After decades of relying on the U.S.-made Patriot interceptor system and its hit-to-kill PAC-3 munition as the most proven air defense against ballistic missiles, three new tracks are now leveraging international cooperation and a dire global need to develop and manufacture cheaper interceptor platforms.

Some officials, meanwhile, are hoping the sense of urgency leads to the fielding of the first new prototypes by the end of 2026 — years faster than today’s Patriots can be made.

It’s an ambitious ask.

The missile defense world has long described the mechanics behind anti-ballistic defense as akin to hitting a bullet out of the sky with another bullet, multiplied in difficulty by the number of simultaneous air threats coming in — a stark reminder of the mass air raids seen today in Iran and Ukraine that stretch air defenses to the breaking point.

Today’s anti-ballistic momentum began with U.S. President Donald Trump’s seemingly off-the-cuff comment at the NATO summit in Ankara earlier this month, when he pledged to grant Ukraine permission to produce Patriot missiles for the first time.

“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving ‘em enough,” Trump said, adding that the companies that make the system’s components, primarily Lockheed Martin, had not yet been consulted on the plan.

Five days later, Ukraine and nine European countries launched a coalition in Paris to field Freyja, an entirely new anti-ballistic system centered on a Ukrainian interceptor priced at roughly one-fifth of a Patriot round.

A week after that, Lockheed Martin unveiled a cheaper, faster-to-produce Patriot missile of its own. And on Wednesday, the company announced the Pentagon had awarded it another $53.86 billion for PAC-3 production, bringing its multiyear deal up to $58.62 billion and aiming to triple production capacity by the end of 2030.

The new anti-ballistics arms race has manifested largely as a result of the munitions shortage created by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, during which American forces have fired at least 1,060 to 1,430 Patriots at roughly $3.9 million apiece, draining an estimated two-thirds of America’s pre-war Patriot inventory, according to a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The diminished stockpile is compounded by the ongoing war in Ukraine, where ballistic missiles are the only threat Kyiv still needs help taking down and the one munition it has completely run out of.

With three new anti-ballistic tracks opened in July alone, NATO and its allies are aiming to shore up air defenses as quickly as possible.

Here is where the primary Patriot interceptor stands, and how the three new alternative pathways in the arms race stack up.

The standard: The Patriot interceptor

The Patriot, the U.S.-made gold standard of ground-based air defense, pairs a radar, a command post and launchers with two families of interceptor missiles, each fielded in several variants.

Lockheed Martin builds the PAC-3 MSE, the hit-to-kill round that rams ballistic missiles out of the sky, while Raytheon, which also makes the Patriot’s radars and ground systems, builds the older PAC-2 GEM-T, a round that explodes near its target and works best against aircraft and cruise missiles.

The MSE is the only Western munition that has reliably killed Russian ballistic missiles — from Iskanders to modified S-300s — in Ukrainian service. It has even downed the air-launched Kinzhal, which flies at hypersonic speeds.

That record is why the Pentagon on Wednesday awarded Lockheed a multiyear deal now worth up to $58.62 billion to triple production capacity by the end of 2030. Today, each round costs roughly $3.9 million.

“This is a once-in-a-generation moment, and we are moving with wartime urgency to deliver the Arsenal of Freedom,” Lockheed chairman and CEO Jim Taiclet said in a statement.

The grant: Ukrainian PAC-3s under US license

Trump’s pledge in Turkey would make Ukraine only the second country outside the U.S. licensed to build Patriot missiles, after Japan, which has produced them under license for decades.

Germany, the Netherlands and Spain are only now standing up a joint production line. Berlin is negotiating a license of its own and Germany’s existing GEM-T work runs through a joint venture with Raytheon rather than a national license, according to The Associated Press.

The license under discussion for Kyiv would likely cover the missiles — rather than complete batteries — and could mean final assembly from imported component kits instead of production from scratch, the AP reported.

Poland has offered to host the joint production on its territory for safety and security reasons, according to Polish news agency PAP.

“It is about securing this production, so that this production takes place in a safe location,” Polish Deputy Defense Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said in Washington on July 23.

Zelenskyy said he met with Lockheed Martin representatives while visiting the U.S. for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral on July 28, posting on Telegram that “Our teams are already working on specific solutions to move to joint production as soon as possible.”

The cost of the licensed PAC-3, meanwhile, would stay the same at close $4 million per round.

