For decades, navies across the world have experimented with a wide range of countermeasures to distract, confuse, and strike incoming torpedoes, notoriously cunning threats to warships. But results, so far, are mixed.

Now, a growing consensus among industry experts suggests that the ability to physically intercept enemy torpedoes is something like the holy grail in a cat-and-mouse game that favors the attacker.

“In the future, due to the development of torpedo systems and how smart they have become, sometimes deceiving or jamming it will not be enough – at that time you must have additional capabilities, which can include a hard-kill measure,” Ahmet Akyol, president of Turkey’s Aselsan said during a panel discussion at Euronaval trade show in Paris last month.

Both Aselsan and Naval Group independently confirmed to Defense News that they are each conducting research and developmental work to build hard-kill torpedo countermeasures, which presents its own set of complexities.

Underwater targeting is much harder than in the air, due to the laws of physics, and while torpedoes move slower than cruise missiles, they are still challenging to detect.

Antoine Kauffman, marketing manager for underwater systems at Naval Group, said it is in part the unique challenges found in the deep-sea environment that help explain “why many systems [anti-torpedo torpedoes] are not yet sufficiently mature to be integrated into militaries.”

Although several kinetic torpedo interceptors have already been developed, much of their lethal capability has yet to be tested, and their reliability remains largely uncertain.

One existing system is the Torbuster manufactured by Israel’s Rafael, which employs generic or tailored acoustic signals to lure an incoming torpedo near a decoy which explodes at close range, a mechanism that does not convince Kauffman.

“We do not believe in it at all because it is based on ‘seduction’ where you need to be able to attract the torpedo less than 20 meters of the countermeasure and never will it go that close – the torpedo will understand well before,” he told Defense News ahead of the Euronaval conference.

The Indian Navy is the only known international customer to have purchased Torbuster following Rafael’s announcement in May that it was partnering with local company Bharat Dynamics Limited to equip Indian ships with the technology.

Kauffman predicted that the maturity of concepts and designs of hard-kill torpedo technology will be more or less around 2030.

This timeline concurs with the one set out by the European Defense Agency regarding an anti-torpedo torpedo (ATT) demonstrator project, which builds on previous work done by Germany’s Atlas Elektronik and the Dutch TNO research organization.

“The objective is to reach a production-ready design by 2028 – it has [already] been proven that the system can successfully detect the attacking torpedo and subsequently activate the anti-torpedo torpedo, indicating that the desired effect can be achieved,” Jürgen Scraback, head of the EDA’s maritime domain unit said.

The official added that negotiations are currently underway for more European Union member states to join the project.

MOSA is a mission system architecture that uses widely practiced, consensus-based standards like the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE). By implementing and promulgating MOSA to our combat systems portfolios, we will be able to rapidly transition critical battlefield capability as well as expand the industrial production potential of the Defense Industrial Base.

The conflicts in the Middle East as well as Eastern Europe have shown us how much more of a technologically dynamic battlefield we may face. Many of our weapon systems deployed by our allies have seen incredible success, yet some have rapidly became mitigated or neutralized by adversaries swiftly introducing new technology, especially in counter navigation and electronic warfare. This is the environment we can expect if we enter conflict and we will need to have flexible warfighting platforms and mission systems that can adopt advanced capability promptly to remain effective.

A solution to this, which is also a best practice the DoD, is embracing MOSA. To keep pace on the battlefield, we will need to be able to field architectures that can adopt new functions and capabilities developed.

Utilizing open standards and sharing capabilities is nothing new in our warfighting systems, however with far more advanced and complicated platforms, the architectures have lost this flexibility. In World War II we were able to rapidly adapt and introduce new capabilities such as radar, sonar, chaff and flares, all introduced during the conflict with little or no development prior.

