Call it a tale of two China strategies.

The U.S. Air Force and Navy are each preparing for a potential fight in the Pacific against China, perhaps in the next couple of years, under the guidance of the same National Defense Strategy. But this uncertain timing overlaps uncomfortably with a mountain of modernization priorities for each service.

Add to that budget caps for fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025, and the two services have responded with very different budget strategies.

On one side, the Air Force’s proposed FY25 budget would trim its procurement account by $1.6 billion from the prior year, while boosting research, development, test and evaluation spending by nearly that amount. In the process, the service expects to reduce its fighter jet purchases by 12.

For its part, the Navy has found itself in a shooting war in the Red Sea while also trying to increase its presence in the Pacific region to deter China. The service has prioritized paying for current operations and personnel in its FY25 spending request. Procurement spending is flat, while research and development drops 5%.

U.S. intelligence officials say Chinese President Xi Jinping has set a goal for the nation’s military to modernize enough to carry out an invasion of Taiwan — which China views as a rogue breakaway province — as early as 2027.

The Air Force says that, while it wrestles with spending caps under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, it leaned toward research and development more than procurement to ensure future capabilities remain on track.

The Navy, in contrast, contends that if it must deter or fight China in this “decade of concern,” it would do so with the fleet it has today, not the one it hopes to develop in the decades to come.

As the services determine their approaches, lawmakers are weighing in on whether the United States will be ready to face China in time.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said at a March conference China could try to take Taiwan by force as early as 2027, noting that fielding capabilities at the turn of the decade will be too late.

“Anybody that uses a metric or time frame and says, ‘We’ll get this stuff done by 2030′ — wrong answer,” Wittman said at the McAleese & Associates event. “2027 needs to be the metric. That’s how we will have the opportunity to deter [China].”

A pattern of differing approaches

At least one expert told Defense News it’s normal for the Navy and Air Force to take different approaches on modernization.

In general, the Navy has taken a more strategic, methodical route to accomplishing its aircraft modernization goals, holding back on buying next-generation aircraft until technology matures and prices come down, said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank who focuses on defense budgets.

In the meantime, the Navy has bought aircraft already in production to fill out its inventory. For example, over the last decade, the service repeatedly extended its fourth-generation F/A-18E/F Super Hornet production line to avoid a fighter jet shortfall. It introduced its fifth-generation F-35C in 2019, well after the Marine Corps’ F-35B in 2015 and the Air Force’s F-35A in 2016.

“That’s why for about a decade, until just recently, the Navy had a higher aircraft procurement budget than the Air Force,” Harrison said. “The Air Force approach has been more about chasing new technologies and shiny objects that are dangled in front of them.”

The Air Force is now simultaneously trying to buy the F-15EX, a new version of a legacy fighter, and the F-35A, while “getting knee-deep” into developing a sixth-generation fighter program called Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, Harrison said.

“They’re trying to buy three different generations of fighters all at the same time,” he said. “And it looks like they just aren’t sure where they want to place their bets. That’s an unsustainable approach, and it looks like it’s catching up to them. They just don’t have the resources to continue buying three different lines of three different generations of fighters all at once.”

But if China moves to reclaim Taiwan in 2027, Harrison said, the Air Force is “going to come up short. They’re not going to have the future systems like NGAD in time, and they’re not going to have the quantity of fifth-gen and fourth-gen fighters that they would likely need in those scenarios. … They’re destined to fall short on quantities with this approach.”

The Navy, for its part, acknowledges it would enter a hypothetical 2027 battle with the fleet it has today. So even as its ship and aircraft fleet have shrunk in size in recent years amid the decommissioning of Cold War-era platforms, the service has focused on the readiness of the ships and planes it would take to war.

The Navy has launched several data-driven efforts aimed at quickening maintenance, and it has looked to field software updates and other capabilities that can be rapidly implemented on existing platforms, rather than built into those of the future.

Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven told Defense News all the services are driven “to be ready to execute the [National Defense Strategy] over the near, the medium and the longer term. Each service will come to that with a slightly different view on how to execute that strategy. But we’re fundamentally all aligned to execute that strategy.”

While the Navy has sided with Wittman’s push to be ready by 2027, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at the McAleese conference his service must take a longer view.

“It’s a risk balance over time,” Kendall said. “If you fixate only on 2027, you’re going to find that in ’29 you’re in big trouble.”

‘We got pinched’

Maj. Gen. Dave Tabor, director of programs for the Air Force’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Programs, told Defense News the service must be able to field enough existing capabilities and continue developing the next generation of aircraft to stay on the cutting edge. To do that, he said, the service had to strike a fine balance between R&D and procurement.

And with the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s budgetary caps pushing the Air Force to make tough choices, R&D came out on top.

“At the end of the day, we got pinched by the topline,” Tabor said, and six F-35s and six F-15EXs got cut. “The result is relatively minimal to our overall rollout, but it’s 12 jets [cut] that last year we were thrilled to have.”

The consequences of the FRA’s budgetary caps started to come into focus last summer after the Air Force had drawn up its program objective memorandum, which spells out the service’s spending plans over the next five years, Tabor said.

“We knew that [the FRA] was coming; we didn’t know how it was going to manifest,” he added.

Top Air Force leaders, including then-Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, current Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin and Secretary Kendall, convened in June for a high-level meeting called Corona South. A key topic of discussion, Tabor said, was what to put on the chopping block to meet the budget caps. The matter remained unsettled as Corona South wrapped up, he added, and only became more clear after submitting the program objective memorandum at the end of June.

In hindsight, the Air Force would have liked a clearer picture of its budgetary outlook earlier, though service leaders ended up relatively satisfied with the result, Tabor said.

“Building a 90% solution is a whole lot different than building a 100% solution and taking 10% out of it, and the latter is kind of what we ended up with,” he said. “The approach was [preserving capabilities that provide] relative value to the joint fight and what did the least amount of damage to what we had already done.”

If a conflict with China were to erupt, he added, systems now in the works — such as NGAD, the B-21 Raider stealth bomber and artificial intelligence-operated drones known as collaborative combat aircraft — would allow the Air Force to fight in ways it never had before.

NGAD and the collaborative combat aircraft ended up winners in the Air Force’s proposed R&D budget: The former’s funding in 2025 would jump by $815 million to more than $2.7 billion, and CCA spending would increase by $165 million to $557 million.

But Harrison and Heather Penney, a former F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the Air Force can’t count on having newer capabilities, such as NGAD, fielded in the early 2030s. Such a time frame could be overly optimistic, they agreed, given the advanced technology that must be refined for NGAD and the track record of some nascent aircraft programs failing to stay on schedule.

