America’s adoption of long-range one-way attack munitions like the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) is evolving quickly. Training on how to fold these relatively low-cost, but potentially highly destructive systems into a joint force playbook for targeting adversaries on land and at sea, from the Pacific to Europe, and anywhere in between, continues.

How exactly LUCAS drones, and other types to come, will be used in future fights globally was highlighted during a panel at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium earlier this week, at which TWZ was in attendance. The discussion was centered on how Army training is changing to meet the extreme combat demands of the future.

The U.S. military first announced it had begun fielding LUCAS, which was reverse-engineered from the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, in December 2025. This came just months after TWZ laid out a detailed case for why the U.S. military should start acquiring Shahed-136 clones in large volumes. LUCAS made its official combat debut in the opening phases of major combat operations against Iran earlier this year. The pusher-propeller, combustion-engine-powered kamikaze drones, which are employed from static launchers that can be positioned on the ground or installed on ships, and with the help of a small rocket booster, were subsequently praised as “indispensable” by America’s top commander in the Middle East.

With all that in mind, “long-range strike drones like LUCAS, how is that fitting into your planning and training?” our Howard Altman asked the panelists at AUSA.

“We’ve taken our Bayonet Academy, as we call it, a training area at JBLM [Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State], and have started incorporating the employment of long-range one-way attack. Like, how do I maintain it? How do I employ it? How does that then get orchestrated in order to achieve that effect?” Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington, head of the 7th Infantry Division, responded. “So we see that playing a key role in order to be able to achieve that effect at mass, … [and] in an affordable manner, while also being able potentially to preserve something that’s more exquisite for something that requires an exquisite munition.”

Earlier this year, the Army brought the 7th Infantry and the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force together under the umbrella of what it now calls the Multi-Domain Command-Pacific (MDC-PAC). Maj. Gen. Harrington is also now the commander of MDC-PAC, and has talked previously about how he sees uncrewed capabilities as critical to overwhelming adversaries in future conflicts. The service’s MDTFs, of which there are now four, have been at the leading edge of fielding new long-range strike and other advanced capabilities.

In his response to Altman’s question, Harrington elaborated more on how he sees long-range one-way attack munitions like LUCAS factoring specifically into future fights in the Pacific, such as one against China. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has already established extensive anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) bubbles in the Western Pacific and is continuing to expand on that strategy.

“So as we start modeling out what it looks like to be able to penetrate a portion of the anti-access/area denial network in support of the joint task force in the PACOM [U.S. Pacific Command] area of operations, we started looking at, well, how do I bend – how do I achieve mass at a cost curve?” the 7th Infantry and MDC-PAC commander explained. “What effect am I really trying to achieve on a system in order to provide that window of opportunity for that joint force commander?”

“So maybe I don’t necessarily need to sink a ship, but if I take out certain systems on that vessel, well then it creates this temporal window opportunity,” he continued. “Then that joint force commander can surge in that carrier strike group or bomber task force.”

What the general is describing here is typically referred to as a mission kill. For years now, TWZ has repeatedly highlighted how long-range one-way attack drones and loitering munitions could be used in exactly this way against even larger warships. Damaging or destroying radars, communications antennas, and other subsystems could severely degrade a ship’s combat effectiveness and increase its vulnerability to follow-on attacks. The time and effort required for repairs could keep it sidelined for a protracted period of time.

“So when we started looking at that, we saw great value. That maybe I don’t have to use specifically or unmask an exquisite system to achieve that effect,” Harrington added. “If I can achieve [the] effect of mass utilizing lower cost systems, hey, maybe that will get me there. So we modeled that, and what we saw was, particularly with our unmanned surface vessels [USV], long-range one-way attack, long-range launch effects, the ability to synchronize and mass that could potentially get us to achieve that effect.”

As with long-range one-way attack drones, the adoption of kamikaze USVs by the U.S. military is evolving rapidly. America’s first use of this capability in real combat also came against Iran in July.

Yesterday, using multiple one-way attack surface drones, CENTCOM forces successfully struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility in Iran. Three Corsair unmanned surface vessels hit the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, marking the first time American forces have employed sea… pic.twitter.com/bOM2kmgRxz

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) July 13, 2026

The term “launch effects” that Harrington used here is a catch-all term the U.S. military now routinely applies to a diverse array of uncrewed aerial systems designed to be launched from other platforms in the air, on the ground, and/or at sea. This includes loitering munitions, but also designs configured for surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, signal relay, and other tasks. The lines separating long-range one-way attack drones, launched effects, and traditional cruise missiles and decoys are in many cases now very blurry.

None of this is limited to the Pacific region or the Middle East, either.

“So, in terms of launch effects, I think you mentioned LUCAS. Covenant’s out there. There’s other systems that are out there,” Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter, head of Multi-Domain Command-Europe (MDC-E), another one of the panelists, also said in direct response to Howard Altman’s question. “In Europe, we like that, more than accepting risk in an area, maybe we’re disintegrating an anti-access/area denial bubble in the center, and then way up north, we’re going to go ahead and accept some risk there. We like to use those systems to create counter-fire parity, long-range fires parity with an adversary.”

Similar to the establishment of MDC-PAC, MDC-E was formed last year by blending together the 56th Artillery Command and the 2nd MDTF, both of which are forward-deployed in Germany.

The “Covenant” mentioned by Carpenter is a U.S.-Israeli company that has been developing a long-range strike weapon system called Anthem. It was just confirmed in September that the U.S. Army has been actively engaged in testing of Anthem. This includes a live-fire demonstration in Morocco earlier this year. You can read more about Anthem and the current plans for it here.

“The reason we like those types of systems is because they’re EMI [electromagnetic interference] resilient, they’re longer range, and they’re higher yield, so they can go ahead and destroy like SS-26 systems, SS-21 systems,” the MDC-E commander added.

SS-26 Stone and SS-21 Scarab are the NATO reporting names for Russia’s Iskander-M and the older Soviet-designed OTR-21 Tochka short-range ballistic missiles, respectively. They are both fired from road-mobile launchers. Russia and Ukraine have employed Tochka in the course of their ongoing conflict, though their role on both sides has steadily diminished amid shrinking inventories. Tochka is also increasingly limited in service elsewhere globally. Iskander-M is a much more capable design that has factored heavily into U.S. military planning in Europe for years now. The U.S. military has previously acknowledged that war in Ukraine has led to improvements to that missile that make it even more dangerous and difficult to intercept.

Long-range one-way attack munitions like LUCAS are well suited to striking surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missile launchers, along with other high-value and time-sensitive targets, as TWZ highlights regularly. It’s also worth noting that Iran’s Shahed-136, specifically, traces its roots back to pioneering Israeli developments in munitions of this kind, where the focus initially was explicitly on finding new avenues to neutralize hostile air defenses. Iran has shown Shahed-136s and other related designs being employed in exactly this way in large-scale exercises in the past, as seen in the video below.

More recently, Iranian forces demonstrated just how effective these capabilities could be in a real-world context in retaliatory attacks on prized air defense radars on the opposite side of the Persian Gulf after the United States and Israel launched their open waves of strikes back in February. TWZ previously explored the far-reaching ramifications of this in a detailed feature that you can find here.

Overall, as we’ve previously written:

“When it comes to this class of drone, speed and advanced guidance concepts do not define its utility. Range and cost do. Survivability comes in numbers, and due to their smaller size, use of composite materials, and small internal combustion engine, as well as their slow speed. These attributes, along with their low-altitude flight profile, mean they possess a reduced signature and general level of detectability that can be a challenge for traditionally configured ground-based radars. Despite their smaller signature, the fact that they are still somewhat vulnerable to interception is actually a positive, but we will get to that in a moment.”

“Above all else, the Shahed-136 and other long-range one-way attack drones exist to put a relevantly-sized warhead on a target far from their launch position at the lowest possible cost. It was previously estimated that the Russian Shahed-136 variant costs around $50,000 per copy, with some estimates being far lower. This cost has also likely declined significantly since Russia has mastered the design and drastically ramped up serial production. By comparison, traditional cruise missiles with similar range have costs in the millions of dollars per round, so the price differential is very dramatic. The Shaheds are also just far easier to build and can be produced in much less time than a typical cruise missile.”

