Douglas A. Macgregor's Blog

Sikorsky unveils Nomad drone fleet with Group 3 flight tests to begin in coming months

WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky announced today the launch of its Nomad drone fleet, a family of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) twin-proprotor UAS.

The aircraft, which will range in size from medium-sized Group 3 UAS to Black Hawk-sized Group 5, are designed to operate in “austere” environments for reconnaissance, “light kinetic,” and cargo missions, all while operating on Sikorsky’s MATRIX autonomous technology using an open-systems architecture, company executives told reporters ahead of today’s announcement. Right now the company said it is focusing on developing its Group 3 UAS, but is drawing up plans for a Group 4 model.

“The resulting Nomad family of drones will be adaptable, go-anywhere, runway independent aircraft capable of land and sea-based missions across defense, national security, forestry and civilian organizations,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky vice president and general manager, said in a company announcement.

The Nomad family of systems, which will run on hybrid-electric power are being funded through internal company investments. The Nomad fleet is also part of DARPA’s EVADE program. Though the company is not on contract with the Army to develop the Nomad fleet, executives said they foresee the Group 3 solution acting in the same capacity of the Army’s RQ-7 Shadow fleet — a Group 3 UAS designed for the brigade level that was completely shelved last year. As Breaking Defense previously reported, Army leaders are looking for a replacement to the Shadow by 2026. 

“If you’re thinking about an Army application, you would see the Group 3 variant doing what was the Shadow mission for the Army, focused on brigade reconnaissance capabilities,” Erskine “Ramsey” Bentley, Sikorsky director of Future Vertical Lift Programs, told reporters.

He added that he foresees the Group 4 Nomad solution serving in the same caliber as the Army’s Gray Eagle drone. The Army halted purchases of the Gray Eagle as part of the Army’s Transformation Initiative and plans to keep the newer ones in inventory and upgrade them, while phasing out the older variants around the fiscal 2028 timeframe. 

The company said the Nomad fleet could be useful to not only the Army, but also other services and the civilian side of the government. 

“We see these aircraft as being multi-role, but also multi-service, and we also see civilian applications, or commercial applications for these aircraft also being vertical takeoff and landing. They would be ideal for shipboard operations with the Navy or the Marine Corps,” Bentley said. “We could use these for spotting wildfires, for wildfire suppression operations, or they could be used for humanitarian assistance operations.” 

Before the Nomad family was officially announced, Sikorsky was developing a small rotor blown wing VTOL UAS deemed the “Nomad 50,” but has since turned its attention to Group 3 systems. Along with the announcement of the Nomad family, the company unveiled the Nomad 100, a Group 3 UAS that will undergo flight testing later this year, an executive said. He added that Sikorsky is in the beginning stages of developing a Group 4 Nomad. 

“Group 4 is really on our drawing boards [in the] preliminary design review. We are discussing it with a couple of customers. There is no contract,” Igor Cherepinsky, the director of Sikorsky Innovations, told reporters last week. “We’re going to go build one [and] demonstrate it anyway, sometime within a year.”

Changing the game in flight testing; a helicopter that reconfigures avionics in-flight

With operating environments growing more complex and threats evolving faster than ever, it’s imperative for the Army and its vendors to field new capabilities at a relevant speed. This need to compress timelines and shrink development from years to months or even weeks is further fueled by the strategic use and integration of more off-the-shelf technology and rapid development of software updates.  

As a result, the historic distinction between initial development and its in-service improvement is effectively being dissolved, creating a continuous, high-speed feedback loop between the battlefield and the factory floor. 

Traditional in-flight testing of system improvements offers the most realistic performance data, but it comes with a slower timeline for tweaking performance issues and then scheduling another flight to test them. Changes can be made faster in a virtual test environment, but that can miss some of the complexities of a live flight in a real operating environment.

Thales has sought to remake the traditional in-flight paradigm by developing a test and demonstration helicopter that allows for capability iterations in real time, literally. 

In creating this flying testbed, Thales hasn’t just changed how the company’s engineers can identify, fix and test performance issues on in-development technologies. It has improved how it interacts with its customers in defense, government, and civil aviation – allowing them to see a system perform in a live flight, provide real-time feedback data on its performance, and potentially see the next iteration during that same test flight.

The Thales Demonstration Helicopter is a modified Airbus H125 light helicopter (formerly named the Eurocopter AS350 Écureuil) that is meant to be both a testbed for the company’s new systems and a tool for direct engagement with customers. 

The platform has a custom cockpit equipped with large display screens, the company’s compact four-axis autopilot, and helmet-mounted displays. It’s built on a modular open-architecture backbone that allows Thales to easily integrate its own hardware and software – or that of its collaborators in industry. And, importantly, it’s connected during flight to Thales engineers on the ground via a secure internet connection so the team can monitor the performance of systems undergoing flight testing and even upload software changes mid-flight.

“It gives us a rapid fly-fix-fly capability that’s very unique; there is nothing better than flying customers in the aircraft so they can see how technologies operate in real environments,” said Ryan Walters, US Army retired Special Operations Chief Helicopter Pilot and GM, Thales Flight Avionics US.

The rapid fly-fix-fly capability is enabled by an encrypted data link using a 5G commercial modem that allows the air crew to talk to and share data with engineers or customers anywhere in the world, according to Jim Sleigh, a Thales flight test engineer and pilot.

