The officials said that Naval Air Systems Command, which grounded the controversial tilt-rotor aircraft about three months ago, will lift it and allow the services to begin implementing their plans to get the Osprey back into the air. Austin met with the top service leaders, including for the Navy and Air Force, on Friday morning, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet made public.

Air Force knows what failed in fatal Osprey crash but not why

The Osprey has been grounded for almost three months following a Nov. 29 Air Force Special Operations Command crash in Japan that killed eight service members. The Japan incident and an earlier August Osprey crash in Australia that killed three Marines are both still under investigation. The Air Force has said that it has identified what failed in the Japan crash, even though it does not know yet why it failed.

The decision to end the flight ban is up to Naval Air Systems Command, but Austin had asked for an informational briefing on the matter because of the significant safety concerns and the fact that three of the services and a critical ally are involved in the program. While Austin does not have approval authority in the return to flight process, U.S. officials said his endorsement of the services’ plan was considered a key step.

In the months since, the services have worked on plans to mitigate the known material failure by conducting additional safety checks and establishing a new, more conservative approach to how the Osprey is operated.

The Dutch Defence Ministry intends to work with local shipbuilder Damen Naval for the naval platform and with Thales for the above-water warfare system, though it still needs to reach agreement with the companies, the government said. The four existing air-defense frigates will be replaced one by one, with the first new vessel expected to be operational in 2036.

The current Zeven Provinciën-class frigates came into service between 2002 and 2005 and would need to be replaced in the 2030s, according to the ministry. In addition, modern weapons such as hypersonic anti-ship missiles and a proliferation of relatively simple systems such as drones have created a growing threat to naval vessels.

“The current frigates will be at the end of their lifespan in the next decade,” the ministry said in a statement. “The ships’ armament with anti-air missiles is also due for renewal. These projects are therefore being combined.”

The Dutch government is in discussion about cooperation with other European countries seeking to replace frigates, in particular Denmark, Germany and Norway, but has yet to reach any concrete agreement, the ministry said in its letter to parliament. Cooperation could include joint development and construction, as well as joint purchasing, training and maintenance, it said.

“The Netherlands is taking the lead on these ships, but we would welcome other countries joining us,” Van der Maat said in a video statement.

First delivery is scheduled for 2034 at the latest, with the final of the four new air-defense frigates becoming operational in 2041. That means the current fleet will continue to sail for two more years than initially planned, according to the ministry.

Van der Maat’s letter to parliament sets out the requirements for the new frigates, with budget discussions and project approval requests to follow in coming years.

The Netherlands plans to reuse some equipment being installed to modernize its existing air-defense frigates, including two new Active Phased Array Radars and four 127mm cannons against surface targets. The radar and fire control system in the works for two new anti-submarine warfare frigates will be further developed for the new air-defense vessels.

The replacement frigates will have layered air defense, with a preference for various ranges to be covered by missiles from the same manufacturer, the ministry said. The vessels will additionally be equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles, as well as with Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile.

The new frigates “will have long-range weapons at their disposal, enabling them to attack important enemy targets inland from a great distance,” Van der Maat said. “This way, the Netherlands can fulfill its role as a seafaring nation and make an important contribution to safety at sea.”

The frigate replacement is the ministry’s biggest maritime project, with a budget for the vessels of more than €2.5 billion, and an additional €1 billion to €2.5 billion investment for the weapon systems. The budget assumes the bare hull will be built elsewhere in Europe, as is the case for the new anti-submarine warfare frigates, though local construction isn’t ruled out, the ministry said.

The new ships will also include defense against hypersonic weapons, which is not part of the budget due to still being in development, the ministry said. The Netherlands is part of the Hypersonic Defence Interceptor Study project, led by pan-European missile maker MBDA.

The defense ministry is replacing most of its major naval surface combatants in the next 15 years, which it said will significantly improve Dutch maritime capabilities, while the resulting industrial cooperation will “provide a powerful boost to European strategic autonomy and the Dutch defense industry.”

A full-year continuing resolution that would keep fiscal 2023 spending levels through the rest of 2024 means the U.S. Army, for instance, would run out of operations and maintenance funding in the European theater as it trains Ukrainian soldiers to defend against Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country, which has entered its third year.

The financial strain is compounded by the lack of certainty over whether Congress will pass a supplemental funding package that would reimburse the Army for expenses incurred so far in bankrolling support to Ukraine.

The Army already spent $500 million in the European theater in operations and maintenance, and “we were counting on a supplemental to be able to sort of replenish us for that,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at a Feb. 27 Defense Writers Group event. “What that means is probably by late spring, summer, we would have to make some difficult choices about other [NATO] exercises, for example, that our forces participate in.”

Additionally, the Army has been funding support to Israel to include deployments of units to the Middle East in the event they are needed, she added.

Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told reporters Feb. 28 at the Pentagon that the service spent $100 million in U.S. Central Command’s area of operations as well as another $500 million to support the U.S. Southwest border security mission.

“I do worry. Our budget has been flat for the last couple years. We don’t have a lot of cash under the sofa cushions, and if we don’t get a budget and we don’t get a supplemental, we’re going to probably have to cancel some things,” Wormuth said.

The Army is prioritizing current operations, Camarillo said, which means it is “going to have to look to other areas of O&M spending where they “can potentially take some risk,” including “exercises and the degree to which we participate in some around the globe. We might have to scale some of that back in the absence of an appropriation this year.”

For the Air Force, Kristyn Jones, who is performing the duties of the service’s undersecretary, told reporters alongside Camarillo that in order to pay its personnel, training exercises would take the hit.

“Anything that’s already on a [Foreign Military Sales] case won’t have a dramatic impact, but all of the replenishment that we’re expecting in the supplemental is currently impacted. And even things like F-35 [fighter jet] training that we’re planning … with our allies and partners, that’s impacted by not having this appropriation as well.”

The Air Force is focused on trying to ensure flight hours are maintained, but it’s also important, Jones noted, that pilots receive training.

Despite the military’s experience in warfare, “we’re in a different strategic environment and we need to do the exercises, often joint and allied, to prepare for that environment. And the lack of our ability to do that doesn’t allow us to, again, to test the new techniques, the new military tactics that we’d like to have primarily for an Indo-Pacific fight,” Jones said. “That’s really where we need to stretch our muscles a little bit more.”

Learning from sequestration

With a possible extended or full-year continuing resolution, the service undersecretaries said the last time the military felt such a painful budget crunch was during the 2013 sequestration, where the services were required by law to make percentage cuts evenly across spending lines.

One of the fallouts of the 2013 sequestration was a rise in aviation mishaps because vital training flight hours were cut. Military Times and Defense News took a deep dive into aviation mishaps from FY11 through FY18 and uncovered the trend.

“Safety is always going to come first,” said Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven, “but we did look at the lessons of 2013 and sequestration, where we spread risk around the enterprise, and I think the concerns about maintaining ready and trained forces are part of the lessons that we’re using to inform if we get into this worst-case scenario where we don’t have our ’24 budget enacted and we are under a CR.”

“We’re not going to repeat that same peanut butter spread,” he added.

But trade-offs will be inevitable, he acknowledged, and “we’ll have to look across the board to see how to maintain the focus on current operations.”

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — The Indian government is closer to buying a multibillion-dollar package of cruise missiles, air defense weapons, surveillance radars and fighter jet engines following approval from the country’s highest decision-making body on security affairs.

At a Feb. 21 meeting, the Cabinet Committee on Security approved the four procurement projects cumulatively worth about 350 billion rupees (U.S. $4 billion).

