill web, so we execute those kill chains and we’re not wasting time?” Solis said.

The stand-in force’s ability to be in multiple locations, understand the environment and pick out targets will make the force’s kill webs more robust, Brady said, but that kill web must also include sensors and shooters from “our allies and partners who are going to be alongside us inside the first island chain.”

“RIMPAC … really provides us an unprecedented opportunity in that multinational foundation to be able to train and experiment with that digital interoperability — those people, processes and systems — to be able to close kill webs,” he added. “Every time you add a new ally or partner or new aspect of the joint force to that [kill web], there are things that we need to overcome to improve upon the speed and the data transfer of that knowledge and battlespace awareness.”

What comes next?

The next year will be chock-full of milestones and tests for the regiment as it races toward its September 2023 declaration of initial operational capability. Though the regiment will primarily use gear already in the Marine Corps’ inventory, it will begin experimenting with two new items to help with maneuver and resupply: a stern landing vessel in lieu of the eventual Light Amphibious Warship, and a long-range unmanned surface vessel.

Brady said his regiment plans to eventually create a company to operate the unmanned vessel, but in the short term, later this summer, “we do receive 39 Marines as part of the research and development platoon. Most of that experimentation and training will happen back in Norfolk, [Virginia], but those Marines will come to us later on this summer.”

Fiscus pointed to the stern landing vessel as a highlight of the 3rd MLR’s upcoming work, saying the ship would head to Southern California and then make its way out to the regiment in Hawaii.

“That’s a lot of the experimentation of how do we continually maneuver — move, maneuver and sustain … the stand-in force,” he said.

Brady previously said the regiment might use the stern landing vessel to move from Oahu to the big island of Hawaii, then go ashore for operations at the Pohakuloa Training Area. While Marines conduct missions at the range, the vessel might practice maneuvering at sea to stay hidden, or it could retrieve spare parts, ammunition, food and other goods to resupply Marines when they return to the beach.

Later this fall, Brady told Defense News, the Marine Corps will deactivate Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 12th Marines and redesignate the unit as Medium Missile Battery under the 3rd Littoral Combat Team, in what the colonel called a major milestone in implementing and shaping the 3rd MLR and its lethality.

After that redesignation — the last major organizational move, other than the eventual long-range unmanned surface vessel company — Brady said he’ll be able to get into the weeds of several outstanding questions.

“What is the size of those task elements, to be able to have a sensing task element and a fires task element? And how many Marines truly is that? What is needed to lift and move those Marines, and what systems are needed to be able to incorporate the kill web for those Marines? Those are the things we’re going to be looking at here this fall,” he explained.

In February, the 3rd MLR will conduct the first-ever service-level training exercise for a Marine littoral regiment, operating around Southern California while testing tactics, techniques and procedures. The unit will then go right into the Balikatan exercise in the Philippines.

Brady said training alongside Philippine counterparts will help the Corps “get after some of the things that they are developing much like our capabilities, in the archipelagic coastal defense concept and the coastal defense regimen.”

Brig. Gen. Joseph Clearfield, the deputy commander of Marine Forces Pacific, told Defense News in a separate interview that the Philippines is one of many key allies and partners in the region that are reshaping their forces in similar ways to the 3rd MLR.

“I spend an awful lot of time in this job interacting with countries on the first island chain to the second island chain; that’s probably one of my primary duties. They are so excited about Force Design [2030], and they all have initiatives underway … to replicate a Marine littoral regiment-like unit,” he said. “They really want to know everything they can about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”

In the fall of 2023, Brady said, the larger Marine Forces Pacific’s capstone exercise will demonstrate a range of capabilities — including those of the 3rd MLR — paving the way for a declaration of initial operational capability.

“The MLR is a capability that exists right now today. We are ready and prepared to fight now,” Brady said. “Regardless of all those things we’re going to be continuing to train and experiment with in the future, and the future capabilities that are going to come to the MLR, we’re [a] capable unit today.”

The Space Development Agency announced last month that L3Harris and Northrop Grumman had each won a contract to produce 14 satellites for the Tranche 1 Tracking Layer in low Earth orbit. These satellites are designed to warn of and track missiles launches.

The United States, Russia and China are among countries developing hypersonic missiles, which can travel faster than five times the speed of sound and are harder to track than conventional missiles.

