Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Army plans ‘rodeo’ to round up supply-chain problems

 

at 10/12/26 9:27pm

The U.S. Army is planning a "rodeo" to round up problems that slow the deployment of new weapons, and rope in new ways to improve supply chains and make parts in more places, the service’s acting chief said today.  The “Manufacturing Rodeo,” planned sometime in 2027, will serve as a sort of public competition to expose where the industrial base is failing to meet demand and where new players are providing innovative approaches. “We need to strain the nations larger industrial base. Were going to stress-test the supply chain, the manufacturing processes, and see where it breaks,” Adam Telle said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. Production bottlenecks and a lack of suppliers for many key parts have plagued the Army for decades. The Government Accountability Office, among others, has detailed many breaking points. But, Telle said, those reports don’t capture how bad the problem could become as the Army seeks new drones and counterdrone weapons with components made by companies far from the service’s control. For instance, he said, the Army needs to “make millions” of one-way attack drones.  “It may look simple, but its a flying supply chain. If somebody else controls one part, they can break the whole thing,” the acting chief said. Parts for such drones are largely made in China, which uses its market dominance to help other autocratic states like Russia and Iran attack U.S. forces and partner militaries in Europe.  Telle, who did not name any adversary, said that “an economy thats an extension of the national-security apparatus” can be “ruthlessly efficient” in deploying weapons.  “Over there, you flip a switch, and by law, by design, the economy is nationalized,” he said. The acting Army chief listed steps the Pentagon has taken to overcome bureaucratic sluggishness in developing and deploying new technologies, such as pushing more acquisition authority down to battalion-level commanders, getting more self-sustained power on U.S. bases, and introducing a program to allow private companies to test new weapons on U.S. Army ranges. New private ranges, such as Second Bend Labs, are also renting time and space to defense startups eager to gain a foothold. Telle said fostering new companies is more important than any single program.  “When someone tells you the Armys biggest acquisition program is this tank or that helicopter or this missile system, tell them theyre wrong. The biggest acquisition program in the Army is building a system of seamless, frictionless, symbiotic relationship with American ingenuity.” ]]

[Category: Science & Tech]

— US Army to stage counter-drug training exercises in South America

 

at 10/12/26 5:42pm

The Army is looking to refocus its U.S. Southern Command exercises to focus on counter-cartel operations, Gen. Joe Ryan, who heads Army Western Hemisphere Command, said Monday at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The move is part of the nascent command’s mission to build a “theater Army,” Ryan said, above and beyond the largely partner training and disaster response missions its U.S. Army North and South predecessors maintained.  “Future multinational training events will shift away from strictly relationship-building engagements toward operations directly targeting drug cartels and designated terrorist organizations,” he said. Ryan said the review was directed by SOUTHCOM’s commander, Marine Gen. Frank Donovan, “to better align with current federal priorities and strategy.” Those priorities include the latest National Defense Strategy’s shift that puts defending the homeland at the top of the list, with the Western Hemisphere as the Pentagon’s priority theater, a concept dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine.” That focus on SOUTHCOM gave rise to the administration’s strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.  “Make no mistake, these designated terrorist organizations operate as global financial networks, utilizing a resilient business model built to endure over decades unless targeted interventions actively disrupt their economic base,” Ryan said. At the same time, the Army is also beefing up its ability to do the legacy mission of crisis response in SOUTHCOM, Ryan said. The service recently got approval to move more aviation assets and personnel down south, to help move people and supplies. “Were going to grow that footprint down there, where its really, you know, its a relatively modest footprint to date, given the responsibilities its attended to, and were gonna give them more aircraft, more crews, more maintainers here over the next couple of fiscal years to help them address some of the natural disasters and threats in the region,” he said. ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Army brings back ‘night court’ audit of programs, shifting more than $100M

 

at 10/12/26 4:00am

The Army may have a new take on acquisition and modernization, but senior leaders have brought back an innovation from the first Trump administration: top-to-bottom reviews of program spending. “Night court,” as the Army calls it, started in 2018. Then-Army Secretary Mark Esper and Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley would meet up at the end of the day to hunt through reams of Army program documents for savings. Ultimately, tens of billions of dollars were reprogrammed to new priorities. Over the summer, service leaders relaunched the effort to evaluate the Army’s many programs. “Everything from basic research, all the way up—how is that lining into where were actually taking the Army, from a modernization perspective?” Brent Ingraham, the Army’s civilian acquisition chief, told reporters Thursday of the new round of night courts. They started with science and technology programs earlier in the summer, Ingraham said, ensuring that the Army’s basic research was aligned with larger goals in the new Portfolio Acquisition Executive offices, which are now responsible for the entire lifecycle of an Army program. “We roughly found, Ill say, a little over $100 million of S&T funds that could better be realigned to match where the portfolios were headed,” he said. Next they reviewed foreign military sales contracts. “How can we improve on delivery of those capabilities?” Ingraham said. “And so its really sort of looking at how we become better partners to our allies and partners on delivery of capabilities.” Sustainment is the most recent bucket added to the review, he said. PAEs are reviewing their programs to realign what it will cost to sustain current and planned programs, what can be cancelled, and where they might save money by bringing maintenance in-house. “The Army sort of fundamentally changed how we do budgeting, inside the department as well,” Ingraham said. “And so now the PAEs get to see the whole portfolio, not just traditional procurement and [research, development, testing and evaluation] dollars, but they see the [operations and maintenance] and the S&T dollars, so they can understand how it fits across the whole portfolio.” ]]

[Category: Policy]

— The Pentagon awarded $350M to a firm tied to a senior DOD official

 