According to local media reports quoting government sources, the approved items were BrahMos cruise missiles for the Navy, air defense guns for the Army, ground-based air surveillance radars and new engines for the Air Force’s MiG-29 fighters.

Approval by the committee, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi chairs, is a necessary step along the Defence Ministry’s contractual pathway.

Local media reported the BrahMos missile deal would be signed in March. The consolidated contract would include some 220 weapons to arm Indian frigates and destroyers — the largest-ever individual BrahMos order for India.

The contract will reportedly involve a mix of standard 290-kilometer-range (180-mile-range) and extended 450-kilometer-range (280-mile-range) BrahMos missiles, of which 75% is locally made.

“The BrahMos is expected to considerably enhance the potential for surface-to-surface attacks by Indian Navy ships, especially with extended-range missiles,” Rahul Bhonsle, a director of the New Delhi-based consultancy Security Risks Asia, told Defense News.

India is also exporting BrahMos missiles to the Philippines under a deal worth about $375 million signed in January 2022. Atul Rane, who leads the missile manufacturer BrahMos Aerospace, said last year the company has set a goal of exporting $5 billion worth of BrahMos weapons by 2025.

The committee also approved the purchase of Sudarshan air defense systems from private firm Larsen & Toubro — an acquisition worth approximately $844 million. The Army would use the systems, which feature radars and 40mm guns, to protect its installations and the country’s border areas.

The Sudarshan approval followed an October 2022 request for procurement seeking 141,576 ammunition rounds to accompany 220 guns, including pre-fragmented, programmable proximity fuses and smart rounds.

The Sudarshan is also competing in an Air Force competition for 244 close-in weapon systems.

“Air defense guns have assumed importance because of the overall weak air and missile defense profile with dated equipment, with the Indian Army in particular, and the add-on threat from drones,” Bhonsle explained.

The Indian Army relies on antiquated Bofors L/70 and ZU-23-2B towed guns, and their replacement has become urgent given the emerging threat of drones and loitering munitions.

Larsen & Toubro is also set to provide the air surveillance radars, worth about $723 million. India is prioritizing better radar coverage of its northern and western borders to guard against Chinese and Pakistani aircraft, respectively. Augmenting the existing radar network in phases, the Air Force will operate the new indigenous sensors.

And Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. is to manufacture new RD-33MK engines for MiG-29 fighters in collaboration with Russia, with the project worth about $639 million.

These projects underscore India’s attempts to maximize indigenous input. The Make in India economic policy seems to be gaining groud, Bhonsle said.

“However, it should be noted there is also considerable foreign collaboration involved in many of the projects, as up to 50% or more is permissible under existing rules for acquisition,” Bhonsle added.

Rear Adm. Brad Andros, the commander of NECC, told Defense News he’s been tasked with drawing up ideas for the “NECC of the future,” in line with a broader Navy Force Design 2045 effort.

Using the Maritime Expeditionary Security Forces as an example, he said over the last two decades they evolved from a riverine force into one that now conducts escort missions and port security operations.

“They’ve got to develop into creating a bastion for the ships and submarines” on patrol or even in combat overseas. The 2000 attack on Arleigh Burke-class destroyer Cole highlighted the importance of scanning the waters for asymmetric threats — in that case, a bomb-laden small boat — but current events show this maritime security force will have to keep an eye out for unmanned boats as well as unmanned drones in the air and unmanned craft under the water, too.

If the Maritime Expeditionary Security Forces will have to become counter-unmanned experts to conduct their mission, “while I’m at it, why don’t I just be able to do the offensive side of it as well?”

Andros said this led to a larger conversation about NECC’s role, partially inspired by current events.

“Taking what we’re seeing in the Black Sea, taking what we’re seeing in the Red Sea: how do we become that dilemma-creator?” he said.

Ukrainian forces have been able to alter what activities Russian ships can conduct in the Black Sea based on their shore-based drone operations. Similarly, the Houthi forces ashore in Yemen have severely restricted shipping in the Red Sea due to their shore-based attacks.

In both cases, the forces didn’t need to be at sea on expensive ships; they have been effective controlling a confined body of water from land.

Andros said the Marine Corps is pursuing its own version of this with the Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept. He said NECC wants to find a way for its force to be additive to what the Marines are doing.

If done right, though, he said NECC could free up a capital ship from having to protect a confined body of water, assuming the U.S. had the right agreements in place to put NECC forces on the ground.

Andros acknowledged this is a departure from NECC’s traditional work, but it may be necessary to have offensive capabilities in order to adequately create a safe haven for U.S. ships and subs overseas.

Navy Expeditionary Combat Command today is “built on protect: law enforcement and patrolling,” the admiral said.

To go after these offensive capabilities, he said the command would have to look into what technical skills the sailors would need for this work, ensure the right ratings and structures are in place to man these units, and realign resources to equip these sailors with offensive drones and other systems.

“It’s not a wholesale change, but it’s enough of a tweak that it’s got to be very deliberate, and it’s going to probably be a good five- to seven-year process to get after it,” Andros said.

Equipment reset

As part of the modernization effort, Andros is looking at NECC’s mismatched gear and considering resetting the inventory.

The force has done a lot of acquisition outside the formal capability development process so it could move fast, he said. It typically bought things that were commercial-off-the-shelf, not expensive, and in small quantities.

As a result, there’s not always commonality throughout the whole NECC force, creating a particular challenge for the sailors tasked with maintaining them.

Asked what he wanted from industry as NECC considers this equipment reset, Andros said the two most important things are that capabilities are packaged into small form factors, and that unit-level sailors can repair themselves.

Andros anticipates increasingly operating in locations without a mature logistics infrastructure, which makes the ability for the sailors to fix their own gear pivotal. He noted that configuration management — ensuring all the radios are common, all the drones are common, and so on — is important for maintainability and one of the reasons NECC is considering this gear reset.

Rearming ships at sea

NECC already has the ability to reload missiles into ships’ vertical launching system cells from ashore or from a barge at the pier, through its Navy Expeditionary Logistics Support Group.

But the idea of being able to reload VLS cells at sea has taken on a new importance in the last year, after Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro highlighted it as a key gap the Navy needed to fill to prepare for a potential war in the Pacific.

So expeditionary reload teams from NECC have been called in as subject matter experts during testing, including an August 2023 demonstration involving destroyer Porter and Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship William McLean.

This took place during the Large Scale Exercise 2023 event, which Andros said was important.

“At the tactical level — the humans doing it, taking an object, swinging it over and putting it in — we’re good,” he said, even if the specific systems being tested as part of Del Toro’s effort are new.

But who would command and control this evolution — who would call for the rearm-at-sea to take place, who would be in charge of safety, who would actually operate the cranes and more — still hasn’t been decided. Incorporating this evolution into a major fleet exercise allowed fleet leaders to start working through some of those questions, he said.

As for whether his NECC sailors would ultimately be the ones to embark on Military Sealift Command ships and conduct the rearming themselves, or if MSC would train its crews to operate the cranes, Andros said, “either way is fine by me, just as long as whoever does it is certified to operate the equipment.”

Paparo’s confirmation was advanced by a voice vote without any objections late Wednesday evening, alongside 25 other senior military promotions. The chamber also confirmed Aprille Joy Ericsson as assistant secretary of defense within the Department of Defense’s research office in a voice vote.

Paparo will replace Adm. John Aquilino, who has served in the INDOPACOM role since April 2021. Paparo currently serves as commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, and was nominated for the new role last August.

How Adm. Paparo will lead the US military in the Indo-Pacific

During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 1, Paparo listed China, Russia and North Korea as the most pressing threats to U.S. military interests in the Pacific.