The Maxar-provided platforms will carry “various mission payloads, including optical terminals for space mesh networking, Ka-band communications, and infrared sensors,” according to Tuesday’s statement.

Maxar will manufacture the platforms in Palo Alto and San Jose, California, and will delivery them in 2024, with launches to begin in April 2025, according to the release.

Maxar declined to comment on the contract value for the deal with L3Harris, whose contract with the Defense Department has a potential value of about $700 million. L3Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

Based in Westminster, Colorado, Maxar provides space technology and geospatial intelligence to both government and commercial customers.

This version clarifies how fast hypersonic missiles can travel.

The cost of the contract is yet to be determined, but the government has allocated up to CA$5 billion (U.S. $4 billion) to purchase the planes.

Airbus was designated as the only supplier qualified to provide the tankers to the Royal Canadian Air Force. As a result, a formal request for its proposal for the planes was issued to the firm on May 13, 2022.

National Defence Department spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande said the government has not yet received the proposal.

“Once Airbus’ response is received, an assessment and negotiation will occur,” Lamirande said, noting that a contract is expected to be awarded by April 2023.

The Canadian Armed Forces found the Airbus A330 MRTT, a refueling and transport plane, is the only aircraft qualified for the job. The Air Force wants the first of the A330s operational by 2028.

The new aircraft are part of Canada’s Strategic Tanker Transport Capability project, meant to replace the existing CC-150 Polaris aircraft flown by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Those refueling and transport planes have been in operation since 1992.

Originally six new aircraft were to be purchased as part of the Strategic Tanker Transport Capability project. But on July 14, Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand announced the military would acquire two used Airbus A330s and eventually upgrade those to become part of the Air Force’s tanker and transport fleet.

Canada acquired those used aircraft, built in 2015, from International Airfinance Corp., a global aircraft leasing company, in a deal worth about $102 million.

Lamirande said the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the commercial aviation industry created favorable market conditions to procure the used A330-200 aircraft at the best value for Canada. The government is scheduled to receive the aircraft in December 2022 and April 2023, and then ferry them to the country shortly after, she added.

“There are a number of predelivery and acceptance activities that need to be completed before any used aircraft will arrive in Canada” Lamirande said. Those include scheduled preventive maintenance, limited retrofit to prepare for service within the Air Force, painting of the aircraft, final delivery inspection and acceptance checks.

The used aircraft are currently configured for long-haul commercial use. They will initially be used for an interim period to perform cargo and troop airlift operations, said Lamirande. The planes could also be used to transport civilian passengers during humanitarian relief operations, as well as fly VIPs, such as Canada’s prime minister.

These used aircraft will, after an interim period of operations, be turned over to Airbus for conversion to the MRTT configuration as the other four new aircraft expected to be purchased.

Increasing access to the Arctic due to warming conditions will likely result in more frequent economic and military competition with these nations, which will have homeland defense ramifications. To deter malign activities in the region, ensure the defense of North America, and realize a stable and secure Arctic, we must demonstrate a commensurate commitment to the region.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that competitors, such as Russia and the People’s Republic of China, desire to influence international norms and alter the behaviors of allies, partners and Arctic-focused countries for the benefit of these competitor nations. Russia and the PRC have made their intentions for the region clear through the promulgation of strategic documents that underline their commitment to the Arctic.

The Arctic is a top priority for Russia. Russia is aggressively militarizing the region while proclaiming intent to infringe upon freedom of navigation in the Northern Sea Route. Russia will likely continue enhancing its military capabilities and developing the region’s resources and infrastructure. These enhancements will strengthen Russian air and coastal defense capabilities, expand its nuclear deterrent credibility, and increase its ability to place North America at risk.

Russia’s geographic proximity to North America makes it the most acute security concern to U.S. interests in the Arctic; however, Russia’s irresponsible behavior in Ukraine highlights reasons why all Arctic nations should be concerned with Russian activities.

As a self-declared “near-Arctic nation,” the PRC is endeavoring to establish a foothold in the northern latitudes. The PRC has consistently increased its scientific, economic and military activities in the Arctic over the last five years, working toward increasing influence through economic exploitation to gain access to vital natural resources. The PRC is applying all instruments of national power to enhance its Arctic influence, including expanding initiatives such as the Polar Silk Road.

