“There’s still myths and misbeliefs about the backstory behind it,” Commandant Gen. David Berger said during a panel discussion hosted by the Reagan National Defense Forum on public confidence in, and recruitment for, the military. “And it’s still having an impact in certain areas of the country on recruiting.”

Berger later told reporters at the event that the vaccine mandate especially has affected recruiting in the South, Military.com reported.

Following guidance from the Defense Department, the Marine Corps announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in September 2021. As of August, 3,299 Marines had been separated from the Corps for refusing the vaccine.

Marines who requested religious exemptions sued in federal court in 2021, arguing that the Marine Corps issued blanket denials of requests for accommodations. A federal judge in August blocked the Corps from separating any Marines who have sought religious accommodations.

The mandates for service members have been controversial in the political sphere, with many congressional Republicans and some Democrats calling for an end to them.

Almost half of Senate Republicans have threatened to withhold support for the annual defense authorization bill as long as the mandates remain in place. Despite mounting pressure from Congress, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has continued to stand by the mandate.

Berger defended the COVID-19 vaccine mandate as being necessary for the readiness of the force.

“That’s what you need to maintain a healthy unit that can deploy, on ship, ashore — it doesn’t matter,” he said on the panel in Simi Valley, California.

Berger also pointed out that service members are required to take nine other vaccines and that the COVID-19 vaccines have prevented deaths in the fleet.

“We haven’t had anybody die [of COVID] since April,” he said. “Zero. Units go out 100% vaccinated, ready. It’s critical to make sure we can do our job.”

The Marine Corps just barely made its recruiting goals for the active force and the Reserve for 2022, making it the only service other than the Space Force to do so. But these goals were adjusted ones: lower than initially planned thanks to higher-than-expected retention, according to Corps officials.

Recruiting has proven a challenge across the services in 2022, with top officials blaming issues ranging from a hot labor market to rising obesity to negative media portrayals of the military. Some recruiters also have complained that the rollout of a new health record system that screens recruits for medical issues makes it harder to recruit.

The ‘wokeness’ issue

Many letters to the editor and social media comments, and some conservatives in Congress and at think tanks, have maintained that “wokeness” in the military has dissuaded young people from serving.

But Berger on Saturday dismissed the idea that Marines are preoccupied with a perception of hyperliberalism in the force.

“The way to answer the question ‘How do you feel about it?’ is, ‘How do the Marines feel about it? How do the soldiers, sailors, airmen feel about it?’” he said in response to a moderator question. “I don’t see it. I don’t hear it. They’re not talking about it. It’s not a factor for them at all.”

“I don’t know about you all, but I don’t see a conversation or an impact of wokeism in the rank-and-file at all,” Berger continued.

Fellow panelist Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisconsin, cast doubt on the general’s assessment of troop sentiment.

“It doesn’t surprise me that the secretary or the commandant wouldn’t be hearing about this from the fleet, because if you’re sitting there in front of the commandant — I mean, you’re probably not going to get the most unvarnished answer,” the representative and former Marine said. “I could be wrong about that.”

Army veteran Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, cut in.

“Wait, I know Marines. Yes, he would,” she said with a laugh. “My dad was a Marine.”

Austin first contracted COVID early this year, though both cases have presented only mild symptoms.

“Now, as in January, my doctor told me that my fully vaccinated status, including two booster shots, is why my symptoms are less severe than would otherwise be the case. I will continue to consult closely with my doctor in the coming days,” he wrote.

Austin will be working from home, with all necessary authorities to maintain command of the Defense Department.

Austin’s positive test comes two days after VA Secretary Denis McDonough announced he had contracted the virus. Austin said his last in-person contact with President Joe Biden, who tested positive for COVID-10 on July 21, was on July 29.

Instead, it has been virtually all supplies the company uses to make key defense products, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s engine.

“It’s components, it’s raw materials,” Greg Hayes, Raytheon’s chief executive, told analysts in October. “Think about aluminum prices going up, [think] of steel, all of the basic raw materials, lead times pushing out. And it’s just harder to get material in the door on time.”

See the Top 100 list here

Aerospace and defense firms faced a thorny mess in 2021, as pandemic-related supply chain snarls and worker shortages — plus fears of a U.S. government budget downturn — entangled the sector. Among the biggest American firms, sales growth last year was mostly flat, reflecting a multibillion-dollar dip in U.S. defense outlays at the end of the Trump administration, following several big increases.

The same day Raytheon, the world’s second-largest defense contractor, reported a more challenging supply chain, Lockheed Martin, the largest, disclosed that supply chain delays had struck its F-35 fighter and other programs, and lowered revenue expectations for 2021 and beyond.

Even so, the defense revenues of the top 100 defense companies climbed for a sixth consecutive year, a sign of the global industry’s continued resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic shocks that stretch back to 2019.

Fiscal 2021 defense revenue recorded for the Defense News Top 100 list totaled $595 billion, up nearly 8% from last year’s list. (The increase does come with an asterisk because of an anomaly with the Emirati firm Edge Group’s revenue calculations last year, but its exclusion would only nudge the increase to 9%.)

The growth is partly driven by the 2021 list’s inclusion of Chinese defense firms for the third straight year, which account for just under 20% of the Top 100′s total defense revenues.

The top 10 firms on this year’s list represent roughly 52% of the total defense revenue; the top 25 firms account for 75% of total defense revenue for the year.

