F-35 International Backfill. On Feb. 15, Sheila Kahyaoglu, a defense/aerospace equity analyst at Jefferies, wrote that Lockheed Martin “has a backlog/commitments for nearly 3,500 F-35s with the program generating about 26 percent of [company] sales today.” Lockheed Martin has delivered 992 F-35s, including 98 last year. Lockheed Martin and the F-35 program office said that they are trying to resolve software hiccups with Technology Refresh-3 (TR-3)—the enabler for Block 4 weapons and sensor improvements to the fighter. The F-35 program office said that Lockheed Martin is on contract to deliver 148 TR-3 F-35s this year. Yet, “TR-3 deliveries are on hold pending customer acceptance of delivery software, driving an expected delivery range in 2024 of 75 to 110 F-35s versus expected [maximum] production at the 156/year rate,” Kahyaoglu wrote. “There appears to be international demand to backfill any [net] change in U.S. orders. In 2024, the [Lockheed Martin] Aeronautics margin guide is about 10 percent, down from 10.3 percent in 2023, factoring in lower margins on F-35 given no meaningful profit adjustments, although Lots 15 to 17 are executing at a better profit rate than Lots 12 to 14.”
Breaking Promises.
The Biden administration’s announced plan last October to develop the 360-kiloton yield, guided tail kit B61-13 gravity bomb for carriage on the future B-21 Raider stealth bomber by Northrop Grumman may be an attempt to win over congressional Republicans opposed to retiring the 1.2 megaton B83-1—the U.S.’ highest yield nuclear weapon, the last megaton yield in the U.S. arsenal and one 80 times larger than the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. The Trump administration reversed the Obama administration’s plan to retire the B83-1, but the Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review went back to the Obama policy, though the Biden administration has cited classification in not releasing the planned B83-1 retirement date. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has said that full rate production of the 50 kiloton, guided tail kit B61-12 began in 2022. The B61-13 is to give the president “additional options against certain harder and large-area targets,” DoD said last October. The B61-13 plan “breaks a promise made during the Obama administration to eliminate all but one of the types of U.S. gravity bombs,” Stephen Young, the senior Washington, D.C., representative of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ global security program, wrote this week. “Specifically, to win support for the B61-12—a new guided gravity bomb the Pentagon and NNSA badly wanted—the Obama administration proposed to retire the B61-3, B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, B61-11, and the B83 gravity bombs, trading six weapons for one. Unfortunately, since its inception, the B61-12 has faced major cost overruns and years of delays. The NNSA initially said the bomb would cost $4 billion, then quickly raised the tab to $8 billion, while the Pentagon initially estimated it at $10 billion. The actual cost, including work the Air Force is doing, will be as much as $14 billion. The NNSA initially projected it would begin making the bombs in 2017, while the Pentagon said it would be 2022 before work started. The Pentagon was right, with the B61-12 finally entering production late in 2022.”
Pony Express 2. Lockheed Martin said that it is ready to launch its internally funded Pony Express 2 demonstration to enhance future Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2). Pony Express 2 is to use two Terran Orbital Renegade-class nanosatellites with four Lockheed Martin payloads—a tactical communications system; a Ka-band crosslink and mesh network; precision relative ranging and time synchronization; and a “high end” central processing unit/processor. SpaceX’s Transporter-10 rideshare is to carry Pony Express into orbit this spring or later. “Pony Express 2 will eventually be joined by other satellites…to form Lockheed Martin’s Space-Augmented Joint All-Domain Operations Environment (SAJE), which will show how space can fully enable and lead the Department of Defense’s CJADC2 vision,” Lockheed Martin said. “After a series of on-orbit demonstrations by Lockheed Martin, Pony Express 2 is expected to be available to participate in government exercises later this year.”
Going Home. Immediately after managing the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) last week said he will retire from Congress at the end of his third term this year. Green believes the U.S. is in dire straits. In his retirement announcement, he said “Our country—and our Congress—is broken beyond most means of repair. I have come to realize our fight is not here within Washington, our fight is with Washington. As I have done my entire life, I will continue serving this country—but in a new capacity.” Green did not offer a prescription for curing the country’s or the Congress’s ills nor did he say how he will keep serving the country. The Tennessean said Green is a potential Republican candidate for governor of Tennessee in 2026.
Deal Closed. BAE Systems last Friday said it closed its $5.6 billion acquisition of Ball Aerospace, a deal that significantly bolsters its space business in the U.S. Ball Aerospace will report as the Space & Mission Systems business of BAE’s U.S.-based BAE Systems, Inc. Ball adds more than 5,200 employees and about $2 billion in annual sales to BAE. BAE disclosed that Citigroup and Bank of America served as its financial advisers on the transaction.
UAS Upgrade. AeroVironment last week said it can now offer operators of its Puma 3 AE unmanned aircraft system (UAS) up to three hours of endurance using the newly approved high-energy-density lithium-ion PS2500 battery pack. The PS2500 has the same size and form factors as the standard battery that offers up to 2.5 hours of endurance. “The new PS2500 battery offers both new and current Puma customers the opportunity to dramatically expand the duration of their operations, enabling more ground covered in a single flight,” Brad Truesdell, AeroVironment’s vice president and general manager of small UAS, said in a statement.
