The key is to develop, mass-produce, and transfer Shahed-like drones to Ukrainian forces, enabling them to overwhelm and strike Russian targets in occupied Ukraine at the scale and frequency required to help defeat the invasion.

The Shahed-136 is an Iranian-developed suicide drone that Tehran transferred to Russia, along with its smaller cousin, the Shahed-131. It is a propeller-driven, carbon-fiber airframe that typically relies on satellite guidance, can carry a warhead of up to 40 kilograms, and has a range of around 1,000 kilometers. Most of its components are Western-made, commercially available and not particularly complex, keeping production costs low, reportedly $20,000 to $30,000 per drone.

Perhaps due to this simplicity, Western militaries have mostly overlooked such systems — but that is a mistake.

Essentially a propeller-driven cruise missile, the Shahed-136 serves a similar role as Tomahawk cruise missiles, primarily striking operational or strategic targets from standoff distance. While Tomahawks have superior range, speed, and warhead size, they cost up to $2 million each, roughly 100 times more than a Shahed. Using massed attacks of low cost Shaheds in conjunction with cruise missiles, Russia has overwhelmed Ukrainian air defenses and forced Ukraine to expend scarce interceptor missiles.

Russia has used Shaheds to strike bridges, fuel-storage facilities, and even frontline targets, but they have likely done the most damage by striking electrical sub-stations. While Ukraine is reportedly downing between half to three-fourths of incoming Shaheds, many still get through. Reportedly, Moscow is seeking to secure hundreds or even thousands more.

While the United States is bolstering Ukraine’s air defenses, defense alone is insufficient. Kyiv needs a Shahed-like capability to strike Russian military targets well behind the frontlines, especially bases in Crimea, which are mostly outside the range of the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb.

With such drones, Ukraine could attack targets such as ports, airbases, and supply nodes beyond the range of its currently fielded weapons. Examples include Sevastopol Naval Base, the port of Berdyansk, Russia’s logistics hubs in Luhansk and Dzhankoi, and the Saki, Belbek, and Gvardeyskoye airbases in Crimea. Hitting these targets would diminish Russian combat power, disrupt command and control, impede logistics, and force the redeployment of finite air defense assets. Put simply, it’ll help Ukraine win the war faster.

Indeed, Ukraine has already conducted sporadic drone strikes on Russian military targets in occupied Crimea and elsewhere using what appear to be long-range suicide drones. The Ukrainian military has attacked Sevastopol naval base and Belbek airbase in Crimea several times, and strikes on the Engels-2 and Dyagilevo airbases damaged multiple aircraft. While Kyiv lacks enough drones for a major air campaign, these operations provide proof of concept and should be scaled up dramatically.

Unfortunately, the U.S. military does not appear to field systems, at least in large quantities, directly analogous to the Shahed-136. Washington has provided Kyiv with the Switchblade-300 loitering munition and plans to send the larger Switchblade-600, but these systems have much smaller warheads and shorter ranges. The Gray Eagle, a system U.S. senators are pushing the Biden administration to provide, is roughly similar to the Turkish TB-2, which Russian air defenses have rendered largely ineffective as a strike platform since early in the war. Details of the Phoenix Ghost program are scarce, but if it were providing Ukraine the ability to conduct an extensive air campaign behind Russian lines, that fact would be readily visible in open sources.

Kyiv is working on building its own answer to the Shahed-136, but Ukraine’s defense industry has limited capacity, thanks in part to Russian attacks on factories. In fact, the CEO of a Ukrainian drone company said in October that only 20 percent of the military’s demand for drones had been met. Kyiv continues to lose drones in battle, so the shortage almost certainly persists.

However, the United States has the necessary industrial capacity to fill this gap. If industry avoids the dual pitfalls of overengineering and low production rates that have bedeviled many recent procurement programs, Ukraine could receive large quantities of drones in short order.

Iran builds Shaheds from commercially available components to simplify design, accelerate production, and reduce costs — and U.S. industry should do the same. While sophisticated seekers, guidance systems, and engines would improve the functionality of the drones, what Ukraine needs is a “good enough” solution delivered quickly at scale, not an exquisite solution delivered after the war ends.

Iranian factories have a production rate of 150 Shahed-136s per month, according to a Ukrainian military-affiliated source. But Ukraine needs thousands of similar weapons. If Washington moves quickly and keeps the design simple, it should be able to meet this need, enabling Ukraine to use masses of drones in each attack, compared to Russia’s current rate of only two or three dozen per salvo.

As the United States rediscovers its role as the arsenal of democracy, the Biden administration should provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs now, not look for optimal solutions that will take years to develop. Necessity is the mother of invention, and what Kyiv needs now is a way to strike Russian forces throughout occupied Ukraine with large quantities of relatively inexpensive munitions. That’s exactly what a mass-produced U.S. version of the Shahed-136 would provide.

Ryan Brobst is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

All have taken a toll on the global economy, creating ripple effects for the defense industry and its labor force.

How to cope with this volatile economy is a key focus for the participants in this year’s Outlook project.