“When was the last time we ever saw an advanced capability show up on time and on budget?” Penney said. The B-21′s apparent success so far is “an exception to how we’ve seen everything else happen. The capabilities [intended for NGAD], in terms of fully operationally capable — that’s not 2030. We’re talking 2035, 2040.”

Tabor said NGAD is “proceeding at pace” and that, even if it falls behind schedule, “we’re prepared with other capabilities to mitigate risk” for a conflict with China.

‘Something has to give’

For the Navy, prioritizing current operations over future platforms wasn’t a choice; it was an operational imperative.

The Navy reported it has lobbed a billion dollars’ worth of missiles into the skies of the Middle East since October, shooting down drones and missiles launched by the Yemen-based Houthi rebel group. The service hasn’t publicly estimated the cost of its operations there, which include the higher-than-usual tempo of daily operations for ships and planes, the extension of the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group’s deployment in the fall, and what’s likely to be a greater maintenance bill.

“Where the Department of the Navy really placed its priorities is on our fundamental mission of being forward-deployed around the world so that if a crisis hits, we’re there on the scene,” Raven, the undersecretary, told Defense News days after releasing the FY25 budget. “Readiness and people were the two top priorities that really came through in this budget.”

The Navy asked for $87.6 billion for operations and maintenance, up $3 billion from FY24. It also continued a recent focus on munitions, asking for $6.6 billion to buy weapons and expand the industrial base that builds them.

But it had to then cut procurement and R&D. The Navy asked for six ships, compared to the seven it previously expected to include in its FY25 budget. It also asked for 75 planes, compared to the 94 it previously planned to purchase.

This took a toll on all three of the Navy’s key modernization programs: its own Next Generation Air Dominance, which includes a manned and unmanned family of systems to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fleet; the SSN(X) next-generation attack submarine that will follow the Virginia class; and the DDG(X) next-generation destroyer that will follow the Arleigh Burke class.

The Navy’s NGAD effort took the biggest financial hit: The service wants $454 million in FY25, compared to $1.5 billion in FY24, for the F/A-XX piloted aircraft portion of the program.

The SSN(X) program faces the most significant delay: The service now says it will begin acquisition in the early 2040s, compared to a previous 2035 start and a 2031 plan before that.

Raven said the Navy had to take risk here, given the FRA budget caps.

“If we’re going to prioritize people and readiness, something has to give, and we saw the best benefit in taking more risk in that longer-term modernization,” he told Defense News. “But budget caps have consequences. There are hard choices being made in this year’s budget.”

Down the line, Raven added, “there may be opportunities to learn from the Air Force as it develops its path to some of these same types of technologies” — such as their separate NGAD programs.

Though lawmakers like Wittman have expressed a preference for prioritizing readiness over future fleet size and capability, one expert warned the Navy is digging itself a hole it will struggle to get out of.

“Given the long lead time to design and build capital assets such as ships and aircraft, the U.S. Navy has entered its version of a ‘doom loop’ where funds for future ships are deferred to pay for today’s readiness — which ensures tomorrow’s readiness will also suffer, as new ships are required to maintain readiness,” Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Defense News.

“Readiness and fleet size are inextricably linked,” Eaglen added. “It’s shortsighted to believe they are separate and distinct.”

The Air Force, after decades of deferred modernization, now faces a “massive gap” between its current reality and the vision Kendall crafted for transforming the service through next-generation systems, Penney said. But it can’t achieve that vision without pouring its money into research and development.

“Nobody’s wrong here, and nobody’s right,” she said.

This is the second story of a two-part series. The first story is available here.

The Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy will immediately start refreshing troops’ training and changing maintenance procedures as prerequisites for resuming normal operations, leaders from each of the services told reporters Wednesday.

But they acknowledged it will be months before the tiltrotor aircraft are fully back to flying real-world missions.

The Ospreys will receive no equipment modifications before they return to the air.

Marine Corps Col. Brian Taylor, the V-22 joint program manager, told reporters his office and the services “have high confidence that we understand what component failed and how it failed.” It’s still unclear why the part in question did not perform as intended.

Taylor and other service officials declined to say which component’s failure caused an Air Force Special Operations Command Osprey to crash into the sea during a training mission Nov. 29, killing all eight airmen aboard. They also declined to answer whether the aircraft would be restricted from flying under certain conditions or in certain areas due to the risk of a repeat problem.

The accident is still under investigation. The Air Force has shared its findings with the joint program office — which manages V-22 acquisition and maintenance for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — and the other services to better understand the material failure that led to the crash.

Because the wreckage of the Osprey sat under the Pacific Ocean for about a month before being recovered, the drive system is corroded such that engineers may never understand why the unnamed component failed, Taylor said. But investigators created a “fault tree” to map out potential causes, which are addressed in the services’ mitigation plan.

The main change will increase the frequency of an inspection that is already done on the aircraft — like upping the number of oil changes on a car, Taylor said. He said the change gives the component a greater “perimeter of safety” during operations.

Though Taylor repeatedly declined to offer information about the component, he said it is not the input quill assembly that attaches the Osprey’s engine to its proprotor gear box — the component that began wearing out early and caused a series of clutch malfunctions for Marine Corps and Air Force pilots in 2022. A portion of the Air Force and Marine Corps fleets were grounded in 2023 as those services studied how to mitigate the risk of so-called “hard clutch engagements” and when to replace worn-out parts.

NBC reported Feb. 19 the November crash may have involved “chipping,” where tiny pieces of metal wear off during use and can damage the engine. Taylor did not specify whether chipping played a role in the crash, but characterized it as a normal phenomenon for a mechanical system and said the V-22 has a sophisticated monitoring system that looks for small metal bits and alerts the pilot if any are detected.

Taylor made clear the November crash was unrelated to other previous V-22 mishaps.

“This is the first time that we’ve seen this particular component fail in this way, and so this is unprecedented” in the 750,000 flight hours amassed over the life of the V-22 program, he said.

Due to that long track record, Taylor said: “We are confident in the system.”

The ‘Gundam 22′ crash

The Nov. 29 accident was the deadliest Air Force mishap since 2018, and the fourth fatal Osprey crash in a two-year span. Twenty U.S. troops have died in Osprey incidents since March 2022.

The downed crew of “Gundam 22″ included Osprey pilots Maj. Jeff Hoernemann, Maj. Luke Unrath and Capt. Terry Brayman; medical personnel Maj. Eric Spendlove and Tech. Sgt. Zach Lavoy; flight engineers Staff Sgt. Jake Turnage and Senior Airman Kody Johnson; and airborne linguist Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Six were stationed at Japan’s Yokota Air Base; two worked at Kadena Air Base. All were assigned to the Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Wing.

The weeks-long, multinational search effort successfully recovered the bodies of all but Spendlove.