Geographically, 46 of the firms on the list are based in the U.S., which accounted for 53% of total defense revenue. Thirty-one firms are based in Europe (including Turkey but excluding Israel and Russia), and there are nine non-Chinese firms from the Asia-Pacific region on the list, three Israeli firms and one each from Brazil, Canada, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s broader assessment of global defense spending for 2021 found that figure continued to grow, surpassing $2 trillion for the first time. The five largest spending nations in 2021 were the U.S., China, India, the U.K. and Russia, which together account for 62% of expenditures, according to its tally.

The labor shortages and supply chain challenges have continued in 2022, along with intensifying inflation. Earlier this year, the chief executive of Boeing, the third-largest defense company in the world, said the firm’s defense business was suffering after winning fixed-price programs and later facing dramatically increased costs.

“We took some risks not knowing that COVID would arise and not knowing that an inflationary environment would take hold like it has,” David Calhoun said in April. “And both of those things have impacted us fairly severely.”

US defense companies

The top 10 U.S. firms are Lockheed Martin ($64 billion), Raytheon Technologies ($42 billion), Boeing ($35 billion), Northrop Grumman ($31 billion), General Dynamics ($31 billion), L3Harris Technologies ($15 billion), HII ($9 billion), Leidos ($8 billion), Amentum ($6 billion) and Booz Allen Hamilton ($6 billion).

Lockheed, whose revenue represents nearly 11% of the total, topped the list for the 23rd year in a row.

The annual Defense News Top 100 list relies heavily on self-reporting from companies, many of which provide estimates rather than definitive data for their defense percentages. That means that while the list is the industry standard, the numbers come with some qualifiers.

The order of the top 10 U.S. firms was virtually unchanged from this year compared to last year. Given the White House’s unfriendliness toward defense mergers by the largest companies — as exemplified by the blocked Lockheed-Aerojet Rocketdyne merger last year — the list may be frozen for some time to come.

“If Lockheed can’t buy Aerojet, and you assume the primes can’t buy each other, and at least with this administration and their view of consolidation, this could be it,” said Roman Schweizer, a market analyst with research firm Cowen. “This could be the way they line up.”

U.S. military spending in 2021 amounted to $801 billion, down 1.4% from 2020, according to SIPRI. Defying market expectations, the defense budget under President Joe Biden’s administration rose. And driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, defense spending is expected to rise in European countries and again in the United States.

“There may be another growth spurt coming after this. That doesn’t even include the Europeans, who are definitely going to see a big increase,” said Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners, a research firm. “Even if there’s a cease-fire in Ukraine, you’ve still got a Russia that’s implacably hostile to the West.”

Below the top tier, the revenue of firms on the list is diversified — with an average of about 56% of their revenue coming from defense, noted Steven Grundman, a former Pentagon industrial policy chief now with the Atlantic Council think tank.

The Raytheon-United Technologies Corp. merger in 2020, for example, tied together Raytheon, primarily a defense firm, with UTC, a company more focused on commercial aerospace.

Diversification reflects one response to market volatility, Grundman said.

“The conventional wisdom holds that most companies in defense are pure-play, without much diversification, but that’s not what these data show,” Grundman said. “Once you get beyond the top 10, most companies have exposure to commercial [markets], primarily commercial aero. In addition to helping to manage volatility, diversification also gives defense companies better access to advanced technologies.”

Defying the conventional wisdom that the defense industry is barbell shaped — a few large and small firms with very few midsized firms in between — roughly half of the firms on the list fall between $1 billion and $5 billion in revenue. They fall on a scale considered mid- or small-cap by Wall Street (a measure of the size of a firm based on the market value of its outstanding shares).

“It’s an indication of industry health that you have a nice mix of small, medium and large companies among the Top 100,” Grundman said.

Great power competitors

China again had seven firms on the list, all in the top quarter and with a combined $117 billion in defense revenue. That’s more than the combined defense revenue for firms from NATO countries (excluding the U.S.) — $110 billion — and far more than that of the other Asia-Pacific firms (excluding Russia) on the list, at $23 billion.

Whereas most Western defense firms on the list disclosed their defense revenue, Chinese firms did not. That data and analysis came from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, which Defense News teamed with for the third consecutive year.

Russia, which historically accounts for 20% of global arms sales, this year had a sole participant: Tactical Missiles Corp., which reported a 36% increase in defense revenue from FY20 to FY21, from roughly $3 billion to about $4 billion.

No other Russian companies responded to requests for data, including Almaz-Antey, featured on the list for several prior years.

In 2021, Russia was building up its forces along the Ukrainian border and grew its military spending by nearly 3%, to about $66 billion, according to SIPRI. This was the third year of growth, and Russia’s military spending reached 4% of its gross domestic product in 2021.

The reaction from the West to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February won’t be reflected in 2021 data; neither will the fallout from retaliatory sanctions. But Daniel Gouré of the Lexington Institute expects the Russian market share to wane as its historic defense customers, like India, look elsewhere.

“The guys who have bought mostly Russian stuff are now shifting,” Gouré said, adding that beyond its economic isolation, there’s more competition from the U.S. and other global players.

