The 74-page whitepaper, which the service unveiled during its annual symposium this week and which builds on a similar document published four years ago, details planned procurements out to 2037.

“The Air Force is aware of [the importance of] long-term development planning and spending of the national budget to achieve maximum value,” said the service’s commander, Air Chief Marshal Panpakdee Pattanakul.

Indeed, part of the whitepaper’s raison d’être is to stake claims for long-term funding as its aircraft inventories age. For instance, the 2020 version stated the fighter fleet had an average age of 26 years, a figure that continues to increase.

But the government’s procurement process is disjointed, according to Greg Raymond, an expert in Asia-Pacific affairs at the Australian National University. He cited factors like political instability, inadequate strategic planning, annual rather than multiyear budgeting measures, and weak civil oversight that allows each armed service to makes its own decisions.

In the latest whitepaper, the Air Force gives priority to a medium-range air defense system possessing a minimum 30-nautical-mile range from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2028. Afterward, from FY33 to FY37, the service plans to carry out a second phase for a medium- or long-range air defense system.

From FY28 to FY32, the force plans to buy a short-range air defense system boasting gun-, missile and laser-based weapons. Credence is given to counter-drone systems, too, and a nine-year project to procure these is to commence in 2025.

The service is also eyeing 12-14 new fighters to replace the F-16 jets of 102 Squadron based at Korat. The procurement is scheduled to take place from FY25 to FY34, two years later than originally planned. The squadron’s F-16s from the late 1980s are to retire by 2028.

Two contenders have emerged for the aircraft requirement: Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Block 70/72 and Saab’s Gripen.

“We’re confident the F-16 Block 70/72 will complement the RTAF’s existing F-16 fleet and deliver the advanced 21st century security capabilities and performance needed to address Thailand’s most pressing defense requirements,” a Lockheed spokesperson told Defense News.

Thailand ordered its first Gripen C/D fighters in 2008. Following a January 2021 contract, the aircraft were upgraded to what the manufacturer calls the MS20 configuration.

Robert Björklund, who markets the Gripen to Thailand for Saab, told Defense News the existing fleet is integrated into the Saab-supplied Link T data system and that the aircraft provides its user with “a very wide range of weapon options, including its highly effective RBS15 anti-ship missile.”

A second fighter replacement project for 12-14 aircraft is slated for FY31 to FY35 to replace F-5E/F jets of 211 Squadron at Ubon that are to retire around the end of the decade. An identical number of fighters are needed to replace F-16A/Bs of 403 Squadron at Takhli from FY37 to FY46.

Thailand tries to maintain relations with several competing nations, including the United States, China, Russia and India, the whitepaper noted. Thailand previously purchase materiel from China, such as armored vehicles, air defense systems and a submarine.

Asked whether the Royal Thai Air Force would consider buying a Chinese fighter like the J-10CE, Raymond said the service values its relationship with the U.S. and likeminded allies too much to do so. He noted that Thai-U.S. relations have “largely stabilized,” despite the latter denying the former’s request to buy F-35A jets last year.

“They wouldn’t want to see themselves placed on the outer [circle] in terms of not getting invitations to things like [exercise] Pitch Black in Australia. I tend to think they’d be perhaps more careful about getting Chinese aircraft than the Thai Navy was about getting a submarine,” he said.

The whitepaper also detailed an effort starting this year to refurbish C-130H Hercules transport aircraft. The 2020 version recommended the service buy 12 replacements, but that idea was dropped.

As for pilot training, last year’s delivery of 12 T-6TH trainers allowed the Air Force to retire its Pilatus PC-9 fleet last month. New Zealand-built CT-4E trainers are to retire in 2031, so basic trainers will be needed from FY33. New lead-in fighter trainers are also sought from FY25, with Thailand already operating the South Korean T-50TH in this role.

The new whitepaper also emphasized unmanned technologies. One effort underway is the Thai-developed M Solar X solar-powered drone. Loitering munitions are also schedule for purchase by 2026, as are medium combat drones from FY26 to FY29 and high-altitude pseudo-satellites from FY24 to FY35.

The Air Force also mentioned procurement programs for micro- and nano-drone swarms from FY26, and a research and development effort for weaponized tactical drones from FY29.

And two Saab 340B Erieye airborne early warning aircraft are to receive enhanced command-and-control capabilities, with their dorsal-mounted radars to be replaced. This would take place from FY26 to FY29.

The government’s FY24 defense budget bill calls for a 198 billion baht (U.S. $5.5 billion) fund, of which $1 billion is for the Air Force. The service has already applied for an allocation of approximately $530 million for a first batch of four fighters.

Troops fired the XM7 rifle and XM250 automatic rifle, part of the Next Generation Squad Weapon program, at the Cold Regions Test Center at Fort Greeley, Alaska, according to an Army release.

That testing began in late January and ran through Feb. 9.

The XM7 rifle will replace the M4 carbine while the XM250 automatic rifle will replace the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Both are chambered in 6.8mm and slated for the close combat forces such as infantry, special operations, scouts, combat engineers, combat medics and forward observers.

The 6.8mm round intermediate caliber round is the first of its kind for U.S. forces and provides users a heavier round that can have lethal effects at greater distances and punch through barriers that stop the standard issue 5.56mm round, which is the caliber of the M4 and SAW.

Both weapons come with an advanced fire control, dubbed the XM157, that houses a ballistics computer to help shooters compensate for bullet drop and distance.

In 2022 the Army chose Sig Sauer to build the two weapons and produce the 6.8mm ammunition until the service upgrades the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant with a production line devoted exclusively to 6.8mm.

The same year the service chose Vortex Optics/Sheltered Wings to provide the XM157 fire control.

The 10-year weapons contract has a ceiling value of $4.5 billion, XM157 fire control cost ceiling is set at $2.7 billion, Army Times previously reported.

The M4 and SAW are expected to remain the primary small arms of non-close combat forces for the coming decades. Once fielded, the XM7 and XM250 will drop the “X” designator.

A platoon with the 101st Airborne Division conducted limited user tests of the rifle, carbine and optic in November. A not-yet-identified platoon with the 101st will officially field the weapon in September, Army Times previously reported.

Staff with the Army’s Cross Functional Team-Soldier Lethality, Program Executive Office-Soldier and the Joint Program Executive Office Armaments and Ammunitions worked with soldiers at the Alaska testing center to evaluate the weapon’s performance in extreme cold weather.

“Extreme cold can affect the weapon’s functionality, of course, but it also hinders a Soldier’s movement and mobility,” said Maj. Brandon Davis, a member of the SL CFT operations team. “So which sling does he prefer in these conditions? Can he or she effectively manipulate the widgets on the weapon wearing gloves? We’re getting after every aspect of how the NGSW impacts lethality and mobility under extreme conditions.”

The service has scheduled testing for the NGSW in extreme heat and humidity later this year, according to the release.

Maj. Gen. Brian Eifler, commander of the Alaska-based 11th Airborne Division, spoke with reporters Monday about the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center training exercise that took place from Feb. 8 through Feb. 22 across the state.

It’s been three years since the Army started its Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center rotations in Alaska, and Eifler said this was the largest and most complex version of the training so far.

A Mongolian Armed Forces infantry company and 600 Canadian troops, 350 from the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, 165 from the Royal Canadian Air Force and 100 from various support forces, participated alongside U.S. forces. Other partner nations such as Sweden, Finland and South Korea sent forces to work with staff sections of U.S. units.

Another 18 nations sent observers to the exercise, Eifler said of the growing exercise.

Army sketches out plan for an Arctic brigade combat team

The Army released its Arctic Strategy in 2021. In June 2022, the service reactivated the 11th Airborne Division in Alaska to oversee and grow Arctic-focused forces and training to counter increasing militarization of the region by Russian and Chinese military forces.

The 1st Brigade, 11th Airborne Division, served as the “blue force” fighting over the two weeks against two battalions of the 2nd Brigade, 11th Airborne Division, which served as the enemy force.

Both units ran their field operations but were joined by simulated brigades. Eifler and his team were able to fight an entire division in the exercise using simulated forces alongside real soldiers, he said.

The 2nd Brigade was given about five times the number of rockets, artillery and ammunition to battle 1st Brigade. The “enemy” brigade also had air defense, communication jamming and electronic warfare tools.

That extra firepower meant that blue force fire units had to pick their targets wisely, shoot quickly and move rapidly to avoid enemy counterfires, Eifler said.

The enemy air defense challenged the blue force to create attack windows and push realistic approaches to a near-peer adversary that controlled the sky.

A standard airborne or air assault mission would easily be detected in that scenario, he said. Which meant division aviators had to strike first.

“We did a 150-mile deep attach with our Apache division while avoiding air defense emitters that we put out,” Eifler said. “They had to duck and weave over those 150 miles close to the terrain to get to the target and destroy it and get back safely.”

Deep strike

That was the first and longest such deep strike of that distance since the rotations began, Eifler said.

Once the strike had its effect, the blue force brigade flew a more than 80-mile air assault using 15 aircraft, including Chinooks and Black Hawks, he said.

On the ground, soldiers used the five new cold-weather, all-terrain vehicles, or CATV, during the exercise, which Eifler said performed well and allowed soldiers to maneuver over various snow, mud and water-logged terrain. Temperatures fluctuated from -40 degrees Fahrenheit to 40 F

BAE Systems won the $278 million contract to produce the cold-weather, all-terrain vehicle for the Army in 2022. At the time the service planned to purchase 163 of them to replace its decades-old small unit support vehicle.

The cold-weather, all-terrain vehicle is a tracked vehicle that can carry nine soldiers and equipment.

At the same time, 1st Brigade dispatched soldier teams on snowmobiles armed with Javelin missile launchers to navigate off-road and knock out enemy tanks and vehicles.

“One of our standing orders is to stay off the road when you’re fighting in harsh weather because the roads and trails are like the enemy’s engagement areas,” Eifler said. “We’re always saying ‘if your traveling is easy, you’re running into danger. And if it’s very hard and difficult to move you’re winning.’”

