Lockheed Martin and a team made up of Boeing and Anduril are now facing off head-to-head to supply a new middle-tier surface-to-air missile to the U.S. Army. The service wants a second interceptor for its new Enduring Shield system, which can already fire AIM-9X Sidewinders, to expand its capabilities, especially against incoming cruise missiles.

Boeing and Anduril announced their offering had been selected to move ahead to the next phase of the competition to develop what is formally called the Integrated Fires Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2) Second Interceptor on Wednesday. The Army subsequently confirmed to Breaking Defense that Lockheed Martin advanced to phase 2 of this program. Rafael Systems Global Sustainment, a U.S. subsidiary of Israeli defense contractor Rafael, had also been in the running, but was not down-selected.

The Army’s search for a second interceptor for Enduring Shield traces back to at least 2023. The system, developed by Leidos’ subsidiary Dynetics, is entering operational service now paired with the AIM-9X. It is designed to provide short-to-medium range defense against a variety of aerial threats, including drones. The Army has not had any kind of mid-range air defense capability since it retired its Hawk surface-to-air missile systems in the 1990s.

A model of the missile Boeing and Anduril have put forward was only shown publicly for the first time earlier this year. Boeing says it is a clean-sheet design and it uses a solid-fuel rocket motor provided by Anduril.

In its announcement about the Army’s down-selection, Boeing shared a previously unreleased rendering of the design, which notably had two sets of fins toward the tail end of the body. The model that has been shown so far only has one set of fins at the very rear of the body. Whether the rendering reflects a newer or older version of the design is unclear. What is seen in the rendering may also be an additional booster rocket motor not seen on the model, which could be necessary for ground-launched applications.

Boeing has also said that the new interceptor is being developed with an emphasis on lower cost and producibility. Modularity and open-architecture systems to enable “faster, lower-cost upgrades by allowing seeker, avionics or software blocks to be swapped without redesigning the entire weapon” have also been particular focus areas, according to the company.

Other details about the missile’s design and capabilities, including how it is guided, remain limited.

“Our scalable production approach is designed to provide a reliable, affordable layer of defense against a range of aerial threats to protect the warfighter with practical, dependable capability when it matters most,” Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems, had said in a statement earlier this week.

Lockheed Martin first showed a rendering of its design last year, but has also shared relatively specific details about it since then. For what has been seen so far, it is visually reminiscent, at least in broad strokes, of a compact air-to-air missile concept called Cuda, which the company previously promoted for a time in the 2010s.

The design is “not new,” Chris Murphy, senior manager of Business Development for Integrated Air and Missile Defense Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control division, confirmed to TWZ in October 2025.

“There are technologies that we already have that we’re leveraging,” Murphy added at the time. “But the requirements for the missile are such that they’re going to be new technologies, and there’s going to be some level of development in order to get those integrated.”

“So you know that our [PAC-3] MSE missile [for the Patriot surface-to-air missile system] is a hit-to-kill system, right? We have great confidence in that technology,” he also said when asked specifically about whether the interceptor would have a traditional warhead. “We also work [on] blast-frag[mentation warheads] on other programs. So we will look at everything. That’s part of the trade space the Army has asked us to look at.”

The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) is generally presented as a hit-to-kill weapon, meaning that it is designed to destroy its target through sheer force of impact. However, it is actually something of a hybrid design that includes a high-explosive “lethality enhancer” charge to increase its chance of scoring a hit, something you can learn more about here.

For its part, the Army has talked in the past about wanting its second interceptor for Enduring Shield to offer roughly comparable capabilities to the AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), but in the same form factor as the AIM-9X. A key driving factor behind the size requirement is retaining magazine depth. The system’s existing palletized launchers can currently be loaded with up to 18 Sidewinders in individual canisters.

Magazine depth, together with more flexibility to engage different threats in different envelopes, is exactly in line with the stated purpose of the Enduring Shield system. The ongoing conflict with Iran, as well as other recent crises in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine, have underscored the threats posed by large-scale complex barrages that blend together long-range one-way-attack drones and cruise missiles. Ballistic missiles are also a very worrisome part of the equation, though Enduring Shield is not capable of engaging them. We will come back to this in a moment.

“I do want to highlight a couple of things that I think are very critical gaps that we have. I don’t think – I cannot add anything to the emphasis on magazine depth for currently fielded systems, or for the need for cheaper and [a] wide-ranging mix of interceptors,” Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, head of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), told TWZ and other attendees in a keynote address at the 2026 Space & Missile Defense Symposium last month. “That couldn’t be made more loud and clear from the highest levels of our government.”

At that time, Rafferty also stressed the need to further expand the Army’s ability to provide multi-layered air and missile defense capabilities. Enduring Shield, as the Army’s first middle-tier air defense system in decades, is already a key component of that broader effort.

The Army also more specifically sees Enduring Shield as central to reducing over-reliance on its Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. The immense strain on the service’s Patriot force and its inadequacy to meet existing operational demands are well established at this point, and have only been reinforced by the latest conflict with Iran. The Army is notably in the process of establishing its first new Patriot battalion in years, on Guam, which will actually be a composite unit also equipped with Enduring Shield. Pairing the two systems together helps free up Patriot batteries to engage higher-tier threats, especially ballistic missiles, which may themselves be targeting air defenders directly.

Additional efforts are underway now to further expand the Army’s array of available lower- and higher-end air and missile defense interceptors, as well as new and improved sensors and networks to go with them. This will only help further distribute capability and capacity, giving air defenders more operational space to employ systems when and where they are likely to be most effective.

There is still a question of whether the Army will actually start receiving new interceptors for Enduring Shield. A major issue that has emerged in recent years is being able to produce key munitions in a timely manner to bolster stocks ahead of conflicts and keep them replenished during sustained operations. To use the example of the Army’s Patriot units again, strain there has been further exacerbated by massive expenditures of interceptors in the course of operations in the Middle East in recent years, as well as demand emanating from Ukraine. There have been a succession of reports in recent months about stockpiles of Patriot interceptors, as well as other critical munitions, becoming ever more critically low. The Pentagon has been working with several companies to dramatically step up production of munitions, including existing and new designs, but it will still take time for those agreements to translate into physical results.

The Army has now at least moved to the next phase of the competition for a second interceptor for the Enduring Shield system, demand for which is already growing.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post One Of These Missiles Is Set To Be The Army’s Next Mid-Tier Anti-Air Interceptor appeared first on TWZ.

Work at a specialized underground weapons test site in New Mexico, contracted earlier this year, was linked to planning for a potential new operation targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, according to a report from CNN. The U.S. military has notably left Iran’s hardest-to-reach site under Pickaxe Mountain untouched so far, but President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials have been openly talking about striking it.

On February 27, the day before U.S. and Israeli forces launched their initial wave of strikes on Iran, the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) quietly announced it had awarded a sole-source deal to Pate Construction Co., Inc., for new construction at the so-called Alternate Seismic Hardrock in Situ Test (ALT-SHIST) site. The work was needed to support an upcoming classified live-fire test. ALT-SHIST is situated within the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR), a sprawling U.S. Army-managed complex in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert basin. DTRA is a relatively small and obscure organization that plays a leading role in U.S. military efforts to develop new and improved ways to respond to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threats.

WSMR and DTRA have come up in discussions about strikes on Iran in the past. The U.S. military’s heaviest conventional air-dropped weapon, the 30,000-pound-class GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bomb, has been extensively tested at multiple sites there in the past. DTRA was also directly involved in its initial development. MOPs made their combat debut during U.S. strikes last year on underground Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow and Natanz as part of Operation Midnight Hammer. The possibility has been raised that a different site within WSMR may have been used to test the plan of attack against Fordow, which involved two ventilation shafts being hit with six GBU-57/Bs each. The bombs were dropped in rapid succession, with each one burrowing deeper and deeper into the facility below. WSMR also happens to contain the site of the first atomic bomb test in 1945.

“The plans for the test [at ALT-SHIST] were connected to the Iran war,” CNN said in its story, published yesterday, citing unnamed sources “familiar with the matter.” Beyond that, the planned testing was tied to a “need to develop a way to target Iran’s deepest-buried underground facilities and, likely, simulate U.S. strikes against specific nuclear facilities.”

CNN said it was unable to independently verify whether or not the test in question had occurred.

A formal justification for the sole-source contract to Pate Construction that DTRA released in February did not mention Iran or elaborate on the need for the new testing at ALT-SHIST, but stressed there was an urgent requirement critical to U.S. national security.

“The services required are the immediate and mission-critical enabling services for a ‘real-world’ national security ordinance [sic; ordnance] test. This is not routine construction; it is the highly specialized remediation and operational preparation of a unique, subterranean test facility at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR),” according to the justification document, which DTRA officials had approved on February 24. “The work is a critical path dependency for a live-fire test designed to validate classified capabilities against rapidly emerging threats.”

“As the incumbent contractor for over a decade, Pate Construction Co., Inc. possesses unparalleled and non-transferable tacit knowledge of this specific subterranean test facility. This is a unique Government structure with complex geological and security considerations, and Pate Construction Co., Inc.’s direct, hands-on experience is a tangible asset that no other source possesses,” the document adds. “Pate Construction Co., Inc. is the only contractor that
currently maintains a fully mobilized presence at WSMR with the specific heavy equipment and security-cleared operators required.”

CNN‘s piece says apparent work at ALT-SHIST was visible in satellite imagery of the site between mid-February and mid-March, but the outlet said it was unable to confirm whether or not this was related to the contract with Pate Construction.

We reviewed satellite imagery showing work at a remote DTRA/STRATCOM test site that coincided with this contracting action, but we couldn’t confirm its purpose.

The Pentagon didn’t respond to our questions regarding the test, and we couldn’t independently confirm it occurred. pic.twitter.com/k8zyvqWy56

— Davis Winkie (@davis_winkie) September 9, 2026

ALT-SHIST is an active test site, and any work observed there earlier this year could well have been linked to other projects. For instance, additional publicly available DTRA contracting documents offer details about planned work on a specific part of the ALT-SHIST site, called Tunnel 7, tracing back to last year, as part of a project nicknamed Millstone Willemite 6 (MW-6).

“This task requires the construction contractor to repair and address the damage to Tunnel 7 caused by prior incidents, in accordance with government-provided designs, specifications, and other contract documents,” according to one contracting document dated September 15, 2025. “The contractor will also be responsible for providing support during testing activities, as well as safing after each test and general support between tests. All tunnel construction must be completed by 15 June 2027.”

“The contractor shall repair a D-shape tunnel and overburden using the D-shape of 20 feet depth and width, inside the tunnel. The contractor shall remove and repair any damage to the ribs, crown, and invert to Tunnel 7,” that same document continues. “After the repair of Tunnel 7, the contractor shall provide general construction support to instrument the tunnel in preparation for testing and then safe the tunnel for re-entry post-testing.”

The schedule for the MW-6-related work indicates that it is separate from what Pate Construction was hired to do at the site back in February.

ALT-SHIST, which was first established in 1995, is also not the only site DTRA makes use of within WSMR. As its name indicates, it is an alternate to the original SHIST site, use of which began in 1993.

“There was a small addition made to the SHIST site, but that area has been heavily used since 2007,” according to an environmental impact study the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed in 2015. “The granite bedrock at these sites has been fractured and damaged by extensive testing. There are no existing granite areas adjacent to those sites where similar testing can be performed.”

USACE conducted that study in support of the establishment of a new test site at WSMR, simply called the Granite Test Site, to succeed the original SHIST. The Granite Test Site is now in use. There are many more sites within the range complex designed to simulate underground and otherwise hardened targets. This is also just one aspect of the wide array of testing that occurs on a daily basis at WSMR.

All three also appear to have been involved in the testing and development of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). 5/10 pic.twitter.com/3aWSYXIZln

— Fabian Hinz (@fab_hinz) June 25, 2025

However, the presence of large areas of undisturbed granite is a key factor here, as that is particularly relevant for testing weapons designed to penetrate into extremely deeply buried facilities. CNN‘s piece yesterday noted that Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain site is built underneath a granite mountain.

“The mountain in White Sands, they specifically picked mountainous areas that were solid rock, and they used state-of-the-art tunneling technology to make the kind of cavities in the mountain that you would put this kind of [Iranian nuclear] facility in,” Gary Stradling, a retired scientist who previously worked for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), told TWZ in an interview last year. “I think that there is a lot of work that DOD has done in these kinds of facilities that is highly classified, and I couldn’t talk to you about it. This is very sophisticated work. It is not casual, and it’s not speculative. These are real experts who are doing the work. Careful, technical, quantitative work to be able to deliver this kind of war-fighting capability to the services.”

TWZ spoke to Stradling, who did work tied to earth-penetrating munitions at various points during his lengthy career, in the wake of Operation Midnight Hammer.

Me, standing at the edge of a MOP crater on a mountain top at White Sands Test Range, where detailed studies of massive earth penetrators were studied for effectiveness against deeply buried targets by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) —formerly Defense Nuclear Agency.… pic.twitter.com/JYq1V2xO6q

— Gary Stradling (@gary_stradling) June 24, 2025

The U.S. military notably did not strike Pickaxe Mountain, which is situated immediately to the southwest of Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, during Operation Midnight Hammer. The site also went untouched by Israel during last year’s 12 Day War. American and Israeli forces did not target it during major combat operations earlier this year, either. All of this underscores the targeting challenge the site presents, even for strikes using MOPs, which TWZ explored in detail earlier this year and that has continued to make it a point of particular discussion.

CNN‘s report yesterday was primarily focused on a new assessment of ongoing construction at Pickaxe Mountain from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington, D.C.

Satellite “images reveal more road activity at Pickaxe Mountain in 2026 than at any point in the site’s history,” according to a report CSIS published yesterday. “There is a clear surge in construction activity in 2026 that corresponds to the raising and hardening of the portal accesses, paving of the internal road network, reinforcement around access areas, and the flattening and removal of excavation spoil.”

“This assessment can neither refute nor substantiate the Israeli intelligence claim that Iran moved centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain,” CSIS’s report also noted. “The continuous construction, the absence of an increased internal security posture, and the lack of observed nonconstruction vehicles and equipment suggest the underground facility is not yet capable of enrichment work, if that is the intended purpose. Further analysis of daily activity would be needed to establish the site’s pattern of life beyond its current construction footprint.”

This is in line with TWZ‘s own previous reporting on Pickaxe Mountain back in July, when there were already signs of growing activity following the establishment of a shaky ceasefire between the United States and Iran the preceding month. As we wrote at that time:

“As with the strikes on Fordow, multiple bombs could be dropped on the same impact point to try to penetrate further down into Pickaxe Mountain. Whether there might be similar ventilation shafts or other weak points that could be exploited at Pickaxe Mountain is unknown. …”

“A strike ‘right in the front door’ on the tunnel entrances at Pickaxe Mountain would be another option to at least hamper access to the facility inside for a time. This could be combined with strikes aimed at sections of the tunnel networks that run deeper inside the facility, but that are still close enough to the surface to be reachable by available conventional munitions. For instance, MOPs may not be able to hit the main cavern areas, but they could possibly hit certain tunnels that might lead to them.”

“Even a combined strike on entrances and shallow tunnels at Pickaxe Mountain could still present certain challenges. Firm intelligence on exactly where the tunnels snake under the mountain could be limited, making it difficult to select the best impact points. This is exactly why the U.S. military has been investing heavily in advanced, void-sensing fuzes for MOP and other bunker buster bombs for decades now. These fuzes detect when a munition has penetrated into a sufficiently large space, such as a room or tunnel in an underground facility, to help maximize damage. Fuzes that can effectively ‘count’ floors also help to ensure the munition has burrowed sufficiently deep before detonating.”