“The Russians are going to find it tougher going forward,” he noted. “The West is going to be more of a competitor than it has been in the past because we may be willing to give out more stuff to keep the Chinese/Russians out [of markets], and then you’ve got more competition from middle-tier players like the Turks, the [South] Koreans.”

There are 31 European countries on the list (including Turkey but excluding Israel and Russia), whose defense revenues total about $120 billion, or 20% of the list’s total. BAE Systems ($26 billion), Leonardo ($14 billion) and Airbus ($11 billion) make up the top three.

Several European firms that weren’t on last year’s list — Polish Armaments Group, Ireland’s Eaton, Turkey’s Roketsan, Germany’s Diehl Group, Norway’s Nammo and Finland’s Patria — made it into the list’s bottom third.

France’s Dassault, whose revenues jumped 65%, primarily attributed the growth to its deliveries of Rafale aircraft, which increased from 13 in FY20 to 25 in FY21.

The evolving security environment in Europe this year is fueling increased demand for integrated missile defenses, early warning systems, air-to-air missiles, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms. As Lockheed executives noted on a recent earnings call, those investments will likely bear out over the long term.

Bill Greenwalt, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy, now with the American Enterprise Institute, said the “interesting data shifts may be seen in the next couple of years as the impact of the war in Ukraine manifests itself in the [Top 100] data as sales are registered and new orders for replacement systems are executed.”

“I would expect those companies who specialize in munitions will see large gains in the coming years,” the think tanker added.

Ukraine’s Ukroboronprom comes in at 89th place, with about $755 million in defense revenue — a 16% rise from FY20 to FY21.

Mergers and absenteeism

Not all of the defense revenue increases on the list came from organic growth, as some firms climbed the list due to mergers and acquisitions.

• Shipbuilding titan HII (17th this year), which in 2022 changed its name from Huntington Ingalls Industries, includes its acquisition of Alion Science and Technology (74th last year).
• Amentum (21st this year) acquired PAE (80th last year).
• Peraton (25th this year) acquired defense IT firm Perspecta (39th last year) and — for $3.4 billion — Northrop’s integrated mission support and IT solutions business. It reported a defense revenue jump from $651 million to about $5 billion.
• KBR (32nd this year) bought Centauri in 2020 to expand its space and military intelligence business as well as tech consultancy Frazer-Nash. It reported $2 billion more in sales over the previous year, some it attributed to its support of U.S. operations to house Afghan evacuees.
• Vectrus (57th this year) acquired both Zenetex and HHB Systems.
• Teledyne (83rd this year) acquired FLIR Systems (88th last year).

State-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries was a standout in terms of industry consolidation, reporting a revenue jump from roughly $20 million to $605 million, after its acquisition of the Advanced Electronics Co. The kingdom has been consolidating companies within SAMI to achieve a 50% technology transfer target, in line with the economic plan Saudi Vision 2030.

SAMI also attributes its growth to its weapons and missiles business, its emerging technologies division, as well as its joint ventures involving Saudi Aircraft Accessories and Components Co., Navantia and Thales.

The absence of several U.S. nontraditional defense firms on the list is partly a reflection of the state of Defense Department efforts to attract them through novel contracting methods, said Jerry McGinn, executive director of George Mason University’s Center for Government Contracting.

“The department is doing a lot of experiments, prototyping, [other transactional authority contracting]. But now we’re at the point of, ‘Does it scale?’” he said. “That’s how those companies start to get bigger. You’re starting to see it, but it’s not at this level yet.”

As the Pentagon invests in the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System and the Defense Enterprise Office Solution, information technology giants Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, which haven’t participated in the Top 100, are notable for their absence.

Gouré and other industry observers said high-profile tech firms might opt not to participate because they are sensitive to employee dissent. A group of Microsoft employees in 2019 demanded the company abandon a U.S. Army contract that relates to Microsoft’s HoloLens augmented reality technology, and protests from a group of Google employees in 2018 prompted it to pull out of Project Maven, a U.S. Air Force artificial intelligence project.

According to Gouré, the absence of such firms from the list will only become more glaring as the Pentagon spends more on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the development of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control project, or JADC2. Such cyber-centric capabilities, likely to come from the commercial side, are the “new arsenal of democracy,” he said.

“You’re now moving into a world in which these companies are providing higher-end products; they’re now participating in more important IT activities,” Gouré said. “The cloud computing backbone of JADC2, which seems like it will be billions upon billions of dollars — there may not be a single integrator, but a couple of companies with billions each for them.”

But Tom Arseneault, president and chief executive of BAE Systems’ U.S. business, expects the conversation there to frequently focus on events more than 1,000 miles away, as Ukraine continues its Western-backed fight to repel Russia’s invasion.

While the war has shifted to a largely ground-based battle in Ukraine’s east, with heavy use of artillery, Arseneault told Defense News the leaders of allied air forces and defense industry representatives will likely discuss the medium and longer term implications of the war and what it will mean for the defense of Europe and NATO.

Arseneault said industry leaders also have not taken their eyes off China, which the United States says remains the pacing threat. The discussion at Farnborough will also revolve around the programs and technologies under development to address the potential threat China poses, he said.

Indeed, up until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, Arseneault said, China was the primary “horizon of concern” for the defense industry. Since then, he said, two additional horizons emerged: how the U.S. and its allies can support Ukraine, and what the U.S. can do as part of NATO to defend Europe.