In one example, “during a demonstration, a customer suggested a change to one of our digital map products,” said Sleigh. “Over the phone, I was able to call an engineer at his desk who connected to the aircraft in real-time. The engineer said, ‘I think I know the problem: hang on, I’m taking control of the display.’ He changed the code, rebooted the display, and asked: ‘how does it look now?’ It was improved!

“At that moment, I realized that we had changed the paradigm, the fly-fix-fly, from what used to be weeks, days, to not hours but literally minutes. It’s a transformative capability for us and our customers in terms of development.”

This type of flying testbed could support incremental upgrades or security patches to Thales avionics, or the integration of entirely new products. Due to the modular open-architecture design, it also creates an opportunity to partner with other companies on integrated capability packages.

“This makes it easy for us to do something like fly someone else’s mission computer, software, or sensor,” Sleigh added. “Our software running on someone else’s hardware, for instance, is easy to do on this helicopter,” thereby improving Thales’ relationships with both the end users and the industry partners.

Customer feedback matters

If having this demonstrator is beneficial from a development and test perspective, it’s equally beneficial from a customer engagement perspective.

As with the digital map mentioned earlier, the company’s ability to communicate while in flight in the Thales Flight Demonstration Helicopter, get real-time feedback, and write and upload new code even before the helicopter lands can be considered revolutionary. An Army test engineer could have been on the flight, seen a system feature or behavior that wasn’t quite what the Army wanted, and had the Thales team on the ground start engineering a fix right away.

Importantly, Walters noted, feedback isn’t being relayed from an Army operator through an Army engineer to a Thales engineer to the Thales business development team. “It’s us flying with our customers for immediate feedback.”

As a former Army aviator, Walters said this could also be a major shift in how industry understands and responds to customer needs.

“Our number one priority is enhancing safety, improving situational awareness, and getting the customer’s thumbprints on our products so that we’re not developing stuff just to requirements or in a vacuum. We’re focused on what the end-user customer and the program offices have to say. They get to actually see that their feedback matters.”

A tangible investment in the US market

The idea for the Thales Flight Demonstration Helicopter surface in 2020 when Thales partnered with StandardAero to integrate its compact autopilot system onto an Airbus H125 and complete a test and evaluation plan to achieve FAA flight certification, allowing Thales to sell its autopilot package to light helicopter operators.

“At the completion of that program, we were reflecting on the helicopter not flying anymore, and the vision came to us that we should repurpose this helicopter as a Thales flying testbed and demo platform,” Sleigh explained.

He noted that on the surface some competitors have a similar demonstrator, but this flying testbed is unique as a “fully integrated, fully mission-representative integrated cockpit platform.”

The future of Army aviation will be modular integrated avionics, according to Walters, where Thales may need to ensure its capabilities can operate seamlessly with partner companies’ products. This modular testbed, designed to demonstrate MOSA compliance, allows Thales and others in industry to collaborate and internally work through interoperability challenges that give the Army confidence that an integrated avionics package will work as planned once installed on a military aircraft.

Said Sleigh: “We’re making investment in tangible terms and now have a platform to invite partners to come fly and bring their technology aboard.” 

“We are part of the equation to reduce risk and enhance safety and can do that through the iterative processes we have with our aircraft to incorporate what we think the customer needs with real time feedback,” said Walters. “At the end of the day, the warfighter deserves the best capabilities industry can provide. We want people to use our solutions because they trust them and it enhances safety and reduces risk, and they get to come home safely each night.”

For more information about the Thales Demonstration Helicopter, visit our website.

How a ‘priority’ on next-gen tankers paved the way for more Boeing KC-46s

WASHINGTON — A renewed emphasis on fielding next-gen air refueler by the mid-2030s has left Boeing’s KC-46 Pegasus as the only tanker that can readily meet the Air Force’s tanker needs, though supply chain and data rights issues could be a factor longterm, the service said in a new document.

The justification and approval (J&A) notice posted by the Air Force Oct. 2 recaps the service’s tumultuous plans for its air refueling fleet over the last few years, culminating in a decision this summer to order up to 75 more KC-46s. The J&A was required since the service is contracting with Boeing for more tankers without a competition.

The document says requests for information for the Air Force’s now-defunct KC-135 Tanker Recapitalization Program garnered a wide range of industry responses, including from a teamup of Lockheed Martin and Airbus up against Boeing. The Air Force said that based on industry replies, only Airbus and Boeing — after Lockheed backed out of its partnership with the European conglomerate — could “partially meet the draft requirements” outlined by the program, including that a solution should be ready to field by fiscal 2031.

But in early 2025, the Air Force changed course as “evolving global threats and competing DoD priorities” resulted in a next-gen tanker known as NGAS becoming a “priority.” In the process, the document says the Air Force found that for the original recapitalization program, both Boeing and Airbus would need “significant development” to meet requirements. The Air Force thus deemed the recap option unaffordable since it also needed to spend money to develop the NGAS platform.

So, the service ditched requirements for a new tanker effort and opted instead to use ones that already exist for the KC-46 until NGAS eventually comes online, the document says. That decision essentially cleared the way for Boeing, since the A330 MRTT Airbus was pitching would need “significant development to meet mandatory requirements.” 

A key driver of the decision to use KC-46 requirements, according to the document, was time. The Air Force is currently replacing its aging KC-135 Stratotanker fleet with the KC-46, but Pegasus deliveries under an existing contract are set to conclude in 2030 — roughly six years before NGAS would be ready at the earliest. To keep replacing the KC-135 with newer refuelers, the Air Force needs a tanker that could fill that six-year gap, which the service says only the KC-46 can do. 