In the airwaves, the enemy force jammed digital communications that, at times, forced commanders to dispatch those same CATVs and snowmobiles to hand-deliver orders to battalions and other units.

The unforgiving cold

Eifler stressed that soldiers operating in the Arctic need to simultaneously keep their high-tech gear running but be ready to go “manual or mechanical” to get the job done.

The unforgiving cold can paralyze some systems and drain batteries in minutes, not hours.

As part of the exercise, soldiers used a C-130 cargo plane to fly a high mobility artillery rocket system more than 500 miles to Utqiagvik, Alaska ― a city on the northernmost reaches of the state and above the Arctic Circle.

Eifler’s blue force also had to contend with smaller, but still challenging threats.

The enemy force used small drone swarms of a dozen or fewer drones used to detect unit positions. They even “armed” some of the small drones with tennis balls and Nerf footballs to drop onto locations, showing soldiers they could be hit by ordnance they weren’t tracking.

During the two-week exercise, Eifler said soldiers tested 40 different types of equipment, from communications gear and vehicles to tents, skis and boots.

The two-star said that in the future the force likely will need more snowmobiles for the types of missions used in this exercise as well as casualty evacuation and basic mobility.

Early observations include a need for a better tent system that can fit into a rucksack and improved ski bindings to withstand the extreme cold temperatures, he said.

North Korea has conducted six rounds of missile tests so far this year, most of them reportedly involving cruise missiles that typically fly at a low altitude to overcome opponents’ missile defenses. Analysts say that in the event of a conflict, North Korea aims to use cruise missiles to strike U.S. aircraft carriers as well as U.S. military bases in Japan.

South Korea’s air force said in a statement the drill on Friday involved fifth-generation stealth F-35A fighter jets from both countries and other fighter jets from South Korea. It said the U.S. F-35As were deployed in South Korea on Wednesday from Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan.

North Korea has ramped up its weapons tests since 2022 in what experts call an attempt to increase its leverage in future diplomacy. South Korea and the U.S. have responded by expanding their military exercises and trilateral training with Japan.

On the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Rio De Janeiro on Thursday, the top diplomats from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan agreed to strengthen their joint response capability against North Korea’s evolving nuclear threats and coordinate to block the North’s financing of its nuclear program, according to South Korea’s Foreign Ministry.

This year, North Korea is expected to step up its testing activities and belligerent rhetoric as both the U.S and South Korea head into elections. North Korea is likely seeking international recognition as a nuclear state, a status that experts say the North thinks would help it receive relief from U.S.-led economic sanctions.

North Korea’s advancing nuclear arsenal has likely emboldened its stance, and there are concerns that the North may launch a limited military provocation against the South. Observers say a full-scale attack is unlikely as the North is outgunned by more superior U.S. and South Korean forces.

U.S. and South Korean officials have repeatedly warned that any nuclear attack by North Korea against them would spell the end of the North’s government, led by Kim Jong Un.

But the U.S. Air Force’s B-52 bomber fleet is showing its age, and the Red Gremlin II is no exception.

On a crisp, clear morning in January, its five-person aircrew from the 11th Bomb Squadron ran through preflight checks for a training mission, tallying up what was broken and how serious the problems were.

Instructor pilot Lt. Col. Michael DeVita’s digital display — a relatively recent system known as the Combat Network Communications Technology, or CONECT — wasn’t working. The radar altimeter was down. And the targeting pod display, needed for a key element of the planned simulated bombing, was on the fritz. At one point, DeVita, the squadron commander, leaned over and gave a stubborn dial three solid taps to unstick it.

For the last six decades, the Red Gremlin II and the other 75 B-52s still in use have been the backbone of the Air Force’s bomber fleet.

They have conducted around-the-clock nuclear alert missions at the edge of Soviet airspace as well as massive bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War. They helped carry out strikes on Iraq that paved the way for the rapid ground assault of Operation Desert Storm. And in recent years, these aircraft conducted precision-guided strikes against the Taliban and the Islamic State group.

Now the Stratofortress needs to last another 36 years.

The Air Force is preparing to bring on its newest stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, and retire the aging B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit. Sometime in the 2030s, the service plans to have a fleet of two bombers — at least 100 B-21s and the current fleet of 76 B-52s, modernized top to bottom with a slate of upgrades.

It is the most sweeping revamp of the U.S. bomber fleet in more than a generation.

This $48.6 billion overhaul is intended to keep the (eventually redubbed) B-52J operational until about 2060 — meaning the Air Force could be flying nearly century-old bombers. When the last B-52 was delivered in 1962, it was expected to last 20 years, the Defense Department’s inspector general said in a November 2023 report.

‘Weapons hot’: Lessons and mistakes on a B-52 bomber training flight

The service is preparing for the overhaul, rethinking day-to-day maintenance and reevaluating its strategy for how a fleet made up of two bomber types would operate against an advanced enemy.

“The B-21 with the B-52J [will be] a very powerful, integrated force,” Maj. Gen. Jason Armagost, commander of 8th Air Force, said in a January interview here, sporting a B-21 patch on his uniform sleeve. The combined fleet would be capable of conducting a wide range of operations and striking an array of enemy targets, possibly armed with the latest hypersonic weapons.

The centerpiece of the B-52J modernization will be the replacement of the bomber’s original ’60s-era Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines with new Rolls-Royce-made F130 engines; that $2.6 billion effort is known as the Commercial Engine Replacement Program. The Air Force expects the first test B-52J will start ground and flight tests in late 2028, and for more B-52s to receive new engines throughout the 2030s.

But that’s not all: The B-52J will also receive a new modern radar, improved avionics, the Long Range Standoff weapon to carry out nuclear strikes from a distance, communication upgrades, new digital displays replacing dozens of old analog dials, new wheels and brakes, and other improvements.

The Air Force is counting on all these advances to work. If they don’t, the service could find itself with perhaps as much as 40% of its planned bomber fleet unable to keep up with wartime requirements.

The Air Force must make the B-52 modernization succeed, said Heather Penney, a retired F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “Long-range strike is absolutely nonnegotiable. Bombers are it.”

Air Force historian Brian Laslie said the fact the B-52 is still in the air, and could continue flying until around its centenary, is remarkable.

“If there was an airplane that was flying today that was 100 years old, we have to go back to 1924,” Laslie said. “We’re talking about the [Boeing P-26] Peashooters, the [Curtiss] JN-3 and JN-4 Jennys [a series of World War I-era biplanes]. We’re talking about canvas and wire and wooden airplanes. A hundred years ago, we don’t even have enclosed cockpits [or] retractable landing gear.”

Experts like Penney argue the United States has underinvested in its bomber fleet since the 1990s, including truncating its B-2 purchase by more than 100 planes, letting the B-1 fleet decay, and waiting too long to start working on the B-21. As a result, she said, the Air Force is asking the B-52 to shoulder a burden no bomber has before.

“We’re asking geriatric B-52s to be that backbone while we’re waiting for B-21 to be able to come on board,” Penney said.

Looking for ‘showstoppers’

Before a B-52 takes off, DeVita said, it’s common for its crew to find at least one thing is broken during the preflight check process. Usually maintainers can fix the problem on the flight line and the crew takes off with a fully operational jet. But sometimes, he added, a broken system can’t be fixed in time, and the crew must decide whether its loss would be bad enough to scrub the mission.

‘More with less’: Lacking parts, airmen scramble to keep B-52s flying

Of the 744 Stratofortresses the Air Force built between 1954 and 1962, 10% remain — and the years have taken a toll. The aircraft’s mission-capable rate has steadily declined over the last decade, from a modern high of 78% in 2012 to 59% in 2022 — the most recent year for which statistics are available.

The bomber’s 185-foot wingspan means it must often remain outdoors, exposed to the elements, including frigid winters at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, searing Middle Eastern heat and sand, and corrosive salt air from the Pacific Ocean. Key parts have become increasingly unavailable, as the companies that made them have moved onto other business or simply closed.

The B-52 may be old, but it’s a hardy plane, said Capt. Jonathan Newark, the instructor weapon systems officer for the training flight. And even though some of its systems may look “antiquated,” he said, they get the job done. He gestured to a panel with thick, black keys he uses to punch in targeting data.

“You look at this keyboard, it looks like something out of the Cold War. Dr. Strangelove, right?” Newark said, referring to the 1964 film about nuclear war that prominently features the B-52. “But we could do every single mission set using this keyboard ... all the way up to our most advanced weapons.”

Back on the runway, the Red Gremlin II idled more than a half hour longer than expected, with the engines emitting a low and steady whine, while maintainers tried to get the targeting pod screen to function. But a fix would have taken too long, so the crew decided to get the flight going.

“We’re balancing what training we can get done,” Newark said. “I don’t have any showstoppers [on this flight]. The students that are here can still get all the training they need. [The targeting pod practice would be] nice to have, not necessarily something we needed today. There’s a lot of things like that — the radar altimeter doesn’t work.”

“We’re able to make an aircrew decision to fly without it,” he added. “We do that a lot with airplanes that are a little bit older.”

Issues with the engines, hydraulics or flight surfaces would be deal-breakers in any situation, Newark said. But in combat, a B-52 crew will be more willing to fly with minor problems on their plane because the mission must get done.

So the crew of the bomber, call sign Scout 93, strapped on their parachutes, buckled into their seats and roared into the sky to meet up with a KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling tanker near Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Top-to-bottom upgrades

The scope of this modernization project is unprecedented in the B-52′s history, said Col. David Miller, director of logistics and engineering at Air Force Global Strike Command.

And Armagost noted the service expects the B-52′s engine upgrades will provide improved efficiency and range. But the new Rolls-Royce engines are also expected to be quieter and more reliable than the current engines, plus they wouldn’t have to depend on an outdated supply chain for spare parts.

“If we’re on a [bomber task force] mission in Indonesia, we’ll probably have parts available for those [new] engines that are pretty close, rather than having to schedule a C-17 [cargo aircraft] to fly an engine from” the United States, Armagost said.