Arseneault spoke with Defense News July 7 about the air show, Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on the defense industry, and BAE’s work on programs such as teaming autonomous systems with manned aircraft and the EC-37B Compass Call. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How has the Ukraine war and the events of the last five months prompted BAE and the industry to change?

I’d characterize the Ukrainian conflict in terms of more of a ground war at this point, and how that translates to the defense of eastern Europe. [That’s] contrasted with the China threat, where you have more of an air and naval profile to that conflict. These horizons all exist at the same time [and] are going to challenge budgets across the countries that have interests in both of those areas, and we’ll see how that plays out.

The M777 [Howitzer] artillery that has been sent over to Ukraine, from both the U.S. stockpiles as well as some of our allies, [is] a BAE system. The resurgence of artillery is an item of interest in the role it plays in battle. Of course, this is the U.S. government and our allies sending systems out of their own stores to make that happen, and maybe with the potential to replenish that over time.

So the role of artillery, the role of combat vehicles, and how that will ultimately translate to the defense of Europe, is a lesson out of that. How it’s affected BAE systems with our combat vehicle and artillery portfolio is something we’ve been watching very closely.

You took the reins at BAE in April 2020, right as the pandemic was heating up. It rocked the defense industry in many ways, with social distancing requirements, supply chains and inflation. How did you try to set BAE on a course to withstand that turmoil?

You have to admit, my timing was impeccable. It all comes down to making sure we’re focusing on our workforce in a way that allows them to be, initially, safe in the way they execute their roles. But then as time has gone on, to move toward more flexibility with the workforce, to understand the impacts of inflation on the workforce, to understand, by the way, the workforces of our collective supply chains.

We are the defense-industrial base writ large, from companies of size, right down through many layers of the supply chain. And that collective workforce is what was really rocked through this period. The concerns about personal safety, ensuring we were going to be able to continue to work right through the pandemic. To do everything we could in order to put the right safety measures in place — understand CDC guidelines, provide all the tools, equipment and personal protective equipment, to make sure our workforce trusted that we and the government were concerned about their health and safety as we worked to build the equipment necessary to keep our armed forces safe.

That has now evolved into a set of workforce challenges across the industry with respect to people’s prioritization of work-life balance, and that’s created challenges of its own. BAE Systems has worked to try to be as flexible as possible in that environment. Let’s face it, there are things you can do in a hybrid way, and there are things where you have to be [there]. You can’t repair a ship from your living room. You can’t build an electronic warfare system from your kitchen table. And you can’t work on highly classified things in a remote setting.

Now, the more recent challenges we face are inflation up and down our supply chain.

Has the supply chain crunch the industry experienced in 2020 and 2021 started to ease?

Things seem to have stabilized on the grand scale; however, there continue to be new challenges mounting. COVID shone a light on how susceptible the industry was to supply chain disruption, because COVID rippled up and down through every layer, and particularly in smaller businesses where you take out five or 10 people and you basically shut their production line down for a period of time.

And now as we’ve come to grips with that, then Ukraine hits and that creates new set of challenges with respect to raw materials and access to some of the supply chains outside our country and in areas that are affected by the conflict. So it just seems like one domino after another. And COVID’s impact had a ripple effect through to the ultimate production of microelectronics.

Now you have an industry that’s trying to catch back up as demand is starting to climb significantly. And so we’re still feeling some of that. I think many of us in industry have found ways to work around it to the best of our ability, but we’re nowhere near where we were pre-COVID. [Microelectronics is now] where we’re having the most [supply chain] trouble.

The Air Force is increasingly focusing on the potential for teaming autonomous aircraft with manned fighters or bombers. Has this prompted BAE to focus more resources on its autonomous sector?

We’ve been involved in autonomy, in one form or another, for a couple of decades. We are on a series of programs, some of them we can talk about, some of them we can’t, with respect to manned-unmanned teaming. We have a business that has been doing flight controls for aircraft, both commercial and military, for decades. So that has positioned us well for this kind of manned-unmanned teaming future.

We’ve been tracking [Air Force] Secretary [Frank Kendall’s] interest in this and briefed him on some of the initiatives and technologies that we’ve been working on. We think there’s some real potential there. The warfare of the future will increasingly depend on those kinds of scenarios, where you’re able to mix manned assets with unmanned to increase firepower and reduce the risk to human life.

BAE is handling the electronic warfare components of the Air Force’s Compass Call recap. How is EC-37B going?

Really well. Compass Call’s mission has been a bit below the radar, but it has been used in every major conflict of the last 40 years. And it is a critical mission. It performs a series of electronic warfare missions from jamming to suppression of enemy air defense, etc. The EC-37B will be able to fly higher and faster [than the old Compass Call EC-130s]. The EC-130, from a maintenance standpoint, was pretty costly with some of these aging aircraft. And so it’s time to change the packaging for Compass Call.

We’ve been introducing a series of new technologies we call SABER, which is the backbone of Compass Call. It stands for [Small] Adaptive Bank of Electronic Resources. That’s the core of this standoff jamming capability that gives Compass Call its edge. One of the things we’ll feature at Farnborough is an exportable version of that. I think standoff jamming as a mission, has quite a bit of relevance in some of these future fight scenarios. And so we’ll be able to bring our standoff jamming capability into the international arena.

The new Compass Call will have a mix of new electronic warfare systems combined with legacy systems transplanted from the old EC-130s. Have there been any issues integrating the old systems with the new?