Still, buying more KC-46s will come with problems. Boeing “will need to resolve” diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) along with parts obsolescence, which the document says impacts both the current KC-46 program and its extension. Additionally, the document raises the prospect of negotiating for more rights to technical data and software, particularly when current rights are “less than the level required” for the KC-46’s production extension.

Boeing referred a request for comment to the Air Force. In a statement to Breaking Defense, Airbus said, “We stand by our proven tanker solution and its evolution, the MRTT+. Airbus remains engaged with the USAF as they continue to evaluate their Next Generation Air Refueling Solution.”

NGAS: Back To The Future

NGAS’s fate until recently had been in doubt, as officials under the Biden administration said the platform might not be affordable, while the Air Force’s FY26 budget devoted limited resources to research and development efforts.

As the document makes clear, the Air Force now treats NGAS as a critical need, though it does note that the “final path to NGAS has yet to be defined given the competing defense priorities.” The program has completed an analysis of alternatives, the document says, though additional fact-gathering is currently underway to refine its requirements.

According to Gen. John Lamontagne, chief of the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command, the service examined a wide range of potential platforms — from business jets to blended wing body aircraft and stealthy, “signature managed” refuelers — for the NGAS mission. The platform is expected to operate in hazardous environments like the Indo-Pacific, where runways are few and air defenses are formidable.

An RFI for the NGAS program was released to industry in August.

“We got some really rough costs associated with that first analysis of alternatives,” Lamontagne told reporters during a roundtable at the AFA conference in September. The August RFI “is really, at its simplest, an attempt to refine those costs, go back out to industry and figure out what’s in the realm of the possible at the right level of signature management, if we go down that road.” 

In the meantime, industry is readying candidates to offer the Air Force for next-gen refueling. According to Roderick McLean, vice president and general manager of air mobility and maritime missions at Lockheed, the company expects a survivable, clean-sheet aircraft will be needed for the mission.

“We do see that you will need to have a survivable vehicle much more refined” than standard tube-and-wing designs “so that it can operate closer in to provide air refueling to a number of systems that will operate in the theater,” McLean said in an interview with Breaking Defense on the sidelines of the AFA conference. 

“We’re very much excited and interested in shaping that opportunity to pursue that,” he added. 

Space Force taps SpaceX, ULA for first set of critical launches beyond FY27

WASHINGTON — The Space Force announced today that it has assigned the first seven future launches under its National Security Space Launch Program (NSSL) program for critical missions: five to SpaceX and two to United Launch Alliance (ULA).

NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 launches carry high-value, must-go payloads and/or those headed to orbits that are more difficult to achieve. The Space Force is using firm-fixed price, indefinite-delivery contracts for these types of launches. Under this task order, SpaceX will receive $714 million and ULA $428 million, according to the announcement provided to reporters by Space Systems Command.

SpaceX’s missions include: USSF-206/WGS-12, USSF-155, NROL-86, USSF-149, and USSF-63.

USSF-206 will carry the twelfth Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) encrypted military communication satellite, according to the press release. Space Systems Command did not specify the satellites being carried by USSF-155, -149 and -63, indicating that the payloads are classified.

ULA will launch NROL-88 and USSF-88/GPS IIIF-4; the latter carrying the fourth of the Global Positioning System III Follow-on (GPS IIIF) satellites designed to upgrade earlier GPS birds and bring new capabilities, including stronger encryption.

Both the of the NROL missions will carry classified payloads for the National Reconnaissance Office and will be launched in partnership with the spy-sat agency, according to the press release.

As the Space Force contracts for launches two years in advance, the assigned Phase 3 Lane 2 launches will loft at the earliest in fiscal 2027.

The service in April chose three vendors to compete for the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 launches: SpaceX, ULA and Blue Origin. Individual launches will be assigned to each firm between now and 2030. The Space Force said at the time that it anticipates 54 launches under Phase 3 Lane 2, with SpaceX expected to take the bulk of the launch load.

Blue Origin was assigned no launches under this first tasking, as the company’s New Glenn heavy-lift rocket has yet to pass its required second launch to obtain Space Force certification to carry the Lane 2 payloads. That certification launch is expected to take place in late October.

Here’s how the Army is scaling its Next Gen C2 platform to an entire division

This is part two of a two-part series on the Army’s Ivy Sting events, in which the service is working to scale up the Next Generation Command and Control prototype to the division level. Check out part one here.

FORT CARSON, Colo. — Brig. Gen. Michael Kaloostian wasn’t subtle about the impact he thinks the service’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative will have: “The expectation is this is going to entirely change the way the Army is going to fight.

“It’s going to change the way the Army is organized … . It’s going to change MOSs [military occupational specialties],” he said in an exclusive interview with Breaking Defense at Fort Carson in Colorado. “Things are going to change.”

For now NGC2 is in the prototype stage, albeit being used by units, and here the 4th Infantry Division is the frontline of the data management revolution, as Kaloostian and other Army officials described it during a mid-September visit to Fort Carson for the first of several Ivy Sting command and control exercises.

Following what the Army deemed a successful demonstration for a “proof of principle” prototype at the battalion level last year, the next step to maturing its modernized network is to scale it to a division holistically. The Army has less than a year to do so, following a July award of nearly $100 million to Anduril and a team of vendors to develop a division-level NGC2 prototype, if it hopes to have the tech ready for Project Convergence Capstone 6 this summer.