The ‘mass’ afforded by LUCAS and other long-range kamikaze drones also imposes problematic cost calculations for opponents when it comes to the air defense equation, and offers a way to rapidly drain an opponent’s stocks of vital interceptors. These are realities the U.S. military is currently grappling with after expending thousands of anti-air interceptors in conflict with Iran and in other crises in the Middle East in recent years, as well as supporting allies and partners, such as Ukraine.

LUCAS, specifically, is already in line to become even more capable through the introduction of a swarming capability, made possible by the Hivemind autonomy software package from Shield AI. As we’ve explained before:

“Using the software, multiple LUCAS drones will be able to share tasks and maneuver cooperatively, making saturation attacks even more effective. As well as the drones dynamically rerouting, avoiding air defenses, and otherwise adapting to changing battlefield conditions, an AI pilot makes it easier for missions to continue despite hostile jamming or loss of datalink connectivity. Indeed, using AI, drone swarms can maintain near-perfect combat efficiency even if it loses members. Drones can be configured with all different payloads, with the swarm’s makeup tailored to each mission, and the AI system can maximize their collective effectiveness at all times.”

The U.S. Army still has many questions to answer about how it will field LUCAS and other long-range one-way-attack drones on a more widespread basis, as well as train personnel to employ them. As evidenced by the establishment of the MDTFs, and now the MDC-PAC and MDC-E formations, the underlying force structure that will go along with all of this is still evolving, as well.

The remarks from Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington and Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter at AUSA this week show senior Army leaders are working hard now to lay the groundwork to answer these questions. A clear vision for how LUCAS and similar weapons will be employed in future fights against land-based and maritime threats is taking shape already.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post The Army’s Plan For Employing LUCAS Kamikaze Drones Against Its Adversaries appeared first on TWZ.

On September 1, the small town of Almazán, in Spain’s Soria province, found itself robbed of a large portion of its heritage. A section of the palace of the Hurtado de Mendoza family collapsed. Twenty days later a further section fell into ruin, prompting an emergency intervention. The disintegration of part of the façade, the gallery and the roof has affected the interior of the 15th-century Gothic building in which the Catholic Monarchs once temporarily took up residence. It is not the only palace that has crumbled. Its decline flags up an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in Spain.

Seguir leyendo

© Wifredo García Álvaro (EFE)

O Porto já tem tendas e Lisboa pode seguir-lhe os passos, um movimento inspirado na Espanha. Mas quem são as pessoas e organizações por trás destas manifestações? E o que querem realmente mudar?

Cláudio Pereira, conhecido artisticamente como Kelad, vai lançar hoje às 18h o seu novo single “Menina de Tavira”, inspirado numa “fase muito feliz” da sua vida no Algarve.

Apesar de ser natural de Castro Daire, no distrito de Viseu, em 2024 viveu e trabalhou em Tavira durante quase seis meses. Mesmo longe de casa, diz ter sido uma experiência que o marcou “profundamente” e aponta como causas a beleza da cidade, que considera uma das mais bonitas de Portugal, as pessoas que conheceu e os momentos que viveu. De tal forma que decidiu dar vida a uma canção que “eternizasse” essa fase feliz da sua vida.

Ao contrário dos seus temas anteriores – “mais ligados à dor e ao fim de relações” -, “Menina de Tavira” é uma canção “assumidamente feliz, embora marcada pela saudade”.

A homenagem a Tavira prolonga-se também no videoclipe, mostrando algumas das suas ruas, casas tradicionais, azulejos e a emblemática ponte romana, num formato de curta-metragem romântica, “inspirada no cinema e em histórias de amor em que duas pessoas se cruzam repetidamente até finalmente se encontrarem”.

Musicalmente, o tema parte da inspiração de “Garota de Ipanema”, de Tom Jobim e Vinicius de Moraes, mas procura uma identidade nacional cruzando bossa nova, pop, R&B e música tradicional, com a presença da guitarra portuguesa. 

A música foi gravada nos Satori Studios, em Viseu, e contou com Bernardo Vicente na guitarra clássica, Pedro Bento no baixo e nas guitarras clássica e elétrica, Francisco Henriques na guitarra portuguesa e, na bateria, Daniel Tejo e Pedro Bento. A mistura e a masterização ficaram a cargo de Pedro Bento.

A canção vai estrear às 18h de hoje e pode ser ouvida (e vista) aqui.

Para lá do motivo próximo, a habitação, e do debate sobre o modo de actuação das polícias, há que perceber o que estas manifestações revelam sobre os movimentos e as pessoas que procuram organizá-las.

Tonight's Forecast:

Freeze warnings are active for the Pikes Peak Region and eastern adjacent plains from midnight until 9 a.m. on Friday. The San Luis Valley will see freeze warnings again too. For Pueblo and the southeastern corner of the state, frost advisories are active from 2 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Friday. That means overnight lows in the 30s and expected along I-25 and east with some in the mountains see teens and 20s. Winds will calm down for a bit, ahead of heavier gusts in the early morning hours of Friday.

Colorado Springs forecast: Low: 31; High: 56;

Our overnight low will be at 31-degrees for Thursday night with freeze advisories active. Friday will be much cooler than seasonal averages in the 50s with a light afternoon breeze. The weekend will feel much nicer outside.

Pueblo forecast: Low: 34; High: 57;

Frost advisories are active for Pueblo on Thursday evening with colder than seasonal average lows in the forecast. Friday will be much cooler than averages also. Then, by the weekend days seasonal highs return with dry time and sunshine.

Canon City forecast: Low: 34; High: 59;

Another cold evening is ahead for Canon City with 30s in the forecast. Winds calm down overnight too. Friday will be a dash more mild, but still cooler than averages. The weekend will feel much nicer outside.

Woodland Park forecast: Low: 25; High: 50;

A very cold overnight expected for mid-October with lows in the 20s. Friday will be well below averages with less wind. The weekend will bring back sunshine and dry time with warmer temperatures too. Not much change is expected as the work week starts next week too.

Extended outlook forecast:

The weekend will finally feel much more season in the 60s and 70s for most across southern Colorado. There will still be a bit of an afternoon breeze especially for the plains. Early next week won't change much in terms of our forecast though. By the middle of the week there could be some changes. We will continue to track that possibility.

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Curious about the First Alert 5 Weather Storm Impact Scale? Check out our cheatsheet explainer.

Watch KOAA News5 on your time, anytime with our free streaming app available for your Roku, FireTV, AppleTV and Android TV. Just search KOAA News5, download and start watching.

Em Oslo, o Comité Nobel escolheu uma criatura da mesma tribo, na qual revê a sua própria virtude. Pillay recebeu um prémio e o Comité criou a ocasião de se admirar a si próprio.

A lição? A economia não vive apenas de números. Vive de comportamentos, confiança e expectativas. Medo, esperança e afins, são economia comportamental.

Airbus recently put the demonstrator for its MQ-72C drone helicopter through the paces for the U.S. Army. The MQ-72C has been in development for several years now for a U.S. Marine Corps competition seeking a new uncrewed cargo-carrying Aerial Logistics Connector (ALC). The Marines see uncrewed logistics ‘connectors’ as key to future expeditionary and distributed operations, and a similar Army requirement could be on the horizon, especially to support long-range air assaults.

Jaysen Yochim, Senior Director for the ALC program at Airbus, talked about the demonstration for the Army with our Howard Altman at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention on Monday. Airbus is currently teamed with L3Harris Technologies, Shield AI, and Parry Labs on development of this drone helicopter for the Marines, as you can learn more about here.

The current iteration of the MQ-72C is based on the crewed UH-72B Lakota, which is in turn a variant of Airbus’ H145 twin-engine light helicopter. The Army operates crewed UH-72s today, but only in non-combat roles, including counter-drug and border patrol missions, and almost exclusively within the borders of the United States.

