Defense news

• New Army tech sips fuel, reduces generator run-time

  26-03-2025 23:14 via defenseone.com
  
  HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – As the Army has been taking new technology to the field for on-the-fly feedback and upgrades, the sustainment community has been taking lessons and thinking about the kind of technology they’ll need to equip and fuel formations in the future.It’s going to require a lot less diesel fuel, leaders said Wednesday at the AUSA Global Force Symposium here. The infantry squad vehicle, one of the stars of the Transformation in Contact effort, sips fuel compared to the
  
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• ULA’s Vulcan cleared for national-security launches

  26-03-2025 23:09 via defenseone.com
  
  United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan heavy-lift rocket has a green light to send military payloads into space, poising the company to compete against SpaceX for Pentagon contracts. “Vulcan certification adds launch capacity, resiliency, and flexibility needed by our nation’s most critical space-based systems,” Brig. Gen. Panzenhagen, the program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, said in the announcement today. ULA now joins SpaceX as a cleared provider f
  
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• US greenlights potential $1.96 billion MQ-9B drone deal for Qatar

  26-03-2025 21:54 via breakingdefense.com
  
  If completed, the sale would mark the first MQ-9 sale to the Middle East for contractor General Atomics.
  
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• Australia could get first new F-35 by 2029 if government reverses program cuts: Lockheed exec

  26-03-2025 21:01 via breakingdefense.com
  
  “[C]onceivably, based on where we are buying long-lead parts for Lot 21 we could make that happen,” said J.R. McDonald, Lockheed’s vice president of business development for the F-35 program.
  
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• Space Force plans to put a multisatellite ‘carrier’ into orbit

  26-03-2025 20:28 via defenseone.com
  
  What’s better than being able to launch satellites quickly to orbit? Having them there already—or so goes the thinking behind a new $60 million Space Force contract to develop an “orbital carrier.”Gravitics received a Strategic Funding Increase award from SpaceWERX, an innovative arm of the Space Force, worth up to $60 million “to demonstrate and fly the Orbital Carrier, a groundbreaking solution for tactically responsive space,” the company announced Wednesda
  
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• Army continues iterating on IVAS, not ‘currently planning’ mass buy of 1.2 version

  26-03-2025 20:22 via breakingdefense.com
  
  Maj. Gen. Christopher Schneider told Breaking Defense that the service got “really great feedback from soldiers on IVAS 1.2,” but big decisions haven’t been signed out yet.
  
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• Shipbuilders swarm Capitol Hill to lobby for aircraft carrier funding

  26-03-2025 20:19 via defenseone.com
  
  Shipbuilders went to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to plead for $600 million in advanced funding to keep aircraft carrier suppliers in production—an ask that comes amid delays, uncertain funding, worries of an aging fleet and recent Pentagon orders to send a second carrier to an active combat zone in the Red Sea. “Folks, we are at one of those tipping points in seeing the opportunities that are there in front of us,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., vice chairman of the House Armed Se
  
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• ULA’s Vulcan rocket certified for national security launches

  26-03-2025 19:48 via breakingdefense.com
  
  With that thumbs up from Space Systems Command’s (SSC) Assured Access to Space program office in hand, ULA now is the second fully certified launch provider, along with SpaceX, cleared under the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.
  
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• New ‘Space Warfighting Framework’ coming to codify Space Force concepts, terms

  26-03-2025 19:15 via breakingdefense.com
  
  The interview signalled a rapprochement between Saltzman and the institute, following his Feb. 20 ban on engagement with Mitchell by Space Force personnel.
  
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• Lockheed targets global energetics expansion with Australia’s GWEO as model

  26-03-2025 19:09 via breakingdefense.com
  
  “The next priority for production is Europe,” Lockheed’s Tim Cahill told reporters. “I would say the Middle East is the next area of direct priority and interest, both on the part of the countries and the part for us to produce.”
  
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• Hanwha adds Penske Australia as subcontractor on Redback IFV

  26-03-2025 18:42 via breakingdefense.com
  
  In July 2023, Hanwha defeated Rheinmetall for a contract worth an estimated $5-7 billion AUD to deliver 129 IFV replacements for the country’s aging M113 fleet. 
  
