By comparison, the Army had 10 mishaps and 14 fatalities for all fiscal 2023. The current number of mishaps is equal to or higher than the total annual mishaps reported each year since fiscal 2016, according to Army Combat Readiness Center data.

“Over the first six months of this fiscal year we’ve seen a troubling trend with our accident rates,” Maj. Gen. Walter Rugen, director of Army aviation said on a call with reporters Wednesday. “And certainly, any loss of life is 100% unacceptable and obviously when we have [an] accident where we lose the aircraft or severely damage the aircraft, we consider that unacceptable too.”

Army endures third Apache mishap in two months

The Army defines a Class A mishap as any that results in the loss of life or the loss of equipment totaling more than $2.5 million. The service tracks the rate of Class A mishaps per 100,000 flight hours. The current rate is 3.22, more than double the highest rate of any entire fiscal year in more than a decade, according to readiness center data.

During the “safety stand up” as opposed to a stand down, Army aviation will continue its normal operations, Rugen said. Commanders have asked for flexibility in providing the training.

“A stand up is more empowering,” he said. “We have ongoing operations that are critical that we complete. We want to empower the force at the lowest level to solve these problems.”

The training will target three broad areas, Rugen said. Decision makers, such as unit commanders, will focus on risk management and mitigation for aviation training and operations. At the operational level, the focus will target power management and spatial disorientation. Maintainers will review maintenance standards for aircraft repairs and safety checks.

“Spatial disorientation has been a trend,” Rugen said. “We get into aspects of flight where the crew must reinforce knowing where you are and where your aircraft is with respect to the ground.”

With the power management aspects, Rugen said aviators will reinforce measures taken regarding flight altitudes, higher temperatures and wind conditions.

Rugen and Brig. Gen. Jonathan Byrom, the readiness center director, did not share more specific information on causes of recent crashes or any training changes.

Aviation experts from Fort Novosel, Alabama, home to the Aviation Center of Excellence and the Army Combat Readiness Center, will visit aviation units across the service to work with units conducting the training.

A March 25 crash involving an AH-64E Apache helicopter at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington was the third Apache mishap in two months. That incident resulted in two soldiers injured.

In February, there were two separate Army National Guard Apache crashes, one in Mississippi resulting in the death of two pilots, the other in Utah, which was not fatal.

That pair of crashes prompted a Guard safety stand down.

In April 2023, the service grounded its entire helicopter fleet following a double Apache crash in Alaska that killed three, a March collision between two Black Hawk helicopters that killed nine in Kentucky and a February Guard Black Hawk crash that killed two in Alabama.

Five of the 12 incidents this fiscal year remain under investigation. Mishaps in which the investigations have concluded will be used in classified briefings in the training.

“The focus is to learn from those, so we don’t repeat any of the problems we had in the past,” Byrom said.

Officials issued the safety order Wednesday morning. Active duty aviators and aviation maintainers will conduct four to six hours of training by May 10. The Guard and Reserve components have 60 days to complete the training.

Frank Kendall told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense the cost decline shows the negotiations are “going in the right direction.”

He declined to discuss upcoming milestones for the B-21 in the hearing on the department’s proposed fiscal 2025 budget, citing the secretive program’s high levels of classification.

When the first B-21 was unveiled to the public in December 2022, the Air Force said it was staying under its inflation-adjusted average procurement unit cost of $692 million. An Air Force spokesperson on Tuesday declined to say what the bomber’s unit costs are now, citing its classification.

The spokesperson said the Air Force’s procurement budget for the B-21 in fiscal 2025 was adjusted to take into account the favorable negotiations on low-rate initial production prices. The service said neither the program’s quantities nor scope were adjusted.

Northrop Grumman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kendall’s remarks. The company reported a nearly $1.6 billion charge on the B-21 in the last quarter of 2023, citing rising production costs and macroeconomic disruptions. This came after chief executive Kathy Warden warned investors several times last year Northrop Grumman could lose money at first on the program.

As the B-21′s development continues and moves into low-rate initial production, the Air Force is trying to make sure it plans for all aspects of the program, Kendall said, not just getting the aircraft itself ready. That includes building the facilities needed to operate and maintain it, training the pilots and other airmen who will work on it and setting up simulators.

“I’ve seen programs get into trouble because there was too much focus on the platform and not enough on all the things that are necessary to support it,” Kendall said. “Hopefully, we will have avoided that in the case of the B-21.”

Meanwhile, the recapitalization of another key portion of the United States’ nuclear triad, the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, is not seeing the same cost decline. The expected price tag of the Sentinel program has grown at least 37%, largely due to the massively complex construction projects it will require. It is now expected to cost more than $130 billion.

The Sentinel cost growth has triggered a process known as a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach, and the Defense Department is now reviewing the program to find a way to restructure it and bring its price under control. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin said Tuesday the Pentagon’s decision on the Sentinel review will likely come in July.

A Nunn-McCurdy review process can also lead to a program being canceled, but top Air Force officials have repeatedly said the Sentinel — slated to replace the aging, Cold War-era LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM — is too important to cancel.

Allvin said the service remains committed to recapitalizing its ICBM program. Land-based nuclear missiles allow a quicker response than the military’s nuclear bombers and submarines and have “a great deterrence effect,” he said.

“We’re supporting [the review process] with facts and data,” Allvin said. “Regardless of what the outcome of that committee [is], we will ensure we have a safe and reliable and effective [nuclear] triad in the future.”

The Air Force has taken steps to improve the structure of the Sentinel program, including by putting a two-star general in charge as program executive officer for ICBMs, Allvin said.

And other parts of the Air Force’s modernization efforts — namely its plans for next-generation tankers and transport planes — are likely to take a back seat to its efforts to recapitalize its nuclear bombers and ICBMs, another top official said Tuesday.

If nuclear modernization gets delayed, said Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, that could have ripple effects — potentially including major service life extensions of older mobility aircraft.

“I don’t view it as realistic to see a next-gen tanker or a next-gen airlifter … until after the nuclear bow wave,” Moore said at an Air and Space Forces Association discussion. “And if that nuclear bow wave pushes out, I think there’s a possibility — just from a reality perspective — that it will push recapitalization of the remainder of the mobility fleet out.”

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told senators on Tuesday at a hearing on the service’s 2025 budget that he will enter the cockpit of one of the F-16s that the service has converted for drone flight to see for himself how it performs in the air.

“There will be a pilot with me who will just be watching, as I will be, as the autonomous technology works,” Kendall told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel. “Hopefully neither he or I will be needed to fly the airplane.”

Drone warfare has quickly expanded from the sidelines of combat to one of its primary weapons. Drones are a daily threat in Ukraine and in the Middle East. In Ukraine, everyday citizens are targeted by Russian drones but also are assembling drones to collect video of Russian positions. In the Middle East, Iranian-backed Houthis and militant groups have regularly employed sophisticated air, sea and underwater drones to target U.S. bases and commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The Air Force began planning for its fleet of collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs, several years ago, and it envisions a scenario in which one piloted jet will be able to quarterback multiple AI-driven, responsive drones, which the service calls “loyal wingmen.”

The service has been tight-lipped on what the fleet of drones will look like in size or platform, whether they will be full-size warplanes or something smaller. Kendall said the converted F-16 test flight will be done for him to observe the technology behind the future fleet.

The fleet is being designed specifically with future warfare, and potentially a conflict with China, in mind. China has rapidly modernized its anti-access capabilities as more sophisticated air defense systems make it risky to send manned crews too close. Drone aircraft could augment the service’s ability to breach those defenses, and they are envisioned to provide support in a variety of future missions such as surveillance or jamming.

“The initial role for the aircraft was going to be counter-air, but it will have the potential to do other things,” Kendall said.

The drone fleet is also expected to be cheaper than developing new manned jets, Kendall said. The current goal is to have each cost about a quarter to a third of what an F-35 fighter costs now, or about $20 million apiece.

The Labor-led government’s broad-ranging LTDP, announced at a news conference in Oslo on April 5, proposes a record-breaking increase in capital investments for national defense that project $60 billion in spending in the 12 year period up to 2036.

A critical feature in the LTDP raises spending and financial benefits across all branches of the Norwegian Defense Forces. The plan will strengthen the NDF’s manpower while significantly enhancing its air-defenses and capabilities to better defend its High North borders with Russia in collaboration with NATO forces, including Nordic neighbors, and new Alliance members, Sweden and Finland.

Higher levels of funding in the LTDP are directed at improving the NDF’s situational awareness capabilities by building its surveillance, presence, and control assets across the High North and in strategic neighborhood areas in the Nordic region. The NDF aims to achieve superior situational awareness through an integrated plan comprising the use of new specialist surveillance vessels and the expansion of satellite and drone capabilities.

“The most fundamental task this government has is to provide security for the people of Norway. We need a defense that is fit for purpose in the emerging security environment. This plan represents a historic boost in defense spending and it will entail a major strengthening of all branches of the Armed Forces,” said Støre.

If achieved, and the LTDP meets all set targets, the expectation is that Norway’s annual defense budget, measured in real terms, will double from its 2024 level of $8.75 billion to over $17 billion by 2036.

The key funding proposals in the LTDP also cover the replenishment of military stocks shipped to help Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Norway has provided Ukraine with over $2 billion in military hardware and humanitarian aid. In 2023 alone, Norway provided $1 billion in military support under the Nansen Support Program, including NASAMS air defence systems.

The procurement elements in the LTDP are pivotal to Norway’s national defense strengthening goals. As a result, the acquisition of new frigates, submarines and surface vessels for the Navy is being prioritized.

Air defense

The procurement plan comprises an advanced air-defense solution to include the country’s first long-range air defense system. The NDF’s Army branch will be expanded from one to three brigades. The Home Guard, the NDF’s rapid mobilization force, will be increased from around 40,000 personnel at present to 45,000 combat-ready soldiers.

Norway aims to reconstruct its military to give it a sharper focus on dealing with active conflict prevention, said Bjørn Arild Gram, Norway’s defense minister.

“Our better resourced military must be able to deal with active conflict prevention every day and stand ready to handle conflict. Increased activity requires more personnel. In total our Armed Forces will be strengthened with over 20,000 conscripted soldiers, civilian employees and reservists,” Gram said.

