A Department of Defense Office of Inspector General report published Monday uncovered critical deficiencies in how the Pentagon maintains and protects core components of the Army’s land capabilities. The shortfalls, the report warns, could endanger personnel, waste millions, and undermine readiness as the Army attempts to retool its logistical network for conflict across multiple theaters.

Investigators inspected $1.96 billion worth of equipment stored at two distribution centers controlled by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the Defense Department bureau tasked with managing the military’s sprawling supply chains. The DLA’s distribution division, responsible for storing and disseminating materiel, handled a total $3.87 billion of Army ground combat gear as of July 2022, according to the report.

The spare parts stored at these facilities support some of the Army’s flagship land fighting technology, including the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Stryker Armored Combat Vehicle, and the Abrams tank, the report noted.

Two-thirds of the inspected parts — valued at $1.31 billion — exhibited “critical” deficiencies, meaning they were “deteriorating and in immediate danger of moving to a lower condition code,” a measure of utility. In all, investigators determined that $1.8 billion (92%) of the inspected equipment was crumbling or at “increased risk” of falling apart because DLA storage facilities failed to follow Pentagon standards.

Among the spare parts in critical condition were 80 gas turbines, worth almost $90 million, stacked together on a lawn outside of a warehouse. The turbines, meant to be stored indoors, had been there since 2020, investigators learned. Investigators also found tens of millions of dollars worth of tank tracks, vehicle transmission assemblies, and diesel engines stashed away in open-air facilities without proper packaging.

Using appropriate containers and shielding gear from the elements can save millions. Investigators pointed to a case in 2021 when the Army spent $10.92 million to repair engines that had been improperly stored.

Inspectors also warned that cluttered, precarious piles of equipment risked injuring personnel working at the distribution centers.

The inspector general largely blamed the storage pitfalls on poor training and oversight.

“DLA Distribution did not provide adequate guidance to its personnel who are responsible for or support” equipment maintenance, according to the report. Investigators also found that DLA’s distribution division “did not have formalized training for the receiving, packaging, warehousing, or inspection personnel who are responsible for the storage and care of Army [ground combat systems] materiel.”

The report claims Army leaders failed to recognize the gaps in its materiel management because the branch does not “adequately oversee” how the parts of its fighting machine are cared for.

The inspector general issued eleven recommendations, including the implementation of new training regimes and regular inspections from the head of Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command. DLA agreed with them all.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A government shutdown would prove “miserable” for the Air Force Reserve, its three-star boss told reporters here Tuesday.

Lt. Gen. John Healy warned that a congressional failure to pass a fiscal 2024 budget could derail reserve operations. The looming uncertainty in the interim could dissuade reservists from joining upcoming missions and drills.

“That’s miserable for us,” Healy said at the Air and Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference. “We’re prepping right now for the hopefully unfortunate and hopefully avoidable likelihood that there’s a shutdown.”

House and Senate leaders remain far apart on plans to extend the current government budget past Sept. 30, its deadline to authorize annual funding for the federal government’s 438 agencies — including the armed forces. Failure to do so could halt paychecks for military personnel unless lawmakers pass a separate bill extending compensation for service members.

Active duty personnel will still have to man their posts without pay even if no such extension is approved. Reservists, meanwhile, risk being furloughed en masse if no new spending bills pass both chambers of Congress before Oct. 1.

A three-day shutdown in 2018 upended training plans and scheduled paydays for around 170,000 Guardsmen and reservists across the Army and the Air Force.

“I stopped signing up for October,” Healy said of his old drill-registration habits. “I think I was a colonel before I finally figured it out.”

Healy noted that a stopgap measure to temporarily fund the government — a continuing resolution — can sow uncertainty among airmen about whether they will get paid or should show up for drills. The Reserve stressed that work would continue as usual under a CR.

”It’s unfortunate that reservists are now culturally expecting a CR,” Healy said.

A shutdown that stops funding altogether would hurt the force more deeply, he added.

Reserve commanders are prepping alternative training schedules to minimize the disruption of a shutdown, he added.