…

“…the U.S. military could conduct follow-on strikes on the entry points at Pickaxe Mountain to disrupt any attempt to regain access, as well.”

“Destroying Pickaxe Mountain will be a scientific and targeting challenge,” CSIS also noted in its report yesterday. “It is an underground fortress buttressed by granite. It is one of the only facilities in Iran’s nuclear program that the United States has not yet struck. Structurally degrading Pickaxe Mountain requires more than just kinetic force – it takes actionable high-confidence intelligence and sophisticated mathematical modeling.”

With all this in mind, it is not at all hard to imagine how new testing at ALT-SHIST, as well as other sites, would be essential for exploring additional options for striking Pickaxe Mountain and/or other deeply-buried targets in Iran using MOPs and/or other munitions.

It’s also worth noting here that GBU-57/Bs are understood to be in relatively short supply, though it is unknown how many of them are currently in inventory. Furthermore, the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit bombers are currently the only aircraft certified to employ the huge MOPs operationally. There was a report in 2024 that prime contractor Boeing was working to expand its capacity to produce these bombs. A MOP successor, the GBU-76/B Next Generation Penetrator (NGP), is in development now, but prototyping work is expected to run through the end of Fiscal Year 2028.

President Donald Trump certainly has raised the prospect of a strike on Pickaxe Mountain publicly on several occasions since July. He has also repeatedly said that the site is being persistently surveilled, particularly from space.

“There’s another place called Pickaxe Mountain, another nice place. We may have to give them a shot there, too, because someone said there was a little movement at the site,” Trump said yesterday during a speech at a convention the Republican Party is hosting in Dallas, Texas, ahead of this year’s midterm elections. “We don’t need much. We see everything, you know, because of Space Force.”

“We may hit Pickaxe [Mountain] very soon,” the President also said while speaking to reporters at the White House last Friday.

Trump on Pickaxe Mountain: We may have to give them a shot there too. We see everything. We can the see tag on their coat. “Muhammad Al-Fayed” It’s never Muhammad Jones. pic.twitter.com/UQm939OruL

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 10, 2026

Trump on Iran:

We may hit Pickaxe Mountain very soon because if there is anything going on with Pickaxe. pic.twitter.com/kwlHZuV6M7

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 4, 2026

Whether growing activity at Pickaxe Mountain finally prompts a U.S. strike at the site, either alone or as part of a larger operation, remains to be seen. If and when such a mission is launched, past and future testing at sites like ALT-SHIST in New Mexico will all but certainly have played an important part.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Work At Underground Test Site A New Indicator Of Possible Strikes On Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain Bunker appeared first on TWZ.

Recently released pictures have highlighted a particularly interesting feature on the U.S. Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Mustin: a piggy-backed point defense system with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on top of a 30mm chain gun. The Mk 38 Mod 4 Gun Weapon System (GWS) is interesting to examine as it offers significant boosts in firepower and other capabilities, including against drones, compared to preceding Mk 38 types.

Yesterday, Destroyer Squadron 15’s (DESRON 15) public affairs office released several pictures showing USS Mustin replenishing at sea in the Indian Ocean, including one highlighting the ship’s Mk 38 Mod 4 GWS (also sometimes confusingly referred to as a Machine Gun System, or MGS). DESRON 15 had put out another group of pictures late last month showing the weapon system being fired during routine training. Mustin was the first vessel in the Navy to receive Mod 4, and still looks to be the service’s only warship with this new version.

Though designated as a Mk 38 variant, the Mod 4 is fundamentally different from other Mk 38 types currently in service in the U.S. Navy, as well as several foreign naval arms.

“The Mk 38 Mod 4 Machine Gun System (MGS) is an upgrade … to address deficiencies in meeting Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) requirements,” the Navy has said in the past. “In addition, the upgrade will also improve performance against surface targets and maintain Anti-Terrorist / Force Protection capabilities.”

To take a step back quickly, the original Mk 38 Mod 0 was developed internally by the Navy in the late 1970s and was simply a manually operated deck-mounted 25mm M242 Bushmaster chain gun with a maximum rate of fire of 180 rounds per minute. The M242 was entering U.S. Army service at around the same time as the main armament for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. A product improved Mod 1 version was the first Mk 38 to actually enter serial production and began to be fitted to Navy ships in the late 1980s.

Following the deadly terrorist attack on the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen in 2000, the Navy began to acquire Mk 38 Mod 2s, also known as the Typhoon Weapon System, from United Defense (later BAE Systems).

The Mod 2 “introduced remote-control operation and mount stabilization and allowed the weapon to maintain aim even as the ship pitched and rolled. It also added a new electro-optical/infrared sensor and a laser rangefinder, giving the system reliable day/night target performance,” according to the Navy. “Beyond sensors, Mod 2 brought improved ammunition handling and enhanced interfaces – resulting in faster and more reliable engagement. Testing showed it delivered two to three times the strike accuracy of its predecessor.”

The Mk 38 Mod 2 otherwise featured the same M242 gun as the Mod 0/1 types, feeding from a magazine on the mount that could be loaded with up to 168 rounds. It is worth noting here that this is less than a minute of total firing time at the weapon’s maximum rate of fire. However, it can also be fired in single-shot and three-round burst modes, as well as at a lower automatic rate of fire of 100 rounds per minute.

In the 2010s, the Navy began acquiring the Mk 38 Mod 3 from BAE Systems, which added a smaller 7.62x51mm Mk 52 Mod 0 chain gun feeding from a 750-round magazine to the complete weapon system. The Mk 52 is also a much faster-firing weapon than the M242, with a maximum rate of fire of 570 rounds per minute.

The Mod 3 “also incorporated an improved EO/IR sensor that provides 330-degree surveillance capability and multiple fields of view,” per the Navy. “This sensor is decoupled from the gun, allowing operators to scan independently of the weapon and reducing the chance of alerting an adversary that they’ve been detected.”

Over the years, Mk 38 1/2/3 types have been integrated on a wide array of Navy ships, including Ticonderoga class cruisers, Arleigh Burke class destroyers, Nimitz and Ford class aircraft carriers, as well as a host of other amphibious warfare ships and auxiliaries.

All of this brings us back to the Mk 38 Mod 4, the Navy’s designation for a version of the Seahawk DS30 series from MSI Defense Systems, which the service first began acquiring in the late 2010s. The Mk 38 Mod 4’s main weapon is a 30mm Mk 44 Mod 3 Bushmaster II chain gun. Like the M242, the Mk 44 also has single-shot and burst modes, as well as low and high fully automatic settings (100 and 200 rounds per minute, respectively). The Mk 44 is also found on versions of the Mk 46 Gun Weapon System installed on stealthy Zumwalt class destroyers and San Antonio class amphibious warfare ships. It is used in a variety of ground-based applications and on the U.S. Air Force’s AC-130J Ghostrider gunship aircraft. As mentioned, the Mk 38 Mod 4 also has a .50 caliber M2 machine gun with a rate of fire of around 500 rounds per minute. The system’s magazine capacity for each gun is not immediately clear.

The complete Mk 38 Mod 4 also comes with a new Mk 48 Mod 2 electro-optical sight system (EOSS), which is mounted separately on the ship, and a Mk 134 Mod 0 operator console for remote operation. Furthermore, the complete system is designed to be fully integrated with the Aegis Combat System on Arleigh Burke class destroyers like USS Mustin. The optical turret appears to replace the older EOSS system mounted atop the bridge that was primarily used to target the ship’s 5-inch gun. It isn’t clear how these new mounts are individually targeted simultaneously as they don’t appear to have their own optics. Radar targeting through Aegis would be a big advancement for at least some targets types, like drones. The older Mk 38s had their own individual FLIR systems. It’s still possible these new turrets could have a basic boresighted electro-optical system as well.

In a July 2022 test, a Mk 38 Mod 4 system “successfully identified, tracked and engaged both surface and aerial targets using live ammunition against fixed and moving targets,” according to the Navy. The event “also highlighted the enhanced fire-control chain, the 30 mm gun’s improved performance and its ability to counter new challenges.”

The USS Mustin received its Mk 38 Mod 4 in 2024 and, as noted, this destroyer still appears to be the only ship in the Navy with this new weapon system, for reasons that are not entirely clear. The service had signed a contract with MSI Defense for an initial low-rate production batch of 15 systems in 2023. Other versions of the Seahawk DS30 are in use today on several classes of naval vessels globally, including British Type 23 frigates.

“USS Mustin (DDG 89), an Arleigh Burke class Aegis guided missile destroyer, was the first U.S. Navy warship to receive the upgrade. [The Naval Surface Warfare Center] Dahlgren Division is now finalizing the configuration so the system can be introduced to a wider set of platforms as fleet requirements evolve,” according to an official news item from Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) just this past February.

The Navy’s 2027 fiscal year budget request, released earlier this year, makes clear the plan is still to integrate the Mk 38 Mod 4 at least on all Flight IIA and Flight III subvariants of the Arleigh Burke destroyer. The Mk 38 Mod 4 is also set to be a feature on future U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers, which will also have combat systems derived from Aegis.

All remaining Mk 38 Mod 2s in Navy service are being brought up to the Mod 3 standard, as well.

For the Navy’s Arleigh Burke class destroyers, specifically, the Mk 38 Mod 4 reflects broader efforts to improve and expand the shorter-range defensive capabilities of those ships, especially against growing drone threats. An increasing number of these destroyers are also being equipped with new anti-drone interceptors. In addition, the service is working to replace the 20mm Vulcan cannon-armed Mk 15 Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems (CIWS) on all subvariants in the class with different launchers for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) to further bolster defenses against drones, as well as incoming missiles and other aerial threats.

In general, the Navy has been investing heavily in new counter-drone defenses for ships across its fleets in recent years. These efforts include laser and high-power microwave directed energy weapons, as well as various types of physical interceptors and electronic warfare systems. Lessons learned from the ongoing conflict with Iran, as well as recent operations in and around the Red Sea, together with observations from the war in Ukraine, have only underscored the increasingly critical need for additional layers of protection against uncrewed attackers in the air and at sea. Small crewed boats attacking in large groups remain a real threat, too.

Mustin may not be the only Navy warship equipped with the Mk 38 Mod 4 for much longer, if the system has not already started finding its way at least onto more Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Navy Destroyer Packs New ‘Piggy-Backed’ Point Defense System That Combines 30mm And .50 Cal Guns appeared first on TWZ.

General Atomics has given us the first look at its new Wildfire drone design. The company is developing this armed medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) uncrewed aircraft in response to new U.S. Air Force requirements for a lower-cost successor to the MQ-9A Reaper.

A rendering of Wildfire was included in a video montage, seen below, which General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI) released earlier today. GA-ASI first announced work on this new drone last month. The Air Force, in partnership with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), formally kicked off its new search for a Reaper successor, currently called the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), in July. GA-ASI also developed the MQ-9A, which is now out of production.

A good idea spreads like Wildfire.#UAS #Airpower pic.twitter.com/eIONVDjZ1n

— General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc (GA-ASI) (@GenAtomics_ASI) September 9, 2026

Wildfire’s pusher-prop design shown is clearly an extension of the existing MQ-9 family, with an overall planform that is extremely similar to that of the Reaper. Like the latest versions of the MQ-9A, the new drone has a sensor turret under the nose and a large blade antenna under the rear fuselage.

Wildfire does notably lack the Reaper’s distinctive hump on top of the forward fuselage. On the MQ-9A, this feature contains the drone’s satellite communications (SATCOM) antenna. What this might mean about how Wildfire is controlled and otherwise communicates is not immediately clear, but it points to the use of a smaller, lower-cost SATCOM terminal. That, in turn, would most likely be tied to a network like Starshield, the government-focused cousin of SpaceX’s Starlink. We could also see greater semi-autonomous control here, or at least a greater reliance on it.

The resulting shape of the forward end of the fuselage is vaguely reminiscent of GA-ASI’s Gnat series of drones from the 1990s, which evolved into the iconic Predator. The MQ-9 family, in turn, is an outgrowth of the Predator.

The rendering of Wildfire also depicts the drone armed with four Joint Strike Missile (JSM) cruise missiles, with two loaded on what appears to be a single pylon under each wing. The stealthy JSM can be employed as an anti-ship or land-attack weapon. GA-ASI has released renderings of MQ-9s in the past with similar loadouts. The Air Force is already acquiring stocks of JSMs, primarily to arm its F-35A Joint Strike Fighters. Stand-off munitions like the JSM have long been seen as an increasingly important, if not critical, addition to the non-stealth Reaper’s arsenal, helping to keep the drones further away from potential threats.

TWZ has reached out to General Atomics for more details.

“General Atomics is looking at it and asking ourselves, ‘What can we really do? No kidding, no BS, actually do,’” GA-ASI spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley did tell us back in August when asked about Wildfire. “Let’s be honest with ourselves first. How do we come out of the box, day one, with a 10,000-nautical-mile ferry range? Can we carry four LRASMs [AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles]? Can we swarm 100 aircraft under semi-autonomous control? Can we fuse all of that data into a highly effective common operating picture? Can we do that at scalable, affordable mass?”

“So that was the assignment, and our engineers sharpened their pencils and got to work,” he added. “What came out the other side was our new Wildfire UAS. That thing is a beast, and no one who actually does this for a living, and is honestly concerned about America’s warfighting edge, can look at it and not want 100 of them as fast as we can make them.”

Wildfire “addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank,” Brinkley also told Breaking Defense for a story published last week.

In terms of what the Air Force has said it is looking for with the MMA, as we have previously written:

“[The service] …wants the MMA drone to perform the same general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions as the MQ-9A. To that end, stated program requirements to date include a speed of at least 200 knots true airspeed, a munition and sensor payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, the ability to self-deploy one-way at least 8,000 nautical miles, and the ability to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet. The MMAs also need to be highly modular and use open architecture mission systems to make it easier to integrate new capabilities and functionality down the line.”

The Air Force also shared last week that it is targeting a roughly $10 million unit cost for the MMA drones, not including sensors and certain other systems. As mentioned, the Reaper is out of production, but the price tag on a fully-equipped Reaper today is widely reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force has itself used the $50 million figure as a reference point in discussing its latest plans for what comes after the MQ-9.

It is unclear how Wildfire might achieve this cost goal while retaining so much obvious Reaper DNA, but even a major 30 to 50 percent reduction in the price tag compared to its predecessor would be a huge deal. In the past, General Atomics’ Brinkley has openly questioned just how cheap an MMA drone could realistically be while still offering comparable capabilities to MQ-9.

The original timeline for the MMA program envisioned the Air Force reaching initial operational capability in 2031 after receiving 20 of the drones. The service is now looking to accelerate that schedule by around two years. The Air Force expects to eventually acquire around 180 MMAs.

The Air Force has tried, without success, to develop a successor to the MQ-9 on several occasions in the past. However, a key driving factor now is huge losses of Reapers in the course of the ongoing conflict against Iran. The service’s MQ-9 fleet has already shrunk dramatically in recent years, in part due to additional losses during operations targeting Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen last year.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s Chief Modernization Officer, told reporters at a roundtable at the Pentagon last week, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s not a lot of good options to immediately replace those aircraft.”