Gallery: Take a flight in the US Air Force’s B-52 bomber

The B-52J will receive a modern active electronically scanned array radar to improve its navigation, self-defense and targeting capabilities. The B-52′s current, outdated mechanically scanned radar is at the end of its life and is increasingly difficult to support, Armagost said.

But making the B-52 new again is only one step in the process. The Air Force is also trying to map out how best to use it in a war against advanced forces that could deny airspace to the U.S. and allies.

Such a conflict would represent a dramatic shift away from the relatively open airspaces in which B-52s have operated for the last two decades. And the modernization on the way is vital to keeping the B-52 able to engage the enemy, Armagost said. That will mean figuring out the best way for the B-52J to work alongside the B-21 now in development.

The B-21 Raider, with its next-generation stealth capabilities, was designed to conduct penetrating strike missions against an adversary with advanced air defenses, such as China, while the B-52J — about as stealth-less as can be — would carry out standoff strikes, launching missiles at enemy targets from outside contested airspace.

But Armagost doesn’t expect a “siloed” approach to how the service will use its fleet of two bomber types, with one or the other individually designated to carry out certain types of missions. What’s more likely, he said, is the B-52J and B-21 working in concert, along with other U.S. forces or partners, in integrated multidomain operations that could include working with cyber and maritime assets.

“Their capabilities are inherently different,” Armagost explained. “But a penetrating strike force, [including the B-21], might open up opportunities for a standoff strike force, [like the B-52], that then has follow-on opportunities for reacquiring denied or contested airspace.”

He envisions the B-52J conducting the kind of integrated operations that paved the way for Desert Storm or the opening salvoes of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

During the Gulf War, for example, B-52s flew 1,741 missions and dropped 27,000 tons of munitions, including Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missiles and conventional bombs. They targeted airfields, aircraft, command-and-control sites, power facilities, and Republican Guard positions, while allowing allied ground forces to sweep through and swiftly win the war.

And in a single night mission in the opening phase of the Iraq War, B-52s launched 100 cruise missiles at targets before going on to fly at least 100 additional missions in the conflict’s first few weeks.

Such a campaign would allow “a 100-hour ground war because of what’s been conducted through an air operation,” Armagost said. “Then the resulting joint environment becomes completely different than what it was prior to that.”

The Air Force is drawing up “robust” concepts of operations for how the B-21 will carry out missions, he added, including alongside the B-52, which is also helping Air Force Global Strike Command identify potential future capability gaps and how to address them.

The weapons arming the B-52J will likely run the gamut, Armagost said — everything from gravity bombs that provide “affordable mass,” to cruise missiles for carrying out strikes beyond the range of enemy air defenses, to precision-guided munitions and highly specialized, “exquisite” weapons like hypersonics.

“If it can fly or be dropped off an aircraft, the B-52 has probably done it,” he said.

The Air Force has used B-52s to test prototype hypersonic weapons in recent years, and Armagost “absolutely” sees them as a regular part of the Stratofortress’ future arsenal.

Although hypersonic weapons have the potential to provide tremendous capabilities — including flying faster than Mach 5 and maneuvering in such a way as to avoid countermeasures — they carry price tags so steep that the B-52J would need cheaper and more traditional bombs, too, he added.

“Everything is a choice, particularly when it comes to aviation,” Armagost said. “If it flies fast or is maneuverable, everything’s a trade-off. That’s why gravity weapons probably will always be a thing.”

Broken tech ‘makes combat a lot more difficult’

After a nearly six-hour flight that included flying alongside another B-52, aerial refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker out of Illinois’ Scott Air Force Base, and simulated bombing practice, the crew of the Red Gremlin II turned back to Barksdale. Its student pilot, 1st Lt. Clay Hultgren, practiced touch-and-go landings over and over, and then brought the bomber to a safe stop.

During the post-flight debrief, instructors took stock of how the flight went — and considered the toll the broken equipment took on their lessons. The radar altimeter started working after the bomber took off, but even if it stayed broken it wouldn’t have been a big deal.

The crew was able to successfully complete most of the planned bombing simulations, except an assignment to find and target mobile equipment.

“We weren’t able to do that because we didn’t have a targeting pod,” DeVita said. “So [we have an] alibi for that.”

And losing the bomber’s CONECT screen — a system rolled out in the mid-2010s that provides detailed, moving color maps and helps with digital targeting — was a major “limiting factor,” DeVita added. The crew of the Red Gremlin II instead had to use the legacy navigation system DeVita learned to fly on years ago.

Losing the CONECT screen also meant the weapon systems officer and electronic warfare stations didn’t have the maps that would have made their jobs easier, DeVita said.

“That’s an issue,” he explained. “It makes combat a lot more difficult to be precise and to do a lot of the things that we walked out the door to do today. So that was unfortunate.”

While the B-52′s massive modernization is vital, Penney fears what the Air Force might find when it takes a closer look under its hood. Six decades of flying may have left it with metal fatigue, corrosion, stress fractures and other hidden structural issues, the retired F-16 pilot said.

She compared the potential dangers facing the B-52 to the unwelcome surprises the service found when it re-engined massive C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft in the 2010s.

“They ended up having to cut the planned number of [C-5] upgrades nearly in half because when they opened up the aircraft, they found a lot of stuff that they didn’t expect,” she said. “They ended up having to do a lot of unplanned [service life extension work], essentially, and that ended up eating into the available money they had for the program.”

Air Force Global Strike Command said in a response to Defense News’ inquiry that the service assessed the B-52s before deciding to modernize them, and found their underlying structures were strong enough to last through the plane’s extended life span.

Penney said she also worries about the risks that come from concurrency as the Air Force attempts multiple major upgrades on a plane in short succession, if not simultaneously. Any one of those upgrades — re-engining, installing a new radar, updating avionics and so on — would be a major effort on its own, she added.

“These are programs that are long overdue and are utterly necessary if the B-52 is going to be able to execute what we need it to do in today’s — and last into the future’s — strategic environment,” she said.

If the B-52 modernization ends up significantly more complicated than expected, and thus delayed, Penney explained, the Air Force may be forced to extend the life of some B-1s or B-2s beyond their planned early retirements in the 2030s just to keep enough operational bombers.

And if the Air Force opens up the B-52 and finds structural problems severe enough to jeopardize the re-engining?

“We can’t even go there,” Penney said. “It is such a must-do. We cannot fail.”

The plane’s weapon systems officer, Capt. Jonathan “Loaner” Newark of the 11th Bomb Squadron at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, furiously taps targeting coordinates into a computer, his face bathed in green light.

Numbers on the screen tick down to zero as the bomber looms over its destination. The bomb bay doors open with a whir and a thump.

”Weapons hot,” Newark says over a crackling intercom. He reaches to his right and flips open a small panel covering a button designed to let loose a 2,000-pound bomb. “Bay three, releasing.”

In one of several passes, and without warning, the bomber jerks sharply upward as its student pilot, 1st Lt. Clay Hultgren, disengages the autopilot at the wrong time. Within seconds, the plane climbs past its assigned altitude limit of 20,000 feet — where it could run afoul of other aircraft.

Instructor pilot Lt. Col. Michael “Fredo” DeVita quickly grabs the yoke and wrestles the 185,000-pound bomber back down to a proper altitude, banking hard to the left. The plane steadies and resumes course as quickly as it veered off track.

No bombs — real or fake — were aboard the B-52 during its Jan. 4 training run. But the five-person aircrew on the flight dubbed “Scout 93″ practiced each step in the process as if they were headed for a airstrike at war.

Stratofortress pilots control six-decade-old hardware with a 185-foot wingspan — and the lives of the four or five airmen onboard. But the moment the Vietnam War-era bomber’s wheels leave the ground, anything can happen — and some of the most important lessons cover more than routine flight procedures.

During training flights, instructors impress upon younger lieutenants the seriousness of life and death when controlling one of the most formidable weapons of war ever built. Its crew must make calculations, down to the smallest decimal point, that ultimately determine whether the bomber strikes its intended target or innocent civilians.

“It’s tough to really glue everybody together,” Newark said. “At the end of the day, we’re all crew and we’re all in charge of those weapons. We all own them.”

Cold War plane, 21st-century training

Hultgren aims to join a long line of pilots that stretches back to the B-52′s debut in 1954. If his training goes as planned, he’ll be among those in the cockpit as the fleet remains in service for decades to come. The Air Force is now working on a series of upgrades, such as new engines, that aim to keep the B-52 flying until about 2060.

As the Stratofortress barrels toward a century in operation, its missions and training for the aircrew aboard must adapt to the digital age, too.

The new B-52: How the Air Force is prepping to fly century-old bombers

Five crew members were aboard the bomber that day, including three instructors: DeVita, 40, a pilot who commands the 11th Bomb Squadron; electronic warfare officer Capt. David “Rumble” Bumgarner, 35; and Newark, 34, the weapon systems officer. Rounding out the crew were pilot trainee Hultgren, 27, and WSO student 1st Lt. Jeremiah Tackett, 27, both too early in their careers to have earned their own call signs.

The mission marked Hultgren’s sixth training flight on the B-52, and Tackett’s 10th.

Their unit, the 11th Bomb Squadron, is the active duty component of the Air Force’s B-52 formal training unit. It takes airmen about nine months to finish the academics and flight training syllabi to learn to operate B-52s and their weaponry. About three dozen students graduated last year, the service said.

For Hultgren occupying the co-pilot’s seat is an exciting opportunity. He dreamed of flying when he joined the Air Force and would have been happy in any aircraft, he said. But being chosen to operate the B-52 — with its deep history and strong community with others who fly the Stratofortress — was thrilling.

“I like that I’m doing something that people have been doing for a while,” Hultgren said.

‘You scared him’

On the morning of the training flight, the crew strapped into their parachutes, donned their oxygen masks and buckled up for takeoff.

Their aircraft — completed in 1960 and dubbed the “Red Gremlin II” — eased onto the runway, following another outbound B-52 that spewed a plume of jet fuel exhaust as it departed.