This edition, which offers forecasts for 2023 from representatives across the globe, differs from our previous approach. You’ll still hear from government and military leaders, industry executives, and analysts, but the essays are now accompanied by one-on-one interviews, forward-looking articles and infographics.

The writers are concerned about a range of topics — from inflation to defense budgets to supply chain security — and they discuss how to solve these issues.

Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, talked about the future of the war-torn nation’s defense industry when Russia’s invasion ends.

Meanwhile, Poland’s defense minister is determined to exceed NATO’s target — that each alliance member spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense — as a way for the country to modernize its armed forces.

Poland’s recent spending spree included deals for South Korean systems (FA-50 fighter jets, K2 Black Panther tanks, K9 Thunder howitzers, K10 resupply vehicles and K239 Chunmoo multiple-rocket launchers), and the European nation leased a set of MQ-9A Reaper drones from American company General Atomics.

For the U.S. Navy’s top civilian, Carlos Del Toro, economics and national security go hand in hand. This, he said, will come in the form of supporting allies and partners abroad, deterring China from trespassing on exclusive economic zones, and addressing quality-of-life issues for service members amid rising inflation.

And on the issue of sustainability, Amentum CEO John Heller warned of a “perfect storm” that the world can still fight off through investments in energy efficiency.

Our reporting in this Outlook edition speaks to each domain of warfare: The U.S. Air Force is getting a new bomber, and that means changes are coming to the service’s existing fleet. The U.S. Army is moving toward another phase as it seeks to replace the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. The U.S. Navy’s secretive Project Overmatch is headed for deployment at sea. Plus, America’s dominance in space was no easy task, as seen through the lens of the Space Development Agency; and there’s more to be done.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence and quantum computing are among NATO’s top acquisition priorities for the new year.

So what to expect in 2023?

If last month’s G20 summit — a meeting of some of the world’s largest economies — is any indication, count on more transitions to clean energy, efforts to recover from the coronavirus and updates to agricultural trade rules.

And consider the summit’s final declaration, which said “most members strongly condemned” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

That ongoing divergence of opinion over a war — one that triggered sanctions, higher food prices and a ramp-up of defense production — will likely further roil the global economy for the year to come.

As the largest ground war since World War II rages on NATO’s borders—a war to which the United States has already committed $15 billion in security assistance to Ukraine at the time of writing—our own once unparalleled defense industrial base is lagging in the global competition for the adoption of emerging technologies.

Yet, scores of emerging national-security-focused technology companies are quietly strengthening Ukraine’s ability to navigate the operational environment, for far fewer dollars than governments are expending in the same pursuit.

Congress must ensure that our warfighters gain the most value possible from government and private sector technology development. Unfortunately, it is still challenging for companies to work with DoD due to years of unrealized reform proposals.

This issue is becoming acute. Existing DoD systems and process do not allow the Department to take full advantage of advancements derived from private investment in startups outside of the traditional defense supplier ecosystem. DoD must become a better buyer and customer of commercial products; one that understands industry incentives and market drivers.

I recently traveled to California to discuss and learn what DoD’s current roadblocks mean for our national defense with key stakeholders, including the Silicon Valley Defense Group, a nonprofit that connects the founders, capital and ideas that are driving promising techno-security developments with DoD. Like SVDG, I am invigorated by the bipartisan support for exploring how dual-use technologies and private capital will advance a broad mandate for defense innovation.

I am committed to finding solutions—the U.S. remains the most innovative country in the world, powered by its private sector, yet DoD is not taking advantage of the incredible innovation ecosystem at its disposal. And what has become abundantly clear in recent years, is that it will never do so unless Congress holds the Department accountable through consistent oversight. It is imperative that the 118th Congress step up and take the lead, leveraging its unique authorities and critical oversight mission to drive the development of cross-cutting relationships between startups, investors, and the defense ecosystem.

Silicon Valley’s earliest focus was on pioneering defense technology, and Congress must reinvigorate this partnership to meet 21st-century challenges. To this end, I propose three areas of focus for the 118th Congress to rebuild a “Defense Valley” that supports and promotes innovation to advance our national defense.

Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution

PPBE is the framework and methodology by which DoD allocates resources, resulting in an annual defense budget request. Developed 60-plus years ago when DoD could still largely dictate technology markets and trends, today it is woefully anachronistic.

A new model is required; one that marries agility with reimagined incentive structures for risk-tolerance, innovation, creativity, and fiscal responsibility. I am encouraged by the thoughtful appointments to the newly-formed Commission on PPBE Reform, and I eagerly await its findings and recommendations, particularly in such areas as the ‘color’ of money, and ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ funding, all of which are inflexible, outdated components of a process that no longer serves DoD’s need for agility and speed.

Small Business Innovation Research Program

The SBIR program is a conceptually useful but practically challenged acquisition mechanism for procuring innovative technologies. Despite being promoted as “America’s Seed Fund,” the program is not designed for startups that want to scale rapidly.

Restrictions, like limiting entrants to companies with less than 50% VC equity-ownership, create a high barrier to entry for startups that have already relinquished ownership stakes as they pass through rounds of funding. Further, some companies are granted multiple awards without commercializing or scaling into programs of record—compounding the program’s challenges.