As competitors invest in military infrastructure and Arctic capabilities in such close proximity to the U.S., allies and partners, they bring the threat even closer to home. Ultimately, the advanced threat capabilities that Russia and the PRC can bring to the Arctic region reduces key leadership decision space and erodes credible deterrence options.

The actions taken by strategic competitors in the Arctic necessitate a response. The National Defense Strategy outlines the importance of campaigning to strengthening deterrence capabilities and attaining military advantages through enhancing joint force capabilities. Both of these elements are essential toward achieving the National Defense Strategy’s goal of a stable Arctic region where threats to the U.S. homeland are deterred.

The purpose of Arctic campaigning is to deter strategic competitors and shape their behavior in order to remain in competition and avoid crisis and conflict. One prominent example of Arctic campaigning is exercises that demonstrate capability, readiness and the will to operate in the northern latitudes. Executing large-scale joint and multinational force exercises under Arctic conditions exhibits credible deterrence while broadcasting robust U.S. defense capabilities. These demonstrations, when messaged appropriately, have a profound deterrent effect on competitors, molding perceptions and shaping their actions.

Campaigning also entails collaborating with likeminded nations, organizations and institutions in pursuit of shared objectives. We will realize a key collaboration milestone this month with the official opening of the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies — the Department of Defense’s newest regional center. The Ted Stevens Center will focus on building strong networks with domestic and international Arctic-minded security leaders, and conducting focused analytical research, all aimed toward advancing the department’s priorities in the Arctic.

Aligned under NORTHCOM, the center will advance awareness on Arctic issues, address the implications of environmental change and emphasize the importance of maintaining a rules-based order in the region. The institutional capabilities that the Ted Stevens Center brings will help promote the Arctic as a peaceful and stable region, where international cooperation based on shared values is paramount.

Ceding the Arctic to competitors will result in accepting unnecessary risk to North America. The changing Arctic environment and increasing competitor activities in the region should invoke a sense of urgency in all of us. Efforts to develop and demonstrate Arctic capabilities, as well as establishing or strengthening multilateral organizations to address Arctic concerns, are clear indicators of progress.

More work remains, however, to effectively deter malign competitor activities, while also working together with likeminded nations to ensure an Arctic region governed by a rules-based international order.

U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck leads North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command. In this latter role, he serves as the Defense Department’s Arctic capabilities advocate.

The message in a lengthy policy statement issued by the Cabinet’s Taiwan Affairs Office and its news department followed almost a week of missile firings and incursions into Taiwanese waters and airspace by Chinese warships and air force planes.

The actions disrupted flights and shipping in a region crucial to global supply chains, prompting strong condemnation from the U.S., Japan and others.

An English-language version of the Chinese statement said Beijing would “work with the greatest sincerity and exert our utmost efforts to achieve peaceful reunification.”

“But we will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures. This is to guard against external interference and all separatist activities,” it said.

“We will always be ready to respond with the use of force or other necessary means to interference by external forces or radical action by separatist elements. Our ultimate goal is to ensure the prospects of China’s peaceful reunification and advance this process,” it said.

China says its threatening moves were prompted by a visit to Taiwan last week by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but Taiwan says such visits are routine and that China used her trip merely as a pretext to up its threats.

In an additional response to Pelosi’s visit, China said it was cutting off dialogue on issues from maritime security to climate change with the U.S., Taiwan’s chief military and political backer.

Taiwan’s foreign minister warned Tuesday that the Chinese military drills reflect ambitions to control large swaths of the western Pacific, while Taipei conducted its own exercises to underscore its readiness to defend itself.

Beijing’s strategy would include controlling the East and South China seas via the Taiwan Strait and imposing a blockade to prevent the U.S. and its allies from aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack, Joseph Wu told a news conference in Taipei.

Beijing extended the ongoing exercises without announcing when they would end, although they appeared to have run their course for the time being.

China’s Defense Ministry and its Eastern Theater Command both issued statements saying the exercises had achieved their targets of sending a warning to those favoring Taiwan’s formal independence and their foreign backers.

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party administration are “pushing Taiwan into the abyss of disaster and sooner or later will be nailed to the pillar of historical shame!” Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei was quoted as saying in a statement on the ministry’s website.

Troops taking part in the exercises had “effectively tested integrated joint combat capabilities,” the Eastern Theater Command said on its Twitter-like Weixin microblog.