NGC2 is the service’s number one modernization priority and is meant to provide commanders and units a new approach to manage information, data, and command and control with agile and software-based architectures. But as Kaloostian said, to make way for NGC2, the Army has already had to make its own tempo and organizational changes.

“I was doing this for a year and got the chance to watch us, and knew, okay, if we don’t start going relatively quickly, we’re going to be challenged. What we did is: PCC6 is in July, we started doing our own analysis here and realized, look, we need these events, these routinized touch points,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commander of 4th ID, told reporters.

Ellis previously served as the director of the C2 Cross Functional Team for Army Futures Command and was charged with overseeing the development of the prototype last year at Project Convergence Capstone 5.

The answer is serialized events dubbed the Ivy Sting series in which every six weeks or so, the division will incrementally add new capabilities, culminating in a division-wide event called Ivy Mass that will transition into Project Convergence.

Ivy Sting 1 took place the week of September 15 and focused on a very narrow fires thread to validate data could be passed over the NGC2 ecosystem using a beta version of the Artillery Execution Suite (AXS) software.

Ellis and the division realized that with the Ivy Sting set of events, there needed to be an internal organization focused solely on integrating the new gear and coordinating with the vendors and other elements of the Army enterprise.

As a result, 4th ID created the C2 Support Element, an organization under the division’s chief of staff and will serve as the overall lead synchronizing NGC2 for the division by integrating the technical expertise into a support entity. The element owns the integration, data, and application layers while the division’s G6 owns the transport layer.

NGC2 In The Wild, And In The Lab

In addition to the experimentation at Fort Carson with the Sting series, all the units across the division will have to receive, train and integrate new NGC2 capabilities. The division has several brigades that are deployed, with some in Korea, the southern border and in the Middle East. They have begun receiving equipment and logins to start playing around with the capabilities, even getting real world data to start training the system.

“I have division elements that are spread all over the place, so we’ll get the chance to bump this in multiple theaters. The Korea guys are going to start using it there and with another division,” Ellis said. “2nd Brigade, 2/4, is down at the southwest border right now. We’re looking to pull in some of the operational once we get all this stuff sorted out. Their operational data threads to pull that into the Next Gen C2 architecture. I can use that to train some of my AI models. I can use that to help with some of the aided target recognition stuff and to use the operational experience they’re getting down there.”

The Army and 4th ID also established an integration lab at Fort Carson, which will house all the industry engineers to work on the technology. The lab provides ability is to test NGC2 with the unit on ground, iterate and modernize the division outside of traditional ways for test and evaluation and conduct risk reduction.

“In a way, we are co-engineering with the customer and so that is occurring every day and then we’re just bringing that functionality forward,” Tom Keane, senior vice president of engineering at Anduril, said in an interview. “When you look at what we’re doing here, we’re talking to systems that we weren’t talking to at PCC5 because now we’re talking to real weapons. We’re bringing in more real-world data. We’re in an exercise setting here, but there’s a lot more data. Then, of course, we’re running in a more production setting. Regardless of whether the award says production or prototype, we are treating this as a production system.”

The integration lab also includes acquisition professionals, requirements professionals and doctrine writers in order to tackle and coordinate NGC2 holistically across the service, known under the tongue-twisting moniker of DOTMLPF or doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel and facilities.

Col. Chris Anderson, program manager for NGC2 with program executive office for command, control, communications-tactical, said such Ivy Sting “sequential events with new learning demands for each one is a giant pressurization of the system.

“Human nature would be, ‘okay your contract awarded, let’s focus on PCC6 next summer and we don’t need to do anything between now and then,'” he said. “This is forcing Army, big A acquisition from the PM, industry team, the unit, the requirements community, the doctrine community, everybody has to revisit this every six weeks and these events are a great forcing function for that.”

The overall goal of the Sting events is not only to add more capability, but ensure the formations are getting better at using them and ensuring they work. Additionally, the Army believes these events in concert with NGC2 could prompt those major changes for the service long term that Kaloostian described.

“The formation is learning how to use that capability and use it effectively every single Ivy Sting exercise. This is not just about the tech. This is a complete DOTMLPF crosswalk. We’re thinking through organizational structure. We’re thinking through the training that’s going to be required. We’re thinking through the personnel and how we reorganize,” he added.

There has been cooperation across other units as the Army is looking at getting feedback on multiple systems, vendors, formations and even regions. The Army has said it won’t be “pure fleeting” systems in the future, meaning the same gear will not be fielded to the entire Army. Instead, it will look to tailor certain equipment to certain units based on the priority, mission and theater.

Another NGC2 Prototype, And The Post Ivy-Sting World

Anduril’s NGC2 prototype isn’t the only one in the works. Lockheed Martin and its team of vendors were awarded a contract recently to work an integrated data layer for 25th Infantry Division under the NGC2 portfolio. But officials said it’s more of a complimentary effort than a competing one.

“It’s not a apples to oranges exactly. It’s two different units, two different missions, different industry teams,” Anderson said. “Competition is always good. Having two really solid teams just makes everybody better. I think one of the big hopes is if we develop AXS in partnership with 4ID, then we lift and shift that over to 25th ID. Meanwhile, we’re doing something with 25th that will lift and shift over to 4th ID. It’s not duplicating investments, but cross pollinating between the divisions.”

Officials from 25th ID were in attendance at Ivy Sting 1 to learn lessons and share their experience as well.