Acquisition mechanisms reforms have a role to play in fueling defense innovation but must be implemented in ways that further that outcome. To that end, I recommend: eliminating the 50% restriction on institutional investment equity-ownership to compete for SBIR grants; exploring effective incentives for companies to focus on progressing and scaling from the early-stage research and development SBIR grants they receive; and aligning incentives between public and private stakeholders to explore a new program to access and scale private sector R&D for DoD purposes, but specifically focused on high-growth startups.

Defense Innovation Unit

Created in 2015 and called “America’s most promising effort to bridge the divide between pressing national security requirements and commercial technology,” DIU is tasked with accelerating DoD commercial technology adoption through partnership with cutting-edge startups.

Born as an experiment, DIU has succeeded beyond expectations, beginning over 175 projects, and transitioning capabilities from 48% of those projects across DoD. Leveraging relationships in Silicon Valley and other tech and VC hubs across the country, DIU realized over $100 billion in R&D for critical emerging technologies—proving the viability and efficacy of its “Fast Follower Strategy” for DoD and American taxpayers. But DIU’s funding profile in recent years does not match its proven successes nor its recent Congressional validation.

Moreover, whereas DIU once reported to the Secretary of Defense (SecDef)—signaling its importance to the Department’s success—it now sits under the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, a component focused on prototyping versus scaling, thus significantly decreasing its organizational effectiveness.

Between manpower shortages, degraded contracting authorities, and indefensibly low funding, DIU is not positioned to make the difference on which our national security depends. To that end, I recommend: realigning DIU to report directly to the SecDef; correcting the unsatisfactory FY23 President’s Budget request; and ensuring that DIU receives stable and adequate future funding befitting of its critical role.

The Pentagon has proven that the only way it will begin to adopt the necessary best practices in acquisition and procurement is if Congress meaningfully holds it accountable for doing so. The 118th Congress must act to empower DoD decision makers prepare for long-term strategic competition.

The sooner Washington realizes that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge against China and that “business-as-usual” will unequivocally lead to defeat, the sooner we can course correct.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., is vice ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee.

Jim Taiclet, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin, put it this way in a recent earnings call: “The clutch isn’t engaged yet.”

“It’s going to take two to three years,” he told analysts. “That’s for our allies as well because they not only have to go through their own processes internally, they then have to go through generally the [U.S.] Foreign Military Sales process.”

Indeed, these kinds of changes are slower to emerge when it comes to company revenue, and that may be why much of this year’s Defense News Top 100 list looks similar to last year. (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies and Boeing predictably take the top spots.)

That said, there are some notable changes. Peraton, which made several major acquisitions, has jumped nearly 75 slots to join Leidos, Amentum and Booz Allen Hamilton as the largest U.S. government services contractors.

KBR, which is 32nd, also jumped up the list, while Ukrainian conglomerate Ukroboronprom surged eight spots.

Of course, the list doesn’t capture everything. Only one Russian company participated this year, giving us limited insight into the country’s defense industry. We rely on analysts to provide the data for Chinese companies.

And some of the major players in technology, from Amazon to Google, provide only limited windows into their defense work, meaning we can’t include them on the list because we don’t have a clear understanding of the scope of their defense work.

It’s a reminder that this list isn’t perfect, but what we hope it provides is a meaningful view of the industry and how it changes — or doesn’t — from year to year. It can show trends in sales, acquisitions and geopolitics. And this year’s list does that.

It’s a snapshot that we hope will serve as a useful tool for readers.

See the Top 100 list here

This year’s Outlook project, which focuses on national security expectations for the coming year, includes contributions from defense ministers, alliance leaders, government directors, military officers, industry executives and analysts.

Naturally, Russia and China are top of mind, and while perspectives from those nations are rare in American media, the director general of Russian firm Almaz-Antey — the 20th largest defense company in the world, according to this year’s Top 100 rankings — weighs in on conflicts in new domains.

All of the authors illustrate how they see the current geopolitical situation as well as what they expect to come. For the Western-aligned writers, that means a focus on multilateral cooperation, which is already critical among all domains – land, air, sea, space and cyberspace.

From a NATO perspective, Russia is either directly testing alliance members along the bloc’s eastern front, or it’s putting pressure on those countries by proxy (look no further than the Belarus-Poland border crisis).

In the Indo-Pacific region, China’s ever-growing influence and military presence has Australia playing catch-up. Defence Minister Melissa Price warns that her country’s “strategic environment is deteriorating more rapidly than anticipated.”

Circling back to Russia, the director general of Almaz-Antey points to the United States’ proliferation of unmanned and space-based technology as a sign that future conflicts will more often play out close to or above our atmosphere.

However, one could argue Russia’s use of an anti-satellite weapon in November, which reportedly created more than 1,500 pieces of space debris, is accelerating the militarization of space.

For its part, industry leaders want their government customers to know that if their militaries are to have the most advanced technology available, they need to remember that innovation doesn’t come free.

So what to expect in 2022?

It’s always impossible to know, and this year it’s partly due to the unpredictability of certain international actors. But from the tone of these essays and the threats presented, it’s easy to surmise industry will get the capital it’s seeking.

