Douglas A. Macgregor's Blog, page 20

The latest from EDGE Group and an interview with Aselsan’s CEO: Middle East Defense Digest [Video]

What’s the fallout from Israel’s attack on Qatar? What’s EDGE Group up to? And what does the CEO of Aselsan think about the Middle Eastern defense market?

All those answers and more await you in this month’s edition of the Middle East Defense Digest hosted by Agnes Helou.

For more regional news, make sure to subscribe to our Middle East newsletter.

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Pentagon, Sikorsky ink $10 billion deal for 99 CH-53K heavy lift helos

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has awarded Sikorsky a multi-year contract valued up to $10.8 billion to build a maximum of 99 CH-53K King Stallion helicopters for the Marine Corps and international partners, the first multi-year contract of its kind for the program of record.

In all, the Pentagon is currently planning to buy 200 CH-53Ks, meaning the new multi-year deal represents roughly half of the entire program. The five-year deal is estimated to provide $1.5 billion in savings from 2025 to 2029, according to a statement from Naval Air Systems Command on Friday.

“This multi-year procurement is key to mitigating program costs,” said Col. Kate Fleeger, program manager for the CH-53K. “The contract allows Sikorsky to take advantage of a long-term, stable demand signal and bundle purchase orders from suppliers to achieve better pricing. That savings is then passed on to the government.”

The CH-53K is the Marine Corps’ heavy lift helicopter slated to replace its legacy CH-53E Super Stallions. The newer aircraft is capable of lifting three times the weight of its predecessor and is designed to move troops, supplies and heavy equipment across the battlefield.

“This award reflects trust and confidence in Sikorsky to deliver these technologically advanced, heavy-lift helicopters that will revolutionize the Marine Corps’ operational capabilities by adding unrivaled power, performance, survivability and dependability to the fleet,” said Rich Benton, Sikorsky vice president and general manager. “The multi-year contract enables Sikorsky to partner with the Department of the Navy to drive long-term affordability, optimize production efficiencies and stabilize our supply chain and workforce, ensuring the Marines maintain the strategic advantage with the CH-53K in a rapidly evolving battlespace.”   

To date, Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, has delivered 20 helicopters to the Marine Corps with an additional 63 aircraft in various states of production. The King Stallion’s first Marine Expeditionary Unit deployment is scheduled for fiscal 2027, according to NAVAIR.

Additionally, Sikorsky is under contract to deliver 12 CH-53Ks to Israel.

“The contract combines five separate aircraft orders — defined as Lots 9-13 — into a five-year multi-year procurement, ensuring price predictability and consistent flow of materials from 267 CH-53K suppliers across 37 states, and 17 suppliers from eight countries,” according to Sikorsky. “The contract allows the U.S. Government to buy up to 99 CH-53K aircraft for the Marine Corps or to fulfill orders from international military customers.”

Data overload threatens decisionmakers as autonomy expands

Warfighters need complete confidence and trust in autonomous systems before fully adopting them, as they will increasingly rely on these systems to take over critical tasks and responsibilities. That means the design and usability of systems, such as those that control ground robots and autonomous vessels, must avoid becoming more complex over time and instead move toward simplifying decision-making for warfighter engagements.

Breaking Defense asked Tim Heiser, director of defense programs at Teague — a U.S.-based firm with nearly a century of human-centered design expertise — to discuss how this issue is being addressed today.

Breaking Defense: What are the warfighter challenges associated with introducing autonomous capabilities/technologies in complex environments?

Tim Heiser is director of defense programs at Teague. 

Heiser: New solutions are being offered and fielded every day; the pace can be overwhelming. Warfighters are trained for precise tasks, where the cause and effect of their actions is clear. Handing off responsibility to a system, especially one they don’t fully understand, is no small step. Industry also has to remember to not take it lightly. Warfighters serve out of pride in their work, and they need full confidence in every action they take — whether involving another person or a machine.

That personal need for confidence is colliding with a technical reality: The amount of data coming in now is more than any human can process at the speed decisions have to be made. That forces us to really think about how information is segmented and about the risk of cognitive overload. On top of that, a lot of the systems in use today were built decades ago. Yes, they’ve been modernized over the years, but at some point adding more doesn’t make them better, it just makes them harder to use. That’s the point where you have to step back and ask: how can a human-machine engagement and autonomy for tasks that have a reasonable expectation of trust, be taken off the plate of those folks so they can make decisions in complex and high-stress environments?