For the LTDP to succeed, said Gram, the key proposals in the plan will need to be implemented simultaneously to address critical deficiencies in present day national defense structures and capabilities.

“Norway must invest in infrastructure, not just for today’s defense but also for a defense that is set for growth. We need to bolster educational capacity to meet the need for more personnel. We must also allocate sufficient funds to replenish our emergency stockpiles. This is essential to avoid ending up with an imbalanced force structure, where vessels are docked, and aircraft are parked,” Gram said.

The LTDP requires a rapid elevation in force strength across all branches of the NDF. To the end, the plan aims to increase the number of conscripts and reservists by 4,600 and 13,700 respectively. The number of support civilian personnel is projected to grow by 4,600 with a special focus on hiring talent with specialized technology skills.

The prioritized Naval strengthening program aims to deliver five to six new frigates, with onboard anti-submarine helicopters, in addition to a minimum of five new submarines. Norway is acquiring the Type 212CD submarine, which is being built under a German-Norwegian strategic partnership that will deliver the T212CDs to both navies.

Along with the procurement of surface ships, the frigate and submarine elements of the LTDP represents the largest capital investment by any Norwegian government in to the strengthening of the Royal Norwegian Navy’s ability to protect the country’s extensive territorial Arctic and sub-arctic waters against prevailing threats.

The scope in ambition of the LTDP is evidenced in Norway’s decision to procure a long-range air defense system to upgrade the NDF’s ability to defend against short-range ballistic missile threats. Moreover, Norway plans to double the quantity of the existing NASAMS air defense which is set to be updated to deliver a higher level of protection against drones and missiles.

The LTDP recognizes the importance of Nato and neighboring Nordic Alliance states Denmark, Sweden and Finland to the long-term security of Norway. Nato’s continuing presence, said Gram, is fundamental to supporting “stability and guaranteeing peace” in the Nordic and Baltic regions.

“Finland’s and Sweden’s recent membership of Nato strengthens security in our region. It also presents Norway with new obligations. We must rapidly transform from not just a receiving country of Allied reinforcements but also a transit and contributing ally to the defense and security of the entire Nordic and Baltic regions,” Gram said.

In January 2020, Poland signed a contract worth $4.6 billion under which the country is to receive 32 F-35A Lightning II jets from the United States. Warsaw aims to replace the Polish Air Force’s outdated Soviet-designed Sukhoi Su-22 and Mikoyan MiG-29 jets with new fifth-generation jets, adding the aircraft to its fleet of F-16 C/D Block 52+ fighters and FA-50 light attack aircraft.

The nation is poised to become the first user of the Lockheed Martin-made jet in the region, with Romania and the Czech Republic following suit. Deliveries of the F-35s for Poland are scheduled to begin in 2024. The Polish Ministry of National Defence says that the deal is on track.

“The implementation of the contract for the purchase of 32 F-35 fighters is proceeding in line with the schedule. The first six of the ordered F-35A aircraft will be delivered to a U.S. air base in the years 2024 to 2025, and they will be used to train Polish pilots,” a spokesperson for the ministry told Defense News.

“The new fighters will arrive to Poland in 2026, and they will continue to be delivered until 2030 in batches of between four and six units per year,” according to the spokesperson.

UK expects ‘short-term’ delays in F-35 deliveries

Meanwhile, as Poland is awaiting the first of its ordered F-35 jets, Warsaw is considering to further expand its combat aircraft fleet with a purchase of 32 additional fighters of a yet undetermined type, as suggested by local defense decision-makers.

Polish Air Force officials have expressed interest in securing air superiority aircraft that could counter Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter bombers and Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets. This suggests that the front runners for a potential order would include the Eurofighter Typhoon, produced by a European consortium jointly operated by Airbus, BAE Systems UK, and Italy’s Leonardo, and the F-15EX Eagle II, manufactured by Boeing.

However, a third option could consist of expanding Poland’s F-35 order and purchasing more jets from Lockheed Martin. Recent statements by local government officials indicate that all options are on the table, but budget constraints will affect the final decision.

“We want to modernize the Polish military, this is our program,” Polish Deputy Defence Minister Paweł Zalewski told local broadcaster Radio Poland in a Feb. 13 interview, vowing to continue the previous government’s thrust.

Asked whether the defense ministry was considering to increase its F-35 order, Zalewski replied that “we will see what will be the offer. For now, we cannot rule out anything, but we would like these aircraft to arrive to Poland as soon as possible.”

As for Italy, the country has received 24 of the 90 fighter jets ordered from the United States. The Italian Air Force already has deployed the F-35s to carry out air-policing missions over the Baltic Sea and the northern Atlantic Ocean.

Rome believes that the issues related to Lockheed’s Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, which is a batch of hardware and software upgrades to the latest variant of the F-35, will not prevent the country’s military from performing its operations as planned.

“The Italian Air Force is following the TR-3 development and release very closely because of the capabilities it will introduce, which are vital to cope with advanced threats,” a spokesperson for the Italian air service told Defense News.

“However, its delay, if not further extended considerably, does not preclude the Italian Air Force to execute the assigned mission within the operating domains,” the spokesperson said.

Tom Kington reported from Rome.

The Air Force recently finished the initial operational test and evaluation phase for the Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System, or EPAWSS, BAE Systems said Tuesday. BAE builds EPAWSS, which provides electronic warfare capabilities for the F-15E Strike Eagle and F-15EX Eagle II fighters.

EPAWSS is a more advanced electronic warfare system than F-15s have had in the past, and BAE says it will allow fighters to monitor, jam and deceive threats in highly contested environments. It provides radar warning, geolocation, situational awareness and self-defense capabilities, allowing a fighter to maneuver more deeply and freely in enemy territory and counter air defense systems.

The advanced EW system was initially only a central component of the F-15EX. But the Air Force, F-15 manufacturer Boeing and BAE are now expanding it into dozens of F-15Es, following Boeing’s award of a $293 million contract to BAE in September 2022.

“EPAWSS is a leap in technology, improving the lethality and combat capabilities of the F-15E and F-15EX in contested, degraded environments against advanced threats,” Maj. Bryant Baum, the system’s test director at the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center, said in the statement. “EPAWSS has set the baseline for EW within the fighter community.”

BAE said it’s working to help improve EPAWSS, including by using artificial intelligence in an approach known as cognitive electronic warfare.

EPAWSS’ cognitive EW capabilities were tested last May in the Air Force’s Northern Edge 2023 exercise in Alaska. During that exercise, two F-15EXs took part in 70 sorties that tested how quickly EPAWSS’s cognitive EW capaiblities can react to electromagnetic threats it had not previously encountered in a busy, unpredictable environment.

BAE said it updated the EPAWSS mission software during the exercise, which improved the jets’ ability to jam other aircraft and showed how quickly its programming can adapt to a

“Our close collaboration with the U.S. Air Force allows us to mature EPAWSS cognitive processing capabilities,” BAE program director Chip Mosle said in the statement. “By incrementally testing and fielding cognitive EW solutions to proven systems such as EPAWSS, we are enabling tactical spectrum overmatch against advanced threats that are unpredictable, evolving and adaptable.”

It’s coming from the rows of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets — and, increasingly, F-35C Joint Strike Fighters — on the flight line, going through routine maintenance before hitting the skies.

It’s also coming from the runway, as jets speed by with chest-rattling force as they return from practicing flight formations over the surrounding farmland.

It’s a reassuring sound to Navy leaders — a sign the squadrons’ maintainers and the depot artisans at Fleet Readiness Center West are turning jets around so pilots can get back in the air for training and deployment preparations.

But as the service’s F-35C fleet expands here in Lemoore, both the Navy and a government oversight group worry the Joint Strike Fighters aren’t available for missions often enough. And to make matters worse for the fleet, it’s costing more than expected to sustain the aircraft.

The Joint Strike Fighter program stands in contrast to most other military aircraft programs: Lockheed Martin plays an outsized role in jet readiness, with the company responsible for maintenance planning and management, distribution of repair parts and supplies, engineering, maintenance training, and more. The government’s F-35 Joint Program Office, or JPO, oversees the global fleet of F-35 jets and manages the facilities and people that support maintenance.

This leaves the services with little control over ensuring their own readiness. But the Joint Strike Fighter Wing in Lemoore, which oversees all Navy F-35Cs, is taking extra steps to directly improve readiness by drawing lessons from the service’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered the military branches to hit an 80% mission-capable rate for all fighters in fiscal 2019. With Super Hornet mission-capable rates barely above 50% for much of 2008 through 2018, the Navy kicked off a data-driven effort to analyze its processes, facilities, supply practices and more, dubbed Naval Sustainment System-Aviation. By the end of FY19, the service surpassed 80% and has sustained that readiness since.

Now, the Joint Strike Fighter Wing is working with its F-18 counterparts to adopt proven practices on operation-level maintenance to boost readiness and lower costs. As part of this effort, the Navy is particularly bolstering its data collection and communication efforts.

Those efforts are yielding results: The Navy’s F-35C community has higher readiness rates and fewer aircraft awaiting supply parts than the rest of the global F-35 fleet’s average, a service leader told Defense News.

That improvement on readiness and cost matters, given the threat of a high-end fight in the Pacific and mushrooming procurement costs.

“From a budget standpoint, it is simple economics: The more it costs to buy and maintain aircraft, the fewer we can procure in a tight fiscal environment and the more onerous it will be to repair them,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Defense News.

“We also cannot go to war, especially against an adversary with advanced [anti-access/area-denial] capabilities, without our most advanced fifth-generation aircraft,” he added.

Slow repair times, lower aircraft readiness

In a September report, the Government Accountability Office detailed the failures in Joint Strike Fighter maintenance and availability of spare parts.

The watchdog’s report noted that in March 2023, 55% of planes were considered mission capable, meaning they were able to fly and conduct at least some warfighting missions. It attributed this low readiness to maintenance challenges at the squadron and depot levels.

The report detailed the unique maintenance setup: Other programs like the Navy’s Super Hornets are repaired through operational-level maintenance by squadrons, intermediate-level work by the Navy’s fleet readiness centers located at the jet bases, and depot-level work at select fleet readiness centers.

But the F-35 program does not include any intermediate-level maintenance; instead squadrons must undertake more work on the flight line with help from contractors, while farming out more work to industry at depot locations and at the original builder’s facilities.