Hultgren’s left hand rested on the bomber’s eight throttle levers, which allow the pilots to individually adjust the power to any engine that shows signs of trouble. DeVita reached over and guided him as they pushed forward in tandem.

A whine rose from the plane’s engines as it accelerated through the acrid cloud of exhaust. DeVita stuck his hand into Hultgren’s peripheral vision, flashing a thumbs-up. The student let go of the throttle and gently pulled back on the yoke with both hands. The Red Gremlin II was airborne.

A typical B-52 training mission almost always follows the same script: takeoff, a few passes with an aerial refueling tanker, simulated bomb runs, and a few touch-and-go landings. Each sortie lasts five or six hours.

During the nearly 6-hour, counterclockwise loop over Arkansas, Oklahoma and back to Louisiana, the B-52 flew alongside the first bomber, met up with a KC-135 Stratotanker for aerial refueling practice and logged bombing runs at Fort Johnson, Louisiana.

Aerial refueling is one of the hardest things for a pilot to master — especially when flying something as massive as the 159-foot-long B-52, mere feet away from a tanker that is almost as large, tens of thousands of feet in the air at hundreds of miles per hour. It requires a steady hand, Newark said, and is “where pilots make their money.”

“Two big airplanes, with a lot of aerodynamic forces, and you’re trying to make really small corrections,” DeVita said. “We’re talking corrections of … a couple feet left or right, on airplanes that are really close together. That’s the hardest part.”

There’s a lot of aerodynamics to consider. As Hultgren pulled the B-52 closer to the KC-135 for yet another round of refueling, the bomber entered the tanker’s downwash. The B-52 began drafting off the KC-135, causing the bomber to speed up as its air resistance waned.

A buzzer blared and red light flashed. The KC-135 pulled away. DeVita pushed Hultgren’s hand off the throttle and eased the plane back.

“You scared him a bit,” DeVita said. “That’s why I took over.”

‘More with less’: Lacking parts, airmen scramble to keep B-52s flying

But after spooking the tanker, Hultgren showed he could learn from his mistakes. DeVita gave him back the throttle and offered pointers on making incremental changes to the bomber’s power to find the “sweet spot” behind the KC-135.

“Whenever you’re ready,” DeVita said. “If you need a little bit more of a break, that’s fine.”

“Think we can do one more?” Hultgren asked. He slowly maneuvered the B-52 forward for its sixth refueling connection.

“Crank the power just a hair,” DeVita said. “Good.”

“F---ing awesome,” Hultgren murmured, as the refueling boom loomed larger and larger above the cockpit.

“That’s really good, dude,” DeVita said as the boom settled into place with a thunk. “Contact. Perfect.”

Hultgren kept practicing to get aerial refueling right, over and over, before the bomber parted ways with the KC-135 and flew back to Louisiana for bombing practice.

Like most training missions, this run was designed to pit the B-52 against a generic, unnamed adversary, Newark said. The crew of the Red Gremlin II practiced entering a simulated battlespace with enemy fighters and friendly forces — in this scenario, F-22 Raptor and F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters and an E-3 Sentry airborne target-tracking jet — before striking imaginary ground targets.

But instructors can throw students some curveballs. The bombing simulation began by striking soft targets such as aluminum aircraft hangars, before the instructors directed the crew to hit hardened two-story buildings in other locations. The deviation pushed Tackett, the student WSO, to decide what combination of munitions could best destroy the sturdier buildings, and to work with Newark to update the targets.

“It gives them [experience with] live problem-solving,” Newark said. “That’s what drove all those good discussions about, how would we destroy a troop staging area? How would we destroy a hardened building? Because we didn’t tell them ahead of time what it would be.”

For years, Stratofortress flights required five airmen — two pilots, two WSOs and an electronic warfare officer. But advancements in technology are allowing the Air Force to fold the EW officer’s duties into the WSO job, blending the bomber’s offensive and defensive roles and shrinking the crew to four.

Now WSOs can handle electronic warfare and airstrikes from computers that show data for both jobs, rather than making airmen sit at a designated station that can perform only one role.

Combining those tasks isn’t daunting for Tackett, the WSO-in-training. When asked how he juggles the sometimes-conflicting duties of a WSO, whose job is to take a plane close enough to a combat zone to strike targets, and an EW officer, who is responsible for keeping a plane out of danger, Tackett said: “A lot of it comes down to commander’s intent, and our mission for the day, making judgment calls, and assessing the situation from there.”

“Knowing both sides of it, I’m able to provide better recommendations to pilots” about where to go and what to hit, Tackett said.

A cramped ride

Flying on the B-52 can be exhausting, and even more so on operational missions that can last up to 36 hours. Despite being one of the biggest bombers ever built, the Stratofortress doesn’t leave much space or comfort for the crew.

It’s cramped and noisy. The constant roar of its six-decade-old engines creates such a din that airmen wear earplugs under their noise-canceling headsets and flight helmets. Without the communications system, it’s impossible to hear what someone else is saying, even when shouted from inches away.

Airmen must stoop when making their way from the cockpit to the electronic warfare station at the back of the jet’s upper level, and then down a ladder to the WSO station. Their posture in the seats isn’t much better.

“This is why our backs are all so screwed up,” DeVita said. “We’re sitting hunched over like this, with this heavy parachute on.”

Gallery: Take a flight in the US Air Force’s B-52 bomber

Amenities are few. A single bunk behind the pilot’s seat allows airmen to grab some shut-eye on long-haul flights; a small, well-used oven that can heat meals up to 400 degrees sits in the back. Typically, the crew brings light sandwiches or other snacks to ward off hunger, and — since it’s easy to get dehydrated while spending hours at high altitude — large bottles of water.

The B-52 crews find ways to entertain themselves in transit on ultra-long flights. Sometimes that means bringing a book; other times, 11th Bomb Squadron members plug a music player into the intercom, courtesy of a jury-rigged cable one airman soldered together.

In 2022, Air Force Global Strike Command launched a program at Barksdale called “Comprehensive Readiness for Aircrew Flying Training,” or CRAFT, to give airmen the physical, nutritional and mental tools to better weather the grueling missions.

But there’s one thing the Air Force can’t give crews: a real bathroom.

Behind this bomber’s WSO station, next to the bomb bay hatch, sits a single urinal without a curtain for privacy. Passengers are often reminded of the “Big Ugly Fat Fellow’s” cardinal rule: Do not go No. 2 on the B-52. An emergency garbage bag is on hand for those who really must go, but the crew is clear: Using it won’t win you any friends.

Debriefing the mission

After a series of repeated touch-and-go landings, the bomber came to a safe halt at Barksdale. The crew made their way back to Thirsty’s, a heritage room decorated with the insignia of the 93rd Bomb Squadron and other aviation memorabilia, a pair of arcade machines and a bar.

The crew popped jalapeño popcorn and cracked open small beers — only one per person — before the instructors started the debrief to run through the results of the day’s training.

They successfully refueled the bomber, and they hit their targets, which was good, DeVita said.

But then, DeVita said, the mission “started to go downhill.” The crew missed check-ins and roll calls they were supposed to make with other aircraft, and started to fall behind schedule.

“In real life … they might cancel the whole ball, because we didn’t speak up or show up,” DeVita told Hultgren and Tackett. The students listened with neutral expressions.

Then there was the matter of the lurch. After a simulated bomb drop at about 19,000 feet, DeVita said, Hultgren had turned off the autopilot while attempting a ‘break turn,’ in which an aircraft turns away hard from a potential threat. Hultgren didn’t account for the bomber’s nose pitching up, causing the sudden and unexpected climb, DeVita said.

“I’ll take the slap on the wrist for that,” Hultgren said. Some of the crew chuckled — but not DeVita.

“Did anybody tell you to kick off the autopilot and make that aggressive of a turn?” DeVita asked him. “Someone taught you that? Or did you teach yourself that?”

“My first-ever break turn, they said don’t use autopilot,” Hultgren said.

“Who?” DeVita said.

Hultgren demurred: “I don’t want to out him.”

DeVita told Hultgren that, at his current skill level, he should stick with the autopilot in those scenarios. And he warned Hultgren that kind of flying endangers the bomber and its crew.

“[At] the roll rate that you did today, I wasn’t comfortable that you were not going to break the airplane — not to mention the fact that we didn’t have control of the airplane, because we climbed 300 feet out of the airspace,” DeVita said.

But DeVita owned up to making his own mistake, when he relayed the wrong data to the crew during bombing practice.

“It can happen so easily, even to experienced people,” Newark said. “It has to be exact.”

The instructors stressed to the students that — even when they’re the new airman in their squadron, and even if it’s a more experienced commander who made a mistake — they need to speak up if they see even a single decimal point out of place on a bomb’s coordinates. Newark said he’ll sometimes give students the wrong coordinates during training to ensure they double-check the numbers.

“I wasn’t paying attention” won’t hold up as an alibi in court, Newark said.

“Don’t just be a passenger in that situation,” Newark said. “If we drop the bomb on the wrong target …”

“We all go to jail,” DeVita answered.

Though the training on “Scout 93″ didn’t go perfectly, that’s why the Air Force spends so much time training B-52 students, DeVita said. Instructors give their unvarnished feedback; students learn and grow from their mistakes.

Hultgren acknowledged his mistakes and said his aerial refueling skills have greatly improved, thanks to DeVita’s frank feedback. He and Tackett are on track to graduate in March.

“If we fly a sortie, and we don’t debrief anything [that went wrong], then we shouldn’t have wasted the taxpayer’s money by taking the airplane airborne,” DeVita said. “It’s not personal.”

Defense News visited Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to check out the aging B-52 bomber fleet and talk to pilots about what it will take for the aircraft to fly for several more decades. Here’s what we saw:

The effort, dubbed Sandtrap, produced prototypes that improved the speed and accuracy of unmanned aerial system countermeasures, according to a Feb. 9 announcement from CENTCOM, the Pentagon’s combatant command whose area of responsibility includes Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Downing a drone or other aerial threat requires spotting, classifying, tracking and targeting it in a process that is increasingly digital.