“If confirmed, I will ensure that we maintain the overmatch that preserves stability today, tomorrow, next week and for the decades to come,” he said.

Paparo is the son of an enlisted Marine and the grandson of an enlisted sailor who fought in World War II, according to his command biography. The Pennsylvania native has served in a variety of leadership roles during his 37-year military career.

A TOPGUN graduate, Paparo has logged more than 6,000 hours flying the F-14 Tomcat, the F-15 Eagle and the F/A-18 Super Hornet and has 1,100 carrier landings under his belt. As a fighter pilot, he took out a surface-to-air missile site in Kandahar during the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

He was one of hundreds of military leaders whose promotions and confirmations were held up for months last year after Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., staged a protest over the Defense Department’s abortion access policies.

Tuberville dropped those holds in December, but Paparo’s confirmation took several more weeks because of lingering background work by the Senate committee.

INDOPACOM oversees more than 380,000 American servicemembers stationed overseas and is responsible for all U.S. military activities in 36 nations.

The government’s “Enhanced Lethality Surface Combatant Fleet” review, released Feb. 20, advocates for a flotilla of 26 warships, more than double the 11 hulls the service currently possesses. The government has accepted the recommendations except for one regarding the continuation of an upgrade for aging Anzac-class frigates.

“The size, lethality and capabilities of the future surface combatant fleet ensures that our Navy is equipped to meet the evolving strategic challenges of our region,” Chief of Navy Vice Adm. Mark Hammond said in a statement following the report’s unveiling.

Jennifer Parker, an expert associate at the National Security College within the Australian National University, told Defense News the force could achieve its new goal, even if “plans of this magnitude are going to have challenges.”

The plan

To supplement its forthcoming nuclear-powered submarines, to be acquired under the AUKUS agreement with the U.K. and U.S., the future surface combatant fleet will feature nine so-called tier 1 destroyers and frigates, 11 smaller tier 2 frigates, and six optionally manned vessels.

Tier 1 vessels will comprise three existing Hobart-class air warfare destroyers — to receive an upgrade to the Aegis combat system and the installation of Tomahawk missiles — and six new Hunter-class anti-submarine frigates. BAE Systems was originally supposed to produce nine frigates, with the first to be commissioned in 2034.

Parker, a former naval officer, said the most significant problem for the service is a looming capability gap, as the first-of-class Anzac frigate will not sail again, and a second is set to retire in 2026, meaning the Navy will have nine total warships by the end of this decade.

“Most predict an increased period of risk in the late 2020s, and that is where Australia has the capability gap,” Parker said, noting the the service should consider how to maximize its remaining capability and operational availability during this time.

With this pending shortfall, the review recommended commissioning 11 general-purpose frigates at least the size of the Anzacs to “provide maritime and land strike, air defence and escort capabilities,” the government explained in a summary of the report.

Australia plans to procure the first three frigates from overseas, with the remainder constructed in Henderson, Western Australia. The Navy has narrowed contenders to Germany’s MEKO A-200, Japan’s Mogami class, South Korea’s FFX Batch II/III, and Spain’s Alfa 3000. The government will make a selection next year, with the first delivery scheduled in 2030.

The planned six large optionally crewed surface vessels are based on an American design and feature 32 missile cells. Built in Henderson and destined to enter service from the mid-2030s, Parker said these are not traditional surface combatants because “their role will be to extend the magazine capability” of other ships.

Although Defence Minister Richard Marles said they would be crewed, Parker predicted they could end up as unmanned platforms.

“There are legal issues with lethal autonomous weapons and operating uncrewed surface vessels, so until those legal issues are overcome, the Australian government wasn’t about to announce that we’re going to have some sort of floating magazine that can launch missiles,” she said.

Apart from surface combatants, the review proposed a fleet of 25 “minor war vessels” for constabulary tasks. These include six Arafura-class offshore patrol vessels, or OPV, slashed from the original 12 that Luerssen Australia is constructing.

“The OPV is an inefficient use of resources for civil maritime security operations and does not possess the survivability and self-defence systems to contribute to a surface combatant mission,” the review stated.

The money

Marles said the entire plan is “fully funded” thanks to an additional AU$11.1 billion (U.S. $7.3 billion) allocated over the next decade, including AU$1.7 billion (U.S. $1.1 billion) in the next four years.

Parker said this amount is “probably feasible,” but added that the Treasury plans to only increase defense spending from 2027 to 2028. “I don’t know how they’re going to be able to resource those things without increasing defense spending in May,” she explained.

But even with the budget allocation, it doesn’t mean the Defence Department can spend that money, she said.

“They still need to go through the approval processes for that specific project,” she added. “I think the challenge is they need to convince the Australian public that defense requires increased spending.

Marles had promised defense expenditure would move from an anticipated 2.1% of gross domestic product by 2030 to 2.4% by that time, but Parker said that is insufficient to fund so many naval acquisitions.

The people

Amid the plans for new construction, a new shipbuilding plan is due later this year.

Parker noted many questions remain over that sector’s workforce, but a nationwide approach addressing education, migration and infrastructure factors would help.

But another challenge is crewing. The Defence Department planned to raise the number of military members by 2,201 in the 2022-2023 time frame, but instead it suffered a net loss of 1,389 uniformed personnel.

The U.S. military may run out of personnel funds before the end of the year, be forced to scale back operations and see ongoing modernization efforts harmed if Congress fails to pass a defense spending bill by the end of next week, service leaders warned Tuesday.

The undersecretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force said they’d have billions of dollars in “misaligned” funds — money that exists but not in the right budget lines to support their current spending needs — if they’re stuck with a full-year continuing resolution that keeps fiscal 2023 spending levels through the rest of 2024.

They agree that they’d have to prioritize current operations first, then people and then acquisition and modernization in a CR.

“You see sailors and Marines across the globe today, performing important missions: the Red Sea is an excellent example of how current operations take precedence,” Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven told reporters at the Pentagon.

Without sufficient funds, he said, “we have to make tough choices. But between the ability to fight tonight and be ready for all the threats, versus preparing for the future and modernizing our forces — it is a tough decision, but we have to lay our chips somewhere, and that’s on the ability to perform our missions today.”

Raven said the Navy’s ability to make that prioritization, though, would require Congress to grant the services some “unprecedented flexibilities” in the form of massive reprogrammings, or moving money from one line item into another.

The Navy, for example, would have $26 billion in the wrong places, and would need Congress to approve $13 billion in formal reprogrammings — more than twice the money Congress approves for the entire Defense Department in a typical year, he said.

But the reprogramming frenzy would be vital to mitigate the risk the services would take in their modernization efforts and industry would face if contracts are delayed or nixed altogether.

The Army is facing a similar misalignment in funds, to the tune of $6 billion.

“These are production rate increases, new starts — both in programs for acquisition as well as military construction projects that we cannot start,” Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo said.

The Air Force’s misalignment in funds equates to over $13 billion and “impacts are particularly challenging in the Space Force, who has seen their budgets rising over the last couple of years,” Air Force Under Secretary Jones said.

‘Burning hotter’

Further complicating funding this fiscal year is the fact that Congress has yet to pass a sweeping supplemental request, which the Pentagon hoped would supply weapons to Ukraine and Israel in support of ongoing wars for both countries and would also fund the Southwest border mission. The lack of supplemental funding compounds the impact of a long-term CR, Camarillo said.

The Army is spending $500 million out of its base budget for operations costs in the European theater, another $100 million in the U.S. Central Command area of operations and another $500 million for the operations along the U.S. Southwest border.