We are starting to combine cross-service architectures to adopt in our weapon systems to enable this sharing of advanced capability and the ability to save schedule and costs with joint development. The Navy’s Hypersonic Weapons program has aligned to Weapon Open System Architecture (WOSA) along with the Army and Air Force enabling the adoption of joint communication systems and other functions. The Navy has also partnered with the Air Force on next generation air dominance capabilities, by aligning joint architectures to share mission system capabilities. This will reduce redundant development efforts, but more importantly, will allow services to transition countermeasure and next-generation offensive functions on multiple platforms at the speed of relevance. This is the type of rapid innovation across services and platforms we need to address critical vulnerabilities that are most likely to appear on the 21st century battlefield.

Another challenge we face is our industrial base’s production capacity, especially with munitions. Our economy has shifted dramatically from the World War II manufacturing powerhouse to a service-based economy. To help expand the industrial base capacity, we can start distributing the production utilizing MOSA. Even the most complex weapon systems have numerous components that do not necessarily require the large prime contractor to solely develop. Utilizing small business and non-tradition defense contractors, many modules of weapon systems could be produced by multiple providers if the architectures enables it. This distribution would allow there to be multiple and distributed production capacity more suited for scaling of munition production if needed.

We are at a point in time where we can bear witness to the 21st-century battlefield and learn the lessons that will hopefully allow us to be prepared for 21st-century combat and able to avoid it. These lessons are showing us continually that the high technological battlefield will need to be able to rapidly adopt new capability and scale munitions production.

MOSA is an answer to these critical elements of warfare, enabling a rapid sharing of capability, reduction of redundant development, and the distribution of our industrial base. We must further the alignment and standardization of architectures like we have in hypersonics and next-generation aircraft. We must deploy these architectures to our R&D programs and test platforms to enable rapid transition of advanced capability from early development to a Program of Record (PoR) without major redesign and reconfiguration.

We have done this before when duty called and we are well on our way. We need to take the lessons we see in the conflicts around the world to see MOSA as the critical combat capability of the 21st century.

Guertin is the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition; Glassman is a senior adviser for the office.

“Our goal is to deliver the technological infrastructure, from the edge to the enterprise, that can enable our government and industry partners to transform America’s world-leading AI advancements into next-generation military and national security capabilities,” the companies said Friday in joint statement.

Both firms are key players in the Pentagon’s AI and software ecosystem. Palantir builds platforms to analyze and distill data and Anduril develops a range of advanced hardware and software systems largely centered on autonomy and AI.

The companies are teamed on the Army’s Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node program, an integrated, AI-defined targeting system set to begin fielding over the next two years.

Palantir also provides the core software enabling the Army’s data platform that supports leaders across the force to provide overall visibility and support rapid decision-making — a contract it’s had since 2017. The Army uses it for unit readiness, managing combat power, logistics and installations and even recruiting.

Anduril, meanwhile, is providing hardware and software for the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, which aims to field thousands of small, networked drones by next August.

For this new partnership, the companies will build on existing product lines, including Palantir’s AI Platform, AIP, and Anduril’s Menace, a software-defined command and control system.

The goal is to address two key problems they see as inhibiting the U.S. military’s adoption of AI: data readiness and the lack of a secure pipeline for scaling industry’s AI models.

To get after the second problem, the team plans to use AIP to deliver a cloud-based data management capability that can deliver AI data at all classification levels. They also plan to combine Palantir’s Maven Smart System with Anduril’s Lattice software to provide “a seamless operational capability” for developing and fielding new AI tools across the defense enterprise.

“This platform is already in place and in use by Anduril and Palantir for their own corporate purposes, and with government contracts that enables this work to begin immediately,” the companies said.

The plan is ultimately to grow the partnership to include more firms.

News of the consortium comes amid announcements of several other industry collaborations involving the two companies. Anduril said Thursday it would team with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI to use AI algorithms to improve the military’s counter-drone capabilities.

And Palantir announced today it is joining forces with Booz Allen Hamilton to advance defense innovation among U.S. allies. That partnership focuses on modernizing defense infrastructure and using data-centric tools to improve collaboration among partner nations.