“If need be, we’ll modify the dates based on if it’s a short shutdown,” he said. “Hopefully, each unit will be able to modify and avoid the shutdown affecting our required operations.”

Military Times Deputy Editor Leo Shane III contributed to this story.

Airmen and guardians of all ranks have until Sept. 4 to submit their “best ideas for improving the department’s capabilities.” Finalists will have the chance to present their proposals to a panel of senior department leaders and industry figures.

“Spark Tank provides a public-facing platform to showcase innovative ideas across the [Department of Air Force],” said Aaron Beebe, the Spark Tank project manager for AFWERX, an Air Force tech acceleration program. “These are real problems experienced daily by those trying to do their jobs and accomplish the mission. We ask them to help us solve them through a more streamlined approach.”

Piloted in 2017, the department’s “Shark Tank” knockoff formed part of a broader campaign to expedite and cheapen the process of finding and developing new technologies. AFWERX launched the same year in hopes of lowering barriers between entrepreneurs and the Air Force’s procurement teams. Individual installations have begun hosting innovation competitions of their own.

The service-wide Spark Tank has shepherded several ‘sky-breaking’ innovations from dorms and base shops to the forefront of the acquisitions process over its seven-year existence.

Last year’s winners, Master Sgt. Sarah Hubert and Tech. Sgt. Raymond Zgoda at Yokota Air Base in Japan, came up with an idea to use ground penetrating radar and augmented reality goggles to precisely map underground pipes, wires and fiber-optic lines on military bases, preventing accidental breaks caused by construction, and also to scan for damages.

The judges selecting the winning gadget included Air Force Chief of Staff CQ Brown, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, an NBA executive, and the founder of tech-focused merchant bank Global Silicon Valley.

The 2024 iteration of the event will pair participants with consultants to help their ideas take flight.

The program, dubbed Data Robot, was part of the Cyber Quest trials held throughout July at Fort Gordon in Georgia. It was previously put through its paces during the Pacific Sentry exercise in Hawaii, officials said.

“We want to give the commanders the right information at the right time so we can impact the enemy. That’s the goal,” Army Col. Brett Riddle, director of the Cyber Battle Lab, told reporters at a Cyber Quest briefing July 28. “And I think Data Robot did show us that we can start to progress forward with that.”

Quickly discerning fact from fiction is critical for forces in the field. And the task is increasingly complex as misinformation floods the likes of Twitter and Facebook and world powers wage online influence campaigns, some more overt than others. A manipulated video surfaced last year in which a poorly edited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on his soldiers to lay down their arms and surrender to Russia, for example. It was quickly debunked.

The U.S. is now beefing up its information warfare capabilities, a persuasive combination of data awareness and deception aimed at gaining an advantage before, during and after battles. Cyber Quest is organized each year to examine up-and-coming technologies and inform future investments.

“It’s our opportunity to take cutting-edge, newly delivered products from industry, put them into the hands of soldiers and determine if they’re going to work in the field, in the dirt, in the rain, in Georgia, in the hot, humid weather,” Army Maj. Gen. Paul Stanton, the commander of the Army cyber center of excellence, said. “We need opportunities like Cyber Quest to work directly alongside our industry and scientific partners so they can make the modifications to existing protocols so that they’ll meet our needs.”

The Data Robot tool required about 90 days’ worth of data to reference before effectively identifying messages pushed by bots, according to Stanton. Pattern recognition and other insights are derived from extensive training regimens.

“Was anyone using artificial intelligence and machine learning? The simple answer is yes,” Stanton said of Cyber Quest. “Social media in the Indo-Pacific doesn’t look like social media in the United States.”

Data Robot could eventually fold into the Command Post Computing Environment to provide snapshots of information, though it will require some troubleshooting, officials said.

The environment consolidates various programs and data streams into a common pane maintained by soldiers. It also provides a software and hardware framework upon which future applications can be built.

“There was a lot of promising work done here at Cyber Quest,” Riddle said. “When we look at information advantage and trying to produce those visual overlays for commanders, it can be done.”