at 10/9/26 2:00pm

Among a cadre of Wall Street executives brought into the Pentagon during President Donald Trump’s second term, George K. Kollitides II has emerged as a powerbroker with a broad mandate to improve procurement of weapons and critical minerals. The longtime partner at the private equity firm Alvarez & Marsal Capital has framed his tour of duty in government as a service to the country. But the work he’s leading has also been a boon to his old friends in the private sector, government procurement records show. In April, months after Kollitides had started work at the Pentagon, he was listed on a securities filing as continuing to work for his old company as a senior adviser. Two months later, the Defense Department finalized a $281 million no-bid consulting contract with an affiliate firm, Alvarez & Marsal Federal, to advise Kollitides’ new Pentagon office, the records show. That contract, large for consulting work even by Defense Department standards, is the second in a pair of deals that since December have awarded almost $350 million in military spending to the firm — about five times more than Alvarez & Marsal entities had received from all U.S. agencies combined in the two decades before Trump returned to office, according to federal spending data. Both of those contracts have been for work connected to Pentagon offices where Kollitides is the head or has a senior role. The deals remain shrouded in secrecy, records show, because they were signed under an unusual contracting method the Defense Department uses to fund experimental weapons — work A&M has never claimed to do. They have begun to send unprecedented sums of taxpayer money to a company that boasts helping government agencies create a “customer-centric culture” and that is deeply intertwined with the private equity firm where Kollitides was a partner for almost 10 years. The two partner firms tag-team investment deals and share back-office support, company documents and federal filings show. Kollitides was still working with A&M Capital when the deals were signed. It’s unclear if he will benefit financially from the windfall of military spending on A&M consulting. His employment at the Pentagon is under a special classification that allows him to keep his financial disclosures confidential. Ethics experts said it’s generally illegal for executive branch officials to play a role in awarding contracts that would have a direct impact on their own finances, unless they were granted a waiver. “It looks way too cozy to be legitimate. I think taxpayers should be appalled,” said Virginia Canter, a former federal government ethics lawyer. “There are a million consulting firms in D.C. and New York. Why would you sole-source this contract? They’re not sending replacement parts for a ship that is sinking.” After ProPublica sent questions to the Pentagon, Kollitides and both A&M entities early this week, A&M Capital said Kollitides had just stopped working there days earlier. In a statement, A&M Capital said it is a “separately capitalized and separately managed firm from the Alvarez & Marsal consulting business” and its “management and employees have no involvement in the day-to-day operations of the consulting business, and vice versa.” The firm said that none of Kollitides’ work for it related to the “defense industry, the Department of War or Mr. Kollitides’ government service.” The Alvarez & Marsal consulting business did not answer any of ProPublica’s questions, including how it became aware of the possibility that it could seek the $281 million no-bid contract and what services it is providing to Kollitides’ Pentagon team. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported the existence of some of the Alvarez & Marsal contracting. “We are proud to serve clients across all industries, and all levels of government,” the company said in a statement. “The common denominator is always the same: we help solve difficult problems.” “It looks way too cozy to be legitimate. I think taxpayers should be appalled.” Virginia Canter, former federal government ethics lawyer Kollitides did not respond to questions about whether he played a role in A&M securing contracts to work for his office, but a Pentagon spokesperson replied for the department and on Kollitides’ behalf saying they both followed all applicable rules. “The Department of War maintains a rigorous, multi-layered ethics framework that includes financial disclosure reviews, divestitures where appropriate, and screening to prevent conflicts of interest,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Jacob Bliss wrote in an email. Kollitides, he added, “is in full compliance with all ethical laws and regulations. Any claims otherwise are false.” There is widespread bipartisan agreement that the Pentagon’s procurement systems are in need of radical reform and private-sector know-how could help the country better secure supply lines and accelerate the development of new weapons to ensure the military is prepared to fight future wars. But current and former defense officials say the massive spending for connected consultants is a reflection of a changed Defense Department under Trump. They say a clubby and politicized culture has taken hold in a wing of the Pentagon controlled by Kollitides and other former Wall Street executives recruited by Steve Feinberg, the billionaire private-equity titan who is now the deputy defense secretary. It’s an operation, they say, that favors people and companies that have close ties to the administration. This year, ProPublica reported that the Office of Strategic Capital, a unit at the Pentagon that Kollitides helps lead, granted a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr. a $620 million loan after a top aide to the president intervened on the company’s behalf. A group of Democratic lawmakers accused the office of “a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling.” ProPublica also reported that the same Pentagon unit was considering a loan to Unusual Machines, a second company connected to the president’s son. A defense official told ProPublica recently that the unit is now in the late stages of a $220 million loan for the Florida drone parts maker, where Trump Jr. sits on the advisory board and was granted a stake. The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the advancing loan process for Unusual Machines and if Trump Jr.’s connections were playing a part. After the earlier loan to a Trump-connected company, the Pentagon said “no company receives preferential treatment” and “political connections play absolutely no role in the Department’s funding decisions.” Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson pushed back on criticism, saying the Defense Department is conducting extensive due diligence on potential lending. That Pentagon lending unit was launched during the Biden administration with an open application process for interested companies. Current and former officials and people who have interacted with the office say Kollitides and other leaders now rely more on their own personal networks to choose companies to fund — as well as the consultants to vet those deals. Multiple Pentagon Hats That reliance on personal networks is how Kollitides got to the Pentagon. Feinberg first hired Kollitides more than two decades ago. Then a rising private-equity star who had graduated from Columbia Business School, Kollitides moved up the ranks at Cerberus, Feinberg’s firm, taking the reins of its aerospace, defense and government groups. In 2012, Kollitides took on an especially sensitive and more public job for the private-equity giant. Kollitides was named chief executive of a Cerberus company combining Remington, the nation’s oldest gun maker, with more than a dozen other firearms and parts companies, eliminating hundreds of jobs from New York to Georgia to Montana. After three years with the Cerberus-owned gunmaker, Kollitides left and became a partner at Alvarez & Marsal Capital, an offshoot of A&M consulting, whose co-founder also had long-standing business ties to Feinberg. Some former business associates said they were not surprised that Kollitides jumped at the chance to rejoin Feinberg at the Pentagon. The two share a love for firearms and defense industry investments. They have also both described their work addressing the military’s most vexing supply chain issues as a patriotic calling. “Americans need us at the Pentagon and our civilians and our contractors to do better,” Feinberg said last year. “We can’t fail, we can’t make excuses, we must succeed.” On social media, Kollitides has shown the kind of partisanship long taboo in the Pentagon but now fostered in its ranks by Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Kollitides has decried the “Democrat Party,” warned of the ills of socialism and posted that “the government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.” Over the last year, Feinberg has continued to heap responsibility on Kollitides: naming him his co-chief of staff and senior adviser; vice chairman of the Office of Strategic Capital’s investment committee; and director of two other new offices, the Economic Defense Unit and the Business Operators for National Defense, or BOND — the office with the $281 million no-bid contract. His employment status allowing him to hold any of those roles at the Pentagon is somewhat of a mystery. Unlike Feinberg, who was confirmed to his post by the Senate, Kollitides was reportedly first brought onto the federal government last year as a special government employee, or SGE, a designation that allows someone to work in government for no more than 130 days a year. Kollitides seemingly exceeded that cap several months ago. But in the Pentagon’s email system, Kollitides’ name now carries an abbreviation signifying he has been designated an HQE, or highly qualified expert. His employment classification, which the Pentagon confirmed, is designed to hire people who bring “enlightened thinking and innovation” to Defense Department roles that can last up to six years. That distinction brings a unique benefit for Kollitides. Financial disclosures filed by HQEs are generally confidential, while those of high-ranking SGEs are often subject to release once a person fills a government role for more than 60 days. It’s unclear if Pentagon ethics officials granted Kollitides a waiver to keep any disclosures confidential. (ProPublica requested Kollitides’ financial disclosure forms in August, but the Pentagon has not yet responded.) Kollitides’ continued tie to Alvarez & Marsal Capital surfaced in April in a securities filing by a second company with which the defense official was taking a leadership post. Days after Feinberg named him the head of BOND, granting Kollitides deep visibility into weapons production rates of U.S. military contractors, Kollitides took a seat on the board of D. Boral Acquisition I, an offshore shell company whose affiliate D. Boral Capital has partnered with defense-related businesses. Bloomberg Government first reported the filing in July, and that Kollitides stepped down from the position at the end of September. Kollitides’ biography in the filing described his current roles at the Pentagon, then added that “he is also a Senior Advisor” to Alvarez & Marsal Capital and that he previously was a partner and co-head of one the firm’s funds. The A&M entity that Kollitides is described as still advising in the filing is essentially the private-equity partner of the sprawling Alvarez & Marsal firm that includes A&M Federal, which is now providing consulting services for his offices at the Pentagon. Though the private-equity and consulting businesses are distinct, they work together, share back-office staff for human resources  and tech support, and have overlapping ownership, according to company documents. The private-equity arm describes itself as having a “strategic relationship” with the consulting side of A&M. The firm boosts its investment decision-making by working with the consulting firm’s thousands of employees around the globe to assess particular companies. And after the fund takes a stake in a company, it deploys the consulting arm’s employees to improve that firm’s operations and make the company more valuable. In other words, the fund’s success hinges on the consulting firm’s. Whether Kollitides violated government ethics rules hinges on details that he and the Pentagon have declined to provide. A Defense Department official told ProPublica that Kollitides “does not and has never had” any investments or financial relations with A&M consulting. The official said Kollitides is also “recused on any conflicted matters related to A&M Capital,” which could be referring to Defense Department decisions related to companies A&M Capital has a financial stake in. Ethics experts said that without a written waiver, executive branch officials are generally barred from participating in decisions, such as the awarding of a contract, that would have a direct impact on their financial interests. That law, the experts said, could apply even if the official doesn’t have a stake in a company but just draws a salary — the rationale being that they’ve improved the odds that the company will be able to continue paying them. The Pentagon official did not answer specific questions about whether Kollitides was being compensated by A&M Capital when the contracts were signed, if he played any role in the contract decision-making process or if he sought or received an exemption to do so. A “Blank Sheet of Paper” Contract A&M’s first contract with the Pentagon was signed in December, months after Kollitides joined the government. That $67.6 million deal was awarded to Alvarez & Marsal Federal through a Defense Department entity focused on efforts to strengthen the nation’s industrial base. The full scope of work that A&M provided is unclear. But documents reviewed by ProPublica show that by late last year, the firm had begun helping to vet possible loan deals for the Office of Strategic Capital, the lending unit then run in part by Kollitides. Like that first contract, the larger, $281 million deal that followed to advise Kollitides’ BOND office came in the form of what is called an OTA, or other transaction agreement, which allows agencies to bypass regular federal contracting rules on public disclosure and oversight. Congress first authorized the Defense Department to use the contracting method in the 1980s to fund breakthrough technologies without publicly disclosing much about the work. The Pentagon has increasingly turned to OTA contracts over the last decade to quickly fund a broader range of one-time costs, including prototype weapons and urgent production needs, even as government auditors have lamented OTAs as a “blank sheet of paper” arrangement with little oversight or accountability. Still, experts said an OTA contract for consulting work was extraordinary. That’s because consulting is one of the simplest services the military can buy, and it has a long history of doing so through competitive bidding. Firms often publish the hourly costs for their associates, managers, and other work before solicitations are posted. But like black-box OTA contracts for secret weapons systems, the funding mechanism has hidden from public view details of what taxpayers are getting for the money. The sheer size of the A&M contract stunned experts. At $281,089,206.65, the consulting contract is among the largest OTAs funded through the Defense Department’s main support division in the last decade, including for top-secret semiconductor projects and underwater drones, records show. The Pentagon has said little about the impact of BOND since Hegseth claimed in February that the new entity would revolutionize military purchasing. The defense secretary said that under the program, the military would embed former corporate executives, or, as he put it, “elite, private-sector patriots” to help optimize and accelerate the manufacturing of critical munitions. Hegseth said he thought the exercise would help the Pentagon increase resiliency in supply chains. The “era of managed decline is over,” he said. In private recruitment materials for those executives, as well as for candidates to fill posts in other Kollitides-run units, the stakes and the mission for BOND were described in even starker terms: Neoliberalism and trade deals have left the U.S. as a country that “can no longer manufacture ships, munitions or planes in a timely manner.” The recruiting materials cast the job of fixing that systemic problem as part-time work: “Recently retired Fortune 100 executives spend five days per month solving public- and private-sector operational challenges,” read pages viewed by ProPublica. Two people familiar with A&M’s work for BOND said the firm’s consultants have accompanied former executives on trips to review work at major defense contractors such as Lockheed, Boeing, RTX and BAE Systems. BAE acknowledged a visit by BOND representatives but declined to comment further. Lockheed, Boeing, RTX and other companies contacted by ProPublica did not respond to requests for comment. Contracting experts said that A&M is likely not guaranteed the full amount, and that contracts like these typically span several years, but records show A&M has already been paid about $31 million. Not everyone, however, is welcome to participate. One former military officer who worked in the defense industry told ProPublica he was contacted by an outside recruiter for Kollitides’ new BOND office. The recruiter, he said, told him that all applicants would be asked who they voted for. The former military officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution, said he expressed discomfort with that line of questioning. He received an email shortly after from the recruiter telling him he was no longer under consideration. The Pentagon did not respond to a question about the officer’s account. “Getting more effective and efficient is not a political question,” the former officer said. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— Army’s new command plans to streamline autonomous warfare acquisition