Yehor Chernev, deputy chairman of the Rada’s committee on national security, defense and intelligence, estimates Ukraine needs at least 18 to 24 months to launch a first pilot production line, “followed by more time to complete the first weapons,” per The Associated Press.

Zelenskyy is pushing for even faster joint production.

“We expect that by the end of 2026, our Ukrainian team will have the technical capability to produce U.S. missiles,” he said on July 15.

The analogue: Freyja

Freyja is a full Patriot-style anti-ballistic system that includes an interceptor, launcher, radar and command-and-control network.

The system, designed by Kyiv startup Fire Point, is built around its FP-7.X interceptor missile and various capabilities supplied by European partners.

Zelenskyy called Freyja “an analogue of Patriot, but a system for more mass production and a cheaper system.”

His comments came as he formally launched the Integrated Anti-Ballistic Missile Coalition in Paris on July 13 alongside nine other countries, including Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The FP-7.X flew for the first time in early June and is built to kill ballistic targets at roughly 15 miles up using a high-explosive fragmentation warhead rather than the PAC-3’s hit-to-kill collision — which may come in later versions — at a target price of approximately $700,000 per interceptor, or roughly one-fifth the price of a PAC-3.

The company says it will build three interceptors a day starting in August. Zelenskyy wants the system up and running within 12 months, and the coalition is targeting its first real ballistic intercept for the end of 2027.

“We have an ambitious goal: to have an MVP ready by the first half of next year,” Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told Reuters on July 27. “That is a prototype that can already demonstrate its first practical results.”

The Lockheed cost-cutter: PAC-3 ACE

Lockheed unveiled the PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector, or ACE, at the Farnborough International Airshow on July 20.

Built on the PAC-3’s fire-control system and fully linked to the Patriot and the Integrated Battle Command System that allied air defenders already run, it is designed to counter airbreathing threats — meaning weapons that rely on oxygen for propulsion — along with cruise missiles and close- and short-range ballistic missiles, a tier below the high-end targets the MSE was built to counter.

“American and allied warfighters need a solution that is battle-tested and budget-smart, and PAC-3 ACE delivers exactly that by building on the unrivaled performance of the PAC-3 MSE,” Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in the announcement.

Lockheed says it will develop and produce the round jointly with American and European industry partners.

International manufacturing is also under consideration, with the munition’s first flight expected in early 2028.

The company advertises ACE at less than half the price of an MSE, or roughly $2 million a round, without disclosing an exact figure.

Boeing’s MQ-25A is the first operational carrier-based unmanned aircraft and as the Stingray enters the force, it is intended to relieve the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornets of their aerial refueling role.

“Integrating unmanned refueling extends the lethality of our Carrier Strike Groups and equips our force with a decisive advantage to fight and win against any adversary,” Cao wrote in a post on X.

The Stingray has reached milestone C, which in the defense acquisition process, authorizes a program to transition from the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase into production and deployment — a process that in this instance has been nearly eight years in the making.

Inked in 2018, the $805 million Boeing-Navy contract covered the design, development, fabrication, test and delivery of four Stingray aircraft, a program that the service expects will cost about $13 billion for 72 aircraft, according to previous Military Times coverage.

Despite its first test flight running a year later than previously planned, on April 25 the Stingray inched closer to operability when it successfully completed its first flight from Mascoutah, Illinois.

The MQ-25A was airborne for roughly two hours, according to a Navy release, with Navy and Boeing Air Vehicle Pilots controlling the Stingray from the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System MD-5 Ground Control Station.

“Boeing is honored to work alongside our U.S. Navy partner in achieving this historic milestone in the MQ-25A Stingray’s development life cycle,” said Troy Rutherford, vice president, Boeing MQ-25 program. “We remain focused on getting this game-changing unmanned aircraft into the hands of the fleet and integrated into the carrier air wing.”

A low-rate initial production, or LRIP, Lot 1 contract for three aircraft is expected to be awarded this summer and include priced options for Lot 2 (three aircraft) and Lot 3 (five aircraft), according to the Navy release.

The role of the MQ-25A is intended to provide the Carrier Air Wing with unmanned refueling, freeing up F/A-18E/F aircraft to focus on strike missions.

“This will expand the operational reach of the air wing while preserving the service life of F/A-18E/Fs, improving readiness across the Super Hornet fleet,” the release said.

