South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration said that it will deploy at least one anti-air laser weapons system called “Block-I” by the end of this year and more in coming years.

An agency statement said the “Block-I” system is capable of launching precision attacks on small incoming drones and multi-copters. It said the system, developed by local company Hanwha Aerospace, costs just 2,000 won (about $1.50) per shot.

“We face North Korea on our doorstep and its drones pose present threats to us, so that's why we've been aiming to build and deploy laser weapons soon to cope with them,” an agency official said, requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to media on the issue.

He said that other countries like the United States and Israel are ahead of South Korea in laser weapons technology, but their primary focus has been on higher-powered laser guns that can shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. South Korea also hopes to develop such anti-missile laser weapons, which its defense procurement agency called “a game changer” in future combat environments.

The “Block-I” system is meant to hit circuit boards and other equipment in enemy drones to make them malfunction and crash on the ground. Tests of the weapons system in 2022-2023 were successful and proved its credibility, the official said.

Some experts questioned the technology.

Lee Illwoo, an expert with the Korea Defense Network in South Korea, doubts how effectively South Korea can use its laser weapons since its anti-air radar systems aren't advanced enough to detect North Korean drones well. He said the range of a laser weapon is relatively short, so high-power microwave weapons would be better when enemy drones are flown in large numbers simultaneously.

Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank in Seoul, said South Korea is likely about five years away from acquiring a functioning laser weapon that can shoot down the drones used by North Korea.

North Korea has periodically flown drones across its heavily fortified border with South Korea for several years, in what observers have called tests of South Korean readiness. In December 2022, South Korea accused the North of sending drones across the border for the first time in five years. South Korea fired warning shots and launched fighter jets and helicopters but failed to shoot down any of the drones.

In a key political meeting in December 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to introduce various types of unmanned combat equipment such as attack drones for 2024. Foreign experts say Kim likely regards drones as a cheap yet effective method to trigger security jitters and an internal divide in South Korea.

Animosities between the two Koreas, split along the world’s most heavily fortified border, have deepened in recent months, with North Korea flying trash-carrying balloons toward South Korea in response to South Korean activists floating political leaflets via their own balloons.

The new capabilities will “have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe. Exercising these advanced capabilities will demonstrate the United States’ commitment to NATO and its contributions to European integrated deterrence,” the joint statement reads.

The long-range fires capabilities will include the SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles and “developmental hypersonic weapons,” the statement details.

The capabilities will be resident in the U.S. Army’s Multidomain Task Force already headquartered in Germany.

The announcement lines up with the Army’s plans to fill out its five MDTF units worldwide. Defense News first reported in April that the MDTF in Europe would be fully established in fiscal 2026 with the addition of a Long-Range Fires Battalion, or LRFB, in support of the European theater.

The Army stood up the 2nd MDTF in Europe in 2021. It has two other established MDTF units in the Indo-Pacific theater with plans to build out two more for a total of five MDTFs. Three will be focused on Pacific operations, one in Europe and one will be based in the U.S. at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, and will be capable of rapid deployment where it is needed.

The units are designed to operate across all domains — land, air, sea, space and cyberspace — and are equipped with the Army’s growing capabilities, including long-range precision fires.

The Army’s plan is to complete all MDTF units by FY28, according to a document detailing the Army’s most recent round of force structure analysis obtained by Defense News earlier this year.

Long-Range Hypersonic batteries

The service will consolidate Mid-Range Capability and Long-Range Hypersonic batteries under a LRFB headquarters over the next five years. Long-Range Precision Fires units will also include the service’s Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, the Army Tactical Missile System replacement, which can be fired from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launcher.

The 1st MDTF, based out of Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington State, has already deployed its Mid-Range Capability launcher to the Philippines earlier this year as part of a bilateral military exercise with the country, marking the first time the newly fielded system has been exercised outside of the U.S.

The MRC fits in the Army’s fires portfolio between its PrSM, designed to hit targets over 499 kilometers away, and its ground-launched hypersonic missiles. The Army’s 3rd MDTF recently fired the newly fielded PrSM from the Pacific island of Palau during a recent ship-sinking exercise.

The service chose Lockheed Martin in November 2020 to build the MRC prototype, landing a nearly $340 million contract to take elements from naval missiles - the SM-6 and Tomahawk – to forge the new weapon. The full MRC system has a battery operations center, four vertical launch systems, prime movers and modified trailers.

The Army’s hypersonic weapon capability has been delayed significantly due to testing troubles.

The service completed its delivery of the first hypersonic weapon capability, minus the all-up rounds, to I Corps’ 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade unit at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state two days ahead of its end-of-FY21 fielding deadline.

The original plan was to train on the equipment and receive those rounds in the fall of 2023, but based on a series of failed or aborted tests, that timeline has slid further down the road.

The Army and Navy, which are jointly developing the common glide body for the weapon had to abort flight tests in March, October and November last year to due “challenges at the range,” according to Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office director.

The Army is gearing up for another flight test this summer. If the test is successful, the Army is aiming to field the first rounds to the first battalion at JBLM in FY25.

Initiatives like Executive Order 14028 and CISA’s Binding Operational Directive 23-1 have heightened scrutiny and accountability for security leaders tasked with ensuring network security and compliance. This guidance helps government entities and private sector organizations navigate the threat landscape and improve their security posture. However, diverse directives from the White House, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other government entities create confusion over which guidance to follow.

Pentagon zero-trust office aims to start data tagging, labeling in ′24 By Molly Weisner

As we navigate the various federal guidelines, it’s important to remember that you’re not alone in this struggle. Security professionals across the board are grappling with legacy tools, siloed security applications, the time-consuming nature of data collection and analysis, and the scarcity of skilled security personnel. These are all factors that complicate efforts to gain comprehensive network insights and prove compliance.

So, where to begin?

Focus efforts on greatest benefit

Vulnerability management is complex and overwhelming for most agencies, often competing with a slew of information from various vendor sources. I like focusing on the basics. The National Vulnerability Database (NVD), the U.S. government’s repository of standards-based vulnerability management data, is one of the most important sources of truth worldwide and a good place to start.

Maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and sponsored by DHS’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, the NVD provides detailed analysis and scoring of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) to help organizations prioritize their response to vulnerabilities. They also publish the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog which is a great supplement. In 2024 NIST has already issued nearly 35,000 alerts; agencies need to understand which CVEs are relevant to their network and their degree of exposure.

Private sector CISOs and federal agencies face the dilemma of complying with complex regulatory requirements within limited timeframes and budgets. Executive orders, for instance, are often issued without fiscal budget backing, forcing security leaders to assess their existing systems and contracts to determine if current infrastructure investments will support the new requirements and identify which legacy systems must be updated or removed from the network.

Additionally, security leaders must evaluate which contract terms may help or hinder the evolution of the network to meet new regulatory compliance standards.

The list of considerations goes on, but the point is that budgets are capped, and contracts can constrain the timing and degree of progress. It’s easy to get distracted by all the noise around new standards and guidelines but stay focused on the regulations that matter to your organization.

Adopt multifunctional technologies

While a private sector organization typically operates one network, the federal government operates multiple. Some examples include unclassified, secret, and top-secret networks, each with its own rules and network challenges. Users often have to contend with challenging military operating environments and low bandwidth connections. In addition, regardless of the challenges, each network must continue to comply with cybersecurity regulations.

The diverse nature of these environments means that security teams must possess expertise across multiple platforms. The scarcity of skilled security personnel exacerbates this challenge, as organizations struggle to find and retain professionals with the necessary knowledge and experience.

To expedite compliance efforts, utilize solutions that provide greater network visibility and are familiar to a broader community of security professionals. Also, adopt multifaceted, versatile technologies and rely less on bespoke solutions. This approach provides more flexibility and scalability to meet evolving guidelines. For example, consider the benefits of automated security and compliance tools. These tools can significantly reduce the time and effort required for data collection and analysis by automating routine tasks and providing centralized visibility into the network.

Additionally, agencies implementing a zero trust architecture require continuous verification of user and device identities. This approach minimizes the attack surface and enhances the overall security posture. By integrating zero trust principles with automated tools, organizations can achieve a more resilient and compliant security framework.

Efficient evidence collection

The shift toward hybrid and multi-cloud environments adds layers of complexity to cybersecurity and compliance efforts. These geographically dispersed systems make it difficult to gain a holistic view of the entire network. This forces security teams to manually aggregate and correlate data from various sources, which is time-consuming and prone to errors. It also hinders the ability to detect and respond to threats promptly, leaving networks vulnerable.

Evidence collection solves this challenge as it requires a comprehensive model of the entire network infrastructure. With end-to-end visibility of the network, even in multi-cloud environments, and capabilities for historical data analysis, path analysis, and compliance monitoring, organizations can more efficiently achieve and maintain a strong security posture and compliance, even with evolving standards.

Behavioral analysis and attack surface management are key components of an effective evidence collection strategy. These capabilities enable security professionals to proactively verify that network behavior aligns with intended configurations and identify anomalies. Additionally, security professionals can simulate the network environment and conduct detailed analysis without impacting live operations. In this controlled setting, security professionals can identify potential vulnerabilities and remediate issues faster.

Staff retention, collaboration

Evolving security guidelines are creating increased demand for cybersecurity professionals. However, the cybersecurity industry is concurrently grappling with a skills gap, where there are more job openings than qualified candidates available to fill them. To address this issue, organizations should prioritize investments in training and development programs. By enhancing the skills of existing staff and fostering a culture of continuous learning, organizations can cultivate a more adept and knowledgeable security team while retaining valuable talent.