The MQ-72C demonstration for the Army, which Airbus self-funded, took place last week at Huntsville Executive Airport just outside of Huntsville, Alabama. The service has a major presence in the Huntsville area, which is focused heavily on supporting aviation and missile developments. As of April of this year, Airbus and its partners had already conducted four rounds of autonomous flight testing of the initial demonstrator version of this design, which is not in a fully uncrewed configuration.

“We did a demonstration for the Army down in Huntsville, really to show all the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop so far on the Marine Corps-funded program,” Yochim said. “We had a total of five demonstration flights that we did down there, showing everything from the autonomous capability of the aircraft in a hover.”

This included “complex hovering patterns, both step turns and fly-through turns, similar to what you’d see on an airfield, to just show how it can be integrated onto an airfield inside of the existing routing structure and everything that exists on an airfield,” he continued. “We did multiple traffic patterns to demonstrate just a normal traffic pattern, like a normal day would be, but also traffic patterns or a flight with a no-fly zone popping up in the middle of the flight.”

The video below shows previous flight testing of the MQ-72C demonstrator.

In that latter instance, the MQ-72C had to “autonomously make decisions” about how it was “going to route itself around the no-fly zones” once they popped up, he added. The human operator did provide the initial flight plan. There was also a pilot on board during the autonomous flight demonstrations, but only as an added safety margin, and they “never had to take control of the aircraft once,” according to Yochim.

Though the demonstrator now has provisions for a pilot, the intention is for the MQ-72C to eventually operate in a completely uncrewed mode. The current version of the design has two LIDAR sensors, facing front and back, as well as an electro-optical camera at the nose end, to help with navigation and otherwise provide situational awareness while operating in the uncrewed mode.

Those sensors feed “imagery into the flight computer with HiveMind that’s interpreting that through its perception systems to make decisions on the go,” Yochim explained. HiveMind is an autonomy software package from Shield AI, which is in use on a growing number of other uncrewed platforms, as you can read more about here.

Yochim also talked about work that has already been done to start laying the groundwork for controlling the MQ-72C in the fully uncrewed mode. Parry Labs has been leading ground control station work.

“Over the summer is really where now the aircraft, rather than having a pilot inside the aircraft, or sorry, an autonomous operator inside the aircraft, using a gaming computer to tell the aircraft what to do, now the aircraft is receiving commands from a ground control station,” he told us. “That is that human in the loop, sending commands to the aircraft over Starlink, so that it has beyond line-of-sight. We’ve had flights that have been autonomously commanded from up to 70 miles away. All of that is stuff that’s happened in the last year. We also have where the aircraft can be commanded from both a ground control station like this and also with the Samsung tablet.”

SpaceX’s Starlink space-based network and its more secure, government-focused cousin, Starshield, are in increasingly widespread use across the U.S. military for communications and other purposes. At present, Starlink also dominates the commercial market for these services globally. Starlink and Starshield offer highly persistent and robust connectivity that is ideal for uncrewed aircraft command and control operations.

The current MQ-72C demonstrator also lacks certain features that are expected to be found on the final configuration. Plans for a set of clamshell doors at the nose notably still have yet to be realized. The UH-72 design already features clamshell doors at the rear of the fuselage, as seen below. The end goal is for the uncrewed version to have an open pass-through main cabin, offering major advantages for loading and unloading cargo, and doing so rapidly.

The nose door arrangement has been “designed. It’s been 3D rendered. It’s gone through some testing on that end, but not flight testing,” Airbus’ Yochim told us. “The flight testing, wind tunnel testing, things like that, take time, and it’s just not been the priority to get there with getting the aircraft ready.”

Yochim said that Airbus is now looking toward the 2029-2030 timeframe for integrating the nose doors. This is tied, in part, to the Marine Corps’ ALC program, where delayed funding has shifted the schedule to the right. On that front, the Marine Corps is aiming for demonstration of this capability in an operationally relevant context next year. The Airbus-led team is also not the only one under contract for that program, with Near Earth Autonomy and Honeywell also working on a design based on the Leonardo AW139 helicopter. The expectation is that the Marines will eventually pick a single ALC design to actually acquire.

In the meantime, Airbus is clearly eyeing other opportunities, including with the U.S. Army. The company’s main arm in Europe is also now pitching a functionally identical U145 drone helicopter based on the current generation H145 design.

At @ILA_Berlin, we introduce the Airbus U145: an uncrewed, fully autonomous variant of the H145. Optimised for cargo with no cockpit, an integrated nose door, and full autonomy, its first flight is set for late 2026. https://t.co/MbodUxYxyI pic.twitter.com/2EnMXzog6c

— Airbus Helicopters (@AirbusHeli) June 8, 2026

Airbus did the “demonstration to just show the Army the capabilities that we’ve been developing with the Marine Corps,” Yochim told us. “So the Marine Corps has been funding the program up to now, and so the message we are giving the Army is this is how far your sister unit [sic; service] has been able to get us with the funding that we’ve had. It’s already product that’s out there. It’s already product that’s working.”

As mentioned, the Marines see ALC as part of a larger family of uncrewed logistics ‘connectors,’ in the air and on the surface, which will be critical to supporting expeditionary and distributed operations involving units spread across far-flung forward locations. The service sees this as particularly central to an island-hopping campaign scenario in the context of a larger potential high-end fight with China in the Pacific, where traditional logistics chains will be top targets. The conflict with Iran has only underscored how disruptive those threats can be.

The Army is facing many of the same kinds of future operational scenarios, especially when it comes to supporting future airmobile operations. The service is already expecting air assaults to take place over far greater distances in the future thanks to the introduction of the MV-75A tiltrotor. Those units will need to be supported once they arrive at their objectives, which could be heavily contested.

“We did several [air assaults] over the last few years directly from Fort Campbell to the Joint Readiness Training Center, which is 500 miles, give or take. The [Marine Corps’ MV-22] Osprey can do that very fast and in one leap,” Army Maj. Gen. David Gardner, head of the 101st Airborne Division, told our sister site Task & Purpose at AUSA. “Our current helicopters, you’ve got to make some fuel and re-arming stops along the way, and the distance isn’t there. But now that helped us think through as a division how we were going to command and control something that moved, expanded our battlefield, so to speak, twice as far, three times, four times as far, and twice as fast.”

The 101st is the Army’s premier air assault formation and is set to be the first to fly MV-75As operationally.

“We can put some things inside the helicopter, and we can put some things under a helicopter with a sling load. We’re not going to sling load something moving 250-ish knots for 500 miles. We’re not going to hang Humvees under that,” Gardner also told Task & Purpose. “We learned some things about how we need to get our equipment to the battlefield, how we need to get our sustainment to the battlefield at those distances, how we might need to rely on autonomous logistics delivery systems.”

It should be stressed that the market for semi-autonomous aerial logistics support is heating up, and that the MQ-72C is not the only option to meet such a requirement. As noted, there is another competitor in the running just for the Marines’ ALC effort, the AW139-based offering from Near Earth Autonomy and Honeywell.

Last year, Sikorsky, now a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, revealed that it was working on a fully uncrewed version of the Black Hawk helicopter that also features a clamshell nose. Sikorsky has also been working with Robinson Unmanned on a pilotless version of the smaller R66 helicopter that again features clamshell doors at the front of the fuselage. Bell, together with Near Earth Autonomy, is developing an uncrewed cargo-carrying version of its Model 505 Jet Ranger X, as well. The drone versions of the R66 and Jet Ranger X are aimed primarily at another Marine Corps ‘connector’ program called the Medium Aerial Resupply Vehicle-Expeditionary Logistics (MARV-EL).

As mentioned, the Army does already operate crewed UH-72s, but it also flies Black Hawks. The service is also expanding its use of contractor-operated R66s for pilot training.

The Army does not appear to have formalized any requirement for a cargo-carrying drone helicopter yet. At the same time, the comments from Maj. Gen. Gardner certainly suggest one may be emerging now.

