The ministry listed 49 ongoing modernization and acquisition projects across the military. Here are some that stood out:

Land Forces

M60 tank: Two separate modernization projects are ongoing. The first will replace the existing fire control system with the new Volkan-M, as well as provide additional armor protection and protected crew seats to M60T tanks. The contract was signed in January 2023. The second bolsters the firepower, survivability and mobility of M60A3 tanks. Prototype development studies are continuing.

Leopard 2 A4 tank: The platform variant is undergoing modernization work through a contract signed in 2022 between the government’s defense program management agency SSB and local defense contractor BMC Otomotiv. Aselsan, another Turkish business, is providing the fire control systems; remote controlled weapon stations; command, control, communication and information systems; laser warning systems; driver vision systems; active protection systems; and close-range surveillance systems. BMC will integrate these systems into the tank and overhaul the chassis.

T-155 Firtina self-propelled howitzer: The next generation of the T-155 is under construction by BMC Otomotiv. The original contract covers the delivery of 130 units. As of the end of 2023, the company had delivered eight. BMC is also developing an engine for the weapon. Inspection and acceptance activities of the prototype engine concluded Feb. 24, 2023.

ACV-15 vehicle: Aselsan is modernizing the combat vehicle by providing the 25mm Nefer turret, among other systems. The Defence Ministry’s 2nd Main Maintenance Factory Directorate is conducting the repair and overhaul of the engine and the transmission of the vehicles.

Naval Forces

Milden submarine project: The Naval Forces’ design office is working on the country’s first indigenous submarine program. Construction is to take place at Gölcük Shipyard Command. A test block is to undergo construction this year, and efforts to build the first submarine are scheduled to start in 2025.

Reis-class submarine program: Hizirreis, the second submarine of the Reis project, which includes the production of six submarines, began May 25, 2023. Gölcük Naval Shipyard is carrying out the work.

Preveze-class submarine: After integration and testing activities ended on the TCG Preveze submarine, which acted as a testbed for the early delivery of the systems, the Gölcük Naval Shipyard started midlife upgrades for the TCG Sakarya in July 2022. That platform is the first submarine to receive the modernization features, and work is ongoing. The plan is to modernize all Preveze-class subs during maintenance and overhaul periods until 2027.

Barbaros-class frigate: Turkey is working on a midlife modernization project focused on the sensors, weapons and combat management systems of Barbaros-class frigates. The first ship to receive upgrades, the TCG Barbaros, is currently performing acceptance tests.

Air Forces

F-16 fighter jet: There are two separate projects for the Turkish Air Forces. The first one is the procurement of new F-16 Block 70 aircraft and the application of Viper modernization to the existing F-16 Block 40/50 airframes in service. The second is meant to extend the structural service life of F-16C/D Block 40/50 aircraft currently in service to 2050, and to strengthen them structurally. This project will take place in facilities run by the 1st Air Maintenance Factory Directorate.

Akinci and Anka-S drones: There are ongoing efforts to buy various types of Akinci and Anka-S drones. For both of these projects, Turkey considers the extension of their range via satellite as critical.

Hürjet aircraft: The primary goal of this project is to design and produce a single-engine, tandem-seat jet trainer with performance features that will play a critical role in training pilots for modern fighter aircraft. The prototype made its maiden flight in April 2023.

Hürkuş-B aircraft: This program for a new-generation basic jet trainer is meant to meet Air Force Command’s need for additional training aircraft. Ultimately, this is to improve the quality of combat readiness training and the effectiveness of flight personnel training. The first aircraft is scheduled for delivery in 2025.

The U.S. Navy’s fiscal 2025 budget request includes money for one Virginia-class attack submarine instead of the planned two, but still represents “a prioritization and very significant investment in undersea warfare capabilities,” the service’s undersecretary said Friday, arguing this is not contradictory.

The Navy has been buying its attack subs at a rate of two per year since FY11, but industry has not kept up in recent years, delivering closer to an average of 1.2 boats annually. The service spent $2.3 billion from FY18 to FY23 to change that, hoping to not only get industry up to an on-time delivery rate of two per year, but then to a rate between 2.3 and 2.5 to support the AUKUS submarine partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom.

The Navy, business leaders and lawmakers have all highlighted stable funding as a key to helping industry bolster its output. And yet, in a fiscal year with a top line capped by law and in which the Navy had to delay several major shipbuilding and modernization efforts, the sea service chose to save some $4 billion in the FY25 spending plan by nixing the second Virginia sub.

“We did reduce the funding to one Virginia-class submarine in FY25. But we maintain the funding for nine out of the planned 10 Virginia class” during the five-year Future Years Defense Program, or FYDP, Under Secretary Erik Raven told reporters.

The one FY25 boat will be the first of a new Block VI design. Navy budget books refer to seeking a nine-sub multiyear procurement contract for Block VI.

“In addition, we make significant investments in the submarine-industrial base. During last year’s budget rollout, I talked about $2.4 billion in submarine-industrial base investments that were planned over the FYDP. In this year’s budget, we plan an additional $8.8 billion on top of what was already programmed across the FYDP,” he added.

Raven said the FY25 budget also maintains its planned advance procurement for future submarines, which is “incredibly important in terms of supporting the supplier base to set themselves up for the needed production rate for Virginia class.”

And in the longer term, he explained, the Navy in last year’s long-range shipbuilding plan showed an intention to buy one boat a year in each of FY30 and FY31.

Now, the Navy believes it can buy two boats in each of those years, which will be reflected when the long-range shipbuilding plan comes out later this spring, he added.

“So taken as a whole, this budget presents a significant investment in the undersea capability area, and we feel like these are absolutely the needed moves to make sure that we’re set up for the long term, for success in both Virginia and the Columbia program,” he said, the latter being the ballistic missile submarine that the Navy still calls its top spending priority.

Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for the budget, said Friday the total submarine-industrial base funding would be $3.9 billion in FY25 alone. That doesn’t include the cost of buying actual submarines, but rather the funds being poured into the supply chain to help vendors hire and train workers, retool existing facilities and build new ones, invest in additive manufacturing, and more.

That one-year sum is $1.5 billion more than the Navy planned to spend across the entire five-year FYDP last year, showing how thorny a challenge this has been and how important it remains to future American and AUKUS alliance needs.

