The most prominent development involved Turkish shipbuilding consortium TAIS and Barzan Holdings, which signed a $1 billion agreement covering the procurement of two Istif-class frigates.

The agreement was signed by Barzan Holdings on behalf of an international client, which was identified as the Indonesian Navy.

A separate agreement related to the same program had previously been signed between TAIS Shipyards and Indonesia’s Ministry of Defense during the IDEF defense exhibition in Istanbul in July 2025.

Unmanned systems cooperation also featured prominently at the naval show.

STM signed a memorandum of understanding with Barzan Holdings covering joint production and co-development of unmanned aerial systems, with options to extend cooperation to unmanned naval platforms.

Under the pact, STM aims to support the local production and integration of its tactical drones in Qatar, while providing engineering, systems development and technology integration support.

In a statement, Turkey’s Defense Industries Presidency said five cooperation agreements were signed at DIMDEX between Barzan Holdings and ASELSAN, ASFAT, MKE, STM and TAIS, covering ammunition production, systems engineering, naval platforms and technology sharing.

Taken together, the deals underline how Ankara and Doha are moving beyond buyer–seller relations toward joint ventures, localized production and third-market projects and positioning Turkey as a long-term industrial partner in Qatar’s defense modernization plans.

The procurement, which is to be carried out as a government-to-government deal with the United States, is estimated to be worth around $205 million, according to the country’s outgoing Defense Minister Atanas Zaprianov.

Following the Cabinet’s decision, the acquisition of anti-ship missiles developed by Norway’s Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace will now be submitted for clearance by the National Assembly, Bulgaria’s unicameral parliament. Zaprianov said that payments for the missiles are expected to be concentrated in the years 2029 to 2030, local news outlet Novinite – Sofia News Agency reported.

The caretaker government which approved the program is fulfilling its responsibilities until a new Cabinet is formed following a snap election anticipated for this spring. At the same time, given Bulgaria’s broad political consensus on the planned procurement, the parliament vote is expected to be a formality.

Last July, the U.S. State Department approved the foreign military sale of the Naval Strike Missile system and related gear for an estimated cost of $620 million. The authorized package includes missiles in several variants, mobile fire control centers with associated communications equipment, launch and transport vehicles, Link-16 multifunctional information distribution systems – joint tactical radio systems (MIDS-JTRS), as well as related training and spare parts assistance.

Amid Russia’s increasingly belligerent activities in the Black Sea, Bulgaria is set to join its neighbor Romania which has also purchased Naval Strike Missiles for its armed forces. The weapon is a sea-skimming, over-the-horizon missile enabled with a range that exceeds 185 kilometers (115 miles), according to data from Kongsberg.

The multiyear contract award, announced Wednesday, will see robots delivered to the services this year. The details of the award amount are not being disclosed at this time, an L3Harris spokesperson told Defense News.

The T7 is a robust robotic system with a highly maneuverable arm that can lift payloads weighing up to nearly 300 pounds and be fitted with a variety of interchangeable components that allow it to disarm bombs in diverse environments. Featuring a multicamera view, it can operate in a variety of confined spaces and also climb stairs.

The system delivers haptic feedback, or controlled vibrations, to give operators touch sensitivity as they are controlling the robotic arm, allowing them to dispose of dangerous materials from a distance with precision.

The award comes several years after the U.S. Air Force purchased 170 T7 robots in 2021 for its explosive ordnance disposal program. The first of those robots were delivered to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida in 2022. Service personnel tasked with EOD missions who trained on the T7 stated at the time that they preferred it due to its long battery life, speed and flexibility.

“Recognized by both the Navy and Marines for outstanding dexterity and performance, L3Harris T7 robotic systems will provide them a significant advantage for their most challenging EOD missions,” Dave Kornick, president of intelligence and cyber, space and mission systems for L3Harris, said in a statement to Defense News.

The contract with the Defense Department will also see L3Harris provide comprehensive training to all service personnel on all aspects of operating the robots.

If confirmed by the Senate, Lt. Gen. Francis Donovan will take over U.S. Southern Command, replacing Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, who retired last year amid increasing scrutiny over the Trump administration’s deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the region, a remarkable extension of American power in Latin America.

U.S. troops earlier this month deposed and apprehended Maduro, the culmination of a pressure campaign that began with the largest military buildup in the region in generations and expanded to dozens of attacks on boats accused of smuggling drugs and the seizure of sanctioned oil tankers connected to Venezuela.

Democrats and Sen. Angus King, a Maine Independent, pressed Donovan for details on how he would oversee Southern Command and for the broad outline of the Trump administration’s long-term plans for the region. Donovan, however, said he didn’t know.

“So, you don’t know what the plan is now? You don’t know why all those ships and aircraft and soldiers are there?” King asked.