There was at least enough interest within the Army already to accept Airbus’ offer of a demonstration of its MQ-72C last week.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post MQ-72C Cargo Helicopter Drone Capabilities Demonstrated For U.S. Army appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Army is pursuing a family of modular and scalable laser directed energy weapons that can be fitted to any vehicle in its inventory. The service sees this as key to expanding the operational use of lasers, particularly to provide an extra layer of defense against drone threats, and outside of dedicated units. The Army is already fielding high-energy lasers operationally on a limited basis, including along the border wth Mexico, but the technology has faced continued hurdles to more widespread use in recent years.

Army officials and industry representatives discussed what is currently called the Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) program during a panel discussion this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention, at which TWZ was in attendance. In September, AeroVironment received the first production contract under E-HEL to supply examples of its 30-kilowatt-class LOCUST X3 laser directed energy weapon system. The Army has already acquired earlier LOCUST variants, including vehicle-mounted and palletized types, through more experimental programs, and these are the systems now deployed along the southern border. The U.S. Navy has also at least tested a containerized version of LOCUST for shipboard use as part of its own larger laser ambitions.

“We’re focused on any vehicle in the motorpool. I want to try to integrate future capability of high-energy lasers into it,” Army Brig. Gen. Guy Yelverton, the Capability Program Executive for Defensive Fires with the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Office for Fires, said during the panel on Monday. “And, so, our E-HEL is on a sled. With that, I can look at integrating it onto multiple different vehicles.”

“And then, as I think about vehicle agnosticness, if I open up my aperture to MOS [military occupation speciality] agnostic, and ensure that it’s easy to train, easy to operate, I can not just focus on air and missile defense organizations,” he continued. “I can now look at any formation type to be able to put a high-energy laser capability into it for the counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] fight.”

“That gives me even more opportunities to share this capability across all Army formations, and give our senior leaders [the] maximum amount of thought process and input into where the system goes, who the soldier is that’s operating it, and I’ve given them quite a solution,” he added. “It’s a great dilemma to have of where do I put all this capability.”

In 2022, the Army reactivated the 4th Battalion, 60th Air Defense Artillery Regiment (4-60th ADA) at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, as part of plans to field new laser-armed Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) systems based on the 8×8 Stryker light armored vehicle. Reliability and other issues with DE M-SHORAD vehicles led the Army to shift focus, and 4-60th ADA has since assumed a more traditional air defense role. The problems with the DE M-SHORAD system are indicative of struggles that have dogged laser-directed energy weapon developments across the U.S. military, and that have led to several other programs being severely truncated or outright cancelled in recent years.

The Army does now have the aforementioned LOCUST systems, including versions mounted on 4×4 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV) and Infantry Squad Vehicles (ISV), as well as the palletized types. Those systems appear to be currently fielded on a more ad hoc level to units at forward locations.

LOCUST is well suited to the Army’s current vision for fielding E-HEL without being tied to specific vehicles or unit types. At the core of the system is a turret with the laser beam projector, as well as built-in electro-optical and infrared video cameras for target acquisition and tracking. Other sensors, such as small-form-factor high-frequency radars and passive radio frequency signal detection systems on host vehicles, as well as off-board radars and other capabilities positioned elsewhere, can be used to cue the turret.

With the 30-kilowatt power rating, the new X3 versions of LOCUST the Army is acquiring now are still at the lower end of the power spectrum for laser directed energy weapons. All versions of LOCUST to date are geared explicitly toward countering small drones.

It is possible that the Army could field other types of laser directed energy weapon systems through E-HEL in the future. The service, in cooperation with other branches of the U.S. military, is also pursuing designs with far higher power ratings through separate programs.

Just being able to field LOCUST X3 more broadly would still offer valuable additional layers of defense against drones across different types of Army units. More broadly speaking, the central benefit that laser directed energy weapons offer is the promise of functionally unlimited magazine depth, though this is dependent on there being sufficient power and cooling capacity. This, in turn, translates to a substantial reduction in the cost-per-intercept equation compared to traditional anti-air interceptors. All of this is especially advantageous for tackling drone threats, which do not have to be large or expensive to present real dangers.

By miniaturizing and ruggedizing lower-power systems like LOCUST, the Army could distribute these capabilities across a broad area, or deploy them in a more concentrated fashion, depending on the fight. Even a convoy with a number of the vehicles sprinkled in with them could help defend it from pop-up attacks

In this context, mobility and flexibility are also important boons. LOCUST systems mounted on light vehicles can be readily positioned and repositioned to respond to changes on the battlefield, as well as be brought to forward locations slung under helicopters. Palletized and containerized versions offer additional kinds of flexibility for providing point defense at sites on land, as well as installation on ships.

At the panel on Monday, Brig. Gen. Yelverton stressed that when it comes to laser weapons systems, in general, the technology is no longer a matter of “science fiction” but has become “science reality.” The U.S. military says laser systems positioned along the border with Mexico have downed real targets, though many questions remain about those deployments. Regardless, challenges do clearly remain.

“Lasers are real. We can do it. We can go out. We can shoot things,” Kirk Williams, Chief Engineer at the Army’s Directed Energy Project Office, another one of the panelists, said. “But what we got to do now is make these systems reliable enough so that the soldiers have the faith in them when they need them, and that’s really the main point that we’re trying to go after right now.”

“We’re getting to the point where the systems are reliable enough, but we still have to make them maintainable and repairable because this is an Army system,” he continued. “It’s going to be on a battlefield. Things are going to break. We can break things in very creative ways, right? So if it’s not reliable, or if it’s not maintainable, if it’s not repairable, that’s a problem.”

“We’re also looking to reduce size, weight, and power,” he added. “JLTV has a lot better payload capacity than ISV. So we really need to be able to get something smaller if we want to have the same effectiveness on an ISV. So that same modular architecture will allow us to go in, take some of those components, make trade-offs.”

The focus on modular and open systems architectures will also help when it comes to integrating new and improved functionality down the line. It will also feed into the larger goal of having E-HEL options not tied to a particular vehicle or other platform.

“By going after the modular architecture, that gives us the flexibility to not only go after increases in reliability, but also increases in performance,” Williams further explained. “It gives us the way to inject new technology into existing systems, and then hopefully it also gives us a way of getting better prices out of some of our vendors.”

In addition, “one of the things we learned is you can have a really cool integrated system, and then when that truck needs an oil change, well, then your laser weapon system is down for the count,” he added. “So, trying to make it so that you can just pull it off of any vehicle, put it on any other vehicle is really one of the things that we’re trying to go after.”

The Army is also very cognizant of the basic fact that a single laser can only engage one target at once. The beam from any laser weapon system also drops in power as it gets further from the source, just because of the need to propagate through the atmosphere. Weather and other environmental conditions like smoke and dust then also become a factor. This has driven demand for more power (and cooling capacity) to improve effectiveness, especially at range. Developments in adaptive optics can also help overcome these issues to a degree, but lasers currently remain very short-range weapons overall.

“That’s why it’s important to us to get enough energy on the target to kill it as quickly as possible and move on to the next threat. Speaking about the magazine, you know I have battery power on there, so depending upon which system, around 80 seconds, 120 seconds, whatever that is, you know that’s the magazine depth I have,” Brig. Gen. Yelverton said on Monday. “The quicker I get on the target, kill it, and off the target, I start rebuilding, regenerating that magazine depth.”

“It’s the targeting system. It’s the optics system that lets you focus on the target,” Williams also chimed in at this point on the panel discussion. “I mentioned trying to make the trackers better and take some of the onus off of the operator. If we can do better aim point control and keep the laser in the same spot, it gives you a better and a quicker kill.”

Earlier on, Williams had highlighted how artificial intelligence-assisted targeting capabilities could be a particularly important addition to laser directed energy weapons. Networking multiple systems together could help with sorting and assigning targets as efficiently as possible.