However, the Navy also asked for $3.3 billion more in the supplemental funding package that stalled in Congress. The package was meant to fund support to Ukraine and Israel, operations at the U.S.-Mexico border, and other emerging defense needs — including submarine-industrial base support, couched as pivotal to deterring China from attacking Taiwan.

Neither the FY24 defense spending bill nor the supplemental spending bill have passed Congress, so it’s unclear when or if any of that money will make it to the supply chain.

Reynolds said this massive spending for a targeted segment of the industrial base “gets us up to that place where we can get to one-plus-two [Columbia and Virginia production rates] towards the end of the FYDP.” That fund would total at least $16.8 billion by FY29 if everything, including the FY24 budget and supplemental, were to pass.

At least one member of Congress is pushing back. Rep. Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat whose district includes the General Dynamics’ Electric Boat submarine construction yard, said Monday the reduced buy in FY25 “demands the highest scrutiny by the Congress” because it “contradicts the Department’s own National Defense [Industrial] Strategy issued January 11, 2024, which identified ‘procurement stability’ as critical to achieve resilient supply chains.”

Still, Raven, in a Monday afternoon briefing, maintained the Navy’s choice is best for industry.

“We removed one Virginia-class out of concern for the industrial base ability to produce yet one more, while in a capped environment making headroom for these historic investments in the submarine-industrial base,” he said.

The Navy in its FY25 budget request seeks six ships instead of the previously planned seven in the proposal — including one attack submarine, compared to the planned two — and will trim its research and development budget by 2.7% and military construction spending by 26.1%.

The service said it wants to instead prioritize current operations and personnel, along with small unmanned systems and the Pentagon-led Replicator program, which could yield results for the fleet on a much shorter timeline.

The Department of the Navy is seeking $257.6 billion for FY25 for the Navy and Marine Corps, up 0.7% from the FY24 request Congress has not passed more than five months into the fiscal year. The Defense Department’s overall spending plan is capped at a 1% increase compared to FY24 under the Fiscal Responsibility Act that dictates FY24 and FY25 spending levels.

Under Secretary Erik Raven told reporters Friday the department fully funded the sea-based portions of the nuclear deterrence triad, including the Columbia-class ballistic submarine, the Trident nuclear missile and the TACAMO command and control aircraft system — leaving insufficient money to cover other shipbuilding and modernization needs.

“Our guidance directs us to take risk in future modernization when there are hard choices to be made,” Raven told reporters ahead of the budget’s release.

“So if you look at F/A-XX, or the other X [next-generation] programs, we knowingly took risk in the schedule for development of those programs in order to prioritize those key investments — whether that’s readiness, or investing in our people, or undersea, to make sure that we make those programs whole,” he added.

‘Re-phased’ modernization plans

The Navy today is quickly using up missiles and ship readiness in the Middle East, as Houthi forces ashore in Yemen continue to lob missiles and attack drones at warships, merchant ships and other targets throughout the region.

As a result, the Navy is already facing a bill it hadn’t anticipated when building the FY25 budget. Raven said the Navy, through the Office of the Secretary of Defense, would likely ask Congress for a supplemental spending bill sometime in FY25 because “the ‘25 budget that is being presented does not anticipate the current expenditure of missiles in the Red Sea or those additional operations costs.”

But the Navy is also worried about the next few years. It considers the 2020s to be a decade of concern, due to experts believing 2027 could be a likely time for China to invade Taiwan.

Because of the cost associated with ongoing operations and the push to be ready for a tougher fight within the next few years, the Navy postponed a number of big-ticket items that wouldn’t come to fruition this decade and doubled down on smaller systems that could.

The Navy’s next-generation fighter, the F/A-XX, is one example. Whereas the FY24 budget sought $1.5 billion to develop and design the plane and its enabling technology, the Navy in FY25 only wants a third of that.

Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, said that was one of the “hard choices” resulting from the limited top line. The delay also gives industry more time to mature technology, he added, saying the Navy is “still committed” to this piece of its Next-Generation Air Dominance family of systems.

The Navy asked for $586.9 million for SSN(X) next-generation attack submarine design and development efforts, up slightly from the $544.7 million it requested in FY24.

The sea service also seeks $102.7 million for its DDG(X) next-generation destroyer, down from FY24′s $187.4 million request.

Budget documents released Monday do not address potential resulting delays.

The Navy previously said it would buy its first Large Unmanned Surface Vessel — a key part of its distributed maritime operations concept, serving as remote missile launchers to supplement manned ships operating elsewhere in theater — in FY25, followed by two in FY26 and three each in FY27 and FY28.

That procurement schedule is now pushed back two years, budget books show.

Reynolds characterized it as “experiencing … technical difficulty,” making the program an easy target for “rephasing,” or delaying to later in the five-year defense spending program when the Pentagon won’t be subject to spending caps.

The Extra Large Unmanned Underwater Vessel, which would lay mines and conduct other covert missions, was meant to begin one-a-year procurement in FY26 and appears to still be on track despite Reynolds also referring to “rephasing” its funding.

But, even as some bigger unmanned programs are delayed, Reynolds said the Navy is moving quickly with some of its smaller unmanned systems. Several are moving from research and development into procurement, and from fabrication into testing, he said. Both the Medium USV and Medium UUV are both funded in the budget and advancing toward fielding, he added.

Reynolds also noted the Navy will fund its contribution to the OSD-led Replicator program, which intends to flood the Indo-Pacific theater with thousands of drones to deter a war or help win it. However, he declined to detail what that money would buy, and the Navy did not disclose how much it will put towards the effort.

Raven noted the budget funds the newly formed Disruptive Capabilities Office, which will rapidly bring innovative technologies, including but not limited to unmanned systems, into the fleet.

“We continue to see unmanned as a feature of so many important naval capabilities, and we are making those investments in this budget,” the undersecretary said.

Deferred buys, early decommissionings

The Navy asks for $32.4 billion to buy six ships in the FY25 budget request, compared to the seven it previously planned for the year.

These include two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, one Constellation-class frigate, one Virginia-class attack submarine, one San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, and one landing ship medium.

This is one fewer submarine than previously planned, and the budget nixes a T-AGOS ocean surveillance ship the Navy previously planned to buy in FY25.

It does, though, add in the San Antonio-class LPD, a shipbuilding line the Pentagon had tried to truncate two years ago.

The continuation of the LPD line allows the Navy to adhere to a law that requires the Navy to maintain a fleet of 31 amphibious ships to support Marine Corps operations, Raven said.