The U.S. military has in recent months faced a barrage of drone and missile attacks, including in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. A one-way drone strike at the Tower 22 installation, near the al-Tanf garrison and Syrian border, killed three soldiers in January. Iranian-supplied militants were blamed.

Houthis, Russians wield same Iranian-supplied drones, DIA studies show

Schuyler Moore, the chief technology officer at CENTCOM, in a statement said the command is committed to “leveraging every talented individual, technical solution and innovative process available” to advance counter-drone efforts.

“The Sandtrap hackathon combined all three: exceptional coders, brilliant software prototypes, and a repeatable process that can give us creative solutions in the future,” she added. Moore previously served as the chief strategy officer for Task Force 59, an outfit designed to quickly fold artificial intelligence and uncrewed systems into Navy operations.

Additional events similar to Sandtrap are expected going forward. Hackathons are organized to bring together specialists — developers, data scientists, software engineers and others — who then quickly improve upon existing programs or build novel ones.

Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, commander of CENTCOM, in a statement said the Sandtrap endeavor brought “new and creative solutions to the table.” Future hackathons, he added, “will drive better solutions to critical missions and advance data-centric warfighting for the command.”

President Joe Biden announced in August that the U.S. would begin training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 as part of a multinational effort to provide Ukraine with the advanced fighter jets. Pilot training began in October at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona.

Since then, the Ukraine war fund that the U.S. has used to send billions of dollars in other weapons systems and assistance to Ukraine has run out of money while Congress has struggled to pass new aid.

The lack of funding has meant the U.S. has not been able to send any new weapons packages to Ukraine despite a brutal bombardment campaign by Russia. But the pilot training has been able to continue, Hokanson said.

“We do have the resources to continue the training that’s already started,” Hokanson said, and get that initial tranche completed this year. “If we decide to increase that, obviously we’ll need the resources to train additional pilots and ground support personnel.”

The latest legislation that would have approved more than $60 billion in aid for Ukraine was scuttled by a small group of House Republicans earlier this week over U.S.-Mexico border policy; a last-ditch effort Thursday the Senate was again trying to get support for a standalone bill that would fund both Ukraine and Israel’s defense needs.

Ukraine’s leaders have asked for fighter jets from the West since the earliest days of the war. For the first year and a half, the U.S. and other allied partners focused on providing other weapons systems, citing the jets’ cost, concerns about further provoking Russia, the number of deadly air defense systems Russia had covering Ukrainian airspace and the difficulty of maintaining the jets.

Ukraine’s leaders have argued that the F-16 is far superior to their existing fleet of Soviet-era warplanes. In some cases, the U.S. has found ways to deliver some of the advanced capabilities without providing the actual jets.

For example, Air Force engineers found ways to modify the HARM air-to-surface anti-radiation missile so that it could be carried and fired by Ukrainian-flown MiGs. The missile and its targeting system enable the jet to identify enemy ground radars and destroy them.

The counter-unmanned aircraft system prototype, developed in collaboration with Moog, showed it could detect, track, identify, and defeat or disable both stationary and moving targets on the ground and in the air in “realistic battlefield scenarios” at the Big Sandy Range in Kingman, Arizona, BAE said in a Jan. 23 statement.

The prototype demonstrated “the turret engaging with ground targets and utilizing a slew-to-cure capability to target both stationary and moving small drones with 30mm proximity rounds,” the statement noted.

The demonstration’s “positive results exemplify opportunities for future capability growth within the purpose-built modular framework of the AMPV platform,” the statement added.

BAE built the AMPV early on to be modular and flexible for future configurations, according to Bill Sheehy, the company’s AMPV program director.

BAE first unveiled the prototype at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2023. It features both the existing chassis but includes enhancements such as the firm’s External Mission Equipment Package top plate, which enables rapid integration of future technologies and capabilities, the company said in the statement.

That package on the cUAS prototype, for example, is configured with Moog’s Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform turret. The Army has already validated the integration of a maneuver short-range air defense turret for the AMPV, just one of the 30 turret systems enabled by Moog’s weapons package, the company said.

Moog’s cUAS weapon system includes Leonardo DRS’ Multi-Mission Hemispheric Radar and Northrop Grumman’s XM914 30mm gun; both are components on the Stryker combat vehicle-based M-SHORAD system already fielded with the Army.

AMPV reached full-rate production in 2023. The vehicle replaces the M113 troop carrier with five variants, including versions designed to fire mortars, a command-and-control platform, and medical vehicles for evacuating or treating troops wounded on the battlefield.

BAE continues to develop new capabilities for the AMPV, anticipating the Army may want the vehicle to carry out additional missions.

The exercises come as Russia’s war on Ukraine bogs down. NATO as an organization is not directly involved in the conflict, except to supply Kyiv with non-lethal support, although many member countries send weapons and ammunition individually or in groups, and provide military training.

In the months before President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, NATO began beefing up security on its eastern flank with Russia and Ukraine. It’s the alliance’s biggest buildup since the Cold War. The war games are meant to deter Russia from targeting a member country.

The exercises – dubbed Steadfast Defender 24 – “will show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometers (miles), from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any condition,” the 31-nation organization said.

Troops will be moving to and through Europe until the end of May in what NATO describes as “a simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary.” Under NATO’s new defense plans, its chief adversaries are Russia and terrorist organizations.

“The alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via transatlantic movement of forces from North America,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, told reporters.

Cavoli said it will demonstrate “our unity, our strength, and our determination to protect each other.”

The chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, said that it’s “a record number of troops that we can bring to bear and have an exercise within that size, across the alliance, across the ocean from the U.S. to Europe.”

Bauer described it as “a big change” compared to troop numbers exercising just a year ago. Sweden, which is expected to join NATO this year, will also take part.

U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps has said that the government in London would send 20,000 troops backed by advanced fighter jets, surveillance planes, warships and submarines, with many being deployed in eastern Europe from February to June.

By the end of the year, Lockheed will have spent roughly $100 million on the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) integration effort so far, according to Tom Copeman, vice president of naval systems within the company’s missiles and fire control business.

“The U.S. Navy has capability and capacity gaps against advanced threats at sea,” Copeman told Defense News in a Jan. 18 interview. The Patriot missile is “a combat-proven weapon against advanced threats, against hypersonic [weapons].”

The capability is “definitely complementary to what [the Navy has] today,” Shireen Melvin, director of integrated combat management within the company’s rotary and mission systems business, said in the same interview.

Lockheed in 2017 decided to pursue an upgraded capability that would allow it to avoid a typically lengthy and costly missile development schedule, Copeman said.

The PAC-3 MSE, as the upgraded missile is known, already has a hot production line in Camden, Arkansas, that is currently ramping up to produce 550 missiles a year. The missile is typically fired from the U.S. Army’s Patriot air-and-missile defense system. Lockheed has plans to increase its production numbers as it replenishes the stockpile of missiles sent to Ukraine since Russia invaded nearly two years ago.

The Missile Defense Agency provided the company with a small amount of funding early on to integrate PAC-3 MSE into its Aegis Ashore baseline capability. Aegis Ashore provides missile defense capability from a deckhouse on land. There is one operational Aegis Ashore in Romania and another in Poland that has yet to reach full operational capability.

That effort did not include a live-fire test, but rather a hardware-in-the-loop test in the fall of 2022 using Army launchers instead of Navy platforms at the Pacific Missile Range Facility.

Lockheed then invested internally to integrate PAC-3 MSE to be fired from Aegis ships.

In summer 2023, Lockheed proved it could integrate PAC-3 MSE missiles with the Aegis SPY-1 radar, an integrated air-and-missile defense sensor, aboard Aegis capable ships. There are nearly 100 SPY-1 radars aboard Aegis cruisers and destroyers.

The spring live-fire test will use a ground-launched vertical launch system rather than one on board Aegis ships, but is meant to demonstrate integration with the entire Aegis combat system, according to Copeman.

If the test is successful, he added, the company hopes the Navy or Defense Department will conduct further tests that could lead to an initial operational capability on a ship. “As of yet, that has not been funded by the DoD,” Copeman said.

Lockheed has also been involved in efforts with the Missile Defense Agency in recent years to integrate the Patriot air-and-missile defense system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System, also manufactured by the company.

In early 2022, MDA successfully launched a PAC-3 MSE missile from a THAAD system in a test at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, in an effort to rapidly field the integrated capability in response to an urgent operational request in the Indo-Pacific region.

WASHINGTON — The testing of sophisticated software aboard an XQ-58A Valkyrie drone will influence how the U.S. Air Force develops and deploys autonomous technology in the near future, according to a service official.

The Kratos-made UAV flew a three-hour sortie in July near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, relying for the first time on artificial intelligence algorithms. Its programming was matured over millions of hours in simulation and digital environments; in flights with an experimental F-16 jet known as the X-62 VISTA; and other events, according to the service.

Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, chief of AI testing and operations, on Jan. 16 said the Valkyrie proved to be “a great test bed” and one capable of illuminating novel approaches to traditional tasks.

“We have to give it some space as it’s doing its maneuvering and just recognize that it is a computer-controlled … aircraft, and it may do things differently than a human,” Hamilton said during a livestreamed event hosted by C4ISRNET. “We need to recognize there’s a huge benefit there — some things we are doing right now may not be the most efficient, most effective way of doing things.”

Tinkering with the Valkyrie builds upon years of the Air Force’s Skyborg program and is closely linked to its more recent effort for collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA. The service in the coming years wants to pair human pilots with CCAs to afford greater flexibility and firepower.

The uncrewed aircraft could execute a variety of assignments: conducting reconnaissance, gathering intelligence, jamming signals, serving as decoys and striking targets with their own missiles. Officials have said CCAs could range in cost and complexity, with some being expensive and precious while others could be easily sacrificed in combat.

“If I’m flying around in my fighter, I can imagine a world where I have multiple drones able to conduct some missions,” Hamilton said. “The key, though, is we’ve got to get the human-machine teaming right. It’s all about that. AI and this autonomy — it’s got to empower the decision-maker.”