The ninety-minute hearing, convened by the House Armed Services Committee to assess the barriers inhibiting the Department of Defense’s adoption of AI, was framed by bipartisan geopolitical anxieties: how can the U.S. maintain its technological edge over China, and what are the risks of falling behind? Experts said the Pentagon has shown an inability to efficiently identify, acquire, and deploy promising new technology, hurting its bid for AI supremacy.

“One of the challenges in adopting AI in the government, in particular the Department of Defense, is the slow procurement process,” Haniyeh Mahmoudian, an ethicist at the AI platform DataRobot, told lawmakers. “AI is an evolving space and long procurement cycles and delays can lead to obsolete AI tools that will require retraining due to changes in data over time.”

A Government Accountability Office report published last month found that the DoD lacks a “comprehensive department-wide guidance for AI acquisitions.” This oversight, the report said, “could result in acquisition of AI capabilities across the services that does not consistently address the unique challenges associated with AI or the specific needs of the acquiring service.”

The Pentagon piloted an online contract exchange called Tradewind last year to expedite the acquisition of AI technology. Alexandr Wang, the founder and CEO of data processing company Scale AI, thinks the platform is worth building upon.

“What we need to look towards in the next era of AI is doubling down on some of these fast procurement methods and ensuring that we continue to innovate,” he said at the hearing.

Wang’s firm secured $250 million in DOD funding last January. The contract bankrolls several data-heavy projects across different branches, including Army robotic combat vehicles and vast, department-wide pattern recognition systems.

The Pentagon’s partnership with Scale epitomized recent efforts by American military leadership to translate its abstract commitments to AI integration into concrete policies and programs. The department launched the Chief Digital and AI Office in 2022 to coordinate the agency’s ever-evolving medley of AI-related proclamations, tests and hardware. The GAO estimates that the newborn office oversees close to 700 AI projects.

A top-down redesign of the agency’s acquisition policies won’t be enough to guarantee American victory in the AI arms race, the witnesses cautioned.

Wang spent much of his testimony knocking the Pentagon’s wasteful approach to data usage.

“AI systems are only as good as the data that they are trained on,” Wang told lawmakers. “The DoD creates more than 22 terabytes of data daily, and because of their outdated data retention and management policies, warfighters, analysts, and operators are unable to tap into its full potential because it is not AI-ready.”

Wang and his peers suspect DoD’s poor data processing capabilities could be the product of insufficient AI-specific military spending.

“China is spending between 1% and 1.5% of its military budget on AI, while the US is spending between 0.1% and 0.2%,” according to Wang. “Adjusted for the total military budget, China is spending ten times more than the U.S.”

The expert panel and their congressional questioners also dissected the DOD’s ethical guidelines surrounding the technology. The agency released a broad set of “ethical principles for the use of AI” in February 2020. The next step, DataRobot’s Mahmoudian said, requires making these “abstract” frameworks “practical” by educating personnel and leadership about the technology’s implications.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), chairman of the Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation subcommittee, painted the consequences of stagnation in stark relief.

“Do we want AI to be leveraged for good and the deterrence of conflict, or evil and the proliferation of it? If the former, the United States must not ‘pause,’” he said in his opening statement. “We must continue developing this revolutionary technology to preserve U.S. technological and moral leadership, and ensure artificial intelligence, and its associated norms and guardrails, are defined by freedom and our ideals, not the CCP’s.”

The approval comes amid tension between the U.S. and China over human rights, military activities and economic practices. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Beijing this month, where he held “candid, substantive, and constructive discussions on key priorities in the bilateral relationship and on a range of global and regional issues” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to a State Department release.

In particular, the two nations disagree over the status of Taiwan, which China considers a rogue province and has threatened to take back by force.

The larger of the two deals, worth $332.2 million, is for 30mm ammunition and related equipment, specifically high-explosive incendiary tracer rounds, multipurpose rounds and training rounds. The principal contractors are Alliant Techsystems Operations LLC in Minnesota and General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems in Illinois.