That the landing ship medium program will begin acquisition in FY25 is welcome news for the Marine Corps, which says it needs those ships to move small groups of Marines within a theater — from shore to shore to conduct missions while evading enemy detection. The program was previously slated for a FY22 start, but was delayed due to lack of funding.

Because these ships are already three years late, the Marine Corps was eyeing a number of other ship types in the fleet that could support Marine Corps maneuver. Many of those, however, are on the chopping block in FY25.

Reynolds said the Navy will request to retire 10 ships before the end of their planned service life, including two Independence-variant LCSs; the four oldest Expeditionary Fast Transports; an Expeditionary Transfer Dock the Marines could leverage; and one Whidbey Island-class amphibious dock landing ship that counts towards the 31-amphib fleet.

Reynolds told reporters these 10 ships would each require “a substantial amount of funding to get to the requirements, to get to the modernization, the lethality, that they need to be part of the fight.”

Due to these and other planned retirements, the fleet will decline to 287 ships in FY25, compared to 293 today.

The budget also postpones the Navy’s plans to buy its next aircraft carriers. It’s still building and paying for the future Enterprise and Doris Miller, hulls 80 and 81, that were put on contract in a two-ship buy in 2019.

Reynolds confirmed the Navy is delaying the next carrier, CVN-82, from a planned FY28 buy to FY30.

Other procurement and readiness

The Navy also intends to spend $16.2 billion to buy 75 manned and unmanned aircraft.

This includes 13 F-35B and 13 F-35C Joint Strike Fighters, 27 Multi-Engine Advanced Training System trainers, 19 CH-53K heavy lift helicopters for the Marine Corps and three MQ-25 Stingray unmanned carrier-based refueling aircraft.

The Marine Corps would spend $4.2 billion for procurement under the budget request, to cover ground vehicles, weapons and more.

The budget requests $6.6 billion for Navy weapons procurement, down slightly from FY24′s historic high of $6.9 billion.

The budget also includes $227 million to support the weapons industrial base, in an effort to increase missile production and strengthen the suppliers of critical components.

The Navy asked for $380 million for these efforts in the FY24 budget.

Raven previously told reporters the Navy intends to sign multiyear procurement contracts for four key weapons programs: the Standard Missile, the Naval Strike Missile, the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile and the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile.

While Congress approved these in the defense authorization bill for FY24, the Navy still doesn’t have the money to sign those contracts. The FY25 plan assumes those contracts are in place and that the hundreds of millions in investment dollars to increase supplier output is taking effect.

One key munition program does face a budget cut and a delay. The Conventional Prompt Strike, the Navy’s portion of the hypersonic missile program alongside the Army, is being pushed back as the test and development program is behind schedule, Reynolds said. The Army, too, is delaying the procurement.

Despite the delay, the Navy is devoting $904 million to the program.

The FY25 budget also includes $2.8 billion for dry dock repairs and upgrades at the four public ship repair yards for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines, under the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program. And it includes $407 million for a similar modernization and optimization effort at the Fleet Readiness Centers that maintain aircraft.

These initiatives are meant to “increase ready players on the field,” one of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti’s calls to action since taking over as the Navy’s top officer in November.

The Feb. 14 presidential election saw Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto garner nearly 60% of the votes, as of March 5. Since assuming the post in 2019, Prabowo has pushed for large-scale military modernization and increases in defense spending, despite the COVID-19 pandemic hitting Indonesia’s economy and partially reversing poverty-reduction measures, according to the World Bank.

Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said Indonesia has consistently built up its defense since the term of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, first elected in 2004. And given Prabowo’s background, he will likely support continued military modernization efforts, Koh added.

“In some ways, one may argue that he might be more enthusiastic about it,” he said.

But given the country’s fiscal state and the scale of modernization the military requires, Prabowo might only be able to complete programs already in the works rather than start new ones, Koh added.

Prabowo was a lieutenant general and commander of the special forces known as Kopassus that were blamed for human rights abuses, including the torture of 22 activists who had opposed Suharto, the authoritarian leader whose 1998 downfall amid massive protests restored democracy in Indonesia.

Human rights groups have claimed that Prabowo was also involved in a series of human rights violations in Timor-Leste in the 1980s and 1990s, when Indonesia occupied the now-independent nation. Prabowo has denied those allegations. The alleged human rights abuses led to Prabowo being forced out of the military, and he was dishonorably discharged in 1998.

Orders and hiccups

Indonesia has pivoted toward naval and air modernization efforts. In 2021, it signed a deal with Airbus realted to A330 Multi Role Tanker Transport aircraft, anti-submarine and transport helicopters, and A400M transport planes. The helicopters are already in service, and the Defense Ministry finalized orders for two A400M aircraft in January. The A330 acquisition remains under discussion, company officials told Defense News.

In 2022, the government ordered 42 Dassault Rafale fighter jets for $8.1 billion, and it most recently completed orders for the last 18 jets in January 2024.

In August 2023, the government signed a memorandum of understanding with Boeing to acquire 24 F-15EX jets, and it also placed orders for Sikorsky S-70M Black Hawk helicopters.

The Defense Ministry also signed a contract to buy a $100 million submarine rescue vessel from the United Kingdom, and it’s reportedly in talks for two more Scorpene submarines from France’s Naval Group.

While President Joko Widodo last year approved approximately 139.3 trillion rupiahs (U.S. $8.9 billion) in defense spending for 2024 — a 20% increase from the prior budget — the government still needs more to meet its military modernization goals.

And the country appears to be falling behind. Under its Minimum Essential Force policy, the government is to complete a list of military upgrades and asset procurements the end of the presidential term, which is October 2024.

As of September 2023, the Air Force had met 51% of its goals, the Army 60% and the Navy 76%, according to Evan Laksmana, Southeast Asia military expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank.

The problem, Koh said, is that while Indonesia did list specific assets and capabilities under its policy, it had not provided enough specifications for planners to further the country’s goals.

Furthermore, Indonesia’s pivot to naval and air modernization might cause an uproar in the Army, which has traditionally received the lion’s share of the budget pie. The Army has been clamoring for artillery and land systems amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Koh said.

“The Air Force will have a tougher time these days and in the future when it comes to competing with funding with the Army,” he explained.