Robert Winkler, a vice president at Kratos, said in September that the Air Force and the Defense Department have communicated their desires for a fleet of robotic wingmen. David Alexander, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which makes the Gray Eagle and Reaper drones, has said the same thing.

The Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget blueprint included at least $392 million for CCA work. Billions of dollars are forecast to be spent in the long term.

The B-21 flew on Wednesday, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in an email. It was not the first time the Northrop Grumman-made bomber flew since its arrival at Edwards in November 2023, but Stefanek declined to say how many flights it has taken or provide other details, citing operational security reasons.

“Flight testing is a critical step in the test campaign managed by the Air Force Test Center and 412th Test Wing’s B-21 combined test force to provide survivable, long-range, penetrating strike capabilities to deter aggression and strategic attacks against the United States, allies and partners,” Stefanek said.

While the B-21 was unveiled with much fanfare in a December 2022 rollout at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, the service and Northrop Grumman have since become more reticent about new developments in the highly classified bomber’s evolution. The War Zone first reported the B-21′s Jan. 17 flight.

Photographs of the B-21 have shown its nickname Cerberus — the multi-headed hound that guards the gates of Hades in Greek mythology — stenciled on its landing gear door.

After its Nov. 10 flight to Edwards, the B-21 moved into the flight testing phase, which includes taxiing, ground tests and flying operations.

Northrop Grumman has built or is in the process of building at least six test B-21s, including this first bomber. The B-21 program is now in the engineering and manufacturing development phase, and the test aircraft are production-representative platforms, meaning they are being built on the same line with the same tools, technicians and processes as production bombers.

Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota is to be the first base to receive a Raider, scheduled for delivery in the mid-2020s.

The Air Force plans to have a fleet of at least 100 B-21s, which will replace the aging B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit bombers as they retire in the 2030s. The B-21 is meant to conduct penetrating deep-strike missions against adversaries with advanced radars and air defense systems. The aircraft can carry both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Each B-21 is expected to have an average procurement cost of $692 million, and the program has a price tag of $203 billion over 30 years.

Test pilots told reporters at the B-21′s December 2022 rollout that a flight test program like the one planned for the B-21 will be a “massive undertaking.”

Northrop Grumman B-21 test pilot Chris Moss said at the time that pilots will be watching to ensure the Raider flies as expected, experience how it feels and confirm its systems work as intended. The bomber will record data that is transmitted to the ground for analysis, he added.

The announcement comes amid the Israel-Hamas war and tension along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where the militant group Hezbollah is based. Hezbollah in recent months has fired Katyusha missiles and drones at Israel.

On Jan. 9, Hezbollah launched a drone attack on a northern Israeli base. That same day, Israel killed the chief of the militant group’s drone operations in southern Lebanon, Hassan Abeid al-Hussein Ismail.

Rafael Advanced Defense Systems had combined the short-range and medium-range variants of the Spyder surface-to-air system. The Israeli company said the test included the interception of a UAV in a “challenging operational scenario, achieving a direct and effective hit.”

“The success of the test is a significant milestone in developing the system against different threats and demonstrates the system’s effectiveness in intercepting challenging ground-launched threats,” Retired Brig. Gen. Pini Yungman, who leads Rafael’s air defense division, said in the statement.

Neither Rafael nor the Israeli Defense Ministry would answer Defense News’ questions about when the military will field the combined system. The company also declined to answer an inquiry about the specifications of the drone target.

However, a source with knowledge of the test told Defense News the drone was the smallest target the Spyder family of systems has ever hit.

The Spyder intercepts threats using two Rafael-made missiles, the Python and the Derby. The system’s new configuration features an integrated radar, electro-optical launcher, advanced command-and-control system, and the two missile types, all mounted on a single platform.

The configuration can provide point defense — in which a specific geographic section is the focus — or area defense — which covers a wider zone.

The Spyder system is operational with other military forces, including Georgia and the Philippines. It is also a contender in the Romanian government’s bid for short-range air defense systems, announced in late November.

But identifying the best radar is more complex than it sounds, according to Col. Matthew Danner, who leads the Japan-based 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit.

He said Marines are experimenting with the new Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept to identify how many people are needed at these temporary, remote posts; what gear they need; and how they can best support the larger naval and joint force.

Though these expeditionary advanced bases could perform a range of missions, the 31st MEU focused on sensing expeditionary advanced bases during its two short deployments in 2023, Danner told Defense News during a Jan. 4 media roundtable.

“What they typically consist of is a ground sensor capability … that will enable us to provide remote sensing capability offshore, and then the radars to provide surface radar out to 40 or 50 nautical miles,” he explained. “And then we link those collections into other sensor EABs [expeditionary advanced bases], we feed it up into joint architecture, and then that contributes to the common operational picture that enables the joint task force or the geographic combatant commander to understand the battle space and employ certain capabilities.”

Not all radars are created equal; it depends on the environment, Danner added.

“There are certain radars that blend into the operating environment better in the Baltic Sea, that are going to stick out [in the Pacific] and become very, very obvious because they’re not the types of radar that are used in the [area],” he said. “Usually it has to do with blending into the electromagnetic spectrum so that our collections don’t stand out from the normal environment itself,” allowing enemy forces to find and target the Marines at expeditionary bases.

Col. Samuel “Lee” Meyer, who commanded 13th MEU during its deployment last year, previously told Defense News his sensing EABs included about 30 to 50 Marines who moved ashore using helicopters or surface connectors. Those forces “provided a risk-worthy, low-cost, low-footprint option to get eyes and ears on an area where the Navy may not be, or may not be able to maintain persistence.”

Meyer said he experimented with Shield AI’s V-Bat drone to provide live video feeds and with Simrad commercial boating radar to build maritime domain awareness.

Danner said his forces used a couple models of the Furuno boating radar, as well as a top secret-level communication tool called Athena’s Trident.

The new system underwent testing in December 2023 and is planned for fielding first at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, California.

Following that fielding, Marine spokeswoman Morgan Blackstock said, the Corps will then field the system to Camp Pendleton, California, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Marine Corps Base Hawaii and Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.

The Corps first announced the Force-on-Force Training Systems-Next program in 2021 after beginning to seek a replacement for the Instrumented Tactical Engagement Simulation System, or ITESS, the replacement for the legacy Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, or MILES, in 2017, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

The Force-on-Force Training Systems-Next system has since been renamed the Marine Corps Tactical Instrumentation System, or MCTIS.

That year Army officials announced the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System would become obsolete by 2026. The Army currently is seeking its own replacement for the legacy shooting simulators.

Marines finally getting a realistic force-on-force shooter for combat training

Saab Inc. won the contract, potentially worth up to $248 million in 2021. Marine Corps Tactical Instrumentation System uses vests equipped with sensors to detect not only hits and misses but also track movement and location data.

That information can be used for real-time tracking during training and after-action reviews using playback features. Such features will allow trainers and observers to accurately analyze user performance in force-on-force training.

In early testing, the system could track the muzzle direction of Marines moving up floors of a building in an urban training site.

The new system also aims to solve some training challenges with both MILES and ITESS. Both are laser-based.

Lasers do a lot of things, but simple physics prevents users from accurately replicating bullets and other projectile ballistics.

The first generation ITESS could handle 120 Marines and opposition forces, the second generation expanded that number to 1,500.

Each Marine Corps Tactical Instrumentation System will have the capacity to handle a battalion-on-battalion fight, or an estimated 2,500 users, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

For instance, users cannot lead a moving target when firing a laser, which is a must for hitting targets with real projectiles. Lasers can’t simulate indirect fire such as mortars or artillery. And even the slightest of disturbances, such as tree leaves or shrubs can stop the laser from connecting with its target.

The Corps first leased the MQ-9 Reaper in 2018 and only received funding to purchase the drones in 2020, the same year the service created the Reaper military occupational specialty of 7318.

In the 2022 aviation plan, the Corps noted it had trained only 38 of the then-68 pilots it needed, who continue to be commissioned officers.

The Reaper first fielded to the U.S. Air Force in 2007 and was used extensively throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and operations globally. The Air Force operated more than 300 Reapers as of 2021, Defense News previously reported.

Marine Corps now has unit in Indo-Pacific flying Reaper drones

The Reaper is the Corps’ first group five drone. The service has long operated group three drones, such as the RQ-21A Blackjack.

A group three drone weighs between 55 pounds and 1,320 pounds, typically operating below 18,000 feet. The group five drones weigh more than 1,320 pounds and operate at altitudes higher than 18,000 feet.

Three units currently operate the Reaper: VMU-1 in Yuma, Arizona; UX-24 at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland; and VMU-3 at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.

VMU-1 was the first operational squadron to use the Reaper, conducting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support in U.S. Central Command beginning in 2018.

UX-24 is an aviation testing unit. And VMU-3 reached initial operational capability in August, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

The VMU-3 “Phantoms” provide aerial reconnaissance for the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment.

Marine spokesman Maj. Jordan Fox said in March that the squadron supports “a wide range of operations such as coastal and border surveillance, weapons tracking, embargo enforcement, humanitarian/disaster assistance, support of peacekeeping and counter-narcotic operations.”

Marines plan to establish the MQ-9A Fleet Replacement Squadron in Cherry Point, North Carolina, Capt. Alyssa Myers told Marine Corps Times.

Former Commandant Gen. David Berger in January 2023 posed a question to Marine aviation leaders in the services’s training and education planning document whether the service should consider options other than commissioned officers to fly the Reaper, given a shortage of fixed wing pilots.

To date, the Corps has stuck with commissioned officers for those jobs.

Under current plans, the Corps aims to field 20 reaper drones over the next decade, Myers said.

The landing ship medium, formerly known as the light amphibious warship, is the service’s first modern stern-landing vessel. Marines will test out the shore-to-shore connector at the Army’s Project Convergence event in early 2024, Defense News reported.