We have to keep the usability of that tech in mind and create an environment of trust first and foremost for that to be fully adopted and deployed. That’s got to be the North Star before industry.

What specific areas of technology does this apply to?

Everything from seabed to space: air vehicles, kinetic and non-kinetic responses, and ground control stations for command and control of sea, air, and space systems, to name a few.

For example, I see a lot of emphasis lately in the marine world. The statistics on our shipbuilding capacity versus adversaries are pretty stark. In response, we are starting to see more seed funding go to autonomous tech that’s going to help rebuild our industrial base, and maritime defense is certainly getting some much-needed attention.  

This is a growing opportunity, but the focus is still the same: How do you field capability that’s going to allow people to do more in a manner in which they’re not going to control everything tomorrow that they control today? Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s a satellite or an undersea vessel, the question is: Do we fully understand what that mission is intended to do, and does the system present itself in such a way that it makes sense to the person who needs to execute that mission?

One of the ways to make this possible is through design. What does design mean to Teague in this context?

I’ll talk about it in the context of intuitiveness and usability. When I think about good design, it is first rooted in user research, very solid research. Do you understand the problem you’re trying to solve, the environment you’re trying to deploy a certain solution in? And do you understand how people are going to use that product, whether it’s digital or physical?

That involves not only understanding what people tell you that they do, but it’s the observations of how they do the work. When starting at the user-research level and observing how warfighters do their tasks, the nonverbals tell you as much as the verbals. You look at the sticky notes, you look at the shortcuts that they’ve developed for themselves over the years because they’ve trained themselves to do things in the most effective manner. The manuals and three-inch binders that they use certainly don’t always keep up with that.

Then you take that written and observed knowledge and put it into a plan that turns discovery into a definition, turning that into a developed opportunity, and then delivering on that opportunity. In the design industry, we call it the Double Diamond process, which forms the foundation of what we do and how we do it from a design perspective.

Ultimately, it always comes back to the mission, and asking: What is it, how will it be fulfilled, and does the product make sense from a usability standpoint? If you start with that, then the ‘design’ starts to follow the function that you’re trying to deploy.

The real issue is that things are becoming much more complex and being able to visualize that design before significant investments are made is money well spent, not only in the near term, but for what we have to have as an output.

Capt. Adam Rodriguez, the exercise platoon leader assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, receives additional guidance for using his tablet during the final exercise of the 10X Dismounted Infantry Platoon Project at Fort Moore, Georgia Sept. 20. 10X is led by the U.S. Army DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center in partnership with Fort Moore’s Robotics Requirements Division, the Maneuver Battle Lab, and the National Advanced Mobility Consortium, and is using a robotic system of systems integrated with an infantry platoon to enhance maneuver, situational awareness, and operational effectiveness (U.S. Army photo by Chris Estrada).

Give us a couple use cases about how design has made a difference in development and acceptance of an autonomous capability.

I’ll start by giving you a digital example — something that transcends the seabed-to-space-type application around ground control stations and command and control (C2). A lot of these systems have been around for a long time. Certainly, there are new ones being born every year, but a lot of systems are tried and true. They’re certified, they’ve gone through all their qualifications, and that’s an investment that does take time and no one wants to repeat.

Yet the engagement of those systems is looking to be modernized. For example, we’re asking people to use an iPhone on weekends and then on Monday come into work and manage a command and control system that at times is still based on a green screen design. That’s not effective. Systems that used to track 1, 5, 10 assets now need to track 100, 500, 1,000 assets. The solution can’t be to continue to bolt on more and more capability. What we’ve seen is the decision string, the amount of checks and balances and clicks of a mouse, let’s say, to determine engagement or not, is starting to lengthen.

And all of that complexity shows up in front of the warfighter. They want to feel confident in the information they’re looking at. What we’ve found is that design can help by triaging that information: what’s critical to understand right now versus what can be moved to on-the-loop or out-of-the-loop and used later for mission planning two, three, four days down the road.

In interviews, warfighters have told us: “I had so much information in front of me, I couldn’t make a decision.” In some cases, they unconsciously chose not to engage because they couldn’t get through the decision wheel fast enough. In a recent UI project, we simplified incoming information using color, iconography, and menu design to create a cleaner system. The result was a simpler interface that allowed faster, clearer decisions.