Retaining security professionals is crucial for organizations to achieve compliance. These professionals develop deep expertise and knowledge of the organization’s systems and processes over time. This institutional knowledge is invaluable as experienced security staff can oversee the continuous implementation and management of security policies and practices necessary for ongoing compliance. Cross-functional software systems can improve collaboration by providing the entire organization access to accurate information about the hybrid multi-cloud environment.

Retaining staff also contributes to efficient audits and assessments. They are well-versed in the organization’s compliance history and processes, enabling them to prepare effectively for audits and respond promptly to assessment findings.

Additionally, collaboration plays a crucial role in navigating the complexities of achieving, maintaining, and proving compliance. Partnering with security professionals in other departments or across entities can break down silos and promote the sharing of resources and knowledge. A collaborative approach can facilitate the adoption of similar technologies and encourage transparency in sharing successful approaches and solutions. By avoiding redundant efforts and isolated strategies, departments and organizations can collectively navigate cybersecurity and compliance challenges.

The complexities of federal cybersecurity guidance necessitate a multifaceted approach to achieving compliance. Understanding what regulations are applicable and implementing multifaceted technologies and frameworks, such as automated tools and a zero trust architecture, enables organizations to adapt to evolving standards more easily. Additionally, prioritizing evidence collection helps organizations gain end-to-end visibility, compliance verification, and network monitoring for vulnerabilities. Amidst these changes, retaining security professionals is critical for developing effective strategies and leveraging institutional knowledge.

These four strategies empower federal and private sector entities to enhance their security posture swiftly, achieve compliance efficiently, and fortify their networks against emerging threats.

Matt Honea is Head of Security and Compliance for Forward Networks.

“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Acting Chief Information Officer at United States Department of Defense,” Beavers wrote in July on LinkedIn. The department’s website now lists her as acting CIO.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon did not immediately return a request for comment.

As the primary IT adviser to the defense secretary, Beavers is taking over from former CIO John Sherman, who stepped down in June to take a position outside government as dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Previously serving as the principal deputy CIO at the Pentagon, Beavers is well acquainted with the Defense Department’s many ongoing initiatives meant to secure the defense-industrial base, develop 5G technologies and explore artificial intelligence.

Since she came to the department, Beavers has worked on landmark endeavors like Project Herald, the Pentagon’s plan to transform digital intelligence sharing, and Fulcrum, the recently announced IT transformation strategy. The latter is where she is most focused now on building momentum, she said in her LinkedIn post.

“[That] gives you tangible steps to turn that strategic vision into an operational reality,” Beavers said at the 2024 TechNet Cyber conference in Baltimore, which took place June 25-27. “It’ll be followed by an implementation plan, which will give some more information.”

The former Air Force intelligence officer and retired brigadier general comes to the position at a time when the DOD is beginning to put many of its theories around zero trust, cloud computing, machine learning and cybersecurity into practice.

The department for several years now released guidance thanks to the help of working groups and testing approaches via pilots. Now, officials say, it’s in a position to actually phase in solutions. The department has a goal to come up with a data tagging and labeling strategy by the end of the calendar year.

Beavers also said at TechNet Cyber that she anticipates growth in the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability procurement vehicle as other contracts begin to expire.

Pentagon zero-trust office aims to start data tagging, labeling in ′24

At the same time, challenges persist for Beavers and her office, including cyber workforce shortages, unpredictable funding and technical debt that separates the services from the modern approaches they’re after.

All the while, China looms as a major U.S. adversary on the digital battlefield, and attacks on public infrastructure underscore the urgency of predicting and intercepting cyberthreats.

The DOD is seeking $14.5 billion in fiscal 2025 for its cyberspace programs. According to the DOD’s website, Kevin Mulvihill is the new acting principal deputy CIO.

An FBI investigation revealed that Teixeira, a 22-year-old who ran a server on Discord called “Thug Shaker Central,” spent much of his life online, talking primarily with other young men via message, video calls and voice chats. He chatted about guns and military gear, threatened his school, made racist and antisemitic jokes, traded conspiracy theories, discussed antigovernment sentiments, and in a bid to show off, shared some of the military’s most closely guarded secrets about the Russia-Ukraine war and the Middle East.

By the time the young airman was arrested in 2023, media scholar PS Berge had been studying Discord and its users for three years and had created an online consortium of other academic researchers who were doing the same. That an intelligence leak occurred on the site, creating a national security incident, didn’t come as a shock to her.

“My response was, ‘Of course. Of course this would happen on Discord,’” Berge said. “Because on a platform like this, you share everything with your people. Everything about your life. So, why not share national security secrets?”

Teixeira pleaded guilty in March to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. His sentencing is scheduled for September, and prosecutors are asking that he serve between 11 and 17 years in prison.

The same month Teixeira agreed to a plea deal, the FBI revealed it had investigated another service member in 2022 for leaking information on Discord.

Former Air Force Staff Sgt. Jason Gray, who served as a cyber analyst at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, admitted to running a Facebook group for followers of Boogaloo, a loosely organized, antigovernment movement that advocates for a second Civil War. Gray was disgruntled with his military career, and he discussed his dissatisfaction with the U.S. government in several Discord channels created for the Boogaloo movement, according to a 2022 FBI affidavit that was unsealed in March.

Gray, who used the account name LazyAirmen#7460, was accused of posting a classified image in a private Discord channel that he “likely obtained” from his access to National Security Agency intelligence, the affidavit states.

Investigators said the image could’ve been shared “in furtherance of the Boogaloo ideology,” but didn’t elaborate on the image’s details. It’s uncertain whether the FBI is still investigating the potential leak. But while searching Gray’s electronic devices for evidence of an intelligence breach, authorities discovered hundreds of images of child pornography. Gray is currently serving five years in federal prison on multiple child pornography charges.

Oversharing is a hallmark of Discord, an online world where members of certain channels talk all day, every day, and even fall asleep together on voice calls, said Megan Squire, a computer scientist and deputy director for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

People who study the platform agree that it’s not inherently bad — it’s used by millions of gamers, students, teachers, professionals, hobbyists and members of the military community to communicate and socialize. However, extremists have hijacked a part of the platform to radicalize and recruit others to their causes, said Jakob Guhl, senior manager for policy and research at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Following the leak of national security secrets and other high-profile, nefarious uses of the platform in recent years, researchers are grappling with what to think of the platform’s small but headline-grabbing dark side, and many disagree on whether Discord as a company is doing enough to root out bad actors.

“It’s always a bit difficult to strike the right tone between not scaring people off the platform, because the majority of users are completely fine, but also highlighting that there is an actual issue of radicalization,” Guhl said. “It’s not the biggest or most offending platform, but it definitely plays a crucial role among this network.”

‘Not inherently evil’

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, known as START, studied decades of violent extremist attacks and found a military background to be the most commonly shared characteristic among those who committed or plotted mass casualty attacks from 1990 through 2022, more so than criminal histories or mental health problems.

Researchers from START said the study revealed why extremist groups tend to focus recruitment efforts toward people with military service records: Even a small number of them can have an outsized impact inside extremist movements.

While such recruitment occurs on Discord, Guhl, Berge and Squire agreed that the mere presence of service members and veterans on the platform isn’t a cause for concern.

“It’s a popular platform and not inherently evil,” Squire said. “I’d be much more concerned about military folks on 4chan, Telegram, places like that. Nothing good is happening on those platforms, but Discord could be useful.”

In fact, Berge said, it can be a valuable forum for marginalized people to foster a sense of community. On its “about” page, Discord describes its mission as one that helps users find a sense of belonging.

“Discord is about giving people the power to create space to find belonging in their lives,” the company’s mission statement reads. “We want to make it easier for you to talk regularly with the people you care about. We want you to build genuine relationships with your friends and communities close to home or around the world.”

That’s what the veterans group Frost Call is doing on the platform. The nonprofit encourages veterans and service members to stay connected through gaming, one of its founders told Military Times last year. As of June, it boasted 390 members.

“When we founded Frost Call, we built an organization around this idea of bringing veterans together, helping to improve camaraderie that’s missing from military service,” Marine Corps veteran Wesley Sanders said last year. “It serves an enormous mental health need, but also ... an existential need for a lot of veterans.”

Moreover, when new users join Discord, extremist elements of the platform are not easily visible.

Discord is made up of millions of servers centered on various topics. Users can join up to 100 servers, and each server has numerous text, voice and video channels. When a new user creates an account and searches servers to join, the platform will suggest “its most popular, most successful, public-facing communities,” rather than any disquieting, invite-only communities, Berge said.

“If you are a standard user, and if you’re signing in to Discord for your general interests — maybe you’re looking for fellow students or fellow veterans — 90% of the time, you’re not going to accidentally stumble upon an extremist group,” she said. “They actually go through a lot of effort to make these spaces insulated, to make them difficult to find.”

When using Disboard, a third-party search platform for Discord servers, prompts such as “Nazi” or “white supremacist” won’t elicit results like they used to, Berge said. In a 2021 study, she found thousands of Discord servers that marketed themselves on Disboard as hateful and Nazi-affiliated spaces.

“You used to be able to search for those terms and find communities. It was horrifying,” Berge said. “Those servers still exist, but they’ve changed the ways they’re identified, and in some cases, we know that high-profile, toxic communities have been shut down.”