The Marines announced the concept in 2020 under the wide-ranging restructuring and overhauls as part of Force Design 2030. The landing ship medium is smaller than a traditional amphibious ship, such as the amphibious assault ship variants such as the landing helicopter assault or landing helicopter dock.

After a series of delays, the landing ship medium program is on track to go under contract in 2025. Marines and sailors will run through a series of tests throughout 2024 as the Corps narrows what it needs from the ship.

Marines to test out first stern landing vessel at Project Convergence

Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, deputy commandant for Marine Corps combat development and integration said in September he was confident the ship would go under contract by 2025, Defense News reported.

“Things have slipped right, but I think for all the right reasons,” he said. “We’re just simply trying to get the requirement right while still trying to move at pace. If you start moving too quickly, you might end up jumping to a conclusion that you probably should have taken a little more time to look at.”

An early prototype project used a leased offshore support vessel from Hornbeck Offshore Services. Designers modified the ship to operate as a stern landing vessel by adding a large ramp, landing legs and protection under the ship’s propellers and rudders, Defense News reported.

That prototype began testing in March 2023.

The Navy expects to purchase between 18–35 landing ship mediums to support Marine amphibious operations, according to a November 2023 Congressional Research Service report.

If the Navy acquires 35 landing ship mediums, the Corps will assign nine to each of the three Marine littoral regiments it is currently building. The Marine littoral regiment is the Corps newest formation that includes a variety of new equipment, such as radar, electronic warfare and the Navy/Marine expeditionary ship interdiction system, or NMESIS.

Eight additional landing ship mediums in the fleet would support any other ships under maintenance or modifications during future operations.

The Marines stood up two Marine littoral regiments in recent years, one based out of Hawaii the other in Okinawa, Japan. A third is planned for Guam sometime after 2025, officials said.

The landing ship medium is crucial to support the Marine expeditionary advanced base operations concept. It envisions small groups of Marines moving between various islands to gather intelligence on enemy locations and strike adversary ships with long range fires.

The approach aims to enable the work of the larger naval fleet, which would otherwise be held at a distance due to enemy anti-access, area-denial radar, sensor and missile systems.

“The LSMs would be instrumental to these operations, with LSMs embarking, transporting, landing, and subsequently reembarking these small Marine Corps units,” according to the Congressional Research Service report.

Under the fiscal year 2024 budget, the Navy sought to purchase the first landing ship medium in fiscal year 2025 at a cost of $187.9 million, with a total of at least six LSMs purchased by fiscal year 2028.

The Navy aims to field hypersonic weapons aboard the destroyer Zumwalt in 2025, and the ship is currently undergoing a modernization period to install the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missile system, among other updates. American Shipbuilder HII is outfitting the destroyer with the weapon system in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

“The upgrades will ensure Zumwalt remains one of the most technologically advanced and lethal ships in the U.S. Navy,” Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson, a spokesperson for the Naval Surface Force, told Navy Times in a statement in August.

USS Zumwalt to receive hypersonic missile upgrades at HII

Lockheed Martin, which is developing the launcher, the weapon control system and other pieces of the missile, announced in February that flight tests would commence in 2024.

In a nationally televised address Thursday, Maduro said 6,000 Venezuelan troops — including air and naval forces — will conduct joint operations off the nation’s eastern coast near the border with Guyana.

Maduro described the impending arrival of the British ship HMS Trent to Guyana’s shores as a threat to his country. He argued the ship’s deployment violates a recent agreement between the South American nations.

“We believe in diplomacy, in dialogue and in peace, but no one is going to threaten Venezuela,” Maduro said in a room where he was accompanied by a dozen military commanders. “This is an unacceptable threat to any sovereign country in Latin America.”

Venezuela and Guyana are involved in a border dispute over the Essequibo, a sparsely populated region the size of Florida with vast oil deposits off its shores.

The region has been under Guyana’s control for decades. But in December, Venezuela relaunched its historical claim to the Essequibo through a referendum in which it asked voters in the country whether the Essequibo should be turned into a Venezuelan state.

As tensions over the region escalated, the leaders of both countries met in the Caribbean island of St. Vincent and signed an agreement that said they would solve their dispute through nonviolent means.

During the talks, however, Guyanese President Irfaan Ali said his nation reserved its right to work with its partners to ensure the defense of his country.

On Thursday, Guyanese officials described the visit of HMS Trent as a planned activity aimed at improving the nation’s defense capabilities and said the ship’s visit will continue as scheduled.

“Nothing that we do or have done is threatening Venezuela,” Guyana’s vice president, Bharrat Jagdeo, told reporters in the capital Georgetown.

HMS Trent is a patrol and rescue ship that recently helped intercept drug traffickers off the West Coast of Africa. It can accommodate up to 30 sailors and a contingent of 18 marines. The vessel is equipped with 30mm cannons and a landing pad for helicopters and drones.

The ship had been sent to Barbados in early December to intercept drug traffickers, but its mission was changed Dec. 24 when it was sent to Guyana. Authorities did not specify when it was expected to arrive off Guyana’s shores.

The U.K. Defence Ministry said the ship will conduct joint operations with Guyana’s defense forces.

The nation of 800,000 people has a small military that is made up of 3,000 soldiers, 200 sailors and four small patrol boats known as Barracudas.

Venezuela says it was the victim of a land theft conspiracy in 1899, when Guyana was a British colony and arbitrators from Britain, Russia and the United States decided the boundary. The U.S. represented Venezuela in part because the Venezuelan government had broken off diplomatic relations with Britain.

Venezuelan officials contend Americans and Europeans colluded to cheat their country out of the land. They also argue that an agreement among Venezuela, Britain and the colony of British Guiana signed in 1966 to resolve the dispute effectively nullified the original arbitration.

Guyana maintains the initial accord is legal and binding, and asked the United Nations’ top court in 2018 to rule it as such, but a decision is years away. The century-old dispute was recently reignited with the discovery of oil in Guyana.

The Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS, is a helmet-mounted combined night vision/thermal augmented reality and situational awareness tool the service is funding to the tune of $22 billion.

The Army procured early versions, labeled IVAS 1.0 and 1.1, in late 2022 as the more ruggedized, field-worthy 1.2 version continued development. Officials confirmed to Army Times that they had procured funding for 5,000 sets of IVAS 1.0 in 2022, and another 5,000 sets of IVAS 1.1 in 2023.

Those 1.0 and 1.1 versions are slated for training units and schoolhouses for soldiers to tinker with and learn best applications for the new technology.

Microsoft, which based the IVAS on its HoloLens augmented reality device, delivered 20 prototypes of IVAS 1.2 in mid-2023.

Soldiers with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York tested the 1.2 in live fires for weapons compatibility checks in mid-August.

Another 80 such devices are scheduled for delivery in 2024 and a further 200 are slated for 2025 with fielding planned the same year, Program Executive Office-Soldier officials told Army Times.

The early HoloLens-based version of IVAS emerged in March 2019.

As teams developed the device, it transitioned from a helmet/no-helmet headstrap goggle option with a chest-mounted controller and thick cabling.

The cabling proved cumbersome for soldiers in various field tests.

Early testing showed image distortion and moisture control problems, which delayed testing by about a year but have since been resolved with software and hardware fixes, officials said.

The 1.2 version now has a flip-up, helmet mount, like many currently fielded night vision devices.

Key features of the device include its ability to link wirelessly to an individual’s weapon sight, allowing for picture-in-picture view from both the weapon-mounted camera and the device’s heads-up display.

In demonstrations at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, home to PEO-Soldier, the Family of Weapons Sights-Individual software used for the weapon-IVAS combination, allowed for users to see through obscurants, such as fog or dust, using thermal vision. Shooters were also able to fire around obstacles by using the weapon camera, while the shooter remains under cover

Navigation and training applications allow for users to lay out 3D maps of terrain, follow compass points in the heads-up display and identify friendly and enemy locations. In tactical scenarios, the device can load a “sand table” or internal map of a shoot house.

It also records position information as users move in teams, allowing for immediate after action reviews following shooting training.

Soldiers can use the IVAS to fly microdrones to scout a nearby location and take imagery of a target to send to its tactical cloud package, that then renders a 3D map of the terrain.

The cloud package runs on a briefcase-sized device used at the small unit level.

The IVAS also connects to the existing Nett Warrior smartphone-based Tactical Assault Kit. That device allows users to share information and upload various applications.

One example includes laying out fields of fire for a machine gunner that could be preloaded onto the device for when that soldier reaches the fighting position, said Brig. Gen. Christohper Schneider, PEO-Soldier commander.

Developers could create an app that provides a nine-line report for medical evacuations or an augmented reality option for medics to perform field surgery at the direction of a doctor at another location, he said.

Project Tripoli, which started in 2022 as part of the Force Design modernization initiative, aims to create a live-virtual-constructive training environment that Marines can leverage at large training bases and in remote locations.

Already the Marine Corps has married its training network with the Navy’s more robust version, shifting from large training facilities to laptops and adopting a joint set of training simulations. Marines on the ground will notice more changes in early 2024, Project Tripoli leaders told Defense News.

Improving live training

On the live side, the Corps is set to debut its Marine Corps Tactical Instrumentation System, or MCTIS, which has nearly completed government acceptance trials at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California.

Jim Brown, deputy director of the Range and Training Programs Division at the service’s Training and Education Command, said MCTIS will track every Marine, vehicle and weapon during a training event in the field, as well as their location, heath status and more. That data will be fed to a central location, creating a digital twin of what’s happening in the exercise.

Its ability to record every move and every shot — both live and simulated, and against real and simulated targets — will benefit both the Marines on the ground and the commanders back at headquarters, he said.

Brown said having a full view of the live, virtual and constructive actions during the event will allow commanders to see much more during their after-action reviews, leading to better lessons learned.

Col. Dane Salm, the director of the Range and Training Programs Division, said in the same interview that MCTIS would also “drastically change” the experience of Marines in the field. As they go through patrols, instructors in the field have always been able to pause the action if something is unsafe, to try to adjudicate who shot whom, and more. But now, Salm said, the instructors will be able to show a squad leader on a tablet what they had planned to do versus what they actually executed ­— giving real-time, visual cues as to what went wrong, while also allowing the squad to start over.