The U.S. military now flies hundreds of V-22s, largely operated by the Marines. The tiltrotor aircraft is known for its towering nacelles that allow it to launch and land like a helicopter, and speed forward like a fixed-wing plane. Troops use the unique aircraft to slip in and out of areas without established runways, where fixed-wing planes may not be able to land with troops and supplies.

The Marine Corps owns nearly 350 Ospreys; the Air Force and Navy operate smaller fleets at around 50 and 30 aircraft, respectively.

Beyond the safety and accident investigation boards studying the most recent crash, Air Force Special Operations Command is also conducting a deep-dive into its CV-22 Osprey program to determine whether it provides adequate training, resources and other factors to ensure airmen’s safety.

The Government Accountability Office and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability have also launched their own probes into the V-22. On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House oversight committee, said it had not yet received information from the military as it looks into the aircraft’s safety and performance.

“Serious concerns remain, such as accountability measures put in place to prevent crashes, a general lack of transparency, how maintenance and operational upkeep is prioritized, and how DOD assesses risks,” Comer said in a statement. “We will continue to rigorously investigate the DOD’s Osprey program to attain answers to our questions on behalf of American taxpayers and protect U.S. service members defending our nation.”

Marines prepare

As the biggest user of the V-22 platform by far, the Marine Corps has been most affected by the monthslong grounding. It relies on the Osprey to move people, supplies and weapons, and operates from ship decks and from ground bases.

Brig. Gen. Richard Joyce, the assistant deputy commandant for aviation, told reporters the Marine Corps has focused on keeping up troops’ proficiency on the Osprey since the grounding began in early December so the service could resume flights as quickly as possible.

“Our simulator utilization has been maximized to keep proficiency as much as possible in the virtual environment,” he said.

The service has gone as far as sending MV-22 pilots in Djibouti thousands of miles away to use simulators in Japan, and shipping MV-22 pilots who are deployed to the Middle East with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit back home to North Carolina for simulator training.

Now that the program office has cleared the aircraft to fly, the Corps’ most experienced pilots and aircrew will begin maintenance-check flights to get the Ospreys up in the air, then retrain on “core and basic skills,” Joyce said. Once those top personnel have brushed up on the fundamentals, they’ll pair with junior pilots and crew for additional basic training.

Joyce said it would take about a month for a squadron to get everyone back up to speed basic skills.

However, it will take more time for the personnel to retrain on more advanced skills and mission-specific tasks for combat assaults, transport flights and other missions.

The general said it would take until late spring or early summer to get back to pre-grounding readiness levels.

V-22 squadrons will go through more consumable parts, like filters, as they take on additional inspections and maintenance, he said. Those parts and training support will first go to deployed units, followed by squadrons with upcoming deployments, squadrons participating in key exercises or service-level training events, and eventually to test-and-evaluation units and those farthest from a future deployment.

The amphibious assault ship Boxer and the 15th MEU are set to deploy from California this spring, and Joyce said it’s not clear yet if they’ll be ready to bring the V-22 along. It’s one of the most pressing decisions related to resuming V-22 flight operations, he said.

Air Force’s ongoing studies

Airmen have done the work required to keep the Air Force’s Osprey fleet healthy during the three-month standdown, but “there’s only so much they can do with aircraft that are not flying,” Air Force Special Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. Tony Bauernfeind told reporters Wednesday.

He described a 12-week road map to getting the Ospreys back in the air that adds new maintenance requirements and allows experienced airmen to lead the way. The service will deviate from that plan as needed if work isn’t progressing on schedule.

Returning the aircraft to service begins with ground and simulator training that will include new safety controls and briefings, a review of aircraft maintenance records and refining squadron-level training plans to implement the new safety protocols, Bauernfeind said.

The Air Force did not elaborate on what new safety protocols will be introduced. AFSOC held an all-hands for Osprey crews Feb. 22-23 at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to explain the new safety protocols.

“We received very positive feedback that it was very beneficial to the crews,” Bauernfeind said.

The second phase will focus on returning air crews and maintainers to basic proficiency, initially targeted at senior aviators, instructors, evaluators and weapons officers. Simulator training has helped keep skills sharp during the standdown.

The phased approach gives the service time to absorb findings from the service’s initial safety investigation, an internal report meant to root out the cause of a mishap and prevent future occurrences. Bauernfeind received and accepted the findings of the safety board March 1.

He expects it will take the service more than three months to reach the level of proficiency it had on the Osprey before the Nov. 29 crash.

Bauernfeind said he’s confident in the service’s ability to safely resume Osprey operations before wrapping up two ongoing investigations. The Air Force has kept the families of the downed crew informed about the process, but has not told them the results of the recently completed safety investigation board.

“I have confidence that we know enough now to return to fly,” he said.

Navy’s path to at-sea missions

The Navy will take a similarly cautious approach to resuming its flights, putting only its most experienced personnel in the air first for basic flights in daytime-only conditions, Commander of Naval Air Forces Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever told reporters.

Those top personnel will then pair with junior sailors and eventually resume night operations and other, more complex training. The Navy will lastly resume training new pilots and aircrew at the fleet replacement squadrons.

But Cheever warned that returning to flight wasn’t the same as returning to mission: It may be several more months until the Navy sees its CMV-22Bs flying operational missions to haul cargo and people to aircraft carriers at sea.

Cheever said the Navy would avoid long, over-ocean flights until all personnel had built up sufficient proficiency. But when asked about any restrictions on the aircraft regarding duration of over-water flights, he deferred to NAVAIR. Taylor, from the V-22 program office under NAVAIR, declined to say whether there were or were not any operational limitations for the planes under the new return-to-flight plan.

Cheever highlighted the Navy’s flexibility and said all carriers at sea had fared well during the V-22 grounding. The Navy relied on its C-2A Greyhound, which is set to sundown in 2026 as it’s replaced by the CMV-22B, to resupply carriers at sea, including the Theodore Roosevelt deployed in the Indo-Pacific today.

He said the Navy also relied more heavily on its replenishment ship fleet and looked to load more goods onto carriers when they were in port.

But he noted the importance of getting the CMV-22 back to its mission, saying it can conduct medical evacuations and haul large F-35C engine components — unlike its aging predecessor.

The U.S. military may run out of personnel funds before the end of the year, be forced to scale back operations and see ongoing modernization efforts harmed if Congress fails to pass a defense spending bill by the end of next week, service leaders warned Tuesday.

The undersecretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force said they’d have billions of dollars in “misaligned” funds — money that exists but not in the right budget lines to support their current spending needs — if they’re stuck with a full-year continuing resolution that keeps fiscal 2023 spending levels through the rest of 2024.