 

at 10/9/26 12:44am

The Army is bringing futures back. The service announced the creation of Futures and Autonomous Systems Command on Friday, a day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new combatant command for autonomous warfare in a speech to troops. "Secretary Hegseth made it clear: We are done with the bureaucratic inertia holding back modernization,” acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said in a news release.  So how do they cut through bureaucracy with a new bureaucratic organization?  FASCOM will stand up in the wake of last year’s decision to consolidate Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command, part of a multi-year effort by the service to reduce its general officer ranks. Hegseth has since taken the idea military-wide. The difference is that FASCOM will be led by an acquisition executive, where Futures Command had four-star generals with infantry backgrounds at the helm during its short tenure. Though the command endeavoured to fix the Army’s broken requirements process, ultimately the final decisions and acquisitions were made at the Pentagon, creating a disconnect that FASCOM won’t have to deal with. “So maybe this is kind of Futures Command 2.0, right?” John G. Ferrari, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and retired two-star general, told Defense One. Except this time, rather than a standalone four-star command with no joint equivalent, FASCOM could nest under the new Autonomous Warfare Command as a service component. “I think their theory of the case is that you have too many disparate organizations within the Pentagon working this, and that theyre working in some cases counter to each other,” Ferrari said, referring to the Defense Innovation Unit, various service PAEs and the recently created Defense Autonomous Warfare Group. A combatant command “gives a single military leader the authority, the responsibility, and the resources to drive this,” he said. “So I think its an admission that the current organizational structure isnt going to deliver in a timely manner.” It’s also a more permanent solution than another working group or special unit.  “I think what theyre trying to do is create an enduring organization that will drive this thing into the future, for the future, and outlast them,” Ferrari said. “Because regardless of who wins the next presidential election, it wont be this president, and so therell likely be changes…the thing that endures are these combatant commands.” What we talk about when we talk about autonomy The Defense Department’s push toward autonomous warfare is not about robot drones finding, fixing, and deploying their weapons at will—at least not yet. The war in Ukraine is a test bed for autonomous operations, with Ukrainian troops using artificial intelligence to identify targets and help guide a weapon to the target. On the Russian side, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies fellow Kateryna Bondar, there are some indications that fully autonomous drones have attacked civilian targets. “We can just infer this indirectly, because analysis of those systems show that they dont have any connection or communication system…and also they carry NVIDIA chips, which are able to process AI models on board, and also just observations how they behave,” she said.  And they’re not very accurate, she added, something that the U.S. military isn’t inclined to experiment with. “So I would say that autonomy that is being deployed right now, its not some super sophisticated technology, AI-enabled full autonomy, or anything like that,” Bondar said. “Its more a function that assists the human operator in getting the drone to a place where the target is, and then actually engaging it.” Ukrainians are also using AI-assisted analysis to gather intelligence, but humans still do the decision-making.  “Now theyre trying to train agents which can perform as humans, and this is, I think, a turning point where we can actually get to autonomous,” she said. “And I would also call it a weapon system because, if this agent is able to act and activate whatever effectors we have—be it missiles, be it drones, whatever it can employ—then the decision-making system and this agent can actually be called a weapon system.” FASCOM would bring together the Army’s existing transformation efforts with regard to unmanned systems, with a new push to prioritize autonomy.  Telle’s memo calls on the service’s operations chief to figure out what kind of manning existing units will need to incorporate autonomous capabilities and designate a Portfolio Acquisition Executive for autonomy. Someone with an operational background should be in charge, Ferrari argued, though the PAEs were recently reorganized from a mix of officers and civilians to all civilians in charge, with uniformed deputies. “If its just led by an acquisition executive, then youre going to have the same problem that the Army always has, which is an acquisition executives leading something, not a warfighter,” he said. There are, though, some battlefield lessons the U.S. military can incorporate, Bondar said, to be able to work with the bureaucracy of a new command without making new technology acquisition so rigid. “Theres a lot of conversation about feedback loop, and it actually makes sense because…when every commander or every unit, whoever is buying drones, has the direct phone number of the manufacturer, they can immediately call and say what should be improved, what didnt work,” she said. “Because for them, giving this feedback, its not some sort of obligation or part of procedure—they really feel this need because their lives depend on this, and the lives of their people.” The Army has its own version of this approach, once called Transformation-in-Contact and now dubbed Continuous Transformation, in which they invite vendors out to field exercises to get live feedback on their products. The key to bringing it all together will be the funding, Ferrari said, which would have to come from this year’s proposed reconciliation bill. Otherwise, the service will be forced to wait until fiscal year 2028 to get into a budget. The service is expected to provide more details about FASCOM’s genesis at the upcoming AUSA annual symposium in Washington D.C., which begins Oct. 12. ]]

[Category: Science & Tech]

— Shield AI expects to fly its unmanned fighter jet within months

 

at 10/8/26 2:15pm

Shield AI expects to start flying its X-BAT prototype unmanned fighter jet by year’s end—and is getting $150 million from the Navy to keep developing it, officials said. “Weve been building two prototype vehicles—theyre full scale. The first one will be done in the next couple of weeks here,” said Armor Harris, Shield AI’s senior vice president of aircraft. “And then well be getting into flight testing at the end of this year…going straight to the vertical takeoff and landing tests as the final de-risk of the [technology].” Shield AI also secured $150 million from the Navy to continue developing the X-BAT, a modification to an other transaction agreement. The venture-capital-backed company promised to match the investment with its own funds. That brings total planned development spending on the project, which also received $50 million from the Navy and the Defense Innovation Unit in August and a dollar match from Shield, to $400 million. “We really developed X-BAT in collaboration with NAVAIR and NAWCAD, which is the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division—the experts for naval aviation,” Harris said. “The Navy has been funding the development through the newly created Rapid Capability Cell. So there was an initial $50 million investment earlier this year. This is basically the next round of investment, which is $150 million to continue the development of the platform.”  The company also recently named two sites for production and flight testing of the autonomous jet. Under the X-BAT contract, the Navy money will be released to Shield AI as it meets developmental milestones. “There will be a follow-on phase in the future if Shield AI and X-BAT continue to perform well—all leading up to fielding an early operational capability in about 2029. So basically, the way that the OTA is structured is that theres milestone-based payments for Shield achieving specific objectives along the way,” Harris said.  The company also aims to export the aircraft as well as sell it to the Pentagon.  “Theres been a tremendous amount of international interest in X-BAT because of its multi-role capabilities, its ability to be runway independent, and basically whats called the cost-per effect,” he said. Particularly interested countries are “looking to augment F-35 and F-16 capabilities” and those “that dont necessarily have the infrastructure and the size of an air force needed to operate a jet like the F-35.” ]]

[Category: Business]

— Defense Business Brief: 1:1 with Gabe Camarillo; Tariff ripple effects?, and more

 

at 10/8/26 2:55am

Peraton wants to bring AI-fueled project management to the Pentagon and beyond—while also changing the perception that it’s just an IT company. It’s true the company has “a rich history of doing IT services and IT modernization across government customers,” Gabe Camarillo, the company’s new defense sector president, told Defense One.  But Peraton is also big on defense prototyping and engineering: “We do Tomahawk theater mission planning support for the Navy,” he said, plus “modeling and simulation for Aegis. Also, sonar analysis and acoustic analysis for the Navy at Carderock. And then we also provide engineering support to some Army programs, like, for example, those that do aircraft survivability equipment.” And those are areas ripe for growth, he said. “Were looking to expand that footprint across the department, particularly at a time where new capabilities allow you to reduce risk in modernization programs, identify technical risks on system designs…achieve test and evaluation much more quickly. And bring that experience to bear to our customers to help them modernize at the pace they want to,” Camarillo said. The former Army undersecretary stepped into the role this summer and said his overall vision is for Peraton to become the “go-to provider to manage and modernize enterprise IT across the department” which includes using AI to manage networks effectively.  And part of the vision is to bring what Peraton’s been doing with the $1.5 billion contract to overhaul the Federal Aviation Administration’s aging air traffic control system to other government customers.  “One of the key aspects of that work that were doing for the FAA is introducing AI-enabled program management, where it gives the leadership of the agency much better insight into how the program can be executed,” Camarillo said, adding that AI can spot cyber risks and map out an organization’s modernization plan.  “That kind of applied AI usage…[can] enable not just an end user to ask queries of an AI tool, but to really allow an enterprise to use the tool effectively for its own modernization. That’s where I think theres some secret sauce that Peraton has brought to the table, and were looking to expand that across all of our customer sets, whether its defense and non-defense.”  Welcome You’ve reached the Defense Business Brief, where we dig into what the Pentagon buys, who they’re buying from, and why. Send along your tips, feedback, and song recommendations to lwilliams@defenseone.com. Check out the Defense Business Brief archive here, and tell your friends to subscribe! On a waterfront near Baltimore during a shipbuilding announcement Tuesday, President Donald Trump brought up tariffs, which he now calls his “fourth” or “fifth favorite word.” The comments weren’t new, but they were a reminder of simmering concerns about how U.S. trade relations, particularly with close allies, could affect national security.  “Our drug industry is coming back. Our car industry is coming back. Theyre leaving Canada. Theyre leaving Mexico. Theyre leaving Japan, Germany, South Korea. Were building car plants,” he said. “Its all because of my favorite word, my fourth favorite…tariff,” the president said. (Context: There are multiple reports that U.S. tariffs on imported goods, such as automobiles from Canada, create uncertainty and the U.S. trade deficit is worsening.) The president’s comments reminded me of exchanges last week during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Golden Dome, in which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised concerns that the escalating U.S. trade war with Canada could spill into defense.  “Theyre a good ally. Theyre a good neighbor. They are modernizing NORAD right now…Its my understanding, though, that an agreement hasnt been reached with Canada yet on Golden Dome,” Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, said during the hearing last week. “I think as we progress along there, my hope would be that we can continue to have a good working relationship there to really protect both of our countries.”  Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., agreed, saying tensions between the neighboring allies have necessitated multiple “peacekeeping visits to Ottawa” and that it’s “unrealistic to expect that you can treat an ally badly in one domain, on the economy, but expect…to work cooperatively in terms of our defense.” Some background: The senators’ concerns echo those circulating since last year when the White House issued hefty tariffs on Canada and threatened to make the sovereign nation the 51st state. Those qualms have resurfaced as U.S.-Canada trade talks faltered in August and as a new batch of tariffs—and retaliatory tariffs—took hold this week. On the defense side, Canada has been reviewing its decision to buy 16 F-35As for months. And even if the trade war is resolved, there’s concern about an overall cooling in U.S.-Canada relations. Making moves + other news General Dynamics President Danny Deep will take over as the company’s next CEO in 2027. CEO Phebe Novakovic will become executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.  Peraton hired two more former Army officials as vice presidents: Jennifer Swanson and Danielle Moyer. The Army inked a $9.5 million deal to expand use of Reveal Technology’s intelligence platform Farsight with the service’s Nett Warrior system.  Ursa Major added ex-Pentagon official David Rader as its chief strategy officer. ACMI, which builds defense production hubs, added Limitless Aeronautics to its Indiana campus.  Kaizen, the company that helped build the Pentagon’s counterdrone marketplace, landed a $49 million deal for unclassified work for the Army.  Auterion debuted a universal UAS launcher. Tiberius Aerospace snagged a $500 million deal to build and distribute its Sceptre precision-guided missile as part of a U.S.-U.K. collaboration. ]]