“Senator, I do not,” Donovan said, explaining that he isn’t involved in military plans for the region in his current role as vice commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

But Donovan acknowledged that the renewed interest in Latin America is likely to bring changes to the Southern Command, which is headquartered in Doral, Florida.

“Do you expect, because of this pivot to the Western Hemisphere, that SOUTHCOM this year is going to have to be much different than SOUTHCOM last year?” asked Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat.

“Yes I do,” Donovan replied.

The confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee was the latest effort by some lawmakers to question the Trump administration over its military operations in Latin America and its justification for the boat strikes, which have prompted concerns about international law and the use of force.

Lawmakers also questioned Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, nominated to lead the National Security Agency, over his views on surveillance and concerns that the NSA could be used against innocent Americans.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst, said she worries that the Trump administration could order the NSA to spy on Americans because of their political views or speech, something she said is expressly forbidden by federal law.

“Will you reject that?” asked Slotkin, who is one of several Democratic lawmakers who say they face criminal investigation by the Trump administration after appearing in a video urging service members to resist illegal orders.

“Senator, if confirmed, I will execute my responsibilities in accordance with the Constitution and all applicable laws,” Rudd said.

The NSA has been without a permanent director since Trump fired Gen. Tim Haugh last year. The NSA director also runs the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, giving it a critical role in the nation’s defensive and offensive cyber capabilities.

Lawmakers from both parties said they expect the nominations to be approved. A vote has not been announced.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, speaking at the 38th Annual Surface Navy Association National Symposium in Arlington, Virginia, on Wednesday, explained that he understood the initial reticence to accept the inclusion of battleships as part of the Navy’s new Golden Fleet.

“We just have biases, cognitive biases, in our brain,” Caudle said. “And what comes to our brain is a thing that goes, like, ‘Why is the Navy building that?’ Well, everything’s an evolution.”

The battleships, which he labeled as “badass,” would afford the service multiple critical capabilities: massive payload volume, speed, the ability to get anywhere in the world, the ability to command and control operations and the ability to fulfill multiple missions.

President Donald Trump announced the Navy’s new Golden Fleet during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last month.

The fleet will include two Trump-class battleships, which Trump said would be the fastest and biggest battleships in the world and 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.

Caudle said he fielded many questions about unmanned technology but that autonomous technology didn’t always present the best capabilities for deterrence, especially when you had a battleship with a significant ability to attack waiting in the wing.

“If I want to shoot 100 things from 100 things, or I want to shoot 100 things from one thing, which is harder?” Caudle asked rhetorically.

Enabling a general purpose force like the battleship, he said, was paramount for the success of the Navy’s future missions.

The battleship, however, won’t be nuclear powered, even though Caudle admitted it seemed logical for it be.

The Navy wanted to get the battleship into the water as fast as possible, and as a result, omitting nuclear power would speed up its production.

Rear Adm. Derek Trinque, the Navy’s surface warfare division director, was caught off-guard by Trump’s announcement of two new warships as part of the Golden Fleet.

“I did not expect to be told to build a battleship when I got this job,” Trinque said Tuesday at the symposium.

But he said he was excited at the opportunity to tackle it headfirst because it allowed the Navy the opportunity to accelerate its DDG(X), or Next-Generation Destroyer, program, which seeks to build the next class of surface combatants and replace older Arleigh Burke-class vessels, which joined the fleet in 1993.

Over the years, the Navy has had to perform surgery on the destroyers to add capabilities, Trinque said, noting that the service is working to “get better at adding capability without cutting them open.”

But while the Navy continues to master that process, it still needs something “newer and bigger” with more power and more weapons, Trinque said.

The Trump-class battleship addresses that necessity and provides an overwhelming amount of offensive strike capability and more overall capacity than any other service ship that the Navy possesses, he said.

Lunday takes the service’s helm at a time of great transformation: The Coast Guard has embarked on a modernization plan that aims to grow the force by 15,000 and expand its capabilities through acquisitions and technology, while it also is actively engaged in significant interdiction and national security operations.

In a ceremony at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, Lunday said the service is in “greater demand than ever before,” and he promised it would become a more “agile, capable and responsive fighting force.”

“Like every Coast Guard crew on a mission, our service must do three things: ready, fight and navigate. And we must do them in that order,” Lunday said.

Under Lunday’s tenure as acting commandant, the Coast Guard launched Force Design 2028, an initiative that calls for restructuring the service’s headquarters, purchasing new aircraft, ships, drones and technology to support operations, improving infrastructure and increasing end-strength.

The Coast Guard received nearly $25 billion in resources in July from the Trump administration’s reconciliation bill — funding designed to fix the service’s crumbling infrastructure and invest in new technology and assets.