The answer appears to be that national security firms have fared well. Very well.

Consider that six of the 10 largest U.S. defense companies had revenues jump by 6 percent or more — a total of about $11 billion — from fiscal 2019. And all seven Chinese firms on the list grew during the last year as well.

See the 2021 Top 100 list here!

The pandemic has shown — or maybe exposed — a workforce in which everyone is always online, always connected and, during the last 16 months, always on the job. That’s also true of the national security community. During this era of gray zone conflict, information warfare and cyberattacks, it’s often felt like there has been no letting up, no pause, no time to catch a breath.

At the same time, this year’s list marks yet another significant shift in how the industry is changing. Last summer, I mentioned that the Top 100 is part art and part science but that every year we push it a bit closer to science. We succeeded in that vision for 2021.

This year’s list includes more than 20 new names. Part of that is due to mergers since last summer. For example, Raytheon Technologies — the result of a combined United Technologies Corporation and Raytheon Company — makes its debut at No. 2.

Some of those new additions are due to a more aggressive approach on our part to seek out information on defense revenues from companies around the world or from firms we either overlooked or for which we couldn’t previously find revenue figures.

As evidence, last year’s 100th company on the list had just less than $300 million in defense revenue. This year, the 100th firm has just less than $600 million.

And some of the change serves as proof of the shifting demands of modern warfare.

Among the companies that are new — or returning — to the Top 100 are the cyber firm ManTech, the space company Parsons Corporation, the satellite imagery company Maxar Technologies, sensor company FLIR Systems, and emerging technologies company Alion Science and Technology. For all the talk of a digital, net-centric battlespace, this year’s list may best reflect how industry is bending and evolving toward that future.

The primary story in the defense industry has been one of relentless growth. A decade ago, 15 companies had $5 billion in defense revenue. Today, we know of at least 24 companies that reach the same threshold.

By next year at this time, we will know if a coronavirus could slow the defense economy down or if even a once-in-a-generation pandemic is a mere hiccup.

Victory in the next major conflict could very well depend on the effectiveness of drones — from their swarm capabilities to their surveillance and artificial intelligence technologies. In “Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future,” author and Defense News correspondent Seth J. Frantzman wonders: Who will be this victorious drone superpower?

The following excerpt was edited for length and clarity.

What if an enemy got a hold of this technology and used it against us? U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Robert Neller warned in April 2019 that drone swarms were heading our way.

Neller was sure that the future was not defending against enemy bombers, but “I think the real future in enemy air attack is going to be swarming drones.”

The Marines put a compact radar and electronic warfare device that looks like a giant pastry on top of jeeps. Called the Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or LMADIS, it can detect and kill drones. The Low Altitude Air Defense detachment of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 166 of the Thirteenth Marine Expeditionary Unit got to try it out. In July 2019, the Marines aboard the amphibious assault ship Boxer in the Arabian Gulf used the system to kill an Iranian drone.

The Air Force also built a satellite dish system called Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder, or THOR, at Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico, that it tested in 2019. The unexotic system moves around in a storage container and uses a microwave burst to kill drones, like a flashlight blasting insects.

The rapid need to confront drone threats came in the wake not only of what the Iranians and the Islamic State group were doing but also an attack in Venezuela showing that a simple commercial drone could be armed with C4 explosives.

The technology to create drone swarms and confront them exists, but putting the anti-swarm technology at every base and location wasn’t possible. Even if counter-drone technology was deployed after laborious testing, the chance that a country or terrorist group using a drone swarm would also run into a base defended by the latest anti-drone technology to see how both work in actual combat is unlikely.

If the U.S. ever had to go to war with a major power such as China, then it could get to see if the swarms work against other advanced technology, but that is also a big gamble to take with the technology for the first time. This means all the prophecies about drone swarms changing the face of war are exciting, but they haven’t come to fruition. Iran’s attack on Saudi Arabia in September 2019 may have been a drone-swarm Pearl Harbor; but just as another 1941 Pearl Harbor never happened again, it may be that another Abqaiq won’t happen in the same way again. If it does happen, it will be faster, deadlier and more destructive.

A new world order

“UAVs are transforming current campaigns against extremists and enabling an entirely different way of pursuing combat operations in which we enable host-nation forces in a way that we never could in the past and help them defeat enemies like the Islamic State in their incarnation as an army, and then help host-nation forces pursue the remaining ISIS elements operating as insurgents and terrorists,” former CIA Director and retired Gen. David Petraeus told the author on March 14, 2020. He said that drones, “unmanned ships, tanks, subs, robots, computers and every additional conceivable system are also going to transform how we fight all campaigns. Over time, the man in the loop may be in developing the algorithm, not the operation of the unmanned system itself.”

The search for better drones came about the way it did in large part because the systems were successful in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, that led to lethargy and complacency in the world’s first drone superpower. There was no rapid need to develop new systems. Instead, there were experiments, and billions were spent on ideas. There was pushback from commanders who wanted traditional manned airplanes, like the F-35.