The Army will be evaluating the after-action reviews from Ivy Sting 1. Officials said they already know the stretch goals for Ivy Sting 2, which is five weeks out from the conclusion of Ivy Sting 1, and may seek to adjust those based on what they fine from the first iteration, possibly adding in more.

Ellis explained Ivy Sting 2 won’t just be fires, but will include airspace management and command and control elements of the headquarters.

Future iterations will also include more contested and congested environments such as jamming, a feature that was absent at Project Convergence last year for the prototype.

“The way that we need to train is we’re going to fight, we’re going to have EW assets are going to contest EMS [electromagnetic spectrum] and we’ll really learn how resilient our network is at that time,” Kaloostian said.

Following Project Convergence 6, the Army will be working on what specific systems it wants to purchase and for what unit. It will also be looking at what the official data layer is and what software components are in that initial mix.

The goal is to have decisions ready to go to be able to begin buying and fielding to units across the Army following the demonstration of the prototype with 4th ID. And then, if Kaloostian is right, bigger service changes are sure to follow.

The US-ROK test case: Can visas and rules unlock American shipbuilding?

In 1890, Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote, “Whoever rules the waves rules the world.” His ideas quickly shaped US foreign policy and inspired leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt, who embraced naval expansion as the key to American power projection.

Today, America faces its most significant great-power challenge since the end of the Cold War, and it is playing out on the seas. China has absorbed Mahan’s lessons with ruthless efficiency. A state-backed shipbuilding base, expansive merchant fleet, and rapidly growing navy now operate as one. China has become the world’s top shipbuilder, controls one of the largest shipping companies, and commands the largest navy by number of ships. Massive subsidies, approaching $100 billion, have helped Beijing capture more than half of the global shipbuilding market and secure influence over port and shipyard infrastructure worldwide.

China’s surge has left the United States facing a shipbuilding challenge it can’t solve on its own. That is why South Korea’s “Make America Shipbuilding Great Again” proposal could mark a turning point in the alliance.

In 2025 tariff negotiations, Seoul pledged $150 billion to revitalize America’s maritime sector. The package includes upgrading US shipyards, training American workers, easing Navy maintenance backlogs, and co‑producing vessels in US yards. Korea’s shipbuilders are global leaders in modular construction and on-time delivery, and this proposal would bring the capital and expertise into American facilities to reinforce rather than replace US industry.

If Washington can clear workforce and legal obstacles that stand in the way of progress, this infusion could provide the industrial foundation needed to meet China’s scale with allied strength. However, as recent events have painfully made clear, changes are going to have to come, both for rules around workforce and for legal restrictions on working with foreign partners.

Workforce Issues In The Spotlight:

On the workforce side, America does not have a clear pathway for the skilled foreign specialists who install equipment, commission lines, and train crews. The ICE raid in early September that detained more than 300 South Korean technicians in Georgia underscored how fragile the current patchwork approach has become. Without these specialists, schedules slip, and the workforce struggles to build the skills needed to deliver on time.

Recent events show these obstacles are not abstract. After the Georgia raid, South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung said companies would be “very hesitant” to expand in the United States without a predictable visa channel. The following day a chartered Korean Air flight carried many of the detained technicians back to Seoul, a vivid image of capital and know-how leaving American soil.

Following this high-profile incident, however, there is reason for cautious optimism. The American Chamber of Commerce in Korea hosted a Sept. 29 business roundtable, where US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said in a video message: “Investment from Korean companies in absolutely key to President Trump’s vision for our country. Our commitment is to make this process easier, so that both Korea and the US can prosper together.”

A day later, the two countries held a working-group talk about improving the visa system. That session, convened in Washington, produced concrete outcomes: the two governments agreed to establish a dedicated “Korean Investor Desk” at the US Embassy in Seoul to help companies navigate visa issues, and reaffirmed that Korean firms may continue using the B-1 business visa and ESTA program for equipment installation and servicing. As the US State Department put it in its official readout, “The United States strongly supports investment that drives American reindustrialization, strengthens the U.S.–ROK alliance, and enhances shared prosperity.”

These are important first steps that show momentum, but administrative fixes alone will not provide lasting certainty. The Partner with Korea Act (H.R. 4687), introduced in July by Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), would create 15,000 visas for highly skilled Korean specialists with strict safeguards to ensure they do not displace American workers. Similar visa categories exist under US trade agreements with Australia, making this a tested model.

The working group can shape the near-term administrative lane, while the Partner with Korea Act can lock in a durable, capped channel so South Korean training teams arrive on schedule and leave once the work is done.

Legalities Blocking Partnerships

On the legal side, the Byrnes–Tollefson Amendment (10 U.S.C. § 8679) and the Jones Act shape what foreign partners can do. One forbids building US Navy hulls in yards overseas, another requires that ships moving cargo between US ports be built in America.

Neither prevents allied firms from investing in US facilities, but both create a level of uncertainty about where cooperation ends and where American control must remain.

However, Korean officials have shown that this can be managed. At a Washington forum hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Korean Defense Acquisition Minister Seok Jong-gun outlined options: components supplied from Korea for U.S. use, blocks built abroad but assembled in American yards, and partially outfitted hulls completed in the United States. He stressed that decisions in Washington are needed to determine how the Byrnes-Tollefson Amendment and the Jones Act will apply.

The rapid moves by companies such as HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI), from its merger with Hyundai Mipo  to  an MOU with Huntington Ingalls Industries, show that Korean industry is prepared to invest. Together these steps show that the legal questions are not fixed barriers but solvable issues, provided both governments set clear rules and allow allied capital and expertise to flow into American yards.