Extremists find a foothold

Founders Jason Citron and Stan Vishnevskiy created Discord in 2015 as a way to allow friends around the world to communicate while playing video games online. Its popularity exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns went into effect and many people became more isolated than ever before.

Just two years after it launched, Discord gained notoriety as the platform of choice for facilitators of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Organizers, including some veterans, used Discord to share propaganda and coordinate the protest, which turned deadly. James Fields was convicted of killing Heather Heyer when he drove his car into a group of counterprotesters. Fields had joined the Army in 2015 but was separated quickly because of a cited lack of motivation and failure to train.

In 2022, Discord made headlines again after a mass shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, where seven people were killed and dozens more injured. The suspected shooter ran his own Discord server called “SS,” where he complained about “commies,” short for “communists,” according to posts archived by the nonprofit website Unicorn Riot.

That same year, an 18-year-old white gunman killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The gunman, Payton Gendron, spent months writing plans for the attack in a diary he kept on a private Discord server, visible only to him. About 30 minutes before the attack, Gendron sent out invitations for others to view the diary, and 15 people accessed it, according to Discord.

The platform again faced scrutiny following Teixeira’s leak of national security secrets.

“It’s periodic. Every couple of years, it seems like there’s something,” Squire said. “There are other platforms that are worse, but Discord keeps coming up over and over again.”

Research institutions such as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that Discord serves as a hub for socializing and community-building across far-right groups, including Catholic extremists, the white supremacist Atomwaffen Division and the antigovernment Boogaloo movement.

Extremist groups value the platform’s layers of privacy and anonymity, as well as its chat and video functions and collaborative nature, Guhl said. Berge described it as a walled garden, or an online environment where user access to content can be controlled. Servers come with the capability to assign hierarchy to different members and allow some members to access information that others can’t, the researchers said.

“In, say, a Twitter direct-messaging thread or Facebook DM, you don’t really have levels and hierarchies,” Squire said. “Discord really allows you to have more fine-grained ranking structures.”

Another reason for the prevalence of extremists on the platform stems from its roots in gaming, Guhl surmised.

Rachel Kowert, a globally recognized researcher on gaming and mental health, has spent five years researching extremism in video game communities. Though gaming itself is a powerful tool for connection and growth, extreme and hateful ideologies are now commonplace in those spaces, Kowert said.

“If you’re spending a lot of time in the social or gaming spaces where misogyny is commonplace, that can in turn start to internalize in the way you see the world and interact in it,” Kowert said.

Fighting a dark legacy

The existence of far-right groups on Discord — and the high-profile instances of extremism on the platform in the past several years — has spawned its “extremist legacy,” one from which it’s now trying hard to distance itself, said Berge.

Discord said it removed more than 2,000 far-right-affiliated servers following the “Unite the Right” rally. After the Buffalo killings, it removed Gendron’s server and worked to prevent the spread of content related to the attack, the company said. At that point, Discord agreed it “must do more to remove hate and violent extremism.”

“We created Discord to be a place for people to find belonging, and hate and violence are in direct opposition to our mission,” the company said in a statement at the time. “We take our commitment to these principles seriously and will continue to invest in and deploy resources.”

Earlier this year, the company reported that 15% of its staff works on its user safety team, which cracks down on harassment, hateful conduct, inappropriate contact, violent and abusive imagery, violent extremism, misinformation, spam, fraud, scams and other illegal behavior.

During the investigations into Teixeira and Jason Gray, Discord officials immediately cooperated with law enforcement, a company spokesperson told Military Times. And in recent months, Discord has leaned on machine-learning technology to moderate content.

“We expressly prohibit using Discord for illegal activity, which includes the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents,” the spokesperson said.

The company publishes reports each quarter showing actions taken against various accounts and servers. The latest report, published in January, says Discord disabled 6,109 accounts and removed 627 servers that espoused violent extremism during the last few months of 2023.

Squire and Guhl agreed that Discord is “pretty good” at responding to extremist content. Guhl credited the company for including extremism and hate speech in its community guidelines, as well as for deleting servers on a regular basis that breach its terms of service. Discord also created a channel where Squire could flag questionable content on the platform, and the company has been receptive to the concerns she’s raised, she said.

“I credit where credit is due, and I have to give them credit for that,” Squire said. “I think it’s taken seriously, and there are other platforms that I could not say that about.”

Extremists are ‘absolutely still there’

Berge applauded Discord for ramping up the technology behind its moderation and for introducing IP bans, which restrict a device from accessing the platform, rather than just an account. Still, she sees room for improvement.

Discord should place more emphasis on educating moderators and users about how to recognize when someone is being radicalized and pulled into an extremist space, Berge said. She also criticized the platform for disbanding a program in 2023 that included hundreds of volunteer moderators.

“It wasn’t Discord’s automated flagging systems that caught national security secrets being leaked by Jack Teixeira. It took other users and community moderators digging into it and someone finally reporting it,” Berge said. “Elevating people and giving them tools to moderate is absolutely central to protecting the platform, and that’s one area where I think they’re taking a step back.”

Berge is still researching communities on Discord, four years after she first uncovered a network of white supremacists using the platform as a recruitment ground. Despite its community guidelines and efforts to remove offending servers and accounts, Discord still serves as a meeting place for pockets of extremism.

“They’re harder to find, but they are absolutely still here. We’re still finding them,” Berge said. “It is still one of the most popular spaces for people to congregate, share and be in community with each other, for better or for worse.”

Discord remains the “platform of choice” for some hate groups, noted Squire, who described the company’s fight against extremists as playing whack-a-mole: As soon as one is removed, another pops up. A lack of institutional knowledge among far-right extremist groups is partly to blame, she said.

“Everybody’s always fresh, and they don’t have any structure for teaching one another and learning from mistakes of the past,” Squire said. “That’s convenient for us, because as we keep amassing knowledge, they make the mistake of reusing the technology that’s most convenient, rather than being strategic.”

This story was produced in partnership with Military Veterans in Journalism. Please send tips to MVJ-Tips@militarytimes.com.

NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched aboard Boeing’s new Starliner capsule early last month, the first people to ride it. Leaks and thruster failures almost derailed their arrival at the International Space Station, and has kept them there much longer than planned.

In their first news conference from orbit, they said they expect to return once thruster testing is complete here on Earth. They said they’re not complaining about getting extra time in orbit, and are enjoying helping the station crew.

“I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will bring us home, no problem," Williams told reporters.

The two rocketed into orbit on June 5 on the test flight, which was originally supposed to last eight days.

NASA ordered up the Starliner and SpaceX Dragon capsules a decade ago for astronaut flights to and from the space station, paying each company billions of dollars. SpaceX's first taxi flight with astronauts was in 2020. Boeing's first crew flight was repeatedly delayed because of software and other issues.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s fiscal 2025 defense policy bill, released July 8, includes a provision that would require DIU to craft a roadmap for how it plans to expand into more regions of the U.S.

“The committee recognizes the importance of DIU’s mission to strengthen national security by accelerating the adoption of commercial technology,” the panel said in a report accompanying the measure, “The committee believes DIU should find ways to expand its geographic footprint to achieve nationwide coverage for DIU activities, particularly to geographic areas that are not major technology and innovation hubs.”

The bill directs DIU to deepen its relationships with Defense Department laboratories, university affiliated research centers and other entities across the country that are tapped into local innovation ecosystem.

The Pentagon established DIU in 2015 to help the department take advantage of technology being developed by Silicon Valley firms. Since then, the organization has grown significantly in influence and resources and has partnered with a range of non-traditional companies — from West Coast startups to smaller defense firms located around the country.

Companies based in California have received the most contracts since DIU’s inception — 159 awards worth $635 million according to its most recent annual report released in May. However, the organization has made a concerted effort to increase its outreach throughout the U.S. As of fiscal 2023, it had awarded contracts to firms in 35 states.

DIU is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and has offices in Boston, Austin, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. This year, through its National Security Innovation Network, the organization opened five new onramp hubs in Kansas, Ohio, Arizona, Hawaii and Washington.

The hubs provide a chance for local universities and businesses to learn how to work with DOD and get access government funding. They also serve as an entry point for the into innovation networks it may not otherwise be aware of.

“American ingenuity is critical to building our nation’s enduring advantage,” DIU Director Doug Beck said of the hubs when they were announced in 2023. “These spaces will serve startups, academia, industry and other local talent and technology in order to leverage the innovation capability across the entire country, connecting them directly to DOD needs and strengthening the defense industrial base.”

The all-new Ariane 6 blasted off from French Guiana for a validation flight loaded with scientific experiments and testing equipment. The next flight planned for December will carry CSO-3, a French military-surveillance satellite that had originally been scheduled for launch in 2021.

“This first successful launch of Ariane 6 finally gives Europe back its capacity to access space,” Philippe Baptiste, the head of French space agency CNES, said in a statement.

The first launch of Ariane 6, originally planned for 2020, had been pushed back by technical issues as well as the Covid-19 pandemic. Russia broke off space cooperation in 2022 after its invasion of Ukraine, meaning Europe could no longer use the Soyuz launchers as a stop-gap measure, and leaving the continent reliant on commercial providers including SpaceX for heavy space lift.

The most urgent upcoming military missions for Ariane 6 are observation satellites including CSO-3, according to Paul Wohrer, a research fellow specialized in space issues at the French Institute of International Relations, or IFRI. France also still has to launch the Yoda agile satellite demonstrator, after the small patroller satellite was held up by a lack of launch slots.