They agree that they’d have to prioritize current operations first, then people and then acquisition and modernization in a CR.

“You see sailors and Marines across the globe today, performing important missions: the Red Sea is an excellent example of how current operations take precedence,” Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven told reporters at the Pentagon.

Without sufficient funds, he said, “we have to make tough choices. But between the ability to fight tonight and be ready for all the threats, versus preparing for the future and modernizing our forces — it is a tough decision, but we have to lay our chips somewhere, and that’s on the ability to perform our missions today.”

Raven said the Navy’s ability to make that prioritization, though, would require Congress to grant the services some “unprecedented flexibilities” in the form of massive reprogrammings, or moving money from one line item into another.

The Navy, for example, would have $26 billion in the wrong places, and would need Congress to approve $13 billion in formal reprogrammings — more than twice the money Congress approves for the entire Defense Department in a typical year, he said.

But the reprogramming frenzy would be vital to mitigate the risk the services would take in their modernization efforts and industry would face if contracts are delayed or nixed altogether.

The Army is facing a similar misalignment in funds, to the tune of $6 billion.

“These are production rate increases, new starts — both in programs for acquisition as well as military construction projects that we cannot start,” Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo said.

The Air Force’s misalignment in funds equates to over $13 billion and “impacts are particularly challenging in the Space Force, who has seen their budgets rising over the last couple of years,” Air Force Under Secretary Jones said.

‘Burning hotter’

Further complicating funding this fiscal year is the fact that Congress has yet to pass a sweeping supplemental request, which the Pentagon hoped would supply weapons to Ukraine and Israel in support of ongoing wars for both countries and would also fund the Southwest border mission. The lack of supplemental funding compounds the impact of a long-term CR, Camarillo said.

The Army is spending $500 million out of its base budget for operations costs in the European theater, another $100 million in the U.S. Central Command area of operations and another $500 million for the operations along the U.S. Southwest border.

“At one point in time, there was a thought that all of this could be funded through a supplemental, and it is now currently, today, in FY24, being funded 100% out of the Army’s base budget,” Camarillo said.

“We are just burning hotter than we normally would across all of our appropriations accounts,” he said. “[U.S. Army Europe and Africa] in Germany has explained that … they will run out of money this summer in the absence of extraordinary relief, aka a reprogramming.”

This will be a problem across the board, he added, to include running out of funds in the Army’s military personnel account.

Industry impacts

The services planned to ramp up munitions spending in FY24, to bolster their own stockpiles as a hedge against a future fight and to replenish allies’ and partners’ stocks.

A year-long CR puts that industry ramp-up in peril.

Camarillo said he was “particularly concerned” the CR would not allow the services to “send that strong signal to give industry the incentive to be able to facilitize, invest in a workforce and be able to do those extra shifts that we know that we need in order to restore our munitions.”

Camarillo said the Army intended to kick off a multiyear procurement effort for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) interceptors in FY24. Under a full-year CR, it would be $1.2 billion short to reach the production rates needed to achieve the economic order quantities and savings associated with the multiyear procurement deal.

Lockheed Martin has invested significantly in the PAC-3 MSE line to grow production from 550 missiles per year to 650. The Army requested in its FY24 budget $775 million to ramp up that production. The company intends to grow production beyond 650 in the following year, as demand increases due to the war in Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.

Camarillo added the Army could not begin to field its Mid Range Capability missile to the first unit, which is important to its Pacific deterrence, due to new programs not being allowed to start under continuing resolutions. Nor could it increase production levels for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Javelin missile, and 155mm munitions.

“I will just say that we have always said our goal was to get on 155 artillery 100,000 per month rounds by the end of calendar year ‘25. We cannot get there unless we get both the appropriation and we get the supplemental,” Camarillo said.

“It’s very challenging, because we’re asking industry to lean as far forward as they possibly can and to make investments both in additional personnel, unique tooling and machining that’s required to ramp up production capacity,” Camarillo said.

And the Army planned to buy 225 Coyote counter-unmanned aerial system interceptors – a spending need that hits home, he said, due to the recent deaths of three soldiers in Jordan who were killed by a drone strike from Iran-backed militants — but those, too, could not be purchased in a year-long CR.

For the Navy, Raven said the sea service wanted to double its Standard Missile 6 spending — something particularly timely, as Navy ships are expending the older SM-2 missiles almost daily in the Red Sea, shooting down Houthi missiles and drones — but that cannot happen under the full-year CR.

After the Navy just last week awarded a maintenance contract to HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding to overhaul the attack submarine Boise – which has languished at the pier since 2015 and has been unable to undergo repairs at either a public or private repair yard – Raven said a full-year CR would render the Navy unable to actually fund and execute that contract this year due to a $600 million shortfall in the submarine maintenance funds.

It would also see a $800 million shortfall in amphibious ship spending that could put at risk America-class amphibious assault ship construction, a $2 billion shortfall in submarine construction spending that would threaten the Virginia-class attack sub program, and more.

For the Air Force, Kristyn Jones, who is performing the duties of the under secretary of the Air Force, said the service has five contractors onboard for its collaborative combat aircraft effort, but that wouldn’t be able to move forward.

The full-year CR would also hamper production increases on the Joint Strike Missile and the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter, both of which the Air Force says it needs for a high-end fight, as well as spending on the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile for facilitization to support future production increases.

“We hear over and over: the industry wants that solid demand signal so they know how to invest, they can support the facilitization — and by having this uncertainty, it really has negative impacts across the defense industrial base,” Jones said.

WASHINGTON, LONDON and PARIS — Several nations have announced their contributions to Operation Prosperity Guardian, a new multinational security initiative in the Middle East to help protect merchant ships in the Red Sea area from drones and missiles.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin formally announced the effort Dec. 18, after previously hinting that collective action is required to protect civilian ships in the region.

To date, Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched at least 100 attacks with one-way drones and ballistic missiles, targeting 10 merchant vessels that represent more than 35 different nations, according to a readout of a virtual meeting between security group participants.

“Operation Prosperity Guardian is bringing together multiple countries to include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain to jointly address security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with the goal of ensuring freedom of navigation for all countries and bolstering regional security and prosperity,” Austin said Dec. 18.

He noted this effort will fall under the purview of the Combined Maritime Forces — a multinational maritime partnership based in Bahrain — and its Task Force 153. The CMF is made up of 39 nations, and its various task forces help secure the Gulf of Oman, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Some task forces also focus on countering piracy across the region as well as and training and partner-building activities.

About 20,000 commercial vessels transit the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden every year, according to the French Navy. Task Force 153 specifically covers the Red Sea and was established in 2022 to address human trafficking and smuggling of both legal materials like coal and illegal weapons and drugs, Defense News previously reported.