GA-ASI has long had a monopoly on MALE combat drone sales in the United States, and is clearly looking to extend that now with Wildfire. However, this market space has been expanding, and other companies are already competing for what could be a very lucrative new deal with the Air Force. Winning the MMA contract could open doors to opportunities elsewhere within the U.S. government and with foreign countries. Variants and derivatives of the MQ-9 are also in service today with the U.S. Marine Corps, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and several additional air arms globally.

More information about Wildfire, as well as its competitors, is only likely to continue emerging as the Air Force pushes ahead with new and aggressive plans to finally acquire a follow-on drone to the venerable Reaper.

Update: 2:15 PM ET –

General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley has now shared additional details about Wildfire with TWZ.

“You’re not imagining it. These new Wildfire renders do lack the dorsal hump you see on Reaper, MQ-9B, Gray Eagle, Mojave STOL and many copycat aircraft,” Brinkley explained. “General Atomics has pushed proliferated low-earth orbit controls onto many of our existing aircraft and pioneered that integration across unmanned aerospace. That is a relatively new technology that we already have great experience integrating, and it makes sense to bring that into Wildfire.”

“Proliferated low-earth orbit” (abbreviated variously as pLEO and P-LEO) refers to distributed constellations of hundreds or potentially thousands of satellites in that orbital region. SpaceX’s constellations supporting the aforementioned Starlink/Starshield networks fall into this general category.

“Wildfire is going to leverage ongoing advancements in autonomy on Day One. We envision networking dozens of Wildfires for true combat mass,” according to Brinkley. “Again, not a hypothetical. We’ve been pioneering many advancements in autonomy, AI, and machine learning across the FQ-42A program and using our own MQ-20 Avenger as a CCA [Collaborative Combat Aircraft] surrogate connected to F-22 and F-35. That’s proven, not concept.”

The FQ-42A, also known as the Dark Merlin, is one of two designs now in development under the first phase, or Increment 1, of the Air Force’s CCA program, the other being Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury. The service announced in June that its initial CCA force would be a mixed fleet of FQ-42As and FQ-44As.

“Four JSMs tells you something about Wildfire overall. We can’t just look at overall external weight limits. You have to consider individual hardpoint capacity,” Brinkley continued. “We’ve concepted four JSMs on MQ-9B before, as a concept, but we’ve never done that on Reaper. Wildfire can absolutely do that, from a hardpoint capacity and also an overall MGTOW [maximum gross takeoff weight] perspective.”

“We’re showing two LRASMs on Wildfire, which is twice as much as the DIU solicitation asked for. If you’re going to build a flying weapons truck, give it some teeth,” he added. “These longer-range missiles also give you increased standoff compared to other weapons you associate with the MQ-9, so that also gives you some flexibility. Wildfire can carry two LRASMs for meaningful combat distances.”

The AGM-158C LRASM (Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile) is a derivative of the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family of land-attack cruise missiles, and is also in the Air Force’s inventory today.

Brinkley also said that Wildfire’s ferry range will exceed the MMA’s target of 8,000 nautical miles.

“We can deliver way ahead of the original FY 2031 schedule [for MMA]. We can deliver more than twice as many aircraft as requested in the same amount of time, because our manufacturing is real. Our network of suppliers, subcontractors and partners is real,” he added. “The obvious question is always cost, and I struggle to discuss costs because no one ever wants to compare apples to apples. There are stated price targets out there, and we’ll hit those. We’ll do it with an aircraft you can trust. We have nearly 10 million flight hours and more than 1,600 aircraft delivered. This is what we do.”

Speaking more generally, Brinkley also highlighted General Atomics’ extensive experience in developing and producing armed MALE drones, including the MQ-9.

“It’s important to remember that Reaper made its first flight 25 years ago and was so far ahead of everything else that it still defines the entire category of medium-altitude, long-endurance strike aircraft worldwide. When you build something new to do this kind of work, it rolls out into the Reaper’s shadow,” he said. “I don’t have to defend MQ-9 because the track record speaks for itself. It’s been called the MVP of Epic Fury [the U.S. military’s nickname for the initial phase of operations against Iran this year] for good reason, and I think it has squashed all questions about the relevance of MALE ISR and strike.”

“So that brings us to questions of affordability versus attrition, cost-per-effect, and the true price of combat operations. It also brings up questions of reliability and mission availability, and Reaper excels at both of these, so you can’t replace it with junk and expect to get the same effects,” he continued. “That’s where Wildfire comes in. Our team went to the graph paper and started sketching out what they would do differently and what they would keep the same. Where are the tradeoffs, and what do you change? No one knows this category of aircraft and missions like we do. We’re not guessing and hoping.”

“I can’t get into deep specifics on Wildfire yet, because it’s too early for that and the goalposts seem to move every time I say something publicly. What I can say is that Wildfire takes all of the known quantities of Reaper, blends them with some cutting-edge technologies and manufacturing advancements, and incorporates our more than three decades of lessons learned about large, unmanned combat aircraft to drive cost-per-effect math down.”

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post First Look At General Atomics’ Wildfire, Its Successor To The MQ-9 Reaper (Updated) appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Navy has lost an advanced uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV), and it is now in Iranian hands. Here’s what we know about the Dive-LD drone and its apparent seizure, and its implications.

Authorities in Iran said earlier today that they had retrieved a U.S. Dive-LD uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) largely intact near the Strait of Hormuz. The regime in Tehran subsequently released pictures and video clips of the UUV being lifted out of the water, seen at various points below. This looks to be the first known instance of an operational deployment of the Dive-LD. This is still a relatively new capability for the U.S. Navy that only began entering service a little more than a year and a half ago. American officials have previously confirmed the use of UUVs, in general, to help keep the Strait of Hormuz free of Iranian naval mines, one of many threats that have dramatically slowed maritime traffic through this critical waterway.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “captured one of the most modern, unmanned, and smart submarines … at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz in a complex intelligence and operational action at dawn today,” according to a statement shared earlier today via Iranian state media. The exact circumstances surrounding the seizure remain unconfirmed.

“An underwater drone operated by U.S. forces malfunctioned more than a day ago,” a U.S. official said in response to our queries about the Iranian claims. “It was surveying regional waters in support of ongoing operations. The defective drone was an older model that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment. U.S. operations in area waters continue.”

The official did not confirm or deny the type of UUV in question, or that Iran had retrieved it. They also did not elaborate on the nature of the malfunction. TWZ also reached out to Anduril, which initially deferred any questions to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). However, they subsequently confirmed the loss of a Dive-LD operating in the region.

“Dive-LD is an attritable autonomous system, meaning it is designed from the outset to operate in dangerous environments where loss of the vehicle is an expected possibility. Its purpose is to keep warfighters out of the most dangerous parts of the undersea mission,” an Anduril spokesperson told us in a statement. “This vehicle had already delivered significant value operating thousands of hours in months-long operations in CENTCOM.”

Categorized as a large UUV, the Dive-LD is 19 feet (approximately 5.8 meters) long, four feet (around 1.2 meters) in diameter, and has a gross weight of close to three tons. The design features a 3D-printed exterior, but is said to be capable of diving down to depths of some 19,685 feet (3.7 miles or 6,000 meters). The UUVs can also remain at sea for around 10 days at a time, depending on their exact configuration, and do so with a high degree of autonomy. Dive-LD was originally developed by U.S.-based Dive Technologies, which was founded in 2018 and then acquired by Anduril in 2022.

Anduril announced the delivery of the first Dive-LD to the U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Group One (UUVGRU-1) in April 2025. The Navy had already released a picture of personnel training with one of these UUVs five months earlier. How many Dive-LDs are now in U.S. service is unclear.

The Dive-LD has a highly modular design. Anduril’s website says that the UUV can be configured for various military missions, including so-called intelligence preparation of the operational environment (IPOE); general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); mine warfare; and precision placement of objects underwater. IPOE refers to the collection of various types of intelligence on a specific area as part of planning for upcoming operations.

As mentioned, U.S. officials have previously stated that UUVs have been supporting mine-clearance operations in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Broadly speaking, uncrewed underwater platforms offer a way to find and record the location of naval mines using sonars, cameras, and other sensors, while helping keep friendly forces further away from potential threats. Afterward, depending on the type of mines that are found, various methods can be employed to neutralize them. Mine sweeping is time-consuming and dangerous, even in permissive environments, let alone when conducted under the threat of enemy attack.

This past weekend, the Financial Times newspaper in the United Kingdom published a story saying U.S. forces have been using UUVs in exactly this way to help clear Iranian mines, citing “people familiar with the operation.”

“Mostly at night, it [the U.S. military] sent Navy Seal [sic SEAL] divers, robot boats and specialised underwater craft into the perilous strait for a four-month mine-clearance mission,” according to FT‘s report. “U.S. Navy divers worked in small teams using inflatable-hulled craft. They located Iranian mines with the help of robot boats and submersibles – such as the U.S. Navy’s Common Uncrewed Surface Vessel – operating towed sonar arrays.”

The Common Uncrewed Surface Vessel (CUSV) is a speedboat-sized drone boat that has been in Navy inventory since the early 2020s, explicitly for counter-mine operations. FT‘s story does not say where any USVs, UUVs, and/or boats full of divers were launched from as part of these operations in and around the Strait of Hormuz, but it posited that the Navy’s Expeditionary Sea Base ship USS Miguel Keith could have been involved.

A trio of Independence class Littoral Combat Ships specifically configured for mine-sweeping duties, including using CUSVs, had been forward deployed in Bahrain before the start of the conflict with Iran in February. At least two of those ships, USS Santa Fe and USS Tulsa, emerged thousands of miles away in Southeast Asia in March, something TWZ was the first to report on. At the time of writing, those ships currently appear to be in Singapore. The exact disposition of the third of these LCSs, the USS Canberra, is unclear, but USNI News reported today that it is sailing in the South China Sea.

The Navy has a host of other warships in the Middle East that could support counter-mine missions. With a 10-day endurance, Dive-LDs, specifically, could potentially have been launched from locations away from the Strait of Hormuz, including friendly ports.

Dive-LDs could also be used for other missions beyond mine clearance in the region. As mentioned, the U.S. official told TWZ the UUV had malfunctioned while “surveying regional waters.” While this would be a relevant task in the context of a larger mine-sweeping operation, underwater surveys would be valuable for other purposes, too. For months now, U.S. forces have been facilitating the movement of ships in and out of the Persian Gulf via a route that hugs the Omani coastline, keeping them as far from Iranian threats as possible. Having up-to-date and highly accurate maps of the seafloor in these areas would be critical to ensuring they are deep enough for large commercial vessels to pass through safely.

IPOE and general ISR support, above and below the waves, would be part of any current or future U.S. activities in the region. This includes a new campaign of strikes targeting Iranian tanker ships that began last month and monitoring general port activity in Iran as part of the ongoing blockade.

Employing Dive-LDs in operations against Iran also provides a valuable real-world opportunity to prove out new UUV capabilities and associated tactics, techniques, and procedures, which could prove critical in a future high-end fight against a peer opponent like China. Dive-LD has been feeding into Anduril’s development of an even more capable large UUV called Ghost Shark, the first customer for which is the Royal Australian Navy. Ghost Shark is a militarized version of a design called the Dive-XL that followed the Dive-LD. In March, Anduril announced it was among those selected for the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform Project (CAMP), an extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicle rapid prototyping effort being run by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the Navy. Anduril did not say what platform it would be supplying for that project, but used a picture of Ghost Shark to illustrate the announcement.

The U.S. military is already known to have taken advantage of the ongoing conflict with Iran to demonstrate new weapon systems and other capabilities, including uncrewed maritime systems. In June, a Saronic Corsair drone boat conducted a first-of-its-kind at-sea rescue of the crew of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter that had gone down in the Gulf of Oman. The following month, U.S. forces launched their first known kamikaze USV attack on Iran’s Bandar Abbas Naval Base using explosive-laden Corsairs.

With all this in mind, it is worth noting that the apparent loss of a Dive-LD intact to Iran is still significant, even if the core design is not brand new and if it does not have any especially sensitive mission systems onboard. It is not necessarily ‘exquisite,’ bleeding-edge technology as it is designed to be optionally attritable, but is still an advanced modern system in operational U.S. service now. Insights into its capabilities and limitations would certainly be of interest to Iran and others. What attempts the U.S. military made to recover the Dive-LD are also unknown. However, the fact that it was not destroyed before or while the Iranians were retrieving it points to American forces having completely lost any sense of its location beforehand.

For its part, Iran has long been a collector of foreign military hardware, primarily U.S. and Israeli, including drones of all types. The capture of a largely intact RQ-170 Sentinel in 2011 is the most famous (or infamous) example. The regime in Tehran also regularly works to reverse engineer what it recovers to varying degrees, and has promised to do the same with the Dive-LD. It could also share its latest prize with its own international partners, including Russia and China, for further analysis and exploitation. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) notably has its own very active UUV programs.

On top of all this, the seizure offers propaganda benefits for the Iranian government, which is already making heavy use of the information space to push back against U.S. military and economic pressure.

Countries seizing foreign USVs and UUVs is certainly not new at this point, even in ostensible peacetime periods. TWZ pointed out that this was only likely to become commonplace, and that steps would need to be taken to address these risks, after a pair of incidents involving Iran in 2022. On August 29 of that year, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) attempted to capture a U.S. Navy Saildrone USV in the Persian Gulf. Just days later, the IRGC briefly commandeered a pair of American Saildrones in the Red Sea.

The current conflict with Iran has only further underscored the important roles that uncrewed maritime platforms are playing in U.S. operations now, which are only set to keep growing as time goes on. As those same operations expand, so will the risks of capture and other losses.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Everything We Know About The U.S. Navy’s Submersible Drone Iran Just Captured appeared first on TWZ.

President Donald Trump has threatened to pursue a ban on U.S. sales of aircraft from Canadian firm Bombardier unless they move production south of the border. American officials have not elaborated on how such a total prohibition on domestic sales could take shape, but there are potential ramifications for the U.S. military, as well as commercial operators in the United States. The U.S. Army, in particular, has made Bombardier Global Express 6500-based ME-11B aircraft a cornerstone of its future aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) plans. For the moment, the U.S. Air Force flies its own fleet of E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) communications jets based on the Global Express family.

“NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social social media platform yesterday. “If they want our Market [sic], they must build here, and stop treating America like a ‘piggyback.’ BUY AMERICAN.”

The post, which was subsequently reshared by U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, also reiterated Trump’s accusations that the Canadian government has been deliberately slow-rolling certification of certain jets from rival U.S. planemaker Gulfstream. Back in January, the President also said he would “decertify” Bombardier aircraft in the United States over this issue, which would prevent them from operating in the United States, but this threat has yet to materialize into reality. Aviation authorities in Canada did certify five specific Gulfstream business jets in March, but do not look to have issued broader type certifications since then. Canada’s demand for more fuel system icing testing, at least on G700 and G800 models, has been cited as a factor in the length of the certification process. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) previously granted Gulfstream a conditional certification for these types that required demonstration of full compliance with domestic aircraft fuel icing regulations no later than the end of this year.

Bombardier and Gulfstream actively compete globally in the large and super midsize business jet categories. A number of airlines in the United States also continue to operate CRJ-series small airliners, which were Bombardier products until 2020, when the line was sold to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) in Japan. Today, the Canadian planemaker has a substantial U.S. presence, centered primarily in Wichita, Kansas, but does not build complete aircraft in the United States. We will come back to this later on.