“The theater troops will monitor changes in the situation in the Taiwan Strait, continue to conduct military training and preparations, organize regular combat readiness patrols in the Taiwan Strait, and resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” spokesperson Col. Shi Yi was quoted as saying.

Taiwan split with the mainland amid civil war in 1949, and its 23 million people overwhelmingly oppose political unification with China while preferring to maintain close economic links and de facto independence.

Through its maneuvers, China has pushed closer to Taiwan’s borders and may be seeking to establish a new normal in which it could eventually control access to the island’s ports and airspace.

Along with lobbing missiles into the Taiwan Strait, the nearly week-long drills saw Chinese ships and planes crossing the center line in the strait that has long been seen as a buffer against outright conflict.

The U.S., Taipei’s main backer, has also shown itself to be willing to face down China’s threats. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in deference to Beijing, but is legally bound to ensure the island can defend itself and to treat all threats against it as matters of grave concern.

That leaves open the question of whether Washington would dispatch forces if China attacked Taiwan. U.S. President Joe Biden has said repeatedly the U.S. is bound to do so — but staff members have quickly walked back those comments.

Beyond the geopolitical risks, an extended crisis in the Taiwan Strait — a significant thoroughfare for global trade — could have major implications for international supply chains at a time when the world is already facing disruptions and uncertainty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

In particular, Taiwan is a crucial provider of computer chips for the global economy, including China’s high-tech sector.

In response to the drills, Taiwan has put its forces on alert, but has so far refrained from taking active countermeasures.

On Tuesday, its military held live-fire artillery drills in Pingtung County on its southeastern coast.

Australia’s recent change of government is a chance to “reset” its troubled relationship with China, but the new administration must “handle the Taiwan question with caution,” a Chinese envoy said Wednesday.

China has brushed aside foreign criticism of its actions, and its ambassador to Australia said he was “surprised” that Australia had signed a statement with the United States and Japan that condemned China’s firing of missiles into Japanese waters in response to Pelosi’s visit.

Xiao Qian told the National Press Club that China wanted to resolve the situation peacefully, but “we can never rule out the option to use other means.”

“So when necessary, when compelled, we are ready to use all necessary means,” Xiao said. “As to what does it mean by ‘all necessary means?’ You can use your imagination.”

In London, the British government summoned Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zeguang to the Foreign Office on Wednesday to demand an explanation of “Beijing’s aggressive and wide-ranging escalation against Taiwan” following Pelosi’s visit.

“We have seen increasingly aggressive behavior and rhetoric from Beijing in recent months, which threaten peace and stability in the region,” said Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. “The United Kingdom urges China to resolve any differences by peaceful means, without the threat or use of force or coercion.”

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Front-line infantry service members have long suffered casualties in higher proportion to other positions, with infantry soldiers comprising 90% of U.S. military combat deaths since World War II.

During the Trump administration, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis created the Pentagon’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force to examine capability shortfalls to address what he saw as decades-long gaps in the equipping and training of close-combat units. While leadership of the task force now falls to the Army rather than the secretary of defense, the initiative continues to look at shortfalls across multiple services’ small units.

With AI the name of the game in the Pentagon’s modernization efforts, the four-year old task force is turning to academia and industry leaders to regain a competitive edge in close combat and examine how autonomous technology can be leveraged to address small units’ priorities.

“We are transforming the joint force by integrating next-generation technologies and war-fighting concepts,” said Col. Shannon Nielsen, the task force director, in a statement. “[This] enhances our ability to compete globally, deter adversaries, and win on all-domain battlefields at the small-unit level.”

The mission of the task force is twofold: to increase the “lethality” of close combat soldiers while decreasing causalities of U.S. infantry members.

Part of the initiative focused on identifying and developing options for investment that include “more lethal and discriminating individual weapons systems, while recognizing the imperative to lighten load for infantry squads,” according to a memo put out by Mattis.

In 2020, Mattis’ successor Mark Esper directed the Army to take control of the task force, citing the branch’s large share of infantry and special operators. The task force moved its headquarters to Fort Benning in Georgia.

“We’ve gotten smaller and leaner since we arrived in Fort Benning,” said Ed Agee, a principal program analyst with the task force, in an interview with C4ISRNET.

The force, which still includes members coming from multiple services, is now looking toward AI and robots as the next step in filling infantry squads’ capability gaps. At the end of July, the force hosted the first meeting of the Artificial Intelligence for Small Unit Maneuver working group at Fort Benning.