History will not wait. More than a century after Mahan, the contest is again decided in shipyards and on the sea. South Korea is signaling a desire to help its loyal ally, with money, machinery, and skill. If the U.S. wants the advantage, it must align rules with reality and let proven teams train American workers in American yards, with clear legal parameters for co-production.

The outcome is what matters: ships delivered on time and on budget, supported by allied capital and expertise already moving into place. With the inaugural US–R.O.K. visa working group meeting concluded, and a dedicated Korean Investor Desk set to launch, the window to act is open.

Jeffrey M. Voth is an engineering and technology executive focused on strengthening the US defense industrial base and allied cooperation. For over two decades, he has worked on US-ROK partnerships, including the KDX-III program.

Photos of China’s tailless J-50 aircraft give hints about stealth profile, likely mission: Experts

NAHA, Japan — Recent images of what appears to be China’s J-50 stealth fighter have revealed what experts told Breaking Defense are new details about the plane’s design, and hints towards its likely eventual mission.

The first clear photos of the aircraft, which has been variously referred to by a temporary designation of J-50, J-XD, or J-XDS in the absence of any official acknowledgement by China’s government, were first published online on social media in late September.

They showed the front and rear quarter views of the aircraft that has is being developed by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC), showing all-moving wingtips which act as control surfaces and thrust vectoring exhaust nozzles.

It also features twin Diverterless Supersonic Intakes, heavy-duty twin-wheeled nose landing gear and a low-profile canopy for a single pilot.

RELATED: How China’s next-gen fighters could impact America’s plans for NGAD

Justin Bronk, senior research fellow for airpower and technology in the Military Sciences team at the Royal United Services Institute, told Breaking Defense that the design is clearly optimized for improved wideband stealth, even when compared to fifth generation fighters, through the removal of canted vertical stabilisers.

The use of 2D thrust vectoring engine exhaust nozzles, like those found on the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, would provide enhanced pitch control to partially compensate for the lack of the canted vertical tails.

“The design is very low drag, and with two even current WS-10C class engines would likely have significant supercruise capabilities at high altitudes, allowing enhanced range and missile reach,” noted Bronk.

Andreas Rupprecht, who has authored several books on Chinese air power, said that the design is likely the “low” component of a future next generation hi-lo mix for China’s air forces, noting that the aircraft appears to be slightly smaller than the Shenyang J-16 multirole fighter.

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Such a “low” aircraft will likely replace some of the older aircraft in China’s inventory, such as the Xi’an fighter-bomber, early Chengdu J-10 multirole fighters and the last of the Shenyang J-11 fighters. The “high” component would be filled by a larger design that has been tentatively designated as the Chengdu J-36, another Chinese stealth design that has been sighted undergoing flight testing.

Bronk pointed out that the twin-wheeled nose landing gear could suggest that China sees the design as a potential carrierborne aircraft, although the tailless design could result in complications during carrier operations due to limitations in high angle of attack performance and controllability in the yaw axis.

“This will limit agility compared to traditional fighters, increase flight control system complexity and make adaption for carrier operations more challenging,” he warned.

He added that this smaller design will likely be intended for high-end air superiority missions first and foremost, albeit with a shorter range and smaller internal payload than the J-36.

Nevertheless, Rupprecht expects that the J-50 will still have significant internal volume for fuel and weapons, with earlier photos of the aircraft in flight showing it has two separate weapons bays on the bottom fuselage.

He also told Breaking Defense that much would depends on how successful and capable the unmanned assets China is known to be developing would be, as there is a possibility that some of the loyal-wingmen unmanned aircraft could also replace the aforementioned fighters in the to some degree.

China has shown off five different types of these loyal wingmen at its recent military parade, and is known to be developing the H-20 bomber. In addition, what appears to be a new and larger stealthy unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) known as the GJ-X has also been seen on satellite imagery of an airbase deep inside western China that has previously been used for testing new designs.

Space Rapid Capabilities Office to put radars on sats to warn of space-bound threats

WASHINGTON — The Space Rapid Capabilities Office (SpRCO) intends to award two vendors contracts by the end of the year to demonstrate that Space Force satellites can be equipped with small, inexpensive on-board radar systems to warn of potential threats from nearby satellites.

While small — worth $3 million each for 24 months — the planned awards are part of a larger effort to promote what the SpRCO calls real-time “own-ship awareness” for US national security satellites.

At a time when threats to US satellites from Chinese and Russian counter-space capabilities are growing, Pentagon officials widely have acknowledged that the current system for keeping eyes on the heavens and finding space-based threats is no longer fit for purpose, with improvements at the top of the priority list for both the Space Force and US Space Command.

Further, US military space leaders also are now more open about the fact that they see space domain awareness as a foundational capability for “orbital warfare” — not just by allowing US satellites to avoid threats from adversaries but also enabling joint force “effectors” on the ground, in the air, at sea and even in space to target enemy satellites and spacecraft.

The effort to develop “own-ship awareness” capabilities thus is major thrust of ongoing SpRCO work, which is focused on moving commercially available capabilities as fast as possible into the hands of Space Force operators. The office has underway a handful of projects to address various underlying technologies for equipping future satellites for orbital warfare missions.

Just like their counterparts routinely carried on aircraft, the on-board satellite radar warning receivers would detect and identify incoming radar signals, and alert an operator not just if another object is approaching, but whether it is being tracked and/or targeted using radar.