In the case of the Super Hornet, the Navy controls all three levels of maintenance and signs its own contracts for support and parts. In contrast, the F-35 program gives significant responsibility to manufacturer Lockheed Martin and to the Joint Program Office, leaving the services with little ability to change or improve the supply system and contractor-led maintenance.

At the operational level, the GAO report noted, squadrons lack some technical data and training experience needed to efficiently conduct maintenance — a challenge that will only grow if the JPO decides to shift more work from industry to the services by adding intermediate-level maintenance to the plan.

At the depots, it noted the JPO is now 12 years behind schedule in standing up some of its repair capabilities, or “workloads.” As of last spring, 44 of 68 workloads were activated.

“Delays in standing up the F-35 program’s depot repair capacity has had several effects, including slow repair times, a growing backlog of components needing repair, and lower aircraft readiness,” the report found.

GAO projects the total fleet’s mission-capable rate could have been at 65% instead of 55% last spring if not for the lack of depot repair capacity.

The lack of depot capacity is also increasing the cost.

With the depots now facing a backlog of 10,000 components to repair, “the F-35 Joint Program Office has purchased new parts instead of repairing the parts it already has in inventory. According to [Department of Defense] officials, this is a practice that program officials do not believe is a sustainable solution.”

Those officials said the approach keeps the aircraft flying, but it results in “higher sustainment costs because buying new parts generally costs more than repairing existing parts.”

Hard-earned lessons from the F-18

In remote Lemoore — where fighter jet squadrons are based a six-hour drive from the admirals in San Diego and a six-hour flight from the JPO in Arlington, Virginia — the captains are in charge.

Joint Strike Fighter Wing Commodore Capt. Barrett Smith and Strike Fighter Wing Pacific Commodore Capt. Michael Stokes are part of a “council of captains” that work together to manage aircraft readiness, facilities, personnel and families at Lemoore.

Smith and Stokes leveraged this close collaboration to boost the Joint Strike Fighter Wing’s primary contribution to F-35C readiness: operational-level maintenance performed by each squadron.

Stokes said the Navy in 2018 brought in the Boston Consulting Group to make recommendations as part of the effort to get F-18s to an 80% mission-capable rate.

He said one of the most consequential results was the creation of the Maintenance Operations Center, which monitors aircraft status daily. The center uses that data to prioritize distribution of parts, provide technical assistance, and identify potential broader changes to boost readiness or reduce cost.

Smith said the F-35C joined the center in October 2022 as part of its own effort to boost the readiness of its planes.

This data can point to problems in real time — for example, a supply issue that’s holding up several planes in a single squadron that has a major exercise coming up — and can also reveal trends over time that might make a squadron reconsider its workflow or whether maintainers need additional training, Smith said.

Stokes said one seemingly simple change recommended by the Boston Consulting Group was to put a whiteboard by each aircraft undergoing maintenance in the squadron hangar or down the road at Fleet Readiness Center West. Each whiteboard would note “the lead person and all of the outstanding items so you can see it in front of that aircraft,” he said.

The two say these practices are yielding results.

On a Feb. 15 visit by Defense News, the Navy had 347 mission-capable Super Hornets, well above the Navy’s requirement to maintain a monthly average of 333.

(The Navy previously had a goal of 341 and then 360 mission-capable Super Hornets, to reflect Mattis’ 80% goal. The inventory of Super Hornets is smaller today, as some squadrons have transitioned to the F-35C. Stokes said the 333-plane goal still equates to an approximately 80% mission-capable rate.)

On the Joint Strike Fighter side, the F-35 JPO wants to see 64% of its planes mission capable, 21% non-mission capable due to waiting on supply parts, and 15% non-mission capable due to waiting on maintainers to do a job. Those numbers will eventually shift to have more planes ready and fewer planes waiting on parts and maintenance work.

Smith’s fleet of Navy F-35Cs is already beating those goals. He told Defense News his wing already surpassed the 64% mission-capable goal. In addition, it’s had a non-mission-capable maintenance rate — the only rate the wing can truly affect on its own — below 15% from January 2023 through March 2024.

‘Ebbs and flows’

Even as Smith and his Joint Strike Fighter Wing do what they can from Lemoore to boost readiness, some things are out of their hands.

Smith is stymied by the same parts challenges outlined in the GAO report.

“Parts availability ebbs and flows,” he said. However, the JPO has a Lightning Sustainment Center with a Navy representative on staff, who Smith can call when there’s a delay in getting a needed part flown to Lemoore.

To increase communication, Smith said that Lightning Sustainment Center representative also sits in on Maintenance Operations Center meetings. He noted cross-community meetings were a big part of the 2018 Naval Sustainment System-Aviation reforms.

Warren Scovell, the director of fleet readiness at the F-35 Joint Program Office, said the organization is closely tracking feedback regarding which parts cause the biggest headaches for the fleet.

The JPO had a top 10 list of readiness degraders, which was later expanded to 20 and then 40. Over the last year, Scovell said, the office eliminated 13 of the top 20 degraders — in many cases, replacing parts with more reliable ones that won’t break as often and therefore won’t be such a drag on the supply system.

Though some parts have remained thornier than others — Defense News reported last year canopies and the electro-optical distributed aperture system were two tough ones that affected all three models of the F-35 jet — Scovell said the fleet can get down to the goal of 21% non-mission capable supply by the end of this year, and then reduce that even further. That rate shows how many planes are down while awaiting supply parts.

Asked if that would drive down cost, he replied: “Absolutely yes.”

“The No. 1 focus is always to keep parts on wing longer. So whenever you can do that, you will absolutely drive down cost,” he added.

Similarly, Smith and the head of Fleet Readiness Center West, Capt. Joseph Hidalgo, agree they’d like the center to perform intermediate maintenance on F-35s instead of outsourcing that to industry. However, that’s up to the JPO.

In the meantime, Smith is trying to apply Naval Sustainment System-Aviation principles to monitoring depot performance data, if only to demonstrate to the JPO what the Navy is experiencing at industry-led depot availabilities and how it affects F-35C readiness.

Scovell said the JPO is working on a new sustainment strategy that would move more work away from industry and to the services. He said that effort is ongoing and declined to provide a timeline for its release, but noted it would allow fleet readiness centers to play a bigger role in F-35 sustainment, including uniformed personnel conducting more maintenance and the services buying their own spare parts.

In a statement, Lockheed Martin said it stands “ready to partner with the government as plans are created for the future of F-35 sustainment.” The company noted it is working with the government to “accelerate depot activations to increase repair capacity” and said that since 2015, the firm has lowered its portion of the F-35′s cost per flight hour by 50%.

Keeping costs low

The naval aviation budget is tight this year and expected to remain that way.

In fiscal 2025, the Navy asked for 13 F-35C jets, down from a recent 19-per-year rate to reflect congressionally imposed spending caps. That number is expected to grow as high as 24 jets a year later this decade — but that comes as aviation procurement needs will balloon by 34%, ship procurement 35%, and weapons procurement 71% in the coming years, according to Navy FY25 budget materials.

It’s unclear if the Navy will be able to secure that kind of funding to grow its fleet. And even if it does, it then has to pay to sustain the new platforms.

“The entire naval aviation enterprise is acutely aware of the burgeoning costs required to sustain air operations and remains focused on increasing lethality and readiness through process improvement and driving efficiency at all levels of the organization,” according to a Navy budget document.

When F-35C sustainment overruns its estimates, the Navy has to reconsider the whole portfolio.

“There is not a single bill-payer for higher-than-expected F-35C maintenance costs. The Navy evaluates cost increases through the lens of the larger Navy priorities and balances the budget in accordance with strategic guidance; this can result in reductions in other areas of the budget,” a Navy spokesperson told Defense News.

The spokesperson noted the cost per tail to operate the F-35C has decreased as the aircraft inventory grows, and that both the JPO and naval squadrons are finding ways to improve performance and lower cost.

Stokes and Smith said they are seeking to minimize mishaps: engines sucking up debris that damages them from the inside, crew damaging planes while towing them, canopies being scraped during operations and more. When they can avoid these mishaps, they pay less to repair the damage.

Hidalgo and Smith are closely monitoring F-35C corrosion and looking to take early intervention steps, after corrosion proved to be a costly challenge with the Super Hornets and the legacy Hornets before them.

Scovell said the JPO is about 90% complete in writing a structural repair manual to send to squadrons so they can do more of their own maintenance on the flight line. He said the squadrons doing this work themselves would be faster and cheaper than waiting on contractor maintenance.

Wittman, who also chairs the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, said the Navy and Air Force are now turning to unmanned wingmen — also known as collaborative combat aircraft — to achieve “affordable capacity” in tight budgets.

He said the U.S. military cannot afford — monetarily or operationally — to lose out on F-35 readiness.

“The combined force in the Indo-Pacific will rely on F-35s in a near-peer fight: South Korea, Japan and Australia all operate the aircraft,” he noted. “Losing that capability from readiness delays, or not achieving the required aircraft capacity due to cost overruns, will inevitably hamper our ability to respond to threats and aggression in the region.”

Wittman also said he hopes the services learn from the F-35′s cost and readiness challenges when pursuing future programs.

“Contractor-led sustainment of the aircraft will eventually phase out in the coming years as it transitions to service-led governance,” he said. “Although contractor-led sustainment was the primary acquisition strategy initially, we are watching setbacks of that original acquisition sustainment strategy play out in real time.”

Correction: A previous version of this story erroneously described the meaning of the bar graphs. Their respective captions have been updated.

The arrival of the F-16s marks the service’s biggest step forward yet in standing up the program known as Venom, which stands for Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model-Autonomy Flying Testbed and aims to speed up the testing of autonomous technology on both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

The Air Force hopes the autonomous technology tested under Venom could help it more quickly shape plans to create a fleet of self-flying drones that team up with crewed fighters in battle, known as collaborative combat aircraft.

The service is heavily focusing on creating a fleet of at least 1,000 CCAs, which will use autonomous capabilities to fly alongside aircraft such as the F-35 or future Next-Generation Air Dominance family of fighter systems. These drone wingmen would carry missiles or other weapons to strike enemy targets, jam enemy signals through electronic warfare operations or perform reconnaissance missions.