There has also been tremendous effort invested in developing autonomous navigation and operational systems for ground vehicles. From an engineering standpoint, these technologies are essential to ensure vehicles perform their required functions and make mission-critical decisions. But how humans engage with those systems — through the interface — is where good design can elevate the technology, transforming it from simply functional to truly effective.

The ability to mission plan, alter decisions mid-mission, and coordinate with other assets in the field is a complex process that requires information to be presented in a clear and meaningful way. These decisions will often fall to young warfighters in high-stress situations, who need confidence that the information they see is accurate and that the choices they make won’t be second-guessed later. Our job in design is to ensure that information is delivered clearly, concisely, and in a way that supports the mission. In autonomous vehicle command, control, and navigation, we’ve seen significant opportunities for design to elevate technical systems into tools that enable their users.

You mentioned the importance of speed-to-trust for autonomous technology. Tell us more.

This shows up in two ways. First, within industry — the men and women on the factory floor who will use this technology to build production systems that increase output. As demand grows to meet the needs of our warfighters, autonomy will become integral to our factories and supply chains. Those who think carefully about how technology integrates with the workforce will be far better positioned to meet these rising demands.

The second area is within the DoD. When industry introduces new technology or products that can be fielded in months rather than years, it’s possible because we’ve already addressed usability, scalability, maintainability, and trainability across the product lifecycle. We’re no longer thinking in decades — we’re thinking in operational timelines. 

Great technology is here now and proliferating faster than ever, which is a good thing. It’s an exciting moment to be in the middle of so much demand and integration of new capabilities. But ultimately, it’s the way these systems are designed — with the user in mind — that drives adoption, impact, and mission success.

To learn how human-centered design turns autonomy into capability, download Teague’s guide: Designing the Future Force.

As Lebanese military prepares to disarm Hezbollah, France supports Saudi conference

BEIRUT — French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to back a “conference that our Saudi friends will hold” in support of the Lebanese Armed Forces, as the LAF prepares for the contentious mission to disarm Hezbollah.

“Lebanon will breathe easier when Hezbollah is weaker and the rest of Lebanon will breathe even better when all of the arms held by Hezbollah are back in the force, in the hands of the Lebanese Armed Forces, there’s no other choice,” Macron said in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last week.

Macron did not divulge additional details about the planned conference to be hosted by Saudi Arabia, and representatives for the Saudi embassy in Beirut did not respond to a request for comment as of press time.

But a French source said the meeting is expected take place before the end of 2025 and will gather several countries, including Gulf and Arab states, European states, commonwealth countries and the US.

“France has no taboos when it comes to arming [the] LAF, even if the needed capabilities are radars for air defense systems,” the source told Breaking Defense in an interview on Friday.

The source added that the conference will help equip the LAF to be able to perform its duties, as the mandate for the international peacekeeping force UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon, will expire in a year after nearly a half-century of presence in southern Lebanon. The conference could also provide aid to Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, in hopes of lessening the operational burden on the LAF, the source said.

That the French expect the meeting to take place in Saudi Arabia, the source said, is a “gamechanger,” signaling progress since the Beirut and Riyadh have had strained relations in recent years. In 2016, Saudi Arabia canceled a military aid package to the LAF worth $3 billion after Lebanon refrained from condemning an attack on the Saudi diplomatic mission in Iran. The aid would have included military vehicles, helicopters and maritime vessels, which the LAF has never received.

It wouldn’t be the first international conference gathered for the LAF’s benefit with France’s support. In October 2024, France held a conference and raised $200 million to support LAF. The source told Breaking Defense that LAF received this assistance in the form of troop transportation equipment, heavy machines, and engineering, demining and training equipment.

Also earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced it would provide the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) a security package worth $14.2 million to help in its new mission to disarm Hezbollah.

The package consists of explosives and support equipment to dismantle Hezbollah weapons caches and military infrastructure.

The task of disarming Hezbollah is likely to be a fraught one, as the group has said it won’t give up its arms willingly. Late last week Reuters published an interview with Jawad Nasrallah, the son of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, in which Jawad reiterated Hezbollah’s position.

“Never in your fantasies or dreams,” he said.