Trump has specifically targeted Bombardier several times across both of his terms amid larger trade disputes with Canada. During Trump’s first administration, the U.S. government notably injected itself into a spat between the Canadian firm and Boeing that ultimately upended a proposed order for F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

How the Trump administration might now seek to block sales of Bombardier jets in the United States is unclear. If there is no legal mechanism for instituting an outright sales ban, U.S. authorities could try to decertify jets from the Canadian firm or implement prohibitive tariffs or other economic measures. In addition to retaliatory certification actions, Trump has also threatened to levy tariffs on Canadian aviation firms in the past. Any of these courses of action could draw legal action or other retaliation from the Canadian government.

All of this raises questions about potential impacts on the U.S. military. As mentioned, the U.S. Army is in the process of acquiring a fleet of Global Express 6500-based ISR planes, designated ME-11Bs, under its High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) program. The Army has already divested all of its older turboprop-powered ISR aircraft as part of the transition to HADES. The service has also been utilizing several contractor-operated ISR planes based on different Bombardier business jets in the interim.

There is also the aforementioned Air Force fleet of E-11As. However, this may increasingly be something of a moot point, as these aircraft are now set to be retired in the 2028 Fiscal Year and supplanted with new space-based communications capabilities. There is still a possibility that Congress could block that plan, at least for a time.

TWZ has reached out to the Army and the Air Force in light of Trump’s latest remarks.

It is important to note that the U.S. certification process for military and civilian aircraft is separate, and that the Trump administration could exempt the former from any new action against Bombardier. After Trump’s decertification threat in January, the White House had told multiple outlets that in-service aircraft would be exempted from any such actions, but would not clarify whether further exemptions would be made for future U.S. military acquisitions.

Upending Bombardier’s business in the United States might have additional downstream effects, including on supply chains that support commercial and military fleets. Disruptions could also negatively impact any future sales opportunities to the U.S. military. When it comes to the latter point, since Trump started his second term, there has been a broader push to recapitalize U.S. government executive aircraft fleets. This has already included the purchase of new Gulfstream G700-based C-39A executive jets for the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Air Force is also working to acquire a successor to its existing Gulfstream-based C-37 executive jets, tentatively designated the C-37C. Multiple branches of the U.S. military operate a host of other Gulfstream-based aircraft, including special mission types like the Air Force’s EA-37B Compass Call electronic warfare jets.

All this being said, there is no guarantee that Trump’s latest threats against Bombardier will materialize, whether or not they might impact U.S. military fleets. The President has already faced public pushback, including from at least one member of his own party, citing the Canadian firm’s existing economic contributions to the U.S. economy through its aforementioned American subsidiary.

“The presence of Bombardier in Wichita supports a local workforce of more than a thousand employees, who contribute their talent and expertise to our nation’s defense and aerospace capabilities,” Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, wrote in a post on X yesterday. “This afternoon, I reached out to the Trump administration to make certain the President is aware of the significant contributions of Bombardier to Kansas and the importance of its presence in Wichita to many Kansas workers at Bombardier and in the Bombardier supply chain.”

“I will continue working to see that Bombardier’s manufacturing operations not only remain in Kansas but continue to grow and create American jobs,” Moran added. “Kansas is home to a hardworking, skilled workforce, and I will continue welcoming leaders in aircraft and defense manufacturing to do business here in the Air Capital of the World.”

“Bombardier’s American workers are based all around the United States with sites in Kansas, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Connecticut, Illinois, Delaware, California, Washington D.C. and New Jersey, as well as overall direct employment presence in more than 20 states,” Bombardier said in its own statement response to Trump’s comments, per NBC News. “Bombardier has also announced extensive plans to grow its defense activities as well as its service network and will, later this year, inaugurate a new facility in Fort Wayne, Indiana.”

The threat alone of U.S. government action could still have negative impacts for Bombardier broadly. The company’s stock price fell by some seven percent after Trump’s post yesterday, though it has rebounded somewhat as of the time of writing.

Trump’s trade war with Canada more broadly is still escalating after a new round of talks collapsed last month. The President and other U.S. officials also continue to make remarks about the country becoming the United States’ 51st state.

Many questions remain to be answered about Trump’s new threats against Bombardier and how they could be implemented, if at all. The President has certainly created new uncertainty regarding the Canadian planemaker’s access to the American market without yet definitively clarifying when the U.S. military could be exempted.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Trump Threatens Canadian Jets At The Center Of Army Aerial Surveillance Plans appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force is targeting an approximately $10 million unit price, excluding sensors and certain other systems, for a drone to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. The cost of a fully kitted-out Reaper today is generally reported to be between $30 million and $50 million. The Air Force is also now pushing to accelerate the program to acquire the new drones, dubbed the Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA), amid what it admits are “concerning” Reaper losses in the course of recent operations against Iran.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service’s Chief Modernization Officer, told reporters that the goal was for the MMAs to be “closer to half” the cost of a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), at a roundtable at the Pentagon yesterday, according to Breaking Defense. He also said the service was hoping to see the price tag on its future CCAs fall to around $20 million after full-rate production of those drones gets underway.

Beyond cost, the Air Force has previously said that it wants the MMA drone to perform the same general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and strike missions as the MQ-9A. To that end, stated program requirements to date include a speed of at least 200 knots true airspeed, a munition and sensor payload capacity of at least 2,800 pounds, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, the ability to self-deploy one-way at least 8,000 nautical miles, and the ability to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet. The MMAs also need to be highly modular and use open architecture mission systems to make it easier to integrate new capabilities and functionality down the line.

With all that in mind, Niemi’s MMA cost “estimate includes only the cost of the air vehicle, without being fully missionized,” an Air Force spokesperson clarified after yesterday’s roundtable, per Breaking Defense.

The MQ-9A is out of production, but, as mentioned, the full cost of each one in Air Force service today is generally pegged at between $30 million and $50 million, depending on the sensors, weapons, and other mission equipment they carry. Speaking yesterday, Lt. Gen. Niemi explicitly used the $50 million price point to underscore the MMA program’s unit cost target, as well as explain why the Air Force does not view the newer, in-production MQ-9B as a path to meeting its current needs. General Atomics developed the MQ-9B from the Reaper, but the former is a significantly evolved design with substantial differences from its predecessor.

“If you don’t like losing an MQ-9A that cost on the order of $50 million, with the sensors, you’re probably not going to like losing an MQ-9B at a higher price point,” Niemi said at yesterday’s roundtable, according to a separate report from Air & Space Forces Magazine.

“There’s a, I think, sort of a misconception that because the MQ-9B is in production, we can walk down there with a big fat check and have 100 of them this year,” the general also said, Breaking Defense also reported. “That’s not reality.”

Niemi acknowledged that tradeoffs will have to be made to find an MMA design that is substantially lower cost compared to the MQ-9A.

“You’re going to have to certainly give up something,” he said, per Breaking Defense. “There’s no doubt if we try and pursue the exact same approach that we had with things like the MQ-9, we’re going to get something that costs about the same as an MQ-9.”

However, “what makes the MQ-9 special has nothing to do with the aircraft itself. Like there is no cutting-edge technology for how fast it flies, how high it flies, how far it flies, all that is proven, decades-old technology,” he added, according to that outlet. “So, if you’re focusing on the truck, and you do it in a way where you’re able to make some smart design compromises … we do think you can drive the cost down.”

Niemi said that he expected the MMA, in very general terms, to look much like an MQ-9, including that it would likely also be turboprop powered and have a similarly shaped main wing.

“I think it’s all going to be proven stuff, because that’s how I’m going to drive down the cost so I can get to that goal that I laid out,” Niemi added.

For its part, General Atomics has had choice words in the past regarding discussions about the costs of the MQ-9A and MQ-9B, as well as their capabilities, particularly in light of recent losses. We will come back to the matter of attrition in a moment.

“Some say we need cheaper, disposable aircraft, so that we can use them and throw them away, or lose them and not feel bad about it. No one is talking about actual capability, ready today,” C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for the company, told TWZ back in June after new discussions about a Reaper successor for the Air Force first began to surface. “No one is talking about all of the hard lessons, already learned, about icing and weather and weapons integration. No one is talking about the multiple survivability upgrades available for the existing platforms and the lack of investment in those.”

“These make-believe weapons that don’t exist have the luxury of being anything you imagine them to be,” Brinkley added at that time. “Unscratched lottery tickets, promising all of the win and none of the lose [sic].”

“I think it’s really unfortunate that MMA has been branded as a ‘Reaper replacement’ because it misrepresents what America needs now and what we need later,” he told us last month. “We need an immediate backfill solution to a critical shortage of unmanned MALE [medium altitude, long endurance] ISR/Strike. We need to get going on that now. MMA isn’t a backfill solution, or even a bridge to a backfill solution. This isn’t that.”

Brinkley was speaking here in the context of a discussion about Wildfire, a new drone General Atomics is now developing in response to the MMA requirements.

Wildfire “addresses all of the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation. We can deliver years earlier and maintain the same high quality. You can have everything that makes Reaper special, plus more, at a price that doesn’t break the bank,” Brinkley also told Breaking Defense for its story yesterday.

All of this brings us back around to the matter of MQ-9A losses and the Air Force’s efforts now to accelerate the schedule for the MMA program.

Exactly how many MQ-9As the Air Force has lost due to enemy fire or for any other reason in the course of operations against Iran this year is unknown, but it is reliably reported to be in the dozens. The service is also understood to have lost dozens more Reapers last year during operations targeting Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. The service is on record saying that its Reaper fleet had shrunk to 135 airframes as of May, down from an official total of 165 as of the start of Fiscal Year 2026. It is also important to note here that these inventory numbers do not include Reapers operated by the Marine Corps or the Central Intelligence Agency.

Air Force officials have offered glowing assessments of the MQ-9A’s performance in operations against Iran, despite these losses, but have also said that the level of attrition is worrisome. That reality, in turn, had major impacts on discussions that led to the current MMA program.

“Although we have plenty of MQ-9As today, we are going through them at a rate that is concerning to us,” Niemi said yesterday, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “There’s not a lot of good options to immediately replace those aircraft.”

When the MMA program was first announced in July, the stated goal was to have an initial operational fleet of 20 of the drones in service by 2031. The Air Force is now working to push that timeline to the left, but still sees fielding of the new drones as being around three years away, at least. The service eventually hopes to acquire at least 180 MMAs.

“I can’t buy an MMA today. The reality is, based on the budget and other constraints, that I’m not going to buy a whole lot of MQ-9Bs today either,” Niemi conceded, per Breaking Defense.

It is important to remember here that the Air Force has already tried multiple times to develop a replacement for the MQ-9 without success. In that time, the idea of what a successor to the Reaper would look like has changed dramatically. As we’ve written previously:

“The Pentagon has long worked on the basis that a future conflict with a peer rival, and especially with China in the Pacific, would see it facing highly robust anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) scenarios. With that in mind, previous Reaper replacement studies had suggested that low observability would need to be incorporated into the design.”

“The latest thinking seems to reject that, or at least reorient the program toward a lower-cost platform of the kind that the Air Force would be able to field in mass, as well as to absorb the anticipated attrition in a high-end conflict. This does not preclude this airframe from featuring low-observable elements. In fact, it most likely will. But those would be more aggressively balanced against cost.”

MMA is also looking at a wider slate of potential vendors. General Atomics, which has long had a monopoly on the U.S. MALE combat drone market, is not the only one angling now for an MMA contract.

Overall, as we have previously written in the context of the Air Force’s latest effort to move beyond the Reaper:

“…the U.S. drone landscape has changed considerably in terms of manufacturers. A few years ago, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and General Atomics would have been seen as the front-runners for the MQ-9 replacement. Now, there are more contenders, often with a founding focus on rapidly scaling up production at low cost. Still, these firms have much to prove, especially considering the risk in replacing an aircraft as important as the MQ-9. At the same time, in the more advanced drone space, the legacy defense ‘prime’ contractors are also making major progress in leveraging new technologies to reduce production costs and migrating away from exquisite, very expensive drones as their default offerings.”

The possibility was reportedly raised yesterday that the MMA program could ultimately lead to the fielding of multiple types of drones through successive incremental development cycles. This is exactly how the Air Force is running its CCA program now.

With the Air Force now pushing for a more aggressive schedule for the MMA effort, more details about the designs it is considering may begin to emerge relatively soon. The service certainly has a pressing need already for these drones after so many MQ-9A losses.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USAF Wants MQ-9 Reaper Successor At A Fraction Of The Cost At $10M Each appeared first on TWZ.

Three foreign frigates – Japan’s Mogami class, the South Korean Chungnam class, and the Istanbul class from Turkey – are reportedly included in a study of ships the U.S. Navy could procure. The Trump administration has been openly pushing to leverage ships designed in friendly countries to rapidly bolster the Navy’s fleet while also working to rebuild America’s shrunken domestic shipbuilding capacity. So, it is worth examining what each design brings to the table, as well as the broader opportunities and major hurdles procuring any of them would represent.

USNI News was first to report on Tuesday that the Japanese, South Korean, and Turkish frigates are included in an ongoing Navy study, citing anonymous sources. The review is in direct response to one of the provisions in a larger memo President Trump sent out last month, titled “Rebuilding the United States Navy and America’s Shipbuilding Industrial Base.” This also comes amid strong opposition in Congress to the basic idea of buying foreign warships for the Navy.

Per that memo, the Secretary of the Navy (currently Acting Secretary Hung Cao) was directed to “submit a plan to the President … that includes timelines and resourcing requirements, for a new competitive acquisition approach for surface combatants with sufficient inherent capabilities to perform anti‑submarine warfare, surface warfare, and convoy escort duties.” The memo also said the “plan should address meeting the requirements for Consolidated Cargo Replenishment at Sea (CONSOL) Tankers and — separately — Roll-On, Roll-Off Vessels.”

The study could lead to “an international warship competition [that] could include building up to two of the ships in foreign shipyards before transitioning to domestic yards as part of the Trump administration’s push to rapidly expand the fleet, three industry sources familiar with the deliberations confirmed,” according to USNI News‘ report. The outlet also said the Navy declined to “directly address the potential for an open competition for a new frigate” when asked.

The acquisition approach described here is in line with what the Trump administration is currently calling the “Finland Model,” which entails construction of an initial batch of ships overseas before moving further production to yards in the United States. The name comes from a partnership the U.S. and Finnish governments announced last year regarding the construction of new icebreakers for the U.S. Coast Guard. Canada’s Seaspan Shipyards is also involved in that plan.

Broader plans to explore foreign surface combatant designs for the U.S. Navy, and potentially more to acquire one of those ships, were mentioned in the Pentagon’s 2027 Fiscal Year budget request released earlier this year. President Trump, former Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, and other U.S. officials have also openly raised the possibility of cooperation with shipbuilders in Japan and South Korea, specifically, including with regard to surface combatants. USNI‘s report says that the Istanbul class was included in the current review after it came up in discussions between Trump and Turkish officials on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara in July.

Many questions remain, but there are clear signs the Trump administration wants to move in pursuing the acquisition of foreign naval vessels. The particular focus on frigates also aligns with a clear Navy need for new ships in that size class.

Why frigates?

Before exploring the specific designs the Navy is now said to be reviewing, it is worth taking a step back to understand why frigates are so important to the service’s shipbuilding plans, in general. The United States has not technically operated frigates since the retirement of its last Oliver Hazard Perry class type in 2015. The expectation had been that the Freedom and Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) would fill the resulting gaps. However, those ships struggled for years with a variety of major issues over the years and still have not lived up to their promised potential, despite certain strides having been made in expanding their operational employment in recent years.