On the drone front, advances in technology were making drones more capable for everyone except the people with guns. Militaries were lagging behind in developing capabilities. Civilian drones led the way. China-based DJI had begun operations in 2006 and introduced the Phantom I in 2013. The Mavic was introduced in 2016 as a compact, portable drone. By then, DJI was on the way to gobbling up 72 percent of the global market for commercial drones, and by 2017 it had become a billion-dollar business.

DJI drones were used throughout the U.S. armed forces, along with some other smaller drones, such as Pumas and Switchblades, which were made by U.S.-based Aerovironment. But the Army was becoming more cyber-savvy. Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, deputy chief for plans and preparations, sent a letter in 2017 to commanders and soldiers telling them to cease and desist: “Uninstall all DJI applications, remove all batteries/storage media from devices, and secure equipment for follow on direction.”

The U.S. was right to be concerned about cybersecurity. In January 2018, users online noted that the Strava jogging app mistakenly revealed the courses special forces were running on secret bases in Syria, all because users’ jogging patterns were open to all.

Cheap, top secret and bizarre

Filling the gaps in the drone war was the name of the game after 2017. The U.S. and other countries now had a wide array of new products to test, and they were also trying to backfill in a bevy of vulnerabilities with new technology. For instance, General Atomics in San Diego, California, wanted to put a laser on its Avenger.

In March 2019, at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona, flying over the majestic high desert, another futuristic drone called the XQ-58A Valkyrie took flight. It was supposed to be able to penetrate enemy air defense. It was designed to be low cost and was pushed by the Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio.

The plane, which basically looks like the stealthy F-117 with its cockpit cut off, was built by Kratos, a company that was also making the drone swarm dubbed “Gremlins.” The XQ-58 would cost only several million dollars each. After so much spending, the Air Force was now looking to develop ideas that were affordable — perhaps drones that could be wingmen, or fly more autonomously and conduct missions themselves. The new shoestring budget was called low-cost, attritable aircraft technology.

Another futuristic idea was Skyborg, which was supposed to fly by 2023. It would be cheap and easy to replace, a kind of flying pod that could accompany aircraft. Acquisition director Will Roper said that Skyborg would take off, land by itself and fly in all weather conditions. These ideas were gaining traction because the new U.S. National Security Strategy envisioned more great power competition with states such as China, Russia or Iran. Now was the time to have more diverse options beyond the Predator and Global Hawk lines.

This was a positive shift, argued Paul Scharre, the vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security. He hinted that the U.S. hadn’t built new platforms since 2009, noting that they relied on three combat aircraft: the F-35, the F-22 and the future B-21. “Diversity is really helpful to complicate things for the adversary.”

The real story was probably that the Air Force was reticent to plow money into new drones when its pilots wanted resources for their planes. Lt. Gen. Dave Deptula of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said the Skyborg wouldn’t step on toes: “They have the potential for dramatically changing the game in the conduct of air operations.”

At the other extreme end of the drone world, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Squad X idea was supposed to put tiny drones with artificial intelligence in the hands of soldiers. By 2020, the U.S. was drawing down soldiers in Afghanistan, its most successful field-testing ground for UAVs. The tiniest drones were called Black Hornets and could fly for 25 minutes. The Army hoped these insect-sized drones might one day become “standard.”

The Air Force also wanted more small UAVs. It already had fielded more than 150 Batcam drones for tactical air controllers, and it was looking at more micro-drones. The Batcam had the unusual luck of ending up in the Air Force museum. But America’s pilots still hadn’t settled on something that would be as widespread as Predator had been in the past. By 2019, the U.S. wanted to buy another 1,000 combat drones by 2030 and some 43,000 smaller or other surveillance drones.

The U.S. Army also used its other transaction authority — a loophole that lets it grab up new products to meet a need at up to $100 million a pop — to look at smaller drones that are man-packable, hoping to have something versatile to give to soldiers in the field. These drones can be carried in a backpack, making them ideal for small units or infantry at the front line. It wasn’t sure what the future would hold, wrapping up operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but wanted a new range of drones for the next wars.

The Marines were also pushing for a capability for their ships, something called Marine Air-Ground Task Force Unmanned Aerial System Expeditionary, or MUX for short. This word salad of a name first looked like an X-wing from “Star Wars” and then a flying “V” with a prop in the front, and was supposed to be ready by 2026.

The fact that the Marines predicted this would take most of a decade to fly shows how sluggish U.S. planners were. They had been wanting these systems since 2015, when slide shows the Marines made called it “MQ-X.”

A study submitted to Congress had suggested tactical UAVs could move items to front-line troops, such as blood plasma or communications equipment. For the Army, more man-portable, platoon-level UAVs were supposed to be rolled out. In 2018, the Army decided it wanted to replace its fleet of tactical Shadow drones, seeking ideas for a “Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (FTUAS).”

Martin UAV and Northrop Grumman came up with one idea — the V-Bat — while Textron Systems made something called the AAI Aerosonde, which looks like an Israeli twin-boom surveillance drone.