The Air Force is increasingly confident autonomous capabilities have advanced to the point where such aircraft can succeed. But officials say there are still a lot of questions to answer about how the technology will work in action, which led the service to launch Project Venom with a nearly $50 million investment this year.

The service eventually plans to modify six F-16s to serve as test aircraft as part of Venom. It has requested another $7 million for the program in 2025, with the following years’ budgets ranging from $6.1 million to $6.6 million.

Maj. Ross Elder, the program’s developmental test lead, said in an Air Force statement Venom will represent a step toward “a new age of aviation.”

“The Venom program marks a pivotal chapter in the advancement of aerial combat capabilities,” he said.

The 96th Test Wing’s 40th Flight Test Squadron and 53rd Wing’s 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin will work together to carry out Venom’s developmental and operational testing.

“Having both [developmental test] and [operational test] pilots working and flying from the same location allows for daily collaboration and reduces the stovepiping of knowledge and lessons learned,” said Lt. Col. Jeremy Castor, who is in charge of Venom’s operational testing.

When Venom’s self-flying F-16s are ready, the Air Force will start testing them with human pilots in the cockpit. Those pilots will take off with the jets and fly them to a testing location, and then allow the autonomous programming to take over in midair. The pilots in the cockpit will keep track of the autonomous software to see whether it works as intended, and make sure all the test objectives are met.

Lt. Col. Joe Gagnon, squadron commander of the 85th, said a human will at all times be ready to start and stop the autonomous algorithms if needed.

“There will never be a time where the Venom aircraft will solely fly by itself without a human component,” he added.

The F-35 Joint Program Office confirmed in an email that the 2020 standoff restriction placed on the aircraft, officially called the Lightning II, was lifted on March 19. The news was first reported by Breaking Defense.

The military stopped F-35As from flying within 25 miles of lightning after a problem was discovered with its Onboard Inert Gas Generation System, or OBIGGS, which is meant to keep the jet safe from strikes. OBIGGS pumps nitrogen-enriched gas into the F-35′s fuel tank to render it inert, and keep the fuel tanks from exploding if struck by lightning.

In 2020, maintainers conducting depot maintenance on an F-35A at Hill Air Force Base in Utah found that one of the tubes that distributes the gas to the fuel tank was damaged. Subsequent inspections found problems with tubes in multiple other F-35s, and the military restricted it from flying near lightning until a fix could be developed.

F-35Bs and Cs were not affected by the lightning problem and did not have their flying restricted.

In a statement to Defense News, F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin said, “The F-35 remains the most capable aircraft in providing global 21st century security that protects the United States and our allies.” BAE Systems, which makes OBIGGS, was not immediately available to comment.

The JPO said the fix included “a more robust” design for the fighters’ OBIGGS hardware, as well as updates to its software. The modification was tested both in the lab and in flight. It credited government and industry engineers for finding a solution to the lightning restriction problem. The JPO declined to further detail how the system was fixed, or how many F-35As have been modified, due to operational security concerns.

“The fix restores operational capability, while providing additional safety for the pilots and aircraft,” the JPO said.

This story has been updated with a statement from Lockheed Martin.

The nearly $2.7 billion unfunded priorities list the Guard submitted to Congress asks for another $690 million to buy six more F-15EX Eagle IIs, and another $660 million for six more F-35A Joint Strike Fighters. The $1.35 billion price tag for the additional fighters makes up a little more than half of the National Guard’s unfunded priorities request.

The Air Force earlier this month released a proposed budget that called for buying 42 F-35As from Lockheed Martin and 18 F-15EXs from Boeing, a reduction of six each from what the service had originally projected it would buy. And the force said it planned to cap the total purchase of F-15EXs next year at 98, down from the 104 the service most recently expected to buy.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said before the budget release the service “had to make some hard choices” to fit within the spending caps set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act that Congress passed last year. As a result, the service cut its procurement spending by $1.6 billion and boosted its research, development, test and evaluation budget by a similar amount.

The Air Force also said the delay in the F-35 upgrades known as Technology Refresh 3 partly prompted it to dial back its fighter procurement.

The Air Force’s own unfunded priorities list did not ask for any additional fighters in FY25.

The National Guard said in its unfunded priorities list that boosting the F-35 purchase next year will allow the Air National Guard to finish building a sustainable fleet of five squadrons flying the advanced jet and increase its capacity in the Indo-Pacific region. It will also allow the Guard to finish standing up another training squadron to help pilots learn how to fly the F-35.

The Guard said the additional Eagle II fighters would let it finish building a fleet of three combat squadrons that fly F-15EXs and would maximize the defense-industrial base’s output of these jets.

The Guard also asked for another $288 million to buy more conformal fuel tanks for F-15EXs to extend their range and capability. The Air National Guard wants to have 54 conformal tanks total in its inventory.

Another $349 million in the request would help the Air National Guard pay for 16 more C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft expected to arrive in 2026. Congress has not provided enough money to pay for recapitalizing two C-130H units in the force, the request said, and the additional money would fix that shortfall.

The Air National Guard also wants another $52 million to give its pilots about 4,600 more flying hours. The unfunded priorities list includes $110.4 million for 803 more recruiters, civil engineers, security forces and maintainers.

In March 2023, the commanders of the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Danish air forces signed a declaration that envisioned the creation of a joint Nordic air force to protect their shared airspaces.

The concept called for the nations to integrate air command and control, joint operations planning, and execution; create flexible air basing; share situational awareness; and produce common air education programs and training exercises.

While the countries have experience in military cooperation, this level of integration between them is unprecedented. Acting as a coordinated force in the air rather than independently will require a shift in the way each nation approaches its airspace security, according to the chief of operations for the Royal Danish Air Force.

“All nations take great pride in their national commands and forces, and our sovereignty is paramount, [but] in order to effectively join our forces, Nordic countries need to have a minute-to-minute command function, which can plan and execute operations, including the use of weapons in defense of our territories,” Col. Søren Andersen said March 27 at an air warfare conference hosted by the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank.

“For instance, effectively defending Copenhagen would require very close coordination between Sweden, allies and Swedish airspace,” he added. “It requires consensus. … It doesn’t work in a way where I just grab the phone and say, ‘Do you think we should shoot this guy or not,’ and then we can vote on it.

“So it needs to be more firm than that.”

A mini-NATO?

All the Nordic countries are expected to share management responsibilities for the combined military force, but this may require them to release some level of control to a higher authority.

The proposal of a combined polar air force structure has earned the title “mini-NATO” — a notion some officials don’t seem fond of.

“This Nordic initiative is in no way to be seen as a substitute or replacement to NATO, but as part of it,” Andersen told conference attendees.

Along the same lines, Lt. Col. Jan Bjurström, deputy director of air operations in the Finnish Air Force, said “Nordic air forces are not planning a separate structure, but one that complements the military alliance as a whole.”

During his presentation, the Danish official touched on what he called the command structure dilemma, surrounding the challenges of having to consider national, Nordic and NATO operational perspectives. Now that all Nordic states are NATO members, there is the question of how their individual and regional responsibilities will fit within the military alliance’s current command-and-control structure.

A statement published last month by the Norwegian Armed Forces, said the NATO command over the Nordic region would “soon” be transferred from the headquarters in Brunssum, Netherlands, to Joint Force Command-Norfolk in the United States.

The alliance’s command-and-control structure was not specifically designed with territorial defense in mind — something the air chiefs said will need revised to include a Nordic agency.

“The Nordic air power concept and Nordic air operations center need to be aligned with NATO plans and structure. This means that NATO’s C2 needs revision to implement this [air operations center] into it,” Bjurström said.

During the Nordic Response exercise this year, a temporarily combined Nordic air operations center was set up for the first time as a test at the Bodø Air Base in Norway. The center was made up of personnel from the air forces of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden (Iceland does not have a military).

Denmark is replacing its F-16 fleet with new F-35 jets, both of which are made by the American company Lockheed Martin.

Argentine Defense Minister Luis Petri and his Danish counterpart Troels Lund Poulsen signed a letter of intent for the sale in Buenos Aires on March 26. The U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Marc Stanley, attended the event.

“Denmark is donating 19 F-16 jets to Ukraine, and the government has decided to sell 24 Danish F-16 jets to Argentina,” Lund Poulsen said in a statement, describing the transaction as a “possible sale.”

“The decision to sell the Danish jets to Argentina has been carried out in close collaboration with the American government, who has approved the sale of the US produced aircrafts,” the Danish Defence Ministry noted in the statement.

Local military sources in Buenos Aires, speaking to Defense News on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of military deals, said Argentina will pay $320 million for the acquisition. They also said banks and the U.S. will provide loans to help finance the deal, which not only includes the aircraft but also weapon systems and other equipment made by U.S. businesses. Denmark is also set to provide simulators and a spares.

Those sources added that the final contract will be signed by the end of April in Copenhagen.

The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency will manage the sale and transfer of weapon systems such as AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, under the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales program.

Denmark’s Acquisition and Logistics Organisation will handle the transfer of surplus F-16s, while the Argentine military’s logistics directorate will surpervise the procurement process.

Negotiations for the deal, which began under Argentina’s previous government led by then-President Alberto Fernandez, also considered the procurement of newly built Chinese/Pakistani-made JF-17 fighter jets.

The potential acquisition of the JF-17 was rejected over concerns it could jeopardize relations with the U.S. military.

The aircraft, dubbed Mk 1, is the second version of Quarterhorse, a high-speed test platform Hermeus is developing iteratively with a goal of demonstrating autonomous, reusable, near-hypersonic flight by 2026. The company’s initial vehicle, Mk 0, completed its ground-based test campaign last November. Mk 1 will be the first to take flight.

Hermeus’ goal is to build one test vehicle per year, and CEO AJ Piplica told C4ISRNET that as Mk 1 prepares for flight in the next few months, refining the company’s processes for quickly building and testing aircraft is just as important as the capability it will demonstrate in flight.

“That’s something that is very different about the approach we’re taking to aircraft development — being this iterative and really pushing to do one aircraft per year,” he said in a March 28 interview. “I think this particular problem requires it. High speed airplanes and pushing the bounds of what’s been done before really requires it.”

While Quarterhorse in its multiple iterations serves as a stepping stone toward the company’s larger goal of developing hypersonic aircraft — which can reach speeds of Mach 5 or higher — for defense and commercial customers, the Pentagon is interested in using the aircraft to help test its own systems.