A progress update of Force Design 2028 released Thursday said the Coast Guard already has allocated $7.7 billion of the funds and plans to complete the process by next year.

Speaking at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium in Arlington, Virginia, on Wednesday, Sean Plankey, a senior adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said the rapid pace was necessary to ensure that the service becomes the Coast Guard “that America needs.”

“That money is taxpayer dollars, and those a taxpayer expects us to use that money to invest it for the American public,” Plankey said. “If we’re just sitting on the account saying, ‘We’re waiting on requirements, we’re figuring things out,’ it’s not going to change the service.”

Since the announcement of Force Design 2028, the service has reorganized 68% of its headquarters staff, creating a chief of staff and two deputy commandant positions, eliminated 14 flag officer positions and added program executive offices to manage acquisitions.

The Coast Guard has purchased two long-range command-and-control aircraft and invested in counter-unmanned aerial systems. It has also made investments in acquiring a new fleet of Arctic security cutters, ten additional fast response cutters, additional offshore patrol cutters and new polar icebreakers and waterways commerce cutters.

At the heart of this “bold course,” Lunday said, are Coast Guard men and women, which he called “our greatest treasure.”

“We will lead and inspire our crews to get the mission done while taking the very best care of them,” Lunday said.

Lunday was named acting commandant Jan. 21, 2025, when his predecessor, Adm. Linda Fagan, was fired from the job after serving in the position for nearly three years. Lunday, a 1987 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, was appointment vice commandant in June 2024 and previously served as commander of Atlantic Area.

Previous assignments include commander of the 14th Coast Guard District, now known as Coast Guard Oceania District, and U.S. Coast Guard Cyber Command. He holds a Master of Science in national security strategy from the National War College and a law degree from George Washington University Law School.

During his swearing-in ceremony, Noem called Lunday a “special kind of leader” for “unprecedented times.”

“Over the past year, Adm. Lunday has proven that his leadership and dedication to the country is unprecedented. He has proven that he is dedicated to the success of the Coast Guard and he has proven it over and over. In fact, 2025 turned out to be one of the most significant and impactful in the Coast Guard’s history,” Noem said.

Lunday was slated to deliver a keynote address Wednesday at the Surface Navy Association meeting but he was called away for operational demands, organizers said.

A social media post Thursday by Noem gave some insight into Lunday’s absence: She announced that the Coast Guard had been involved in the seizure of a sixth sanctioned oil tanker the administration said has ties to Venezuela.

According to The Associated Press, a Coast Guard tactical team boarded the motor tanker Veronica with Marines and Navy sailors from the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in the Caribbean Sea.

The collaboration comes in response to a call by global navies for more armed naval drones, according to Saildrone.

The 20-meter Saildrone Surveyor vessel will boast the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) launcher manufactured by the U.S. defense giant.

“We expect this work to attract interest from customers who already depend upon Saildrone and are now thinking about layered maritime defense – for some navies, awareness alone is no longer sufficient, and they’re asking how unmanned systems can also contribute to deterrence and if necessary a response,” ret. Vice-Adm. John Mustin, Saildrone’s president, told Defense News.

Larger Saildrone USVs are also under consideration to carry Lockheed Martin weaponry, such as the Mk 70 Vertical Launching System, a containerized missile launcher, per a company press release.

The new partnership will entail enhanced naval capabilities, including the use of artificial intelligence, which is part of Lockheed Martin’s $50 million investment in Saildrone.

According to Mustin, while the company strives to integrate greater autonomy across its USVs to increase sensing and data processing abilities, it is not pursuing fully autonomous weapons. “Any strike capability would have a human firmly in the loop,” he added.

Many global navies have envisioned a manned-unmanned hybrid fleet for their future requirements, including the United States. Former U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said the service’s ambition is to build up to 500 vessels, including 350 crewed ships and 150 large uncrewed surface vessels.

Last year’s reconciliation bill known as the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act,’ passed by Congress, included investments of over $3 billion for the procurement of surface vessels: $1.5 billion for the expansion of small USV production and $2.1 for the development and procurement of medium ones.

A report from the U.S.-based Center for Maritime Strategy published in September noted that lawmakers were reluctant to approve the planned funding until the Navy was able to produce a concept of operations for their use.

Saildrone has already planned proof-of-concept integrations and a live-fire demonstration to take place next summer.

Arming naval drones was not a widely implemented practice a few years ago, primarily due to technological and political hurdles, which limited their use largely to surveillance missions.

The Ukraine war has changed this, as the country’s naval forces demonstrated their ability to attack much larger targets using cheaper weaponized USVs.

However, the Saildrone executive warned that the success may not replicate across different conflict zones.