The Navy’s announcement of a new frigate program in 2019, dubbed FFG(X), was widely seen as a rebuke of the core concepts behind the LCS. This, in turn, led to the Constellation class frigate, which became a debacle unto itself and was finally cancelled last year. It is important to point out the Constellation design was based on the established Franco-Italian FREMM frigate. The expectation was that only relatively minor changes would be made before putting the ship in American service. In the end, the U.S. derivative had only 15 percent design commonality with its European ‘parent,’ which directly contributed to the demise of the program.

A new FF(X) frigate program has since emerged. Through that effort, the Navy is now in line to get ships derived from the U.S. Coast Guard’s Legend class National Security Cutter (NSC), with the goal being to have the first one in the water by 2028. However, those frigates, at least the ones built in the initial tranche, will lack a Vertical Launch System (VLS) and certain other features that were seen as critical for the preceding Constellation class. This has immediately raised questions about the operational utility of these new small surface combatants, as TWZ has previously explored in detail.

None of this diminishes the Navy’s current desire for new frigates, and more of them, to provide smaller, lower-cost platforms that can be used to bolster larger surface action groups or operate more independently in roles that do not require larger, more capable designs. When fielded in sufficient volume, they can also free up other types of surface combatants for other, higher priority duties or similar help to relieve strain on those fleets.

Today, the Navy’s fleet of Arleigh Burke class destroyers “gets used with a very high demand signal combatant commanders. The Navy can’t operate with only one size of ship,” Rear Adm. Brian Metcalf, the Navy’s Deputy Portfolio Acquisition Executive Maritime for Combatants, said in an official video in June. “The [FF(X)] frigate will fill that gap. They can be used in less contentious waters. They can be used as high-value escorts. There are all kinds of things the frigate can fill the gap for and allow destroyers to execute the high-end mission set.”

With all this in mind, it is not surprising that the Navy would be seeking to further bolster its future frigate fleets on a shorter timetable by leveraging foreign shipbuilders. There are also clear benefits to taking advantage of capable, in-production designs, which leads us to the Mogami, Chungnam, and Istanbul classes.

The Mogami class

Japan’s Mogami class, with its stealthy design characteristics, has long been a standout among modern frigates currently in production globally. The ship is designed as a multi-mission platform with anti-air, anti-surface, anti-submarine, and mine warfare capabilities, the latter of which includes both mine-hunting and mine-laying.

TWZ has covered the ship in detail in the past, writing:

“The original Mogami class design (also known as the 30FFM), the first of which only entered Japanese service in 2022, is already a very modern design with its shape featuring some stealthy characteristics. The 436-foot-long, 53-and-a-half-foot-wide, 5,500-metric-ton displacement frigates have a combined diesel and gas (CODAG) propulsion system that allows for fuel-efficient normal cruising operations and an additional burst of speed in combat. The ships have an active electronically scanned array (AESA) main radar, as well as a host of other advanced sensors and mission systems. One of the Mogami‘s most distinctive features is its NORA-50 UNIted COmbined Radio aNtenna (UNICORN) mast on top of the main superstructure, which contains various antennas. The frigates also have especially futuristic-looking Combat Information Centers (CIC)…”

“Armament-wise, the baseline Mogami class frigate has two four-round launchers for Type 17 anti-ship cruise missiles, a SeaRAM close-in defense system loaded with RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM), and a five-inch main gun in a turret at the bow. There are also two remote weapon stations, each armed with a .50 caliber machine gun, on top of the bridge for additional protection against close-in low-end threats.”

“The Mogami design was originally slated to feature a 16-cell Mk 41 launch system array, but the seventh ship in the class, the JS Niyodo, which was commissioned in May, was the first to be fitted with it. The first six of these frigates were delivered without this capability, but they are expected to be back-fitted with it in the future. Mk 41 cells on Mogami class frigates are expected to be primarily filled with domestically-developed A-SAM or U.S.-designed RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles. Four ESSMs can notably be loaded in a single Mk 41 cell.”

The Mogami class frigates also have a flight deck and hangar designed to accommodate a single Seahawk helicopter. The ships can also deploy uncrewed underwater and surface vessels (UUV/USV), as well as rigid-hull inflatable boats (RHIBs), via a ramp at the stern.

MHI in Japan has also developed an enlarged derivative that is close to 466 feet long, almost 56 feet at its widest, and displaces some 6,200 metric tons. This version also features a 32-cell VLS array, along with an upgraded radar, other improved sensors, and updated mission systems. Last year, the Australian government announced it would be acquiring a fleet of these ships with certain unspecified country-specific features as part of its SEA 3000 program.

The Australian deal is one of, if not still the most significant foreign arms sale for Japan since the end of World War II. It also helps ensure that the Mogami production line will remain hot for years to come. For the U.S. Navy, sharing a frigate with two of America’s highest-profile allies in the Pacific, and which could therefore be readily serviced in those countries, would be very advantageous.

The Mogami is also a contender to become New Zealand’s next frigate, and there have also been discussions about sales to Indonesia. The Japan Maritime Self Defense Force only has two more of these frigates on order, the last of which is expected to be commissioned into service by March of next year.

The Chungnam class

The Chungnam class (also sometimes referred to as the FFX-III or FFG-III) is the latest frigate for the South Korean Navy, and features a mix of anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-submarine capabilities. The first example entered service in that country in 2024. These ships are just over 423 feet long, approach 49 feet at the widest point in the hull, and displace some 4,300 tons with a full combat load. The design is based on the earlier Daegu class, which was itself an evolution of the preceding Incheon class that traces its roots back to the late 1990s.

As was the case on the Daegu class, the Chungnam class uses combined diesel–electric or gas (CODLOG) propulsion, which offers benefits for power management and efficiency, as well as when it comes to reducing maintenance requirements and operating costs. The design features a prominent integrated mast structure with four fixed-face arrays for the main multi-function AESA radar near the top. The ships have additional radars and other sensors, as well as an electronic warfare suite.

Each one of the Chungnam class frigates has a 16-cell K-VLS array. Domestically developed K-SAAM surface-to-air missiles and Haeseong I anti-ship cruise missiles (also called the SSM-700L or C-Star), as well as K745A1 Hong Sang Eo (Red Shark) vertically-launched anti-submarine rockets, can be loaded into these cells.

The armament package on these ships also includes a five-inch main gun in a turret at the bow, a pair of triple torpedo tubes, and a Close-in Weapon System II (CIWS II) armed with a seven-barrel 30mm Gatling-type cannon.

The Chungnam class frigates also have a flight deck and hangar for a single helicopter at the stern.

As it stands now, the South Korean Navy has two Chungnam class frigates in service and has plans to acquire four more over the next few years. The lead ship in the class was built by HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, which is also one of the principal designers of the ship. A different shipbuilder, SK Oceanplant, built the second ship in the class, ROKS Gyeoungbuk, and is now working on the third and fourth examples. Hanwha Ocean is reportedly in line to build the last two ships in the class for South Korea. Hyundai and Hanwha have pitched export designs based on the Chungnam class, with both firms notably in the running to supply new frigates to Thailand.

Hanwha has already been making steady inroads in the shipbuilding industry in the United States, including the acquisition of the Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2024. Hyundai has reportedly been working to do the same. Just last month, Hanwha publicly announced a new $1.2 billion bid to buy out Australian shipbuilder Austal’s U.S. subsidiary, Austal USA. Austal notably built the Independence class LCSs for the U.S. Navy and continues to supply that service with other vessels. Austal subsequently said it was considering the South Korean offer.

The Istanbul class

Turkey’s Istanbul class (also known as the Istif class or just I class), developed under the country’s MILGEM national warship program, is not a design that has typically come up in previous discussions about potential foreign-made frigates for the U.S. Navy. It is described as a multi-role frigate with anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine capabilities. The lead ship in this class, TCG Istanbul, entered Turkish Navy service in 2024.

At around 371 and a half feet long and with a beam of just over 47 feet, as well as a displacement of some 3,000 tons with a full combat load, the Istanbul class is notably smaller than either the Mogami class or Chungnam class. Like the Mogami, it uses CODAG propulsion. The Turkish design is understood to have leveraged lessons learned from the Project GENESIS program to upgrade the country’s second-hand ex-U.S. Navy Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, as you can learn more about here.

TCG Istanbul is armed with a 16-cell MiDLAS VLS array, with past reports saying it is primarily configured to fire Hisar short-to-medium-range surface-to-air missiles. However, just in August, it was revealed that the second ship in the class, the future TCG Izmir, which is undergoing sea trials now, has a new 16-cell version of MiDLAS with visibly longer cells. This would allow the ship to fire larger weapons vertically, such as the Siper medium-range surface-to-air missiles, Atmaca anti-ship cruise missiles, and/or Gezgin land-attack cruise missiles. MiDLAS is a scalable VLS design developed in Turkey as an alternative to the U.S.-made Mk 41.

The initial Istanbul class design already had four deck-mounted launchers that can be loaded with up to 16 Atmaca missiles, in total. The frigates also have a 76mm cannon in a turret on the bow, a Gokdeniz CIWS with a twin-barrel 35mm cannon, two 25mm cannon-armed remote weapon stations, and a pair of twin torpedo tubes.

The main sensor on the Istanbul class is a rotating AESA radar mounted on top of the ship’s main integrated mast structure. It has additional radars and other sensors, as well as electronic support measures and electronic countermeasures systems.

The Istanbul class design also features a flight deck and hangar at the stern, sized around the Seahawk helicopter.

As mentioned, the second Istanbul class frigate for the Turkish Navy is now in sea trials, and the country plans to eventually acquire eight of these warships in total. They are being built through several shipyards in Turkey. Last year, Turkey’s TAIS Shipyards also secured a contract to build at least two Istanbul class frigates for Indonesia.

Growing U.S. roadblocks to any foreign warships

Much remains to be seen about how the U.S. Navy might proceed with the acquisition of new frigates, or any other naval vessels, via foreign shipbuilders. Whether any other relevant, in-production designs are being considered, or could be in the future, is unknown. USNI News‘ report says the current study is scheduled to wrap up in November.

Furthermore, what the Navy might want to do could well turn out to be moot. Members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle have been very vocally pushing back on any plans to acquire foreign warships amid concerns about negative impacts on the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

Current U.S. law would already require the Trump administration to issue a national security waiver to pursue foreign-made naval vessels. A draft of the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for the 2027 Fiscal Year now making its way through the Senate would eliminate the ability to issue such a waiver. In June, members of the House Armed Services Committee separately moved to outright block any spending on foreign-built warships in a separate draft NDAA.

The aforementioned Finland Model, as outlined in Trump’s August memo, is clearly intended to try to assuage Congressional concerns. Under the stated plan, foreign shipbuilders would be required to make major investments in U.S. shipbuilding enterprises and hire American workers as part of any future contract, even if an initial tranche of vessels is built overseas.

“The Administration strongly opposes section 1025, which would prohibit the use of funds for procurement of initial battle force ships to be built in a foreign shipyard, especially while, in accordance with the ‘Finland Model’ first employed with the Coast Guard’s medium icebreaker program, long-term investments are being made in an American brown or greenfield shipyard,” the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) wrote in a statement of Administration Policy in July, specifically in response to provisions in the the House’s NDAA draft. “This prohibition fails to seriously address the challenges posed by current shipbuilding backlogs across six major programs in our ‘prime’ shipyards.”

This latter point here speaks to an already worrisome and still-widening gap between U.S. shipbuilding capacity and that of chief global competitor China. The U.S. government has tried to take steps in recent years to revitalize the American side of the equation, but workforce retention and other factors have continued to present serious hurdles. There are additional concerns now about how the addition of work on the Trump class battleship program will affect America’s naval shipbuilding ecosystem, which the Trump administration has separately pushed back on.

Continuing U.S. shipyard capacity and quality issues raise their own questions about the viability of the Finland Model. The construct inherently limits the U.S. government’s ability to make use of yards overseas and is heavily contingent on the shipbuilding industry in the United States expanding at a rate where it will be able to absorb the additional production demands. With the naval shipbuilding deficit already becoming extremely problematic, buying examples of relevant classes with minimal changes and having them built where production is already established could arguably be the priority, especially in light of the failures of the LCS and Constellation programs.

Ensuring that any U.S.-specific changes to the design are minimal will also be critical for any such plan to be successful. As mentioned, the Constellation class was undone in large part due to a near-constant stream of changes ordered by the Navy, which negated the benefits of choosing a derivative of an in-production design. The service has stressed its intention to avoid any similar pitfalls with its existing FF(X) frigate program, which also has to be factored into the larger domestic shipyard capacity question.

“The President has directed the Navy to aggressively increase domestic shipbuilding capacity, including leveraging the proven shipbuilding skills and industrial expertise of our allies,” Navy Capt. Ron Flanders said in a statement on Tuesday, according to USNI News. “We are actively developing options to fulfill the President’s intent to deliver ships faster while ensuring long-term investment, technology transfer, and workforce expansion within United States shipyards.”

Signs are certainly growing that the Navy is moving closer to kicking off a formal process to acquire foreign-designed warships, which could include Mogami, Chungnam, and/or Istanbul frigates, to help grow its fleets, especially in the face of growing challenges posed by China.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post The Three Foreign Frigates Being Studied For Possible U.S. Navy Service appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Navy’s supercarrier USS Abraham Lincoln is now in Thailand for a much-deserved and highly publicized liberty port call. The carrier had gone 286 days without making such a stop, with much of that time spent executing grueling combat operations against Iran. The ship has been run very hard, relying on at times a rickety conveyor of sea replenishments to continue operating for months on end, and it has the scars to show for it. The Lincoln looks very much worse for wear, with so-called “running rust” and algae caked all along the sides of the hull, as well as around the edges of the flight deck and sponsons on either side. It’s something of a startling appearance for one of the most powerful ships on the planet and a major symbol of U.S. power projection, but it is also a reminder of what the vessel and its crew have endured for months on end.

The Lincoln arrived in the Thai port of Laem Chabang earlier today. The carrier did make a stop in Guam in December 2025 and reportedly made another one somewhere in the Middle East in July. However, in both cases, these have been characterized as brief logistical stopovers that did not offer any real opportunity for personnel onboard to disembark. Thai media reports say the carrier is expected to remain in Laem Chabang through the end of the weekend.

“Our arrival in Laem Chabang provides a well-deserved opportunity for our Sailors and Marines to rest and recharge. It also underscores the strong and enduring partnership and alliance between the United States and Thailand,” Rear Adm. Robert E. Loughran, commander of Carrier Strike Group 3 (CSG-3), said in a statement in a press release today. “What this strike group has accomplished is truly historic. I could not be prouder of the exceptional professionalism and expertise demonstrated by every member of this team during our operations in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.”

Lincoln and its strike group had left port in San Diego in November 2025 for what was originally expected to be a routine cruise in the Pacific. The carrier, its air wing, and escorts were subsequently directed to the Middle East and arrived in that region in January 2026.

CSG-3 took part in the opening salvo of strikes on Iran on February 28 as part of what the U.S. military dubbed Operation Epic Fury. Lincoln and the rest of the strike group continued to support Epic Fury and subsequent operations against Iran for months thereafter. The decision was finally made to rotate the carrier out of the region last month following a raft of reports of severely flagging morale and mental health among the crew, which we will come back to later.