Building on the task force’s mission of improving lethality for small units, the group is particularly interested in providing autonomous and AI technology to close combat troops in the Army, Marines and Special Forces.

Participants at the event witnessed technologies that might eventually be used on the battlefield, such as a four-legged robot, or “dog,” and small unmanned aerial vehicles. The event was part of the Army’s “10x platoon” experiment, which tries out technologies to upgrade infantry forces for the decade ahead.

“We’re pushing the edge of the envelope – thinking outside the box,” Agee said.

Although the robots and autonomous technologies tested at the event were not armed, Agee said he could see the beginnings of the transition to armed capabilities based on the remote technologies witnessed at the event.

Different technologies could find homes in different services depending on the capability gaps each service has within its small units.

The Army, for example, views the “dog,” as a top priority, Agee said. The four-legged robot could be used to scout a building or location that might come under fire, taking the place of a soldier. Meanwhile, Special Forces prioritizes technologies that allow the command’s platforms to operate in denied airspace where communication or other network technologies might be blocked, he explained.

The working group included operational end-users who have participated in combat. At the event, they had the opportunity to provide feedback to engineers and other industry personnel and academics in attendance about the technologies tested and what improvements or changes they would like to see made based.

By Aug. 31, defense leaders from the services will provide the task force with a list of capability gaps for the Army, Marines and Special Operations. From there, he said the task force will turn to industry leaders and academics to brainstorm ideas about what AI technologies could assist in meeting those needs.

“If a technology shows great promise, and it’s successful with development and the decision is made to make it a program of record, it would go through...an accelerated version of acquisition,” Agee said.

He explained that the decision to accelerate an acquisition timeline depends on the promise of the technology and what shortfall the technology is addressing.

The working group, including the task force, meets monthly with members of the joint AI community.

But first, Congress must act.

Many of the recommendations in the February DoD Report, “State of Competition within the Defense Industrial Base,” are clear, thoughtful and urgently needed. However, there are two misguided ideas throughout the report that are worth interrogating — a focus on small businesses instead of startups and a lack of understanding of the role of institutional venture capital in America’s innovation ecosystem.

These two themes reflect commonly held misunderstandings in the defense innovation community.

The first misstep is that the Pentagon report repeatedly emphasizes working with “small businesses” when instead they should be focused on working with “startups.” Many people use these terms interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing. American entrepreneur Steve Blank has a video on the pivotal differences between a small business and a startup.

In short, “small business” describes the universe of commercial entities that have fewer than 500 employees, including restaurants, barber shops, small consulting firms, auto repair workshops or any other type of business. “Startups” are the tiny subset of all small businesses that have the aspiration and have been recognized for their potential to take innovative groundbreaking ideas and become massive companies.

Professional venture capital investors evaluate, recruit and select promising startups, and then fund only the ones they believe have the greatest potential. Top firms often evaluate hundreds or even thousands of companies before selecting one to invest in. As a result, the statistics VC funding are remarkably similar to highly selective National Football League rosters — according to analysis by Stanford University, only two in every thousand new businesses end up securing VC funding.

In business, venture backing is a predictive signal of future potential. Over the past 50 years, only 0.19% of new businesses have been backed by VC firms. However, that tiny sliver have accounted for a whopping 28% of the total number of U.S. initial public offerings.

Said differently, a VC backed startup is roughly 200 times more likely to eventually become a public company than those that are not backed. Similar disparities are true for R&D spend, as that tiny percentage of new companies that are VC backed have gone on to account for an incredible 42% of the R&D spending by U.S. public companies. There are of course notable exceptions to these general trends, but the data demonstrate a stark truth: VC-backed companies are exponentially more likely to be drivers of economic growth and R&D innovation than their non-VC backed peers.

Given this data, you would expect the Pentagon to be rushing to recruit VC-backed startups to join the fight. Sadly, the Small Business Innovation Research program expressly prohibits the government from using VC investment as a criterion for contract awards. 15 U.S. Code § 638 - Research and Development, (7) Evaluation criteria states that “a Federal agency may not use investment of venture capital or investment from hedge funds or private equity firms as a criterion for the award of contracts under the SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research] program.” Despite calling itself “America’s Seed Fund”, the SBIR program expressly ignores the opinions of professional seed investors.