In fact, it showed not much had changed since the 1980s when it comes to how things look. Throughout 2020, various U.S. Army units, from Kentucky to Washington state and from Texas to North Carolina, would test and use the drones. They wanted something that didn’t need much of a runway and had better optics, made less sound, and didn’t need much extra stuff lying about to fly and control it. On the positive side, the zoo of new options showed everyone was finally getting access to drones.

The problem for the U.S. military was it didn’t really know what it wanted in the future. In an October 2019 meeting, Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that the U.S. should assess the possibility of using drones as a low-cost and highly available alternative to manned airplanes: “I think we need a road map for RPAs [remotely piloted aircraft] in terms of what are the new missions that we can begin to transition over to RPAs and some new operational concepts.”

Older aircraft, such as the Reaper, may have been jealous of these new concepts. If you’re an old dog, you need to learn new tricks: The Reaper took off and landed autonomously for the first time in October 2018.

This was the tip of the iceberg of U.S. problems. In dropping ideas like the futuristic X-47, or keeping them under wraps as classified programs, the Navy moved toward creating yet another experiment, a drone tanker MQ-25. It first flew in September 2019. Various countries’ air forces kept pushing a loyal wingman program, basically a drone mule that would help manned aircraft.

In early May 2020, Boeing finally got the go-ahead from the Royal Australian Air Force to introduce the Airpower Teaming System, which it had unveiled in 2019. The plane is sleek and looks like a normal fighter plane if you chopped the top off and kept the wings and half the fuselage. It is paired with fighter aircraft to help carry out some duties.

Another problem was trying to plan for the future war by uploading the correct data to the drones once they were flying in a crowded airspace. The future war would have an airspace that would be crowded like a highway with helicopter drones, like the futuristic Bell V-247, swarms of mini-drones, kamikaze drones fired from tubes on ships, tactical catapult-launched drones by Marines landing on a beach, and drones flown by special ops soldiers on a hill nearby.

All that would be watched by a stealthy flying wing and a combat air patrol of other drones armed with Hellfire missiles. Eventually, they would run into each other. So another acronym had to be invented: Air Space Total Awareness for Rapid Tactical Execution.

In 2020, DARPA went looking for a network that could coordinate everything. The Israelis already had it in something called a “glass battlefield” being built for the Germans, which would network all units together on the battlefield. This was part of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ BNET communications system and Fire Weaver that was supposed to digitize units at the front line so they wouldn’t have to rely on cumbersome mountains of radios and different systems to talk to different units.

For more, visit the publisher’s page at https://posthillpress.com/book/drone-wars-pioneers-killing-machines-artificial-intelligence-and-the-battle-for-the-future.

Australia’s defense reporters are being denied access to senior Department of Defence officials under a clampdown imposed by new Defence Minister Peter Dutton.

Dutton took office on March 30, becoming the sixth person to hold the position since the coalition government gained power in September 2013, and it is no coincidence that the Australian Department of Defence has become significantly less transparent under his watch.

The situation has now deteriorated to the point that department staff were given new guidelines as to how it should engage — or not — with reporters. According to Kym Bergmann, editor of Australia Pacific Defence Reporter, if these guidelines are enforced (and they overwhelmingly are being enforced), no member may speak with the media without approval from the minister’s office.

Citing the guidance document, Bergmann wrote that officials were told to keep responses to media queries “as brief and succinct as possible,” limit all answers to three paragraphs regardless of question complexity, shy away from “capability-related interviews,” and instead revert to written responses.

I have not seen those guidelines, but my experience has been consistent with them. At the least, my last 10 requests for interviews across a range of subjects were met with a response, either on or after deadline, which “politely declines” the request without further reason. Even a benign request to speak with the chief of the Royal Australian Air Force about the service’s 100th anniversary was declined, and at least one industry-led media visit has been canceled without explanation.

This is a concern, as recently leaked reports suggest all is not well with high-profile acquisition programs, such as the Royal Australian Navy’s AU$80 billion (U.S. $62 billion) future submarine program and the removal of the Army’s Battlefield Management System on security grounds. Despite the latter story breaking in April, neither the Defence Department nor its minister has commented on the matter, and media queries have similarly been met with no response.

The complaints are not limited to members of the media. The subject came up at a recent hearing in Canberra with the Senate Standing Committees on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade, during where senior officials were questioned by Sen. Penny Wong, the leader of the opposition in the legislative body.

According to the official transcript, Wong asked whether Dutton or his office has provided direction to the department. In response, Associate Secretary of Defence Katherine Jones confirmed she saw media reports of a leaked email.

“My understanding is that came from an email that was sent by someone within the department purporting to paraphrase it,” she said.

When pressed to reveal who paraphrased it and circulated it, Jones replied: “It was a low-level officer within the organization.”

During the hearing, Jones pointed the finger firmly at the minister’s office as the original source of the email. “The email that was sent did not come from my area. It was someone summarizing the advice that has been provided to the senior leadership,” she said.

Whatever the genesis of the missive, its message has now been passed down to the unit level within the services, warning personnel about speaking with the media.

The Department of Defence has historically been quick to raise the drawbridge when facing sustained media scrutiny about late and over-budget acquisition programs. In this case, it would appear the departmental “guidelines” are either direct instructions, or have been zealously adopted to prevent the leaking of information that would reflect poorly on the government.