To ‘harmonize’ better: Air Force developing new defensive cyber campaign plan

AFA 2025 — The Air Force’s primary cyber unit is developing a new strategy to better synchronize the work of different groups of cyber defenders, with a particular focus on critical infrastructure and networks, according to the unit’s commander.

“Prior to this, we’ve always kind of looked at them [cybersecurity teams] in separate missions, but they’re really doing the same thing in a different way. We want to harmonize that better,” Lt. Gen. Thomas Hensley, commander of 16th Air Force, said during a panel presentation at the annual Air and Space Forces Association conference at National Harbor, Md.

Currently, cyber defense missions are undertaken by at least two different sets of teams. There are the local defenders, known as cybersecurity service providers or CSSPs, which perform persistent defense of systems. Then there are cyber protection teams, defensive teams focused on hunting adversaries within the network. They have been described as cyber SWAT teams that have specialized kits to eradicate adversary intrusions on networks.

RELATED: After cuts to DoD’s cyber workforce, experts see short-term readiness risk, but also opportunity

The move for greater harmonization between the two groups, a spokesperson for the 16th said, came out of work the 16th has already done on what they called “mission thread defense.” That refers to an overarching strategy and process flow of information and focuses on protecting critical operational sequences that can span multiple systems and components — to include hardware, software, open vulnerabilities programmable logic controllers, data dependencies, sub systems and architecture.

“In the increasingly complex and competitive global security environment, mission thread defense protects our systems from any cyber threats, disruptions, and failures at any time. It ensures that essential capabilities, [such as] things that keep America safe, remain functional even under attack, protecting both our homeland and operational success by focusing on endurance and integrity of mission-critical operations,” the spokesperson said. “Mission thread defense safeguards critical operations from the beginning to the end of a mission. It enhances system resiliency, mitigates threats, and safeguards steady operations even under cyberattack or system failure.”

Base Defense And Public Utilities

Historically, the military has focused its defense on Internet Protocol-based networks, but in the age of countless Internet-of-Things devices and digitally maintained critical infrastructure, the threat landscape has widen dramatically.

Volt Typhoon, for instance, was purported Chinese malware discovered inside US critical infrastructure using a technique in the cybersecurity world dubbed “living off the land,” which means it’s using legitimate tools organic to the systems for malicious purposes. What has particularly alarmed officials regarding Volt Typhoon is the paradigm shift of Chinese threats moving from espionage and intellectual property theft to holding critical infrastructure at risk, likely to thwart a US mobilization response to Chinese activity in the Pacific.

Part of the issue is many of these critical infrastructure systems are owned and operated by public utilities, not the US government, even on military bases.

“Looking at the base defense itself, we can do all that we can to defend those bases, but realize that those bases rely on public utilities,” Hensley said. “If those public utilities are attacked, we’ll have a week, maybe two weeks, of generator power to keep the missions going, but then that’s it. We’re out. How do we protect the public utilities that are feeding the bases so that we can continue to fight?”

He explained the Air Force is working through several cooperative research and development agreements with public utility companies at a variety of strategic locations and bases to help improve defenses and partnership with the private sector.

Some include intelligence sharing to inform utilities of adversary activity in their networks, others involve sharing best practices to eradicate adversaries, and some more sensitive agreements allow the Air Force to put sensors on utility systems for persistent monitoring.

Hensley noted the National Guard has authorities to do this type of work. In fact, several Guard exercises work to game out just how these relationships work in time of crisis in order to have partnerships and memorandums of agreement already established if a major event occurs.

What’s in a pin? Trump dons golden F-22 during Erdogan meeting

WASHINGTON — As US President Donald Trump sat in the newly gold-adorned Oval Office with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a smaller piece of precious metal caught the eye of some observers: a pin, worn on the lapel of Trump’s jacket, that resembled a fighter jet.

Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a golden F-22 Raptor, a miniature of the Lockheed Martin-made fifth-generation stealth fighter.

What was less clear, and remains so, is why the president chose to wear that particular pin for that particular meeting on Thursday. (A White House spokesperson gamely confirmed to Breaking Defense that it was an F-22, but declined to comment further on Trump’s wardrobe.)

The detail is particularly intriguing considering Turkey has long sought re-entry into another American fifth-generation fighter jet program: the F-35, which is also made by Lockheed Martin and is the counterpart to the air-to-air specialist F-22.