When it comes to the actual operational employment of laser directed energy weapons, “as these systems get smaller, as they get more powerful, the quicker we could get them into our soldiers’ hands,” Army Col. Charles Kean, Deputy Commanding Officer for Support at the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, another one of the panelists, said.

This, in turn, will open up important new opportunities to “operate with them forward, test them in the mud, the dirt, the humidity of the Pacific, test them down in the southern border where they’re different conditions, whether it’s in the Middle East and Europe, it’s applicable across the board,” Kean continued. “We have to understand it, get it in our hands as quickly as possible, so we could iterate it, iterate on it, and make it better and continue to iterate, because the adversaries continue to iterate in reverse against us.”

This last point is worth highlighting. The U.S. military’s chief global competitor, China, has been particularly active in the development and fielding of ground-based laser and other directed energy weapons, as well as designs for shipboard use. Chinese firms are selling laser weapon systems to foreign armed forces, as well. Other countries, including American allies and partners, are also very actively pursuing these capabilities.

Touted as the "world’s most powerful," China’s LY-1 ship-based laser air defense system was displayed on an eight-wheeled truck, with no specs released. pic.twitter.com/WalkQffaA9

— Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel) September 3, 2025

Col. Kean also stressed that laser directed energy weapons would still only be one part of a larger layered air and missile defense ecosystem for the Army.

As it stands now, the Army hopes to have the first LOCUST X3 systems acquired through E-HEL in operational service by early 2028. A similar timeframe has been put forward for the separate Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) program, which the Army is also involved in. JLWS is aiming to produce a viable containerized 150-kilowatt-class laser directed energy weapon, with plans to work toward 300- and 500-kilowatt-class designs. At the panel on Monday, Scott Keeney, CEO of laser systems developer nLIGHT, which has been working together with AeroVironment on LOCUST, among other projects, said he saw further scaling up of capabilities to the one-megawatt-class as being on the horizon. This is a power rating the U.S. Navy has also talked about as a future goal.

The Army clearly sees E-HEL already as a path to truly operationalizing laser directed energy capabilities across the system, but the service itself acknowledges that there is still significant work to be done to make this goal a reality.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Army Wants High-Energy Laser Weapons It Can Put On “Any Vehicle In The Motorpool” appeared first on TWZ.

The U.S. Army now has at least five named programs seeking new anti-air interceptors of various tiers to collectively address everything from advanced hypersonic missiles to small weaponized drones. In the process, an important central theme is emerging: the service’s days of fielding air defense systems that can only use one type of interceptor look to be increasingly over. For the U.S. military, the impacts from the war with Iran have made clear that diversifying munitions stockpiles and supplier bases is no longer just valuable, it is critical.

Army Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, the service’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Fires, highlighted this growing trend yesterday during a panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention, at which TWZ has been in attendance.

To provide some immediate context, with the exception of Patriot, the main ground-based air defense systems in Army inventory today are fielded with just one type of interceptor. In the case of Patriot, the service’s procurement of new interceptors had also been increasingly limited to just one type, the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE). Production of the preceding PAC-3 Cost Reduction Initiative (CRI) missile ended in 2023. Just earlier this year, the Army placed its first order in decades for new PAC-2 Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) missiles, an older interceptor design for Patriot that has remained in production primarily for U.S. allies and partners.

Separately, the Army is in the process of fielding Enduring Shield, a new middle-tier air defense system designed to handle multiple interceptor types. However, the service is currently only acquiring AIM-9X Sidewinders to load into them. We will come back to this later on.

“We have the capabilities we need to have to fight and win, but it’s our job to ensure that victory is achievable in the future inside of any dynamic environment scenario fight we might find ourselves in,” Lt. Gen. Lozano said yesterday. “So, it’s incumbent upon Mr. Ingraham [Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Brent Ingraham] and I to continue to be creative and looking at, well, should we buy GEM-Ts because they’re being produced?”

“GEM-Ts are a really good missile in the battlespace within they operate. I mean, they’re being employed today by air defense brigades around the world,” he continued. “So if we have the opportunity, it’s probably something we should take advantage of, and we’re looking at doing that.

“We’ve had a lot of discussions about even more interceptors. From a PAC-3 MSE perspective, our goal has always been to get to 2,000 [per year],” he added. “Why we’re running programs like LCI [Low Cost Interceptor], and NGSRI [Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor], and NGCM [Next-Generation C-UAS Missile], and Second Interceptor, is because I think the easy button answer is just buy more of a great missile. We’re going to buy more [PAC-3 MSEs], but when we start talking about overall missile output, we start looking at numbers like is it 4,000, is it 6,000, is it 8,000, we’re looking at a diverse set of capabilities.”

The LCI program is seeking a lower-cost and lower-tier interceptor for Patriot with a unit price of no more than $1 million. PAC-3 MSE’s average unit cost has been around $4 million in recent years.

NGSRI is the Army’s program to find a replacement for the venerable Stinger. The new missiles have to be compatible with existing vehicle-based and man-portable launchers.

The Army is working to field a new counter-drone interceptor through NGCM. Those missiles will be integrated into launchers the service has now for the Coyote interceptor.

The Second Interceptor effort is for Enduring Shield, which is also known as the Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2). The main goal there is to provide increased capability against incoming cruise missiles compared to the AIM-9X.

There is also the Army’s Future Interceptor effort, which also came up separately at the panel yesterday, and is also for Patriot. Unlike LCI, the aim here is to acquire a new interceptor with improved capabilities against hypersonic missiles and other upper-tier threats.

Historically, Army programs like these would eventually result in the selection of a single winning missile design. Lozano’s remarks yesterday point to the service increasingly taking a very different approach.

On “second interceptor, obviously, we just moved into phase two of that program. We’ve got Lockheed Martin competing with Boeing, who was teamed with Anduril,” Lozano said. “But we wanted to turn up the heat on that program. I constantly get frustrated when a funding profile emerges over the FYDP [the Future Years Defense Program], and then magically we lay in a five-year program.”

“I’m like, no, I actually need that capability now,” he continued. “So, have we thought maybe what if we ran a 24-month program or a 36-month program, right? And so, in that vein, what we have decided to do is, while those two companies continue to compete, we’re going to create a shoot-off opportunity in [the] fourth quarter [of Fiscal Year 20]27, and I want to run an in-parallel, what I call an in-stride competition.”

“We just held an industry day, and we basically just said, hey, if there’s any other company who didn’t make the first cut in the phase one, but, oh, by the way, who continued to invest in the IFPC Second Interceptor capability, we’d love for you to come out to the range,” he added. “We’ll give you range time, we’ll present targets, and we’ll allow you to recompete with an opportunity to get back into the program folder.”

The Army is doing the exact same thing with NGSRI, where Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have been competing face-to-face. That program is also now planning to hold a new shoot-off that will be open to other vendors in the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2027.

There are signs the Army is moving in a similar direction with NGCM, where it previously selected AeroVironment to supply its Freedom Eagle-1 (FE-1) interceptor. The service put out a request for information seeking new NGCM options in August, with a goal of holding an initial evaluation again in the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2027. A deeper operational assessment could then follow in Fiscal Year 2028.

To reiterate, on top of all this, the Army is also now pursuing at least two new interceptor options for Patriot.

“We have to address the threat, and we need to address the threat in a complementary way, meaning we need to fight on a cost curve that’s affordable for the U.S. Army to maintain and sustain that warfighting capability abroad,” Lozano stressed yesterday.

This gets to the crux of the matter. It is not at all a new observation that just having a stockpile of any particular munition on day one of a conflict is not enough, especially if the fight becomes drawn out. There needs to be sufficient depth to those stocks at the start and the ability to readily replenish them in line with expenditures. The war with Iran, compounded by other crises in the Middle East and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, has made clear that these core truths apply to all armed forces, even the U.S. military.

Lower-cost munitions are part of the solution, but they also need to be producible at scale on reasonable timelines. The lead time for higher-end munitions today is often measured in months, if not years. Furthermore, being locked into a single vendor has been shown to not just be undesirable, but a potential national security risk in an actual conflict. Lozano’s remarks yesterday, and how the Army is now pursuing new anti-air interceptors, reflect larger trends, not just in the acquisition of larger volumes of munitions overall, but also from a broader array of total suppliers.