Two of the Arleigh Burke class destroyers assigned to CSG-3, the USS Michael Murphy and the USS Spruance, are still understood to be operating in the Western end of the Indian Ocean. A third destroyer in the strike group, the USS Frank E. Petersen Jr., accompanied the Lincoln to Thailand and is now docked in a separate port in Sriracha, near Laem Chabang. The Ticonderoga class cruiser USS Robert Smalls also helped escort the carrier, and that warship “also arrived in Map Ta Phut, Thailand for their own scheduled port visit,” according to the Navy.

As mentioned, Lincoln definitely looks like it’s been at sea more or less continuously for the last nine and a half months or so. Pictures and videos of the ship in Laem Chabang seen throughout this story plainly show big dark rust stains all around the hull and other similar signs of wear elsewhere. There is also a bright green ring of algae layered on the hull at the waterline. While carriers have very large crews and usually keep the ship’s appearance up relatively well while on cruise, there is only so much that can be done out of port on particularly long deployments, where all resources are focused on sustained high-tempo combat operations.

Running rust on U.S. Navy ships has been something of a lightning rod for criticism in recent years, including from President Donald Trump. This is in part due to the negative optics of such visible wear and tear on American naval vessels, especially during calls in foreign ports.

“It’s terrible. I think they should be ashamed,” John Phelan told members of Congress at a hearing last year after being shown pictures of a very worn-looking Arleigh Burke class destroyer, the USS Dewey, during a stopover in Singapore. “Would you want to go on that ship?”

Phelan was testifying at the time regarding his nomination to be Secretary of the Navy. At the time, he said that President Trump had already been texting him in the middle of the night regarding the issue. Phelan was subsequently confirmed and served as the Navy’s top civilian until he was unexpectedly fired in April, reportedly over disagreements regarding the new Trump class battleships and other more general friction within the administration,

Lincoln‘s current condition is, of course, an extreme case that is the result of very specific operational circumstances. The carrier has already been in the news for weeks now due to the aforementioned morale issues, which family members of those onboard have been very vocally calling attention to through the media. One sailor had to be rescued last month after deliberately jumping overboard. There were reports that at least one other individual onboard had attempted to do the same. President Donald Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others, have pushed back on concerns about mental health and other issues on the ship. In a statement shared on social media on August 16, Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), acknowledged, but still downplayed, the seriousness of the mental health situation, in particular.

At the same time, the carrier’s marathon deployment is indicative of larger shipbuilding, readiness, and other issues that the Navy continues to struggle with. Strains on the service carrier fleets in particular have been steadily building for years and are now becoming a low-level crisis. The USS Gerald R. Ford wrapped up a historic 326-day-long deployment in May. The Navy has publicly said that the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is set to begin its latest cruise soon, could be away from home for at least eight months. The longer the ships remain deployed, the longer they typically have to spend in port afterward, further compounding the situation with each passing day during months-long extensions. This all has very worrisome cascading impacts on even routine maintenance cycles, let alone deep overhauls and upgrade efforts, as well as personnel management matters, as we have explored in detail in the past.

“It’s my earnest attempt to really try to keep those [deployments] at seven months,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s top officer, said during a question-and-answer session at Fort Meade, Maryland, Monday, which was livestreamed. He also said he wanted a Navy “that can sustain a seven-month deployment and still give our combatant commanders the amount of naval force they need to accomplish their missions, solve their key operational problems, and make sure they have all the naval force necessary to do what they need to do.”

Caudle had notably acknowledged concerns about strains on the Ford while speaking to TWZ and other outlets at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium back in January.

The Lincoln‘s visibly worn state certainly draws new attention to the stress on America’s carrier fleets as personnel onboard are now finally getting a much-earned reprieve in Laem Chabang.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USS Abraham Lincoln Looks Like It’s Been Through Hell After 286 Days At Sea appeared first on TWZ.

Chinese state-run shipping company COSCO has been using concealed systems on its vessels to gather signals intelligence around North American, European, and Asian coastlines for decades, it has been alleged. Similar claims have been made in the past, and overlap between nominally civilian enterprises in China and the country’s military and intelligence services is well established at this point.

Reuters first reported on the use of COSCO ships as discrete signals intelligence platforms earlier today, citing two unnamed officials within President Donald Trump’s administration.

“The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. assessment of the Chinese program, said COSCO has a decades-long intelligence-collection partnership with Beijing,” according to the report. “The arrangement allows China to collect communication signals from vessels ​and aircraft operating across Europe, North America and Asia, they said.”

It is worth noting here that China’s National Intelligence Law, enacted in 2017, includes a specific provision that requires all organizations and citizens within the country to support state intelligence work as required. It also obligates the state to protect entities that do so.

“The advanced equipment aboard the ships is intended to enable China ​to gather information about ‘military communications technologies and encryption developments,’ one of the officials said,” Reuters‘ story today added. “The officials did not detail the type of equipment COSCO ships were allegedly using, but said they were ‘sophisticated signals intelligence collection’ platforms, not routine communications hardware.”

Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., unsurprisingly denied these assertions, according to that outlet.

Purpose-built signals intelligence suites can range widely in size and shape, as can their capabilities. They can be very small and basic or far more elaborate systems. Even the latter could be concealed as modern commercial ships, which already feature lots of antennas.

What might happen to intelligence collected by the ships is unknown. At the very least, systems onboard could record the data, which could then be batched out when safe to do so, either physically or via transmission. Basic passive signals suites can also run autonomously, or even be controlled from anywhere in the world if the ship is connected via satellite communications (SATCOM). High-bandwidth SATCOM is very common now on ships around the globe.

Personnel on the ship could also operate the systems, and even process receptions of interest. It might be possible to fit the ships with suitable datalinks to then transmit the collected data in near-real-time to other nodes, including ones back in China, for further analysis and exploitation.

Reuters‘ sources said scooping up data on “military communications technologies and encryption developments” was a priority for the commercial vessels turned spy ships. Signals intelligence can take many other forms, from emissions from radars to communications chatter. Depending on what is collected and how, specialists can use that information to glean details about how systems function, as well as insights into standard operating procedures and other details. This is especially true when multiple forms of intelligence are fused together. Generally speaking, signals intelligence is routinely used to help build out so-called ‘electronic orders of battle’ detailing the disposition and capabilities of an opponent’s forces, especially air defense and command and control networks.

As mentioned, this is not the first time claims in this general vein have emerged, either. At least some evidence has been presented in the past, through open-source analysis. Reuters‘ sources directed that outlet to a report published last year by the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College exploring exactly this topic in relation to China’s quasi-military maritime militia. The maritime militia is made up of ostensibly civilian fishing fleets, but has direct ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese Coast Guard. It is routinely used to harass and intimidate foreign vessels in disputed waters, especially in the South China Sea.

“Undergirding these operations is a cadre of maritime militia intelligence specialists called ‘information personnel.’ Information personnel are organized into force contingents that support operational militia forces,” according to that report. “Most have day jobs in the fishing industry, but many hale [sic; hail] from other sectors, including marine shipping and even maritime law enforcement units.”

“It is more likely than not that PRC [People’s Republic of China] vessels operating overseas have already begun embarking information personnel to serve intelligence collection and reporting functions. In the case of China’s fishing fleet, serving this foreign intelligence collection function could be as simple as adding a new duty to the ‘information personnel’ that already embark aboard some distant-water fishing vessels,” that report added. “Aside from their primary responsibilities of tallying and reporting production numbers, serving as experts on international and national fisheries regulations that affect their work, and handling interactions with foreign officials while at sea and in port, they might also be tasked with collecting and reporting military and political intelligence while operating overseas.”

“Similar processes may already be in place in the commercial shipping industry,” it continued. “For instance, Guangxi province’s Beihai city has built up its ranks of maritime intelligence specialists by recruiting from among marine shipping personnel.”

No explicit mention is made in the report about signals intelligence gathering.

In the past year or so, there have been multiple reports that Russia is also using its so-called ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tanker ships in a secondary role as intelligence-gathering platforms. The primary job of those vessels is to help the Kremlin evade sanctions.

There is other tangential evidence that also lends credence to today’s report from Reuters. As mentioned, in the midst of still mysterious drone swarms that harassed U.S. Navy ships off the coast of southern California back in 2019, U.S. authorities at least explored the possibility that a Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier, the M/V Bass Strait, might have been a launch point. It remains unknown, at least publicly, whether the Bass Strait or another nearby ship might have been the source of the harassment, or if it came from somewhere else, potentially further away. TWZ was the first to report on this detail as part of a deeper investigation into these incidents, which came amid a spike in news about claimed sightings of what are now commonly referred to as unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). We have been saying for years now that, while some UAP sightings do remain unexplained, many more are likely to have been drones (as well as balloons), which foreign governments could be using for intelligence gathering and other malign purposes.

It’s also worth noting here that intelligence collection from international waters and airspace is a practice that nation state armed forces and intelligence agencies globally, including those in the United States, engage in regularly with varying degrees of openness. Leveraging nominally civilian ships, as well as aircraft, for these purposes is hardly new.

Despite the official denials to the Reuters piece today, it would be hard to imagine Chinese authorities not making use of commercial ships for this purpose, if possible, given that major deepwater ports worldwide are often dual-purpose civilian/military facilities. Radar sites and other critical facilities are often positioned along or near coastlines. Cargo ships and tankers often pass by major exercises and under major military operating airspace, where they could scoop up critical data.

With commercial ships already plying their routes, this would also just offer the Chinese government ways to readily bolster maritime intelligence-gathering capacity at low cost and low risk. China’s commercial fleets dwarf any other on Earth, making their presence commonplace and providing many opportunities to hide these operations.

A 2021 report published through the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) Tearline Project also highlighted the possibility of Chinese-owned facilities at ports around the world being used for intelligence gathering or even for launching non-kinetic attacks, including electronic warfare jamming. It specifically noted how COSCO’s facility in Belgium’s Port of Zeebrugge is “in close proximity to a Belgian Naval Base and thus could fulfill additional militarized requirements.”

Concerns about land owned by Chinese companies and nationals being used to collect intelligence or for other purposes have become an increasingly hot topic of discussion in the United States in recent years.

Reuters‘ piece does not say what, if any, steps U.S. authorities have taken or may be planning to take now to monitor for or take more active countermeasures against Chinese-flagged ships being used for intelligence gathering, despite this being said to be a decades-old practice. The report does note that “the Pentagon put COSCO on its list of companies linked to China’s military in January 2025, a designation that carries serious reputational costs for companies ​as well as U.S. government procurement ​bans, but does not entail ⁠formal sanctions.”

Though no hard evidence has yet been provided, Chinese authorities using cargo ships as additional discreet signals intelligence-gathering assets is very plausible, and would certainly seem to be an issue that should be taken seriously, if it is not already being addressed.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Chinese Cargo Ships Clandestinely Gather Signals Intelligence: Report appeared first on TWZ.

American Rheinmetall and General Dynamics Land Systems have now delivered the first prototypes of their proposed XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle (MICV) designs to the U.S. Army. The XM30 program is the Army’s latest attempt to replace its fleet of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. The competing MICV designs are set to be put to the test alongside early prototypes of the next-generation M1E3 Abrams tank in the spring.

The U.S. subsidiary of Germany’s Rheinmetall has been developing a version of its Lynx family to meet the Army’s MICV requirements, and announced the delivery of the first example today. General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), which is offering the Wolf, a further evolution of the company’s Griffin III, itself derived from the ASCOD 2 infantry fighting vehicle, said last week that its first prototype had arrived at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. Variants and derivatives of the Lynx and ASCOD 2 are already in service with several countries, which we will come back to later on.

The press release today from American Rheinmetall says the company will eventually deliver eight prototypes to the Army for further testing. It is very likely General Dynamics Land Systems will be supplying an equivalent number of vehicles, but the company does not appear to have confirmed that explicitly at the time of writing. Army budget documents released earlier this year show the service is planning to acquire at least 108 XM30s through Fiscal Year 2031. The Army has some 2,500 Bradleys in service today, a figure that includes multiple variants and subvariants.

“Delivering our first prototype to the Army is an important step as the XM30 Combat Vehicle program enters a more visible phase,” Matt Warnick, CEO of American Rheinmetall, said in a statement accompanying the release. “Team Lynx now has the opportunity to show the Army that we can deliver on the promise of a modern replacement for the Bradley.”

“I could not be happier to be part of the GDLS team that is delivering this incredible new capability on schedule to the Army – they need it now,” Geoffrey Norman, Director for U.S. Strategy & Growth at General Dynamics Land Systems, had written last week in a post on LinkedIn. “The work continues as this first vehicle gets into the Army’s hands.”

The Lynx and Griffin III-based XM30 designs both feature hybrid-electric propulsion. This will offer improved fuel economy, added electrical power generation, and other benefits compared to the Bradley with its traditional diesel engine. The vehicles both have remotely operated turrets, with their two-person crews, as well as up to six passengers, all riding in the hull.

The Army expects the winning XM30 to provide significant boosts in lethality and other capabilities compared to any existing version of the Bradley. The main weapon on both competing designs is an XM913 50mm automatic cannon, offering a significant increase in firepower compared to the 25mm M242 on the Bradley.

The XM30 will also be able to launch loitering munitions. AeroVironment’s Switchblade 300 has been integrated onto General Dynamics Land Systems’ design. American Rheinmetall’s entry is designed to be able to fire versions of Raytheon’s Coyote Block 3, but whether it can launch other munitions is unclear. The launchers on the Lynx-based XM30 are known to also be capable of firing anti-tank guided missiles, such as the TOW and Javelin. The Army has demonstrated the ability to fire a version of the Coyote from the TOW missile launcher on the Bradley, as well.

Next-generation fire control, sensor, and networking/communications capabilities are also key to the Army’s current Bradley replacement plans. With its improved network connectivity, the service envisions XM30s acting as controllers for uncrewed ground vehicles, as well. The Army has already been working to prove out future crewed-uncrewed teaming concepts using the Bradley.

Overall, the Army sees the XM30 as a future “cornerstone of the Armored Brigade Combat Team (ABCT), designed to enhance lethality, survivability, and maneuverability in high-intensity combat against near-peer adversaries,” according to the Army’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget documents. “The XM30 is versatile in its operational roles, capable of leading the charge, scouting ahead, or providing overwatch while Soldiers dismount and maneuver. Its ability to control robotic systems and semi-autonomous platforms adds another layer of capability, allowing the formation to extend its reach and maintain dominance across the battlefield.”

“The XM30 program is not just a replacement for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle – it represents a transformative leap in ground combat vehicle development. The XM30 is more than a vehicle; it is a software-defined platform designed for interoperability and adaptability, ensuring it evolves with changing technologies and operational demands,” the budget documents continue. “By leveraging digital engineering and modular open systems architecture (MOSA), the XM30 ensures infantry units always have the cutting-edge tools they need to outmaneuver and outgun the enemy. The XM30 also achieves a level of logistical efficiency that ensures sustained operational readiness while reducing costs and complexity.”

The Army now plans to put the XM30 prototypes to the test during a regular rotation at the sprawling National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin in California next spring, according to a report last month from Breaking Defense. Soldiers assigned to the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood in Texas, will operate the vehicles. 1/1st Cavalry is one of the Army’s so-called Transformation In Contact (TIC) units, which are supporting the service’s broader modernization objectives. The brigade is expected to bring prototypes of the next-generation M1E3 Abrams tank to the NTC, as well.

The Army has talked in the past about aiming to field a winning XM30 design by Fiscal Year 2029. However, it remains to be seen when it might make a final selection and when the first of those vehicles actually enter operational service.