[Category: Business]

— Army activates sustainment brigade as part of Pacific restructuring

 

at 10/7/26 8:06pm

The Army shuttered one Okinawa-based support unit and reactivated a larger one, part of the broader effort to prepare for a potential conflict in the expansive theater. The closure of the 10th Support Group and the reestablishment of the 45th Sustainment Brigade will give the service a brigade-level headquarters that can better command and control sustainment capabilities in the region, said Col. Dennis Han, who leads the new unit. It will also mean a “small growth” in the number of soldiers at Torii Station, but no additional infrastructure at the base on Okinawa’s west coast. While the 10th Support Group was focused on providing logistics support within Japan, the change to 45th Sustainment Brigade broadens the aperture to the entire Pacific. The Army is “heavily investing in the emerging requirements here,” and this is part of the service’s response, Han said. “Over the next couple of years, we’re looking forward to building our staff, building our capacity to be prepared for whatever comes our way.” Maj. Gen. James Dooghan, commander of U.S. Army Japan, said in a release that the ceremony was "more than casing one set of colors and uncasing another. ... It is about continuity and transformation, ensuring our Army is positioned to sustain the force wherever and whenever it is needed."  Sustainment is a perennial topic at regional conferences. At AUSA’s Land Forces Pacific in May, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Samuel Paparo noted that the Army “delivers foundational sustainment capabilities to the entire joint force. And I’m fervent in my belief that nobody knows or senses or feels viscerally the scale of sustainment than our nation’s Army.”   ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Recent Taiwan simulation highlights US cyberdefense gaps against China, experts warn

 

at 10/7/26 9:59am

The United States devotes too little attention toward preparedness for a Chinese campaign of cyberattacks and economic pressure against Taiwan, organizers of a recent war game warned Tuesday, arguing that gaps between military and civilian planning could delay assistance to the island. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies exercise examined how Beijing could disrupt Taiwan’s communications networks to extract political concessions without launching an invasion. The simulation was held in Taiwan in late September, and its findings were briefed to Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and his national security team, according to the think tank. Mark Montgomery, an FDD senior fellow and retired Navy rear admiral who helped lead the exercise, said Washington routinely rehearses possible military conflict over Taiwan but is less systematic about preparing for the cyber operations he considers more likely to occur. “The Department of Defense sees it as a problem for the other federal agencies, and the other federal agencies don’t have a budget or a systematic process for running these kinds of tabletops,” he said in a briefing with reporters. The exercise began with localized cellular disruptions, information manipulation and pressure on satellite connectivity. A second phase escalated to damaged undersea cables, disabled electrical substations supporting telecommunications and strained backup networks, according to Craig Singleton, FDD’s China program director, who played China in the simulation. The aim was to make daily life less reliable and undermine confidence in Taiwan’s government while avoiding a direct confrontation with the United States, Singleton said. Communications outages could also compound problems in other sectors, disrupting payments, slowing emergency coordination and making power failures harder to manage. Taiwanese participants rerouted traffic and activated alternatives. But the harder test was whether those systems could sustain services for weeks as Beijing studied the response and targeted the backups, he said. Asked by Nextgov/FCW about lessons from Salt Typhoon, the Chinese hacking campaign that breached U.S. and global telecommunications networks, Singleton said that operation informed the scenario, but it wasn’t named directly in the exercise packets. A separate Chinese hacking collective dubbed Volt Typhoon—which seeks to establish access⁠ to critical infrastructure for disruptive or destructive attacks during a major crisis or conflict—was also not mentioned directly, but its activities also influenced the war game. “If an adversary already understands the network, its dependencies and its fallback pathways, then disruption can become much more targeted and adaptive,” Singleton said. Montgomery said policymakers also tend to underestimate recovery times for systems that are taken down, especially when restoring one service depends on bringing others back online. He described that as a recurring problem in exercises across several countries. “You know they’re speaking in minutes and hours, and my experience is days or weeks,” he said. The warnings underscore the range of threats Taiwan faces beyond a possible Chinese invasion. In its 2026 worldwide threat assessment⁠, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Chinese leaders did not currently plan to invade Taiwan in 2027 and had no fixed timeline for unification. Beijing preferred achieving its goal without force, the assessment said, while continuing to develop military options. More recently, U.S. officials have assessed an invasion before 2028 as increasingly unlikely⁠, citing military readiness delays and China’s interest in Taiwan’s next presidential election.  China claims Taiwan as its territory, although it has never governed the self-ruled island, and views bringing the island under its control as central to national unification. China has not ruled out using force, but cyberattacks and economic pressure could offer ways to weaken Taiwan’s resistance and push its leaders toward concessions without the risks of an invasion. Montgomery separately warned that early 2028 could bring intensified cyber and economic coercion if Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party wins a fourth consecutive presidential election. FDD hopes to run future exercises with congressional staff and federal agencies, he added. ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Anduril wades into traditional shipbuilding arena with major submarine play

 

at 10/7/26 2:41am

SPARROWS POINT, Md.—Defense tech company Anduril aims to speed up Virginia-class submarine production by building components, such as torpedo tubes, at a future site outside the nation’s capital by 2030. The new facility, to be called Arsenal-2, will be the company’s second manufacturing plant and is part of a $6.6 billion effort funded by Anduril, at $3.7 billion, and the U.S. Navy through a $2.9 billion contract award. That contract tasks Anduril with building “critical components and large scale assemblies of the Virginia-class” to be delivered to General Dynamics Electric Boat in Connecticut, and HII Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, which are the prime contractors on the Navy’s submarine programs, according to the company’s announcement.  Flanked by two of Anduril’s Dive-XL vessels, President Donald Trump spoke to a mostly Navy audience Tuesday on a range of topics, from Venezuela to tariffs, and even gave a quick endorsement of subsea autonomous vessels before he announced the U.S. government’s stake in the new shipyard. “The ultimate proof of our commitment to ensuring the shipyards enduring success: American taxpayers will receive a 40 percent stake in the new shipyard. We get 40 percent,” Trump said, without providing more details.  That stake is in a new Anduril subsidiary created to operate the future shipyard. The government is not taking an equity stake in Anduril, the company said.  Additional specifics on the deal were not immediately available.  Submarines are “our oceans apex predators” that are needed “now more than ever” for deterrence, Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher, who oversees the Navy’s submarine construction, said during the event at Tradepoint Atlantic near Baltimore. But he also acknowledged the nation’s lack of shipbuilding capacity.  “As other nations challenge the rules-based order that keeps our oceans free and open, we need the deterrence and denial of our submarines now more than ever,” he said. “At the same time, we must reckon with the fact that we have lost industrial capacity. Today, we start to rebuild it.” The shipyard is being designed with reconfigurable production lines and will be underpinned by Anduril’s ArsenalOS industrial software platform. “What were really focused on here is being able to build an entire shipyard with a software and digital foundation. So that covers everything from how the factory is laid out, how work moves through the factory in a logical way, how all of that work is managed,” Chris Brose, Anduril’s president and chief strategy officer, told reporters.  That means “automating things that you can automate, keeping digital records of things like precision welding, so that you have traceability back to all the work that was done and an ability to understand, in very precise detail, for the purposes of certification and other types of kind of safety critical measures, what was done at what point all along the way, and having that traceability throughout the entire yard.”  The idea, he said, is for software to make it easier for new or inexperienced shipbuilders to perform tasks because they “can come in with a modicum of training enabled by technology—with digital designs, technical augmentation—and really understand how they can [be] contributing much, much faster.” The company plans to break ground by early 2027 on Arsenal-2, which will span approximately 40 football fields on nearly 200 acres just outside of Baltimore. Initial operations are slated to begin by 2030.  The Navy contract also ties payments to “demonstrated production outcomes,” Anduril said in its news release. Having a non-traditional defense company like Anduril building submarine components is an example of the Navy’s strategy to increase shipbuilding throughput by distributing the workload across multiple suppliers in the industrial base.  “Today, roughly 10 percent of shipbuilding work is performed at distributed sites. Our goal is 50 percent. New hulls will prioritize modular, digital designs that enable distributed shipbuilding across multiple yards and suppliers,” the Navy wrote in its 2026 shipbuilding plan earlier this year.  The move also deepens the Pentagon’s relationship with the company, which has several contracts across the military, and its leaders. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named Anduril’s founder, Palmer Luckey, as part of an advising committee for Project Meridian, which will analyze future warfare needs. Once operational, Anduril’s Baltimore plant is expected to increase overall Navy submarine production by 15 percent or about 9 million production hours per year. That should then translate into more ships produced through the Newport News and Electric Boat shipyards, Gaucher said: “Situated geographically between these two prime shipyards and connected to them by a network of sea, rail, and road, Arsenal-2 will take on the heavy component manufacturing.” The facility will also build “components our prime shipyards need today, like precision torpedo tubes and impulse tanks,” he said, eventually “moving on to complex rafted module assemblies.”  The company also plans to eventually build sections of the ship’s hull. Tuesday’s audience included about 100 sailors, and 200 midshipmen bused an hour from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and Hegseth also spoke at the event. The USS Billings, which was recently deployed in the Caribbean, served as a prominent backdrop to the stage. Sailors aboard the Freedom-class littoral combat ship could be seen standing at attention during the president’s address.  But many high-level Maryland officials, including Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, were absent from the hourslong event. Moore apparently skipped the event after being denied a speaking slot. Four Baltimore Ravens football players attended and did not speak, but were asked to stand as part of a special shoutout during the president’s remarks. ]]

[Category: Business]