“We’re going to discuss the F-35. We’ll be discussing all of the things that you know about …,” Trump said, sitting next to Erdogan. “And I think you’ll be successful with buying the things that he’d like to buy. … We’ll have to see. We haven’t even started yet but I know he wants the F-35, and he’s wanted, and we’re talking about that very seriously.”

RELATED: Trump wants a twin-engine F-35. Experts say it’s ‘not feasible.’

Erdogan, likewise, said the two would have an “opportunity” to talk about “some of the issues regarding the F-35” as well as F-16s.

Turkey was ejected from the international F-35 program in 2019, during Trump’s first term, after it agreed to purchase Russian air defense systems. And though Ankara is currently developing its own indigenous fifth-generation fighter called the KAAN, Erdogan has long sought to work his way back under the F-35 umbrella. (The F-22 was never offered to international partners and is only flown by the US Air Force.)

Despite Trump’s optimistic words, however, no public announcement was made following Erdogan’s visit regarding the F-35 or any other deal.

As for the pin, Trump continued to wear it throughout meetings on Thursday, and it was affixed to his jacket again this morning when he appeared at the Ryder Cup.

U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd on the first tee during the Friday afternoon four-ball matches of the 2025 Ryder Cup at Black Course at Bethpage State Park Golf Course on September 26, 2025 in Farmingdale, New York. (Photo by Andrew Redington/Getty Images)

Air Force AI writes battle plans faster than humans can — but some of them are wrong

AFA 2025 — In a recent Air Force experiment, AI algorithms generated attack plans about 400 times faster than human staff, a two-star general told reporters here at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference. The catch? Not all the AI-generated plans would actually work.

The challenge in the exercise, called DASH-2, was to come up with detailed “Courses Of Action” (COAs) for how to strike a given set of targets with a given set of aircraft and weapons, explained Maj. Gen. Robert Claude, a member of the joint Air Force/Space Force team for the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). Human staff using traditional methods generated three COAs in about 16 minutes, Claude said, while AI tools generated 10 COAs in “roughly eight seconds.”

Some quick math averages those rates out: The AI generated 1.25 COAs every second, the humans generated one COA every 5.3 minutes. That’s a 400-fold difference in speed.

That’s radically faster than in the inaugural experiment in the series, this summer’s DASH-1, where the Air Force claimed AI sped up planning “seven-fold” — without making any more mistakes than humans. But not all AIs are created equal, and the best-laid plans of mice, men and machines oft go awry.

In DASH-2, Claude said, “while it was much more timely and there were more COAs generated [by AI than humans], they weren’t necessarily completely viable COAs.”

While he didn’t go into details, he said the errors were not blatant but subtle: more along the lines of failing to factor in the right kind of sensor for specific weather conditions, rather than trying to send tanks on air missions or put glue on pizza. (Of course subtle errors are harder to catch and require more expertise for a human to correct.)

The lesson, Claude said: “What is going to be important going forward is, while we’re getting faster results and we’re getting more results [from AI], there’s still going to have to be a human in the loop for the foreseeable future to make sure that they’re all viable [and] to make the decision.”

That said, Claude was confident future iterations of AI planning aides can get that error rate back down. The name DASH stands for “Decision Advantage Sprint for Human-Machine Teaming,” and as both “dash” and “sprint” imply, the emphasis was on speed, with the participating software development teams having just two weeks to build custom planning tools.

“It’s all, obviously, in how they build the algorithm. You’ve got to make sure that all the right factors are included,” Claude said. “In a two-week sprint, you know, there’s just not time to build all that in with all the checks and balances.”

That’s an acceptable tradeoff for a quick experiment to explore the art of the possible, not for a deployed military system. “If we pursue this route, if we do this for real,” he said, “it’s going to be longer than a two-week coding period.”

The third and final DASH of the year is already underway at the ominously named Shadow Operations Center — Nellis in Las Vegas. “I was actually out for the beginning of DASH-3 last week,” Claude said.

The general was powerfully struck by how much incoming information the Air Force planners in the exercise, known as battle managers, had to cope with.

“They sat me in front of a scope and it was an eye-opening experience for me to see … from a battle manager standpoint, what it is they go through,” he said. “If we successfully get to the point where we’ve got a good human-machine team arrangement, how valuable that could be.”