Maintaining tech competition

Two U.S. senators this week, meanwhile, introduced legislation that calls for the Defense Department to implement guardrails to maintain competition for major technology development programs.

The bill — championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, and Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo. — targets DOD’s AI and cloud computing programs, portfolios that it says are dominated by a handful of Silicon Valley companies.

“Right now, all of our eggs are in one giant Silicon Valley basket. That doesn’t only stifle innovation, but it’s more expensive and it seriously increases our security risks,” Warren said in a statement. “Our new bill will make sure that as the Department of Defense keeps expanding its use of AI and cloud computing tools, it’s making good deals that will keep our information secure and our government resilient.”

Specific provisions in the bill include a requirement that DOD conduct an open competition for any AI or data integration programs with annual contracts worth at least $50 million.

It would also direct the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office to ensure that any government data used to build or operate the military AI tools be secured and protected — particularly if it’s being stored alongside vendor data.

Land warfare reporter Jen Judson contributed to this story.

“Unmanned systems pose both an urgent and enduring threat to U.S. personnel, facilities, and assets overseas,” the Pentagon said in a statement Thursday announcing the strategy. “By producing a singular Strategy for Countering Unmanned Systems, the Secretary and the Department are orienting around a common understanding of the challenge and a shared approach to addressing it.”

One-way aerial drone attacks have spiked in recent years, and the Pentagon has grown increasingly concerned by the threats they pose to the U.S. and its allies. For more than a year, Iran-backed Houthi rebel groups have been using small unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, to target ships in the Red Sea, and killer drones have featured heavily in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

DOD officials have said the department is taking a layered approach to defending against enemy drones, meaning the U.S. will pursue a range of capabilities to disable these systems, from electronic warfare to kinetic weapons. The military services have a number of ongoing programs to develop and field this technology.

Austin’s strategy is aligned with these and other high-level DOD efforts, including those led by the Joint Counter-Small UAS office, which was established in 2019 to coordinate counter-UAS development, tactics and training across the military services.

The strategy also closely follows the second phase of Replicator, which is focused on rapidly fielding off-the-shelf counter-drone technology. Austin, who announced Replicator 2 in September, said the Pentagon plans to request funding in fiscal 2026 and set a two-year timeline for delivering “meaningfully improved” counter-UAS systems.

An unclassified fact sheet released Thursday sheds some light on the department’s strategy, laying out five lines of effort it plans to pursue. These include: improving its ability to detect, track and characterize drone threats; launching focused campaigns to counter “threat networks”; making counter-drone defense a core piece of its doctrine, training and policy; quickly fielding counter-UAS technology and prioritizing funding for these capabilities; and placing a greater emphasis on countering unmanned systems in its force development and design efforts.

The strategy emphasizes the need for partnerships with Congress, defense and commercial industries and allies. It also pledges to create clear metrics to track its progress, though it’s unclear if those details will be publicly released.

“This strategy marks a critical next step in the Department of Defense’s efforts to counter unmanned systems, but much work lies ahead,” the fact sheet states. “Although the rapidly evolving nature of the threats posed by adversary use of unmanned systems means that the department will need to continually reassess our efforts, this strategy sets a foundation for action to meet this challenge.”

After having dramatically reshaped the tactical combat on land since their introduction by Ukrainian forces in the spring of 2023, highly maneuverable first-person view (FPV) drones have rapidly become a key asset in Ukraine’s counter-drone efforts as more and more Ukrainian units employ them to intercept Russian fixed-wing reconnaissance drones.

Since May 2024, this author has visually confirmed almost 650 interceptions of this type – mostly taking place at a distance of 1,000-3,000 meters – across the entire frontline using open-source information released by a variety of sources, including social media channels and accounts of Ukrainian units, humanitarian organizations, and more. Similarly, the Tochnyi collective project has recently documented and geolocated more than 850 interceptions of Russian drones by Ukrainian FPVs, further corroborating this trend. The real number of Russian unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, shot down with this technique is likely higher, considering that not all interceptions are recorded or publicly disclosed.