The lack of autonomous access to space was “becoming dangerous,” leaving Europe unable to launch satellites that are “extremely sensitive and extremely useful for our armed forces,” according to Wohrer, and pushing back future programs such as the French IRIS military-observation satellites.

European armies “need this type of space capability, particularly at a time when war is on Europe’s doorstep,” Wohrer said. “The war in Ukraine clearly demonstrated the importance of space. We seem to be entering a period in which the ability to access space will become increasingly strategic.”

While military satellites made up a limited share of Ariane 5 launches, the retired rocket’s final mission in July 2023 lifted the French Syracuse 4B military communications satellite into orbit, as well as Germany’s Heinrich-Hertz-Satellit with a dual civilian-military communications payload.

Over a 27-year career, Ariane 5 placed the military communications systems for the major western European states in orbit: Skynet 5 for the U.K., Syracuse 3 and 4 for France, Sicral-2 for Italy, Secomsat and SpainSat for Spain and Satcom BW for Germany’s Bundeswehr.

The new rocket has an order book for 30 launches, Caroline Arnoux, head of the Ariane 6 program at Arianespace, said in a press briefing on June 25. After two launches planned for this year, the pace will increase to six in 2025, eight the following year and ten in 2027. About a third of the missions are for government customers, including the military.

The primary goal of Ariane 6 is to serve European institutional missions and ensure they can reach space, which is the core reason for public funding of the launcher, according to Lucia Linares, head of space transportation strategy and institutional launches at the European Space Agency. The new rocket will the “Europe’s workhorse for guaranteed access to space,” Linares said at the June 25 briefing.

An Ariane 6 launch may initially be in the order of tens of millions of dollars more expensive than a launch by SpaceX of the reusable Falcon 9, according to Wohrer. That probably won’t hold back European armed forces from favoring the domestically-produced rocket, he said.

“It’s unlikely that the difference in costs will be enough for the military not to buy European launchers,” Wohrer said. “At what point does it become an unbearable factor? It’s a bit like the cost of security, the cost of ensuring strategic autonomy in terms of access to space.”

ESA is working on a reusable rocket engine called Prometheus, with ArianeGroup the lead contractor, with the goal of making a “very low-cost” engine that can be built at one-tenth of the cost of the Vulcain 2 that powered the Ariane 5.

Launching military or dual-use satellites on a foreign rocket risks revealing secrets, and it puts Europe at the mercy of foreign competitors’ prices, as was the case with the EU paying SpaceX a premium for security measures around the launch of Galileo navigation satellites, according to Wohrer. The lack of autonomous launch capacity “is something quite dangerous, quite risky,” he said.

European countries will have to think about bolstering their capabilities to gather intelligence from space if they want to be less reliant on the United States, according to Wohrer. The European parliament has raised concerns about depending on the U.S. in terms of space security, saying this could contradict the EU’s desire to achieve strategic autonomy.

“If this is the kind of development we’re heading for, access to space will be absolutely essential,” Wohrer said. “I don’t think you can be a major military power today without access to space. Frankly, space has become extremely useful for waging war and conducting operations.”

Japan’s Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency – ATLA for short – published the video on its official YouTube page on July 4. In an accompanying explanation, it said it had “conducted a pre-launch test of a Hyper-Velocity Gliding Projectile for island defense” in California on March 23.

Examining the video footage, Timothy Wright, research associate in the Defence and Military Analysis Programme of the U.K.-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), offered this explanation to Defense News:

“Japan conducted two preliminary tests of its so-called HVGP in March and April, 2024 respectively. The missile’s manufacturer said the purpose of the test was to validate ‘measurement’ units, possibly meaning the missile’s inertial navigation system. ATLA did not say whether the warhead separated from the booster during either test.”

Once fielded, the HVGP, made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, will be launched from a truck using a booster, after which the warhead separates and glides towards its target.

Wright noted, “Japan is developing the HVGP for both anti-ship and land attack missions to intercept and eliminate invading forces against Japan at a distance and at an early stage.”

ATLA has previously released computer animations of an HVGP attacking an enemy aircraft carrier.

When development commenced in fiscal 2015, the HVGP was slated to enter service in 2029. However, Japan’s perceived deterioration of its security environment – prompted primarily by China and North Korea – caused defense leaders to accelerate the missile’s development by three years.

The high-supersonic Block I version of the HVGP, with an estimated maximum range of 310 miles (500km), is now expected to be fielded by the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) in 2026.

As part of its incremental development, a hypersonic Block 2 version, with perhaps an 1,864-mile (3,000km) range, will be fielded in around FY2030.

“Japan’s current missile capabilities reflect the restrictions of its post-1945 defense posture, but those limitations will soon change substantially following Tokyo’s groundbreaking decision in 2023 for it to procure so-called ‘counterstrike’ capabilities,” Wright said.

The IISS researcher said Tokyo is developing “at least seven new types of air-, sea- and ground-launched missiles for land and maritime roles, and buying three different missile designs from its U.S. ally”.

One of those American missiles is the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM). Also on July 4, ATLA confirmed it had signed an agreement to acquire the Lockheed Martin-made weapon. The U.S. had approved a $104 million Foreign Military Sale of 50 AGM-158B/B-2 JASSMs with extended range last August.

These, plus the HVGP, will strengthen Japan’s “stand-off defense capabilities in order to quickly and remotely intercept and eliminate invading forces against our country,” ATLA said.

Japanese ground forces are expected to eventually field two HVGP battalions.

“Once these systems enter service in large numbers, Japan will possess one of the most significant long-range strike capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Wright.

The journalists reported seeing nothing wrong on the flight deck, which was precisely the point of Hill’s invitation. Ike and its crew remained on station, with no hole in the deck.

Two weeks earlier, a spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi rebel movement announced that the rebels had struck the Eisenhower with a barrage of missiles to punish the United States for its support of Israel in its war against Hamas.

On X (formerly Twitter), Houthi supporters shared a video allegedly showing a large crater at the forward end of the Eisenhower’s flight deck. Other accounts posted a different image of a fiery blast aboard the ship.

The purported evidence of a strike spread quickly across Chinese and Russian social media platforms, thanks in part to the efforts of Russian sites with a reputation in the West for spreading disinformation.

Despite false Houthi claims, the Ike aircraft carrier fights on

The Houthis’ online conjuring of a successful attack on Ike that never happened complements their months-long campaign to disrupt commercial shipping in the Red Sea that has sunk commercial vessels and injured civilian mariners.

And while the U.S. military and allies regularly hit back with airstrikes against Houthi missile launchers and other assets in Yemen, the Pentagon is less prepared to defend against the online lies and disinformation that the Houthis are spreading.

In the instance of the false Ike attack, Capt. Hill took matters into his own hands, leveraging his 86,000 followers on X. The day after the false claims emerged, Hill began to post videos and still images showing normal operations aboard his ship, including a plane landing on the flight deck and trays of muffins and cinnamon buns fresh from the oven in the ship’s bakery.

I infiltrated the bake shop because I smelled something interesting from way down the p-way. pic.twitter.com/8BkWFdI5LU

— Chowdah Hill (@ChowdahHill) May 31, 2024

Meanwhile, independent analysts exposed how the Houthis generated their false evidence of a missile strike on the Eisenhower.

An Israeli analyst demonstrated that the supposed photograph of a crater on the carrier’s flight deck consisted of a stock image of a hole superimposed on an overhead shot of the Eisenhower taken from satellite imagery dated almost a year before the alleged strike.

This is a photoshopped satellite image of the USS Eisenhower docked at Pier 12 at the Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, taken on April 10th, 2023.
Additionally, here is the Shutterstock image used for the "impact". https://t.co/CWagV062Xl pic.twitter.com/eqYsb04WVM

— Tal Hagin (@talhagin) June 4, 2024

The fictional attack on Ike did not come as a surprise to anyone tracking Houthi disinformation efforts. In an ironic example from March, a Telegram channel and a pro-Houthi website shared an AI-generated image of a burning vessel they identified as the Pinocchio, an actual commercial ship the Houthis had targeted but missed.

The Houthis’ supporters had pulled their supposed evidence from a website that shared free stock images. However, no one from the Pentagon officially debunked this image as the Israeli analyst did for the fake photos of Ike.

In addition to these forgeries, pro-Houthi accounts have posted actual images of commercial vessels in flames, claiming the destruction resulted from Houthi attacks.

Yet in those cases, one image showed a burning ship on the Black Sea while another showed events that took place off the coast of Sri Lanka. Pro-Houthi posters even attempted to portray a blurry photo of a distant volcano as a successful strike on an Israeli ship.

This deluge of deceptively labeled images spread was also met with crickets from the Pentagon.

The U.S. military appears to grasp the need to counter disinformation spread by the Houthis and other regional adversaries. In February, the Joint Maritime Information Center, or JMIC, launched its efforts to provide accurate information to shipping companies about Houthi strikes, both real and imagined.

The JMIC operates under the umbrella of the Combined Maritime Forces – a naval partnership of 44 nations under the command of the top U.S. admiral in the region, who also serves as commander of U.S. 5th Fleet.

This is a start, but the Navy has yet to show that it can debunk false information as quickly as the Houthis post it online.