The Defense Department lacks the flight test infrastructure to support the more than 70 hypersonic development programs being pursued by the military services. In recent years, the department has been working to increase its flight cadence by funding commercial systems like Quarterhorse and developing flying testbeds for advanced materials and components.

The Air Force Research Laboratory was an early investor in Quarterhorse, awarding Hermeus a $1.5 million contract in 2020 and another $60 million the following year. Last November, the Defense Innovation Unit selected the aircraft for its Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities program, or HyCAT, which aims to increase DOD’s flight testing capacity.

Hermeus had planned to fly Quarterhorse in 2023, but its decision to build Mk 0 as a ground test platform pushed that target to this year. Piplica said the delay was disappointing, but noted that spending more time wringing out the technology and processes on the ground has started to payoff as the company shifts its focus toward flight.

Following a 204-day build process, Mk 1 will now move through ground testing in Atlanta before it is shipped to Edwards Air Force Base in California for additional tests, Piplica said.

‘Push the envelope’

The goal of the first flight, which will take off from Edwards, is to demonstrate high-speed takeoff and landing. Piplica declined to detail specific speed and altitude targets but said Mk 1 is designed for a “pretty limited” flight envelope. Once Quarterhorse achieves those objectives, the company will see if it can move beyond those limits.

“We’ll push the envelope, get as much data as we can, and we’ll certainly take technical risk in doing so,” he said. “One of the key pieces to our approach is to really push learning as far to the left as early as you can.”

Hermeus will provide data from the flight to AFRL, DIU and other customers. The test will also inform Mk 2, which is set to fly next year and achieve supersonic speeds.

A key difference in that vehicle is that it will feature Hermeus’ Chimera II propulsion system, which includes Pratt & Whitney’s F100 engine. That engine is what will ultimately fly in Hermeus’ first hypersonic aircraft, Dark Horse.

“We’ll be flying that engine about three years earlier than we had originally planned in our roadmap,” Piplica said.

Mk 3 will follow in 2026, and Piplica said he expects that’s the timeframe in which Quarterhorse will start supporting Defense Department testing. As for how or when future vehicles may be incorporated into DOD aircraft fleets, Piplica declined to speculate, though he compared Mk 2 to an F-16-scale, autonomous aircraft.

“How does that play into the future force roadmap of the Air Force and the Joint Force writ large?” he said. “For us, it’s an aircraft on a roadmap that we have to do anyway. That alignment, I think, is really powerful.”

The VKS has directly lost approximately 16 fighters over the past eight months. However, this does not account for the imputed losses, which arise from an aircraft accruing more flight hours than planned, reducing its overall life. Based on updated information, the VKS is on track to suffer approximately 60 imputed aircraft losses this year from overuse. That is equivalent to losing 26 new airframes. Meanwhile the VKS currently procures only about 20 total Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft per year.

The air war has mostly maintained a steady state since mid-2023, with the exception of February 2024, when the VKS flew approximately 150 sorties per day in support of the Avdiivka offensive. Given that Russia also has been using longer-range glide bombs and devoted more aircraft to air-to-ground roles, the average sortie duration has also likely decreased, reducing the accelerated aging. Still, slightly more than half of the VKS’ tactical airframes are more than 30 years old; these have far fewer flight hours left.

The accelerated aging may be shaping Russia’s combat operations. The majority of VKS fighters operating (and lost) over Ukraine are the newer Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft with occasional reported sightings of Su-25s.

The older MiG-31s and Su-27s have been relegated to supporting hypersonic Kinzhal strikes and air patrol at a distance. With an estimated average remaining airframe life of less than 20% and 35% respectively, these older aircraft can be used for this war, but likely have insufficient life to support Russia’s potential future invasions.

Russia’s air-to-air warfare MiG-29s are totally absent, even from air-patrol missions. Given their age, these aircraft may be either unserviceable or are being kept in reserve for a final mission. Regardless, whether due to lack of upgrades, survivability or age, these are effectively paper airplanes.

The Su-24s, on the other hand, were used extensively in the invasion of Ukraine. But there have been no reports of Su-24 losses thus far in 2024. How much are they still flying? These aircraft are old; the newest models were manufactured in 1993. The VKS may have chosen not to configure them for their new FAB-1500 glide bombs, which would also hint at the fact that the Su-24s may be reaching the end of their useful lives.

Ukraine, which is short on air defense munitions, has a few options to accelerate Russian air losses. Attacking air bases would likely reduce VKS sortie rates by more than 20% by disrupting operations and forcing the VKS to fly from more distant bases. The greatest opportunity remains the effect of forthcoming F-16 jets (and possible Gripens) to divert VKS sorties from ground-attack to air-to-air efforts.

Which fighter jet is best for Ukraine as it fights off Russia?

Regardless, more air defense munitions and fighters will be critical to Ukrainian success. Russia is relying on only about 300 combined Su-30, Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft for its operations over Ukraine, including delivering the hugely destructive glide bombs. From a strategic perspective, shooting down these newest VKS aircraft imposes a larger cost to Russia and would have the greatest overall impact on the VKS’ ability to perform strikes. It would also improve the odds of survival of the 45 F-16s allies promised to Ukraine.

The VKS has fewer than 650 tactical aircraft when accounting for end-of-life aircraft; it has even less when accounting for accelerated usage. But these numbers are unlikely to change its behavior, based on Russia’s exhibited willingness to accept high losses even for trivial gains.

In comparison, NATO has roughly 800 fifth-generation aircraft, with another 100 or more arriving every year. This is more than sufficient to counter the VKS in the air and conduct targeted ground strikes, especially given the poor performance of Russian surface-to-air missiles in Ukraine.

To be sure, NATO should expand its production of air-to-air and surface-to-air munitions to deter further Russian aggression and support Ukraine. But with the VKS currently shrinking, the alliance can afford to donate more munitions to Ukraine now without worrying about its immediate strategic reserves.

Michael Bohnert is an engineer at the think tank Rand. He previously worked as an engineer for the U.S. Navy and the Naval Nuclear Laboratory.

The island nation’s purchase comes as its own efforts to field a similar domestically developed platform falter.

The U.S. Defense Department signed the $250 million deal with General Atomics for the final two MQ-9Bs on March 11 through the government’s Foreign Military Sales program.

The award followed an initial contract dated May 1, 2023. That $217.6 million deal promised the delivery of two aircraft by May 2025. However, a U.S. Air Force spokesperson told Defense News the first two drones will arrive in 2026 and the final pair in 2027.

The spokesperson clarified that this contract action was “re-announced because they broke the contract into two separate actions, each for two MQ-9s.”

Taiwan will also receive two ground control stations as part of the agreements.

The U.S. government had approved this sale in November 2020, stating that MQ-9s would give Taiwan “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), target acquisition, and counter-land, counter-sea and anti-submarine strike capabilities.”

These drones could take over some missions performed by Taiwan’s fighter fleet that is already busy monitoring Chinese military activities in the surrounding airspace and sea. Beijing considers the island nation a rogue province and has threatened to take it back by force.

“It’s an important ISR platform for the Taiwan military, giving them a cutting-edge platform to improve their ability to monitor China’s gray zone activities. In a time of war, the MQ-9 can also be used in hunter-killer roles,” Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council, told Defense News.

The arrival of these SkyGuardians is particularly important, given Taiwan’s Teng Yun medium-altitude, long-endurance drone, currently under development by the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, is encountering difficulties. In January, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported the Teng Yun 2 had “not passed its combat readiness testing phase, with initial results finding there was still room for improvement.”

Taiwan defense analyst Chen Kuo-ming said the Teng Yun has made insufficient progress since its 2015 unveiling. “In the past year there have been lots of tests. However, I’m worried about the Teng Yun because its progress, compared with Chinese UAVs, is so slow,” the expert noted.

Nevertheless, he was optimistic the program would eventually succeed.

The Teng Yun 2 received a more powerful American-made engine as well as an enhanced configuration and flight control system. Taiwan’s military started testing it in March 2023, but further improvements must take place before the Air Force can consider fielding it.

Taiwan’s MQ-9Bs are expected to carry the WESCAM MX-20 multispectral targeting system and RTX’s SeaVue maritime multirole radar. However, Chen said it’s unlikely the U.S. will give Taiwan permission to arm its MQ-9Bs.

Hammond-Chambers said these American-built drones should improve interoperability with allies, noting he expects Taiwan will “procure more MQ-9s in the future as they build out the number of platforms available. Four is a start and will allow for training, infrastructure and experience to be garnered. In a permissive D.C. arms sales environment, Taiwan should be able to procure more.”

The unfunded priorities list the service submitted to Congress, dated March 21, asks for another $1.5 billion to restock spare parts; $612 million to create nine new deployable units called mission generation force elements; $1.1 billion for construction projects worldwide; and $266 million to fund exercises in the Pacific region.

The Air Force did not ask Congress for additional funds to buy more aircraft, as it sometimes has in previous years’ unfunded priorities lists. The service’s $188.1 billion budget request for FY25 trims six F-35A Joint Strike Fighters and six F-15EX Eagle II fighters from what it originally planned, and the wish list does not aim to change that.

In the unfunded priorities list, the Air Force said its additional $1.5 billion request for spare parts — the largest component in the list — is necessary because the tight budget environment prevented it from asking for all the parts it needed.

The spare parts request asks for:

• $167 million for B-52H Stratofortress bombers.
• $564 million for F-16 Fighting Falcon jets.
• Nearly $61 million for F-15E Strike Eagle jets.
• Nearly $62 million for the HC-130J Combat King personnel recovery aircraft.
• $195 million for RC-135 intelligence aircraft.
• $7 million for C-130J Super Hercules cargo planes.
• Almost $450 million for the KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling plane.

The service also said its $612 million request to create new mission generation force elements would allow it to deploy as many as 208 additional combat-coded fighters.

Mission generation force elements are part of the service’s new Air Force Generation deployment concept, which allow it to send fighter aircraft overseas. Those elements include both the equipment, jets and airmen needed to fly and maintain the aircraft. They also include munitions operations, weather-tracking capabilities, and intelligence and cyber capabilities.

This request would cover a one-time purchase of spare parts, aviation support equipment and munitions support equipment. But the elements would be created using personnel and fighters already in the service, and the funds would not pay for more jets or airmen.