“The proposed sale will contribute to the sustainment of the recipient’s CM34 Armored Vehicles, enhancing its ability to meet current and future threats,” the release read.

The other potential sale, worth $108 million, is for “a Cooperative Logistics Supply Support Arrangement (CLSSA) Foreign Military Sales Order II (FMSO II) to support the purchase of spare and repair parts for wheeled vehicles, weapons, and other related elements of program support,” the agency noted.

The sales serve “U.S. national, economic, and security interests by supporting the recipient’s continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability,” a State Department spokesperson said. They also help “improve the security of the recipient and assist in maintaining political stability, military balance, and economic progress in the region.”

The U.S. has pumped billions of dollars in security assistance into Taiwan in recent years in the hopes of deterring a military assault from China.

Congress approved $3 billion for the Defense and State departments to distribute to Taiwan in the fiscal 2023 defense authorization bill. The Biden administration also provided $500 million in military aid in May under presidential drawdown authority — the same executive tool used to transfer weapons and aid to Ukraine.

U.S. officials are currently trying to unclog a nearly $19 billion logjam in assistance to Taipei.

The U.S. is required to “make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capabilities,” according to the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. The law was put into place by Congress in 1979 following the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China.

“I think the speed of the joint force and a common goal in the future is what’s lacking right now,” Gen. David Berger said from the exhibition hall of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in downtown Washington. “And we also don’t have the speed, the velocity to get us there.”

Berger’s address headlined the first day of Modern Day Marine, an annual three-day exposition showcasing the Corps’ latest gadgets and end goals. The commandant, set to retire mid-July, spent much of his speech touting his branch’s progress on Force Design 2030, a sweeping revamping of Marine structure, strategy and capability.

“Marines are leading the joint force in innovation, modernization, and that’s exactly what you would expect Marines to be doing,” Berger said.

Berger debuted his new vision for the Marine Corps in March 2020 to a mixture of criticism and celebration.

The plan reimagines the Corps as a trimmed-down, expeditionary force geared for the fast-paced amphibious combat that, U.S. military minds suspect, would be the focal point of a conflict in the Pacific.

Leaders from other branches have echoed Berger’s calls for greater coordination among the joint force: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force and National Guard.

“The current environment requires the joint force to strengthen and integrate deterrence across domains, theaters, and the spectrum of conflict,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley wrote in the Joint Chief’s 2022 National Military Strategy.

Other military branches have unveiled similar modernization initiatives; for many, improving joint force collaboration is a stated priority.

The Army published an “Army Modernization Strategy” in 2021. The plans detailed in the document are, according to its authors, “interdependent and require corresponding updates to global force posture, facilities, and policies to ensure the Army’s modernization efforts remain synchronized over time and with the rest of the Joint Force.”

The Navy’s 2022 “Navigation Plan”— and its corresponding Force Design 2045 plan — highlighted its plans to coordinate with the Marine Corps on developing littoral combat units and other initiatives to “support Marines in contested areas.”

Future Marine operations will hinge on effective cooperation with assets and teams from the Navy, Berger stressed, as the Corps focuses again on being a “naval force.”

A corollary “Joint Force Design” plan that “says this is where we need to be five, six or seven years into the future,” Berger said, would help facilitate this alignment.

“I think what would help would be a common aim point,” he added. “But I’m not here to judge the other services.”

The new deals, totaling billions, span a number of key industries — including semiconductors, aerospace, and artificial intelligence.

Modi touted the partnership in his Thursday address to a joint meeting of Congress.

“The United States has become one of our most important defense partners,” Modi said, triggering a standing ovation. “When defense and aerospace in India grow, industries in the states of Washington, Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Pennsylvania thrive.”

But government officials and activists raised concerns about the Modi administration. Approximately 70 Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash), signed a letter Monday urging the Biden administration to make human rights a centerpiece of the week’s negotiations. The cohort criticized the “rise of religious intolerance, the targeting of civil society organizations and journalists and growing restrictions on press freedoms and internet access” across the subcontinent.