It is fortunate that an Israeli civilian had the skill and commitment necessary to expose the alleged crater aboard the Eisenhower as a work of photoshopping. He posted his conclusions on X four days after the Houthis publicized the supposed attack. Ideally, the Navy itself should be prepared to debunk such propaganda as soon as it appears.

Standing up this kind of capability should be a priority for the JMIC, which could include such efforts in its existing weekly updates.

It is important to act now before the Houthis’ disinformation apparatus becomes more sophisticated. Already, one of its supporters’ fake images of a burning ship garnered 850,000 views on X.

Moreover, the challenge is not limited to the Red Sea or the Middle East. Military forces in every command should have public affairs and open-source intelligence personnel working together to debunk false and exaggerated claims of enemy success on the battlefield.

Max Lesser is senior analyst on emerging threats at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank.

Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced the contract Tuesday at a Chamber of Commerce industry day focused on increasing NATO member countries' defense manufacturing capabilities to deter future attacks.

“There is no way to provide strong defense without a strong defense industry," Stoltenberg said.

The Stinger is a portable surface-to-air defense system that can be carried and fired by troops or mounted onto a vehicle and used as short-range defense against aircraft.

The Raytheon-produced system was one of the first weapons the U.S. shipped to Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion. It is now among hundreds of types of systems, and tens of millions of rounds of ammunition, artillery and missiles, that countries have pulled from their stockpiles to help Ukraine. But the rapid push over the past two years exposed that defense firms both in the U.S. and in Europe were not set to produce at the levels needed in a major conventional war.

The NATO summit is also occurring against a backdrop of uncertainty: U.S. political divisions delayed weapons for Ukraine for months and the upcoming presidential election is raising concern that U.S. backing — with weapons and troops — in case of threats against member countries may not always be guaranteed.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has boasted during campaign speeches that he'd encourage Russia to do as it wished with NATO members that do not meet their commitment to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.

In some cases, defense production lines were stagnant at the time of the 2022 invasion and are only now getting production numbers up. The buildup has been dependent on getting new, longer-term contracts signed to support more capital investment in the needed infrastructure.

“This is not about shifts or a bottleneck. It’s building new factories,” said Morten Brandtzaeg, the chief executive officer of Nammo, a Norway-based ammunition firm.

The war also spurred those NATO members to increase the amount they spend on defense.

Out of 32 NATO members, 23 are expected to meet the 2% commitment this year, up from just six before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That's seen as still not enough, as Russia has leveraged the sheer size of its workforce to rapidly replace weapons lost in the war.

“If you want to fight a war for a long time, you need to have an industry behind you, that has the capacity for a long time,” Brandtzaeg said.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told the Chamber of Commerce that Russia is now spending an estimated 7% to 9% of its GDP on defense. Estonia is spending more than 3% of its GDP on defense, but needs to do more to refill its stockpiles, Pevkur said.

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who also serves as a deputy prime minister, said his country will commit at least 4% of its GDP to defense this year.

The war in Ukraine “exposed major weaknesses of Poland, of region and of the world at large,” Kosiniak-Kamysz said.

Since the invasion, the U.S. has provided more than $53.6 billion in weapons and security assistance to Ukraine. This support, at a time when the U.S. also is sending weapons to Israel and Taiwan, has strained the U.S. stockpile. The rest of the NATO members and other international partners have provided about $50 billion altogether in weapons and security assistance, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, an independent research organization based in Germany.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan told Tuesday's gathering that for the first time ever, the NATO countries will each pledge to make plans to strengthen their own industrial defense capacity. He said this would help the alliance “prioritize production of the most vital defense equipment we would need in the event of a conflict."

The 32 members have widely varying defense industry sizes and capabilities, so each country's plan could vary widely, from partnering with industry to partnering with other countries.

___

Cook reported from Brussels.

This same weapon is widely used by Ukrainian soldiers against Russian invaders, plus Taiwan recently had a USD $60.2 million Foreign Military Sale of 720 of these loitering munitions approved.

Canberra’s announcement did not mention quantities or price, but it said the first examples would reach Australia later this year and enter Australian Defence Force service in 2025.

Pentagon to issue guidance on open radio access networks to support 5G

The Switchblade 300, which has a 3.69-pound (1.68kg) warhead and 19-mile (30km) range in its latest Block 20 variant, will “boost the ADF’s arsenal of drones, including those capable of being armed,” according to a Department of Defence statement.

The weapon can be transported in a backpack, before being launched from a tube.

“With autonomous weapon systems increasingly prevalent, the Defence Strategic Review made clear that new technology and asymmetric advantage are important priorities,” said Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy. “The delivery of this proven precision loitering munition demonstrates the speed at which we are introducing capabilities to the ADF.”

However, his reference to speedy introduction is incongruous. Ukraine has been demonstrating the utility of loitering munitions for the past 2.5 years of combat, and yet Australia is only now introducing this class of weapon.

Indeed, Travis Reddy, CEO of the Australian firm DefendTex, criticized the ADF for its tardiness in acquiring any loitering munitions. His company manufactures the D40 drone, essentially a flying 40mm grenade.

He told Defense News the Australian government even prevented DefendTex from exporting warhead-equipped D40s to Ukraine, because its fuse had not “been through all the certification and qualification stages”. Therefore, the Australian company could send only camera-equipped D40s.

Conversely, the “U.K. took a pragmatic approach” and delivered to Ukraine 300 warhead-equipped D40s that it had commercially procured from DefendTex. Reddy said this D40 case “very much talks about this risk-adverse culture that exists within Defence”.

“We’re running programs right now to develop Australian drones,” Conroy said. “And we’re hoping to get them into the inventory as soon as possible.”

One example is the One-Way Loitering (OWL) munition developed by Western Australia-based firm Innovaero.

Innovaero officials didn’t immediatelyrespond to Defense News requests for details, but it is known the OWL is being trialed by Australian Army special forces, and more will be delivered to the army this year.

The OWL is in a different class to the Switchblade 300, since it has a 125-mile range, 100-minute endurance and carries a 15-pound anti-armor or fragmentation warhead.

Another Australian firm delivering drones to Ukraine is Sypaq Systems. Amanda Holt, Sypaq’s CEO, previously told Defense News that her firm had been delivering 100 low-cost Corvo drones per month, and that Ukrainian troops often jury-rigged them with explosives to act as loitering munitions.

Speaking in Alaska at the onset of NATO’s large-scale Arctic Defender drills, Boris Pistorius announced that Germany would propose a joint procurement scheme at the alliance’s summit this week in Washington, D.C.

The summit, marking the alliance’s 75-year anniversary, is expected be dominated by talk about countering the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

The German defense minister said he expected the summit to result in the formal announcement of a command in the German city of Wiesbaden to coordinate the provision of military material and training to the Ukrainian armed forces. Germany will be “represented at a high level in the leadership,” he said Monday.

The new command, the name of which is still being debated, will have a staff of 700 people, the U.S. State Department has announced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed that “these efforts do not make NATO party to the conflict.”

Russian state media and government officials have repeatedly said they consider the war in Ukraine a conflict between their country and NATO as a whole and the U.S. specifically due to their crucial support of Kyiv.

Pistorius also announced that Germany will buy “tens of thousands of rounds” of armaments this year through the Czech munitions initiative. He pledged to continue the military support of Ukraine more broadly, noting that the third German-donated patriot system had recently arrived in the eastern European country and was already operationally deployed.

In Washington, Germany will present a plan for NATO to buy drones “from German industry” on behalf of the Ukrainian armed forces, Pistorius said. This proposal would serve as “a foundation for our partners for the joint procurement of drones of all kinds,” he said while speaking to the press in Fairbanks.

According to the German government, the country has already provided 537 surveillance drones to Ukraine, mostly VECTOR and RQ-35 HEIDRUN models. The proposed initiative would encourage NATO to jointly procure these and other German-made drones on Kyiv’s behalf.

As of the end of April, Germany had provided a total of €10.2 billion ($11.03 billion) in military goods to Ukraine since the onset of the invasion, putting it second only to the U.S. on the list of Kyiv’s most dedicated supporters. In 2024 alone, the government in Berlin has already authorized the export of €4.88 billion in armaments to Ukraine, contributing to record military export volumes.

“You will see more of them on the frontline,” said Oleksandr Kamyshin, speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. “That’s one of the game changers we expect in the nearest 12 months.”

Uncrewed weapons have been key to Ukraine’s self defense to this point in the war. Naval drones have afflicted Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea — which has needed to move farther east after having around 20 ships sunk or damaged. And aerial drones have become crucial for targeting and attacks on the front lines, where some 10,000 are lost every month.

Air Force, Space Force on track for Bring-Your-Own-Device enrollment

Dressed in his usual black polo and fatigue-style pants, Kamyshin spoke at an event to promote Ukraine’s state-owned defense industry: Ukroboronprom. His comments followed a presentation on what Kyiv could produce on its own and where it needs help from foreign governments, defense companies and venture capitalists.

The increase in ground robotics Kamyshin predicted will come from manufacturers inside Ukraine, a sprawling network of volunteer, commercial and state-backed efforts. It also includes American companies partnering with Ukrainian firms to help improve their own kit.

Adam Bry, head of the drone maker Skydio, told Defense News in an interview last month that Ukrainian drone builders are the most advanced in the world. The land-based drones will perform a variety of missions, Kamyshin said, including demining, medical evacuation and combat itself.