Despite receiving little attention across the mainstream media, Ukraine’s increasingly successful use of FPV drones as C-UAS interceptors is a highly consequential development because it directly removes Russia’s main ISR assets from the battlefield, eroding its forces’ situational awareness as well as ability to detect targets, breaking a key link in the Russian kill-chain.

Without sufficient and persistent “eyes” in the sky, Russia struggles to timely and regularly feed target information to its vast fires arsenal. This, in turn, offers Ukraine some respite from both Russian artillery and missile strikes against a variety of targets, including high-payoff ones at operational depth, such as ground-based air defenses and airfields, that Russia typically attacks with Iskander M tactical ballistic missiles.

At the same time, fewer drones in the skies negatively affect the use of other strike capabilities such as loitering munitions that directly or indirectly depend on live reconnaissance, rapid target acquisition and signal-relay functions. The progressive reduction in documented Lancet strikes in the past three months seems no mere coincidence, as this infamous loitering munition operates in hunter-killer teams with Zala reconnaissance drones from the same manufacturer. This is good news for Ukrainian formations operating along and near the frontline, in particular artillery units, which have suffered significant losses to Lancet strikes. Ukrainian FPV operators even managed to intercept a few Lancets, with 15 cases visually confirmed by this author.

Equally important, shooting down more Russian ISR drones also blunts Russia’s ability to conduct proper battle damage assessment, an essential task that is often overlooked in discussions.

Another major implication is the cost effectiveness and operational flexibility of using FPV drone interceptors, which are cheaper than any other kinetic solution at Ukraine’s disposal and easy to produce, distribute, and deploy even across a dispersed force. While the concept of using drones to kinetically defeat other drones is not new, Kyiv’s forces have been the first to employ it in real combat and at scale. The demand for FPV drones has never been so high and drone manufacturers such as the Wild Hornets along with many private crowdfunding initiatives are delivering thousands of platforms each month to frontline units.

The skyrocketing use of FPV drones has also fueled unprecedented combat experimentation and tactics refinement, resulting in the establishment of specialized FPV air defense units within several Ukrainian brigades and rapid technological iteration cycles. The flip side is that there is at least one human operator behind any single interception, making it a personnel-intensive process dependent on skilled operators. Flying an FPV drone requires extensive training and practice, particularly when conducting high-speed maneuvers or engaging moving targets.

This is where automated terminal guidance should come into play to significantly expedite and improve the last-mile engagement process. Ukrainian forces are already using automated tools to detect, identify, and track Russian ISR drones, but they now need to integrate scalable AI-enabled computer vision in the terminal phase as Russia deploys more UAS. Such capabilities will also make the FPV drone more resilient against electronic warfare.

NATO and individual allies should take stock of these technological and tactical innovations and invest in drone-based, cost-effective interceptors to complement their C-UAS capabilities.

The analysis of collected data also provides some interesting insights into Russia’s drone capabilities and use as part of its current operations.

First, the Russian military relies on a largely standardized fleet of medium-size reconnaissance UAS for its tactical and operational ISR, centered around three main fixed-wing platforms: the Zala 421, the Supercam 350, and the Orlan family, which comprises the Orlan 10 and 30 variants. The Zala 421 accounts for the vast majority of Ukraine’s FPV-based interceptions (54%), making this model the new workhorse of Russia’s ISR drone fleet, followed by the Supercam (28%) and Orlan 10/30 (12%) family of systems. This standardized approach facilitates drone production on an industrial scale – much larger than the volumes any Western country is currently manufacturing – simplifies training and logistics, and reduces the likelihood of interoperability issues across the Russian military. In this respect, it’s hard not to appreciate the lesson for the United States and NATO allies.