“At one point in time, there was a thought that all of this could be funded through a supplemental, and it is now currently, today, in FY24, being funded 100% out of the Army’s base budget,” Camarillo said.

“We are just burning hotter than we normally would across all of our appropriations accounts,” he said. “[U.S. Army Europe and Africa] in Germany has explained that … they will run out of money this summer in the absence of extraordinary relief, aka a reprogramming.”

This will be a problem across the board, he added, to include running out of funds in the Army’s military personnel account.

Industry impacts

The services planned to ramp up munitions spending in FY24, to bolster their own stockpiles as a hedge against a future fight and to replenish allies’ and partners’ stocks.

A year-long CR puts that industry ramp-up in peril.

Camarillo said he was “particularly concerned” the CR would not allow the services to “send that strong signal to give industry the incentive to be able to facilitize, invest in a workforce and be able to do those extra shifts that we know that we need in order to restore our munitions.”

Camarillo said the Army intended to kick off a multiyear procurement effort for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) interceptors in FY24. Under a full-year CR, it would be $1.2 billion short to reach the production rates needed to achieve the economic order quantities and savings associated with the multiyear procurement deal.

Lockheed Martin has invested significantly in the PAC-3 MSE line to grow production from 550 missiles per year to 650. The Army requested in its FY24 budget $775 million to ramp up that production. The company intends to grow production beyond 650 in the following year, as demand increases due to the war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.

Camarillo added the Army could not begin to field its Mid Range Capability missile to the first unit, which is important to its Pacific deterrence, due to new programs not being allowed to start under continuing resolutions. Nor could it increase production levels for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Javelin missile, and 155mm munitions.

“I will just say that we have always said our goal was to get on 155 artillery 100,000 per month rounds by the end of calendar year ‘25. We cannot get there unless we get both the appropriation and we get the supplemental,” Camarillo said.

“It’s very challenging, because we’re asking industry to lean as far forward as they possibly can and to make investments both in additional personnel, unique tooling and machining that’s required to ramp up production capacity,” Camarillo said.

And the Army planned to buy 225 Coyote counter-unmanned aerial system interceptors – a spending need that hits home, he said, due to the recent deaths of three soldiers in Jordan who were killed by a drone strike from Iran-backed militants — but those, too, could not be purchased in a year-long CR.

For the Navy, Raven said the sea service wanted to double its Standard Missile 6 spending — something particularly timely, as Navy ships are expending the older SM-2 missiles almost daily in the Red Sea, shooting down Houthi missiles and drones — but that cannot happen under the full-year CR.

After the Navy just last week awarded a maintenance contract to HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding to overhaul the attack submarine Boise – which has languished at the pier since 2015 and has been unable to undergo repairs at either a public or private repair yard – Raven said a full-year CR would render the Navy unable to actually fund and execute that contract this year due to a $600 million shortfall in the submarine maintenance funds.

It would also see a $800 million shortfall in amphibious ship spending that could put at risk America-class amphibious assault ship construction, a $2 billion shortfall in submarine construction spending that would threaten the Virginia-class attack sub program, and more.

For the Air Force, Kristyn Jones, who is performing the duties of the under secretary of the Air Force, said the service has five contractors onboard for its collaborative combat aircraft effort, but that wouldn’t be able to move forward.

The full-year CR would also hamper production increases on the Joint Strike Missile and the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, both of which the Air Force says it needs for a high-end fight, as well as spending on the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile for facilitization to support future production increases.

“We hear over and over: the industry wants that solid demand signal so they know how to invest, they can support the facilitization — and by having this uncertainty, it really has negative impacts across the defense industrial base,” Jones said.

It’s also eyeing a potential 2030 timeframe for a push to reinvigorate the sealift fleet.

Now, the California shipyard must determine how to best fill its order books between now and then.

The yard here is unique: it is the only one in the nation that builds new U.S. Navy and commercial ships and conducts repairs on both. This flexibility offers options as it seeks new work, NASSCO President David Carver said in a recent interview.

But after a couple years of turbulent labor and supply chain conditions, the yard is pursuing stability — something it thinks is achievable with a few key programs.

The San Diego shipyard just delivered its fourth Lewis B. Puller-class Expeditionary Sea Base this month and has two more under construction. After that sixth ESB delivers, the yard will need to fill its graving dock with another ship type.

“We’re looking at the [next-generation] sub tender program. We’re looking at commercial possibilities. So we fully intend to fill the graving dock, our build position, with another ship class,” Carver said Feb. 13 from his office overlooking the assembly area.

Or, it could use that space to accelerate the John Lewis-class oiler program.

The first nine oilers are on contract, with two delivered to the Navy and the next four in various phases of construction.

Carver said the program got off to a slow start, was abruptly accelerated in 2018 when a shipyard accident halted the ESB program and forced NASSCO to move those employees to the oiler program to avoid laying them off, and then slowed again when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Now, though, the oiler program “is really starting to hit its stride. We are seeing significant ship-over-ship learning, much like we did on our T-AKE program some years back.”

Carver said NASSCO and the Navy have discussed the pace of future oiler construction. He believes building two a year “is probably aggressive” — unless the yard can’t win a contract for the submarine tender or a commercial tanker program to replace the expeditionary sea base program, in which case it could use that graving dock to build more oilers. But, he said, the ideal rate might be alternating between one and two every year in what’s known as a sawtooth profile.

General Dynamics in December finished a capital improvement project to expand the block assembly line. Now, Carver said, production should be able to ramp up such that, by the end of the year, NASSCO is producing one additional block, or segment of a ship hull, each week.

“Seems minor, but one extra block [per week over the course of one year] is a quarter of a T-AO. So we’ll be able to build a quarter of a ship more every year by the end of the year,” he said, noting this would help the yard get to the 1-2-1-2 sawtooth pattern while also being able to pursue the submarine tender or commercial work.

Sealift, sooner or later

Carver is confident there will be a boon in sealift ship spending down the road, perhaps around 2030. A sealift fleet, along with the Air Force’s fleet of cargo aircraft, would carry the ground force and all its supplies to a fight overseas.

“We believe it’s going to happen, it’s just when,” he said. “Our nation’s in trouble in terms of that sealift capability — everyone understands it, but it’s just not a priority to be funded” yet.

Sealift has historically been a challenge because the Navy must buy them, even though the Army would be perhaps the biggest beneficiary of a strong sealift fleet. Because sealift ships don’t fill a Navy operational need, the ships don’t fare well when budgets get tight.

The Navy and the U.S. Maritime Administration have bought used sealift ships in recent years, but the ships have been more expensive than anticipated and required modifications to meet Defense Department sealift requirements.

“It’s a stopgap, but they’re going to have to build new sooner or later,” Carver said, adding that NASSCO has already drafted designs and shared them with the Navy.

The Navy took a stab at a multi-purpose sealift ship called the Common Hull Auxiliary Multi-Mission Platform, or CHAMP, awarding contracts to NASSCO and three other companies in an industry studies phase in 2019. This common hull would have performed five separate missions: sealift, aviation logistics support, hospital, repair tender, and command and control. The cost, though, ballooned to more than $1 billion dollars per ship, leading the Navy to cancel the effort.

Carver said NASSCO’s design costs “a quarter of that price,” and the company continues to make its pitch to the Navy and lawmakers about the need to buy inexpensive sealift ships to reinvigorate the fleet and support the shipbuilding sector.

Repair workload continues to shrink

The shipyard has seen relative stability on the construction side compared to its the ship repair business.

“Ship repair … has dropped for the third year in a row,” with 2024′s workload down one-third compared to three years ago, Carver said.

