SpaceX Contract with DoD for Ukraine. Last summer came news that Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, had signed a contract in June with DoD to continue providing the company’s Starlink satellite communications service to Ukraine and its armed forces. An article last July 28 in the New York Times
said that the contract included 400-500 new Starlink terminals and services beyond the 42,000 terminals already used in Ukraine by the military, hospitals, businesses and other organizations and that SpaceX had asked DoD to pick up what the company estimated to be $400 million in annual costs for the provision of Starlink to Ukraine. Since last summer, reporters have asked Pentagon officials which DoD department or agency had issued the contract and how much the latter was worth, to no avail. Defense Daily filed a Freedom of Information Act request last Oct. 18 for any such contract records. On March 22, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) responded and said that the agency had awarded a nearly $23 million contract to SpaceX for a period of performance of June 1 last year through May 31 this year. The web page for DoD contracts contains no listing for the contract.
Dutch Subs. The Netherlands Ministry of Defense chose France’s Naval Group to produce its 4 new submarines based on the Barracuda family of boats. The new submarines will replace the Netherlands’ current Walrus-class fleet. The Naval Group is to deliver the first two submarines within 10 years. The Ministry of Defense did not announce the value of the deal, but it told members of parliament in a letter that the budget for construction and other costs is about $6.1 billion.
HII Acceleration. HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division and National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) co-hosted an acceleration summit technology showcase this last week. It has industry and academic partners share potential technology innovations to support practices for construction and maintenance activities in shipbuilding, with more than 26 organizations participating. HII said participants included 3M, Lincoln Electric, Fastenal, and Blast One alongside regional suppliers and other shipyards.
Lockheed-Navantia. Lockheed Martin and Spain’s Navantia signed an agreement extending their collaboration agreement by three more years. The companies intend to continue to look into working on commercial opportunities in surface ships and submarines together. Previous collaboration helped integrate the Aegis Combat System into the Spanish Navy F100 frigates. They are also collaborating to integrate the combat management system and sonar systems for the Spanish Navy’s S-80 submarines.
MQ-9B Sonobuoys. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) on March 20 revealed it performed a set of tests with Naval Air Systems Command in February on the company’s Sonobuoy Dispensing System (SDS) using the MQ-9B SeaGuardian unmanned aircraft. The tests occurred at the Navy’s W-291 test range in southern California, with the SeaGuardian flying with the SDS pod and RTX SeaVue multi-role radar. In the test, the SDS pod dropped eight AN/SSQ-53 and two AN/SSQ-62 sonobuoys, monitored by the aircraft’s onboard Sonobuoy Monitoring and Control System (SMCS). Italy’s AEREA designed and built the pneumatic ejection system and internal structure assembly of the pod.
SecNav Hosts Industry. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro hosted industry executives from major ship repair companies at the Pentagon on March 18. The leaders were asked to participate in a roundtable discussion focused on surface ship repair and modernization initiatives as part of his maritime statecraft efforts. The Navy said government and industry officials discussed maintenance delay days, contract award timelines, repair yard efficiencies, performance to plan initiatives, maritime training programs, and the impacts of a fiscally constrained environment
…While Austal USA Hosts Marines. Austal USA hosted several senior Marine Corps leaders this past week at the company’s Mobile, Ala., shipyard, the company said on March 21. Attendees included Lt. Gen. Karsten Heckl, Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration; Lt. Gen. James Mierman, Deputy Commandant for Plans, Policies and Operations; Lt. Gen. James Adams, Deputy Commandant for Programs and Resources; and Maj. Gen. Eric Austin, Commanding General of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. The officials toured the company’s steel panel line and discussed the company’s contract to produce Landing Craft Utility-1700 and the future role of the Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transport fleet to support the Marine Corps.
Replicator ‘Sandbox.’ The Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer (CDAO) said he is supporting the Replicator drone initiative with a “sandbox” for testing unmanned systems’ software capabilities. “One of the things that CDAO is doing is supporting the Replicator initiative by creating a sandbox, if you will, where companies can come [and use] our data to evaluate the success of their unmanned aircraft software, with respect to the scenarios that we think are going to be effective,” DoD CDAO Craig Martell told the House Armed Services Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation Subcommittee during a hearing on March 22. Replicator aims to field thousands of attritable autonomous systems by August 2025. Martell said CDAO will provide data, scenarios and likely software as well for the Replicator “sandbox.” “The folks that are part of the Replicator initiative will come and try out their software, their prediction [and] detection [capabilities] on our data. We think it’s really important and we’re strongly supporting it,” Martell said. Martell is set to step down as the inaugural CDAO in April and will be succeeded by Radha Plumb, deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.
Granger Stepping Down. Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) will step down as chair of the House Appropriations Committee after Congress completes work on the fiscal year 2024 appropriations bill. The decision follows Granger’s announcement in November that she won’t seek reelection. In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday, Granger requested the GOP Steering Committee select a new chair and said she intends to continue serving on the Appropriations Committee through the end of her term as chair emeritus. “Recognizing that an election year often results in final appropriations bills not getting enacted until well into the next fiscal year, it is important that I do everything in my power to ensure a seamless transition before the FY ‘25 bill development begins in earnest,” Granger wrote in her letter. Granger has been the House’s top appropriator since January 2023, after serving four years as the committee’s ranking member.
New HAC-D Seat. Granger also recently announced that Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas) has been appointed to the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. Ellzey, a former Navy fighter pilot, will move over from his current seat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. “I look forward to conducting rigorous oversight of the largest discretionary budget in the federal government to ensure taxpayers get the lethal, nimble, and reliable military force we need to stand fast against the malign ambitions of dictators in China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea,” Ellzey said in a statement.