There has also been a push across the U.S. military to bring in new and non-traditional firms, including in partnership with established prime contractors. An example of this is the Boeing/Anduril team-up for Second Interceptor. This was also underscored by new framework agreements the Pentagon announced back in May regarding the planned purchase of thousands of lower-cost cruise missiles.

The @DeptofWar has reached new framework agreements with a slate of disruptive new entrants to aggressively expand the United States military’s lethal cruise missile and hypersonic missile strike capabilities.
 
Low-Cost Containerized Missiles (LCCM) Program:
• Anduril
•… pic.twitter.com/Fr2xAnBM7y

— Department of War CTO (@DoWCTO) May 13, 2026

With regard to the LCI program, specifically, Lozano highlighted an additional aspect of all of this yesterday.

LCI has “a unique twist to it because we’re looking for companies who have all-up rounds, but I’m also asking for companies to come in at the component level,” he explained. “We typically don’t do that, right? There’s a lot of risk in managing components and generating all-up round systems. But we’re also looking for weapon system integrators, because I want to be able to create two or three teams who can compete with the all-up round guys to see if we can generate some momentum behind the fact that we need to thicken our inventory with low-cost, affordable munitions.”

The U.S. Navy is now pursuing a roughly similar approach with its Naval Modular Missile (NMM) program. NMM envisions an entirely new family of sea-launched surface-to-air missiles that offer very different capabilities, but that all feature certain common components, as you can read more about here.

The Army is also eyeing a new family of launcher vehicles, as well as containerized options, all capable of firing various types of surface-to-air and surface-to-surface munitions. Autonomy is also an important aspect of what is aptly dubbed the Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML) program.

It is also important to note here that the underlying aim is not to eliminate more exquisite munitions, or the capabilities that they offer, but to create a more affordable, complementary mix of options.

“What I would say is we’re solely focused on delivering on the programs we are executing now,” Lozano said in closing at the end of the panel yesterday. “We have to deliver, and if we deliver on that wide variety of capability, then we can increase and ramp that capacity. And that would be my wish list, that we have enough resources and we achieve programmatic success in the way that we’re planning to, so we can deliver in mass.”

All signs point to the diversity in munitions that Lozano is talking about here being particularly pronounced in future Army air defense capabilities full of systems firing multiple types of interceptors.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post The Days Of Army Air Defense Systems Firing Just One Type Of Interceptor Are Ending appeared first on TWZ.

Agora é oficial: o brasileiro Rafael Câmara vai correr na Fórmula 1 na temporada 2027. O anúncio foi feito pela Haas esta quinta-feira (15), de que o piloto no próximo ano assumirá a vaga deixada por Esteban Ocon.

Os rumores da chegada do piloto começaram a surgir ainda no meio deste campeonato, como refere a F1Mania na sua notícia, lembrando que Rafael Câmara é membro da Academia da Ferrari desde 2021, chegou a participar de diversos testes guiando carros tanto da escuderia italiana como da equipa americana, sempre impressionando com os seus resultados – inclusivamente, a primeira atividade que teve com a Haas foi um TPC em Portimão no mês de agosto.

Até ser designado para preencher a vaga na Haas, Rafa ainda precisou enfrentar alguma concorrência, designadamente contra Leo Fornaroli, atual campeão da Fórmula 2, Jack Doohan e Ryo Hirakawa. Mas, no final, o campeão de 2025 da Fórmula 3 e atual líder da Fórmula 2 é quem está a vencer esta ‘corrida’ pelo lugar no team na F1.

“Estou muito feliz em me juntar à Haas como piloto de Fórmula 1. É um passo importante na minha carreira e quero agradecer a Gene Haas e Ayao Komatsu pela confiança que depositaram em mim. Também sou muito grato à Academia da Ferrari pelo apoio e por tudo o que contribuíram para o meu desenvolvimento ao longo dos anos, assim como à minha família por estar sempre presente nesta jornada”, disse Rafael Câmara.

“Agora, o meu foco é preparar-me da melhor maneira possível para este novo desafio. Haverá muito a aprender, e estou ansioso para trabalhar em estreita colaboração com a equipa, entender o carro e continuar evoluindo como piloto”, prosseguiu.

Lembra-nos a F1Mania que Rafa Câmara disputa a F2 na temporada 2026 e na última etapa, a rodada tripla do GP do Azerbaijão, onde conseguiu uma vitória e assumiu a liderança da classificação – tem mais duas vitórias e sete pódios totais . Agora restam duas etapas, Qatar e Abu Dhabi, mas ainda em dúvida se irão mesmo acontecer devido à guerra no Médio Oriente.

Entre os feitos de sua carreira, além do título da F3 também conta como campeão da Fórmula Regional Europeia em 2024, além de um vice na Fórmula 4 dos Emirados Árabes Unidos em 2022, assim como ter terminado em terceiro na Fórmula 4 Italiana, Fórmula 4 Alemã e Fórmula Regional do M´deio Oriente.

Ayao Komatsu, chefe da Haas, afirmou que “estou muito empolgado em contratar um talento tão jovem e incrível como Rafael Câmara. Não preciso falar a todos sobre as suas conquistas nas categorias de base; elas têm sido impressionantes. Além disso, na sua temporada de estreia na Fórmula 2, a velocidade que ele demonstrou em momentos muito difíceis, como nas classificações no Mónaco e Montreal, evidenciam todo o potencial que o Rafa possui.”

“Quando ele pilotou, no nosso programa TPC em Portugal, mostrou que conseguia lidar muito bem com a situação, mesmo sem muito tempo para conhecer o carro; ele mostrou-nos mais do que apenas velocidade pura. O Rafa conseguiu criar um ambiente para extrair o melhor de si mesmo; foi algo muito impressionante e, certamente, as voltas que ele completou foram especiais.“

A teminar, Ayao Komatsu, salientou: “Estamos todos animados com essa oportunidade e realmente comprometidos, como TGR Haas F1 Team, em desenvolver esse talento e oferecer um ambiente onde ele possa prosperar. Queremos criar um espaço onde ele se sinta confortável e apoiado, e onde possa realmente desenvolver todo o seu potencial.”

Por fim, Gene Haas, dono da Haas, comentou: “Estou ansioso para ver o que Rafael Câmara pode alcançar na Fórmula 1, tendo acompanhado as suas conquistas na Fórmula 3 e, agora, na Fórmula 2 este ano.”
“É um desafio diferente neste nível, mas, com base na experiência que tivemos com Ollie Bearman, que seguiu uma trajetória semelhante e também veio da Academia da Ferrari, sabemos que esses pilotos mais jovens que chegam bem preparados e podem causar um impacto imediato na equipa”, acrescentou.

Azeredo Lopes admite que o possível uso de armas pesadas no Irão é sinal de que os EUA não alcançaram os objetivos militares. Ainda assim,  impacto destrutivo, mas não definitivo, deste armamento.

Contrary to the celebratory myth that the Civil Rights movement ushered in an era of seamless egalitarian brotherhood, the actual implementation of its ideals exposed bitter, ethnic rivalries even among the very groups that worked to undermine White society. On May 9, 1968, 19 educators received letters from the Ocean Hill-Brownsville governing board telling them...

A pressão sobre Luís Neves não pára de aumentar. Depois das polémicas do verão, há uma demissão no MAI, o SIRESP regressa à discussão e o PS já admite a saída do ministro. Até quando resiste?

Aumenta a pressão sobre Luís Neves. Depois das polémicas do Verão e da aprovação de uma comissão de inquérito, agora é uma demissão no MAI e o regresso do eterno SIRESP. Consegue o ministro resistir?

Tonight's Forecast:

Over the San Luis Valley there is a freeze warning active tonight into early Thursday morning as temperatures drop into the subfreezing range. Elsewhere, 30s and 40s are expected across the region. Showers linger for the plains tonight while the I-25 corridor dries out. The mountains will see some lingering snow too.