SpRCO first revealed in December 2023 that three early prototypes for on-board threat warning had been launched 2023, although details were scant due to the classified nature of the effort. In March 2025, SpRCO Director Kelly Hammett said the prototypes had been a “quasi-operational success” at monitoring Chinese capabilities to pinpoint the whereabouts of US satellites.

While those prototypes were carried on a commercial satellite built by Northrop Grumman, the new sensors will fly on Space Force satellites — which will be a bigger integration hurdle.

“Space RCO is equipping the Force for warfighting capabilities that keep the U.S. ahead of emerging threats. Part of equipping is the tactical awareness that allows us to close our kill chains and disrupt those of the adversary,” Hammett told Breaking Defense on Wednesday in response to a query about the upcoming radar warning receiver award.

A SpRCO spokesperson told Breaking Defense that the office worked with the Space Force’s innovation arm, SpaceWERX and the Small Business Administration to actually increase the normal $2 million value cap of Direct to Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research grants for the threat warning radar demonstration.

The spokesperson also said that SpRCO already is in discussions with the Space Force about “integration requirements and timelines” for flying the first low size, weight, and power radar on a “candidate” satellite to be launched in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO). Likewise, the office is “in discussions with a specific Space Force GEO program on including radar sensors on their line of future platforms,” the spokesperson said.

While the SpRCO spokesperson would not comment on the specific satellite and program in mind, Hammett has in the past referenced potential work with the Space Force’s nascent program, dubbed RG-XX, to replace its six Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) neighborhood watch birds. The service is set to issue a draft request for information for RG-XX by the end of the year.

Further, according to charts Hammett showed Sept. 17 during the annual Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance conference in Hawaii, SpRCO is already planning a follow-own SBIR award for small on-board optical payloads for threat warning.

Picogrid integrates ‘universal translator’ for stovepiped systems into Palantir’s Maven

WASHINGTON — Rising software firm Picogrid has integrated its Legion software, designed as a “universal translator” between previously incompatible systems, into Palantir’s Maven Smart System, a widely used military AI platform that pulls in data from a wide variety of sensors.

The two systems’ ability to work together in real-life conditions was field-tested at one of the Scarlet Dragon interservice exercises hosted by the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, the company said in a press release, where “Picogrid and Palantir jointly demonstrated real-time data streaming from field-deployed sensors and drones into MSS.”

Picogrid’s technology is important because the Pentagon is betting heavily on globe-spanning, AI-enhanced, multi-domain command networks, but a lot of its older “legacy” systems can’t even talk to each other, let alone some futuristic super-brain.

“Our focus has always been on breaking down data silos,” said CEO Zane Mountcastle in a press release shared with Breaking Defense. “By connecting Legion’s rich, real-time data streams directly into Maven’s powerful analytics engine, we’re giving commands the fastest, most complete picture of the battlefield.”

Picogrid’s partnership with Palantir comes after three years of quietly racking up contracts, including with the Space Force, Air Force, and Army, as well as work in Ukraine, and just a week after Picogrid announced a partnership with an even larger prime, Northrop Grumman, whose annual defense revenues are estimated at the fourth largest in the world. Northrop’s investing in modular open architecture designs that let different companies plug-and-play their software into a single system — as long as they meet shared technical standards, which legacy systems rarely do. That’s particularly problematic in counter-drone defense, which requires sharing targeting data amongst a wide assortment of different radars, acoustic sensors, guns, missiles launchers, and energy weapons. So on Sept. 25, Picogrid announced it would integrate Legion into Northrop’s AI-powered counter-drone command system, AiON.

Getting previously incompatible legacy systems to communicate in a common, modern digital language requires a lot of painstaking engineering work, said Picogrid co-founder Martin Slosarik. But, he explained to Breaking Defense, recent advances in AI allow each engineer to do more work in months than they previously could do in a year.

The Picogrid team now uses Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyze masses of detailed technical documents, Slosarik said, and trained an LLM to answer engineers’ questions about, for example, the Army’s open source Integrated Sensor Architecture. The LLMs can even write some of the required code, he said, but the AI is still only as good as an entry-level engineer, so it needs a lot of human handholding on its way to a usable product.

Once Picogrid’s humans and AIs have cracked the code on a given legacy system, Slosarik said, they build hardware and software add-ons that let it communicate using modern, standardized protocols and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). That gives each system a common language not only with other Picogrid-upgraded systems but with any number of modern command-and-control systems, such as the widely used ATAK. Picogrid can end up replacing multiple bulky boxes of legacy tech with a single streamlined unit, Slosarik said.

Picogrid opened a new 25,000-square-foot facility in El Segundo in May, tripling its production capacity, and plans to add another site in Oklahoma, although it hasn’t announced a timeline.

In NGC2 first, Army uses beta artillery data tool in howitzer strike at Ivy Sting 1

This is part one of a two-part series on the Army’s Ivy Sting events, in which the service is working to scale up the Next Generation Command and Control prototype to the division level.

FORT CARSON, Colo. — The Army unit hadn’t originally planned to fire the M777A2 Howitzer using a new data management tool for the first time ever so soon, but the pieces fell into place, everything was set, so soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division let it rip.

When the smoke cleared from the test strike on Sept. 15, the 4th ID had taken a small but important step toward maturing and expanding the service’s critical Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative, which aims to use cutting-edge tech to push the 250-year-old organization to the forefront of modern battlefield management.