From gridlock to greener pastures: How a full-year CR could empower warfighters

Every autumn, Pentagon and Congressional leaders sound the alarm over continuing resolutions (CRs). A CR, they insist, is catastrophic, blocking new starts, freezing budgets, and endangering readiness.

But last year, when Congress actually delivered a full-year CR, the sky did not fall. In fact, something remarkable happened: the Department of Defense gained more budgetary freedom than it has seen in decades.

Why? Because the full-year CR cuts appropriators out of their favorite pastime, line-item micromanagement. Instead of Congress dictating thousands of budget line items in exquisite detail, the department received several large lump-sums, akin to the structure of this year’s authorizer-written reconciliation bill. That gave the Pentagon far more flexibility to shift money within accounts to meet real-world demands and some of the findings in the PPBE Commission. The only thing missing was the Pentagon’s readiness to exploit it.

Let’s be clear: Last year’s year-long CR compromise was no disaster. Troops got paid, operations continued, and modernization didn’t collapse.

But appropriators weren’t ready to let go. They dutifully handed DoD the detailed line-item instructions they would have passed if a normal bill had cleared. And here’s the disappointment: DoD, it appears, mostly honored them. Instead of seizing the chance to realign money with strategy, the Pentagon treated the appropriators’ “wish list” as binding law.

In other words, Congressional appropriators clung to micromanagement through new means and DoD voluntarily obliged itself. The flexibility of a full-year CR was wasted.

There’s no excuse for a repeat. Everyone knows another full-year CR is a live possibility. This time, DoD must plan ahead. Instead of defaulting to appropriators’ shadow line items, the department should build a disciplined strategy for reallocating funds in line with the needs of the warfighter, akin to what it now has to do with the reconciliation bill.

The real advantage of a full-year CR is not the anomaly process; it’s liberation from congressional earmarks and parochial dictates. Appropriators carve the defense budget into thousands of specified slices every year. These mandates tie the Pentagon’s hands and consume resources that should be directed against real threats.

Under a full-year CR, those impediments fall away. DoD receives funding at some new pre-determined level, but with greater latitude to move money within accounts. That means the services can finally prioritize based on the development timeline of industry rather than the artificial clock tied to the political process.

A full-year CR this year is not a crisis, it’s an opportunity — if Pentagon leaders prepare. Consider a three-part opportunity:

No restrictions on new starts or accelerating procurement quantities enabling leaders to exploit success as it happens. The restrictions on new starts had in the past been limited only to partial year-CRs, but the Congress last year in the Full Year CR enabled the Pentagon to move forward seamlessly.Funding capability areas rather than programs.  The 2026 appropriation was built by the Pentagon back in 2024 and a lot has changed in the meantime.The big winner is emerging tech. Funds could flow into AI-enabled decision tools and electronic warfare prototypes, not low-payoff science projects that happened to make it into the budget tables two years ago.

The normal appropriation process leads to line-item micromanagement and prevents DoD from exploiting accelerated acquisition often leading to the “valley of death” for new defense entrants.

Gridlock is usually a dirty word in Washington. But for defense budgeting, gridlock may mean salvation. When Congress deadlocks and passes a full-year CR, it accidentally delivers something better than over-engineered appropriations bills: a large, flexible pot of money that the Department can align with the needs of the warfighter today.

Last year, the Pentagon squandered that opportunity by being surprised and by mostly deferring to appropriators’ unofficial instructions. This year, it must do the opposite: expect a full-year CR, plan for it, and be ready to act strategically.

Sometimes Washington’s dysfunction delivers more than its best-laid plans. Gridlock may be just what the Pentagon needs.

Ret. Maj. Gen. John G. Ferrari is a senior nonresident fellow at AEI. He previously served as a director of program analysis and evaluation for the service.

Wilsbach expected to become next Air Force chief of staff: Sources

WASHINGTON — Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach is expected to be named as the Trump administration’s official choice for Air Force chief of staff, three sources told Breaking Defense.

If confirmed, Wilsbach will replace Gen. David Allvin, who unexpectedly announced last month that he would retire in November, halfway through his four-year term. 

The Air Force declined to comment on the status of the nomination. The White House did not respond to an after-hours request for comment by press time. 

President Donald Trump has been known to change his mind, so a switch is always possible until the decision is formally sent to the Senate and announced by the Defense Department. But two of the sources who spoke with Breaking Defense say they expect Congress to be notified in the coming days that Wilsbach is the choice.