The Air Force said its $1.1 billion request for additional construction funds would allow it to whittle down a $46.8 billion backlog on infrastructure and facilities that it needs to prepare for a potential conflict against China.

That includes $158 million for planning and design work on the Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft that will replace the aging E-4B Nightwatch fleet. The E-4B, nicknamed the “doomsday plane,” would allow the president to direct forces in case of a nuclear war or other devastating emergency that destroys command-and-control centers on the ground.

It also asks for another $215 million in construction funds for basic military training classrooms and a dining facility at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, plus $148 million for a multidomain operations complex at Beale Air Force Base in California.

The Air Force also asked for another $28 million to build infrastructure needed for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the T-7A Red Hawk trainer at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

And the service wants additional funds to allow Pacific Air Forces to conduct a theaterwide exercise to practice the Agile Combat Employment concept. That approach aims to spread out deployed airmen across more bases to make it harder for an adversary, such as China, to destroyer large portions of the force.

After the first theaterwide Agile Combat Employment exercise in 2025, the Air Force wants to keep holding those drills every other year, and plans to use $5 million to plan and prepare for them.

The drone, an Anduril Industries’ Ghost-X, paused and then rose higher, disappearing into the clouds. Another followed.

Seemingly small and unthreatening, the drones were serving as the eyes of an infantry company concealed by the surrounding mountains and readying to reclaim a village held by the enemy.

And those drones were not alone.

All at once, an overwhelming group of air- and ground-based machine fighters burst onto the scene. An “octocopter” lumbered through the sky with precision munitions and other robots attached to its belly, dropping three 60mm mortar rounds on a roof and other small, hand-held, cylindrical “throwbots” on the ground.

Robotic combat vehicles rolled into view, armed with .50-caliber and M240 machine guns, firing on enemy positions and providing cover for troops maneuvering into the village.

Meanwhile, a four-legged dog robot stepped out from a thick cloud of smoke, giving the soldiers monitoring from afar another view.

The scene was the culmination of a U.S. Army effort to understand how it can use humans and machines together on the battlefield. Service leaders descended on Fort Irwin, California — home to the National Training Center — in March for a large exercise known as Project Convergence.

The demonstration was a glimpse of the Army’s future, according to top officials. Gen. James Rainey, who leads Army Futures Command, expects the service’s future force to be so integrated with machines that humans will face a much lower risk.

“We will never again trade blood for first contact,” he frequently says, promising to deploy robots instead.

But getting these formations right won’t be easy, leaders acknowledge. For human-machine integration to work, a functional and user-friendly network must underpin it, it requires protection from cyberattacks, and the systems must have the right amount of autonomy.

Leaders also say it’s not technology that will prove the most difficult factor, but rather breaking from antiquated acquisition processes that prevent rapid purchases and slow down deliveries to soldiers.

“The pace of the threat and the pace of technology — the evolution is much faster, and there’s no way that we’re going to succeed if we continue to acquire technology or even choose to develop” it at the usual pace, Joseph Welch, the Army’s C5ISR Center director, said at the March event.

Forward progress

The Project Convergence exercise followed months of effort focused on integrating humans and machines into service formations. It was a chance to see what works and what doesn’t as the Army prepares for a fight against adversaries with advanced capabilities.

The service insists it’s now ready to move forward with human-machine integrated formations.

The fiscal 2025 budget request marks the first time the Army has included funding for these formations, also called H-MIF. It’s seeking $33 million for the first step, which provides an initial human-machine integration capability to infantry and armor formations. The Army was experimenting with both at Project Convergence.

The service wants machines in these new formations to “offload risk” and provide soldiers with “additional information for decision making,” according to the service’s budget documents.

The Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office is spearheading the effort for Futures Command. The office is creating prototypes using existing air and ground robotic programs and payloads while incorporating common architecture, communications and network capabilities.

The FY25 funding, the Army has said, will fund the movement of concepts through prototyping as well as enable soldiers to evaluate them in exercises and experiments.

At the Project Convergence event, the Army flooded the battlefield with robots, sensors and other machines meant to help soldiers in complex flights. The experiment included air and ground robots with reconfigurable payloads, tethered drones, counter-drone systems, and a ventriloquist decoy emitter that emulates radio frequency traffic to confuse the enemy.

The service used more than 240 pieces of technology, including capabilities from allied militaries in the U.K., Canada, Australia, France and Japan.

The pressure to transform

The decision to rely more on robots isn’t a choice, according to Alexander Miller, who is now serving as chief technology officer to Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George.

George and Miller both watched the experiment in March; Miller carried a cellphone with an app demonstrating the Army’s new Tactical Assault Kit. The app superimposes the location of soldiers and robots as well as enemy positions in real time.

The service knows it has to do this, or “we will fall radically behind,” Miller said of human-machine integration. “There are bad people who are willing to use robotics, and if we don’t figure it out we will be behind the curve, we will put men and women in harm’s way.”

Integrating robots into formations is also accelerating because “there has been a cultural shift,” Miller said. “It’s been 12-18 months where we have stopped treating robots as a one-for-one augmentation for soldiers and started saying: ‘What are the dull, dirty, dangerous, disruptive things that robots can really do that are not just combat power? How do we augment them without taking a single rifleman off or multiple riflemen off the line to control a robot?’ ”

At the March experiment, for instance, the Army sent a ground robot with a mine-clearing line charge to deploy along enemy lines. As it fights the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian military is using these to disarm enemy minefields and trenches, but transporting them in crewed vehicles.

At the experiment, the robot shot the line charge out of a small launcher. The line didn’t explode as intended.

Army leaders said glitches are common and making this work would provide a much safer way for soldiers to clear mine fields.

Also enabling new models for human-machine integration is the progress of commercial technology, according to Welch. “That has accelerated tremendously across many different technical domains,” he said.

Artificial intelligence is getting smarter; sensors are getting smaller, lighter and more versatile; connectivity solutions are more abundant; and air-, ground- and space-based capabilities are easier to use.

Obstacles ahead

Army leaders acknowledge there is plenty of work ahead to integrate robots and soldiers on the battlefield. The experiment itself illustrated “just how complicated it’s going to be ... where we really proliferate lower-cost, cheaper options and we clutter the environment intentionally,” Miller said.

At one point during Project Convergence, the Army jammed itself, causing a friendly drone swarm to fall out of the sky. The service fixed the problem by turning on a capability allowing smart routing management for its Wi-Fi, Miller said.

Beyond technical challenges, George said, the Army must convince Congress to alter the procurement process so the service can acquire or adapt capabilities within broader funding lines. The goal, he explained, is to be more responsive to what is working for soldiers and to be able to rapidly buy small amounts of that equipment.

He said he’s working with Congress “so that we can move money a little bit.”

“We want and need the oversight, [but] it’s a matter of how we go back to them and tell them, ‘Here’s what we’re going to buy inside that funding line, and here’s how we’re doing it,’ and get feedback,” George added.

Indeed, one focus is on marking sure the Army can change systems without needing reprogramming authorization or new funding.

The technical and operational ways the Army is going to employ human-machine integrated formations today “doesn’t mean that’s how we’re going to employ it two years from now,” said Mark Kitz, the service’s program executive officer for command, control, communications-tactical.

“We don’t historically treat robotics as a software program. It’s really a software program,” Kitz explained. “So how do we use some of our unique acquisition authorities then to build that flexibility upfront?”

Miller said another potential obstacle is ensuring sufficient U.S. production of components.

“We have to have components that are approved and valid and we aren’t scared to employ because they were made by an adversary,” he said. Welch noted the Army is working with U.S. government labs to address some of the component concerns.

The service is also working internally to revamp its approach to finding capabilities.

“There’s a much tighter coupling ... not only externally with our industry partners and other key stakeholders, whether it be over on [Capitol] Hill or up in [the Office of the Secretary of Defense], but also internally,” said Lt. Gen. John Morrison, the Army’s deputy chief of staff in charge of command, control, communications, cyber operations and networks. “We’ve got requirements with acquisition, with testers, and they’re all centered around soldiers, getting that direct feedback.”

Benjamin Jensen, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank where he focuses on wargaming, said he’s “optimistic” about human-machine integration but that it may take longer than the service expects.

“Most people overestimate the speed at which you can develop new concepts of employment around even proven engineering,” he said. “It often takes years outside of a major war to build entirely new formations and structures.”

If enacted, the allotment would mark the most Joint Strike Fighters the Air Force has bought in a single year since 2021, when it procured 60. The service had included 48 F-35As in its fiscal 2024 budget request.

The FY24 defense appropriations bill would provide the Air Force more than $5.2 billion for F-35A procurement, an increase of nearly $361 million over the original budget request. The program increase of three additional F-35As would account for $277 million of that growth.

The purchase would still remain far below the minimum annual buy of 72 F-35s the service argued for years it needed to modernize its fighter fleet, while keeping up with the pace of older jets leaving the inventory. The Air Force plans to buy more than 1,700 F-35As, totaling nearly $250 billion, over the life of the program, according to FY25 budget documents.

Congress in FY24 also looks to give the Marine Corps and Navy funds for 16 short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing F-35Bs as well as 19 F-35Cs, which can take off and land from aircraft carriers.

F-35 fighters act as combat quarterbacks, conducting airstrikes as well as vacuuming up data on other nearby military assets and communications to share with the rest of the joint force. The program remains the Defense Department’s most expensive at more than $1.7 trillion to buy, operate and sustain.

Boosting spending on the Pentagon’s most advanced fighter jet is one piece of Congress’ agreement to put more than $40 billion toward militarywide aviation procurement in FY24 — $3 billion above the initial request, appropriators said in a legislative summary.

Congress would also approve the Air Force’s request to buy 24 F-15EX Eagle II fighters for $2.4 billion, seven MH-139 Grey Wolf patrol helicopters for $223 million and 15 KC-46A Pegasus refueling tankers for $2.8 billion.

The bill also offers an extra $840 million to purchase eight additional C-130J airlifters that would replace an older version flown by the Air National Guard; and $400 million to buy 10 HH-60W combat search and rescue helicopters, rebuffing the service’s plan to cease procurement.