“We have a plan to carry two vendors as long as we possibly can. It becomes a question about resourcing the money, because you’re not paying necessarily double, but you’re kind of paying double,” Army Brig. Gen. Troy Denomy, Program Acquisition Executive of Maneuver, told Breaking Defense for its story in August. “We’re absolutely trying to keep our options open as long as we can, but money matters.”

That being said, “if there’s not a clear winner at the end of the NTC rotation, ‘then it may be worth not selecting at that point,’ Denomy said,” per Breaking Defense.

This is hardly the first time the Army has attempted to replace the Bradley since it first entered service in the 1980s. Cost, weight, and other factors have derailed several previous attempts, including the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV) effort that directly preceded the current MICV program. In February, another report from Breaking Defense had raised questions about the XM30’s future after at least a temporary program pause within the last year. That was followed by a new request for information for a different, but very similar-sounding vehicle.

As mentioned, the two competing XM30 designs are based on vehicles that are in operational service today. Hungary became the first operator of a Lynx variant last year, and Ukraine is also in the process of procuring versions of that design. Today, Spain is the primary operator of the ASCOD 2, with Latvia also working to field a fleet of those vehicles. The British Army’s much-troubled Ajax is also derived from the ASCOD 2. The U.S. Army’s now-cancelled M10 Booker ‘light tank’ is another member of this broader family.

It is worth noting here that there has been much debate in recent years about the utility of heavy armored vehicles like the Bradley, as well as the Abrams tank, in future conflicts. Armored and unarmored vehicles face a growing multitude of threats, including more and more capable anti-tank guided missiles and especially kamikaze drones. Reporting earlier on in the conflict in Ukraine had underscored the continued value of heavy armor, including of the Bradley, even if its place as a decisive factor on the battlefield was diminishing. However, a report just last week from The New York Times indicated that tanks, in particular, have become increasingly sidelined, largely due to the threat of drone attacks.

The Army is also now in the midst of a new leadership shakeup with the resignation of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. Reports say Driscoll’s departure follows growing friction with Secretary Pete Hegseth, including over modernization efforts.

In the meantime, examples of both of the designs competing to become the future XM30 are now in Army hands and are set to be tested alongside the M1E3 next year.

Update: 5:23 PM ET –

GDLS has now put out a brief press release regarding the delivery of the first Wolf prototype to Aberdeen Proving Ground, which it says occurred on August 21.

“This on-time delivery will allow Soldiers to start putting the Wolf through its paces, with the ultimate goal of getting it fielded into armored brigades as quickly as possible,” GDLS’ Norman said in a new statement accompanying the release. “I would like to congratulate our XM30 team on the successful design and production of this game-changing solution. The Wolf is the most technologically advanced combat vehicle ever assembled.”

The release also included the picture below, showing the Wolf prototype entirely under wraps on a trailer.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Competing Bradley Fighting Vehicle Replacement Prototypes Delivered To The U.S. Army (Updated) appeared first on TWZ.

The first of Japan’s two new cruiser-sized Aegis System Equipped Vessels (ASEV) is continuing to take shape, recently receiving its huge main integrated mast, giving the vessel a new and remarkably imposing silhouette. The four very large fixed arrays for the ship’s powerful AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar will eventually be integrated onto this structure. The ASEV’s stated primary mission is missile defense, but Japanese authorities plan to give the vessels additional counter-drone, anti-ship, and land attack capabilities in the future. Tomahawk cruise missiles are notably set to be added to the ship’s arsenal down the line.

The ASEVs are large surface combatants, set to be some 620 feet long, have a beam (the widest point of the hull) of some 82 feet, and a standard displacement of 12,000 tons. For comparison, Japan’s largest surface combatants today, its Maya class destroyers, are just over 557 feet long, have a beam of some 73 feet, and a standard displacement of around 8,200 tons. It is worth noting here that the size of new and advanced destroyers, often optimized for anti-air warfare missions, has been trending upward globally in recent years. This, in turn, has caused the line between destroyers and what have more historically been categorized as cruisers in certain cases.

The first ASEV was laid down at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI) shipyard in Nagasaki in July 2025. The second was laid down in February of this year at Japan Marine United Isogo shipyard, which is situated in Yokohama City near Tokyo, according to a past report from Naval News. The Japanese Ministry of Defense is currently aiming to have the first of these vessels in service before the end of the country’s 2027 Fiscal Year, which runs from April 2027 to March 2028. The second is expected to follow in the 2028 fiscal cycle, which extends into 2029.

Significant progress in the overall construction of the first ship has been made just this year. The addition of the main mast structure, installed on top of the main superstructure, as seen in pictures at the top of this story and below, has drawn particular attention in recent weeks.

Japanese are very fast with ship building.

March 26 and today. ASEV-class destroyer.

190 m hull, SPY-7 Aegis, 128cell Mk 41 VLS. SM-3 for ballistic missiles, SM-6, plus Japan’s long range Type 12 SSM. pic.twitter.com/RQZixtqWwe

— 信濃 Æýà (@Shinano_AEya) August 30, 2026

The especially large size of the ASEV’s integrated mast is driven by that of the AN/SPY-7(V)1 active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radar from Lockheed Martin. Each one of the radar’s four rectangular arrays is reportedly around 14 feet (nearly 4.3 meters) tall. This would put them in the same general size category as the arrays for Raytheon’s AN/SPY-6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) found on U.S. Navy Flight III Arleigh Burke class destroyers. That being said, the pictures we have now raise the question of whether the AN/SPY-7(V)1 arrays are bigger than previously assessed. The AMDR is another notably large design heavily optimized for missile defense.

The size and location of the mast provide a centralized, elevated position for the AN/SPY-7(V)1’s large arrays, which will also require significant power generation capacity and thermal management to keep everything cool. This is a notable departure from the placement of the arrays on the main superstructure on existing Japanese destroyers, as well as the U.S. Arleigh Burke class, and offers an unobstructed, elevated line-of-sight to the horizon. Beyond the ballistic missile defense mission, this view farther out over the horizon would be important for tracking and engaging low-flying drones and cruise missiles, which might be targeting the ship itself. This is something we will come back to later on.

“With five times the tracking capability of the SPY-1, it [the AN/SPY-7(V)1] counters lofted trajectories and simultaneous multiple ballistic missile threats,” according to a machine translation of a section of the Japanese Ministry of Defense’s 2026 defense policy white paper, which was released earlier this month.

The passive electronically-scanned array (PESA) AN/SPY-1 was the first radar to be paired with the Aegis Combat System, and both were first introduced in the 1970s. Variants of the SPY-1 are still found on a variety of U.S. and foreign Aegis-equipped warships, including Japan’s Kongo, Atago, and Maya class destroyers.

The AN/SPY-7(V)1 is also a derivative of the U.S. military’s static, land-based Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) in Alaska. Japan also originally planned to employ the AN/SPY-7(V)1 on land at a pair of Aegis Ashore missile defense sites. However, that effort was subsequently cancelled, with the ASEV emerging to fill the resulting gap.

Additional versions of the AN/SPY-7 with much smaller arrays are also being integrated onto new F110 Bonifaz class frigates for the Spanish Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy’s forthcoming River class destroyers (also known as the Canadian Surface Combatant). The use of the AN/SPY-7(V)1 on the ASEV could impact decisions regarding new radars for other future and existing Japanese warships. Raytheon is also pitching versions of its increasingly popular AN/SPY-6 family for use on a successor to the Kongo class and for refit on the Maya class, according to a recent report from Naval News.

When it comes to the ASEV, as already noted, the AN/SPY-7(V)1 is central to the ship’s main stated missile defense mission. As the name makes clear, the ship will also feature the Aegis Combat System. The vessel will be capable of “remote engagement and guidance against anti-air targets tracked by other vessels” via a “Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC),” per the Japanese Ministry of Defense’s most recent annual defense white paper.

The video below provides details about the U.S. Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) developments, which are likely very similar to what Japan has planned for the ASEV.

In terms of armament, when the ASEVs first enter service, their main weaponry is expected to be a mix of variants of the Standard Missile-3 and -6 (SM-3 and SM-6). The SM-3 family is designed to engage ballistic missile threats during the mid-course portion of their flights while they are traveling outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. The SM-3 also has a demonstrated anti-satellite capability. The SM-6 is a multi-purpose missile that was originally designed with an anti-air focus. It can be used to target incoming ballistic missiles in the terminal phase of flight and also has at least a degree of capability for engaging hypersonic weapons. SM-6 can be used in a surface-to-surface mode, including against ships, as well. Japan is also a partner in the U.S.-led development of a new Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI), which is being designed specifically to intercept unpowered, but highly maneuverable hypersonic boost-glide vehicles.

SM-3, SM-6, and future GPIs will be loaded into either of the ASEV’s two Vertical Launch System (VLS) arrays, one at the bow end and another toward the stern. Each one of the ships will have a total of 128 VLS cells. For comparison, Japan’s Maya class destroyers, as well as the U.S. Navy’s Flight IIA and III Arleigh Burke class destroyers, have 96 VLS cells apiece. The U.S. Navy’s Ticonderoga class cruisers each have 122 VLS cells, and 128 is also the number of VLSs currently expected to be found on the future Trump class battleships.

At the time of writing, Japanese authorities do not appear to have explicitly mentioned plans to arm the ASEVs with other missiles when they first enter service. That being said, any VLS array capable of accommodating SM-3s and SM-6s should be able to fire a variety of other weapons, including shorter-ranged SM-2s and Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM), which the ship could use for more localized air and missile defense, as well as protecting the ship itself.

Renderings and models of the ASEV do show the design also armed with a five-inch naval gun in a turret on the bow, along with two Phalanx Close-in Weapon Systems (CIWS) and other automatic cannons for point defense.

As mentioned, while missile defense is the immediate focus for the ASEVs, there are already plans to significantly expand their capability to engage other ships and targets on land. Tomahawk cruise missiles and a new, extended-range version of the Type 12 anti-ship cruise missile are set to be added to the arsenal of these vessels in the 2032 timeframe, according to the latest official Japanese defense white paper.

Japanese authorities want the ASEVs to eventually be able to help fend off waves of enemy drones, too. High-energy laser-directed energy weapons are set to be integrated onto the ships down the line to help address those threats. The overall size and other general characteristics of the ships would leave the door open to the possible addition of high-power microwaves and other capabilities in the future.

TWZ has long noted that the ASEVs will bring huge new boosts in naval air and missile defense and long-strike capability to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces. The vessels also reflect a significant evolution in post-World War II Japanese doctrine, toward what officials currently frame as a “stand-off defense” construct that remains within the bounds of the country’s current pacifist constitution.

Just with SM-3, SM-6, and GPI, the ASEVs will offer an important addition to the air and missile defense bubbles around Japan’s home islands and outlying territories in the face of growing geopolitical friction with China and Russia, two countries that are increasingly cooperating militarily. The vessels will also add to Japan’s deterrent against long-standing and still evolving threats posed by the regime in North Korea, which has its own close ties to the Chinese and Russian governments. All three of these nations continue to expand their arsenals of ever-more capable ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles. Long-range one-way-attack drones are another growing part of the equation, with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and fighting in the Middle East in recent years underscoring just how real a threat they pose.

With the addition of Tomahawks, the ASEVs, along with other Japanese warships, will gain the additional ability to threaten counterstrikes against targets on land (and potentially at sea) at least around 1,000 miles in any direction. As part of the broader stand-off defense strategy, the Japan Self Defense Forces is developing new land-based long-range strike capabilities, including hypersonic missiles, as well.

It is worth noting that with current plans to acquire only two ASEVs, these will be high-value but also low-density assets, which will have to be very deliberately deployed for maximum effect. They will also stand out as top-priority targets in any future conflict, and will need to be protected as such.

It is possible that the roles and missions of the ASEVs, just like their designs, could evolve further as time goes on. The threat ecosystem facing Japan will continue to evolve, likely more rapidly, in the coming years. The country is also expanding its naval capabilities in other ways, and with an eye toward more blue water operations. This includes expanded light carrier capabilities through refits of existing Izumo class ships. Anti-ship ballistic missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles, among large volumes of more traditional threats, could see the ASEVs used as escorts, even if experimentally. While just two hulls are barely enough to keep one on patrol to protect Japan, more could be built for expeditionary applications.

Regardless, the ASEVs are set to be a major addition to the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force’s fleets that will have big ramifications. From the progress that is visible at the shipyard in Nagasaki, MHI looks to be well on track to deliver the first of these ships next year or two.

Special thanks to @kensakai9310 on X, who also goes by “Sakai,” for sharing recently taken pictures of the first ASEV under construction at MHI’s yard in Nagasaki with us.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Japan’s First Dedicated Missile Defense Warship Is A Monster appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Air Force has stood up a new squadron at Andrews Air Force Base to manage the arrival of HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters to replace aging UH-1N Twin Hueys. Originally designed for combat search and rescue (CSAR) missions, the HH-60Ws assigned to the 5th Helicopter Squadron will be in a specialized configuration to take on the tasks of ferrying VIPs around the nation’s capital and supporting continuity of government plans. Questions have been raised about using Jolly Green IIs in these roles, and how this may impact the ability of the overall fleet of these helicopters to meet CSAR demands.

The Air Force held a ceremony at Andrews yesterday to mark the formal activation of the 5th Helicopter Squadron, also sometimes abbreviated as 5 HS. The 1st Helicopter Squadron (1 HS), with its UH-1Ns, will continue to operate throughout the transition to the HH-60W, which is expected to be completed in 2030, to avoid any gaps in capacity to meet critical operational requirements. A total of 26 Jolly Green IIs are set to be based at the facility, which is situated just outside Washington, D.C., a one-for-one replacement for the Twin Hueys that are there now. The arrival of the new helicopters will also lead to a small increase in total personnel, 60 in total, at Andrews.

The Air Force originally planned to supplant all of its UH-1Ns worldwide with new MH-139 Grey Wolf helicopters, which is a more direct replacement in terms of size and capability. The service is still acquiring MH-139s to supplant UH-1Ns elsewhere, including ones assigned to Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) units that help provide security around Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos. We will come back to this later on.

“The HH-60W’s increased speed, range and carrying capacity will better deliver safe operations for U.S. senior leaders, service members, and the communities around the region,” the Air Force said in a press release regarding the 5th Helicopter Squadron’s activation.

The Jolly Green II also has in-flight refueling capability, something that is not found on the UH-1N or MH-139, and could be very valuable for missions around Washington, D.C. The HH-60Ws heading to Andrews are set to receive additional modifications, including to the main cabin seating arrangement, communications suite, and defensive capabilities, as you can read more about here.

“In the next few years, the 5 HS will train aircrew and maintainers, establish operational and maintenance processes, and receive new aircraft as it prepares to execute the national security mission within the National Capital Region,” the release yesterday added.

National Capital Region (NCR) refers to a larger area that surrounds Washington, D.C., proper. Air Force operations in and around the NCR are primarily managed through a unit called the Air Force District of Washington (AFDW).

The HH-60Ws will be taking over an AFDW mission set from the UH-1Ns that currently includes daily airlift sorties transporting U.S. and foreign VIPs around the nation’s capital. The helicopters will also be in position to swing into action as part of continuity of government plans. In such a scenario, the Jolly Green IIs would be tasked to help rush senior officials and lawmakers to safety to ensure the continued functioning of federal authorities following an attack or a similarly serious contingency. 1st Helicopter Squadron’s role in responding to the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on 9/11 was highlighted during the activation ceremony at Andrews yesterday.