Wilsbach’s path to the top uniformed Air Force post has been unusual compared to the typically rote and bureaucratic nomination process. 

On Aug. 11, the Air Force four-star stepped down from his position as head of Air Combat Command, ahead of his intended retirement. But seven days later, Allvin’s early exit was announced, and shortly thereafter multiple sources told Breaking Defense that Wilsbach had emerged as the frontrunner for the chief of staff job, in part due to his prior assignment as commander of Pacific Air Forces. 

However, Wilsbach’s potential nomination appeared to be stalled after social media accounts mounted a campaign calling out his previous statements supporting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. That campaign instead promoted Air Force Global Strike Command head Gen. Thomas Bussiere, then nominated for the vice chief of staff, as a potential contender for the chief of staff job. (Bussiere’s nomination for vice chief has since been pulled, Aviation Week reported earlier this month.) 

The unprecedented campaigning for the service’s top military role became the talk of the Air Force community, and was a hot topic among attendees at the Air and Space Forces Association conference this week. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink in a briefing with reporters on Monday downplayed concerns that the service would be left leaderless in its top uniformed position.

While noting that the Trump administration ultimately has to select a nominee, “the bottom line is we will not not have a chief. Gen. Allvin and I will make sure that we have a chief,” he said.

Wilsbach is a fighter pilot by craft, having flown aircraft like the F-22 Raptor, F-15 and F-16. If selected, he would guide the service during a critical window, as fears mount that China could invade Taiwan and invoke a US response. In his own right, Wilsbach has commanded forces amid what he called “completely unprofessional and totally unsafe” intercepts by Chinese pilots.

“What’s disturbing is … their typical response is, ‘This is your fault, because this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t here,’” Wilsbach told reporters in September 2023, regarding cases where American officials have been able to confront their Chinese counterparts on the intercepts.

“Do it safely, do it professionally and everybody will be okay,” Wilsbach said. “We won’t have a miscalculation. We won’t have a disaster.”

Michael Marrow contributed to this report.

State clears Germany for $1.2 billion worth of AMRAAMs

WASHINGTON — The US State Department greenlit a potential foreign military sale of up to 400 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air (AMRAAM) missiles to Germany, a deal valued at over $1.2 billion, according to a notice published by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. 

The approval paves the way for Berlin to acquire the weapons from defense giant RTX, whose subsidiary Raytheon manufactures the AMRAAM. The approval covers the AIM-120D-3 variant of the weapon and associated equipment, which the DSCA release on Thursday said will “provid[e]increased air-to-air capability for the German F-35 program” and other NATO needs.

The notice from DSCA is a congressional notification and is not final, as quantities and dollar totals often shift during negotiations. Today’s announcement also technically tees up an opportunity for lawmakers to block the deal within a 30-day period, though such a step would be unlikely considering Germany is a key NATO ally. 

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy goals and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a NATO Ally that is a force for political stability and economic progress in Europe,” the DSCA posting says. 

RELATED: Denmark picks Europe’s SAMP/T for long-range air defense, shuns Patriot

The AMRAAM has been in particularly high demand amid modern threats that have highlighted air defense as a key focus of the US military and its allies. Although AMRAAM is an air-to-air missile, it can also be fired from the ground-based NASAMS air defense system that serves NATO customers and has been extensively used in Ukraine. 

RTX has been ramping up production of the missile to meet the need, which company officials have forecast will remain durable in the coming years. The announcement for Germany today is the latest for a European customer, following similar recent approvals of variants of the weapon for the Netherlands (232 missiles and equipment for an estimated $570 million) and Finland (405 missiles and equipment for an estimated $1.1 billion).

The US government, for its part, is working to boost production of the weapon due to the high domestic and international interest in the AMRAAM. A spending plan lawmakers sent the Pentagon for President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill allocates an additional $250 million for procurement of the weapon alongside $225 million to expand its production capacity. Officials aim to eventually double the missile’s annual production from 1,200 to 2,400 units.

“More AMRAAMs are coming off the production line today than ever before. We’re working closely with our supply chain to ensure our customers have the advanced munitions they need at scale,” Brian DeGennaro, vice president of Raytheon’s air dominance portfolio, said in a statement to Breaking Defense.