Surprisingly few. This plan to repackage Compass Call into a new platform had been under way for some time, and so they anticipated a lot of the challenges.

For 40 years, this has been a critical system. Over that time, we’ve been working as the mission systems integrator to continue to evolve that system. One of the things about electronic warfare is, the minute we think we’ve got it bulletproof from an electromagnetic standpoint, our adversaries come up with something new. So there’s this continual path of understanding and evaluating and assessing our ability to counter these evolving threats.

Are there any areas of concern you see in the debate over the 2023 budget?

Congress is recognizing a couple of things. One, the effects of inflation on the buying power of the services, as well as the need, on the basis of the National Defense Strategy priorities, to make sure we are creating the opportunity to modernize for the new and sustain the legacy [systems] in the process. You’re seeing upward pressure on the budgets pretty much across the board as it’s moving its way through the committees. Much to be seen yet, but it feels like it’s moving in the right direction.

Do you expect the inflationary pressures on the Defense Department to result in slightly lowered procurement amounts for key weapons systems in 2023?

It’s going to depend. Inflation will have a variety of impacts across the broader portfolio, and it’s all going to be about trying to find the right balance. In some instances, that will mean recognizing that inflation will have an upward trajectory on prices that will be paid for the same number of aircraft or systems.

In other instances, there will be a balancing act around how far can that money go? What can we afford? Each of the services are working through their sense of that, but I think Congress recognizes that the budget needs to account for the inflation that we’re experiencing, which we haven’t seen in the better part of 40 years. There’s a number of factors at play working its way into the decision, much as you and I and everyone who is paying for gasoline and groceries these days is experiencing.

The launches could underscore North Korea’s determination to press ahead with its efforts to expand its arsenal despite the virus outbreak to rally support behind the leader, Kim Jong Un, and keep up pressure on its rivals amid long-dormant nuclear diplomacy.

Thursday’s launches were the North’s first weapons fired since the inauguration of new conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday.

North Korea has a history of rattling new governments in Seoul and Washington in an apparent bid to boost its bargaining chips in future negotiations. The North Korean nuclear threat will likely top the agenda when Yoon meets visiting U.S. President Joe Biden in Seoul next week.

Both South Korea and Japan condemned the launches from the North’s capital region on Thursday afternoon.

The missiles plunged into the waters between North Korea’s eastern coast and outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said. There was no report of damage to aircraft or vessels.

South Korea’s military said it boosted its readiness and surveillance while maintaining close coordination with the United States. It called on the North to immediately halt its repeated missile firings.

South Korea and Japan released similar flight details, saying the weapons traveled about 350-360 kilometers (217-224 miles) at a maximum altitude of 90-100 kilometers (56-62 miles).

Earlier Thursday, North Korean state media confirmed the country’s first COVID-19 infections as Kim ordered nationwide lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus. Kim also ordered officials to bolster the country’s defense posture to avoid any security vacuum.

In recent months, North Korea has test-launched a spate of missiles in what experts call an attempt to modernize its weapons and pressure the United States and its allies into accepting it as a nuclear state and relax sanctions on the North. Some observers say that despite the elevated anti-virus steps, North Korea would likely continue to build its arsenal with weapons tests to boost public morale and strengthen loyalty for the Kim leadership.

“North Korea’s latest missile firings appear excessive to what would be needed to test and improve military capabilities,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said. “These launches look like a show of strength after the Kim regime publicly admitted to a coronavirus outbreak.”

A statement issued after a meeting chaired by Yoon’s national security adviser Kim Sung-han said South Korea would seek “practical” and “stern” measures in cooperation with the international community to respond to the growing North Korean threat.

The North Korean weapons tested recently included a variety of nuclear-capable missiles that could potentially reach South Korea, Japan or the mainland U.S. In March, North Korea ended its self-imposed suspension on huge weapons tests since 2018 with a launch of its biggest missile capable of reaching the entirety of the American homeland.

The U.N. Security Council has typically imposed punishing sanctions on North Korea after it carried out nuclear and long-range missile tests. But that didn’t happen in March because veto-wielding members are divided over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Last Saturday, South Korea detected a North Korea ballistic missile launch likely from a submarine, the first such test since last October. There are also signs that the North is preparing to conduct its first nuclear test in nearly five years at a remote testing ground in its northeast.

Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo.

It had been just a few months since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the continental United States. Milley had called to ask Perna to delay his retirement (already put on hold by more than a year) to run the operation to develop and deliver COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics to the American population.

The effort was dubbed Operation Warp Speed. Milley offered him some time to think about taking the job, but Perna told him, “I don’t need any time. I’m ready to do it.”

Perna immediately began thinking through the gargantuan process and how his long career in the Army, particularly his command of logistics, could help pull the country out of the crisis. Defense News spoke with Perna in a recent interview, in which he reflected on the achievements of Operation Warp Speed as well as the lessons learned.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

How did your experience at Army Materiel Command and as an Army leader ready you for this unprecedented task?

Our strength is that we can see things at different levels strategically, operationally and tactically. We have clarity and vision. If we don’t get it right the first time, we’re able to adjust, we’re agile and adaptive. We know how to identify what we think is the end state, and then visualize it and then work left to figure out what has to be done.