The NCR presents particular challenges for crisis response missions and routine day-to-day flight operations. The airspace around Washington, D.C., is most densely defended and heavily monitored anywhere in the United States, and packed full of military and civilian air traffic every day. Where and when military helicopters can operate over the nation’s capital has been a hot topic of debate since a fatal mid-air collision involving an Army UH-60 Black Hawk and a PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet in January 2025. The Black Hawk was conducting a continuity of government training flight at the time. This has been more recently highlighted by an incident involving a Marine One helicopter carrying President Donald Trump earlier this month. A subsequent Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigation has highlighted communication issues and factors tied to the construction of a new helipad at the White House.

It is also worth noting here that Marine Helicopter Squadron One (HMX-1), the primary unit responsible for the Marine One presidential helicopter mission, would play a role in any continuity of government scenario in the NCR. Helicopters from the U.S. Park Police, as well as ones belonging to other law enforcement and civilian agencies, would be utilized, too.

As mentioned, there are significant questions about the impacts of basing HH-60Ws at Andrews will have on the rest of the Air Force’s Jolly Green II fleet. This is something TWZ highlighted when the Air Force confirmed it was moving ahead with the AFDW HH-60W plan with the release of its 2027 Fiscal Year budget request earlier this year.

A particular issue is the Air Force’s decision years ago to scale back total purchases of HH-60Ws, from 113 helicopters down to 91. If the service does not order more Jolly Green IIs in the coming years, this will mean that roughly a third of the entire fleet will be assigned to the AFDW mission.

The Air Force previously confirmed the plan will involve taking HH-60Ws out of “back up inventory.” In the past, the service has defended this decision as being “more cost effective” than a move to “procure additional MH-139A aircraft” to meet AFDW requirements. Whether or not there were other specific operational considerations that factored into the decision to use Jolly Green IIs to meet these needs instead is unknown. The acquisition plan for the Grey Wolf has also been significantly truncated, with the Air Force now planning to buy just 56 of these helicopters instead of 80.

“The MH-139A Grey Wolf was competitively selected to replace the UH-1N for intercontinental ballistic missile security and National Capital Region missions, including continuity of government and transport of United States government officials and security forces,” members of the House Armed Services Committee wrote in a report accompanying a draft of the annual policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for the 2027 Fiscal Year, back in May. “The committee remains concerned regarding the justification for transitioning these missions to an alternate rotary-wing platform and seeks additional details on cost and operational implications.”

At that time, the House Armed Services Committee explicitly directed “the Secretary of the Air Force to submit a report to the congressional defense committees not later than December 1, 2026, assessing operational, cost, infrastructure, and readiness impacts of assigning any non-MH-139A rotary-wing aircraft to continuity of government and transport of United States government officials and security forces in the National Capital Region.” The lawmakers stressed that the report had to include “a comparison of procurement cost, cost per flight hour, infrastructure and aircraft modification requirements, and training and manpower impacts” and an assessment of the cost, schedule, and operational disruption associated with required upgrades to Joint Base Andrews facilities for each aircraft type.”

Separate questions have been raised in recent years about the utility of traditional CSAR helicopters in future operations, especially in the context of a high-end fight, such as one between the United States and China in the Pacific. Air Force officials openly talked about exploring alternatives for rescuing aircrew downed deep inside contested environments, but details about those plans remained limited.

At the same time, demand for traditional CSAR capabilities has certainly not gone away entirely. This was underscored by the operation to retrieve the crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle that went down inside Iran in April. HH-60Ws were part of the larger force package sent into Iranian airspace to help recover those aviators.

Wild footage from a USAF C-130 fueling two helicopters over Iran shared by telegram channels. The cars & the dialect are Iranian and from southwest. pic.twitter.com/K9cufOOY26

— Ramin Khanizadeh (@RKhanizadeh) April 3, 2026

Footage of Iranian police firing small arms at a pair of USAF HH-60Ws searching for the downed F-15E crew earlier today. pic.twitter.com/9SwhyhY1Aw

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 3, 2026

In the meantime, the Air Force’s UH-1Ns, a type the service first began operating in the early 1970s. are only getting older and harder to sustain, too. Three of the UH-1Ns currently assigned to 1st Helicopter Squadron saw combat during the Vietnam War. Just last week, one of the unit’s Twin Hueys made a precautionary landing in an open field in Maryland “after experiencing unusual mechanical noise” while on a training flight. This is hardly the first time such an incident has occurred.

There is a possibility that Congress could more directly intervene in the Air Force’s move to start flying HH-60Ws around Washington, D.C. With the expectation that UH-1Ns will remain in service at Andrews for another four years, there is time for the service’s own plans to evolve further.

With the activation of 5th Helicopter Squadron, the Air Force has now taken an important step toward an all-new helicopter force in the nation’s capital.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post USAF Stands Up Unit To Fly HH-60W Helicopters In Doomsday Evacuation Role In Nation’s Capital appeared first on TWZ.

NASA is starting to explore options to fill the gaps that will be left by the eventual retirement of its iconic T-38 Talons. Since the 1960s, NASA has been using the jets to support astronaut training and as chase planes. However, the Talons are aging, supportability is already a problem, and challenges to sustain them further are expected to grow as the U.S. Air Force replaces its T-38 fleet with new T-7A Red Hawks.

The Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, put out a contracting notice today seeking information about potential T-38 successors. NASA currently has 25 Talons in its inventory, according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) online database.

“NASA JSC is conducting market research to obtain industry information regarding availability, capability, schedule, sustainment models, and cost efficacy for modern high-performance jet aircraft that could be used in evaluation and an evaluation program for supporting NASA’s astronaut SFRT [Spaceflight Readiness Training] requirements,” the notice explains. “NASA has operated the T-38N fleet in support of astronaut SFRT for several decades. With the U.S. Air Force planning to retire the T‑38 fleet in the 2030-2035 timeframe, NASA is evaluating options to transition to a more modern high-performance aircraft.”

The T-38N variant is specific to NASA and distinct from the T-38A/B/C variants the Air Force currently operates. The U.S. Naval Test Pilot School also has a handful of T-38Cs. Both the N and C variants are based on the original T-38A, which first entered Air Force service in 1961. The Air Force bailed the first Talons to NASA three years later.

The N models have received various upgrades over the years, including the integration of new modern ‘glass cockpits’ with digital displays starting in the 1990s. As of 2011, compared to contemporary C variants, “the T-38N aircraft includes differences in communications and navigation, such as the addition of weather radar, a data link weather system, the terrain avoidance and warning system, the terminal collision avoidance system, GPS with localizer performance and vertical guidance approach capability, and redesigned electrical, inlet, ejector nozzle, and flight management systems,” according to a report from the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Now, “NASA is seeking information on existing, production, or near-production high-performance jet aircraft capable of supporting SFRT,” per today’s contracting notice from the JSC. “NASA is not restricting industry responses to a specific performance class or aircraft design heritage.”

The notice does provide the following list of desired characteristics:

• “High reliability with established maintenance documentation”
• “Self-starting engine capability”
• “Performance comparable to a modern jet trainer/light fighter aircraft”
• “Capability to support dynamic maneuvering, formation flying, and cross-country navigation”
• “Dual-seat, dual-control configuration (tandem or side-by-side)”
• “Modern avionics compatible with instrument flight operations”
• “Aircraft capable of being single-pilot qualified from either seat is highly desired”

“Prior to any fleet transition, NASA seeks to conduct a limited-scope evaluation program using a small number of modern aircraft,” the notice adds. “This evaluation program is not a full fleet buy or replacement. It is intended to operate a small number of aircraft within JSC’s existing operational framework to assess compatibility, logistics, cost efficacy, and training impact.”

Furthermore, “NASA anticipates evaluating a small number of aircraft over a multi-year period,” it continues. “NASA requests information on potential procurement options such as lease, lease-to-own, barter, or other arrangements due to limited upfront procurement funding.”

NASA is looking to be solely responsible for flight operations of the jets, but is expecting contractors to handle maintenance, whether the aircraft are government-owned or not.

The contracting notice does also say that “NASA is open to operating the aircraft under reasonable flight hour limits, maneuver restrictions, or operational envelopes consistent with contractor recommendations.”

Just what kind of limits and restrictions NASA might be willing to accept is unclear. The entire reason for operating the T-38s now is to offer a high-performance platform with a good degree of maneuverability to support the SRFT requirements. These are attributes that are also valuable when flying as a chase plane and otherwise supporting flight research and test activities.

NASA certainly seems to be willing to consider a wide range of potential operations, both in terms of aircraft and operating schemes. When Boeing won the Air Force’s T-X competition to replace the T-38 with what became the T-7A, TWZ noted the possibility that other Talon operators, including NASA, could follow suit.

There are a wide variety of other jet trainers available on the open market. This includes Korea Aerospace Industries’ (KAI) T-50, a design capable of supersonic flight that has been offered on the U.S. market before through a partnership with Lockheed Martin. A version of the T-50 was one of the losing entrants in the Air Force’s T-X competition.

There are several private companies that operate relevant jet trainer types to provide flight training and ‘red air’ aggressor services, too. NASA’s current administrator, Jared Isaacman, founded one of those companies, Draken International, making him once the owner of the world’s largest private air force. He has also personally bought various demilitarized fighters and jet trainers over the years. During this year’s July 4th celebrations in Washington, D.C., he somewhat controversially flew over the nation’s capital in one of the F-5 Tiger II jets that he owns.

With expectations that funding for new jet trainers will be limited, at least initially, NASA could well seek to enter into some kind of new arrangement with the Air Force (or another branch of the U.S. military) just like it did in the 1960s. It’s also worth noting here that the T-7A program continues to suffer significant delays due to technical issues and other factors. This has led the Air Force to repeatedly push back its own T-38 replacement timeline. The service’s original goal was to reach initial operational capability with the Red Hawk in October of last year, but it is now targeting August 2027 to achieve that milestone. A full-rate production decision is now not expected to come until January 2029. So, the prospect of NASA actually getting T-7s anytime before the USAF gets all the jets it badly needs is questionable.

There are also no indications that NASA’s SFRT requirements will slow in the meantime, either. If anything, these training demands could grow as work continues toward the resumption of crewed missions to the Moon under the Artemis program. The Artemis IV mission, currently scheduled for 2028, is set to be the first time astronauts have set foot on the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972.

From the wording of today’s contracting notice from JSC, NASA is still some years away from making a final decision on what will come after the T-38N, but the hunt is now on.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

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The U.S. Army is calling for new potential options for replacing the venerable Stinger short-range heat-seeking surface-to-air missile. The service has already been funding work on two competing designs from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon under its Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor (NGSRI) program since 2023. The Army is currently aiming to buy 11,000 NGSRI missiles, as well as 2,200 new man-portable launchers, starting in Fiscal Year 2028.

The Army put out a contracting notice regarding what it is calling the NGSRI Alternate Interceptor Demonstration (AID) yesterday. The service is looking to hold an industry day event regarding its plans for the AID at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama next month.

“The Army is seeking to identify additional potential sources to fulfill the NGSRI requirements,” the notice explains. “The Army plans to conduct a demonstration in the Spring 2027 timeframe. A successful demonstration by an offeror may lead to an award for missile procurement.”

“The current NGSRI program was initiated to meet the Department of the Army requirement for Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) surface to air missile systems to replace the legacy FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air defense system,” the notice adds. “The NGSRI is a high performance, soldier portable, fire and forget, surface to air missile system capable of defeating rotary wing, fixed wing, and Group 2/3 Unmanned Aircraft System threats.”

In U.S. military parlance, Group 2 covers drones with gross weights between 21 and 55 pounds, that can fly up to altitudes of 3,500 feet, and hit top speeds of up to 250 knots. Group 3, the next tier up, is a far broader category that encompasses uncrewed aerial systems weighing anywhere between 55 and 1,320 pounds, with operational ceilings between 3,500 and 18,000 feet, and with top speeds between 100 and 250 knots.

The Iranian-designed Shahed-136 one-way-attack drone is, by far, the best-known example of a Group 3 design, and one that encapsulates the importance of addressing threats in that particular category. Development of kamikaze drones in the Group 2 tier has also been surging globally, including in the United States. Both categories do also include drones configured for surveillance and reconnaissance and other missions.

It is also worth noting here that the Stinger has received upgrades in recent years to improve its effectiveness against drones. You can read more about that missile’s evolution since it was first introduced in the 1970s here.

“The NGSRI missile is backwards compatible with the legacy Stinger missile platforms such as SGT STOUT and Marine Corps Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS),” yesterday’s contracting notice also stresses. This has been a key requirement since the program started.

Sgt. Stout is the name given to an air defense system in Army service today that is based on the 8×8 Stryker light armored vehicle. The Sgt. Stout has a turret that can be fitted with up to two four-round launchers for Stingers. Those launchers can also be swapped out for ones that can be loaded with a pair of millimeter-wave radar-guided AGM-114L Hellfire missiles. The turret also has a 30mm XM914 automatic cannon, which can fire proximity-fuzed airbursting rounds against drones and other aerial threats, and a 7.62x51mm M240B machine gun.

The four-round Stinger launchers used on the Sgt. Stout are the same ones found on the older Humvee-based Avenger air defense systems, which are in increasingly limited use in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Army Avengers were recently in the news after images emerged showing them protecting President Donald Trump at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey.

In its current form, the Marine Corps’ MADIS consists of two 4×4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) in different configurations. One is armed with Stinger missiles, as well as an XM914 cannon and M240 machine gun, all mounted on a single remote weapon station. The other has the same type of remote weapon station, but without Stingers, and also has added electronic warfare, electronic support measures, and sensor capabilities.

Stinger is still perhaps best known in its shoulder-fired form, also known as the Man-Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) configuration, as seen in pictures earlier in this piece. The Army has already been pursuing new individual launchers, or Control Launch Assemblies (CLA), for use with existing Stingers, which could also be used with future NGSRI missiles. Lockheed Martin has publicly put forward a new CLA design as part of its NGSRI proposal, which is called QuadStar, as seen in the video below.

Whether or not the newly announced AID plans reflect any major issues with the existing NGSRI competition is unknown. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have announced the successful passage of major milestones in work on their respective designs at separate points this year. Raytheon is also the current prime contractor for the Stinger.

Stinger is also in widespread service globally. Any replacement the U.S. military might adopt, especially one that is backwards compatible with existing launchers, could easily translate to interest from foreign armed forces. The ongoing war in Ukraine and other conflicts in recent years have contributed to a new surge in demand for MANPADS worldwide, including to help counter growing drone threats.

The U.S. military has been putting new emphasis on diversifying supplier bases and greater government control of intellectual property rights, especially for munitions, in recent years. This is a general focus area that has grown even more since President Trump’s second term began last year. Officials have been open about their desire to reduce reliance on traditional prime contractors and bring in more smaller and non-traditional firms, even for very high-profile weapon system programs. These efforts reflect a particular push to avoid so-called ‘vendor lock’ and promote greater competition, which can also offer benefits when it comes to cost and scaling production.

When it comes to NGSRI, as mentioned, the Army is looking to buy thousands of these missiles, as well as individual launchers, in the coming years. A new demonstration next year would also not preclude the service from ultimately ordering NGSRIs from either Lockheed Martin or Raytheon.

With plans to start production of the selected NGSRI design in Fiscal Year 2028, which starts on October 1 of next year, the Army will need to make a decision about how to proceed with NGSRI relatively soon.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

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