For example, Indonesia reportedly scrapped a deal to buy 12 used Dassault Mirage 2000-5 jets from Qatar to replace its retiring F-5 fleet. Public backlash pushed the government to abandon the plan days ahead of the Feb. 14 presidential election.

Indonesia is also behind on payments for a joint program with South Korea. The countries agreed to co-fund the KF-21 Boramae fighter jet program.

When asked for an update, Sangshin Park, a regional manager for KF-21 manufacturer Korea Aerospace Industries, told Defense News: “We also don’t know what’s going to happen, and we’re still waiting.”

Edna Tarigan and Achmad Ibrahim with The Associated Press contributed to this story.

The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy will immediately start refreshing troops’ training and changing maintenance procedures as prerequisites for resuming normal operations, leaders from each of the services told reporters Wednesday.

But they acknowledged it will be months before the tiltrotor aircraft are fully back to flying real-world missions.

The Ospreys will receive no equipment modifications before they return to the air.

What is the Osprey, the aircraft at the center of multiple tragedies?

Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, the V-22 joint program manager, told reporters his office and the services “have high confidence that we understand what component failed and how it failed.” It’s still unclear why the part in question did not perform as intended.

Taylor and other service officials declined to say which component’s failure caused an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey to crash into the sea during a training mission Nov. 29, killing all eight airmen aboard. They also declined to answer whether the aircraft would be restricted from flying under certain conditions or in certain areas due to the risk of a repeat problem.

The accident is still under investigation. The Air Force has shared its findings with the joint program office — which manages V-22 acquisition and maintenance for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — and the other services to better understand the material failure that led to the crash.

Because the wreckage of the Osprey sat under the Pacific Ocean for about a month before being recovered, the drive system is corroded such that engineers may never understand why the unnamed component failed, Taylor said. But investigators created a “fault tree” to map out potential causes, which are addressed in the services’ mitigation plan.

The main change will increase the frequency of an inspection that is already done on the aircraft — like upping the number of oil changes on a car, Taylor said. He said the change gives the component a greater “perimeter of safety” during operations.

Though Taylor repeatedly declined to offer information about the component, he said it is not the input quill assembly that attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box — the component that began wearing out early and caused a series of clutch malfunctions for Marine Corps and Air Force pilots in 2022. A portion of the Air Force and Marine Corps fleets were grounded in 2023 as those services studied how to mitigate the risk of so-called “hard clutch engagements” and when to replace worn-out parts.

NBC reported Feb. 19 the November crash may have involved “chipping,” where tiny pieces of metal wear off during use and can damage the engine. Taylor did not specify whether chipping played a role in the crash, but characterized it as a normal phenomenon for a mechanical system and said the V-22 has a sophisticated monitoring system that looks for small metal bits and alerts the pilot if any are detected.

Taylor made clear the November crash was unrelated to other previous V-22 mishaps.

“This is the first time that we’ve seen this particular component fail in this way, and so this is unprecedented” in the 750,000 flight hours amassed over the life of the V-22 program, he said.

Due to that long track record, Taylor said: “We are confident in the system.”

The ‘Gundam 22′ crash

The Nov. 29 accident was the deadliest Air Force mishap since 2018, and the fourth fatal Osprey crash in a two-year span. Twenty U.S. troops have died in Osprey incidents since March 2022.

The downed crew of “Gundam 22″ included Osprey pilots Maj. Jeff Hoernemann, Maj. Luke Unrath and Capt. Terry Brayman; medical personnel Maj. Eric Spendlove and Tech. Sgt. Zach Lavoy; flight engineers Staff Sgt. Jake Turnage and Senior Airman Kody Johnson; and airborne linguist Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Six were stationed at Japan’s Yokota Air Base; two worked at Kadena Air Base. All were assigned to the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Wing.

The weeks-long, multinational search effort successfully recovered the bodies of all but Spendlove.

The U.S. military now flies hundreds of V-22s, largely operated by the Marines. The tiltrotor aircraft is known for its towering nacelles that allow it to launch and land like a helicopter, and speed forward like a fixed-wing plane. Troops use the unique aircraft to slip in and out of areas without established runways, where fixed-wing planes may not be able to land with troops and supplies.

The Marine Corps owns nearly 350 Ospreys; the Air Force and Navy operate smaller fleets at around 50 and 30 aircraft, respectively.

Beyond the safety and accident investigation boards studying the most recent crash, Air Force Special Operations Command is also conducting a deep-dive into its CV-22 Osprey program to determine whether it provides adequate training, resources and other factors to ensure airmen’s safety.

The Government Accountability Office and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have also launched their own probes into the V-22. On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House oversight committee, said it had not yet received information from the military as it looks into the aircraft’s safety and performance.

“Serious concerns remain, such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DOD assesses risks,” Comer said in a statement. “We will continue to rigorously investigate the DOD’s Osprey program to attain answers to our questions on behalf of American taxpayers and protect U.S. service members defending our nation.”

Marines prepare

As the biggest user of the V-22 platform by far, the Marine Corps has been most affected by the monthslong grounding. It relies on the Osprey to move people, supplies and weapons, and operates from ship decks and from ground bases.

Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, the assistant deputy commandant for aviation, told reporters the Marine Corps has focused on keeping up troops’ proficiency on the Osprey since the grounding began in early December so the service could resume flights as quickly as possible.

“Our simulator utilization has been maximized to keep proficiency as much as possible in the virtual environment,” he said.

How the Osprey grounding affected a Marine unit in the Indo-Pacific

The service has gone as far as sending MV-22 pilots in Djibouti thousands of miles away to use simulators in Japan, and shipping MV-22 pilots who are deployed to the Middle East with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit back home to North Carolina for simulator training.

Now that the program office has cleared the aircraft to fly, the Corps’ most experienced pilots and aircrew will begin maintenance-check flights to get the Ospreys up in the air, then retrain on “core and basic skills,” Joyce said. Once those top personnel have brushed up on the fundamentals, they’ll pair with junior pilots and crew for additional basic training.

Joyce said it would take about a month for a squadron to get everyone back up to speed basic skills.

However, it will take more time for the personnel to retrain on more advanced skills and mission-specific tasks for combat assaults, transport flights and other missions.

The general said it would take until late spring or early summer to get back to pre-grounding readiness levels.

V-22 squadrons will go through more consumable parts, like filters, as they take on additional inspections and maintenance, he said. Those parts and training support will first go to deployed units, followed by squadrons with upcoming deployments, squadrons participating in key exercises or service-level training events, and eventually to test-and-evaluation units and those farthest from a future deployment.