The Navy has designated some of the work as small business set-asides, leaving companies like NASSCO and its next-door neighbor in San Diego, BAE Systems, ineligible, while other availabilities have been shortened or canceled due to extended deployments or funding shortfalls.

Carver said the ship repair industry overall is in a down cycle and that many other companies have had to lay off employees. NASSCO has avoided this, since it can move employees to the construction side — but Carver said the shipyard has struggled with the growing cost of repair work due to increases in the cost of labor, supplies and overhead related to reforms made after several shipboard fires.

The yard is hopeful the workload will increase beginning in 2025, especially as the Navy moves deeper into its DDG Mod 2.0 effort to upgrade all 25 Flight IIA Arleigh Burke destroyers.

The milestone — something the Defense Department and the other armed services still have not achieved — comes after almost two decades of trying to prepare the Corps’ records and several failed audits along the way.

During this two-year audit, the Marine Corps had independent third-party auditors from Ernst and Young vet the value of all its assets listed on financial statements. The Corps also had to prove that every single item existed and was where the service said it was.

Gregory Koval, the assistant deputy commandant for resources, told reporters the audit team made more than 70 site visits in the U.S. and around the world. In these visits, they checked more than 7,800 real property assets such as land and buildings; 5,900 pieces of military equipment; 1.9 million pieces of non-ammunition supplies, such as spare parts; and 24 million items of ammunition, some of which are stored at Army and Navy facilities.

If a vehicle wasn’t where it was listed as being because it was out conducting operations, or a piece of ammunition wasn’t there because it had already been shot in a recent exercise, the Corps had to show documentation or photos of that, too, in order to explain discrepancies.

Koval said the final financial report states the Marine Corps passed its audit but still has some areas where it can improve.

Lt. Gen. James Adams, the deputy commandant for programs and resources, said one area of focus is automating processes. Today, there are disparate systems where data must be manually moved from one system to another, introducing the opportunity for error. The service is moving toward integrated, automated systems that would avoid human error in sharing information between human resources and financial data systems, for example.

Adams said that passing the audit now will make all future ones more manageable. This last audit asked a third party to validate the existence and the value of every single thing the Marines own, which required significant historical research, he explained.

Subsequent audits, on the other hand, will be able to assume the past information is correct and therefore only cover “from this point forward,” instead asking Marines to prove information related to that fiscal year’s financial transactions.

Adams said the Corps got close to completing past audits in a single fiscal year, but because of the immense historical research, they couldn’t get the audit completed and over the finish line in a single year. For the fiscal year 2023 audit, the service requested an extension, which could prove to be a model for the other services.

“It was a goal of the commandant of the Marine Corps to pass the audit because he wants to show the credibility of the Marine Corps back to the Congress and the taxpayer,” Ed Gardiner, the assistant deputy commandant for programs and resources, told reporters.

In addition to having more time, this audit also used the military’s new general ledger software, Defense Agencies Initiative, in which auditors had confidence, according to Gardiner.

Gardiner explained the services were, by law, supposed to start financial audits in the 1990s, but the Marine Corps didn’t begin producing statements in preparation for an audit until 2006. The first audit in 2010 showed plenty of room for improvement, he said. In late 2013, the Marines announced they had passed a limited-scope audit for fiscal year 2012 — but in March 2015, a number of financial and oversight leaders reported the results were unreliable and the clean pass would be rescinded.

In 2017, the Marine Corps began conducting full financial statement audits.

The 2023 full financial statement audit was conducted to the highest standards, Gardiner said, with the Ernst and Young team not only being audited themselves by a peer-review team but also by the Pentagon’s inspector general team.

“We’ve been all the way to the end of the process, and we have lessons learned that we can share with the rest of the department,” he said, adding the Marine Corps hopes these lessons “can be an accelerant for the rest of the department.”

Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord made similar remarks in November 2023, when the Pentagon failed its sixth audit since 2018.

Noting the Marines’ extension, McCord said that “we are very focused on it as a test case for the department and the larger services.”

“Whatever results of that may be when we get the auditor’s final opinion, I want to commend the USMC and, in particular, (Marine Corps Commandant Gen.) Eric Smith for their leadership and effort,” McCord added.

Newport News Shipbuilding told Defense News the work can now begin “immediately.” The contract announcement notes the work is expected to be completed by September 2029.

This comes after almost a decade of fits and starts to the overhaul work that have sent the submarine back and forth between Newport News and nearby Naval Station Norfolk and Norfolk Naval Shipyard over the years. There’s never been both space for the submarine to undergo repairs and money to fund it at the same time, making the Boise the poster child for the submarine community’s readiness woes in the past decade.

The 31-year-old Los Angeles-class submarine completed its last patrol in 2015 and was supposed to come to the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia for an extended engineering overhaul.

But the largest of the four public shipyards faced a significant backlog, working on ballistic missile submarine midlife refuelings, aircraft carrier repairs and even the transformation of a couple submarines into training ships. The attack submarines fell to the bottom of the priority list; some availabilities faced long delays, while others, like Boise, didn’t even begin.

In July 2018, Boise moved to private shipyard Newport News Shipbuilding to begin an overhaul that would have lasted until 2021, Defense News previously reported. But the work didn’t start then.

In September 2020, the Navy paid Newport News $351.8 million to cover initial planning work. In April 2021, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told lawmakers the availability would begin soon, when the yard had space for Boise’s work to begin in earnest. The work didn’t start then, either.

Fiscal 2024 budget documents referred to inducting Boise into its maintenance period this fiscal year, but the Friday contract announcement will allow the work to begin.

“The NNS team looks forward to leveraging our experience in nuclear-powered submarine maintenance to begin this important engineering overhaul (EOH) of USS Boise (SSN 764). The contract covers work that will include maintenance and restoration of the ship’s hull structure, tanks, propulsion systems, electric plant, auxiliary systems, armament and furnishings, as well as numerous ship alterations,” shipyard spokesman Todd Corillo told Defense News.

Navy leaders have previously expressed concern about Newport News’ ability to conduct submarine overhauls, when the yard’s infrastructure and workforce is designed to do new construction, not repair work.

Then-Naval Sea Systems Command commander Vice Adm. Tom Moore told USNI News in 2020 it couldn’t start work on Boise yet because Newport News was struggling to repair fellow attack subs Helena and Columbus. The ship construction yard hadn’t conducted a submarine overhaul in more than a decade, he said, and the skills associated with that work had atrophied. As a result, both Helena and Columbus continued to see delays.

Helena left Newport News in January 2022, and Columbus is expected to undock this year, ahead of a 2025 redelivery to the fleet.

Corillo told Defense News the yard has learned from its work on the first two submarine overhaul periods.

“Over the past seven years, NNS has reconstituted our submarine repair business following a 10-year hiatus. In this time, we have built a proficient workforce, matured the supply chain, developed process improvements and made smart investments in required facilities,” he said. “Although we experienced challenges with our transition back into this complex business, we are now keeping pace with current submarine repair needs and also forecasting future workflow to drive predictable capacity and performance.”

He added that the yard has already done early production work to “de-risk” the Boise overhaul since the submarine arrived at the yard in 2020.

The new buys, approved Feb. 21 by the parliament’s defense commission, are part of a uptick in Italian military spending partly spurred by the Ukraine conflict.

Italy has previously ordered 10 FREMM frigates; the latest orders, dubbed FREMM EVO, will take the fleet to 12. Italy has already taken delivery of eight vessels.

The ninth and tenth vessels were under construction when they were sold to Egypt and have been replaced with new orders.