And appropriators would provide $1.6 billion for procurement related to the Air Force’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber, about $55 million shy of its request because of a classified reduction. It’s unclear how many aircraft that might fund; the stealth bomber was approved to begin low-rate production last fall.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are pledging $2.3 billion to fully fund development of the F-35′s successor, known as the Next Generation Air Dominance program, and to further mature drone wingmen under the collaborative combat aircraft initiative.

Lawmakers on Friday were still scrambling to pass the FY24 defense budget ahead of a midnight deadline to fund the federal government or enter a shutdown.

The service noted their arrival in budget documents released March 11. The first of 10 EA-37Bs was delivered to the Air Force last year for testing — two years later than anticipated — before heading to its eventual home at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. Delivery of the first mission-ready jet is expected sometime in 2024.

US Air Force receives first new Compass Call electronic warfare plane

It’s unclear to what extent the first five aircraft will be used in testing or if they will enter regular operations as they come online. Air Combat Command, which manages the fleet, declined to provide more details about the jets.

Compass Call is designed to jam enemy signals, including communications, radar and navigations systems, and can suppress enemy air defenses by blocking the connection between weapons systems and command-and-control networks. The aircraft also carries hardware and software that give airmen the ability to hack into wireless devices, defuse roadside bombs and more.

Its new airframe — a Gulfstream G550 business jet outfitted with advanced electronic attack equipment by an L3Harris-BAE Systems team — will also be able to soar higher than 40,000 feet and fly at nearly 600 mph, nearly twice as high and as fast as the legacy EC-130H.

The 43rd Electronic Combat Squadron at Davis-Monthan will be the first to transition to the new Compass Call, which began flying in the 1980s. As it prepares to replace old with new, the squadron logged its final flight in an EC-130H on Feb. 15.

“Throughout its storied existence, the squadron’s adaptability and commitment to evolving military technologies shine through, having operated 11 different aircraft types across six continents,” 43rd ECS Commander Lt. Col. Tray Wood said in a statement. “The final EC-130H flight marks the end of an era and signals the beginning of a new chapter with the forthcoming EA-37B transition.”

This Compass Call squadron was deployed in Afghanistan for 20 years. Here’s their inside story.

The 41st and 42nd Electronic Combat Squadrons, also based at Davis-Monthan, are still flying the legacy platform. The 41st is the only remaining operational squadron flying the EC-130H; the 42nd is a training squadron.

The new EA-37B, which was redesignated from EC-37B late last year, comes as the Air Force looks to replace many of its decades-old aircraft with more-capable versions that may have a better shot at surviving in future conflicts against advanced adversaries like China.

The service said in November it had retired nine of its 14 old Compass Calls so far. Air Force budget documents show that the service plans to send one more EC-130H to its aircraft “Boneyard” this year. The budget also includes an additional $15 million for operating and maintaining the Compass Call program, driven by fielding the new aircraft and storing the retiring planes.

A mainstay in U.S. Central Command during the war on terror, the EC-130H carries a 13-person crew, including two pilots, a navigator, a flight engineer, a mission crew commander and supervisor, a signals analyst and multiple cryptologic language analysts. The Air Force contends that though its new Compass Call airframe is smaller, advances in equipment will allow it to consolidate jobs onboard and cut the crew to nine members.

The 41st Electronic Combat Squadron spent 20 years overseas with the Compass Call, becoming the longest continuously deployed Air Force unit in Afghanistan at nearly 14,800 sorties over 90,000 flying hours before returning home in 2021.

The department in February announced a sweeping shake-up of the Air Force and Space Force to better prepare them for a potential conflict with China, which the department calls a “reoptimization for great power competition.”

The changes would include the creation of an Integrated Capabilities Command, led by a three-star general, which would take charge of identifying the Air Force’s future requirements. The Air Force would also revamp some existing organizations such as Air Combat Command as well as Air Education and Training Command; shift how airmen, units and equipment deploy; and improve training.

But in a summary of the compromise version of the fiscal 2024 Defense Appropriations Act, publicly released Thursday, lawmakers said the Air Force hasn’t thoroughly explained why the reorganization is necessary, how the service would implement it and what budget is required. Lawmakers say they need such information to properly assess the department’s plans.

The bill would require Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall to explain any organizational changes to congressional defense committees, 30 days before they go into effect. Lawmakers would also want Kendall to explain how such a change would differ from the existing structure; a breakdown of the phases of the reorganization; what each phase would cost; a description of the new offices, commands or centers it would require; how this would affect service members and civilian employees; and the programmatic effects of the planned change.

When asked for comment, the Air Force said it plans to keep lawmakers informed about its reorganization.

“As the Department of the Air Force develops implementation plans, leaders will continue to share information with congressional staffs,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in an email to Defense News.

The Government Accountability Office would also have send the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees a report within six months on the Air Force’s planned reorganization. This report would have to detail factors and analysis the service considered for the revamp, what feedback combatant commanders offered, how much it might cost, how long it might take to put into place and how the reorganization might be deemed a success.

GAO would also have to describe how recommendations from the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Commission were taken into account, and how the reorganization might affect joint and coalition forces.

Kendall told reporters at a budget briefing earlier this month that the revamp would likely not cost a great deal of money.

“What we’re talking about with the re-optimization is creating some new organizations, but they will be created out of pieces that we already have,” Kendall said. “We’re not talking about big manpower increases, and we’re going to minimize, [to] the extent we can, the movement of people ... the acquisition of real estate, and so on.”

Denmark is exploring how to deal with a slipping delivery schedule, including possibly borrowing or buying aircraft from other F-35 users. Norway said there’s a risk full operational capacity of its F-35 fleet will be pushed back.

F-35 deliveries are on hold as Lockheed Martin wrestles to complete an upgrade known as Technology Refresh 3, initially planned for summer 2023. While the company still aims for the second quarter for TR-3 software acceptance, the third quarter is a more likely scenario, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said in January.

The delays threaten to frustrate plans by Denmark and Belgium to replace their fleets of more than 40-year old F-16 fighters. Denmark has four F-35s in country, of 27 ordered, while Belgium is scheduled to receive the first of 34 stealth fighters in 2024, a milestone already delayed from last year.

“We are making progress toward delivering the first TR-3 configured aircraft,” Lockheed Martin said in a statement, declining to say when European buyers will get their next planes. “Customer deliveries will be informed based on the remaining TR-3 test schedule.”

Denmark said last week that Lockheed Martin targets TR-3 for around July, but risks delays. It’s too early to say what delays would mean, the country’s defense minister said.

For now, Denmark still conducts operational tasks with F-16 aircraft, “but if the delay in F-35 delivery continues, there can be consequences,” said Hans Peter Michaelsen, an independent military analyst and former Royal Danish Air Force major.

The snag comes at a time of high tension in Europe, following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. NATO fighter jets scrambled more than 300 times last year to intercept Russian military flights, mostly over the Baltic Sea, after 570 intercepts in 2022. The U.K., Norway, the Netherlands and Italy have deployed their F-35s for air-policing missions over the Baltic and the northern Atlantic.

The Danish Ministry of Defence has asked the joint military command and its procurement organization “to explore a number of options that could mitigate the implications to the Danish F-35 implementation timeline in case a delay should occur,” it said in a statement.

Options include repatriating some of Denmark’s six F-35s now stationed at Luke Air Force Base in the U.S. for training, possibly with support from other nations so Danish pilot instruction can continue. Another would be buying or borrowing aircraft from other F-35 operators.

“If the planned F-35 deliveries slip to 2025 and Danish F-35s cannot be temporarily withdrawn from Luke AFB, I foresee operational and training consequences,” Michaelsen said. While he doesn’t expect Quick Reaction Alert tasks to be affected, having only four aircraft in Denmark could complicate maintaining operational status for pilots and technicians.

The defense ministry has investigated whether the U.S. can provide additional F-35s for training, which would allow Denmark to withdraw planes from Luke AFB to avoid a delay building up its F-35 capacity, according to the analyst.

Norway and the Netherlands face less urgency, as they already operate most of their F-35 fleet. The Royal Norwegian Air Force retired its F-16s in 2022, and the Royal Dutch Air Force plans to do the same by October.

Norway has “enough aircraft available to meet current operational and training requirements,” said Endre Lunde, an adviser at the Norwegian Defense Materiel Agency. “Like the U.S. and other partners in the JSF program we will not be taking delivery of any further aircraft until a solution has been found to current issues related to the TR-3 upgrades.”

Norway has 34 F-35s in country and six in the U.S. for training, of a total 52 planes ordered. Delivery of the remaining aircraft, originally scheduled for 2023 and 2024, remains to be confirmed.

The Netherlands meanwhile has received 39 of its 52 F-35s, with eight aircraft in the U.S. for training. The Dutch Ministry of Defence declined to comment ahead of a progress report to parliament toward the end of this month.

“For Norway and Netherlands I do not foresee large consequences, as both countries have already achieved limited operational status with their F-35s, but the full operational date will probably slip to the right,” Michaelsen said. “A delay in delivery for other European customers – Belgium, Finland, Poland and Germany – will probably mean that these countries will have to operate their legacy fighters for a prolonged time.”

The U.S. Air Force conducted the first flight of an F-35 in TR-3 configuration in January 2023. The upgrade provides the F-35 with more computing power as the basis for modernized Block 4 capabilities, including new sensors and improved electronic warfare capabilities.

“Even after TR-3 completion we expect that it will take some time to clear the backlog of undelivered aircraft,” Lunde said. “Our current expectation however is that we will be able to take delivery of all Norwegian aircraft by the end of this year, or during the first half of 2025 at the very latest.”

There’s a knock-on effect on planned upgrades of Norway’s TR-2 configuration aircraft, with the impact on the schedule still unclear, Lunde said. The delays pose a risk to reaching full operational capability in 2025, though the main risk to that milestone is a lack of trained maintenance personnel, he said.

To reach full operational capability, Norway requires both a sufficient number of air frames, as well as the capabilities of TR-3, including integration of the Joint Strike Missile, according to Lunde. The JSM is a cruise missile being developed by Kongsberg and RTX, designed to be launched from the F-35′s internal weapons bay.

Belgium, which had expected to receive its first two F-35s in 2023, said in December it now counts on eight jets to be delivered for training of Belgian pilots and engineers starting this summer. Poland is also scheduled to receive its first F-35 this year, after ordering 32 planes in 2020.