The amphibious assault ship Boxer and the 15th MEU are set to deploy from California this spring, and Joyce said it’s not clear yet if they’ll be ready to bring the V-22 along. It’s one of the most pressing decisions related to resuming V-22 flight operations, he said.

Air Force’s ongoing studies

Airmen have done the work required to keep the Air Force’s Osprey fleet healthy during the three-month standdown, but “there’s only so much they can do with aircraft that are not flying,” Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind told reporters Wednesday.

He described a 12-week road map to getting the Ospreys back in the air that adds new maintenance requirements and allows experienced airmen to lead the way. The service will deviate from that plan as needed if work isn’t progressing on schedule.

Returning the aircraft to service begins with ground and simulator training that will include new safety controls and briefings, a review of aircraft maintenance records and refining squadron-level training plans to implement the new safety protocols, Bauernfeind said.

The Air Force did not elaborate on what new safety protocols will be introduced. AFSOC held an all-hands for Osprey crews Feb. 22-23 at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to explain the new safety protocols.

“We received very positive feedback that it was very beneficial to the crews,” Bauernfeind said.

The second phase will focus on returning air crews and maintainers to basic proficiency, initially targeted at senior aviators, instructors, evaluators and weapons officers. Simulator training has helped keep skills sharp during the standdown.

The phased approach gives the service time to absorb findings from the service’s initial safety investigation, an internal report meant to root out the cause of a mishap and prevent future occurrences. Bauernfeind received and accepted the findings of the safety board March 1.

He expects it will take the service more than three months to reach the level of proficiency it had on the Osprey before the Nov. 29 crash.

Bauernfeind said he’s confident in the service’s ability to safely resume Osprey operations before wrapping up two ongoing investigations. The Air Force has kept the families of the downed crew informed about the process, but has not told them the results of the recently completed safety investigation board.

“I have confidence that we know enough now to return to fly,” he said.

Navy’s path to at-sea missions

The Navy will take a similarly cautious approach to resuming its flights, putting only its most experienced personnel in the air first for basic flights in daytime-only conditions, Commander of Naval Air Forces Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever told reporters.

Those top personnel will then pair with junior sailors and eventually resume night operations and other, more complex training. The Navy will lastly resume training new pilots and aircrew at the fleet replacement squadrons.

But Cheever warned that returning to flight wasn’t the same as returning to mission: It may be several more months until the Navy sees its CMV-22Bs flying operational missions to haul cargo and people to aircraft carriers at sea.

Cheever said the Navy would avoid long, over-ocean flights until all personnel had built up sufficient proficiency. But when asked about any restrictions on the aircraft regarding duration of over-water flights, he deferred to NAVAIR. Taylor, from the V-22 program office under NAVAIR, declined to say whether there were or were not any operational limitations for the planes under the new return-to-flight plan.

Cheever highlighted the Navy’s flexibility and said all carriers at sea had fared well during the V-22 grounding. The Navy relied on its C-2A Greyhound, which is set to sundown in 2026 as it’s replaced by the CMV-22B, to resupply carriers at sea, including the Theodore Roosevelt deployed in the Indo-Pacific today.

He said the Navy also relied more heavily on its replenishment ship fleet and looked to load more goods onto carriers when they were in port.

But he noted the importance of getting the CMV-22 back to its mission, saying it can conduct medical evacuations and haul large F-35C engine components — unlike its aging predecessor.

Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, the deputy commandant of the Marine Corps for combat development and integration, told Defense News today the redesign effort was “gone.”

He said the first LPD Flight II ship, whose design is already scaled down for affordability compared to the first 13 San Antonio LPDs, is still in construction and a few years from delivering to the fleet.

“And we’re already talking about changing it? Does that make sense to anybody? No. So we’re not doing that, that’s gone,” Heckl said after an Amphibious Warship Industrial Base Coalition breakfast event on Capitol Hill.

Defense News first reported of the Defense Department-led effort to create a scaled-down design to reduce the cost in March 2023.

The FY25 defense budget request will be released on Monday, and Heckl and other leaders said they could not discuss in advance of the formal announcement what ships would be included in the spending proposal. But Heckl said last month at the WEST conference in San Diego he and others would be pleased with the budget when it comes to amphibious ships.

Industry leaders, lawmakers and Marines spoke at the breakfast event, pushing for full funding for the next ship in the class, LPD-33, in the FY25 budget. They also are seeking predictable funding to buy LPDs every other year and the larger amphibious assault ships every four years as well as multi-ship buys — something Congress has granted the Navy in past defense authorization bills but the Navy has not executed.

This comes as the Marine Corps more broadly worries about its ability to move Marines into and around a theater.

Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Christopher Mahoney said in a speech it would be a “modest proposition” to ask for LPDs on two-year intervals and LHAs on four-year intervals. Moreover, he said the Marines need additional money to build the Landing Ship Medium to move smaller groups from island to island in the Pacific. He said the LSM program, meant to start production in FY22 and delayed to FY25, is “late to need.”

“We’re embarking on deep experimentation, so the minute those ships hit the water, we’re ready to use them,” he said.

Heckl said after the event the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit have been on deployment since July, straining personnel and delaying needed maintenance on the ships. He added that the Boxer ARG and 15th MEU is split right now, with LPD Somerset already deployed to the Pacific and amphibious assault ship Boxer and dock landing ship Harpers Ferry still awaiting further maintenance before they deploy later this spring.

“One ship is not a MEU,” he said of the Somerset’s ongoing work. “It’s a single-ship deployer, and we’ll do with it what we can, but it’s not a MEU.”

Sophisticated networking and communications capabilities derived from the U.S. Navy’s hush-hush Project Overmatch are deployed on at least three carrier strike groups, according to the commander of the Third Fleet.

Project Overmatch represents the sea service’s contribution to the Department of Defense’s multibillion-dollar connectivity campaign known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. Military leaders have shared few details about its progress since inception in 2020, citing competition with Russia and China.

During a March 5 discussion with reporters at Camp Pendleton, California, for the Army’s technology crucible dubbed Project Convergence Capstone 4, Vice Adm. Michael Boyle said Project Overmatch is “already fielded on” three carrier strike groups. He did not name them, nor did he say for how long the capabilities had been installed.