Second, the Russian forces are not standing idly by and are starting to mimic Ukrainian solutions – albeit on a much smaller scale – while also taking precautions to protect their ISR drones from Ukrainian FPVs. Their countermeasures, however, seem to have little success so far. These range from simple camouflage and fake Ukrainian color schemes to more sophisticated tools such as small radio-frequency jammers installed on drones in order to disrupt the video link between the operator and the FPV interceptor as it approaches the Russian UAS. The Russians are also equipping some of their drones with rear-looking wide-angle cameras to detect incoming Ukrainian FPV drones and give the pilot enough time to use evasive maneuvers to avoid the interceptor and escape using its longer endurance. Still, Ukrainian counter-tactics are also evolving and include the launch of tandem interceptors to maximize chances of success and attack Russian drones with fast-ascending maneuvers from below to remain outside the drone cameras’ field of view.

Ukraine’s current advantage in the use of FPV drones is proving critical but may be short-lived as Russia develops new countermeasures.

Federico Borsari is a resident fellow in the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman has made readiness a top priority for the service and has called on the organizations that write requirements, train guardians and develop test and training infrastructure to move quickly to prepare the force to operate in a more contested space environment.

That’s a big task for a service that was established just five years ago and is transitioning from viewing space as a benign domain to a potential theater of war. And the leaders of the service’s testing and training enterprise say they are feeling that time crunch.

Col. Corey Klopstein, who leads efforts to acquire operational test and training infrastructure at Space Systems Command, said Saltzman’s mandate means his organization has “a long way to go in a very short period of time.”

“We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got our forces ready to present as quickly as possible,” he said during a recent Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference webinar. “We’re not in the same position as other services that have been training in these contested environments.”

Maj. Gen. Tim Sejba, head of Space Training and Readiness Command, said Tuesday that while it will take decades for the Space Force to build high-fidelity training and testing ranges, there are interim steps the service can take to improve its live and simulated training infrastructure.

Speaking at the annual I/ITSEC conference in Orlando, Florida, this week, Sejba said the Space Force is taking a hybrid approach to improving its current systems, stitching together legacy capabilities with new technology available in the commercial market.

“The only way we’re going to be able to support the joint force and our allies is to partner with industry differently than we have in the past,” he said.

The service is using its $12 billion Space Enterprise Consortium contract to buy some of these capabilities. The contracting mechanism allows the Space Force to issue task orders to more than 750 preapproved companies and get solutions faster than it might under a more traditional acquisition program.

In September, the service issued an RFI through the consortium seeking commercial companies with satellites on orbit that have excess capacity and could be used to support Space Force live training and testing. This and other acquisition tools are not only efficient ways to buy new capabilities, but they’re often more affordable, too, Klopstein said.

“I want to see what’s out there and push the boundary to see if there’s anything that we can bring in and leverage as quickly as possible,” he said. “And if you can partner with commercial industry and you can have dual use of technologies, that helps us collectively bring the cost down.”

In the near term, Klopstein said, the service plans rely on whatever capability it can get from industry to address its biggest training gaps: integration and outdated simulators.

The integration challenge involves understanding how the service’s satellites interact and affect one another on orbit and simulating that in a virtual training environment. Today, much of the Space Force’s training happens system by system, but Klopstein said the service needs to better connect its capabilities to make its training more comprehensive and realistic.

The Space Force also needs to invest in upgrading its simulators, which don’t currently provide the capability the service needs to validate its tactics, Klopstein said.

For now, Space Systems Command is doing what it can to piece together new capabilities and existing systems, but the Space Force’s future training needs will require a more robust virtual training infrastructure.

Klopstein’s team has met with industry several times over the last year to assess what modeling and simulation capabilities it might be able to take advantage of today to build that future infrastructure. That work is informing a broader acquisition strategy that the service expects to unveil early next year.

The Army’s next step in expanding the distance and survivability of its land-based rockets could see a missile delivered from an autonomous launcher to strike targets farther than 1,000 kilometers away.

On Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Winston Brooks, commander of the Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Brig. Gen. Rory Crooks, director of the Cross Functional Team-Long Range Precision Fires, discussed future work on “Increment 5″ of the Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM.

If successful, the project would give even low-level tactical units the ability to conduct what are known as “strategic deep fires,” which range beyond 500 kilometers, according to Army data.

Defense News reported that in November the Army conducted its first two PrSM salvo tests at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. The testing involved firing the two missiles in rapid succession.

Testers used the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, launcher.

In his remarks Tuesday, Crooks cautioned that while there is much potential for developing the fires platform with the autonomous launcher, there isn’t yet a timeline for fully developing and fielding that technology.

But the missile is slated to enter its science and technology phase in October 2025.

Currently, the missile is limited by its platform. The M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System, or MLRS pod, is 13 feet long.

Crooks noted that because the autonomous platform doesn’t need a cab for a human driver, there could be a chance to put a longer missile on the frame at some point.

The PrSM program seeks to replace legacy systems such as the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System, the same weapon used by Ukrainian forces for the first time in October 2023 to strike Russian targets.

The U.S. missiles used by Ukrainians had shorter maximum distances than those used by the U.S. Army, limiting them to less than 300 kilometers, Military Times previously reported. The same system has been used more recently for deeper strikes into Russian territory.

The Increment 1 versions of the PrSM are being fielded now by Lockheed Martin. Those missiles have a range of at least 500 kilometers, according to the company.

Increment 2 is a land-based, anti-ship seeker; Increment 3 will add lethal payload options; and the Increment 4 project is seeking to push existing ranges beyond 1,000 kilometers.

The Office of Naval Research has begun work on an initiative known as Warrior Resiliency, which would use wearable technology and other data sensors to develop sophisticated predictions about how to supercharge Marines’ performance and adapt training for maximum effect.

The effort, which was funded through a $4.4 million allocation in fiscal 2024, is taking shape as the Army trumpets early successes of its Holistic Health and Fitness program, which aims to “unlock … peak performance” by giving soldiers access to expert coaches and equipment.

But the roots of Warrior Resiliency and similar efforts, according to those close to the initiative, date back years — to the Pentagon’s Close Combat Lethality Task Force, spearheaded by then-defense secretary Jim Mattis.

Established in 2018, the CCLTF aimed to close key capability gaps with joint solutions. One of those identified gaps was the individual performance of warfighters; a 2018 Defense Department memo establishing the task force directs that science and technology be leveraged to improve human performance “within ethical guidelines.”

But according to Chief Warrant Officer 5 Stephen LaRose, who served on the task force as an adviser and program manager until 2023, the Corps has struggled to put meaningful investment and support behind a program that would achieve these aims.

Despite a variety of limited objective experiments, he said, “there hasn’t been any program that’s been comprehensive enough … that would transition to a human performance program of record.”

A 2021 collaboration with Army Combat Capabilities Development Command resulted in an “Optimizing the Human Weapons System (OHWS)” roadmap to a Marine Corps program that would use wearables and smart devices to create a sophisticated dashboard showing troops’ “wellness inputs,” such as alcohol consumption and physical exercise, training load, sleep data and recovery stats.

A presentation of the plan, reviewed by Marine Corps Times, shows a timeline of milestones leading up to a needs analysis to be completed by Marine Corps Warfighting Lab in 2023.

That year, Brig. Gen. Kyle Ellison, then the commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, linked OHWS and Warrior Resiliency in an endorsement letter, calling for resources to establish a service program of record.

Peter Squire, ONR’s program officer for Human Performance Training and Education, told Marine Corps Times that Warrior Resiliency, in its current form, aims to create readiness “status indicators” for unit leaders by assessing Marines’ biometrics to prevent injury and optimize performance.

He noted that maturing wearable and biometric tracking technology enabled better and more effective monitoring now than had previously been possible.