The two FREMM EVO vessels, which will together cost €2 billion (U.S. $2.2 billion), will boast upgrades to their combat management systems and radar and electronic warfare suites as well as to the sonar, gun, communications and missile systems.

The second green light from parliament was for Italy’s planned purchase of Leopard 2A8 tanks to replace its ageing Ariete tanks and make good on NATO commitments.

The 14-year program will start with a two-year development effort to achieve what has been called an ‘Italianized’ Leopard, bringing in local firms to add systems to the German tank.

Lorenzo Mariani, the co-director general of Italian defense firm Leonardo, told Defense News this month Italy will add its own, domestically-manufactured components, including a Leonardo-supplied electro-optical sensor, software-defined radio, command-and-control system and possibly a gun barrel.

Between 2027 and 2037, assembly in Italy will occur with 132 main battle tanks produced to equip two tank regiments and 140 versions for other roles, including engineering.

With multiyear logistics, training and munitions included, Italy expects the overall cost of the program to reach nearly €8.3 billion euros, according to documents supplied to parliament.

The yard has laid off nearly 100 workers related to the LCU program since January and is considering actions to dispute the Navy’s termination of the contract, hoping to get back into a settlement process.

Louisiana-based small business Swiftships won the LCU competition in March 2018, with the Navy awarding a contract for $18 million for the detail design and the construction of the first craft. The yard also received follow-on contracts, one in 2019 worth $26.7 million for the next two craft, and another in 2020 worth $50.1 million for four more.

These craft haul Marines as well as their ground equipment and weapons from amphibious ships to the shore and back again. They are the slower but heavier-lift connectors, compared to the Ship to Shore Connectors that travel at higher speeds but carry less weight.

Swiftships’ contract called for options to build as many as 32 — the total number of craft needed to replace the Navy’s Vietnam-era LCU inventory.

In September 2023, the Navy awarded another LCU contract to Alabama-based Austal USA. The contract called for building three craft for $91.5 million — a significantly higher per-unit cost than Swiftships’ contract — and options for another nine.

According to interviews with and documentation provided by Swiftships, Naval Sea Systems Command on Nov. 9 raised the possibility of terminating the program.

NAVSEA wrote that the shipyard was not making progress on LCU production and offered to reach a settlement that would include Swiftships turning over parts and material delivered by its vendors. On Jan. 24, NAVSEA issued a stop-work order on the program, according to documentation provided by Swiftships, and on Feb. 20 the command formally notified the yard of its decision to terminate the contract.

In its notification to Swiftships, NAVSEA wrote the first three craft were supposed to be delivered by June, September and December 2023, but are still incomplete. NAVSEA declined to comment to Defense News.

Years of challenges

Swiftships’ chief executive, Shehraze Shah, told Defense News there had long been turbulence in the program. Indeed, he said, the Navy and Swiftships had not agreed on a final design two years into the program, and a third-party design agent was brought in to complete the design but continued to make changes. Shah pointed to these issues as reasons the construction could not move forward on time.

Jeff Leleux, the president of the yard, said the Navy and Swiftships took nearly a year to settle a request for equitable adjustment — needed to realign the cost and schedule associated with the contract due to the delays — during which Swiftships and its vendors went months without payment.

After the new timeline was set, said John Messinger, Swiftships’ director of proposals and contracts, the yard realized one of the design changes made by the third-party design agent would require the company to rip out the engine-cooling system and reinstall some piping on the craft, for example.

The executives said they are behind schedule, but contend the Navy has not negotiated with them in good faith amid design and supply chain challenges.

The issue caught the attention of lawmakers far earlier. In September 2022, Republican Reps. Clay Higgins of Louisiana and Neal Dunn of Florida wrote a letter to the secretaries of the Navy and the Department of Homeland Security to discuss their concerns about work being taken from smaller yards and given to Austal USA.

“In addition to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the letter read, “SwiftShips notified Congress regarding unnecessary complications with the Navy’s handling of the LCU-1700 contract. These complications include four program manager transitions since the signing of the contract, needless stop work orders, delayed payments to SwiftShips and material vendors, and serious design delays. SwiftShips has continuously struggled with the acquisition of materials due to the Navy ceding its contractual obligation to pay material vendors.”

The letter stated the Navy notified Congress in April 2022 of its intention to award Austal the LCU work without formally re-competing the program, even though Austal at that time had not yet opened its steel ship production line. The Alabama yard had previously only constructed aluminum ships, but began establishing a steel construction line following a $50 million Defense Production Act grant in 2020.

Indeed, both countries have experienced heavy losses in life and materiel during the war, which began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. There’s now a growing sense this conflict has reached a stalemate, and that it will likely continue through the year, according to a report released this month by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The London-based think tank also recently updated its Military Balance+ database, which assesses the defense capabilities of militaries around the world. The following compares select system types and data points between Russia and Ukraine, based on data from IISS, with footnotes at the bottom of this article. The data is current as of November, meaning it accounts for nearly two years of war.

• Data as of November 2023.
• Armored Fighting Vehicles are armored combat vehicles with a combat weight of at least 6 metric tons.
• Artillery includes guns, howitzers, rocket launchers and mortars with a caliber greater than 100mm for artillery pieces and 80mm and above for mortars, capable of engaging ground targets with indirect fire.
• Surface-to-Surface Missile Launchers are launch vehicles for transporting and firing surface-to-surface ballistic and cruise missiles.
• Air Defense includes guns, directed-energy weapons and surface-to-air missile launchers designed to engage fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.

Carlos Del Toro said Thursday the Maritime Economic Deterrence Executive Council is needed because other countries have taken steps that threaten the Navy’s technology development and supply chain.

He described “exploiting supply chain vulnerabilities, adversarial capital investments in companies developing technologies that are critical to our fleet and our force” and ongoing “intellectual property theft” as “concerted actions designed to weaken our competitive advantages, not only at sea but on the world’s economic stage.”

The new council is co-chaired by Vice Adm. Francis Morley, the top uniformed advisor to the Navy’s acquisition community, and Chris Diaz, the secretary’s chief of staff, Del Toro said at an Aspen Strategy Group event in New York.

The council includes representation from the research and development community, supply chain and critical infrastructure experts, and intelligence and law enforcement organizations within the Department of the Navy.

Del Toro said this group, using authorities already granted to the department, “will focus on mitigating adversarial foreign investment risks, innovation and technology protection, supply chain integrity initiatives, and the coordination and protection of research efforts across both the government as well as the private sector.”

Morley, speaking at the same event, said the group had an initial meeting to discuss the challenges ahead. He said the meeting made clear each community has been taking its own steps to protect intellectual property, research and supply chains, but that they could accomplish more working in tandem.

Del Toro said the council’s establishment follows other Biden administration efforts to shore up “seams” between the military, the traditional defense industrial base and the innovation sector.

He cited the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act as an early step to ensure American independence in critical technology and manufacturing sectors.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy this month released a 2024 list of critical and emerging technologies with national security importance, including artificial intelligence, hypersonics and quantum information.

And, he added, the Department of Defense last month released its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy outlining how to modernize the defense sector.

The joint venture, of which Edge will own 51% but Fincantieri will manage, is meant to take advantage of the United Arab Emirates’ credit financing options and relations with other states.

The venture “will be awarded prime rights to non-NATO orders, especially leveraging on the attractiveness of UAE [government-to-government] arrangements and export credit financing packages, along with a number of strategic orders placed by select NATO member countries,” the firms said.

State-controlled Fincantieri is Italy’s main naval contractor and is also building FREMM frigates for the U.S. Navy at its American shipyard.

Founded in 2019, Edge is an advanced technology group that comprises more than 25 subsidiaries and employs thousands of people.