Project Overmatch engineers are participating in PCC4, where they are identifying connectivity gaps and fixes, according to Boyle. The capstone event aims to improve information-sharing and coordination of firepower across the military.

“We’re not just experimenting for the sake of experimenting. We’re experimenting to understand what works and what doesn’t work, and what do we want to pursue as a capability that connects us together,” the admiral said. “This is proving that we can connect, that I can connect, to a Patriot battery, that I can connect across the joint force, that I can connect through a tactical operations center-light to Air Force sensors and bring that information in.”

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A Navy spokesperson corroborated Boyle’s count when asked by C4ISRNET. The spokesperson declined to name the carrier strike groups, but said the rollout is ahead of schedule.

Navy officials have in the past said Project Overmatch’s introduction to the fleet would focus on the Indo-Pacific — a vast region where Washington may clash with Beijing and where digital links will be strained — and then expand globally. Project Overmatch was also expected to play a role in Large Scale Exercise 23, featuring 25,000 sailors and Marines as well as aircraft carriers, submarines, logistics support and simulated units.

Project Overmatch trials kicked off last year with the Carl Vinson carrier strike group off the coast of California.

Rear Adm. Doug Small, the leader of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, later said much was learned from the testing.

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

The Navy sought $192 million for Project Overmatch in fiscal 2024, which began Oct. 1. A full defense budget, however, has yet to pass Congress.

Consider the situation in the Red Sea. For our Navy’s warships engaging the Houthi rebel group, reloading VLS cells would require a transit through the Suez Canal to ports in Greece or Italy, about 2,000 miles or more away. This lost time, under persistent Houthi attacks, proves this ability to reload underway is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity.

VLS cells carry most of the surface fleet’s firepower onboard destroyers and cruisers. From VLS cells, the Navy employs air and missile defense weapons as well as long-range strike and anti-ship missiles. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers have the capacity to store 90-96 missiles in VLS cells depending on the variant of warship. Warships are loaded with an assortment of weapons before deploying to meet expected mission needs and ensure the ship’s self-defense.

Reloading the most capable missile defense weapon — the RIM-161, also known as the Standard Missile-3 — into one of these vertical cells is a delicate matter. It requires precisely loading a 1.5-ton, 21.5-foot-long missile into a tube built into the hull of the ship. At sea, the movement caused by even calm seas makes this nearly impossible to do without damaging the missile.

A 2019 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments study found a VLS reload-at-sea capability could provide the equivalent of an additional 18 destroyers or cruisers in a Pacific war scenario. With China’s modern navy larger than ours and backed by a massive shipbuilding industry, every one of our warships must be kept in the fight. As such, the U.S. Navy can ill afford to lose one warship for weeks to arrive at a safe Pacific harbor to reload weapons.

China’s navy has more ships than the US. Does that matter?

Fortunately, rearming VLS cells at sea is not an impossible engineering problem.

The Navy has explored two options since the mid-1990s. The first uses a conventional approach reminiscent of time-tested underway replenishment at-sea methods: the Transportable Re-Arming Mechanism. The second, more complex approach uses a crane that compensates for wave movements: Large Vessel Interface Lift On/Lift Off.

Between the two approaches, the TRAM system’s simpler approach is closer to an at-sea demonstration. The secretary’s comments at WEST indicate this is coming in the summer. Once completed the next step will be to adapt the method to operational destroyers — a task that the Navy’s recent performance indicates will be too long in coming.

Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have been going on for months, and the destroyer Carney has been there from the beginning. As of Feb. 3, it had been shooting down Houthi missiles and drones for almost four months. When it must depart the fight for a distant port to load its VLS cells, the lost firepower will have to be made up someway, or operations will be affected.

Calls for developing the capability to reload VLS cells at sea is not new. And the attention of the secretary of the Navy dates back to a major speech given at Columbia University in December 2022. The secretary’s attention clearly underscores the importance placed on developing it. Yet progress seems stalled.

It’s time Congress steps in and gets answers to help the Navy get what it needs to develop this critical capability. Perhaps some of the needed money could be spared from the $114.7 million requested in the current defense budget for diversity, equity and inclusion activities.

The nation cannot afford to learn the importance of having VLS rearming at sea after a major war in Asia begins. As the secretary has stated, “history is forged in the crucible of action, not the comfort of hindsight.”

Brent D. Sadler is a senior research fellow in naval warfare and advanced technologies at The Heritage Foundation think tank.

The commander of the Turkish Naval Forces, Adm. Ercüment Tatlıoğlu, visited the Istanbul Shipyard Command and the Naval Forces Design Project Office on Feb. 28, the service announced, where he received a briefing on the design process and plans for the TF-2000 program. The design office, which is based on the same premises as the shipyard, began design efforts in July 2017.

The TF-2000′s principal mission is to detect and destroy guided missiles. According to the navy, the ship will be able to detect ballistic missiles, too. It’s unclear how many vessels the service plans to buy, how much money is set aside for the program and how long construction will take.

This vessel’s latest iteration shows changes from previous ones. For example, the original displacement was 7,000 tons. And in previous versions, the calculated speed was 28-plus knots (32+ mph). The second iteration shared in 2021 had the ship at 166 meters (545 feet) long and 21.5 meters (70.5 feet) wide, with a displacement of 8,500 tons.

In the latest design, the ship is 149 meters long and 21.3 meters wide. It has a draft of 5.75 meters. The displacement is 8,300 tons.

Its main machinery is in the so-called CODOG — or combined diesel or gas —configuration, which is expected to help the vessel reach 26 knots (30 mph) or more.

The ship will feature one 127mm main gun, two 25mm remote controlled weapon station and one 35mm Gökdeniz close-in weapon system.

It’s also to receive two Midlas vertical launch systems. The first one, with 32 cells, is located between the bridge and the main gun. The other, armed with 64 missiles, is located at midships between the funnels and the main mast. The principal weapons for the VLS will be the Siper and Hisar air defense missiles. The navy had previously said the TF-2000 would be fitted with Gezgin cruise missiles launched from vertical launch systems.

The ship also features a Levent point defense missile system.

The newest version of the TF-2000 comes with structural changes, too. According to the new design, Turkey has abandoned the approach for two, separate funnels; there is now one large funnel structure.