We’re also very good at operationalizing things to achieve the effects that we want. You don’t go to war and sit at the port; you go to war and you figure out how to defeat the enemy. Then the third thing is: We know how to put a plan together to get there. We use the military decision-making process — something on which we’re trained as young officers. We come up with courses of action and we assess risk against them. We decide and we move out, and when they don’t work out, we adjust. It’s probably the greatest attribute we have because we have never done this in the country before.

On that Saturday morning, I got [out] my notebook and started going through the military decision-making process: Define end state, work left, started thinking through what the plan would be, and started writing notes. My thoughts matured rapidly as we got into the process. I worked through my role with my co-leader [Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a former head of the vaccines department at GlaxoSmithKline]. At the end of the day, he was an expert — a world-renowned expert scientist in developing vaccines. I consider myself a world-renowned expert in logistics and sustainment. He was a good partner to me as we developed our processes and procedures for developing infrastructure, garnering materials and then eventually the distribution.

In an interview with Defense News, the American Medical Association president, Dr. Gerald Harmon, praised Operation Warp Speed as one of the “greatest scientific achievements of our lifetime.” What made this such a success story?

Here’s why I think at the end of the day, we were successful. One: We had a clearly defined purpose. Our purpose was to develop, manufacture and deliver safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics to the American people.

Two: We had absolute priority and resources to do the mission. I had that with both White Houses because my tenure extended through both. I had absolute priority and resources. This is so important. How many people get missions where they are given 100% priority or 100% of resources? I wanted people, people came; I needed funding, funding came; I wanted priority and materials, equipment and support for infrastructure came.

Three: We had unity of effort, and this is really important for everybody to understand. It was the U.S. government, it was academia, our world-renowned scientists and it was industry. This is what they do every day. It wasn’t us trying to figure it out in the back of some tent. It was these world-class pharmaceutical companies that were already doing this.

We worked with six industry partners to develop six different vaccines. There was a significant amount of people who were in different stages of making a vaccine because of the great homework that they’d already been doing to set the foundation before we were involved. We needed vaccines that demonstrated the right numbers, i.e., were they going to be effective. We needed a vaccine that could be produced in a relatively rapid time within our regulatory guidance. If it was successful, we kept it; if it wasn’t successful, we were going to eliminate. Then we needed to have enough volume. Our goal was initially 300 million [shots]. That changed to 600 million when it went to a two-shot regimen.

Once we figured out who the six companies were, we had to make sure we had the logistical infrastructure to do 30,000 people in a trial. We needed statistical data to demonstrate that the vaccines were going to be safe and effective.

Then manufacturing. All these partners had facilities of some type, but maybe not at the right volume. We helped build actual capability and capacity, whether it was directly with the pharmaceutical company or it was a supporter, because pharmaceutical companies make the vaccine, but then they give it to another company to put it in the vials. It was all about volume, how fast were we going to get it and how fast could we get it out to the American people. We [used Defense Production Act authorities] 19 [times] in our tenure. We had to manage that supply chain to achieve the effects that we wanted. We had to manage the materials to make the vaccine. We had to manage the equipment for expansion capacity. We had to manage the consumables, whether it was tubing or plastic bags that actually produced the vaccine, or whether it was needles and syringes or vials to put the vaccine in.

I used to tell the team that when we manage the supply chain, we have to be offensive and defensive in our efforts. Offensively, we had to manage everything across the six primary vaccine makers. We had to make sure they had enough for when they needed it to make the vaccine. In making the vaccine, all six companies needed many of the same things. We had to make sure nobody hoarded, that everybody got what they needed when they needed it. We had to go all over the world to get this stuff — a lot of it came from overseas.

How did you formulate a plan to distribute vaccines?

We wanted to make sure the 50 states, eight territories and six major cities all received a portion of the vaccine, fair and equitable across the board. So we developed a mathematical formula. This was really, really important in the climate of the day, and I’ll just leave it at that. It was based on adult population at the time because we knew we wouldn’t have approval for adolescents. Every week we designed a program where we knew, once it was first approved, we were going to exponentially increase volume every week. So week one was 5 million, but then week two was 7.5 million, etc. But the mathematical formula allowed us to figure out how to deliver it, allowed states to figure out how to plan for locations.

Second thing we had to do — and the country is not set up for this — we had to create places to receive the vaccine. Now you say: “Oh, General, the flu vaccine goes out every year.” Well guess what? Not everybody gets the flu vaccine. We went from 7,000 locations to over 70,000 locations where the vaccine could be delivered. To do that, every location had to be validated by the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention].

They had to get certified and they had to get approved for receipt and execution of the vaccine. We went to the experts again. There’s three main medical vaccine distributors: Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen and McKesson. We talked to them, understanding that we did not want to dilute other medical supplies that were being delivered like heart medicine, cholesterol medicine, etc. We went to McKesson eventually — they were our main distributor.

Then here was the brilliance of the effort: We brought in FedEx and UPS. These two companies — open competitors — worked together to figure out how to be an end-to-end solution. So the vaccine went right from manufacturers and then we delivered it all the way down to the 70,000 locations. The vaccine got approved; 24 hours later, it was being delivered throughout the entire country. It went to the Pacific territories all the way up to Alaska and Maine, right down to Puerto Rico, and all the way across the country. It went there simultaneously. That was such a huge victory for us.