“That’s the beginning of a new era for the Army,” 4th Infantry Division Commander Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis told reporters in September, days after the firing.

It was also the first, admittedly narrow use of a new series of test exercises, dubbed Ivy Sting, that aim to rapidly test and evaluate NGC2 tech on a rolling basis as the Army looks to scale the capability to the division level.

In mid-September, a small group of reporters visited the home of the 4th ID at Fort Carson, Colo., to see parts of Ivy Sting 1 firsthand, where the Army used its a beta version of its new Artillery Execution Suite (AXS) tool to speedily gather target information, pass it through the necessary chain and then hit its target.

In the past warfighting functions, such as intelligence, logistics or fires, were siloed in their own staff sections with their own systems slowing down sharing and situational awareness. NGC2 aims to collapse all those systems and functions into applications analogous to an iPhone so a commander or units will have access to all the data and information. AXS will be one of those “apps” within the system.

“There’s not one criteria that says a success or failure [for Ivy Sting 1],” Ellis said on Sept. 17. “Really, we already met the success criteria, which was, we thought today would be the first live fire, but the software was ready, the soldiers were ready, the gun crews were ready. We actually accelerated all this stuff, and we shot live on Monday night.”

Hitting The Mark, Quicker

The Army sees NGC2 as a years-long effort to do a generational upgrade to its command and control regime. The Army awarded Anduril and a team of vendors a nearly $100 million contract to prototype a broader NGC2 system for 4th Infantry Division between July and next summer for Project Convergence Capstone 6. More recently Lockheed Martin and its team of vendors were awarded a contract to work an integrated data layer for 25th Infantry Division under the NGC2 portfolio.

But for the first iteration of Ivy Sting 1, Ellis said fires was a more manageable place to start.

“The fires thread is a very logical thread that we all understand really well. AXS was coming along. We knew was coming online. We accelerated that because fires threads are really good,” he said. “The fires backbone becomes a very convenient place for us to then pull in all of these other threads and say, this is where I need to make all of these other things work.”

Currently, hitting something with a howitzer looks something like this: A target comes across the Army Intel Data Platform and goes to the strike cell, a staff entity within the division that fuses fires and intelligence. That cell vets targets under a very manual process.

Once the target is nominated, it is passed to the Joint Air-Ground Integration Cell (JAGIC), a collection of multiple staff sections that serves as a capability for the division commander. Namely, it manages the airspace and effects for the division commander and select the right asset to strike the nominated target, either through kinetic or non-kinetic means.

If the JAGIC decides that field artillery is the right weapon for the target, that nominated target is then passed to the Fire Control Element, another staff element within the division. The FCE will decide what field artillery unit is best to action that target based on what unit is in the best position and has the most rounds.

The target data is passed to the Fire Direction Cell that will actually fire the M777.

That’s a lot of gates to pass data through, especially in time-sensitive combat operations in which the target might just pick up and leave at any moment. That’s where the targeting piece of the envisioned NGC2 ecosystem comes in — in this case, the AXS beta software — both to speed the entire process and to conduct some analysis on its own to relieve the cognitive burden on the soldiers and staff involved.

There is already a data management tool to help aid the process, known as Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS), which provides fully automated support for planning, coordinating and conducting fires — but which entered service in 1995.

Col. Charlie Brown, division artillery commander for 4th ID, said AFATDS has been successful in the “last 20 to 23 years, where it has worked mostly in a static COIN [counter-insurgency] environment.”

But, he said, “What we foresee as a dynamic, multi-domain environment, we don’t think AFATDS can get there. AXS is being introduced to help accelerate that kill chain.”

Reduce Risk, Increase The Tempo

For the exercise, the 4th ID used both AFATDS and AXS to take out one target each, but there was evidence AXS was speedier very early on.

A few days before the official live fire test, when soldiers and officials were doing their checks and dry runs, it took users over two hours of troubleshooting on the legacy system because there was an issue with how the system counts days, a not so uncommon problem in the artillery world.

That same day, with the new AXS system, forces were online and loaded up before soldiers had dug the necessary holes in the ground to stabilize the howitzer. That speed is key on a future battlefield where targets will move rapidly and static forces will be vulnerable to being targeted by the enemy.

Officials and commanders indicated that AXS could allow the Army to mass more combat power and be more dispersed on the battlefield as the mesh networking capabilities with NGC2 allow artillery batteries to operate farther apart. One of the key lessons from the war in Ukraine is forces must move quickly — seven to eight minutes — or they’ll be fired upon.

“Every second that we can shave off the kill chain reduces risk for our formation. At the same time, it puts pressure on the tempo against the enemy. So reduces risk and increases tempo against the enemy, so we see that as a huge benefit,” Brown said.

Ellis explained that having the system online before spades are even dug in helps hit home to soldiers that this capability really works.

“When I look at my 13B, my artillery men and say, ‘Okay, this technology is going to make your life better,’ they may believe me, but when they see that, he turned on the radio and he was up communicating with the Fire Direction Center, was ready to fire before they finished digging the spades in, to me, that’s the benefit of all of this,” Ellis said.

Ivy Sting 1 was, of course, a relatively narrow test case, but as the first in the series, the objective was to start slow. Officials noted the exercise was a validation of the system, rather than stressing it. There weren’t multiple field assets choose from or pass data to like a real-world situation, for instance.

That could come in the next Ivy Sting, as more and larger pieces of the NGC2 ecosystem are added and the Army expands toward division-level deployment.