Reliable Flight. Reliable Robotics last week said its uncrewed aircraft completed a demonstration recently of its autonomous flight system for intra-theater military logistics as part of Air Force’s AGILE FLAG exercise in California. The demonstration was for the Air Force’s AFWERX Autonomy Prime unit and included autonomous taxi, take-off, a 120-mile flight to another airport, and land, with a remote operator providing route planning and communications. “This successful demo underscored two important mission enablers, the ability to deploy Reliable’s control station wherever the Air Force needs, and convert existing aircraft using our aircraft-agnostic autonomous flight system,” said David O’Brien, senior vice president of government solutions for Reliable. Also, during AGILE FLAG, Xwing conducted 2,800 miles of human-supervised autonomous flight between eight public and military airports.
Space Fundraise. LeoLabs, whose ground-based radar technology is used to track objects in low-Earth orbit, last week said it raised an additional $29 million in financing to invest in end-user applications and partner integrations. “With the unprecedented growth of satellites in low Earth orbit, enhanced safety and security solutions are critical,” Dan Ceperly, CEO and co-founder of California-based LeoLabs, said in a statement. “We’ve built a responsive layer of artificial intelligence algorithms that turn the real-time data collected by our all-weather, 24-7 sensor network into continuous and reliable insights for space operators.” The investment was led by GP Bullhound.
Project Overmatch Work. Rebellion Defense last week said it has been contracted to provide software support to the Navy to aid in the service’s efforts on behalf of the Defense Department’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) concept. Rebellion’s work, which will be performed under subcontract to the engineering company Fuse, is being done for the Navy’s Project Overmatch, which supports CJADC2. Rebellion said it “will demonstrate proof-of-concept opportunities to add speed, automation, and cognitive benefits to analysts, decision-makers, and warfighters.”
Summer VLS Re-Arming. The Secretary of the Navy confirmed the service plans to conduct an at-sea demonstration of a missile-re-arming system to reload Vertical Launch System cells this summer. “I’ve directed an at-sea demonstration no later than this summer for reloading our Vertical Launch Systems at sea using the Transportable Re-Arming Mechanism (TRAM) developed at Port Hueneme.,” Secretary Carlos Del Toro said during a speech at the WEST 2024 conference, co-hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA. Del Toro argued U.S. activities in the Red Sea illuminate a TRAM-like capability is “long overdue” to keep ships at sea when weapons magazines run low. The Secretary said he and Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, have “discussed at-length the importance and the critical advantage this tremendous game-changing opportunity will provide us—especially in the Pacific—and we are now working to pave the way for that capability to reach the fleet.”
MARCORSYSCOM. Marine Corps Systems Command (MARCORSYSCOM) and its Program Executive Office Land Systems (PEO LS) announced on Feb. 13 plans for a structural reorganization intended to modernize and streamline operations. “These changes—modeled after the principles laid out by former Commandant David H. Berger and underscored by current Commandant Eric M. Smith in Force Design, continued guidance from senior leadership, and feedback from across the acquisition community—underscore the Corps’ commitment to modernizing and optimizing operations to reduce bureaucratic delays to program execution,” MARCORSYSCOM said in a statement. The organizational changes will align with the service’s Force Design priorities and “aim to boost efficiency and agility by streamlining decision-making processes, harmonizing organizational structures, and strategically aligning programs to enhance warfighting capabilities ahead of the ever-evolving geopolitical landscape.”
PEO LS. For PEO LS specifically, the Marine Corps said “major changes” would be instituted to get after “targeted realignments and deliberate consolidation [to] bolster critical modernization efforts associated with integrated command and control as well as combat and tactical vehicle fleet modernization.” The Marine Corps said the PEO LS organizational adjustments will include a realignment of light and heavy tactical vehicle programs, the consolidation of intelligence systems, cyber operations and air and ground command and control systems. “This strategic restructuring positions PEO LS to better meet the evolving demands of modern warfare and operational efficiency,” the Marine Corps said.
New Combat Helmet. The Army announced on Feb. 12 it has achieved the first unit equipped milestone for the new Next-Generation Integrated Head Protection System (NG-IHPS), fielding the new combat helmet to around 2,000 soldiers from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. The NG-IHPS helmet, built by Avon Protection, is intended to replace the service’s Integrated Head Protection System, the Advanced Combat Helmet and the Enhanced Combat Helmet. “This fielding marks significant progress for soldier protective equipment as it equips soldiers with protection against relevant battlefield threats, and the innovative helmet design is a purpose-built platform for integration now, and with future soldier-enabling devices,” Lt. Col. Ken Elgort, product manager for soldier protective equipment, said in a statement. The Army said the new NG-IHPS helmet consists of a “retention system, suspension system, helmet cover and a night vision device bracket that is able to integrate a mandible protector, hearing protection, communications and head-up displays like the Integrated Visual Augmentation System and the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular.”
Italy FMS. The State Department has approved a potential $150 million deal with Italy for the sale of RTX-built GBU-53/B small diameter bombs. The new deal covers 149 GBU-53/Bs all-up rounds and 10 test assets, which will be added to a previous $22.5 million FMS case covering 24 GBU-53Bs and four test assets. “The proposed sale will improve Italy’s capability to meet current and future threats by improving the Italian Air Force and Navy’s F-35 weapons capabilities. It will also advance United States interoperability with NATO and the Italian Armed Forces,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement.
…And AMRAAMs. The State Department has also approved a possible $69.3 million deal with Italy for RTX-built AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM). Italy has requested to buy 12 AMRAAMs that will be added to a previous $32.5 million FMS case covering 12 of the missiles. “The proposed sale will improve Italy’s capability to meet current and future threats by ensuring Italy has modern, capable air-to-air munitions,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said.