The readout of Austin’s meeting noted that task force “could be leveraged to deter attacks under the CMF,” but the Defense Department declined to provide additional information.

Here are some details about forces participating in Operation Prosperity Guardian.

Britain

Britain has committed a Type 45 destroyer equipped with air defense weapons to the international task force.

The Defence Ministry announced Dec. 19 the destroyer HMS Diamond will lead the Royal Navy’s contribution to Operation Prosperity Guardian.

HMS Diamond has been in the region for a little more than two weeks and moved to the Red Sea on Saturday. It was almost immediately called into action to shoot down a suspected Houthi drone aimed at a commercial ship in the area. This was first time the Royal Navy shot down an aerial target since the Gulf War in 1991.

“This is an international problem that requires an international solution. That is why HMS Diamond has joined Operation Prosperity Guardian,” Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said while announcing the work with the security group.

British forces have been on hand with a small fleet of ships in the region. For example, the military operates a flotilla out of Bahrain that includes the frigate HMS Lancaster, three mine-hunting vessels and a Royal Fleet Auxiliary support ship.

Italy

Italy will do its part to counter “destabilizing terrorist activity” by sending the multimission frigate Virginio Fasan to the Red Sea, the country’s Defence Ministry said in a statement.

Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto and Austin discussed maritime security in a video call Tuesday, including options for securing shipping routes to avoid economic repercussions and “dangerous impacts” on commodity prices.

“It’s necessary to increase the presence in the area in order to create the conditions for stabilization, to avoid environmental disasters and also to avoid a resurgence of the inflationary push,” Crosetto said in the statement.

France

The French multimission frigate Languedoc has been patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the southern area of the Red Sea since Dec. 8 to secure freedom of navigation, the French Navy said in a Dec. 15 statement.

The Languedoc shot down two drones coming from the direction of Yemen that appeared hostile on the second day of its patrol duty. The frigate destroyed a drone threatening the Norwegian oil tanker Strinda on Dec. 11, before moving in to protect the stricken tanker and prevent a hijacking, according to the Navy. A fire aboard the Strinda was brought under control without injuries.

Norway

Norway will dispatch as many as 10 staff officers to the Combined Maritime Forces, the Norwegian Defence Ministry said.

Marita Isaksen Wangberg, a ministry spokesperson, told Defense News the country isn’t sending any vessels.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands plans to contribute two staff officers to the operation. The country doesn’t have any vessels in the area at this time, and the contribution of ships is under review, Navy spokesperson Alex Kranenburg told Defense News.

Spain

Spain has not made a decision regarding its participation in Operation Prosperity Guardian, the Defence Ministry’s spokesperson, Nuria Fernández de la Fuente, told Defense News. Any participation by Spain, the representative added, would not be unilateral but within the framework of NATO or the European Union.

WASHINGTON — Sailors from the crew of the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln extinguished an electrical fire that broke out on the ship around 2 p.m. on June 28, according to the service.

Nonessential personnel were evacuated from the ship for a short period, but no one was injured during the event, Cmdr. Zach Harrell, a spokesman for Naval Air Forces, told Defense News.

According to a statement from Harrell, “the in-port emergency team aboard aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) responded to an electrical fire in the forward emergency diesel generator compartment.”

He said the fire was extinguished within about 10 minutes.

Harrell noted that no foul play is suspected, and an “assessment is underway to determine the extent of the damage to the ship.”

The ship was conducting planned maintenance, otherwise known as a planned incremental availability, while pier-side at Naval Air Station North Island when the fire occurred, Harrell said.

The provision in the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act would require both the Navy and Air Force secretaries to submit alongside their annual budget requests “development and technology maturation progress reports” for the Next Generation Air Dominance program and the complementary effort for collaborative combat aircraft.

NGAD is a sixth-generation fighter program that would pair with unmanned aircraft, including the CCA acting as a so-called loyal wingman.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., who chairs the House Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, told Defense News that “the Navy needs to speed that up, so that’s why we want to report on what they’re doing.”

The Air Force is juggling several technology development efforts in parallel, including work on advanced engines and a next-generation tanker to give the NGAD fighter additional range in highly contested environments. Wittman said he wants to ensure one technology doesn’t fall behind, and potentially lead to bad decisions for other components.

If the various technology development efforts are properly aligned, “we can either deliver on time or deliver to the left,” or ahead of schedule, he explained.

One nightmare scenario, he said, is that the aircraft’s development gets ahead of engine development, and the Air Force eventually realizes it made a bad decision that would have been avoided if the engine had matured faster.

“We want to see all those things happen in a sequence where one takes advantage of the other … so we’re making maximum use of resources,” Wittman said of the annual reporting requirement.

Asked about the gap between the Navy’s and the Air Force’s progress on NGAD, Wittman said the Navy must set its requirements beyond simply seeking a carrier-based fighter.

The Air Force about five years ago realized its fifth-generation fighters were at risk from Chinese weapons within the first island chain, Wittman noted. (The first island chain runs parallel to the mainland of the Asian continent, starting in the Kuril Islands, through the Japanese Archipelago; includes Taiwan and the northwestern portion of the Philippines; and finishes in Borneo.)

The Navy, he added, at first believed it could mitigate the threat by keeping its aircraft carriers farther away and sending its fifth-generation F-35Cs in along with tankers to increase their range. But, Wittman continued, the jets and the tankers are still at risk, and so this sixth-generation NGAD program is important to the sea service.

“The Navy is behind, and I don’t want the Air Force to mark time while the Navy’s trying to catch up,” Wittman said.

“But I do think the things that the Air Force is doing will inform the Navy, and the Navy should, with that, be able to make big steps forward that they otherwise couldn’t make if they were doing this on their own. So what our expectation is, is the Navy can do a significant amount of catch-up, based upon what the Air Force is doing.”

Five members of the joint chiefs of staff — including Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman — are required statutorily to leave their posts within the coming months, starting in July. Meanwhile, most of the vice chiefs — many of whom are the nominees or favorites to replace the chiefs — are preparing to assume leadership of the services amid the Senate impasse.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is doubling down on his blockade of military confirmations. He told Defense News that the looming vacancies will not prompt him to back down from his ongoing hold on hundreds of military promotions, including the joint chiefs.

“If they’re worried about readiness, they need to go back to their old policy and we’ll get it done,” Tuberville said on Wednesday. “But they’re more worried about social programs than they are about military readiness.”

The senator imposed his blockade in February to protest the Pentagon’s new policy that provides leave time for troops to travel to receive abortion services if they’re stationed in states where it’s now illegal.

The first service chief vacancy will occur when Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger steps down on July 10, commencing a steady stream of exits from the joint chiefs through October. Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville must step down next on August 8, followed by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday shortly after on August 21.