In a statement, the firms said they would develop “joint intellectual property” and “significantly” enhance Edge’s ability to “design and build frigates and other large vessels, broadening its range of operations and marking a crucial advancement in the diversification of its maritime solutions portfolio.”

The statement noted the joint venture “will set up a dedicated design authority, opening up opportunities for highly skilled Emiratis, and drawing in international expertise to support this innovative and strategic initiative.”

The firms added they aim to co-develop midsize submarines.

The misfire saw the missile crash back into the sea close to the submarine HMS Vanguard, which was undertaking demonstration and shakedown operations off the coast of Florida following a seven-year deep maintenance program.

Shapps confirmed the failure in a Feb. 21 statement to Parliament after reports of the Jan. 30 incident appeared in The Sun newspaper here.

It’s the second Trident test-firing in a row that went wrong for the Royal Navy. The previous misfire took place in 2016 when a missile veered off course and was destroyed.

Shapps was accompanied onboard HMS Vanguard by Britain’s top sailor, Adm. Ben Key, numerous media outlets reported.

Defence Procurement Minister James Cartlidge, appearing before the parliamentary Defence Committee on a separate topic on Feb. 21, confirmed he too was onboard along with senior unnamed U.S. officials.

Cartlidge declined to comment on a question from a committee member suggesting the failure was unrelated to the missile itself.

The Sun newspaper, which broke the story, reported that a Trident II was propelled into the air by compressed gas in its launch tube, but that its first-stage boosters did not ignite.

“On this occasion, an anomaly did occur, but it was event-specific, and there are no implications for the reliability of the wider Trident missile systems and stockpiles,” Shapps told lawmakers. “Nor are there any implications for our ability to fire our nuclear weapons, should the circumstances arise in which we need to do so.”

He added that the government “has absolute confidence that the U.K.’s deterrent remains effective, dependable and formidable.”

Britain’s two misfirings are in contrast to the performance of the U.S. Navy, which also operates the Trident D5.

The last test of an unarmed missile by the U.S. Navy took place in September when the Ohio-class submarine Louisiana fired the weapon off the coast of San Diego, California.

Like HMS Vanguard, the Louisiana was undergoing a demonstration and shakedown operation at the time of the firing.

Despite the British misfiring, Shapps said the submarine and crew were successfully certified and will rejoin the operational cycle as planned.

Vanguard is part of a four-strong fleet of nuclear missile-armed submarines operating with at least one submarine at sea and operational at all times.

A fleet of four Dreadnought-class boats, now under construction by BAE Systems at its Barrow-in-Furniss yard, are scheduled to replace the aging submarine fleet starting early in the next decade.

Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland on Jan. 1. The document has rattled Somalia, which said it’s prepared to go to war over it because it considers Somaliland part of its territory. Somaliland says Ethiopia agreed to recognize its independence in return for a naval port.

Somali Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre described the defense and economic deal with Turkey as “a historic day for the country,” after the council of ministers approved it.

“Somalia will have a true ally, a friend and a brother in the international arena,” he said.

Details of that agreement have not been made public, but Somalia sees such a deal as an act of aggression, even though Somaliland has enjoyed de facto independence for three decades.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told reporters Saturday that senior officers from Ethiopia’s military were in Somaliland “preparing the ground” for the territory’s annexation.

Ethiopia has not addressed the allegations, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has downplayed fear of conflict, telling lawmakers earlier this month he had “no intention” of going to war with Somalia. With a population of more than 120 million, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world.

Turkey is a key player in Somalia, one of several Gulf Arab states jockeying for influence in a country that lies on the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden — a pathway to the Red Sea.

Under the deal announced Wednesday, Turkey will provide training and equipment to the Somali Navy so it can better safeguard its territorial waters from threats such as terrorism, piracy and “foreign interference.”

The deal, first signed by the two countries’ defense ministers on Feb. 8, will be in force for a decade, according to Somali authorities.

“For Somalia, it offers crucial support for security and development initiatives, while for Turkey, it represents an opportunity to expand its influence and deepen its engagement in Africa,” said Mohamed Gaas, an analyst who leads the think tank Raad Peace Research Institute in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

SAN DIEGO — Some of the world’s largest defense contractors as well as U.S. Navy and Marine Corps leadership converged on the waterfront convention center here for the West conference Feb. 13-15. Reporters with C4ISRNET, Defense News and Navy Times were there as well, chronicling the events and conversation.

From Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro issuing a frank warning to industry to lessons learned from Houthi engagements in the Red Sea, here’s what you may have missed:

• Project Overmatch networking capabilities have been upgraded and rolled out to an additional number of Navy ships following testing last year with the Carl Vinson carrier strike group. All the details here.
• Northrop Grumman said it will participate in two events to demonstrate autonomy and electronic warfare payloads the company is developing for unmanned surface vessels under its Project Scion initiative. Click for more info.
• The Navy’s ongoing battles with Iran-backed Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden have resulted in destroyers shooting down 14 anti-ship ballistic missiles “for the first time in history.” Interested?
• Six months into its effort to field thousands of attritable, autonomous systems, the Pentagon is planning the second iteration of the Replicator program — and this time, software will be the focus. What that means for the future.
• The U.S. Marine Corps will put a new type of missile-delivery drone to the test in an operational scenario this month, following a year of developmental work. And then what?
• The Navy plans to establish a second unmanned surface drone squadron in May, according to the head of U.S. Pacific Fleet. Keep reading.

The next West conference is scheduled for late January 2025.

“This is not a contractor-owned, contractor-operated capability, but this is a uniformed capability that we’ll be able to own [and] operate unmanned capabilities that can be employed within particular spaces,” Adm. Samuel Paparo said.

The Navy created its first unit dedicated to surface drones, Unmanned Surface Vessel Division 1, in 2022.

Paparo also said the Navy will launch Integrated Battle Problem 24.1 in March, which will pair manned and unmanned capabilities.

He mentioned that prior exercises involved drones traveling 50,000 miles over seven months, as well as experiments involving the placement of SM-6 missile launchers on large surface drones.

Del Toro asks Navy contractors to consider taxpayers over shareholders

Paparo also called the Navy’s unmanned work in various fleet commands “complementary battle labs” that are all pushing toward the same goal of honing unmanned and autonomous operations.

A primary goal of the work is to not unnecessarily risk sailor lives, he said.

“Don’t send a human being to do something dangerous that a machine can do better, faster and more cheaply,” Paparo said. “Ensure that you have the means of control.”

He noted much of this work is done quietly “for the simple reason that we don’t want to expose it to an adversary that would emplace a counter to that capability.”

“A key principle within warfare is the element of operational security,” Paparo said. “So for most exquisite capabilities, if I’m doing my job, you won’t be knowing about it.”

He began his keynote speech with a grim warning about the state of the globe. “The world is increasingly descending into chaos and disorder, and from Europe to the Middle East to the Pacific, we’re seeing significant shifts in state behaviors, and they are not random,” he said.

“At a recent state visit to Moscow, the [People’s Republic of China] president, I won’t utter his name, was overheard telling the Russian president that right now, there are changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving those changes together,” Paparo said. “The changes referenced are challenges to our security, our freedom and our well-being.”

Speaking at the West naval conference in San Diego on Feb. 15, Del Toro, a former businessman, said that in a time of war abroad and political uncertainty at home, the U.S. needs companies to deliver weapons, warships, aircraft and more on time, on budget and without excuses.