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• How a beatdown at sea turned Russia's navy into China's junior partner

  26-03-2025 18:13 via defenseone.com
  
  Away from the grueling land battles and devastating airstrikes, the Ukraine war has from its outset had a naval element. Soon after the February 2022 invasion, Russia imposed a de facto naval blockade on Ukraine, only to see its fleet stunningly defeated during a contest for control of the Black Sea.But that war on the waves looks like it could be ending.Under the terms of a deal announced on March 25, 2025, by the U.S. and agreed upon in Saudi Arabia
  
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• Sweden targets $30B increase in defense spending, to hit 3.5% of GDP by 2030

  26-03-2025 17:28 via breakingdefense.com
  
  “I don’t want us to act in a way that undermines the possibility of transatlantic cooperation. But we also cannot assume or take for granted that the United States will continue to act in Europe as it has over the past 80 years,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.
  
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• Papua New Guinea, Kiwis, Aussies tying up for relief op coordination

  26-03-2025 16:53 via breakingdefense.com
  
  When Lt. Col. Eddie Miro, director of Papua New Guinea’s tiny air force took the job, his country had one working helicopter. Today, Papua owns two PAC 750 single engine aircraft built in New Zealand.
  
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• The D Brief: More Yemen-chat details released; Troops patrolling border; Ukraine ceasefire broadened; Army’s gear overhaul; And a bit more.

  26-03-2025 16:05 via defenseone.com
  
  Yemen OPSEC fail, cont.After a day of repeated denials in sworn testimony, top White House intelligence officials are back on Capitol Hill for a hearing on worldwide threats before House lawmakers on the intelligence committee. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard return for another round of questioning, joined by FBI Director Kash Patel. At a Tuesday hearing, Ratliffe and Gabbard assured senators that no classified information was posted as Trump'
  
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• Space Force ‘transitioning’ SATCOM contracts from DISA

  26-03-2025 15:55 via breakingdefense.com
  
  Col. Rich Kniseley said the current plan is to set up a new Space Force working capital fund for buying commercial SATCOM, initially worth about $120 million, on Oct. 1. 
  
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• Sikorsky to integrate Israeli systems on Israel’s CH-53K helicopters

  26-03-2025 15:03 via breakingdefense.com
  
  The US State Department agreed to a potential sale of up to 18 of these helicopters to Israel in 2021, and Israel eventually went ahead with a deal for an initial 12 estimated at around $2 billion in 2022.
  
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• ‘Nothing will be safe’ from Army’s kit overhaul

  26-03-2025 03:39 via defenseone.com
  
  HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—There’s no such thing as a standard gear set-up from squad to squad in the Army, the chief of infantry said Tuesday, and none of it is designed to work together.So the service finds itself in a place where a dismounted soldier can be walking around with more than 80 pounds of kit, including four or five radios that each do something different.“In fact, we've been focusing our efforts on the individual soldier for so long we've burdened them with redundant capab
  
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• Heads must roll for Signal-chat debacle

  26-03-2025 03:21 via defenseone.com
  
  In his bombshell report in The Atlantic, Jeff Goldberg revealed a stunning violation of national security: the most senior members of the President's team discussed details of military operations and intelligence on the encrypted messaging app Signal—not in the secure White House Situation Room or over a hardened intranet system. This is not a “learn and move on” situation; heads must roll.One reason is accountability. As the former chief people officer of the Air Force an
  
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• The Army wants to put $1B into Transformation in Contact 2.0

  26-03-2025 03:19 via defenseone.com
  
  HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—The Army is doubling down on its Transformation in Contact modernization model, the service’s top operations officer said Tuesday—adding more units into the program and multiplying the number of systems they’ll test as well as the funding to make it all happen.The service plans to spend $1 billion on the effort between now and the end of fiscal year 2027, Lt. Gen. Joe Ryan told an audience at AUSA’s Global Force Symposium. That’s a huge jump f
  
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• ‘Sloppy,’ ‘incompetent’ intelligence chiefs hammered for Signal chat

  26-03-2025 01:03 via defenseone.com
  
  Tuesday's annual "worldwide threats" hearing—intended as a discussion of China, Russia, Iran, transnational criminal organizations, and other actors—devolved instead into something closer to a criminal deposition from Law and Order, with the heads of the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence dodging senators’ questions about their use of a commercial chat app to discuss war plans and foreign affairs—all with a journalist on the line.The fact that off
  
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