Their main use, though, will be lightening some of the burden on Ukrainian soldiers fighting near the 600-mile front line. Ukraine lowered its eligible draft age from 27 to 25 earlier this year to help with some of its personnel shortages while fighting a much larger neighbor.

“The main point [is that] we try to get our people back from the front line,” Kamyshin said.

In addition, he said Ukraine’s aerial drones were already using artificial intelligence to target Russian positions and that the use of such software would expand in the coming year.

The Pentagon itself is pushing to use more autonomous as it faces a size disadvantage of its own: against China in the Indo-Pacific. In the last several years, the U.S. government has reviewed its policies on artificial intelligence and warfare, one part of the Replicator initiative — an effort to rush more drones to military leaders in the Pacific.

“We do our best to keep in mind all those ethical things, but at this point we have to work out a solution that will get more Russians out of my country,” Kamyshin said. “That’s the ethical dilemma we have now.”

Drones are one of Ukraine’s many equipment needs.

The country is still trying to source more artillery shells after a yearslong ramp up in the west. To do so, Kamyshin said, it will need two things: explosive components like TNT and money. The U.S. State Department, along with other countries, announced $2 billion in Foreign Military Financing for Ukraine’s defense industry earlier this year.

The money will help mature Ukraine’s domestic production in the long-term, but Kamyshin said it wasn’t enough.

“We are looking for another $10 [billion] to $15 billion,” he said.

Airmen and guardians will soon be able to take advantage of the Hypori Halo Workspace Anywhere program that grants access to government apps, email, NIPRNet, sensitive data, and CAC-enabled websites via personal devices, including a phone or tablet, whether they’re in the office or not.

A spokesperson for Hypori did not give an exact date for enrollment, but told C4ISRNET it’s still on track to begin this summer.

“The Air Force and Space Force are actually already using our platform,” said Jared Shepard, CEO and president of Hypori, at the TechNet Cyber conference presented by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International late last month in Baltimore. “Now, they’re going to scale.”

Capitalizing on the need for integrated communications and the pandemic-fueled remote work environment, the Army, including its Reserve and Guard components, already began transitioning service members toward Halo, which as of June 11 became the only way Army.mil users can access Army 365 services from a personal device. Shepard said at the conference that 50,000 Army enrollees are using the service since that BYOD effort began as a pilot in 2022. Hypori was also awarded a contract by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on June 6 to give a third of its workforce remote access to secure networks.

“[BYOD] is a top priority for us, and it is a game changer because when our soldiers and airmen are not at the armory, they have to be connected in a secure way,” said Ken McNeill, chief information officer of the National Guard Bureau, in a statement February.

Reservists and part-time members of the services especially have limited access to base networks, so giving them the flexibility to complete work from wherever they are will be a boon to the organization, leaders have said.

“In our dynamic environment, the Department of the Air Force is committed to providing user-friendly enterprise solutions which empower the force to work securely in a wide range of operational contexts,” said said Air Force Chief Information Officer Venice Goodwine in a statement in March.

The technology also eliminates the need to carry two devices while ensuring their government and personal data are kept separate to minimize liability. The idea of “no data at rest” means there is no risk of compromise if the enrolled devices are stolen or lost, and it ensures that personal information stored on that device is not accessible by the government.

The technology, which also vets users, is also compliant with White House orders that ban TikTok on government devices due to concerns that the social media platform’s Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance, would get access to sensitive data.

“Industry has a responsibility that if it’s doing work for the Department of Defense, that it protects that data,” Shepard said.

Aircraft are traditionally painted using a masking technique, requiring painters to use tape, film and paper to outline certain markings for a particular aircraft.

The new system being tested projects insignia and markings directly on the aircraft, providing the exact placement of objects that need painting without all the masking.

So far, the laser projection system is dramatically easier to use than the old stenciling method, according to Steven Lofy, senior materials engineer for the center’s corrosion and wear team.

“It takes an extensive amount of time and labor to mask aircraft for the application of major markings and insignia during the final finish process,” Lofy said in a statement. “It’s a demanding process based on old, paper drawings that can be difficult to read, making it challenging for our artisans to mask the exact areas on each aircraft consistently.”

Navy assembles F-35B clutch for first time

It’s also saving time, he said.

“With the laser projection system, we can simply come in, turn on the projectors and actually project where each marking should be on the aircraft,” Lofy said. “All we have to do from there is line each stencil up, mask and paint.”

The readiness center first utilized the system in January on a Marine Corps MV-22B Osprey for the aircraft’s signature white, horizontal stripes — resulting in an 85 percent decrease in labor hours. While the process previously took roughly 16 hours, the projector brought that number down to two.

The center has used the laser projection system to paint four aircraft so far and plans are underway to use the system more broadly by uploading 2D stencils to the projection system’s software, according to the Navy.

Based out of Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina, the center provides maintenance and repairs for Marine Corps aircraft — including the F-35B Lightning II. It is one of the Navy’s eight fleet readiness centers.

Even a “reasonably modified” version of the Northrop Grumman-made Sentinel will likely cost $140.9 billion, 81% more than the program’s original cost estimate of $77.7 billion, the Pentagon said in a statement. If Sentinel continues on its current path without being modified, the likely cost will be about $160 billion, it said.

And the military expects restructuring the program will delay it by several years.

“There are reasons for this cost growth, but there are also no excuses,” William LaPlante, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said in a conference call with reporters on Monday. “We fully appreciate the magnitude of the costs, but we also understand the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.”

The Sentinel is intended to replace the Air Force’s half-century old Minuteman III nuclear missile, which is nearing the end of its life. In January, the Air Force announced Sentinel’s future costs were projected to run over budget severely enough to trigger a review process known as a critical Nunn-McCurdy breach.

Such a review can sometimes lead to a program being canceled. LaPlante said Monday he decided to proceed with Sentinel after concluding it met several criteria, including that it is essential to national security and there were no cheaper alternatives that would meet the military’s operational requirements.

Big changes are coming for Sentinel, however. LaPlante rescinded the program’s Milestone B approval, which in September 2020 authorized the program to move into its engineering and manufacturing development phase. He also ordered the Air Force to restructure the program to address the root causes of the cost overruns and make sure it has the right management structure to keep its future price down.

The per-unit total cost for Sentinel was originally $118 million in 2020, when its cost, schedule and performance goals were set. When the Nunn-McCurdy breach was announced in January, those per-unit costs had grown at least 37% to about $162 million.

Hunter said the per-unit cost for the revised Sentinel program — which include components in addition to its missiles — is estimated to be about $214 million. He said the estimates from the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation, or CAPE, office came with a 50% confidence level, meaning the costs could end up higher or lower.

Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said he agreed with LaPlante’s decision and pledged to draw up a plan for restructuring Sentinel over the next few months and get to a new Milestone B approval. The entire process for revising the program and getting the Pentagon to approve its new plan, cost and schedule will likely take 18 to 24 months, Hunter said.

Command and launch

LaPlante and Hunter said most of the projected overruns are coming from Sentinel’s command and launch segment, which will include its missile silos and accompanying launch control centers where airmen operate the ICBMs. Revamping that segment will be a major part of the Air Force’s cost control effort, they said, as well as improving its systems engineering and changing how its contract is structured.

LaPlante said changes will include a “scaling back” of the launch facilities to make them smaller, simpler and more cost-effective. Paring down the launch facilities will also shorten the timeline needed to transition from the existing Minuteman III system and the new Sentinel facilities, he said.

Hunter said the new Sentinel facilities will need more communications infrastructure beyond the 7,500 miles of copper cabling now in use for the Minuteman silos and launch centers. The Air Force’s planned modifications to Sentinel include more affordable ways to do that work, he said.

In a statement, Northrop Grumman said it “is making important progress on this highly complex weapon system,” and continuing to achieve milestones to mature its design and reduce risk to prepare for production and deployment in the future.

Northrop said those milestones include designing and developing Sentinel’s facilities, support equipment and missile, and tests of components such as its nose cone and three booster stages.

“We continue to perform and meet our commitments under the EMD contract as we move toward delivery of this essential national security capability,” Northrop Grumman said.

LaPlante said that in “hindsight,” the department didn’t originally have enough information on how complicated Sentinel’s ground-based systems would be to accurately estimate its costs. In the nearly four years since, the Pentagon has much better information on hand, he said.

The Air Force also set up a committee chaired by its most senior leaders to oversee its nuclear enterprise, including its bombers, ICBMs and command-and-control, Hunter said. And the department dedicated a program executive officer to be in charge of ICBMs, set up a Nuclear Systems Center, and is changing the leadership of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center from a two-star general to a three-star general, he said.

Hunter said the Air Force will “do what it takes to sustain Minuteman III to meet these warfighter requirements in the interim.”

Gen. Jim Slife, the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, said Sentinel’s cost growth is not expected to kick in during the next five years, and the hardest choices on what to cut won’t be made until after the program’s new baseline is set.

“It is a decision for down the road, to decide what trade offs we’re going to need to make,” Slife said.

Notably the country aims to put Sfera communications satellites into orbit — an analogue of the American-made Starlink and the British OneWeb constellations. Roscosmos previously sought to launch more than 600 systems into space as part of this project, but budget cuts prevented this. Now the agency is eyeing 360 satellites, although Borisov said the goal ought to be at least 1,200.

The government has agreed to approve 180 billion rubles (U.S. $2 billion) for 162 satellites. However, thus far the state has allocated 95 billion rubles, and a strategy meant to further develop the domestic communications sector up to 2035 calls for the launch of six geostationary satellites.