President Joe Biden nominated Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown as the next joint chiefs chairman, replacing Milley, who must depart by early October, and creating another opening at the top of the Air Force.

“There’s no playbook for this,” Arnold Punaro, a former staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview with Defense News. “This is really a time for regular order, and not the chaos and uncertainty that we see in the system right now.”

The tumult sends a terrible message about the seriousness with which the United States takes its military promotion process, he said.

“It sends a sign of weakness to the rest of the world, that we can’t get our work done on time, and that we’re involved in political chaos,” Punaro said. “This has nothing to do with the individuals involved. We want the young officers, and up-and-coming commanders to see that the military promotion system is based on merit and [who is] best qualified.”

The Senate typically confirms noncontroversial military nominees, including the joint chiefs, using expedited floor procedures via unanimous consent. But any individual senator can block a unanimous consent request, allowing Tuberville to force the Senate to move through numerous procedural votes on each individual nominee.

“All they’ve got to do is put it on the floor and vote for it,” Tuberville told Defense News. “I’ll vote for it.”

Tuberville’s hold would require several weeks of limited Senate floor time to confirm the five joint chiefs nominees alone. Tuberville’s blockade is also holding up more than 220 flag and general officer promotions, which would take an additional several months of scarce floor time if the Senate did nothing but confirm military nominees. The Senate expects to receive hundreds more military nominees in the coming months.

Democratic leaders appear reluctant to use valuable floor time to confirm otherwise noncontroversial nominees and worry that doing so will encourage other senators to block military promotions in order to extract policy concessions.

“The Senate cannot encourage this behavior by handing out rewards for holding up hundreds of nominees,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who chairs the military personnel panel, told Defense News.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., repeatedly declined to commit to scheduling floor votes for the joint chiefs nominees when pressed by reporters at a Wednesday press conference.

“What Sen. Tuberville has done is just awful,” Schumer told Defense News. “We believe that Republican senators, if they care about national security, should be putting pressure on him to release the holds.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last month that he disagrees with Tuberville’s military holds.

And Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told Defense News he hoped the issue could be resolved with a vote on the Pentagon’s abortion policy in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act– a suggestion that Tuberville shot down.

“I don’t want to put it in the NDAA and then hold it up because you’re going to have people that will be against it,” Tuberville told Defense News. “I’d rather have the Defense Department draw something up, send it over here and let’s vote on it, stand-alone.”

What happens next?

The fact that the same nominees tapped to lead the services will fill in for the vacancies in their capacity as the number two officer provides the Senate with little immediate incentive to resolve the impasse.

Punaro said vice chiefs would step in and perform those duties to keep the services running on a day-to-day basis. Similarly, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady would temporarily perform the duties of chairman if Brown is not confirmed by the beginning of October.

Delaying the start of new chiefs’ tenures hinders their ability to start making their desired changes to their services, he said.

Gen. Eric Smith, the Marines’ No. 2 officer and Biden’s nominee for commandant, is scheduled for a confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Given Smith’s current role as assistant commandant, the Marines are preparing for Smith to perform the commandant’s duties when Berger leaves on July 10 even if the Senate has not confirmed him by then.

The confirmation hearings for the other joint chiefs nominees, including Brown, are slated for July.

That includes Army vice chief Gen. Randy George to replace McConville. Biden has yet to nominate a new Chief of Naval Operations, but Navy vice chief Admiral Lisa Franchetti is widely considered the favorite for the position.

And of course, Biden will have to nominate a new Air Force chief of staff to replace Brown, with current Air Force vice chief Gen. David Allvin considered the frontrunner.

Senate Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., told Defense News “It would be absolutely irresponsible” not to have a congressionally confirmed service chief.

Senators have held up votes on noncontroversial nominees more frequently in recent years. For instance, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., imposed a blanket hold on all Defense Department civilian nominations for more than a year.

They target military nominees less frequently. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., was the last senator to do so in 2020. Her hold lasted less than two weeks before she lifted it. By contrast, Tuberville’s hold has lasted more than three months with no end in sight.

“What goes around comes around,” Reed told Defense News. “If basically this succeeds, then the next two years from now someone who wants an assault weapons ban will say ‘gee, I’ll just hold up all the generals.”

Jen Judson contributed to this report.

And beginning in summer 2019, as the deputy commandant for combat development and integration, he started working with Commandant Gen. David Berger on a plan to transform the Marine Corps.

In that role, and then as the No. 2 Marine, he helped draft blueprints for a complete overhaul of the service ― known as Force Design 2030 ― with the goal of turning a Corps shaped by two decades of land wars into one able to compete against Chinese forces in particular.

Now, he could carry on the Corps’ transformational trajectory.

The White House nominated Smith to serve as the next commandant of the Marine Corps, ensuring stability for the force modernization vision that Smith himself helped craft.

The Biden administration sent its pick to Congress Tuesday, according to a congressional website.

Several of Smith’s former colleagues described the general as a personable, down-to-earth leader who cares deeply about the Marines under his command.

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Watson, the commanding general of 1st Marine Division, said, “Gen. Eric Smith is an extraordinarily positive and engaged leader, with an emotional IQ well above the average.”

“I found him to be one of the most supportive bosses I’ve ever had.”

From Texas to the Pentagon

Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Plano, Texas, according to his official Marine Corps biography. Even now, he often makes reference to his Texas upbringing, and he is a fan of the Texas Rangers and country music.

He attended Texas A&M University — a public school with a strong emphasis on preparing military officers — on a Navy ROTC scholarship, following in the footsteps of his older brother.

In August 1984, in the first days of Smith’s sophomore year, a new member of the university’s Corps of Cadets, Bruce Goodrich, died after three juniors hazed him for an hour in the hot Texas weather. The tragedy stunned the campus.

While there’s no public record of Smith discussing Goodrich’s death, it’s an event that would have shaped his experience at the university and his formative years as a midshipman.

As a senior, Smith served as the commander of the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Band, a precise marching band made up of the university’s Corps of Cadets, according to the university’s yearbook.

He met his wife, Trish, on a blind date at the football stadium, according to a profile on the Texas A&M fundraising foundation’s website.

After receiving his commission in 1987, Smith became an infantry officer — a path that most commandants have taken. He served in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm before returning to his alma mater as an NROTC instructor, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

He has made several other deployments: to Liberia and Venezuela early in his career, to Iraq twice and to Afghanistan for a one-year deployment.

On his first deployment to Iraq, he was shot at least once, in the leg while moving from one base to another, he told NBC News in 2005.

But, as he prepared for a second deployment to Iraq, he told the interviewer he was more concerned about maintaining the Corps’ legacy than about getting shot at again.