Several Democratic lawmakers — including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — boycotted the speech, citing Modi’s human rights record. Modi was welcomed by those who did attend; call-and-response cries of “Jai Hind”—”Long Live India”— rang from the Senate chamber’s upper deck as Modi left the room and some members of Congress sought Modi’s autograph after his speech.

In mid-May, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation jailed Defense News contributor Vivek Raghuvanshi on unspecified espionage charges. White House and Pentagon officials skirted questions about Raghuvanshi’s detention this week, while the National Press Club issued a statement stating it was “deeply concerned about [his] arrest and detention.”

Modi did not acknowledge the crackdown when asked about it by a reporter at the White House, instead hailing India’s democratic credentials. Biden also avoided a similar question, noting “an overwhelming respect for each other because we’re both democracies.”

Raghuvanshi would likely have covered a number of high-profile deals unveiled this week. India agreed to procure $3 billion worth of MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones. GE Aerospace said it would partner with Indian flight tech company Hindustan Aeronautics to produce fighter jet engines for the Indian Air Force.

Micron Technology, an American semiconductor firm, pledged to spend upwards of $2.75 billion on construction of an assembly and test facility in India. Meanwhile, the two powers kickstarted negotiations for a reciprocal defense procurement arrangement to coordinate the exchange and development of military technology.

The day before Modi’s address, Indian and American bureaucrats along with executives from startups and defense contractors congregated for a daylong conference at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to network and showcase new tech in the hopes of facilitating “joint innovation on defense technologies and accelerate the integration of India’s budding private sector defense industry with the U.S. defense sector,” according to the White House.

Overlapping strategic concerns and growing economic incentives are drawing the once distant powers together. Both are wary of Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific (though the Biden administration has shied away from mentioning Beijing explicitly during Modi’s visit). The U.S. is also keen to distance India from Russia, the country’s leading arms supplier. New Delhi, meanwhile, is eager to develop an organic defense industry of its own.

The recent slate of agreements builds on decades of summits and signings. Bush administration officials and their Indian counterparts penned a “U.S.-India Defense Relationship” framework in 2005, setting out mutual priorities and areas of cooperation. A series of subsequent economic agreements culminated in the pair’s first strategic dialogue in 2010, as then-President Barack Obama ushered in the American “Pivot to Asia.”

Obama consecrated India as a “major defense partner” during the prime minister’s last full-fledged state visit to Washington in 2016. The U.S. began sharing advanced military communications technology with New Delhi two years later.

The QUAD, an informal security collective including India, Japan, Australia and the U.S., held its first meeting in 2021. Earlier this year, India and the U.S. launched the “Initiative on Critical and Emerging and Technology” to streamline the exchange of military technology and expertise.

The company unveiled its new three-letter moniker, RTX, in a LinkedIn post on Monday. The rebranding comes three years after Raytheon merged with aerospace manufacturer United Technologies Corp. to form Raytheon Technologies. Since then, the company’s stock has traded under the RTX ticker symbol.

RTX “is a nod to the past and a nod to the future,” Greg Hayes, the company’s chief executive, said at an investor meeting Monday. He noted United Technologies’ ticker symbol was UTX; Raytheon’s was RTN.

Last summer, the conglomerate announced it would move its headquarters to Arlington, Virginia. Earlier this year, it announced plans to reorganize into three brands: Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, and Raytheon.

In a call with analysts in April, Christopher Calio, RTX’s chief operating officer, said the restructuring is meant to better align the company’s businesses with customer priorities, improve performance, and to better use company resources to optimize investments and cost structure.

Baltic Operations 2023, or BALTOPS, concludes a week after American and European pilots flew their final sorties for the High North’s premier aerial warfare drill, Arctic Challenge 2023. The concurrent exercises, which included U.S. Air Force and Navy personnel, aimed to bolster Euro-American defense cooperation.

BALTOPS, which featured a cohort of 50 ships and 45 aircraft led by U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa and U.S. 6th Fleet, kicked-off in Estonia June 4. Over the following two weeks, the navies of 20 countries — four more than last year — simulated maritime and amphibious combat scenarios in and around the Baltic Sea.