Sergei Prokhorov, who leads the Sfera project, recently said there is money set aside for four of them.

Is this practical?

While Borisov, who spoke July 3, is aiming for the production of at least 250 satellites per year for various purposes, the country currently makes about 15 annually — despite an existing capacity to manufacture about 40 each year.

Roscosmos’ goal is unrealistic, according to Pavel Luzin, a space policy expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank. He noted the satellites will likely serve several functions, including optical observation, communications, meteorology, radar and television service.

“All the serious satellites that Russia has launched into space since 2022 were produced using imported Western electronics purchased no later than the mid-2010s, before the first sanctions,” Luzin told Defense News, referring to economic restrictions placed on Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“It turns out to be a fundamental contradiction: Russia has a big problem with satellite production, but at the same time Russia declares that in just a couple of years it will be able to produce [250] high-quality satellites for various purposes per year and is already mastering the technologies of their conveyor production,” Luzin said. “This simply does not happen.”

Russia can find components on the world market for the production of several satellites, but not enough to produce hundreds, Luzin added. “The heads of companies report that despite the sanctions, the industry is alive, although in fact they may not know where to get components for hundreds of satellites.”

Indeed, Borisov had said “industry is functioning relatively stably” amid the sanctions.

Amid the war, the state has adjusted its satellite production priorities, focusing heavily on dual-use satellites — that is, ones that provide military and civilian services.

Among its priorities are the optical reconnaissance satellite Razdan; a radar satellite for marine reconnaissance for the Pion-NKS constellation; two radar satellites, dubbed Obzor-R and Kondor; and several Glonass communications satellites.

Denis Banchenko, a former employee of Roscosmos, told Defense News that “a significant part of the planned satellites, and most likely all of them, will be used in the interests of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation for intelligence, surveillance, navigation and communications purposes.”

At the TechNet Cyber conference presented by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International in Baltimore last month, Randy Resnick, director of the Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office, said tagging and labeling, the practice of assigning metadata and identifiers to pieces of data, has been a long-term challenge for the department.

“They’ve been apparently working on this for 12 or more years —15 years — and I think it’s time enough to do something,” he said.

By way of an update on these efforts, Resnick said he approved three pilot programs in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Defense Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Office and the Department of Homeland Security to develop a plan that would allow for all the necessary conversions and interpretations to process any data tagging and labeling standard in an understandable,repeatable way.

Pentagon’s AI chief says data labeling is key to win race with China

The goal is to have a successful demo of a schema by the end of the calendar year. Resnick also set a deadline of October for an internal working group to brief his office on a solution, even a partial one.

“We’re not looking for perfection,” he said at TechNet. “We have to start implementing something, and then it’ll grow over time as people agree to more tags and more labels. It’s got to be flexible enough to allow for growth.”

In a January study by Defense Innovation Board, researchers found “data access remains the central enterprise-level obstacle to the sharing and use of data for the warfighter.” Part of that is because military departments are “haphazardly” placing data leaders throughout the organization while top-level tech leaders are struggling to enforce their position as a unifier. Other persistent issues like a lack of uniform guidance, sustained funding, workforce gaps and technical silos also make progress on broader zero-trust difficult.

For now, there remain roadblocks that separate the DoD from the data economy it wants, but Resnick is realistic about these challenges and said a solution in development is better than nothing at all.

“That’s the type of solution that I personally am looking for, because that’s what the department needs,” he said.

DIU, whose mission is to help the U.S. Department of Defense better leverage commercial technology, worked with two computing firms on the 18-month effort: Rescale, headquartered in San Francisco, and Parallel Works, based out of Chicago.

The companies partnered with DoD’s High Performance Computing Modernization Program, which is working to make decision-making tools enabled by supercomputers more accessible across the department — from researchers and acquisition officials to operators in the field.

The military uses supercomputers to quickly process large amounts of data that can be used to inform decisions or simulate complex scenarios. For example, a unit could use high-performance computing to understand how the weather forecast might impact a planned ISR operation. Or an engineer designing lighter body armor for soldiers could use it to research materials.

The Pentagon relies largely on physical computers — which are expensive to buy and maintain — to perform this work. Through the DIU effort, Rescale and Parallel Works demonstrated that they could provide these computing tools on the cloud, which means users don’t have to have access to a physical computer to take advantage of the capability.

“Researchers are [now] able to access cloud resources when appropriate to augment their work at on-premises centers,” Benjamin Parsons, chief technology officer for the High Performance Computing Modernization Program, said in a June 27 statement. “This has given them access to a wider variety of hardware, and the ability to scale resources beyond what is currently possible, all within one secure, easy to use, environment.”

Both firms are poised to receive production contracts later this year to scale their high-computing platforms to more users.

Matt McKee, Rescale’s chief operating officer, told C4ISRNET in a July 3 interview that cloud-based computing platforms have played a key role in the private sectors, which have used these tools to significantly reduce engineering cycle times for new product releases.

Those capabilities, he said, could change the way DoD develops, tests and fields new systems over the next three to five years.

“You’re seeing that type of thing reverberating through the private sector industry — so, how do we make sure that the U.S. government also has that agility,” he said. “We need to be able to incorporate everything new that is available to us and put all those resources to bear.”

While these supplies are traditionally delivered to Navy vessels via manned aircraft, such assets are expensive and facing manning shortages — causing delays that drones could remedy, according to Navy officials.

The Curtis Wilbur conducted flight tests using the Skyways V2.6 Unmanned Aerial System and PteroDynamics X-P4 Unmanned Aerial System, launching and recovering six drones between from June 19 to June 24 as part of the Just In Time Delivery logistics effort with the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division.

“The Navy continues to drive rapid experimentation and implementation of new technologies,” Cmdr. Yilei Liu, commanding officer of the Curtis Wilbur, said in a statement. “While easy to configure and ready to deploy, it is vital to evaluate these technologies in different environmental conditions to define and scope the operating envelopes of these highly capable platforms.”

Navy finalizes plans for next Rim of the Pacific exercise

In 2021, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division awarded PteroDynamics a contract to deliver three vertical take-off and landing drone prototypes to the Navy to assist delivering repair cargo.

“Embedding autonomous platforms into our already-existing systems will define the nature of combat operations in the future,” Liu said. “Once tested, autonomous systems can provide independent defensive and offensive capabilities in a contested environment. These systems can perform potentially dangerous, high-risk evolutions with maximum efficiency and minimal risk to personnel.”

Exercise Rim of the Pacific, known as RIMPAC, is a biennial exercise held near the Hawaiian Islands and involves nearly 30 nations and more than 25,000 personnel.

The exercise concludes on Aug. 1.

The focus of the Ramstein Legacy drill, held June 3-14, was on developing the alliance’s integrated air and missile defense with an additional eye on combating Class 1 unmanned aerial system threats — a reference to small, mini and micro drones.

Participating units hailed from Romania, Germany, Portugal, Hungary, France, Turkey and Poland, supported by British and Finnish fighter jets. In addition, three companies were invited to introduce some of their counter-drone equipment, including the U.S.-based firm Echodyne, the French CS Group, and German electronics specialist Rohde & Schwarz.

“Class 1 UAS have become one of the most important threats we observe at the moment in military conflicts. Where for many years having air superiority was one of the pillars of the NATO doctrine, we have seen recently that’s no longer the case,” said Cristian Coman, chief scientist at the joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance center at NATO’s Communications and Information Agency (NCIA).

On the first day of the training, participants were asked to get familiar with the capabilities of the systems at the exercise, including electronic warfare equipment, radars, and command-and-control systems.

The following days were focused on practical exercises and hands-on training, with each scenario increasing in difficulty. Part of the personnel involved in this segment were officers from the Italian C-UAS Center of Excellence, who performed the job of the enemy.

“We are here acting in the role of the red team in this exercise, where we are the threat the trainees need to identify and counteract. We are flying the drones, which are common civilian ones,” Italian Navy Lt. Cmdr. Federico Fugazzotto told reporters.

Some of the models displayed included the American-made Parrot Disco first-person-view drone as well as two Chinese-made DJI types. Exercise participants were instructed to use their detection equipment for picking up the drones’ electronic signatures.

According to Fugazzotto, increasingly complex scenarios entailed flights of varying lengths, hiding the drones’ points of departure on the ground, and attacking with multiple systems at once.

Crimea mirage

As the training unfolded, experts with NCIA confirmed to Defense News that GPS spoofing was detected and affected some of the drones, though officials did not name the source. The interference method feeds false coordinates to drone navigation systems in an effort to crash or disorient them.

“When I had the hand-held device from the drone, where you basically have the controller, my hand device would ‘be’ on a foreign location in Crimea,” Mario Behn, the principal scientist at NCIA, told Defense News. “But the drone was still here, which of course is physically impossible, as it is a huge range,”

On both days of Ramstein Legacy, data provided by the website GPSJam showed a high level of GPS interference that encompassed all of Constanta.

Military personnel here were vague about anti-jamming techniques and equipment used to mitigate interference, citing security concerns in revealing Western countermeasures.

The extensive level of jamming was also apparent in the area surrounding the nearby Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, where Finnish F/A-18 fighter jets and British Eurofighters were deployed. The exercise marked Finland’s first foreign deployment for NATO since joining the alliance in April 2023.

When asked if he was used to flying amid this amount of jamming, Lt. Col. Rami Lindström, commander of the Finnish F/A-18 detachment in Romania, acknowledged the GPS interference but appeared unfazed about it affecting the equipment.