“We have a saying that the Marine Corps is like a little glass Christmas ornament, if you will,” he said. “You can drop it, but only once. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

“And the people who built the legacy that we live on, this eagle, globe and anchor, from Iwo Jima, they’re gone,” he continued. “You can’t apologize to them for soiling the reputation of the Marine Corps.”

As a general officer, Smith went on to lead Marine Corps Forces Southern Command, in 2015; 1st Marine Division, from 2017–2018; and III Marine Expeditionary Force, from 2018–2019.

He also had stints as the senior military adviser to the defense secretary and as the assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations.

Retired Marine Col. Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense who worked closely with Smith when the general served as Work’s senior military adviser nearly a decade ago, said, “Eric Smith is the consummate professional: Intelligent, knowledgeable, empathetic and civil.”

“He was unafraid to tell me when I was about to do something wrong or had done something wrong,” Work said.

Force Design 2030

As the commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, headquartered in Okinawa, Japan, Smith got a first-hand look at the forces at the heart of the Corps’ Force Design modernization.

The Force Design 2030 overhaul started with a basic premise: China is the United States’ pacing threat and is making great strides in boosting its maritime forces.

If the Marine Corps, itself a maritime force, wanted to play a role in deterring China, the Corps needed to reshape itself.

Smith played an integral part in the plan’s development and early execution while serving as deputy commandant for combat development and integration.

As part of Force Design 2030, the Corps has made changes, such as shedding heavy gear like tanks, upgrading to longer-range weapons, building a web of sensors, empowering small unit leaders, investing in the lift and logistics to support distributed operations, and more.

Though Force Design 2030 generally has found acceptance at the top levels of the Defense Department and in Congress, it sparked an extraordinary — and public — backlash from retired Marine leaders.

Several retired generals penned opinion essays decrying Force Design and urging the Marine Corps and Congress to halt the overhaul, which they said would leave the service less prepared to confront a range of crises.

Despite the criticism, Berger repeatedly has said that classified intelligence supports the direction the force is moving in. The ascension of his No. 2, Smith, to the No. 1 job in the Corps would confirm the service will continue on that path.

Despite the inherent complexity of the Force Design effort, Smith often simplifies the message with his signature Texas anecdotes.

In a panel discussion at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference in April, Smith compared the lack of deployed Marine expeditionary units on amphibious ships to the lack of security at his hometown convenience store.

Smith spoke of the Mr. Ed food store that he and his brothers would visit, which had a sign in the window that read, “This establishment is protected by an armed security guard three nights a week. You guess which three.”

“Sounds like Texas bravado,” Smith said. “It sounded like deterrence — I didn’t know what deterrence was then, but the older I got, though, and in my current job, I realize that’s not deterrence, that’s an invitation, because that’s four nights a week” without protection.

Smith has spoken repeatedly about the need to maintain a fleet of at least 31 amphibious ships, and the fight over the future of that ship fleet would certainly follow Smith into the commandant’s seat.

During the Ash Carter Exchange on Innovation and National Security May 9, Smith was asked to preview what else was upcoming for Force Design 2030 — items he himself would oversee if confirmed as the next commandant.

He spoke of standing up a second Marine littoral regiment, a new kind of unit that emphasizes Force Design principles, which will be based in Japan. He also mentioned increasing the number of Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System anti-ship missile batteries, and fielding loitering munitions, or suicide drones, to make distributed forces more lethal and survivable.

Asked if he was worried about the success of Force Design 2030 once its chief architect retires, Smith said no.

“It’s fact-based and threat-informed,” he said.

Watson noted Smith was “the quarterback behind the initial implementation of Force Design 2030″ but also “has also been the driver behind the wargaming, experimentation and analysis that has led the Corps to Force Design 2030 refinements over time.”

Smith’s ‘No. 1 priority’

Smith also has made a name for himself in the way he’s cared for Marines, his former senior enlisted advisers said.

Soon after Smith took command of III Marine Expeditionary Force, he tasked Sgt. Maj. Mario Marquez with improving the quality of life for troops and their families.

The changes to long-standing policies that Smith made as part of this effort boosted morale, said Marquez, who is now retired.

The general loosened restrictions on how late Marines could stay out after work, he made it easier for junior enlisted Marines to get authorization to drive, and he drove changes that made it cheaper for families to move to and from Okinawa, Japan.

“Taking care of people is his No. 1 priority and always has been,” Marquez said.

The retired sergeant major said he believed Smith, if confirmed, would bring that attitude and focus to the Corps’ top job.

Even as Smith made some rules more lax as the head of III Marine Expeditionary Force, he still cared deeply about discipline, according to Marquez.

“Customs, courtesies and iron-clad discipline is what keeps you alive on the battlefield,” Smith said on the BruteCast podcast in August 2022.

Smith himself previously has spoken about the importance of looking out for the men and women he leads.

In a November 2018 Marine article, a Marine asked the then-commanding general which superpower he’d want to have.

“I’d probably want to be able to read minds so I know what people are really thinking,” Smith said.

“It’s hard, the older you get and the more senior you are, people don’t want to tell you stuff. I ask them, ‘Hey, Marines, how’s it going? Everything’s fine? You’re getting all the repair parts you need?’ and they say, ‘Sir, everything’s fine. Yeah, we got everything,’ when it’s not good and they don’t.”

As the two-star in charge of 1st Marine Division in 2017, he led a crackdown on hazing that ended with nearly 30 Marines confined to the brig and at least 18 administratively separated. A Marine Corps Times investigation later confirmed the division had a serious hazing problem.

Judges from the United States Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals in February 2018 rebuked Smith for showing “personal interest” and bias in going after those accused of hazing.

The judges pointed in particular to Smith’s sharply worded emails to other leaders, including one in which he complained, “I’ve just been flipped the bird by lots of” lance corporals.

Despite the reproach Smith received from the appeals court, he soon pinned on a third star and served as the leader of some of the most prominent commands in the Corps.

Smith earned a reputation for being a skilled, hard-working Marine, in addition to being kind, according to retired Sgt. Maj. Tom Eggerling, who served as the top enlisted Marine for Combat Development Command while Smith was its commanding general.

Well before they met or worked together, Eggerling heard other Marines say of Smith, “He’s going to be the commandant one day.”

Now, that may finally happen. But all Defense Department nominees currently face a hurdle: Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, is blocking a list of military nominees that will grow to include service chiefs for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and dozens of other flag and general officer positions for commands around the globe.

Tuberville is protesting a Pentagon policy related to abortion and has thus far not shown any signs of backing down and allowing the Senate’s vetting and confirmation process to continue.