— The Pentagon’s autonomy command should draw on lessons old and new

 

at 10/6/26 7:48pm

As Pentagon leaders launch their latest effort to accelerate the development and deployment of autonomous and robotic systems, they can draw on key lessons from past attempts and recent breakthroughs. The planned Autonomous Warfare Command, slated to launch by next October, will promote “not a particular drone, but the ability to adapt in combat” against “realistic opposition,” according to a Sept. 30 memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who added: “We do not have a decade to transition our procurement and doctrine.” That’s because on today’s battlefields, effective adaptation to “realistic opposition” is something that happens in weeks, not the months and years it typically takes defense contractors to update designs or even issue software patches. Fortunately, the Pentagon isn’t starting from scratch. Start with the mission, not the robot Start with asking commanders and operators what they want from autonomy and robots, rather than trying to dazzle them with an experiment or demonstration that isnt relevant to what they need. One example is Maven Smart System, an AI intelligence platform widely adopted by the U.S. military and NATO forces—and a model for getting emerging technology to the force faster. A noted 2024 report for CNAS wrote, “A clear, urgent, but broad problem definition permitted Maven to more directly meet user needs.” So what do combatant commanders want now? Here’s Gen. Frank Donovan, commander of U.S. Southern Command, speaking in May at a Defense One event: “Most of the systems were looking at are primarily our domain awareness systems, and…We can match the robots to the environment whether it swims, it flies, it has feet, whatever it does.”  Donovan had just finished leading the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, the special-operations effort to apply autonomy and robotics to missions. He discovered that robots were needed not just to replace humans in combat but to better understand what was happening in the places where boots weren’t on the ground.  “Our partners, who have the access and placement where they live, have to work in, in the rough terrain, the jungle, over the horizon, thousands of miles at sea.” Build communicative autonomy Donovan said most of his work at the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group was about getting people partners to talk about what information they needed from robotic systems and what information they wanted those systems robots to have.  “We dont talk about robots. We talk about the data environment, right? With the different data layers that we need at the very forward edge so our [special operations forces] and our conventional force teammates with a...cell phone they can actually plug into that data network, and whatever robot shows up with the capability, they can leverage it instantaneously.” Autonomous systems will become even more important when network access is blocked by adversary electronic-warfare capabilities, said one former senior defense official who worked to field AI software to U.S. and allied forces.  “The next step is getting these systems to true autonomy that can handle the operating environment. In any conflict, GPS and comms will be denied and degraded. We see it today in Ukraine and the Middle East, and its a certainty in any future fight,” they said. Buy the brains and body separately Another lesson comes from the auto industry, which has turned to external partners for its autonomy needs.  By contrast, the former senior official said, “The Department has mostly asked industry to self-organize to deliver autonomy alongside the vehicle.” For example, Pentagon buyers seeking autonomous drones have simply asked manufacturers to build autonomous versions of their remote-controlled aircraft.  That’s the wrong approach, the former official said. Drone makers “build excellent platforms, but autonomy is its own discipline. Commercial self-driving figured this out years ago: the automakers build great vehicles and partner with autonomy companies for the driver,” they said. “Defense needs the same model.”   Make it modular The former official added that Pentagon buyers should specify that the autonomy package should be modular—that is, able to be upgraded as threats change and technology improves.  That’s true not just for individual weapons, but across the force and indeed across alliances, they said. “Open standards are what make that partnership work at scale.” This was underscored by a recent NATO experiment in Portugal. In September, the alliance’s Centre for Maritime Research and Experimentation, or CMRE, wrapped up its biggest annual exercise: Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping with Maritime Unmanned Systems. This year’s edition featured a demonstration that showed what an Autonomous Warfare Command will look to replicate: robots receiving orders not from humans but from software.  “For the first time, we had materialized our vision for future operations. We had algorithms looking at what the mission was looking like and automatically giving tasks to drones,” said João Alves, a principal scientist at CMRE. That wasn’t the result of a new sensor or piece of AI software but rather a policy change: partner militaries agreeing to adopt a standard for the systems that they were buying. Instill trust The biggest challenge any military office, command, or unit will face when using autonomous weapons is knowing when to rely on them.  That’s the big conclusion of a 2017 study of autonomy safety failures involving Patriot missile batteries.The most dramatic case was the 2003 downing of an F-18 by a Patriot in Iraq.  “The tactical director at the battalion command and control node gave the order, ‘Bring your launchers to ready.’ That directive was tantamount to an order to engage. But that was not what the tactical director intended,” Army engineering psychologist John Hawley wrote in the study. Even with everything else in place—a specific mission, open standards, and shared data, the right training—the biggest challenge any command or unit faces when employing autonomy is “sustained high reliability in a complex and unpredictable operational setting,” Hawley concludes.  That same question—does this software program understand what I intend it to do?—has only grown more urgent with each new instance of an AI software agent breaking the law in service of a poorly defined user request. If AUTOWARCOM is to set a course for the military, its leaders must recognize why previous efforts in autonomy succeeded or failed, and acknowledge that human trust can’t be automated. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— Pentagon, FBI personnel-data breaches raise questions

 

at 10/5/26 12:00pm

A Pentagon breach that exposed sensitive personnel information for months is raising questions yet again about federal agencies ability to detect unauthorized access to their records. Information about roughly 3 million people was potentially exposed from October 2025 to July 16, 2026, by a breach of a file-sharing system at the Defense Manpower Data Center, which maintains personnel information used across the military and other government agencies. “Three million people may be the headline, but months of unauthorized access to highly sensitive data going undetected is the real warning,” said Nitay Milner, co-founder and CEO of data security company ORION Security. Nextgov/FCW obtained a copy of the letter, which was signed by DMDC Director Katie Griffin. The accessed files contained unencrypted personal information, including Social Security numbers and, depending on the individual, names, birth dates, contact information and military occupational specialties. “Upon discovery of the security vulnerability, DMDC immediately initiated privacy and cybersecurity incident response actions in accordance with Office of the Management and Budget and [Defense] Department guidelines and policies,” Griffin wrote. “We are taking appropriate actions to assess and enhance the cybersecurity posture of the DMDC system.” DMDC patched the flaw and restored the system, according to the letter, and affected individuals are being offered a year of credit monitoring and identity-restoration services. Military Times first reported the incident late last month, citing the same notice. A defense official later told CNN that the breach affected 2.76 million living people and another 294,000 deceased individuals. The disclosure comes as the FBI responds to a separate breach claimed by prolific cybercrime group ShinyHunters, which likely exposed sensitive records of personnel involved in intelligence-gathering roles.  No public evidence has linked the intrusions, though both cases involve information that could help attackers identify government personnel and tailor attempts to deceive them through fraud schemes. Such data can also identify employees whose work is of particular interest to foreign intelligence services. The breach is hardly the first to expose weaknesses in federal systems in recent years. In December 2024, Treasury disclosed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers accessed unclassified documents through a compromised remote-support service. Separately, the federal judiciary acknowledged attacks on its electronic case management system in August 2025, and the Congressional Budget Office confirmed unauthorized access to its systems that November.  AI systems are widely expected to accelerate cyberattacks, helping hackers find security weaknesses and use stolen personal information to make their targeting more precise and convincing. Milner said detecting unauthorized activity requires agencies to understand who is gathering sensitive information, whether they are permitted to enter a given system and whether their behavior makes sense.  That scrutiny can matter even when an intrusion doesn’t immediately disrupt a system or draw attention. In the case of DMDC, the department’s notification described access spanning roughly nine months before the vulnerability was discovered. Jeff Wichman, senior director of breach preparedness and response at Semperis, said agencies must plan for intrusions even when they have experienced security teams and established protections. “The FBI and Pentagon have amazing responders, but these breaches are still happening and eventually everyone is hit,” he said. “True resilience depends on having a fully pressure-tested incident response plan detailing exactly which teams are responsible for what across the entire breach cycle, from initial discovery and containment to legal and regulatory reporting.” He also warned that new government AI services, including the America.gov chatbot, could create more ways for attackers to reach sensitive information if those tools connect to agency systems. “More government agencies will fall victim to compromise,” he said. “Every piece of leaked data creates a domino effect.” ]]

[Category: Threats]

— US spy chief tapped as White House AI czar

 

at 10/5/26 9:00am

The nations top spy is now also the White Houses AI czar. President Donald Trump named Jay Clayton, who was sworn in as director of national intelligence in July, to lead what Trump referred to in a Truth Social post as the “Super Intelligence Force” meant to coordinate the government’s engagement with various organizations, critical-infrastructure providers, and AI companies. Last month, Trump ordered federal agencies to start calling AI "super intelligence." According to its charter, the task force will create plans to handle AI-enabled threats, streamline breach notifications, and improve government-response capacities while aiming to avoid overregulation. Its creation follows growing public concerns over AI safety and cybersecurity risks, as well as heated political discussions over the data-center buildouts that power many of today’s AI systems. “The risk of not being first is high,” Clayton told the Wall Street Journal in a Saturday exclusive that discussed the task force. “Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries,” he said. “Being first will better enable us to address those risks on behalf of the American people.” The task force has three vice chairs: Defense Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson. Its members include Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other senior advisors, alongside external advisors like venture capitalist David Sacks — who previously worked as Trump’s AI and crypto czar early in the administration — and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. It will have 120 days to report on the risks and opportunities of AI and establish a plan for the federal government to tackle it. The panel’s establishment marks a shift for an administration that has predominantly maintained a hands-off approach toward AI governance. But officials have faced mounting pressure over the past six months to respond as a new generation of sophisticated, autonomous AI models demonstrating advanced cybersecurity capabilities have repeatedly circumvented or escaped technical safeguards. Its creation highlights a steady group of voices in the administration and tech industry that believe the time for AI safeguard discussions should begin, though Trump and other officials have largely continued to lean toward a more relaxed approach to regulating the technology. In public discussions, officials and researchers typically frame AI development as a trade-off between slowing down for safety and accelerating to maintain an edge over foreign adversaries pursuing AI for military and economic gains.  China has especially become a major player in the global AI race. Clayton’s appointment to the task force appears to signal a shift by the administration to cast AI as a geopolitical and national-security subject area.  His dual role is a unique move for the White House, placing the current DNI — who oversees the 18 U.S. spy agencies — at the helm of broad domestic technology and economic policy discussions. Clayton brings a background as a corporate lawyer and former SEC chairman, distinguishing him from tech-focused people from Silicon Valley.  AI has already transformed how spy agencies digest vast troves of collected data and build intelligence products, among other things. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he welcomed the administration’s attention toward the fast-evolving technology but said Clayton’s new title lacks a coherent strategy. “We still do not know what authority this new role will have, whether it will include developing safety standards or reviewing the most advanced models, or how it fits into the administration’s broader approach to AI,” Warner said in a statement. “That lack of clarity is especially concerning as leading AI companies themselves are confronting increasingly capable systems that can evade safeguards and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities.” “I hope this appointment is an opportunity for the administration to move beyond slogans and toward a serious, coordinated national strategy for AI,” he said. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— China-linked hackers posed as former US officials, Anthropic employee to target AI experts