As we look to compile the best team we can to win the future fight, the Pentagon and Silicon Valley need to team up. Ignoring the role of institutional venture capital in identifying, supporting, and scaling the most promising commercial technology firms is at best inefficient and at worst it is grossly irresponsible.

Congress should remove this unhelpful provision of SBIR law and clear the way for the Pentagon to begin aggressively recruiting venture backed startups to join the national security fight.

Andrew Powell is the CEO and co-founder of Learn to Win, a software training company headquartered in Silicon Valley.

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The platform built by the small data and technology company will use an Internet of Things system to monitor individual weapons at scale, according to the release.

“The resulting insights will enable units to regularly assess weapons’ health, reduce failure rates, extend the lifetime of a weapon and optimize maintenance plans, enhancing performance and reducing costs,” the company stated in the release.

Armaments Research will work in partnership with firearms company Sig Sauer, which the Army chose in April to manufacture the 6.8mm rifles and automatic rifles that will replace the standard-issue M4 variants in the close combat force. The Army’s general purpose forces will continue to use the M4.

“Our team is thrilled to partner with Sig Sauer to deliver this groundbreaking platform and refresh the Army’s weapons for the first time in several decades,” Armaments Research CEO Michael Canty said in the release. “The Army NGSW program office is pushing the boundaries in seeking a modern, data-driven approach to weapons readiness and we are honored to contribute.”

The company did not provide specifics in the release about the terms of its contract, including the price or the duration. Sig Sauer’s contract is for 10 years, with a $20.4 million initial delivery order.

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Armaments Research offers services to clients in the defense and law enforcement spheres. It claims on its website that its systems reduce tactical response time by 60%.

The Next Generation Squad Weapons program is an effort the Army launched in 2017 to prototype and develop more lethal small arms for the close combat force.

The differences between South Korea and China underscored a reemerging rift between the countries just a day after their top diplomats met in eastern China and expressed hope that the issue wouldn’t become a “stumbling stone” in relations.

Bilateral ties took a significant hit in 2017 when South Korea installed a missile battery employing the U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, in response to nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

The decision drew an angry reaction from China, which said the anti-missile system could be reconfigured to peer into its territory. Beijing retaliated by suspending Chinese group tours to South Korea and obliterating the China business of South Korean supermarket giant Lotte, which had provided land for the missile system.

South Korea’s previous president, Moon Jae-in, a liberal who pursued engagement with North Korea, tried to repair relations with Beijing by pledging the “Three Nos” — that Seoul wouldn’t deploy any additional THAAD systems; wouldn’t participate in U.S.-led missile defense networks; and wouldn’t form a trilateral military alliance with Washington and Tokyo.

Moon’s dovish approach has been discarded by his conservative successor, Yoon Suk Yeol, who has vowed stronger security cooperation with Washington and expressed a willingness to acquire more THAAD batteries to counter accelerating North Korean efforts to expand its nuclear weapon and missile programs.

Commenting on Tuesday’s meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his South Korean counterpart, Park Jin, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin in a briefing Wednesday reaffirmed Beijing’s stance that the THAAD system in South Korea undermines its “strategic security interests.”

He added that Seoul had committed to a policy of “Three Nos and One Limit,” the latter apparently referring to a pledge to limit the operations of the THAAD battery already in place, something Seoul has never publicly acknowledged.

“The two foreign ministers had another in-depth exchange of views on the THAAD issue, making clear their respective positions and enhancing mutual understanding,” Wang said. He said the minsters agreed to “attach importance to each other’s legitimate concerns and to continue to handle and control the issue prudently” to prevent it from becoming a “stumbling stone” in bilateral relations.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it understands that Wang was referring to the policies of the Moon government with the “Three Nos and One Limit” remark.

It said the Yoon government has maintained that THAAD is a defensive tool for protecting South Korean lives and property, and that it’s a national security matter that Seoul isn’t willing to negotiate with Beijing. It also insisted that the “Three Nos” were never a formal agreement or promise.

“During the meeting, both sides confirmed their differences over the THAAD matter, but also agreed that the issue should not become an obstacle that influences relations between the countries,” the ministry said.

South Korea, a longtime U.S. ally, has struggled to strike a balance between the United States and the increasingly assertive foreign policy of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government.

Deepening conflicts between Washington and Beijing over a broad range of issues including Taiwan, Hong Kong, trade, and Chinese claims to large sections of the South China and East China Seas have increased fears in Seoul that it would become squeezed between its treaty ally and largest trading partner.