Eggerling recalled walking through the barracks at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, with Smith when they came across a young Marine on duty who mentioned that he had just gotten promoted to corporal that day.

Smith asked the corporal, “Can you call your mom?”

Smith and Eggerling spoke with the young Marine’s mother on FaceTime, telling her how proud they were of him, Eggerling recalled.

“Eric Smith is as genuine as they come,” Eggerling said.

The strongest typhoon to hit the territory of roughly 150,000 people since 2002, Mawar briefly made landfall around 9 p.m. Wednesday as a Category 4 storm at Andersen Air Force Base on the northern tip of the island, weather service officials said.

Rivers spilled over their banks in the wake of the storn, which ripped roofs off homes, flipped vehicles and shredded trees.

Andersen officials said Friday that airmen had conducted an initial damage assessment to restore the base to mission-ready status and are currently working on bringing back power and water to the base, while other military units are preparing to step in to assist.

A top priority is clearing the airfield from debris so that outside agencies can provide assistance and supplies as part of recovery efforts, according to Brig. Gen. Paul Fast, 36th Wing commander.

“Thankfully, no member of Team Andersen was seriously injured,” Fast said in an Air Force statement. “Currently, our top priority is sustaining life and ensuring the well-being of our members, but we are also prioritizing opening our airfield to bring in aid for the island.”

The Air Force said it’s in the process of restoring operations to the base exchange, commissary, fuel station and medical services.

The Air Force also recommended against visiting beaches “due to high levels of bacteria that may result in minor and more serious illnesses when being exposed to contaminated water, such as sore throats, meningitis, encephalitis and severe gastroenteritis.”

Other military units are also expected to jump in and assist with recovery efforts.

The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit are poised for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to tap them to provide humanitarian and disaster relief in Guam, a defense official told Military Times.

The Makin Island ARG includes the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, and amphibious transport docks Anchorage and John P. Murtha.

The 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and the 3rd Marine Logistics Group, both based in Okinawa, Japan, are also standing by waiting for tasking, the defense official said.

These efforts would fall under the Defense Support of Civil Authorities construct, which permits the military to assist the U.S. and its territories during disasters.

It’s unclear when exactly Indo-Pacific Command will formally task these Marine Corps assets with ther assistance efforts, although the defense official said it could happen as early as Friday. INDOPACOM did not respond to a request for comment from Military Times by deadline.

The central and northern parts of Guam received more than 2 feet of rain as the eyewall of Mawar passed. The island’s international airport flooded and the swirling typhoon churned up a storm surge and waves that crashed through coastal reefs and flooded homes.

“We are waking up to a rather disturbing scene out there across Guam,” said Landon Aydlett, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, in a briefing streamed online. “We’re looking out our door and what used to be a jungle looks like toothpicks — it looks like a scene from the movie ‘Twister,’ with trees just thrashed apart.”

“Most of Guam is dealing with a major mess that’s going to take weeks to clean up,” he added.

The storm is expected to move northwest for days over a large, empty expanse of ocean and enter the Philippine region late Friday or early Saturday. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Facebook that officials are preparing, and that the storm could bring heavy rainfall and flooding.

The storm could threaten Taiwan next week. Mawar regained its status as a super typhoon on Thursday, with winds reaching 150 mph. By early Friday, they had strengthened to 175 mph, according to the weather service.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Under the contract, the company will continue the development of its 200,000-pound thrust Arroway engine for space launch, which Ursa Major unveiled in June 2022. Arroway will help replace the Russian-made RD-series engines, according to a company press release. It is a reusable liquid oxygen and methane staged combustion engine for medium and heavy launch vehicles, and the company expects to conduct a hot fire test in 2025.

The contract will also cover the construction and testing of a prototype of the Draper engine for hypersonic launches, which would be a new addition to Ursa Major’s current lineup of three engine models. The company already has a 5,000-pound thrust Hadley engine for hypersonic launches that is currently undergoing certifications for Defense Department use under an August 2022 Air Force contract. Draper would continue this work but use a different liquid propellant that’s more storable — hydrogen peroxide instead of a liquid oxygen and kerosene mix — allowing the reusable engine to be operated safely from more locations.

A Ursa Major statement about the award notes the contract would allow the company to build a dedicated test stand for Draper and hot fire test the engine within 12 months.

The company and the Air Force did not disclose the value of the contract. An Ursa Major spokesman characterized it as an “eight-figure contract.”

“Ursa Major continues to be an important partner to AFRL as we build hypersonics capabilities and remove America’s dependence on foreign propulsion systems for launch,” Shawn Phillips, chief of AFRL’s Rocket Propulsion Division, was quoted as saying in the company news release.

Joe Laurienti, the founder and CEO of Ursa Major, told Defense News in an interview this spring that the military services are pursuing hypersonic missiles and counter-hypersonic defenses, but they still haven’t fully reckoned with the entire infrastructure needed to support those objectives. They’ll need aerial targets for tracking and intercept exercises, they’ll need hypersonic testbeds as they develop various sensors and support equipment for the hypersonic weapons, and they’ll need training missiles as they grow a cadre of hypersonic missile operators, according to Laurienti.

That’s where he thinks Ursa Major and its products — which focus on liquid propellants rather than solid rocket motors — can play the biggest role.

Laurienti said liquid engines have better performance than solid rocket motors but are more difficult to handle and store. The development of the Draper engine gets closer to the ideal balance of the two technologies: as a liquid engine, it will support high speeds, long distances and maneuverable flights, while also being safe enough to fly on the wing of a plane or be stored on a ship.

This combination will be critical as the U.S. builds aerial targets that can simulate threats ranging from Russian hypersonic missiles to Chinese cruise missiles to North Korean and Iranian ballistic missiles.

He also noted the liquid engines can be refilled and reused — but Ursa Major also uses additive manufacturing to keep costs down, meaning the engines will be inexpensive enough to be shot down and destroyed during live-fire tests if needed.

Ursa Major is under contract with hypersonic testing company Stratolaunch to conduct what Laurienti called the the first-ever private hypersonic flight in the U.S. later this year. In this pairing, Stratolaunch has created a reusable cruise missile-like testbed that its customers can use to test their electronics. Ursa Major is providing the engine to propel the testbed to hypersonic speeds.

Laurienti said the company is eyeing other industry pairings like this, hoping Ursa Major can address what he called the “pain point” — propulsion ­— for private industry interested in hypersonic flights.

But Ursa Major is also eyeing a potential business opportunity with the military. Laurienti said the Air Force and Navy bought and used more than 5,000 AQM-37 air-launched supersonic targets over the course of decades. The services are now looking to replenish their stockpiles and upgrade them from supersonic to hypersonic speed, he explained, an effort that could land the company a seat at the table following the latest engine award.