More than 6,000 personnel, including about 1,500 U.S. sailors, Marines and airmen, took part in the exercise, more than twice as many as in 2020.

The destroyer Paul Ignatius and command ship Mount Whitney headlined the U.S. Navy contingent. American forces flaunted a number of new capabilities during the exercise. Unmanned surface vessels rehearsed personnel rescues and medical transfers. A Danish frigate leveraged U.S. logistical capabilities to reload a dummy missile. Participating countries also wargamed enemy attacks on NATO-member satellites and GPS systems.

BALTOPS 23 represents “a tangible indication of commitment to collective defense capability across the NATO Alliance,” Vice Adm. Thomas Ishee, commander of Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO and U.S. 6th Fleet, said in a June 4 press release. “We continue to meet the security challenges of today, and prepare for tomorrow, through interoperability and seamless integration in real world operations.”

U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots finished their drills for Arctic Challenge, a Nordic-run aerial warfare exercise featuring 10 other NATO members, on June 9.

The Air Force press office described this year’s Arctic Challenge Exercise, hosted in Finland, as a symbol of “the strength and capability of the Alliance throughout the Nordic region.”

Lucky and observant onlookers might have spotted an F-35A Lightning II, F-15E Strike Eagle or KC-135R Stratotanker streaking across the Arctic sky. The 48th Fighter Wing out of RAF Lakenheath in England teamed up with Mildenhall’s 100th Air Refueling Wing and the Maine Air National Guard’s 101st Air Refueling Wing to coordinate U.S. Air Force flight contributions to Arctic Challenge. Personnel from Nellis Air Force Base’s 414th Combat Training Squadron, which conducts Red Flag exercises in Nevada, helped U.S. and partner pilots simulate combat scenarios.

Though BALTOPS and Arctic Challenge were not directly connected, some units participated in both. Navy pilots with Carrier Air Wing 8, assigned to the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, flew their aircraft in mock missions for both exercises, according to U.S. 6th Fleet spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Karl Schonberg.

“Participating in BALTOPS 23 and Arctic Challenge allows us to conduct integrated training and high-intensity activities with our Allies and partners to enhance collective defense capability across the NATO Alliance,” Capt. Dan Catlin, commander of Carrier Air Wing 8, told Military Times.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has breathed new life into NATO.

Chided as an antiquated and restrictive partnership during the Trump administration, the alliance has regained its status as a bulwark against future Russian aggression in the eyes of analysts and policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. Finland made its BALTOPS debut as a full-fledged NATO member after joining the alliance in April, ditching decades of overt strategic neutrality. Sweden’s bid for entry, stonewalled by Turkey, awaits confirmation.

The Nordic exercises come on the heels of several other high-profile Euro-American military initiatives. The Ford, the world’s largest warship, made a port call in Oslo in late May before sailing to the Arctic Circle to partake in Arctic Challenge. The U.S. and its NATO allies showcased their collaborative air and missile defense systems during the biannual Formidable Shield exercise in May.

Defender 23, a two-month joint operation encompassing several land-based drills across the continent, kicked off in late April. Defender’s aerial corollary, Air Defender 2023—NATO’s largest ever multinational air warfare exercise—began on Monday and concludes June 23.

Russia has followed the U.S.-NATO exercise spree with agitation. The Kremlin fumed when it caught wind of the Ford’s arrival in Norway. Once a willing participant in BALTOPS, the Russian military launched a Baltic exercise of its own on June 5, deploying roughly 3,500 soldiers, 40 ships, and 25 aircraft in response to what it has described as a “provocative” NATO maneuver.

Russia has mirrored NATO’s Baltic wargames in the past. In 2020, Russian fighter jets strafed practice maritime targets as alliance ships drilled in the waves below. The following year, Russian warships sailed around Stockholm one day after allied vessels set off for BALTOPS exercises. There have been no reports of collisions or near-misses between Russian and NATO forces deployed to the region.