“We have a lot of reports in Finland about the same kind of jamming, so we are used to that. But the F-18 is a warhorse and is resistant against that,” Lindström told Defense News in an interview.

“You can say we know our neighbor and we like to share this knowledge with our allies,” the Finnish official added, referring to Russia.

Back to school

In 2019, NCIA established an academy in Oeiras, Portugal, to provide training on NATO systems devoted to communications, air command and control, and cybersecurity. With drones omnipresent in today’s military thinking, the school’s emphasis is about to change.

“Our idea would be to add a counter-UAS curriculum with educational courses followed by enhanced practical training, which would be very easy to integrate at the Portugal academy,” Behn said.

There are some hurdles to that end, however, especially when it comes to standardizing hands-on training.

For one, the drone arsenals of NATO countries are so diverse that finding cross-cutting training approaches will be tricky. That is in addition to the ceaseless cat-and-mouse game of buying improved drones and superior countermeasures.

“Procurement processes take years, except we don’t have years to defend against those small drone threats,” Coman said.

Well known examples include the Human Genome Project, space exploration, Silicon Valley, and biomedical research. Further, in the ever-evolving landscape of science and innovation, the U.S. stands as a beacon for global talent, attracting brilliant minds to its research institutions and universities. This influx of international scientists and engineers has undeniably enriched the nation’s scientific endeavors, leading to countless breakthrough discoveries, transformative innovations, and advancements.

However, amidst the celebration of diversity and collaboration lies a growing concern – the need to balance the openness of the U.S. research enterprise and maintain the nation’s competitive edge on the global stage with the imperative to safeguard national security interests.

Revelations and discussions from this year, as articulated in a GAO Report on Research Security released in January 2024; in remarks made by the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, in her March 2024 testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and in widely reported revelations by the FBI, have highlighted the potential risks associated with foreign researchers working on sensitive projects.

Now, especially as we approach the election, the conversation has turned to how best to protect intellectual property and prevent the unwanted compromise and nefarious exploitation of critical technology by foreign adversaries and other bad actors, including terrorist groups and those that mean to do harm to our national well being. While this is not an easy tension to navigate, it is one we can indeed manage consistent with our national values as we continue to forge ahead with advanced scientific research and technology development to the benefit of all people, everywhere.

At the heart of the matter lies the challenge of finding a solution that does not stifle the flow of talent while ensuring that the nation’s interests are protected. This delicate balance requires a departure from conventional approaches to risk assessment, which often rely on simplistic country-based criteria or blanket restrictions that paint various foreign researchers with the same brush of suspicion.

Instead, what is needed is a nuanced and agile approach – one that leverages technology to identify and mitigate potential risks swiftly and effectively and supplements the work that teams focused on innovation and national security are already doing. Enter the concept of a triage tool – a sophisticated mechanism that incorporates AI capabilities designed to assess the risk posed by international scientists and engineers while expediting the entry of low-risk individuals into the U.S. research ecosystem.

The ideal triage tool, tied to policy that favors the fast tracking of the many scientists who will provide valuable contributions without jeopardizing national security, would possess several key attributes: it must operate without bias, respecting the diversity of backgrounds and nationalities among applicants; it should be automated, ensuring swift processing and scalability without compromising accuracy; and it must prioritize privacy, abstaining from intrusive data collection methods such as biometrics or personally identifiable information.

Furthermore, the tool should complement existing vetting processes, seamlessly integrating into the fabric of U.S. research institutions and agencies. It should be cost-effective, offering significant savings in both time and resources while delivering reliable results with minimal false positives or negatives.

By implementing such a tool, the U.S. can achieve a delicate balance between fostering international collaboration and protecting its national security interests and by establishing robust mechanisms for protecting sensitive information, the U.S. can bolster trust and encourage fruitful collaboration between domestic and international partners. This would not only enhance the experience of foreign researchers seeking opportunities in the U.S. but also provide reassurance to domestic institutions and agencies tasked with safeguarding sensitive information.

The U.S. stands at a crossroads, where the nurturing of global talent is not merely an option but a strategic imperative. Embracing international scientists and engineers is not only a testament to our commitment to excellence but also a catalyst for driving forward the frontiers of human knowledge and ingenuity. In the end, it is not about erecting barriers or shutting the door to international talent – it is about striking a harmonious chord between openness and vigilance, rather than a forced tradeoff between the two.

By embracing innovation in risk assessment and vetting processes, and thereby welcoming the contributions of international talent, the U.S. can continue to lead the world in scientific discovery, address the existing skill gaps, foster global collaboration and culture exchanges, while safeguarding its technological edge for generations to come and fortifying the country’s position as a leader in innovation.

Donald (Don) J. Blersch is Clearspeed’s SVP of Government Innovation. With multi-agency experience, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Blersch led the implementation of technology innovation while advising the executive leadership bench on a wide range of security disciplines, enabling the department to meet vital national security responsibilities with a well-vetted and trusted workforce, hyperfocused on the protection of sensitive, classified information.

Defense electronics manufacturer Hensoldt will provide the additional technology, worth more than €100 million (U.S. $108 million). The company will also integrate the TRML-4D radars into the IRIS-T SLM air defense systems destined for the two customers on behalf of Diehl Defence.

Estonia and Latvia agreed to purchase the German-made weapons in September in a deal worth more than €1 billion. For Latvia, the purchase of €600 million worth of air defense systems was the largest military purchase in the country’s 30 years of independence.

The TRML-4D radar enables the detection and tracking of aerial targets within a 250-kilometer (155-mile) radius and are able to simultaneously follow about 1,500 targets, Hensoldt said in a news release.

The European Sky Shield Initiative, launched by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in 2022, seeks to strengthen the continent’s air defenses, with a particular aim of countering Russian and Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles.

The initiative now counts 21 participating countries, including neutral non-NATO members Austria and Switzerland. The aim is to maintain systems that can form a continuous barrier across the continent, from the Nordic region to Turkey.

The latest announcement brings the total number of radars Hensoldt is producing as part of the initiative alone to more than 80, the company said.

The German-made IRIS-T is the primary short- and medium-range system used under the scheme. Some participating countries have procured American-made long-range Patriot missiles and the Israeli-made Arrow 3 exo-atmospheric interceptor for longer ranges.

France, which is not part of the initiative, has criticized the approach for relying too heavily on non-European components. Italy and Spain are also not participants. However, the initiative has consistently expanded, notably when Poland dropped its ambiguous stance and announced in April it would join.

The initiative, largely a consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has contributed to dramatically accelerating the pace at which European governments are spending funds on air defense. The Baltic states were among the first European nations to kick off the initiative, signing a joint declaration with 12 others in October 2022.

Kongsberg and MBDA informed Swiss defense-procurement agency armasuisse they won’t submit offers due to time constraints, armasuisse spokeswoman Samanta Leiser told Defense News in an emailed response to questions. The evaluation process will continue as planned, with Diehl remaining as a potential manufacturer, the government office said in a statement on Friday.

Switzerland in April decided to join the Germany-led European Sky Shield Initiative, for which Diehl is a partner for the medium-range component with the Iris-T SLM system. Armasuisse said participation in ESSI doesn’t preempt any decision on what air defense the country is buying, though other partners in the initiative have picked Diehl’s system.

“Armasuisse is awaiting the receipt of the offer from the remaining manufacturing company by mid-July,” the office said. “Apart from the costs, a decision in favor of the remaining candidate in the third quarter of 2024 is dependent on this candidate submitting an offer which meets the requirements of armasuisse.”

Leiser declined to comment on the budget, how many systems Switzerland is seeking or what the delivery timeline will be. The Swiss parliament is currently discussing buying the system within the 2024 defense plan, rather than in 2025 as previously envisioned.

The alpine country in 2016 suspended a previous project to modernize its air-defense system, terminating a contract with Thales for purchasing preparations. Switzerland in 2022 agreed to buy the Patriot system for longer-range, ground-based air defense.

Kongsberg had been asked to provide a quote for the NASAMS system, according to company spokesman Ivar Simensen, who said the company has no further comment. MBDA didn’t respond to requests for comment, while Diehl also didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Slovenia in January agreed to buy one Iris-T SLM fire unit, consisting of a radar component, a tactical operations center and four missile launchers, through the German federal office for defense procurement. Estonia and Latvia signed framework agreements with Diehl in September to buy the system within the framework of ESSI.

One of Switzerland’s criteria is that the system must already be successfully in use. The country also says inclusion of Swiss industry in the contract is “of particular importance,” with a demand that the entire purchase price is compensated with offsetting transactions in Switzerland. “There is no flexibility” with respect to the offset requirement, according to Leiser.

Iris-T SLM is designed to defend against aircraft, cruise missiles and drones to a range of up to 40 kilometers. Diehl says the performance of Iris-T SLM in Ukraine has been “excellent,” achieving “close to 100% hit rate” even during attack waves with more than 12 targets.

Separately, Kongsberg said it signed a contract with the Norwegian Defence Material Agency to the initial development phase of the German-Norwegian supersonic strike missile, or 3SM, set to be deployed on naval vessels from 2035. The contract value for the first development phase is up to 1.5 billion kroner (U.S. $131 million), the company said in a statement on Friday.

Kongsberg, Diehl Defence and MBDA Deutschland agreed in May to set up a partnership for joint development of the new missile.