 

at 10/1/26 3:00am

Chinese hackers impersonated a former senior White House technology official, a former State Department economist and a senior Anthropic employee in attempts to break into the cloud accounts of artificial intelligence policy experts, according to findings from cybersecurity company Proofpoint released Thursday. The campaigns targeted researchers at think tanks, universities and law firms, using invitations to advise on AI policy and export controls to start conversations. Once recipients responded, the attackers sent links designed to steal their Microsoft login credentials, per the findings. Among those impersonated were Lynne Parker, a former principal deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Heidi Crebo-Rediker, who served as the State Department’s first chief economist.  Proofpoint connected the activity to a group tracked as TA419, describing it as a China-aligned outfit supporting Beijing’s intelligence interests. The report doesn’t say how many people were targeted, whether any accounts were successfully compromised or if the attackers obtained any information. Beginning July 8, the hackers posed as Parker and then Crebo-Rediker in messages inviting AI experts to join a fictitious “AI Policy Advisory Committee” or contribute to a purported Senate Foreign Relations Committee report on AI export controls and supply chains. Parker’s White House roles included assistant director for AI and founding director of the National AI Initiative Office. Crebo-Rediker, now a Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow, previously worked as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s chief of international finance and economics. After a recipient engaged with the initial messages, the attackers followed up with correspondence that directed targets to a fake OneDrive page used to attempt the account theft. The group had also used a similar approach in February, impersonating a senior Anthropic employee in an email to an AI policy analyst at a U.S. think tank, Proofpoint said. The subject line read, “Request for Feedback on Military Integration of Claude,” invoking ongoing debate over military use of the company’s AI models. The research did not name the impersonated employee. The hackers have “consistently shown an interest in defense, national security, energy, international relations, and foreign policy targets, predominantly with a nexus to the U.S. and Japan,” the report says. “The targeting of AI policy experts represents an extension of that remit rather than a departure from it.” In an email to Nextgov/FCW, Parker confirmed that she learned of the impersonation on July 9, when two recipients contacted her through separate channels to ask whether she had sent the emails. She told them the messages were fraudulent and alerted other colleagues. “The challenge is that, without knowing who the bad actors are targeting, it’s difficult to reach everyone who might be at risk,” Parker said. “It is personally troubling to see the trust and relationships I’ve built over my career exploited to deceive others,” she added. “Targeting people in the field can be a way to gain access to valuable information and networks. Protecting America’s AI leadership requires protecting the people and institutions behind it and recognizing that trusted relationships can themselves become a target.” Crebo-Rediker and Anthropic did not respond to requests for comment. China’s embassy in Washington, D.C., was also contacted. Chinese officials have routinely denied allegations of state-backed hacking and espionage. The decision to target policy researchers highlights expanding intelligence threats in the global AI race between the U.S., China and other nation-states. Access to experts’ accounts could expose private discussions and professional contacts relevant to decisions about AI’s development, military use and sale abroad. The cyberspies’ approach also illustrates how attackers continue to exploit the dynamics of routine professional exchanges for information-gathering. The findings also come as AI companies gain an increasingly direct role in Washington’s debate over how to oversee the fast-evolving technology. President Donald Trump met with industry leaders Tuesday to endorse voluntary AI safety commitments. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also had dinner with Trump on Sunday.  Proofpoint found that the attackers registered web addresses impersonating the Heritage Foundation, Japan’s defense minister Shinjiro Koizumi and the Japan–Taiwan Exchange Association. Posing as those figures and organizations could help the hackers convince experts that a malicious email is worth their time. “At the end of the day, humans are our best line of defense,” Don Styer, a former Navy Supply Corps officer and executive vice president for federal services at Consulting Solutions, said in an interview. Attackers can exploit trust through impersonation or seemingly routine requests, he said, adding that foreign adversaries value intelligence they can’t find in public sources and may combine seemingly innocuous details to build a larger picture of a target. Professional outreach has long been used as an intelligence tool. Nextgov/FCW reported in January that a suspected Chinese spying outfit approached a former senior State Department official last year with an offer to pay for research on U.S. policy toward Venezuela.  The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported in June that its reporters received suspicious consulting offers after publishing an investigation into China’s transnational repression. Separately, Britain’s MI5 on Wednesday accused the China General Technology Research Institute of funding academic work to improve Chinese intelligence capabilities. Over 100 U.K.-based academics had contributed to its projects, including research involving AI and cybersecurity, according to the agency, which added that many participants may have been unaware of the institute’s intelligence ties.  The targeting comes amid broader U.S. concerns about Chinese efforts to siphon American AI capabilities. Early last month, the NSA and other agencies accused Chinese developers of conducting large-scale distillation campaigns that use responses from advanced U.S. models to train competing systems. The attackers revealed in Proofpoint’s findings “will likely continue targeting think tanks and policy experts working on technologies, and in geographies, of particular interest to the Chinese government” and will “likely also continue spoofing the identities of real subject-matter experts,” the company said. ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Hegseth plans ‘Autonomous Warfare Command’

 

at 9/30/26 5:01pm

The Pentagon will create a combatant command to lead its efforts to develop and deploy robotic weapons, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday in a speech peppered with Bible verses and insults to the press.  The new Autonomous Warfare Command, or AUTOWARCOM, will be “a new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force,” Hegseth said. It is to stand up by Oct. 1, 2027, according to a memo released after his speech. The secretary seemed to say that planning for the new command would flow from the three-month-old direct reporting portfolio manager for unmanned offensive and defensive systems, whose “culminating mission” will “take place over the course of months, clearing the path for Autonomous Warfare Command.” In the meantime, the office is being given a new task: to “prototype a new construct called warfighting acquisition” that “fuses operators with entrepreneurs in rapid adaptation cycles while distributing decisions and dollars closer to frontline units, to combatant commands.” He said the office would henceforth be led by Owen West, who currently runs the Defense Innovation Unit, and a Navy senior chief petty officer who is both a SEAL and a test pilot. It will also be renamed “Project Agincourt,” the secretary said, miming a bow and arrow. To further speed the adoption of unmanned technologies, Hegseth said, the Army, Navy, and Air Force Departments will create “new MOS frameworks”—a reference to the job classifications of the Army and Marine Corps—”to support our shift to autonomy. We need institutional knowledge and career paths for a new generation of autonomous warfighters.” The secretary also announced a committee with a four-month deadline “to creatively look to the future and identify the domains that we must conquer and capabilities we must master.” The committee, dubbed Project Meridian, will be led by defense contractors Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich, the 83-year-old former Speaker of the House whose mixed scientific legacy includes dissolving Congress’ non-partisan scientific advisory office.  ‘FORTRESS America’ Hegseth said that the U.S. military has become “Dependent on foreign mines for rare earths, on overseas factories for microchips, on foreign supply chains for weapons, and on a civilian power grid to keep the lights on at our bases.” So, he said, he is launching an effort to ensure that every U.S. military base will eventually generate its own electrical power; he gave no timeline or cost estimate. He also said the military will increase its stockpiles of munitions and critical supply-chain materials. It will also stockpile medicine and blood, part of what Hegseth called “a national insurance policy for the American homeland.” As part of this “FORTRESS America” effort, Hegseth said, the U.S. military will build a new base in the state that makes the best pitch for it. A DOD statement said the base will “serve as a foundational hub for integrated defense operations, distributed command-and-control, and resilient cyber and technological capabilities.” The secretary said the base will cover “hundreds of thousands of acres,” house 15,000 to 25,000 troops, and have structures of “timeless classical architecture” to comply with an August executive order.  Other new initiatives include a planned Office of Religious Affairs that will report to Hegseth personally. “ORA will ensure religious affairs are no longer dispersed across distant bureaucratic layers, giving senior leaders a dedicated capability to protect free exercise, remove policy barriers, identify unmet requirements, and secure the support needed for the Service chaplaincies to succeed,” a DOD statement said.  Hegseth continued a pattern of espousing conservative evangelical religious beliefs in official speeches. He quoted the Bible several times, called children “precious souls made in the image and likeness of God,” and said that “Americas military must understand the difference” between God and evil. The defense secretary also took pains, beginning with the second sentence of his speech and continuing at intervals until his closing thoughts, to lambaste what he called the “hyperventilating” and “delusional” media for, among other things, reporting on the swift depletion of key munitions in the war on Iran. He said that “partisan activism that intentionally smears the troops” amounts to “treason, actually.” He cited no evidence of smears or activism, nor any basis for telling the assembled troops that “its your movements and bases that they reveal to the enemy.” Hegseth prompted and drew light applause on a few occasions, a change from the resolute silence at his high-profile speech a year ago; the video feed did not reveal whether the clapping came from the carefully selected junior officers and senior enlisted leaders, or from others in the audience. “This is decidedly not a trifling matter of decorum or politeness," Peter Feaver, a noted expert on civil-military affairs, wrote a day before the speech. "The safety of the American republic and the constitutional order depend on elected political leaders trusting that the military they have inherited from previous administrations will serve in a nonpartisan fashion.” ]]

[Category: Policy]

— Defense Business Brief: End-of-fiscal-year advice for founders; Navy drone boats; Powerus to go public