“What the Ukrainians have shown is their incredible ability to inflict a cost curve on their adversaries, striking capital assets with significantly less expensive means – but different theaters around the world present different challenges over much larger distances and threats,” Mustin said.

Over the last year, Saildrone platforms have totaled over 10,000 cumulative days on the water, covering more than 380,000 nautical miles and detecting 2,376,583 vessels, according to the company.

Capt. Garrett Miller, the commodore of Surface Development Group One, made the announcements Wednesday at the Surface Navy Association’s 38th National Symposium.

“My command is really focused on operationalizing USVs for the fleet. We’re driving that really hard,” Miller said. He added that working with fully autonomous vessels requires a “completely different mindset.”

Miller confirmed to Defense News that three early command USV divisions will be formed, with assumption of command set to take place next week in San Diego.

Miller said that the service’s long-anticipated Seahawk and Sea Hunter medium USVs will no longer be experimental and will be deployed this year, telling Defense News that the Seahawk will become part of a carrier strike group. The deployments will take place beginning in the next month.

The Seahawk and Sea Hunter are the Navy’s first medium autonomous USVs, and are both nearly 135 feet long. They are primed for surveillance, equipped to send data to manned ships to aid in anti-submarine warfare and to increase reconnaissance capabilities. They were previously used in fleet exercises in 2022 and 2023.

Miller said that the Navy grew the number of small USVs it had in the force from four to hundreds within 2025 alone, and has since established a warfare officer career path for unmanned systems.

He added that the Navy will continue to acquire USVs that have containerized payloads, which could deliver a variety of kinetic effects.

Navy Secretary John Phelan delivered remarks at the 38th Annual Surface Navy Association National Symposium in Arlington, Virginia, and extolled the virtues of “radical transparency,” an end to “stupid” practices, rolling the dice on calculated risks and maintaining a posture that is ready for war at any time to better the service’s current and future fleets.

“That results in accountability and moving from a compliance-based organization to a performance-based organization,” Phelan said.

The Navy secretary emphasized the importance of sculpting the service into an organization that did not penalize individuals for raising their hand and pointing out problems, instead welcoming a culture that prioritizes accountability.

He said he noticed a desire within the Navy to change. Internal discussions within the service, according to Phelan, have noted that there is a problem with taking accountability, both with regard to the Navy and with Navy customers.

But the Navy secretary is just as concerned with owning mistakes as taking swings that might lead to them.

Phelan preached the importance of risk-taking by increasing production and ramping up shipbuilding efforts with a decreased fear of failure.

Speaking about his time before the Navy as a CEO and businessman responsible for founding several investment companies, Phelan said it became increasingly difficult to embrace risk as his companies grew larger and more successful.

Despite that hesitancy though, Phelan said he still tried to prioritize taking calculated, smart risks. Unconventional thinking and experimentation, for Phelan, were the foundations of success.

The same applies to the Navy, he said.

According to Phelan, there is currently the notion that something has to be perfect — right out of the gate — once it is ready for testing.

This doesn’t have to be the case, he said.

Phelan hopes to move the Navy away from a zero-defect mentality and increase speed.

An uptick in output can lead to mistakes and failures, but from those failures, lessons can be learned, he reiterated.

During his visits to shipyards, Phelan said he’d also noticed “stupid” practices that resulted from underinvestment and should be fixed to improve conditions for workers: A bathroom a mile away from welders; a supply bin two miles away from welders and pipefitters; bad parking that caused hour-long delays for workers getting into the office — these were logistic issues that Phelan said needed solving.

The Navy secretary further emphasized the need to outpace near-peer adversaries like the People’s Republic of China — which he said by 2030 was projected to possess nearly half of the overall global industrial capacity — in order to maintain maritime dominance abroad and specifically in the Indo-Pacific.

In 2022, China had approximately 1,800 ships under construction, whereas the U.S. had five, Phelan pointed out. China also had roughly 100 million people working in manufacturing, whereas the U.S. had fewer than 13 million, according to the Navy secretary.

Phelan said he visited a defense company that made missiles, whose name he declined to mention, on a Thursday at 11:00 a.m. and was shocked to find only 18 people working that day in a 250,000 square foot facility.

The lack of boots on the ground drove him to ask a question he said he’s asked many times during his time as Navy secretary:

“What would we do if we were at war?”

The U.S. needs to prepare so that it can fight international conflicts whenever it is called upon to do so, Phelan said.

“We should behave like we’re playing Miami or Indiana [football] every weekend,” he said.

That type of vigilance is hard to maintain, but if warfighters are doing it, so should everyone else, he said.

Conflicts can break out at any time, said Phelan.

“‘I wish’ is a really bad thing when it comes to warfare,” he concluded.