Colorado Springs forecast: Low: 37; High: 52;

Overnight lows are expected to be colder than averages in the 30s as showers clear out. Dry time is expected overnight with mostly sunny skies in store for Thursday. Winds on Thursday will be very strong with gusts up the 45 MPH. Colder than average afternoon highs are expected into Thursday and Friday before things rebound into the weekend.

Pueblo forecast: Low: 39; High: 59;

Wednesday night will stay below averages with lows in the 40s. Thursday will be cooler than averages again with mostly dry conditions. The end of the week on Friday will begin to rebound slightly with a warmer and more seasonal weekend ahead too.

Canon City forecast: Low: 38; High: 60;

Temperatures will stay below averages for Wednesday night and into the coming days as the week wraps up. The weekend will be more seasonal in the 60s and 70s with dry time too.

Woodland Park forecast: Low: 28; High: 38;

A few more snowflakes are possible for Wednesday evening and into Thursday morning. That's ahead of rebounding temperatures into Friday and the weekend. More sunshine returns for Woodland Park by the weekend too.

Mountains forecast: Low: 30; High: 54;

The central and southern mountains will be in the subfreezing range tonight and into the coming days. More snow is likely overnight with more expected into Thursday too. That's ahead of a drier trend into the weekend.

Extended outlook forecast:

By Friday southern Colorado can expect temperatures to start to rebound. The weekend will be much more seasonal in the 60s and 70s across the area. The drier and sunnier trend continues into early next week too.

____

Curious about the First Alert 5 Weather Storm Impact Scale? Check out our cheatsheet explainer.

Watch KOAA News5 on your time, anytime with our free streaming app available for your Roku, FireTV, AppleTV and Android TV. Just search KOAA News5, download and start watching.

The head of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) was initially skeptical about the utility of high-altitude balloons, but now sees them as a “game-changing” capability. Lt. Gen. John Rafferty’s comments follow a separate disclosure that the Army axed plans for a balloon swarm test in the Pacific last year and instead sent those systems to support real operations in the Middle East. TWZ has been closely tracking the expanding use of high-altitude balloons and other lighter-than-air systems globally for intelligence gathering, as platforms for launching drones, and in support of other missions, for years now.

Lt. Gen. Rafferty was asked about high-altitude balloons during a media roundtable today, at which TWZ was in attendance, on the sidelines of the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention. Army Col. Joseph Mroszczyk, head of SMDC’s Transformation Integration Directorate for Space Superiority (TID-Space Superiority), also discussed the service’s use of balloons during the roundtable. Breaking Defense first reported on the shift of balloon-based capabilities from the Pacific to the Middle East on Monday.

“I’ll just give a little personal history on high-altitude balloons. I started in the Army Futures Command in the Long Range Fires-Cross Functional Team. There was this talk of high-altitude balloons. I think it was the ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] task force was talking about it,” Rafferty said. “It just sounded crazy to me that we were considering this.”

“Then, a few years later, when the Sergeant Major [SMDC Command Sgt. Maj. Rickey Jackson] and I were together in the multi-domain community in Europe, I went with the 2nd MDTF [Multi-Domain Task Force] to Morocco for training and experimentation,” he continued. “[I] saw the high-altitude balloons in action, and I was immediately convinced after I understood better how they worked and how their ability to station-keep, and their ability to sense and even deliver effects from high altitude. It was game-changing for me.”

Broadly speaking, the main benefit that modern high-altitude balloons offer is their ability to be deployed persistently for days, weeks, or even months at a time. Designs available on the market today can hold their position, in spite of prevailing winds, and moderate their altitudes to keep on station, after precisely navigating to an assigned operating area.

On top of their persistence, the altitudes at which these balloons operate provide excellent fields of view for radars, cameras, and other sensors in all directions and across very broad areas. From a perch of 60,000 feet or more, they also offer a way to peer into certain denied areas while still soaring in international airspace and keeping further away from potential threats.

The video below from high-altitude balloon maker Aerostar offers a good general overview of the kind of capabilities on the market today.

As Lt. Gen. Rafferty noted today, ISR is not the only use case for high-altitude balloons, either. They can serve as communications relay nodes, as well as launch platforms for swarms of drones and other expendable payloads. These are all capabilities the Army has explicitly talked about as part of broader plans for balloons in the past. Other countries, especially China, are already actively employing high-altitude balloons for ISR and other missions, as we will come back to later on.

“In my former role as an MDTF commander, we experimented a lot in the Pacific with those [balloon-based] capabilities. We have leveraged different size platforms,” Col. Mroszczyk added today. “In this [TID-Space Superiority] role, as a proponent, what I’m pushing for is a family of stratospheric systems that really covers smaller size all the way up to larger size types of platforms in terms of balloons.”

“What that enables us to provide is space-like capabilities, really exploiting a transition point between what is normally considered the aerial layer and the space domain,” he continued. “Really, where you go from about 60,000 feet to 100,000 feet is what we focus on in the stratosphere. That operational space allows some persistence and broad coverage in an area where you can deliver space-like capabilities in terms of payloads, but then also take advantage of the deep access that you get from a stratospheric balloon.”

“So, being able to go, take advantage of winds that are pushing you where you want to go already to be able to get either launched effects or other types of payloads for sensing and communications and extension of your launched effects portfolio,” he added. “That is a way that we can help exploit the stratosphere, and we’re looking to do that throughout multiple experiments over the course of the coming year.”

“Launched effects,” is a catch-all term the U.S. military now routinely uses to talk collectively about uncrewed aerial systems designed to be launched from other platforms in the air, on the ground, and/or at sea. This encompasses drones configured for a wide variety of missions, including surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, signal relay, and even kinetic attack.

Col. Mroszczyk talked about plans to further demonstrate how high-altitude balloons will be commanded and controlled, as well as networked together with other Army capabilities, when asked to elaborate on what the forthcoming experimentation would entail.

As mentioned, the Army had also planned to demonstrate the ability of balloons to operate in swarms with a high degree of autonomy in the Pacific region last year before those assets were redirected to the Middle East. When exactly that deployment occurred and how long it lasted are unclear.

“We were asked to pivot and do some experimentation in combination with operations, and we pivoted and supported operations in CENTCOM [U.S. Central Command],” Andrew Evans, Director of Strategy and Transformation with the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army, or G-2, told Breaking Defense, per the story that outlet published on Monday.

“They were effective for the mission that they were assigned,” he also said, but declined to elaborate further, according to Breaking Defense. “Balloons can be a little finicky in terms of temperature, and you have to contend with environmental characteristics.”

“We had a lot of help from vendors in this space, but as you think about employing your systems and going from something like a Pacific [theater] to something like a CENTCOM [theater], you learn where those friction points might exist between what the military might need to inherently own, and … what a vendor could help provide in terms of the service,” Evans added. Furthermore, “balloons can be a little finicky in terms of temperature, and you have to contend with environmental characteristics.”

The remarks today from Lt. Gen. Rafferty and Col. Mroszczyk underscore the Army’s commitment to fielding new high-altitude balloon-based capabilities and the immense benefits the service sees in them. However, the continued emphasis on testing and experimentation highlights a discrepancy with the state of the service’s current efforts, and even more so in light of global trends.

The Army has been openly talking about balloons as part of its vision for a new multi-layered persistent sensor architecture, and how they could also be used to launch drones and other ‘effects,’ for at least six years now. In that same time, China has very actively shown off its ability to gather intelligence and conduct other missions using balloons and other lighter-than-air craft on a broad operational level across the Pacific. TWZ had been reporting on this reality for years before it was thrust fully into the public consciousness after a Chinese spy balloon passed over parts of the United States and Canada back in 2023.

Other countries, including U.S. allies and partners, are increasingly fielding balloon-based and other lighter-than-air systems, too. Forces in Ukraine have notably been using balloons to conduct kinetic attacks and launch drones in the course of the ongoing conflict with Russia. On the other side of that conflict, Russian forces have used balloons as decoys to confuse and misdirect air defenses.