“You can’t be asking the American taxpayer to make even greater public investments while you continue, in some cases, to goose your stock prices through stock buybacks, deferring promised capital investments, and other accounting maneuvers that, to some, seem to prioritize stock prices that drive executive compensation rather than making the needed, fundamental investments in the industrial base, in your own companies, at a time when our nation needs us to be at all-ahead flank,” he said.

“Through initiatives like the Taxpayer Advocacy Project, I have directed our contract community and the Office of General Counsel to ensure that we will leverage all legal means at our disposal to ensure that the American people are also getting what they paid for,” he added.

RTX shake-up signals a shift from change to steadiness, analysts say

The message was delivered to a standing-room-only crowd teeming with some of the world’s largest defense contractors. Del Toro did not single out any one company.

The defense industry in the aggregate is financially healthy, and that status has improved over time, according to a Pentagon contracting study published in April. Traditional defense firms outperform commercial counterparts in many key financial metrics, it found.

Shipbuilder HII this month reported revenue rose 13 percent to $3.2 billon in the fourth quarter of 2023 from the same period a year earlier, as operating income almost tripled to $312 million. General Dynamics said it earned $1 billion, or $3.64 per diluted share, on revenue of $11.7 billion, the highest quarterly EPS and revenue in company history.

Del Toro said the Navy would hold accountable contractors with poor performance, including through a “deep dive” investigation of the most chronic offenders.

“We must endeavor to ensure that contracts with the Navy are delivered on time and on budget,” he said. “The global strategic situation demands it.”

Project Overmatch represents the service’s contribution to the Department of Defense’s larger connect-everything-everywhere campaign known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or CJADC2. Details about the project have been scant since its inception in 2020, a move experts say is necessitated by Russian and Chinese monitoring.

Small, the leader of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, on Feb. 14 told West conference attendees in San Diego that much was learned from the trials with the Carl Vinson, and that enhancements have since been made.

“It’s never something we’re done with. It’s a constant learning and a constant improving process,” Small said. “Not only have we fielded it, we’ve updated and re-fielded and delivered over-the-air capability based on what it is that sailors need.”

He didn’t specify what corners of the fleet are now imbued with the advanced networking and data handling associated with CJADC2.

Navy officials in the past have said Project Overmatch’s rollout would first concentrate on the Indo-Pacific — a vast region where the U.S. may butt heads with China — and then expand globally. Project Overmatch was also expected to play a role in the Large Scale Exercise 23, which featured 25,000 sailors and Marines as well as aircraft carriers, submarines, logistics support and simulated units.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, speaking at the same event, said the service is seeking fleet-wide connectivity to support distributed maritime operations and “to achieve decision superiority and lethality at machine speed.”

Distributed maritime operations aims to scatter warships across larger distances and make them both harder to find and harder to target.

“Through Project Overmatch, we’re building a software-defined network solution and modern software pipelines to provide as many pathways as possible to connect and share information,” Franchetti said.

The Navy sought $192 million for Project Overmatch in fiscal 2024.

The strategy, released February 2022 by the Biden administration, notes the “intensifying American focus” in the region is partly due to “mounting challenges, particularly from the [People’s Republic of China]. The PRC is combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological might as it pursues a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and seeks to become the world’s most influential power.”

In response, the U.S. and its allies are tightening their military, economic and technological bonds.

Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, this week said “the integration of our defense industrial bases, the integration of our concepts of operations, the combinations and integrations of our headquarters, and our combining on a common mission, reflects that modernizing [of] the U.S.-Japan relationship in order to account for the international security environment that we’re in today.”

Speaking at the WEST 2024 conference here hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA International, he cited the Keen Edge 24 exercise earlier this month, which was the biggest command post exercise ever with the Japanese Self-Defense Force. The event also marked the first time the Japanese force employed its new Japanese Joint Operations Command.

With Australia also participating for the first time, “we operated against the most complex scenario that demonstrated Japanese will and innovation that reflects the sea change in the national defense strategy released just a year ago,” he said.

Japan’s December 2022 defense strategy and spending plan called for beefed-up investments in missile defense capabilities and counterstrike capabilities, or the ability to hit the enemy’s missile launchers, ordnance stores and other attack infrastructure. The strategy, too, noted increased missile threats from China as well as North Korea.

Beyond large bilateral exercises, Paparo said the U.S. and Japanese navies are becoming more integrated in their routine operations.

“We’re spending more and more time in combined formations every single day,” he added.

Paparo, who has been tapped to serve as the next commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said Japan has multiple open foreign military sales with the U.S., including one announced last month to buy as many as 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

He noted Japan is also building weapons for the U.S., referencing a December move by Japan to sell the Patriot air defense system to the U.S. to restore dwindling stockpiles here.

The admiral said this was just one of several efforts to deepen U.S. ties with other allies and partners in the region, including Australia, South Korea, the Philippines and India.

Veiled threats were published on social media channels associated with the Iran-backed militant group in December and were later amplified by Hezbollah, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute. The posts featured maps of the area, including the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, where fiber-optic cables run, and chatter about international connectivity.

Asked at the West conference in San Diego if he thought such threats were realistic — if extremists could execute such sabotage — U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Michael Brookes said: “I’m not so sure it is.”

“The Russian Navy remains the greatest threat to the U.S. in the undersea domain,” said Brookes, whose organization collects, analyzes and distributes intelligence about foreign forces. Brookes was named commander in July.

The Houthis and other Iranian-armed militias have launched a series of attacks on commercial vessels and U.S. forces across the Greater Middle East in recent weeks, prompting the U.S. to respond with retaliatory strikes in Yemen and Iraq. Houthi forces have used explosives-laden unmanned systems in the air and on the water as well as anti-ship ballistic missiles.

Due to the confined geography of the Red Sea and the speed of anti-ship munitions, there may only be a 60- to 90-second window between Houthi launch and a destroyer’s response in self-defense, Navy Times reported, citing a service leader.

The barrages in the Red Sea have impeded trade in otherwise economically vital waters. Ships are rerouting to avoid the region, resulting in many more nautical miles traversed, additional days spent traveling and extra fuel burned.

The Houthis need not turn to undersea cables to “continue to pose a significant maritime threat or to be able to continue escalating in the maritime domain,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran specialist at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank in Washington, D.C., said in an interview. “I would expect more anti-ship missile and drone attacks.”

The PCA is charged with instituting Department of Defense mandates as well as keeping the secretary of the Navy, chief of naval operations and Marine Corps officials apprised of all cyber matters. The position is a result of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act and is closely tied to the role of chief information officer.

Scott St. Pierre, who has served as the PCA in recent months, on Feb. 13 said the next person for the job has been selected by Navy leadership and is expected “in the next two to six weeks.” St. Pierre would not say who that may be, and joked he was “just here to keep the seat warm” in the meantime.

St. Pierre succeeded Chris Cleary, the Navy’s first cyber advisor and former naval officer. Cleary joined defense contractor ManTech in January after years on the job.

US Navy champions digital weaponry as decider of future fights

The Navy is reworking its cyber practices amid growing threats, both domestic and international, to digital infrastructure. The service in November published its first cyber strategy, which argued neither ship nor torpedo alone would strike the deciding blow in future wars. Rather, it stated, the use of non-kinetic effects that may not be seen but still wreak havoc on enemy systems will increasingly decide outcomes.

The next PCA will need to bring people together and foster a shared sense of cyber responsibility, according to St. Pierre.

“Each and everyone of us in this room today has a responsibility to cybersecurity, whether it’s talking about it, whether it’s educating somebody about it, whether it’s helping your boss understand we need to put a little more money into it,” he said at the conference, jointly hosted by AFCEA and the U.S. Naval Institute.