MCTIS will make its formal debut in February at the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) Warfighting Exercise 2-24 at Twentynine Palms, Salm said.

More flexible virtual trainers

On the virtual side of the training portfolio, Salm said the Corps is in the midst of an extended user evaluation involving two options to replace the Supporting Arms Virtual Trainer, previously located at the Dome — a large building that was expensive to maintain and only existed at a few locations.

Instead, Marines will move to a Joint Virtual Fires Trainer, where Marines outfitted with goggles and hand-held wands will conduct virtual training scenarios run through an application on a gaming laptop.

The Marine Corps is putting two companies through the evaluation at Twentynine Palms; Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Arizona; and Marine Corps bases Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and Camp Pendleton in California.

Salm said this effort will unshackle Marines from having to go to a certain building for training — meaning more Marines could train at once, train from remote posts or their barracks, and run more scenarios.

The new Joint Virtual Fires Trainer will “multiply the amount of individuals that we’re training and certifying as [joint terminal attack controllers] for the fleet,” Salm said.

Similarly, Joseph Lomangino, action officer for Project Tripoli, said in an interview the service had already discontinued use of its Combined Arms Command and Control Training Upgrade System, or CACCTUS, which similarly involved a lot of computers and server stacks in a large building.

“We determined we can achieve the same training and increase the density of that training across the Marine Corps by replacing the CACCTUS with the [Marine Common Virtual Platform],” he said, referring to a common laptop with open standards that could be used for a range of live, virtual and constructive training needs.

About 1,600 laptops for combined arms and close-air support training have replaced six CACCTUS locations across the Corps. The Marine Common Virtual Platform will replace those laptops once the service chooses the final hardware, Lomangino said.

That same laptop will also be used in the final Joint Virtual Fires Trainer, he added.

‘Something better’

This move to laptop-based training only works if they are connected to a robust network with realistic simulations and scenarios, Lomangino noted.

The Corps developed the Marine Training Enterprise Network and has since connected it to the Navy’s larger Navy Continuous Training Environment, itself available globally and around the clock.

Now, “instead of units having to pile into a center or fly to a center,” they can use laptops to conduct training anywhere ­­— and alongside anyone else in the virtual environment,“ Lomangino said. “You can have units in different, disparate locations train together in that environment.”

Brown said the simulations will also be better, as Marines are ditching the MAGTF Tactical Warfare Simulation that’s nearly four decades old and moving instead of the Joint Live Virtual Constructive Federation.

“[The MAGTF Tactical Warfare Simulation] was a great simulation. … It did everything, but it did it about an inch deep,” Brown said. “As we move into new training environments that are being dictated by new operational environments, we need something better.”

The Joint LVC Federation includes high-quality simulations that all the services and combatant commands will use. Salm said the exercise Steel Knight — a naval, joint and international training exercise that recently concluded at Camp Pendleton — leveraged the Navy Continuous Training Environment network and the Joint LVC Federation.

“Every exercise we see, either going on at Twentynine Palms or even in the Pacific, like Balikatan next year, we’re going to continue to build upon the last exercise and adding more and more and more aspects of [Project] Tripoli to it,” Salm added.

The current fiscal year was meant to pave the way for the larger proliferation of laptops and other hardware that would be fielded in fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026, Lomangino said. But the ongoing continuing resolution funding the government has hindered the effort, as the measure doesn’t allow the Corps to start new programs nor increase spending on existing programs.

The three officials declined to talk about planned or actual spending for Project Tripoli, due to ongoing budget uncertainty.

However, Lomangino said that by divesting of single-task trainers and replacing them with commercial and government off-the-shelf technology that already exists, the Corps is able to go from “a limited LVC capability to an enterprise-level LVC capability without having to go through massive, extreme expenditures.”

Brown said the effort would certainly lead to cost savings in the future because the service won’t have to maintain massive buildings that house large trainers, and it will be cheaper to upgrade laptops rather than replace entire trainers that become obsolete.

But, he added, those savings are a secondary or tertiary benefit.

“The application of virtual [and] constructive alongside the live is meant to produce a better trained Marine and a more combat-ready organization. You can equate it to a pitcher in the bullpen warming up before stepping onto the mound,” Brown said.

“The reason we’re doing this is Force Design, and Force Design needs this to be successful. And I don’t want to overhype it, but the concepts and the formations and the capabilities — if they don’t have a trained Marine with their hands on those and executing those, Force Design would fail.”

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan successfully test-fired a new indigenous long-range precision strike weapon with a range of about 249 miles, according to the military’s media branch.

This distance is a considerable leap over the existing Fatah 1 round, which has a range of about 87 miles.

The Fatah 2 is “equipped with state of the art avionics, sophisticated navigation system and unique flight trajectory,” Inter Services Public Relations said in Wednesday’s announcement.” Based on footage of the test released by ISPR, the Fatah 2 appears to be a two-round guided multiple launch rocket system based on the Chinese Taian TAS5450 eight-wheel drive chassis.

Its predecessor, the Fatah 1, is manufactured by Global Industrial Defence Solutions. The conglomerate says the Fatah 1 is intended “to precisely attack and destroy enemy’s group and area targets, such as military bases, massive armored troops, missile launching sites, large airports, harbors and other important facilities.”

The Fatah 1 is an eight-round guided multiple rocket launch system based on the same Taian chassis as the 10-round A-100 multiple launch rocket system in service with Pakistan.

The Fatah 2 test “marks another step in Pakistan’s efforts to field multiple precision strike artillery systems with variable ranges to hold adversary targets at risk,” said Frank O’Donnell, a nonresident fellow with the Stimson Center think tank’s South Asia Program and a senior research adviser at the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network.

The fact Pakistan developed the weapon, he added, demonstrates the country has learned lessons from recent or ongoing conflicts.

“When viewed in the context of Pakistan’s parallel efforts to field a similarly diverse arsenal of combat drones, its implementation of certain lessons — which the military feels the Azerbaijan-Armenia and Russia-Ukraine wars have reinforced — become clear,” O’Donnell told Defense News. “They include the advantages of assigning adversary precision ground bombardment missions to relatively low-cost artillery and combat drone systems, preserving manned fighter aircraft for higher-end strike missions and interception of their counterparts.”

India’s S-400 air defense system is likely a key target of the Fatah 2, he added, as Pakistan could fire the weapon as a decoy to create “greater room for a combat drone to strike the S-400 itself in the midst of the bombardment.”

Defense experts have long considered U.S. bridging capability inadequate, particularly in the European theater.

Building bridges over rivers or other bodies of water to advance forward in an operation sounds simple, but involves complex coordination to ensure the enemy is suppressed long enough to move thousands of soldiers and equipment across and that the bridges can support even the heaviest combat vehicles and tanks.

And strong wet gap crossing capabilities are expected to be needed in the Indo-Pacific region, according to both Army officials and defense experts.

“The U.S. clearly does not have enough river crossing capability, and river crossing is an important part of what’s happening in Ukraine,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who previously led U.S. Army Europe, told Defense News in an interview earlier this year. Beyond Ukraine, bridging is “a capability that we need to have in a lot of places in the world.”

Typically, engineer brigades, which provide bridging capability, are a corps-level asset, but during a large-scale combat exercise — Remagen Ready — at Fort Cavazos, Texas, earlier this fall, the 36th Engineer Brigade was taken out of the III Armored Corps and brought into the 1st Cavalry Division, Maj. Gen. Kevin Admiral, 1st Cavalry Division commander, told Defense News in a Dec. 12 interview.

Corps are made up of two divisions and roughly 20,000 to 45,000 troops total, while divisions are made up of three brigades and 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers.

Wet gap crossings “is one of the most difficult things to do,” said Col. Aaron Cox, the 36th Engineer Brigade commander.

“We play one role, which is the actual building of rafts and full enclosure bridges. Those tactical challenges aren’t too difficult, but it is making sure that the fires threat is reduced, that there’s no enemy on the far side objectives, that we have obscuration, that the enemy’s logistics nodes on the far side have been suppressed,” he added. “That’s where the challenge comes from, and it’s converging all of those capabilities into one location in time so that we can successfully get across.”

Engineer units in divisions are “not purpose-built for large-scale combat operations,” Admiral noted. Those units are usually organized in battalions under brigade combat teams, which are not adequate to support large-scale combat maneuver. To conduct a wet gap crossing at the division level in large-scale combat, “I would need external resources that I don’t really have,” he said.

By putting the 36th Engineer Brigade into the 1st Cavalry Division for the exercise, it gave the division the assets and manpower it needed to execute the wet gap mission. Because the brigade was under the control of the division commander, it was easier to coordinate the complex movements needed to set the conditions for a safe crossing and then execute the crossing of about 20,000 soldiers and their armored equipment.

The 1st Cavalry coordinated the two-day live wet gap crossing during the exercise with two physical bridges using what’s known as the Improved Ribbon Bridge, made up of panels that can be put on the back of a truck for transport and then combined to make larger rafts. Seven panels connected together can support an M1 Abrams tank.

The exercise validated the need to put engineer brigades underneath division command, Admiral said, part of a larger plan to redesign force structure as the Army modernizes and shifts from years of using the brigade combat team as the tactical unit where maneuver operations are planned and executed. Now, the service plans to give the division that responsibility.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, BCTs operated relatively independently, but large-scale operations across land, air, sea, space and cyber against adversaries like Russia and China would require division-level operations.

The exercise “gave us a good chance to do an initial validation of the Army 2030 Armored Strike Division,” Admiral said. “This is the right direction for the armored divisions.”

Army Futures Command continues to work on what a modernized force’s structure will look like in 2030 and beyond, incorporating lessons from exercises like Remagen Ready.

The Army’s plan to grow its engineer companies, according to the service’s acquisition chief, Doug Bush, is “on track. It’s just finding the money,” he said in an interview this fall. “It’s a big priority, especially as they learned a lot from trying to move around Europe.”