 

at 9/30/26 4:21pm

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon’s comptroller has a bit of advice for tech makers and founders who want to do business with the military: Make tech that troops like, find out who can buy it for them, and hire someone who knows how things work. .  “Having the users like your products is incredibly necessary. Thats a given. But its the program offices and the [portfolio acquisition executives, or] PAEs who really have the power to make you successful,” Jules Hurst, the Defense Department’s chief financial officer, said at Y Combinator’s Startup Industrial Base event Wednesday. “You have to provide the solution to them. Again, they’ve made their budget. They made it a year and a half ago. Theyve made a plan to execute that budget. So anything youre bringing in is, at times, disruptive to them if they have an established program. So youve got to figure out how you can fit in.”  Fitting in could mean being a subcontractor for an existing program or helping program managers “shape requirements for a future capability,” but it has to be more than just a good idea, he said.  “Youve got to fit into the cycle—and I know thats not what a lot of you want to hear. And were working on changing that by doing acquisition reform, but its still the case in a lot of programs across the department,” Hurst said.  Hiring someone familiar with doing business with the government “will help you immensely,” he said, as will finding the right Defense Department program offices.  “Shop for the program offices and program managers that are really interested in change, and you align yourself with that person and you start to help try to solve their problems with your team. If you find the right program office or program manager, they can do immense good for you. They can open up lots of opportunities across the department. They can introduce you to people, even if youre not a good fit for their program. So part of it is also personality shopping and finding somebody who really wants to make change and isn’t fixated on just compliance.” And once in the door, companies must be able to make the tech in large quantities.  “The best thing is to show that you can make stuff. A lot of startups right now, sometimes theyre paper deep—and thats kind of a risky bet for the government. Not that we shouldnt take it, right? Because sometimes our alternative is a company that does manufacture things, but doesnt produce in the timetable we want, or the capabilities we need, or the cost schedule we want,” Hurst said.  “So again, my best advice to you is: show that you can manufacture things. And if you are not manufacturing things, hire people who have experience manufacturing things, so you can show the government that youre bringing on the talent necessary to scale your product and capability if they decide to buy it.” Welcome You’ve reached the Defense Business Brief, where we dig into what the Pentagon buys, who they’re buying from, and why. Send along your tips, feedback, and song recommendations to lwilliams@defenseone.com. Check out the Defense Business Brief archive here, and tell your friends to subscribe! USVs wading in. The Navy will buy 30 medium-sized unmanned surface vessels at about $40 million each from three companies: Galliano Marine Services, HII, and Saronic. Each company will build 10, the first of which are expected to be delivered in the last quarter of 2027.  A little more: Six out of seven companies successfully completed sea trials for phase one of the Navy’s MUSV program. The three that didn’t get production contracts but had successful trials—Leidos, PacMar Technologies, and Sea Machines—“will automatically transfer into the marketplace and be eligible as part of phase two,” which will have broader requirements, Christopher Miller, the Navy’s acting direct reporting portfolio manager for robotic and autonomous systems, told reporters. Birdon participated in the trials and did not meet the program requirements but has a “viable path” to joining the drone marketplace in the future, he said. Pulling up: The MUSV program has been through a lot of changes in the last year (including a lawsuit.) But the more interesting part for me is what could come out of phase two, where other services, like the Army, can share requirements they have. This could have big implications for the Indo-Pacom region, and is something USARPAC commander Gen. Ronald Clark highlighted earlier this year.  “The Army has a mission, and they actually operate a number of ships. And I think theres a great opportunity here…and were just trying to make sure everybody sees the state of the market in terms of the capability, what the performance is. And then well obviously work closely on the requirements,” Miller told reporters. “But Im excited about that because I do think theres opportunity for a close collaboration and partnering with the other services as they think about their future programs.”  Phase 2 is expected to start testing evaluations as early as Nov. 16 and continue over the next five years. Related tangent: Defense tech darling Saronic broke ground on its much-anticipated Port Alpha facility in Brownsville, Texas, today. Vice President JD Vance attended the event. Also, earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the company’s Austin facility, praising the company’s USVs for aiding in the rescue of downed Apache pilots.  Making moves + other news Michael Brasseur joined Booz Allen Hamilton as an executive vice president. Brasseur was previously Saab, Inc.’s chief strategy officer and led the Navy’s Task Force 59.  Dronemaker Powerus is expected to go public Oct. 1 as it finalizes its merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. The new company name will be Powerus Corporation.  The FBI shut down an investigation into defense contractors’ alleged bribes to lawmakers, ProPublica reports. Time is the real constraint the defense industrial base has to contend with, Seurat Technologies’ CEO James Demuth writes in Defense One.  Boeing snags a multibillion-dollar deal to build the Navy’s next generation fighter, F/A-XX. The Navy partially accepted the future USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier.  SpaceX launched a really big rocket and ended the flight test early.  One last thing: Happy New Fiscal Year’s Eve to all who celebrate! Out with the old and in with the new—err, continuing resolution. ]]

[Category: Business]

— Pentagon update on National Defense Strategy cites progress, omits key threats

 

at 9/29/26 10:41pm

The Pentagon’s latest report about its implementation of the National Defense Strategy notes progress on accelerating weapons production, cutting red tape, and persuading European governments to boost defense spending—but is light on problems such as Russia’s increasing aggression in Europe and the high cost of U.S. wars in the Middle East. The report to Congress, dated Sept. 22 but pushed out on Defense Department social media on Tuesday, argues that the Trump administration has made “significant progress implementing the 2026 National Defense Strategy’s guidance” in several areas. It cites a historically large budget request that includes funding for undersea forces, long-range air forces, long-range ground fires, and satellites for communication and intelligence; and $53 billion to accelerate the development of munitions.  The report arrives one day before Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s scheduled “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. He is likely to talk about some of the update’s key themes, according to one person familiar with the matter. The update cites progress made in the Golden Dome for America, or GDA, effort to build a continental defense against drones and missiles. “DoW has already conducted our first live-fire event, during which we successfully demonstrated key aspects of GDA command-and-control (C2) as well as integration of other key capabilities,” it says. The update says the Pentagon has worked with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission to ease the development and testing of counter-drone defenses. “We have created a first-of-its-kind process for the rapid coordination and safe incorporation of next generation C-UAS technology” into the National Airspace System, it says. The update touts the administration’s effort to persuade European allies to spend more on their militaries and contribute more to plans for the continent’s defense.  At least one alliance defense leader—Paweł Ksawery Zalewski, secretary of state at Poland’s Ministry of National Defence—has said the NATO 3.0 concept should not be misunderstood as a harbinger of a U.S. retreat from the alliance. “Polish armed forces and American armed forces have never been so close and so good and so deep as today,” Zalewski told a U.S. audience last week. But the report glosses over conditions that have worsened since the National Defense Strategy was published in January—in part, because of President Trump’s decision to start a war on Iran. For instance, while the NDS holds as a goal the replenishment of the U.S. arsenal, the new report doesn’t mention that Operation Epic Fury and other Middle East operations have set back that goal by “months and years,” as a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies put it in May. Nor does the report mention the NDS’ warning against “endless wars, regime change, and nation building”—the latter two being among the many justifications given by the Trump administration for its war on Iran.  It skips the fact that the NDS said regional allies should deter Iran and that it said further military action to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon would be unnecessary in the wake of June 2025’s “Midnight Hammer” bombing. Instead, the update asserts that the Defense Department “anticipated that such a need [for strikes against Iran’s nuclear program] might be forthcoming.” But perhaps the report’s most significant omission, which it shares with the NDS itself, concerns Russian actions: hybrid and kinetic action against NATO members, military assistance to Iran, and intensifying the war on Ukraine. Instead, the update notes that the United States reduced the number of manned brigade combat teams in Europe from “five to three, returning us to the level of BCTs in Europe in 2021.”  Max Bergmann and Otto Svendsen, writing for the Heinrich Böll Foundation on Sept. 24, say that “a potential U.S. force posture reduction in Europe will leave the continent vulnerable to further Russian aggression.” ]]

[Category: Threats]

— Army awards counterdrone contracts worth more than $4B

 

at 9/29/26 7:10pm

Military drone and counterdrone demand is booming amid a rush to spend funds before the end of the fiscal year—but the Pentagon’s drone marketplace is making it a little easier, defense officials said.  “These contracts are available to everybody. And so what weve seen across the department is a surge of end-of-year requests for procurement,” Brig. Gen. Matthew Ross, who leads the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401, told reporters Tuesday. “End-of-year spending is nothing new inside of the department, but when you have an available contract vehicle, it makes it really easy to execute. And so, weve seen that from across the services.”  The Army issued 10 indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts Tuesday with a total ceiling of $4.15 billion for systems to disable or destroy unmanned aerial drones, including command-and-control systems, sensors, and weapons. Seven companies received $500 million awards: Allen Control Systems, Digital Force Technologies, DroneShield, L3Harris WESCAM, Napatree Technology, RADA Technologies, and SRC.  Echodyne and PVP Advanced EO Systems received $250 million contracts, and SmartShooter received a $150 million contract. Only about $50 million was obligated at the time of award, the Army said.  But there’s room for more—up to $7 billion.  "As of today we have awarded over $5 billion, which includes previous contracts with [Aerovironment] and CACI, these 10 new IDIQs and others that we expect to sign before the end of next month. The $7 billion ceiling is in full effect today, and additional contracts will be pursued to get us to that point," Col. Tony Lindh, JIATF-401’s lead for rapid acquisitions, told reporters.  The new enterprise contracts reflect a new way of doing business for the Army, providing buyers more flexibility over time.  “These platforms are software-defined, hardware-enabled systems…so we have to be able to partner with industry and then hold them accountable over time,” said Ross, JIATF 401’s director.  The Army’s unmanned aerial systems marketplace has done about $800 million in transactions since it opened earlier this year, and the expectation is for counterdrone demand to follow a similar path—especially with allies and partners, said Brent Ingraham, who leads Army acquisitions.  “About 10 days ago, Australia successfully procured, in this case, it was a UAS off the drones.mil marketplace,” Ingraham told reporters. “We still have to use the [foreign military sales] process as we go through this marketplace. But…weve automated the tools on the back end.”  That means it now takes days from request to purchase instead of months or longer when an ally or partner nation wants to buy a system the U.S. has.  “When they see the U.S. military buying certain products, theyre all in,” Ingraham said. “And so this is a way to share those technologies, share what were doing,” and help smaller businesses “scale.” ]]

[Category: Business]

— The military may be top-heavy. Don't make things worse with hasty cuts.