The U.K. has received 35 aircraft of 48 expected by the end of 2025, and in December formed its second squadron to operate the F-35 Lightning II. The 13 aircraft due by the end of next year are in the TR-3 configuration, and the U.K. is working with the F-35 joint program office to understand the impact of the delay.

“We do not currently anticipate a shortfall in the ability to build the U.K. Lightning force to full operational capability,” the Ministry of Defence said.

The Danish defense ministry has said it doesn’t expect the issues to affect the planned donation of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine, while Norway said F-35 delays won’t impact delivery of F-16s to international partners, either through sale or donation.

Andrew Chuter in London contributed to this story.

The test, which also involved Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne, took place in a closed chamber at the Arnold Engineering Development Complex in Tennessee. It followed static fire tests of the first and second stages’ rocket motors in March 2023 and January 2024, respectively.

This third stage that was tested is the smallest of Sentinel’s three-stage propulsion system. The Air Force did not offer further details about the test, nor did it identify whether the event was successful.

“This test is the latest in our ground and flight test program and is designed to help us refine Sentinel’s air vehicle design,” Maj. Gen. John Newberry, commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center and the service’s program executive officer for strategic systems. “It demonstrates the progress the Air Force is making on modernizing our nation’s strategic land-based nuclear deterrent.”

The Sentinel program is intended to replace the aging LGM-30G Minuteman III ICBM, which has been a key part of the United States’ nuclear triad since the Cold War. The Air Force now has roughly 400 Minuteman III weapons in silos spread out across Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado and Nebraska.

Northrop Grumman did not issue a news release about the test, but provided a short statement to Defense News: “In partnership with the Air Force, we continue to make significant progress on the Sentinel program, achieving key milestones to mature the design and reduce risk.”

Northrop said in a February release it had successfully tested several other elements of the missile. This included evaluating the forward and aft sections of a Sentinel ICBM at its Strategic Missile Test and Production Complex in Promontory, Utah to collect data about the weapon’s in-flight structural dynamics.

Northrop also tested the Sentinel’s shroud, which encases the payload within the missile’s nose, in a fly-off test at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California. This test, which the company said was successful, verified the shroud would not strike the enclosed payload as it flew off the missile.

The price tag for the Sentinel program has spiked enough to trigger a cost overrun process known as a Nunn-McCurdy breach. Top Air Force leaders have pinned the bulk of the cost growth on its highly complex command and launch segment, which involves securing real estate from hundreds of landowners across the Midwest, building more than 400 launch facilities and 7,500 miles of utility corridors, and laying thousands of miles of fiber-optic networks.

The Air Force said the Sentinel missile itself is not seeing as much of a severe cost growth as other portions of the program.

Sentinel, which was originally due to reach initial operational capability in 2029, is also falling behind schedule by about two years, the Air Force said earlier this year.

But the service is unlikely to cancel the Sentinel program over cost overruns and delays, and top leaders have said replacing the Minuteman III is so important they would find money elsewhere in the budget to pay for the new ICBMs. The Pentagon is now reviewing Sentinel to see how it might restructure the program to get it back on track and bring down costs.

The U.S. Air Force on Sunday carried out what is expected to be the final test of the hypersonic AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon.

The service did not say whether the test was successful.

In a statement to Defense News, an Air Force spokesperson said a B-52H Stratofortress carried out the test of the fully operational ARRW prototype, referred to as an all-up round test, after taking off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The test was carried out at the Reagan Test Site, an Army facility in the Marshall Islands.

The Air Force declined to identify the test’s objectives, but said it “gained valuable insights into the capabilities” of the Lockheed Martin-made hypersonic weapon.

“This test acquired valuable, unique data and was intended to further a range of hypersonic programs,” the spokesperson said. “We also validated and improved our test and evaluation capabilities for continued development of advanced hypersonic systems.”

In a follow-up statement, Lockheed Martin said it is ready to deliver ARRW technology or other hypersonic capabilities to the Air Force.

“Following the recent end-to-end flight test, Lockheed Martin has completed the test program with full confidence in ARRW’s revolutionary capabilities, and we stand ready to deliver this fully-qualified, hypersonic solution to the U.S. Air Force,” the company said. “Building on ARRW’s industry-leading technology and testing success, Lockheed Martin can quickly deliver additional hypersonic-strike assets that can be rapidly deployed to the U.S. military.”

ARRW is one of the Air Force’s two main programs to develop an air-launched hypersonic weapon that could fly faster than Mach 5 and be highly maneuverable. China and Russia have invested heavily in their own hypersonic weapons, and the Pentagon is under pressure from Congress to show more progress toward fielding the United States’ own capabilities.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall last year told lawmakers the ARRW program had “struggled” in testing, shortly after a March 2023 test failed.

Air Force officials said earlier this month that ARRW’s upcoming test would be its last, and the service plans to wrap up its rapid prototyping program this year. The service requested no funding to procure ARRW, nor conduct any research and development, in 2025.

Kendall has sounded a more optimistic tone about the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile program, and the fiscal 2025 budget request proposes $517 million to keep developing that program. The HACM weapon, developed by Northrop Grumman and RTX subsidiary Raytheon, is an air-breathing missile that the Air Force said would be smaller than ARRW and able to fly along “vastly different trajectories” than the boost-glide ARRW.

The Air Force assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics told reporters earlier this month that the service will study the results of the final ARRW test to help it decide what hypersonic capabilities it will need.

The move comes amid a shift in Japan’s security strategy and as the country loosens stringent post-war export regulations targeting weaponry. Under revised rules, Japan had approved the transfer of radars to the Philippines and the delivery of Patriot missiles to the U.S. last year.

In December, Japan, the U.K. and Italy launched a joint partnership to develop the Mitsubishi F-X fighter jet under the Global Combat Air Program, which aims to make new stealth fighter jets by 2035 to replace the Japan Air Self-Defense Force’s aging F-2s as well as Britain’s and Italy’s Eurofighter Typhoons.

Easing export rules on the F-X fighter jet marks the latest revision in Japan’s materiel transfer rules since it revamped its security policy in December 2022. The move faced dissent from opposition parties and Komeito, the junior coalition partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told the Diet — Japan’s parliament — on Wednesday that restricting exports to countries outside the partnership will hinder the country’s aircraft modernization plan and dampen the success of the international joint development program.

Easing the restrictions on the jets will create a “favorable security environment” for Japan, Kishida said, adding that the program will boost the local defense industry.

Companies involved in the program have also expressed intentions to export the jets to other countries to defray development and production costs.

After months of negotiations, Komeito softened its stance and on Friday agreed to the change with stringent conditions, specifically that the revision will only cover the F-X fighter jet, the parties said in a joint news conference.

Furthermore, all fighter jet exports will require Cabinet approval, and access will only be open to countries with existing defense deals with Japan. The parties also clarified barring sales to countries under existing armed conflict.

Japan’s Cabinet is expected to approve the revisions later this month, in time for partners to release the initial designs of the F-X jet.

Meanwhile, major opposition groups remain critical of the alteration, indicating that relaxing export rules on the fighter jet counters Japan’s pacifist position and raises alarm about the country transitioning into an arms merchant.

The March 9 test hit all of its primary objectives, according to Stratolaunch CEO Zachary Krevor. Taking off from Stratolaunch’s manufacturing and test facility at Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the uncrewed vehicle separated from its carrier craft and reached high supersonic speeds before dropping into the Pacific Ocean.

“This was really focused on risk reduction for our platform,” Krevor told C4ISRNET in a March 11 interview. “We got through acceleration, through the transonic phase into the supersonic phase — that was our primary objective.”

An aircraft achieves hypersonic speeds when it reaches Mach 5, and Krevor said the first powered Talon-A got close to that rate. The company would not disclose the altitude or exact speed of the test flight.

For Stratolaunch’s second powered Talon-A mission, scheduled for the second half of this year, it wants to push the uncrewed aircraft’s envelope further. The goal is to reach hypersonic speeds and to demonstrate reusability, landing the system on a runway.

The vehicle, dubbed TA-2, won’t undergo any structural changes before the flight, Krevor said, noting that the first mission validated the aircraft’s design and construction. The company is, however, considering operational lessons from the TA-1 vehicle.

“There’s certainly some operational lessons that we’ve learned regarding our propellant management and how can we continue to improve,” he said. “We are a company that believes strongly in continuous improvement.”

A successful Talon-A test campaign has significant implications for the Defense Department’s hypersonic efforts, which are focused on fielding the advanced weapons and defending against similar systems that China and Russia are building.

DoD is working to increase its testing rigor, setting a goal in 2022 to eventually conduct one flight each week. Talon-A could provide the department with a reusable, more affordable platform to test and validate high-speed components, subsystems and other technologies.

Talon-A’s first powered flight provided some data to U.S. Defense Department customers, including the Pentagon’s Test Resource Management Center, which is developing an airborne hypersonic test capability called SkyRange.

The next flight will take that partnership a step further, with SkyRange’s advanced sensors tracking the mission. It will also be the first flight to support the Pentagon’s Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonics Test Bed program, or MACH-TB. The flying testbed effort is designed to validate hypersonic subsystems, advanced materials and other technologies.

The next mission is one of five Talon-A test flights that will carry MACH-TB payloads as part of a contract inked in November.

The company is also working to ensure its behemoth Talon-A carrier vehicle, dubbed Roc, is prepared for its next mission. The aircraft, which has a wingspan of 385 feet and can fly 500,000 pounds of payload, will perform a series of flights aimed at increasing its altitude for the next Talon-A mission.

The flights are part of mandatory Federal Aviation Administration inspections to validate Roc’s airworthiness.

Krevor noted that for the TA-1 mission, Roc’s 14th flight, the aircraft demonstrated a two-week turnaround time and brought its total flight time to around 60 hours.

“Roc really is turning into a dependable aircraft that’s going to be a national asset for the United States to perform missions that, frankly, were unable to be accomplished previously,” he said.

Stratolaunch is also preparing its second carrier aircraft — a Boeing 747 owned by Virgin Orbit before the company declared bankruptcy last spring — to support Talon A missions next year. The company is performing modifications on the platform to ensure it is compatible with its data systems and interfaces.

The aircraft will support some classified DoD testing before it starts flying Talon A missions.

“I can’t talk in great detail about it, but the 747 will support additional customer flight testing in the fourth quarter of this year,” Krevor said.