“It’s really been, I think, within the past five years or so that we’ve seen the ability for accurate commercial wearable devices that can be used in a more continuous or persistent manner, where we can get information now to better understand status and indicators over time,” he said. “So, it’s sort of been the culmination of a couple different aspects over time, where we saw there was a good opportunity to put it forward.”

Many of the specifics of the effort remain under wraps. The first priority of Warrior Resiliency, which got underway in earnest last spring, has been the establishment of predictive algorithms and frameworks for processing data and making decisions.

Some experimentation has been conducted with active Marine Corps units, Squire said, although he declined to name which ones, pending the service’s authorization. The specific devices to be used in widespread data collection are still pending.

“Right now, we are focused on utilizing what the commercial market has available, and have working partnerships with a variety of different vendors,” Squire said.

Device accuracy will be a priority, he added, and the form factor of devices used — armbands versus rings or watches, for example — may depend on individual Marines’ preferences or their job duties.

Ultimately, Warrior Resiliency will be a “multi-year effort” resulting in prototype platforms and “knowledge products” to help the Corps establish a broad-edged program within the operating forces, Squire said.

He compared the expected result to the Corps’ Marksmanship Campaign Plan, released earlier this year, that represented the service’s most aggressive reimagining of arms training and skills development in a century.

Within the next eight months, he expects the Corps and ONR to reach decisions around larger-scale system testing and next steps, he said.

For LaRose, concerns remain that the Corps will fully embrace the work being done and build human performance assessment into regular training and operations.

“Every Marine a rifleman, but we got to get past the [sole focus on] marksmanship,” he said. “You’re … using the rifle to get to the stress, to the decisions, to the finite motor skills.”

Following a pattern of undersea cable damage across European waters in the last year, with the most recent disruptions happening just weeks ago, top NATO officials have begun envisioning a capability that would allow the alliance to have permanent eyes above and under the waterline.

In an interview with Defense News, Adm. Pierre Vandier, the alliance’s Norfolk, Virginia-based commander for concepts and transformation, likened the idea to police CCTV cameras installed on street lights in urban trouble spots for recording evidence of crimes.

“The technology is there to make this street-lighting with USVs,” he said, using the military’s shorthand for unmanned surface vessel.

Vandier said his team is in the early stages of developing a USV fleet so that “NATO can see and monitor daily its environment.”

The first step would be to achieve this at a surface level, and then later under water.

The new project has already received “great support” from the central command of all NATO maritime forces, known as MARCOM, and the alliance operational headquarters of SACEUR, Vandier added.

While many details still need to be hashed out, officials believe they can equip the drone formation with fielded platforms that are known to work, leaning on experiments done by the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 59.

“There is no name [for now], just USV Fleet,” Vandier told Defense News. “In fact, it already exists, so somehow it’s not very risky. The U.S. has enforced Task Force 59 in the Gulf for years, so everything is known and sold, so it is much more a matter of adoption than technology.”

Launched in 2021, TF 59 is a unit dedicated to integrating unmanned systems and artificial intelligence in the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet area of operations. It operates out of Bahrain and includes drones as well as other uncrewed vehicles working alongside manned ships.

In January, a new sub-unit was established, called Task Group 59.1, whose focus is on testing and upgrading industry systems to bolster maritime security across the Middle East region.

As of last month, the unit has trialed, upgraded and experimented with more than 23 different unmanned systems.

The task group took part in exercise Digital Talon in early November, during which it succeeded at remotely launching a loitering munition at sea and tested the vertical take-off and landing of drones from a USV.

According to Vandier, the goal is to launch the drone surveillance fleet before the next NATO Summit, which will be held in the Netherlands next June.

“We are to experiment with the first talks about this and then work with the allies to find a proper way to make this happen,” he added.

The most recent incidents of undersea cable disruptions took place on Nov. 17 and 18, when a cable of a telecommunications company between Lithuania and Sweden was cut, and a cable connecting Finland and Germany was damaged.