American-made Hornet middle-range strike UAV being tested with balloon-assisted launch system.

Such resolution allows to drastically increase its original range (approx. 100km).

Hornet OWA-UAVs are actively employed by Ukrainian forces for strikes on Russian logistics and other… pic.twitter.com/S1bHqLNhPY

— Status-6 (@Archer83Able) May 20, 2026

The Middle East deployment does show new efforts on the Army’s part to operationalize high-altitude balloons on a more widespread basis, but also that it is still relying on largely experimental capabilities to do so. Earlier this year, the service called attention to the establishment of a new schoolhouse for high-altitude balloon training to help further lay this groundwork, further underscoring how all of this is still very much in its infancy.

The remarks today from Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, especially, show there is substantial support within the Army for pushing ahead with high-altitude balloon programs. At the same time, there is clearly much work to be done if they are to have a truly game-changing impact, while the gap with China and others only continues to grow.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

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Sikorsky is aiming to start offering a new modular and readily swappable nose for the venerable H-60 family of helicopters within the next year or so. The noses will be made available on new-production H-60s, as well as be retrofittable to helicopters in service now. The ‘nose jobs’ will help operators relatively quickly reconfigure their H-60s for very different missions, from cargo-carrying to serving as gunships, as required. It also opens new avenues to integrating autonomous capabilities and other advanced functionality.

Our Howard Altman had a chance to speak with representatives from Sikorsky, now a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, about the plans for the new nose for the H-60-series at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual convention today. This is part of a larger vision for keeping the design operationally relevant into the 2070s, which also includes uprated engines and increased total payload capacity. You can read more about the overall Black Hawk 2070 strategy here.

Of the different elements of Black Hawk 2070, “the nose is a good one, and it’s one that’s on a pretty accelerated timeline. Within the next, I would say, year or so, the nose will be available to be retrofitted or to be coming off the line,” Jason Wrigley, Sikorsky’s director of business development for Black Hawk, said. “We’ve gone through a design cycle with it.”

As it stands now, the new nose structure will offer roughly double the physical space of the standard nose on current-generation H-60s today.

“We’ve done the design. We then 3D-printed the noses, and we did that so that we can physically interact with it, because the whole point of this is for maintainability and access to be able to integrate these different sensors and comms gear,” he continued. “We’ve gotten some feedback from the engineers, from operators, from maintainers, and that goes back into the next cycle of the design.”

Exploring ways to optimize accessibility to areas of the new nose was a major focus of this ‘test print,’ according to Wrigley. Sikorsky has a scale model on the show floor at AUSA this week that highlights how the current design opens from the top, as seen below. Ensuring that it will be possible to keep any systems inside sufficiently cooled has also been an important design consideration already.

Overall, “we just are kind of confirming, can we reach everywhere we need to? What are the different configurations?” he added. There’s been “a lot of work with the [U.S.] Army around what do you envision potentially could go in here?”

“This is one of those cases also where our whole engineering team gets more comfortable. It’s not something where the Army came to us and said, ‘this is exactly what I want. Here’s my spec,'” he also noted. “It was more, ‘here’s what I want to achieve. Here’s what I want to be able to do.’ And so we went off and designed that.”

“I like to highlight this, because it’s part of the way we’re also changing the way we design and deliver the Black Hawk,” Wrigley added as an aside. “So we’re very much in a model-based environment.”

While Wrigley mentioned sensors and communications equipment as possible payloads to fit into that extra space initially when talking with us today, he made clear later on that these are just some of the potential options.

“It’s using the old term, but it’s open architecture, and so the whole point is whatever the mission requires” can go into these new extended noses, he explained. “There’s always a demand for real estate up front.”

It’s very true that more specialized variants of the H-60, such as the MH-60s operated by the U.S. Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, often have modified noses loaded with radars, other sensors, and additional systems. The new HH-60W Jolly Green II rescue helicopters for the U.S. Air Force are another prime example of this, and there are many more.

“There’s a big focus on open architecture and that ability to quickly plug-and-play,” Wrigley also told TWZ earlier this month in the context of the larger Black Hawk 2070 plan. “The new modular nose will change the look of the Black Hawk up front to provide even more space for equipment that will work directly with the new digital architecture.”

In terms of swapping out modular noses on individual helicopters, Wrigley said that it is still too early in the design process to know exactly how that would be done and how long it might take to do so in practice.

“Part of the design process is to also write up the documentation for the retrofit, but we don’t see this one as very invasive,” he explained.

It is not hard to imagine use cases for long-nosed H-60s, especially ones that can then be reconfigured between missions, and not just for the U.S. Army. As Wrigley already underscored, there is long-standing demand for H-60s with longer and larger noses to accommodate additional mission systems. Modular noses, in general, have been becoming more and more common in aviation design for some time now.

The ability to readily swap modular noses could also allow operators of even relatively small H-60 fleets to gain a valuable new degree of multi-mission capability. As one example, cargo-carrying helicopters could be converted into gunships, and back again, as required, using a small common pool of noses with the requisite sensors, laser designators, and other equipment. All of this could offer cost benefits when it comes to sustainment and logistics, as well as added operational flexibility.

The long-nosed Black Hawk model on display at AUSA is notably configured as a gunship. Sikorsky has also talked previously about leveraging the new nose to reconfigure H-60s for search and rescue, airborne drone control, and other missions.

Just being able to install a radar for one series of missions, and then quickly switch over to an electro-optical wide-area surveillance system or another kind of sensor for the next run of sorties, would bring new adaptability to the already very flexible Black Hawk. Defensive systems could also be readily swapped from aircraft to aircraft, as well as more quickly upgraded, as needed.

The modular nose also opens the door to a new way to integrate advanced capabilities, including autonomy packages, which Wrigley said is also driving demand for more space at the front end of the helicopter. Sikorsky has been developing various tiers of autonomous capabilities for the H-60 family for years now, including artificial intelligence-driven ‘copilots’ designed just to help reduce the workload of human crew members and increase safety margins. Autonomous flight capabilities require additional sensors, such as LIDAR and cameras, to help with navigation and to provide additional situational awareness. At least some of those components could be hosted within new modular noses.

At the same time, integrating higher degrees of autonomy could require more substantial modification. Sikorsky is now developing a fully uncrewed version of the H-60, and has been doing so with an eye toward converting older Black Hawks to this configuration as they are retired from service, as you can read more about here.

In line with the Black Hawk 2070 vision, the modular noses could be part of a broader equation for modernizing existing H-60 fleets, as well.

“In our conversations with the Army, I think they’ve been using a phrase that they call targeted modernization,” Wrigley told us, speaking more generally. “There’s a daunting task that says there’s 1,000-1,500 Black Hawks in inventory. If you literally tried to upgrade every one of them, it’s a very expensive proposition, and it probably takes a long time.”

“I don’t think that’s the way they’re thinking about it. I think they’re thinking about it more on a battalion basis or a unit basis,” he continued. “Like, what’s the mission, and maybe certain Black Hawks get upgraded with autonomy, and other Black Hawks get upgraded with sort of the expanded launched effects capability, the engine, the structural upgrades, the [stub] wings, stuff like that.”

“Maybe some of them become ‘Superhawks’ or whatever, [and] get the whole package,” he added.

There is certainly still work to be done on the development of the new modular nose and then actually integrating it onto the H-60 platform. At the same time, Sikorsky clearly already sees demand for this new feature, which could lead to a breadth of new opportunities for new and old helicopters in the H-60 line.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The post Sikorsky Aiming For Black Hawk ‘Nose Jobs’ To Be Available Within The Next Year appeared first on TWZ.

A visita de Filipe VI a Ceuta destaca gestão de Sánchez na crise migratória. A mês e meio das eleições, o tema regressa à campanha. Entre Ceuta e Maricarmen, qual vai determinar o resultado eleitoral?