Supplemental Details. Pentagon programmatic details in the $95 billion Senate-passed supplemental have been leaking in drips and drabs. DoD and congressional offices have not responded to email queries on why such programmatic details, customarily in appropriations measures, are not included in their entirety in the supplemental. The lack of transparency has caused confusion. For example, congressional appropriators have said that $560 million is in the supplemental for counter unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), yet this week Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, said that there was $686 million in the supplemental for counter UAS. Kurilla also spoke of $157 million in the measure to replenish RTX Standard Missile-2s fired by Navy destroyers against Houthi kamikaze drones in the Red Sea region. The lack of programmatic disclosure has precedent. On June 11, 1941, the executive branch submitted the first report on the Lend-Lease Act, enacted three months earlier. In a letter accompanying the report, then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote Congress that, in the report, “facts and figures are given to the extent advisable without disclosing military secrets to benefit the axis powers.”
Play Together. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks last week highlighted Palantir’s recent win to continue developing a new intelligence ground station for the Army, noting that the winning team has a “mix of traditional and non-traditional defense companies” to include Anduril Industries, Northrop Grumman, and Sierra Nevada. “Hopefully such teamwork is a harbinger of things to come, and hopefully we’ll see the power of continuous iterative development of software and hardware to accelerate capability delivery. Hicks, speaking at the National Security Innovation Base Summit, also said that vendors need to build systems that “play well with others” through modular open-systems architectures.
…An Unusual Win. Hicks also pointed out that Palantir’s win on TITAN may have been the first prime contract for a software company “for a hardware intensive program.” The software company beat RTX for TITAN, which includes a truck-based ground station that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning analytic tools to fuse and distribute sensor data across all domains. Palantir’s team also includes L3Harris Technologies, Pacific Defense, Strategic Technology Consulting, and World Wide Technology.
…Roadrunner and Coyote. Hicks also welcomed the “disruption” that the defense industrial base is experiencing with new entrants bringing new systems and added competition. Outlining a warfighting scenario, she told attendees to imagine that “you’re downrange in some austere location, under fire from dozens of one-way attack drones. You don’t want just one type of system for counter-UAS. That’s too risky. You want as much protection as you can get. So, we want Roadrunners and Coyotes for instance.” Coyote is made by RTX, a legacy prime contractor, and Roadrunner by Anduril, an upstart in the defense space.
LM Ventures Investment. Firestorm Labs, which developing unmanned aircraft systems and expeditionary 3D printing manufacturing cells to manufacture drones in the field, has received $12.5 million in a new funding round from Lockheed Martin Ventures and other defense investors. San Diego-based Firestorm said it already has contract for its UAS and xCell manufacturing line from the Defense Department, and added that the new investment will help add employees and scale production to meet growing demand. Some of the other investors in Firestorm include Decisive Point, Silent Ventures, 645 Ventures, Overmatch VC, BVVC, Marquee Ventures, Cubit Capital, IronGate, Backswing Ventures, and RedCat.
Another Coast Guard FRC. Bollinger Shipyards last week said it has delivered the 56th 154-foot fast response cutter (FRC) to the Coast Guard, the David Duren, which will be the Redcats first of three homeported in Astoria, Ore. Bollinger is on contract for 65 FRCs. Congressional appropriators are providing $200 million in fiscal year 2024 for at least two more FRCs. The Coast Guard only requested $20 million for the program. For FY ’25, the Coast Guard is asking Congress to fund $216 million for two more of the short-range vessels, that would likely be deployed in the Indo-Pacific region.
People News. President Biden last week nominated Michael Sulmeyer to be assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. He is currently the Army’s top cyber adviser. Biden also nominated retired Army Gen. Mark Milley, who most recently was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to serve on the National Infrastructure Advisory Council. The Professional Services Council has added three new board members, Kim Lynch, executive vice president, government defense and intelligence at Oracle, Ricardo Michel, executive director, Palladium International, and Jennifer Welham, senior vice president of health, people, and human services at ICF. HawkEye 360 has appointed Jamal Ware as its new vice president of government affairs and public policy. He has served on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The venture capital firm Red Cell Partners has added Veronica Daigle to its practice. She previously was executive director of Boeing’s legislative affairs unit and is a former assistant defense secretary for readiness. Finally, the drone technology company PDW has appointed retired Navy Rear Adm. Hugh Wyman Howard and retired Army Col. Jay Wisham to its strategic advisory board to help with the go-to market strategy.
New Federal Group. Swedish multi-national telecommunications company Ericsson has opened a new U.S. federal division to serve government agencies and the Defense Department with 5G innovations. Ericsson Federal Technologies Group is led by Christopher Ling. He previously worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, most recently as executive vice president and group lead of the National Security Business in the U.S.
LTAMDS Demo. RTX said the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) conducted a successful fourth live-fire demonstration at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on March 21. The company noted that military officials from seven countries observed the event. LTAMDS is the Army’s program to field a new radar for the Patriot air defense system. RTX said the series of live-fire demos have demonstrated LTAMDS performance and integration with the new Northrop Grumman-built Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS). The latest live fire involved LTAMDS successfully acquiring and tracking a cruise missile surrogate target, passing track data to IBCS and then the radar guiding a PAC-3 MSE interceptor to take out the target. “The solid performance of the radar against these complex and realistic threats validates the radar’s design and demonstrates how this capability will transform the air and missile defense mission,” Tom Laliberty, RTX’s president of land and air defense systems, said in a statement. RTX noted six LTAMDS radars are progressing through “rigorous testing” in the lead up to fielding “within the calendar year.”