Turkey shortened the length of the ship when it eliminated the flexible mission space. This leftover area between the funnels and the hangar were supposed to be a reconfigurable space to carry up to 10 standard ISO containers at 20 feet each; or four 12-meter-long rigid inflatable boats; or various unmanned underwater and surface vessels. There was also space for 16 Atmaca anti-ship missiles, but the newest design does not show dedicated launchers onboard.

The ship is to feature 130-150 crew members, and with accommodations for 200. The vessel’s range is estimated to be 5,000 nautical miles at 18 knots. The ship is also to have a minimum 45-day operational capability without replenishments, and perform missions for 180 days without the support from its base.

While no two availabilities are the same, Clark has a good idea of what best practices led him and his team to be successful — so the Navy has put him in charge of all the San Diego-based surface ships in maintenance and basic-phase training.

The Navy in December stood up a network of Surface Readiness Groups, or SURFGRUs, to put proven leaders in a position to focus solely on getting ships through maintenance and basic training on time, before turning them over to operational squadrons.

Clark leads a SURFGRU Southwest staff of 90 in San Diego, initially overseeing 17 surface ships. That will eventually expand to about 200 personnel overseeing 36 ships in maintenance and basic training.

In Norfolk, Virginia, Capt. Bryan Carmichael — who led amphibious assault ship Bataan through a complicated on-time, on-budget overhaul when he served as commanding officer from 2019 to 2021 — leads the SURFGRU Mid Atlantic that has 10 ships today and will increase to a comparable size as its West Coast counterpart.

The Navy has or will have smaller SURFGRUs in: Everett, Washington; Mayport, Florida; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Yokosuka, Japan; Rota, Spain; and Manama, Bahrain.

The surface navy has worked for years to dig out of a ship maintenance backlog and get ships out of the yards on time.

“We can keep doing what we’re doing, and we keep telling ourselves we’re going to try harder, but it’s probably not going to work,” Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, the commander of Naval Surface Forces, told Defense News. “We’re going to need a new approach, and we’re going to need a different way of measuring it and holding ourselves accountable. This is that way.”

McLane said the Navy knows best practices for ship maintenance, but it’s impossible for a first-time ship captain to know and implement every lesson learned.

That’s where the SURFGRUs come in, he said, to serve as coaches and mentors.

He offered an example of a returning carrier strike group: the destroyer squadron commodore might have a number of ships going into maintenance on a staggered schedule, and everything could be perfectly planned from the start and all the material on hand when the first ship arrives at the repair yard. But, that first ship may on Day 1 have an assessment of its intakes and uptakes; if the yard realizes the ducts are corroded and they’ll have to replace them, for which the material is not on hand, that first ship may on Day 1 be looking at a 45-day delay.

When the second ship comes in, the exact same thing might happen again.

Technically, McLane said, the intakes and uptakes assessment cannot be done until the ship is in the yard and all the insulation can be peeled off. But an experienced leader knows there are ways to do spot checks beforehand to look for signs of corrosion. But if the ship captain, the destroyer squadron commodore and the project manager at Naval Sea Systems Command are all leading their first maintenance availability, they would likely make this common but costly mistake.

In his example, the destroyer squadron commodore might realize this by the third ship, after putting the first two ships behind schedule. But “I don’t want to spot them two ships all the time,” McLane said.

Now, the SURFGRU commodore and their senior staff will know these types of tricks, McLane said, and be in a position to mentor ship captains and squadron commodores about what to watch for and how to stay on schedule. Those officers, then, will succeed in their maintenance availability and also take those best practices on to future jobs.

A new approach

Clark and Carmichael told Defense News they’re still in standup mode, trying to bring on more staff and establish relationships across the waterfront.

Clark said today he’s looking for base hits, to use a baseball analogy: can his team find a part that a ship was struggling to get that was holding up its maintenance; can they find the right sailors to temporarily fill a manning gap that’s preventing a ship from getting underway for training.

Eventually, he said, the home run and the proof the SURFGRU idea is working will be fewer maintenance delay days, more ships completing maintenance on-time and on-budget, more ships on the waterfront being classified as mission capable, and ships receiving higher scores from the Board of Inspection and Survey.

To get the word out, Clark said he’s made some “winning hearts and minds” office calls across the waterfront, chiefly with commodores and strike group commanders. He also plans to meet with general managers of the nearby private ship repair yards who maintain surface ships.

Success in this endeavor “is driven by those relationships, but at the same time we’re looking to build those processes … that will just live past the personalities that are in the seat now, because we’re learning how to do things better, more effective,” Clark said.

Carmichael noted the work that’s going into another facet of the new job: the SURFGRUs will also serve as the area commander under the Navy’s new command and control structure for in-port fires and other emergencies. This change came about after the investigation into the 2020 Bonhomme Richard fire showed confusion about and discrepancies in the previous roles and responsibilities during a fire.

Carmichael and his staff have been working with Norfolk-area leaders from the base, the Navy region, the local repair yards, and even local, state and federal emergency response offices. After some drills and certification events, the SURFGRUs will formally take on this role in mid-April, McLane said.

A third role the SURFGRUs will play, in addition to the area commander and ushering ships in their homeport through maintenance and training, will be supporting deployed strike groups who may be having manning or maintenance challenges.

Rather than ask a carrier strike group commander who’s operating in the Middle East to divert attention to a nagging maintenance challenge on their cruiser, the network of surface readiness groups will eventually be able to take over and help troubleshoot or otherwise support these deployed surface ships.

West Coast ships would be supported by the San Diego or Everett groups while in local waters, then by Pearl Harbor during transit and Yokosuka once in the Western Pacific, McLane said. East Coast ships similarly would be aided by the Norfolk or Mayport groups, and then by the Rota or Bahrain groups once in theater.

This role — supporting ships during the advanced training, deployment and sustainment phases of the force-generation cycle — is a key difference between the surface readiness groups of today and the readiness squadrons of the Cold War that were stood down in the 1990s.

“A lot of people say, ‘well this is just the readiness squadrons coming back’ — well, yes, but it’s more,” Clark said. “It’s the entire [force-generation cycle]. It’s global. There’s always going to be a SURFGRU commander ready to jump on man, train, equip issues for a ship, no matter where they are in the world.”

Adm. Samuel Paparo, recognizing the tune, smiled as he grabbed the microphone. He then quipped about past lives and “a lot of illegal things” that took place as he came of age in the 1980s.