There was no system in America that allowed us to watch [vaccines and therapeutics] go from manufacturer through distribution down to administration. We created that system: Tiberius, [a software system designed to track vaccine distribution, that allowed us to] see every drop of vaccine. I could see it at every place we were making it. I could see it at every distribution site. I could see when they were low. We knew when people weren’t using it.

What didn’t go well?

Our communication strategy was ineffective, and it was poorly executed strategically, operationally and tactically.

We really worked hard with the states, the territories, the cities. We talked to them several times a week, we ran weekly rehearsals. Some of those states, territories and cities did magnificent jobs, some didn’t. I’m not going to go any deeper than that. But I made an assumption, and the assumption was not a good assumption. I adjusted it and I ended up putting things in place, but it’s not like I was a four-star general in the Army and I had two-star division commanders who were executing. We have different forms of leadership, different types of leadership, different cultures of leadership that we were working with in the execution phase — some very good and some not so good. We had to adapt to that.

It was an incredibly challenging time. COVID-19 was a big deal. We didn’t know what it was, we didn’t know where it was going, we didn’t know if we’d come up with a solution. But failure was not an option. Could we have made up a more challenging time period than in the middle of an election period? Think about that. And it wasn’t a midterm election, it was a presidential election; it was a big frickin’ deal. And it became polarizing. It was a challenge.

How do you see the government or our country adopting practices from this experience for the next pandemic or something else?

We have the greatest medical community and scientists in the world, and I had the great pleasure of meeting so many of them. We operate at such a high standards. It’s so well regulated. We ought to be proud of that.

With that said, do I think we could do things better? Yes, I do. We ought to challenge ourselves, challenge the status quo to that end, whether it’s our processes for execution, how to do trials to how to do delivery, to management, etc. We ought to sit down as a country and think through this. It should start at the federal level. There ought to be a bipartisan review. [From the beginning], we started collecting all of our after-action stuff. We collected every briefing, every decision, everything we did, every recommendation, and we logged it and put it together for future use.

[The result of a review] could be directing some type of organization that provides unity of command but at the very least, unity of effort. It could be something that directs an operational concept that would cover all these things from how to set up the campaign plan for execution if something ever comes back. We have to make the decisions about do we have dedicated infrastructure. Do we have dedicated partners that are part of the team? Do we have dedicated supply chain support, whether it’s materials, consumables or equipment? I think we ought to take advantage of a bad situation and not let this happen to us again.

What can the Army learn from Operation Warp Speed? What elements of this process would you inject into Army functions?

I couldn’t see myself tactically or operationally, physically. Tiberius [did that]. We were competitive [in] the acquisition process, but I didn’t play games. I didn’t spend five years developing requirements. I didn’t have time to put them through this budgeted development phase. You only have so much money so you can only do so much. I needed it all. I needed it immediately. And I got it. Tiberius was created from scratch. Maybe five years from now, they’ll need something different, but I didn’t worry about that.

We spend too much time trying to figure out how we’re going to not only fight 20 years from now, but also fight today. Then we develop these requirements that are out of control, then we try to buy it with a budget that’s piecemealed with technology that changes almost daily.

What Army Futures Command is trying to do for the Army is the right way to go. I would tell you though, the Army in its totality, there’s still a significant number of programs that are not being run by [Army Futures Command], so what process are we going to use? How are we going to define requirements? How are we going to ensure things get done? How are we going to stop trying to solve world hunger with a budget that’s piecemeal and an enemy we might not even know is coming 10 to 20 years from now? That was my biggest lesson learned.

SINGAPORE — Singapore’s biennial air show opened Tuesday on a smaller scale than before the pandemic, even as the aviation sector gears up for a recovery two years after coronavirus outbreaks nearly paralyzed air travel.

The three-day air show began Tuesday. Members of the general public are not allowed, but about 600 exhibitors are showing their products and services. That’s down from 930 during the last show in February 2020, when coronavirus cases were just beginning to rise.

Experts say the aviation market is poised for recovery, with defense spending on the rise and commercial aviation picking up despite the latest wave of omicron-driven infections. Those attending the show must observe stringent coronavirus rules, including regular COVID-19 testing and potential isolation for those found infected with the coronavirus.

The air show began in 2008. It typically attracts senior corporate executives of aviation companies and delegations from countries around the world. About 13,000 people are expected to attend this year’s show, less than half the 30,000 who visited in 2020.

Many Southeast Asian countries have kept their borders closed or imposed strict limits and quarantine and testing requirements to try to curb outbreaks that have ravaged most countries. Some are now slowly relaxing those precautions.

“The air show comes at an interesting time, because the market in Southeast Asia is finally starting to recover after almost two years of decimated impact on air travel, particularly in the international market,” said Brendan Sobie, an independent aviation and aerospace analyst based in Singapore.

Many Chinese companies are staying away from this year’s show, likely because of Beijing’s “zero-COVID” policies that involve lengthy quarantines.

Major exhibitors at this year’s show include Boeing, Airbus and Lockheed Martin. Boeing’s newest widebody jet, the 777X, made its Asian debut at this year’s show, demonstrating aerial maneuvers during a daily flight display. The 777X is about 20% more fuel efficient than the aircraft it replaces, according to Darren Hulst, the vice president of marketing for Boeing’s commercial airplanes.