 

at 9/29/26 6:31pm

News broke Tuesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is planning to order the elimination of one-fifth of the U.S. military’s general and flag billets. There is a legitimate case for examining whether the Armed Forces have have become too top-heavy. There is also a legitimate reason to be concerned about how reductions in the senior officer corps are carried out.  For more than 20 years, I worked as a federal contractor operating mission-critical facilities supporting the Defense Department, State Department, and federal law-enforcement agencies. That experience gave me an appreciation for something that can be difficult to quantify on an organizational chart: institutional knowledge. Large organizations accumulate layers of management. The military is not immune. Headquarters expand, responsibilities overlap, and positions created to meet one requirement sometimes remain long after circumstances change. Congress recognized this issue well before the current administration. In 2017, lawmakers reduced the authorized number of active-duty general and flag officer positions by about 11 percent. They also ordered a comprehensive look at whether another 10 percent of flag jobs might be cut, and if so, which ones. This is important context for todays debate: concern about “rank creep” did not suddenly appear in 2025, nor is questioning the number of generals and admirals inherently an attack on military leadership. It is a legitimate management and national-security question. But it is only the beginning of the analysis. [[Related Posts]] In May 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed a minimum 20 percent reduction in active-component four-star positions, a minimum 20 percent reduction in National Guard general officers, and an additional minimum 10 percent reduction in general and flag officers associated with restructuring the Unified Command Plan. That order came amid broader cuts to the defense civilian workforce, a campaign noted for a lack of planning and consequent disruption. Hegseth’s new order to cut 20 percent of general and flag billets reportedly comes with a similarly tight deadline: Jan. 1. The question Congress and the American public should be asking is not simply, "How many generals can we eliminate?" It should be: Which positions does the military need to accomplish its mission, and what happens when those positions and the officers who fill them disappear? There is an enormous difference between eliminating an unnecessary headquarters position and losing an experienced operational commander. There is a difference between removing a redundant layer of administration and disrupting the succession of officers being prepared for increasingly demanding commands. And there is a difference between making an organization leaner and simply making it smaller. The men and women who reach the senior ranks of our Armed Forces generally arrive there after decades of increasingly demanding assignments. The combined operational, technical, and institutional experience represented by those officers is an asset that cannot quickly or easily be replaced. That does not mean every general or admiral billet should be preserved. If a headquarters is unnecessary, eliminate it. If two commands unnecessarily duplicate one another, consolidate them. If a position no longer requires a general or flag officer, downgrade it. If layers of bureaucracy interfere with getting resources and authority to the people actually performing the mission, remove those layers. But make those decisions based upon the requirements of the mission—not simply the desire to achieve a predetermined percentage reduction. The same principle should apply farther down the ranks. A serious examination of military "rank creep" should not stop with four-star generals. Congress should examine the entire personnel structure and determine whether the balance among general and flag officers, field-grade officers, senior noncommissioned officers, and the junior enlisted personnel who perform much of the militarys day-to-day operational work remains appropriate for todays force. The answer may differ considerably among the services. A Navy built around technologically complex ships, submarines and aviation cannot necessarily be evaluated using the same personnel ratios as an Army ground formation. Cyber, space, intelligence and nuclear missions also require experienced technical personnel. That is precisely why percentage reductions alone are an inadequate substitute for manpower analysis. There is another consequence that deserves attention: the effect on the officers who remain. If capable and deserving officers come to believe that opportunities for advancement are disappearing for reasons unrelated to their performance, qualifications or the needs of the service, the consequences can extend far beyond the officers whose promotions are affected. It can influence retention, morale and the willingness of talented younger officers to commit their careers to military service. Promotion and command decisions should be based upon merit and military requirements, without regard to sex, ethnicity or orientation. The objective should be straightforward: identify and advance the most capable people required to defend the country. Congress therefore has an important oversight responsibility. It should determine which senior positions are actually being eliminated, which are merely being left vacant or reassigned, whether the positions involve administrative or operational responsibilities, what effect the changes have on succession and readiness, and how todays reductions compare with the reforms Congress itself initiated nearly a decade ago. Lawmakers should also ask a deceptively simple question: Did the FY2017 reforms work? If Congress previously ordered substantial reductions and todays Defense Department again concludes that the senior ranks are excessive, policymakers should understand why. Were the earlier reductions implemented as intended? Did new headquarters and billets subsequently replace those eliminated? Did missions change? Or does the underlying personnel system itself encourage rank growth? Those answers matter. We should streamline the military where the evidence supports doing so. Every dollar and every billet consumed by unnecessary overhead is a resource unavailable to the warfighter. But efficiency cannot be measured simply by counting how many stars have disappeared from an organizational chart. We should not endeavor to achieve a managerial statistic by dulling the point of the spear and sacrificing the careers of dedicated members of our Armed Forces. James Jacobson spent more than 20 years as a federal contractor operating mission-critical facilities supporting the Department of Defense, Department of State, and federal law-enforcement agencies. He lives in Naples, Florida. ]]

[Category: Ideas]

— White House unveils ‘super intelligence’ executive order and industry accord

 

at 9/29/26 5:20pm

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday instructing agencies to refer to artificial intelligence as “super intelligence” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory documents.  The order gives the assistant to the president for science and technology 60 days to submit, in consultation with agency heads, proposed legislative language establishing a definition for super intelligence, or SI.  That assessment will include whether SI should modify, expand upon or supersede the legal definition of AI. Trump unveiled the term “super intelligence” last week at the United Nations General Assembly and teased that it would become federal policy at a launch event for America.gov on Tuesday. The order came hours after Trump and top administration officials met at the White House to discuss AI safety. During the meeting, leaders of major technology companies signed an accord on frontier model safety. AI safety “starts with every company that is training and deploying frontier models having robust internal processes and controls to ensure that their technology behaves as intended and that any issues are promptly identified and resolved,” according to a copy of the accord. The document says a participating company will have four layers of controls and audits: “robust internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of its models during training and deployment around areas like cybersecurity,” an internal team to oversee controls, partnerships with independent external auditors and a designated independent committee to oversee reports from internal teams and external auditors. The accord was signed by Trump, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, xAI CEO Elon Musk and NVIDIA President and CEO Jensen Huang. “We agreed to a number of things that include joint monitoring, board special committees, just generally grading each other’s homework,” Musk said at the America.gov launch event Tuesday afternoon. The accord and AI rebranding come just months after an OpenAI model escaped its testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face. The accord also comes as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continue to fight over new measures to ensure AI products are safe. Vice President JD Vance also delivered remarks Tuesday afternoon where he defended the administration’s preference for working with, rather than regulating, top AI companies. “The solution to some of the AI risks is for you guys to take the risk seriously, not to come to the government for a regulatory regime that may make things worse if it’s not smart and careful,” Vance added.  But Vance threw cold water on proposals to create a Food and Drug Administration- or Federal Aviation Administration-style regulatory body to oversee frontier models.  “The problem with that is one you have to get regulators who are actually smart about what’s going on and most bureaucrats just know way less about this than the people who are actually building these products,” Vance said. The vice president argued that the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department already have the authority to hold AI developers responsible for creating products that harm consumers. ]]

[Category: Policy]

— After 40 days of combat, Navy destroyer returns home

 

at 9/29/26 11:38am

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii—Some 300 days after leaving Hawaii, the guided-missile destroyer Frank E. Petersen Jr. was welcomed home Monday with delighted cheers, jangling cowbells, handmade posters, and fresh flower leis.   The ship—part of the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group—did 40 days of combat operations and spent six months in an active combat zone. It started its deployment in December with operations in the South China Sea, but in late January was redirected to the Middle East, shortly before President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury. The Petersen took part in the war’s initial strikes on Iran, firing Tomahawk missiles at land targets on Feb. 28. Then, as the strike group’s air and missile defense commander, the destroyer warded off more than 100 Iranian missiles and drones launched against its group and other ships in the region. We made sure that we kept dozens of ships safe against a variety of different attacks—missile attacks, drone attacks,” said Capt. Casey Mahon, the ship’s commander.  The destroyer, commissioned in 2022, sailed more than 85,000 nautical miles during the deployment and conducted 45 replenishments at sea. At one point, the ship spent 106 days at sea between port calls, Mahon said. It also was the first ship to enter the Strait of Hormuz after the end of major combat operations, he said, which was “quite a voyage.” “Obviously there was stress we had to face when we did that…on the sea, under the sea, and in the air.”  Though some of the adversary technology the crew faced was new, he said, “air defense really hasn’t changed a lot of ways since World War II: You have a radar, you find the thing, you’ve got to track it.” Still, “how these things fly, how they do their missions are very different, and so the crew showed a lot of adaptability to that,” and the ship’s systems were also “very effective in that adaptability.” The Petersen learned lessons both in “how to stay at sea for a long time” and in how to defend against new tactics, Mahon said, and has passed on those lessons to other ships that are in the region now. “Like any good Navy ship, you know, you’re ready for that next mission,” Mahon said. “It wasn’t what we expected to happen on deployment, but for the crew, you know, whether you’re in the north Arabian Sea or the South China Sea, you’re at sea, and so we do the operations that we’re directed to do.” Clutching ti leaf lei as she waited on the pier with her two children, Alysha Nishikawa said she was worried at times during the deployment, but she tried to “throw out positive energy” to her husband and reassure him that they were OK so he could continue to do his job. Petty Officer 1st Class Ryhean Tucker, who was one of the first sailors to reunite with his family as the recipient of the “first kiss,” said the deployment was “stressful” and challenging. His wife, Taylor Tucker, said it was also challenging for her, taking care of their two children and moving from Virginia to Hawaii. “It was a big job, but we did it,” she said. ]]

[Category: Threats]

As of 10/13/26 6:45am. Last new 10/12/26 9:42pm.