Times have since changed, and some have found religion in the military, Paparo said. And, much like the times, the demands of a modern-day warrior with a mean, mean stride are constantly evolving.

“We are in the middle of another epochal change,” he said. “And that is the dawn — and I do mean the dawn — of the information age.”

As the U.S. Defense Department prepares for potential confrontations with Russia or China and juggles counterterrorism operations in the Greater Middle East and Africa, it’s emphasizing data: how it’s collected; how it’s shared; and how it can be weaponized. But by some of the department’s own measures, including the 2023 Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment, it is falling behind.

State actors and extremist groups alike have long exploited the information ecosystem in an attempt to distort or degrade U.S. standing. Operating online and below the threshold of armed conflict ducks the consequences of physical battles, where personnel levels, accumulated stockpiles and technology budgets can make all the difference.

The Navy in November published a 14-page document laying out how it plans to get up to speed, arguing neither ship nor torpedo alone will strike the decisive blow in future fights. Rather, it stated, a marriage of traditional munitions and exquisite software will win the day.

The thinking was prominent at the AFCEA- and U.S. Naval Institute-hosted West confab, where Paparo and other leaders spoke, and where some of the world’s largest defense contractors mingled and hawked their wares. Signs promised secure connectivity. Other screens advertised warrens of computerized pipes and tubes through which findings could flow.

“Who competes best in this — who adapts better, who’s better able to combine data, computing power and [artificial intelligence], and who can win the first battle, likely in space, cyber and the information domain — shall prevail,” Paparo said.

Subs and simulation

The U.S. has sought to invigorate its approach to information warfare, a persuasive brew of public outreach, offensive and defensive electronic capabilities, and cyber operations that can confer advantages before, during and after major events. Rapidly deployable teams of information forces that can shape public perceptions are a must, the Defense Department has said, as is a healthy workforce comprising military and civilian experts.

The Navy in 2022 embedded information warfare specialists aboard submarines to study how their expertise may aid underwater operations. That pilot program is now advancing into a second phase, with information professional officers and cryptologic technicians joining two East Coast subs, the Delaware and the California.

Years prior, the service made information warfare commanders fixtures of carrier strike groups.

“This is the first and the most decisive battle,” said Paparo, who previously told Congress that Indo-Pacific Command, his future post, is capable of wielding deception to alter attitudes and behaviors. “The information age will not necessarily replace some of the more timeless elements of naval combat, maneuver and fires, but will in fact augment them.”

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Tenets of information warfare — situational awareness, assured command and control, and the confluence of intelligence and weaponry — have enabled U.S. forces to bat down overhead threats in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden while also assisting retaliatory strikes across the Greater Middle East.

Warships Carney, Gravely, Laboon, Mason and Thomas Hudner have destroyed more than 70 drones and seven cruise missiles since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October. Prior knowledge regarding the armaments and installations of Iran and the Houthi rebel group in Yemen has made it easier, albeit dangerous.

Information warfare “underpins every single warfare mission in the Navy today,” Elizabeth Nashold, the deputy at Naval Information Forces Command, said at the West conference. “You name that mission, and there’s an IW component to it.”

“USS Carney was ready on Day 1,” she added. “We are in an information age, and we are seeing proliferating technologies, and we have to keep up.”

Ensuring sailors are well-versed in information warfare has proved tricky, as the sensitivity of tools employed clashes with the always-alert eyes and ears of Russia and China. The U.S. Navy has for years wanted to flesh out its simulation and gaming environments to bridge the gap, but has run into both engineering and bureaucratic walls.

“A lot of our IW capabilities are at a higher classification level than what we see in the current live, virtual and constructive operating environment,” Nashold said. “The other challenge is really just getting all the different IW capabilities into LVC.”

The Navy plans to introduce 20 information warfare systems into its live, virtual and constructive environments. The first few — focused on cryptology, meteorology and oceanography — will be uploaded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, according to Nashold. Other information warfare disciplines include communications, cryptology and electronic warfare, or the ability to use the electromagnetic spectrum to sense, defend and communicate.

Additionally, the service is eyeing ashore training facilities in locations where sailors and sea power are concentrated: California, Virginia and Japan.

“They’re basically going to be places where sailors can come and actually train to execute those capabilities,” Nashold said. “Once we get into the environment, our IW sailors can run all of our IW capabilities concurrently, and they can actually innovate and iterate and practice over and over again.”

Safe and secure

The Navy’s inaugural cyber strategy, published late last year, underlined the value of virtual weaponry. Non-kinetic effects — capable of wreaking havoc on electronic guts and subsystems — will prove increasingly potent as militaries adopt interlinked databases and units.

In the U.S., the vision of connecting once-disparate forces across land, air, sea, space and cyberspace is known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. In China, the weaving of command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to quickly coordinate firepower is known as Multi-Domain Precision Warfare.

The former considers the latter a top-tier national security hazard. Defense Department documents describe Beijing as determined to reorient international power in its favor. Such ambitions can take many forms, economic and narrative among them.

“We all know information is combat power, and really the next fight is an information-domain fight just as much as a physical, kinetic fight,” Jane Rathbun, the Navy’s chief information officer, said at West. “We want to make sure that we provide our sailors and Marines with trustworthy, secure information at the time of need.”

Shuttling intel back-and-forth runs the risk of interception or poisoning. Tampering could go undetected, as well, exposing troops to unnecessary risks down the line.

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“The golden rule in the information superiority vision is the right data, the right place, the right time, securely. And the ‘securely’ piece is critically important,” Rathbun said.

The service’s cyber blueprint identifies critical infrastructure — such as bases, far-flung logistics nodes, and food and water supply chains — as a soft underbelly in need of thicker insulation.

The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S., warned in May a Chinese espionage group slipped past digital defenses in Guam and other locations. Microsoft had detected the breach and attributed it to a group known as Volt Typhoon. A successful cyberattack on infrastructure in Guam or other Indo-Pacific footholds could cripple U.S. military capabilities in the area.

“Volt Typhoon is out there, it’s real,” Scott St. Pierre, who serves as the Navy’s principal cyber adviser, said at West.

“We’re in battle today,” he added. “Information is power.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning from sequestration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Equipment reset

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

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

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

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

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

Rearming ships at sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The money

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

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

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

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

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

The people

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Burning hotter’

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

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

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

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

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

Industry impacts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sealift, sooner or later

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Repair workload continues to shrink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Years of challenges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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