Either way, the ultimate loser from this lack of transparency is the Australian taxpayer.

Whether this is a direct policy across the current government, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison; the Minister for Defence, or a junior staffer within his office, is not yet clear. But one thing is certain: Defense reporting in a country which regards itself one of the worlds’ most stable democracies just became a lot harder.

The attached JPEG resembled a Defense News story complete with my byline, but instead of my work, it was a cocktail of lies and paranoia. There was the layout of one of my stories about the new defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, but some of the words matched a Washington Post article ― and it included both a false headline about Austin “defunding and dismantling” the U.S. Army and an equally false quote about America looking to China for its national defense.

Over the next few days, I received more than five dozen emails from strangers, most of them fearful this viral fake news was true. Meanwhile, I watched the meme stubbornly spread on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and maybe most of all Telegram, a chat app popular with QAnon adherents that was first developed in Russia.

“Did you in fact write this article? If so is there some back up for it? I am a retired Marine and frankly this scares the shit out of me,” one man wrote.

For the first two days, I alerted the trickle of Facebook users who’d reposted it. But a search of Facebook on Sunday revealed a soul-crushing cascade: The image had been reposted dozens of times.

Weeks after a disinformation-fueled siege at the U.S. Capitol where lawmakers were confirming the national election results, this was an uncomfortably close look at a threat that has long worried national security experts and scholars. The disinformation crisis will be a challenge for President Joe Biden, who called out the “attack on democracy and truth” in his inaugural address by saying: “We must reject the culture in which facts themselves are manipulated and even manufactured.”

Expect an uphill fight. A 2018 study of Twitter by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that false news travels faster than true stories, and not due to bots programmed to disseminate inaccurate stories but rather because of people retweeting them.

False news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories, the study found, and it takes true stories about six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it does for false stories to reach the same number of people.

Digital investigations

According to Benjamin Decker, the founder and chief executive of the digital investigations consultancy Memetica, the Austin image and some associated text seemed to have first appeared on the online forum 4chan on Jan. 20, two days before a reader emailed me and before it jumped to multiple platforms and message boards. Decker has likened the authors of these sorts of memes to brushfire arsonists who want sparks to jump firebreaks into more mainstream platforms, where others will fan the flames.

Where did this one come from? That’s unclear.

Authorities have warned that Russia, China and others are using cyber-enabled information operations to exacerbate existing tensions within the United States and between it and its allies. Some of the clumsy language in the fake Austin quote — “We are looking at China to rely on regarding our national defense” — suggested to Decker the meme may have been developed overseas. He noted it received some “suspicious amplification” from the “Republicans Worldwide” Facebook page, which has previously carried Russian-made memes.

One of the Telegram accounts that posted the piece is attributed to retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, an 83-year-old former Fox News analyst and military adviser for the Trump campaign known for making debunked claims about voter fraud. The account has an incredible reach with more than 80,000 subscribers.

But when I called the real McInerney, he told me it was not him.

“I’m not on any social media, so someone is trying to discredit me,” McInerney said. “I’ve sent at least four emails to Telegram to ask that my name be removed. Others have called me, and it’s obvious Telegram is complicit.”

What about the premise that Austin might end the U.S. Army and outsource the country’s defense to China?

“Ridiculous,” McInerney said, adding that Austin was the best appointment Biden has made. “Austin is a general officer I have great respect for, and I’m actually surprised he would want to work in this administration.”

President Donald Trump’s departure has left the pro-Trump and QAnon communities disillusioned, fractured and flocking to alternative platforms such as Gab and Telegram after mainstream sites banned them. As these communities look for new narratives, account holders purporting to have served in the military can lend credibility to fake conspiracy theories.

“In the post-election era of QAnon, they need some sort of validation or verification, and what there’s been recently, especially in the run-up to Jan. 20, are these new QAnon channels on Telegram impersonating senior military officials,” Decker said.

Impersonating a media brand can do the same. “You’re kind of hijacking the brand in order to push a certain narrative, and that’s something that we’ve seen time and time again,” Decker said.

Fighting brush fires

What I learned while alerting those Facebook users was depressing but also reassuring. After finding the images by searching for keywords, I was sometimes parachuting into threads where debates were already happening about the meme’s veracity. Many concluded it was fake after searching for the nonexistent story itself, and one QAnon thread even hosted a version of the meme emblazoned with big red letters: “FAKE!!”

“I haven’t seen this anywhere,” one Facebook user replied to another. “Trust me I have some concerns about the ‘new admin’ but I do want to make sure I get info from various sources.”

One woman I alerted was embarrassed, but I offered that the item was crafted to be deceptive and that she and I were its victims.

I work hard to provide accurate information, with context, to educate the public, and the meme was upsetting to me because my name had been used to do the opposite. Not only was it damaging to my credibility, but political lies ― as shown by the deadly insurrection at the Capitol ― damage our democracy.

It was dispiriting that my flagging of several dozen individual posts as “false news” through Facebook’s own notification system had no immediate effect. Only after Defense News and Memetica contacted Facebook did the memes disappear en masse.