During his meeting with Park, Wang Yi said the countries should be “free from external interference” and shouldn’t interfere in each other’s domestic affairs, an apparent jab at Seoul’s tilt toward Washington.

Wang also called for the countries to work together to maintain stable industrial supply chains, a possible reference to fears that Chinese technology policy and U.S. security controls might split the world into separate markets with incompatible standards and products, slowing innovation and raising costs. South Korea is facing pressure from the Biden administration to participate in a U.S.-led semiconductor alliance involving Taiwan and Japan which China opposes.

Associated Press video producer Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.

The evaluation comes as some European armies are in the market to equip their soldiers with robots for anything from cargo carrying to surveillance and attack missions. Manufacturers hope the technology will one day be as ubiquitous as drones are in the air domain, though navigating the intricacies of earthly terrain has proved to be a harder nut to crack.

Spain’s robotic evaluation program, dubbed Scorpion, began in early 2021, though sporadic tests with THeMIS began as early as 2019 under the country’s Fuerza 35 effort, a major modernization program for the Army.

Milrem’s flagship product has been a staple at defense exhibitions for years, and the company displayed the THeMIS at last November’s FEINDEF show in Madrid, Spain.

“The THeMIS has already prove[d] itself to 12 countries, seven of which are members of NATO, as a capable, robust and versatile system,” said Kuldar Väärsi, CEO of Milrem Robotics. “We are glad that Spain has joined as the 13th user of THEMIS and chosen Milrem Robotics as a partner to build their robotic and autonomous systems capabilities.”

The company’s robot saw front-line action alongside deployed Estonian forces during the now-defunct Barkhane counterterrorism mission, led by France, in Mali. According to the manufacturer, the vehicle there logged 1,200 kilometers (746 miles miles) in harsh desert conditions.

Milrem, backed by the Estonian government, booked a major win in 2020 when it received the European Commission’s nod to lead a pan-European Union effort to create a standardized architecture for a new-generation unmanned ground system. While the effort is meant to be hardware-agnostic, it uses the THeMIS as a reference platform.

The deal follows QinetiQ’s announcement that it plans to acquire software provider Avantus Federal by year’s end — “an important step in the execution of QinetiQ’s five-year ambitions to expand our presence in the US,” QinetiQ CEO Steve Wadey said Friday in a statement about the purchase.

In the latest deal, QinetiQ US will provide services for “system development, fabrication, sensor and system integration, prototyping of multi-function sensor suites, and technology assessment efforts” to the Prototyping Integration Facility of the C5ISR Center at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the release said.

“We are proud to continue our partnership with the C5ISR Center and its mission partners to rapidly deliver innovative capabilities to support our national security,” said Shawn Purvis, president and CEO of QinetiQ US.

The indefinite delivery, infinite quantity contract is made up of a one-year base period followed by four one-year option periods, the release stated.

QinetiQ was named the 64th largest defense company in the Defense News Top 100 list, with a fiscal 2021 defense revenue of $1.5 billion.

The Army’s C5ISR Center — short for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance — researches and develops advanced technology. It operates under Combat Capabilities Development Command, which is under the purview of Army Futures Command — an organization responsible for modernizing the force.

The Defense Health Agency’s Omnibus IV contract is a 10-year, multiple-award contract meant to deliver medical and technical services to the Pentagon, the company said in a statement on Aug. 9.

The Omnibus IV contract addresses four market segments that companies could be selected to provide services to the DoD: research and development; R&D support services; regulatory processes; and translational science and support services. Other contractors to receive work in all four market segments include General Dynamics Information Technology, Military Health Research Foundation and Leidos, according to the DHA ordering guide.

“As a trusted health solution provider, Battelle provides cross-disciplinary scientific and engineering expertise to improve public health and advance medical discoveries,” Nicole Brennan, division manager of health and research at Battelle, said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to working with our team to provide the most innovative solutions to the DoD that will improve health outcomes.”

Battelle conducts R&D, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, since its founding in 1929, the company serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries.

The Military Health System is one of America’s largest and most complex health care institutions. It’s responsible for providing health services through both direct and private care to some 9.6 million beneficiaries, composed of uniformed service members, military retirees and family members.