Investigations of the incidents are still ongoing.

That’s the problem that motivated veterans John New and Tim Wood to build a new management system that leaves all the coordination to an AI algorithm, which spots personnel qualification or compliance issues and fires off notifications to the service member to fix the problem well before activation or deployment.

After successful limited employment within the Air Force Reserve, Wood and New say they hope other services will see the value in their product and adopt it more broadly.

The two entrepreneurs, whose company, co-founded by New, an Army infantry veteran, is called WorkMerk, say the personnel management system was inspired by an idea from an airman, Master Sgt. Taylor Trani, then a technical sergeant in medical and dental administration at the New Jersey Air National Guard’s 177th Fighter Wing.

“[She] was sick and tired of the problem,” said Wood, who spent 22 years in the Navy SEALs. “And we just ran with it.”

Independent research confirmed how haphazard and inefficient military personnel management could be.

During one “deep dive” with the Air Force Reserve’s 932nd Airlift Wing out of Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, New and Wood found the wing’s unit deployment manager spent 30 hours of prep time simply to ensure personnel were ready for a drill weekend.

The unit’s medical and dental team, they said, worked for two full weeks to review medical records for the same weekend and verify appointments and documentation were up to date.

“Well, after that two weeks of work, they had approximately a 30% no-show rate, just because there was no connectivity directly with the airmen, and their supervisor had no visibility on it, and so on,” said Wood, who directs DOD business development and product for WorkMerk.

That spurred the launch of a pilot test of the system they’re now calling AFLINX, which began by collating medical and dental data for a full unit, automatically sampling that data and creating calendar invites for airmen, sent to their smartphones, for needed appointments.

To protect privacy, they said, they made sure no medical or personal identification information traveled out of the system — airmen would receive a fairly generic message telling them they had an appointment to schedule.

“It was the equivalent of having one extra body in that department,” Wood said, “saving them … approximately 1,000 hours a year throughout the whole wing of all the activities [they’d have to] schedule and put butts in seats to get something done for an airman during a calendar year.”

AFWERX, the Air Force’s innovation arm, saw the value in the system and began investing it around the time that research with the 177th began, in 2020, they said.

In a statement, AFWERX spokesman Matthew Clouse said WorkMerk to date has received five contracts work a total of $3.9 million and a tactical funding increase contract for AFLINX in August 2023 intended to help the software grow from prototype to fieldable project.

The 932nd, he said, “is exploring software solutions to enhance planning, administration, management, readiness and communication processes. While Airmen are not currently using the software during its prototype stage, they are providing input on use cases to ensure any future acquisition decisions are informed by operational needs and end-user requirements.”

While it can be difficult to generate excitement about innovations in personnel management, they’ve had a warm reception in pitch meetings to a number of Air Force Reserve components, they said, including the 22nd, 10th and 4th Air Forces, and Air Force Reserve Command.

“It’s not hitting targets over the horizon with a hypersonic missile, right. That’s why it’s kind of a slow burn on people talking about it,” Wood said. “But we’ve … had nothing but praise and only the questions of, ‘When will it be ready?’ and ‘How much will it cost?’”

That cost, New said, was on the order of $100,000 per unit of 1,200 to 1,400 troops.

While WorkMerk has yet to branch out to other services, a Marine officer who spoke with Military Times confirmed that Reserve personnel management was a joint headache.

Col. Brian Pate, G-3 operations officer for Marine Corps Cyberspace Command, said the limited purview that commanders have over the schedules of their reservists, who may be spread out over a wide geographic region when not drilling, made the challenge more difficult.

“They may not be near a military medical treatment facility,” he said. “So, when they’re coming in, it may be that they have a very short window of time to execute a medical appointment or to hit the readiness requirement.

“You need to do very detailed planning to make sure that they succeed in doing the activity. So, having a management tool, I think, would help with that.”