Singapore Airlines is among Boeing customers planning to include the new jet in their fleets.

“The No. 1 trend we’re seeing is how resilient the demand for aviation is and how important it is for people to connect,” Hulst said in an interview Tuesday. He noted that short-haul flights have recovered quickly in regions like the U.S., where high gas prices are discouraging people from traveling by car.

“As we see the industry recover more, as more and more restrictions are lifted on long haul travel, we’ll see the market continue to recover and we think the industry will be back to where it was in 2019 somewhere by the end of 2023 or early 2024,” Hulst said.

Boeing rival Airbus said Monday that it had confirmed 48 orders for new aircraft — 28 A320neos for Kuwait’s Jazeera Airways, and 20 Airbus A220s for U.S.-based aircraft leasing firm Aviation Capital Group.

China’s absence at the show leaves a big gap, said Sobie. Chinese tourists usually are the world’s biggest spenders, having splashed out $254.6 billion on overseas travel in 2019, according to the U.N.’s World Tourism Organization.

“It’s not about them not participating in the show necessarily. It’s about them not participating in the recovery of the international aviation industry,” he said.

“China is a very important market for Asia and in particular, Southeast Asia relies very heavily on China,” he said. “So it’s an extremely important market that has to recover in order for the market overall to fully recover.”

While civil aviation has been decimated by the pandemic, experts said defense innovation and spending were less affected, apart from disruptions to supply chains that have troubled many industries worldwide.

Israel Aerospace Industries showcased its new Blue Spear missile system at the show in Singapore, while Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, also from Israel, displayed its Spyder air defense system, which is designed to guard against enemy aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Strategic competition and geopolitical tensions are fueling increased military spending for many countries in the region, including in Southeast Asia, said Michael Raska, coordinator of the military transformation program at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies.

“The show might be smaller, and the pandemic may have mitigated the number of exhibitors, but it doesn’t mean that defense procurement has been slowing down,” Raska said.

He noted that such shows are an important platform for companies and customers to build trust and connect in person, especially when it comes to defense procurement and procurement.

“That’s more important than anything else on the show,” Raska said. “Forging these relationships or finding new relationships in the industry, that’s something you cannot do on Zoom.”

Associated Press video journalist Syawalludin Zain contributed to this report.

In a brief statement, Del Toro said he returned from official travel on Friday, and that his most recent negative tests had been on Jan. 21 and Friday.

He has mild, cold-like symptoms, according to his spokesman, Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey.

Del Toro said he will quarantine for at least the next five days in accordance with U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and will attend meetings and discussions virtually when necessary.

He also delegated Acting Undersecretary of the Navy, Meredith Berger, to represent him at in-person obligations.

“I am grateful to be fully vaccinated and to have received the booster shot in October as I know my symptoms could be far worse,” Del Toro said. “We must continue to vaccinate our naval forces and look out for our physical health as we finish the fight against COVID.”

Del Toro was visiting Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, last Friday, according to public imagery released from the visit.

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, and Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps Commandant, all tested positive for COVID and followed the same quarantine and remote-working protocol.

All three leaders have since returned to their in-person duties.

COVID vaccines reduce the chances of infection, serious illness or death from the virus, according to the CDC.

“Most people who get COVID-19 are unvaccinated,” the agency states. “However, since vaccines are not 100% effective at preventing infection, some people who are fully vaccinated will still get COVID-19.”

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Biden administration doesn’t have legal standing to enforce a mandate for federal employees, which could include firings.

“This case is not about whether folks should get vaccinated against COVID-19 — the court believes they should,” Texas district Judge Jeffrey Brown wrote. “It is not even about the federal government’s power, exercised properly, to mandate vaccination of its employees. It is instead about whether the president can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment. That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.”

DoD has not yet released its policy for firing or otherwise disciplining any of its 950,000 civilian employees who refuse to be vaccinated, though exemption requests have been processed.

The Pentagon has not released its numbers of unvaccinated civilians, but DoD data shows that more than 340,000 have been vaccinated through the department.

“To ensure compliance with the preliminary nationwide injunction issued on January 21, the Department of Defense is not taking any further actions to implement or enforce the civilian employee vaccination as required by Executive Order 14043 at this time,” spokeswoman Lisa Lawrence told Military Times on Thursday.

The military departments began notifying their employees earlier this week.

President Joe Biden’s executive order dropped Sept. 14, requiring all federal employees to get vaccination, secure an exemption or risk disciplinary action.

The Pentagon has not explicitly said that employees would be fired if they did not complete the vaccination requirement. In late November, the department began requiring regular testing for civilians who remain unvaccinated.

Clarke is fully vaccinated, according to a Monday release, and has received a booster.

“He has very mild symptoms and is able to fully perform all his duties remotely,” the release said.

Clarke, who works out of MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, has not met in person with any of DoD’s civilian leadership, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, since the new year, according to the release.

Unrelatedly, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger have contracted COVID-19 this month.

Austin’s office announced Jan. 3 that he had tested positive, with mild symptoms. He was back in the office Jan. 10, after symptoms had subsided. The Pentagon requires masks unless individuals are alone in an office with a closed door.

Both Milley and Berger announced they had tested positive on Jan. 17 and would be working remotely.

DoD policy requires anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 to isolate for at least five days, or until symptoms improve, then wear a mask at work for another five days regardless of local mask rules.