“This acquisition is an important step in the execution of QinetiQ’s five-year ambitions to expand our presence in the US, the largest security and defence market in the world,” the company’s CEO, Steve Wadey, said in a statement Aug. 5.

The deal would double QinetiQ’s U.S. business, according to the release, and is to be completed by the end of this year, subject to regulatory approvals. A combination of existing cash and new debt facilities are expected to finance the acquisition.

QinetiQ was the 64th largest defense firm in 2021, per Defense News’ Top 100 list, which ranks companies according to defense revenue. Its total revenue for the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2022, was about £1.32 billion, or $1.8 billion, per the list. According to the company, its revenue has grown for the last five years.

Avantus, which was not on the list, brought in $298 million in total revenue in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022, and its revenue has grown by double-digit rates over the last three years, according to the release.

Founded in 2016 and based in McLean, Virginia, Avantus provides data and cyber services to the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, among other American military and government entities. QinetiQ also provides products and services to the U.S. government.

Angered by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, China has sent military ships and planes across the midline that separates the two sides in the Taiwan Strait and launched missiles into waters surrounding the island. The drills, which began Thursday, have disrupted flights and shipping in one of the busiest zones for global trade.

Ignoring calls to calm tensions, Beijing instead extended the exercises without announcing when they will end.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said that beyond aiming to annex the island democracy, which split with the mainland amid civil war in 1949, China wants to establish its dominance in the western Pacific. That would include controlling of the East and South China Seas via the Taiwan Strait and imposing a blockade to prevent the U.S. and its allies from aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack, he told a news conference in Taipei.

The exercises show China’s “geostrategic ambition beyond Taiwan,” which Beijing claims as its own territory, Wu said.

“China has no right to interfere in or alter” Taiwan’s democracy or its interactions with other nations, he added.

Wu’s assessment of China’s maneuvers was grimmer than that of other observers but echoed widespread concerns that Beijing is seeking to expand its influence in the Pacific, where the U.S. has military bases and extensive treaty partnerships.

China has said its drills were prompted by Pelosi’s visit, but Wu said Beijing was using her trip as a pretext for intimidating moves long in the works. China also banned some Taiwanese food imports after the visit and cut off dialogue with the U.S. on a range of issues from military contacts to combating transnational crime and climate change.

Pelosi also dismissed China’s outrage as a public stunt, noting on NBC’s “Today” show that “nobody said a word” about a Senate delegation a few visit months ago. Later on the MSNBC news network, she said Chinese President Xi Jinping was acting like a “scared bully.”

“I don’t think the president of China should control the schedules of members of Congress,” she said.

Through its maneuvers, China has pushed closer to Taiwan’s borders and may be seeking to establish a new normal in which it could eventually control access to the island’s ports and airspace. But that would likely elicit a strong response from the military on the island, whose people strongly favor the status quo of de-facto independence.

The U.S., Taipei’s main backer, has also shown itself to be willing to face down Beijing’s threats. Washington has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in deference to Beijing, but is legally bound to ensure the island can defend itself and to treat all threats against it as matters of grave concern.

That leaves open the question of whether Washington would dispatch forces if China attacked Taiwan. U.S. President Joe Biden has said repeatedly the U.S. is bound to do so — but staff members have quickly walked back those comments.

Beyond the geopolitical risks, an extended crisis in the Taiwan Strait, a significant thoroughfare for global trade, could have major implications for international supply chains at a time when the world is already facing disruptions and uncertainty in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In particular, Taiwan is a crucial provider of computer chips for the global economy, including China’s high-tech sectors.

In response to the drills, Taiwan has put its forces on alert, but has so far refrained from taking active counter measures.

On Tuesday, its military held live-fire artillery drills in Pingtung County on its southeastern coast.

The army will continue to train and accumulate strength to deal with the threat from China, said Maj, Gen. Lou Woei-jye, spokesperson for Taiwan’s 8th Army Command. “No matter what the situation is ... this is the best way to defend our country.”

Taiwan, once a Japanese colony, had only loose connections to imperial China and then split with the mainland in 1949. Despite never having governed the island, China’s ruling Communist Party regards it as its own territory and has sought to isolate it diplomatically and economically in addition to ratcheting up military threats.

Washington has insisted Pelosi’s visit did not change its “one China policy,” which holds that the United States has no position on the status of the two sides but wants their dispute settled peacefully.

Associated Press writer Ashraf Khalil in Washington contributed to this report.