For its part, Facebook said its team determined that the posts violated its policies toward digitally altered images leading to disinformation, that it deleted them and that similar posts should be automatically screened in the future.

Several users I contacted acknowledged the meme was false but stubbornly left it up because, to them, it showed larger truths about the new Biden administration.

“Not as farfetched as you think,” one man replied with regard to Austin. “What do you know of his past? Why was he chosen? Why did Biden already move in Syria? Why did he just make us dependent on foreign oil? Why is he against jets just sold to UAE? Why did he support past funding for Iran? Why did his past administration take out Seal Team Six and not lend aid to Bengahzi? Not farfetched at all. Corruption runs very deep with this guy.”

But anyone with an internet connection can watch Austin’s confirmation hearing and get the facts.

The headline falsely stated: ‘Lloyd Austin, Biden’s nominee to lead the Pentagon, is considering “defunding, maybe disbanding” U.S. Army.’ Another lie was that Austin was asked how the U.S. would counter foreign threats, and he replied, “We are looking into having China to rely on regarding national defense.” If Austin had said either, it’s unlikely he’d have been confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 93-2.

Yes, some lawmakers have argued Austin lacks sufficient China experience, but Austin used his confirmation hearing to call China an adversary and note on the record the Defense Department’s “pacing” challenge. Asked how he would maintain a competitive edge against China, he gave a predictable answer: “We will present a credible deterrent to China and any other adversary that looks to take us on.”

Far from dismantling the Army, Austin ― who is a retired four-star Army general and former Army vice chief of staff ― had to reassure a skeptical Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., during the hearing that he would not show favoritism toward the Army over the other services.

Claims that Austin, the country’s first Black defense secretary, was considering defunding the Army echoed the “defund the police” slogan that became common during the George Floyd protests this summer. However, Biden’s campaign platform has promised $300 million for police departments to hire more officers, and he’s rejected the “defund police” label.

In the end it was just a slapdash mix of issues on America’s political fault lines, and it might have taken somebody 15 minutes to assemble. But that’s all it needed to catch fire online.

More access: President-elect Joe Biden made daily briefings at the Pentagon and the State Department part of his formal platform. Such a move would improve transparency and strengthen relationships with allies about how national security leaders are thinking. Transparency also improves accountability. In 2018, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., told Defense News: “I worry that by failing to discuss problems, we will only ensure there is no public pressure to fix them.” Still true. Also, more details about the U.S. Air Force’s F-35, or the Advanced Battle Management System, or the secret prototype of its next-generation fighter jet would be nice.

Less jargon: This is a wish list, so let me dream, OK? Elon Musk’s greatest contribution to national security may be the Falcon 9 rocket, and SpaceX’s Starlink constellation may eventually have greater consequences. But his work attempting to abolish unnecessary acronyms, particularly if adopted by more leaders in the military, would be a significant legacy. From a well-circulated 2010 letter Musk sent SpaceX employees:

“Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees.”

CJADC2. Enough said.

A new effort at reform: Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the recently retired longtime Republican leader of the House Armed Services Committee, made defense reform one of the tenets of his time in office. Concurrently, the Pentagon’s efforts by its chief management officer found savings but did not involve the broad, sweeping measures envisioned by Congress and was shuttered. Finally, with a new administration, it’s unclear if former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s “night court” efforts at finding savings will continue. A new serious, long-lasting effort at reform is needed.

A clearer vision for the Space Force: If there’s another pew-pew-pew joke about the Space Force, it’s too soon. But for decades the military has relied on space for an information advantage. A recent briefing from Morgan Stanley noted that the Pentagon doubled spending on space in the last five years, with at least $4 billion spent to mitigate risks. How the Space Force will work to protect or extend that advantage is a worthy discussion.

A shipbuilding plan for the Navy that sticks: Industry needs a plan, or at least a core of a plan, to be able to meet the service’s needs in the future. The back-and-forth “will they, won’t they” that has hampered shipbuilding plans in recent years — most notably a dead-on-arrival plan from the White House’s national security adviser — makes it more difficult for industry to prepare and raises questions about cost and capacity, neither of which are necessary.

A meaningful public conversation about cyber operations: The SolarWinds breach has revealed how little is known about how effectively the Defense Department protects its networks. The Pentagon’s supply chain cybersecurity program known as CMMC, or the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, is admirable. But it is also looking like it is two years too late. The discussion around cyber in the federal government has centered on leaders taking greater responsibility for their agency’s cybersecurity. That approach is well-intentioned but has felt too punitive. In light of what SolarWinds has exposed, accelerating and funding protection measures, such as the adoption of zero trust, would be an easy first step.

Speedy delivery of a vaccine: I’m encouraged by the anecdotes of new ways for Defense Department employees to get work done during this time of coronavirus. I’m less optimistic the pandemic has presented opportunities for businesses or innovators trying to get in the door — the so-called lifeblood of innovation that we hear so much about. Instead, I worry that at a time of unprecedented change, leaders rely on what they already know.

The Outlook project features thoughtful ideas from some of the world’s most thoughtful minds in defense. It’s insightful. But also, do better than CJADC2.