Acting Army Chief of Staff Gen. Christopher LaNeve said in an Army budget hearing that the order to halt a planned 9-month rotation to Europe by 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division to Eastern Europe came from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

LaNeve and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said they were informed of the order and had been consulted, but they wouldn’t provide the exact timing of the decision. On May 1, the unit had cased its colors in preparation for deployment, dispatched its advanced team and launched its equipment overseas.

Soldiers began discussing the decision to scrap the deployment publicly early Tuesday morning; the order was confirmed Wednesday by Army Times and other news media.

LaNeve said the decision was made “in the last two weeks” by the Defense Department and Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of U.S. European Command and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

LaNeve and Driscoll downplayed the move as part of routine manning reviews conducted throughout the year.

“We are constantly in contact with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the combatant commanders … and this is not meant to hide the ball,” Driscoll said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

“This type of conversation is going on throughout the year, every single year, and the Army is always ready to move people and things based off combatant commander and Secretary of War preferences,” Driscoll added.

But lawmakers questioned the timing and the reasons, lambasting the order that Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said sent a “terrible message to Russia and our allies.”

Bacon said he had spoken with Polish leaders who were “blindsided” by the decision and understood that Grynkewich had expressed reservations to the order, saying that it was not without risk.

“This is a slap in the face to Poland. It’s a slap in the face to our Baltic friends. I think it’s a slap to the face in this committee, because we’ve put floors and restrictions on the Pentagon on further reductions in Europe because of what they did with Romania,” Bacon said.

CNN reported Thursday that Hegseth made the decision in relation to the administration’s efforts to pressure Europe to increase its own defenses.

CNN also reported that Hegseth’s order canceled a deployment of 3rd Battalion, 12th Field Artillery Regiment to Germany later this year and a command that oversees long-range rockets and missiles will be removed from Europe.

The news follows an announcement May 1 that the U.S. would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany — a decision Pentagon officials said was made following a review of “theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”

But critics say the withdrawal is retribution for NATO countries deciding not to join the U.S. in attacking Iran. President Donald Trump repeatedly has criticized NATO countries for not investing more in their own defense and said in March that NATO would face a “bad future” if they didn’t help defend the Strait of Hormuz.

“If there’s no response, or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO,” Trump told the Financial Times.

Army leaders did not say how many soldiers were affected by the decision or provide the number of personnel in the advanced echelon that now must return to Fort Hood, where the brigade is based.

The order has upended the lives of at least 4,500 soldiers, however, many of whom made preparations to vacate homes and apartments, store belongings and relocate their families.

The order also cost money: in a text message reviewed by Army Times Tuesday, a brigade member estimated the cost and retrieval of equipment at $4 million.

Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez said Thursday the decision was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision,” but lawmakers pushed back on that assessment, with Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., saying he didn’t see how the “statement can be true.”

“These are major decisions that appear to many of the members of this committee to be last-minute decisions,” Scott said.

LaNeve and Driscoll noted that in their roles as chief of staff and secretary, their jobs are administrative and they have no authority in operational decisions.

LaNeve’s multiple references to the law that dictates the structure of the armed forces — and the pair’s lack of response — irritated several committee members.

“We have been very focused on this committee about force posture, and EUCOM in particular not being disturbed, particularly without — what the statute requires — is consultation with us, and we didn’t get that, so we don’t know what’s going on here, but I just tell you we’re not happy,” said Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala.

“It is a pretty dramatic decision to, at the last minute, pull a team that you’re trying to send over there,” agreed Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the committee’s ranking member. “If there’s some strategy behind it, then you guys ought to know, and you ought to be able to communicate it to us.”

The U.S. has roughly 80,000 service members in Europe.

European Command did not respond to a request for comment by publication.

Ursa Major, a Colorado-based defense manufacturer, debuted the HAVOC missile system on Tuesday.

The medium-range hypersonic system is powered by a liquid rocket engine, is able to alter its speed in flight and can be adapted for use with a wide variety of rocket motor systems from warplanes to vertical launch systems.

Additionally, the system can be deployed outside of Earth’s atmosphere, according to the company.

“Keeping pace with our adversaries requires more than exquisite systems. It requires speed to delivery, affordability, and the ability to build at scale,” Chris Spagnoletti, CEO of Ursa Major, said in a statement.

“The Ursa Major HAVOC Missile System delivers a highly capable hypersonic weapon designed from the start to be produced rapidly and in quantity, giving the warfighter a credible and adaptable capability.”

The system has a core module that makes it suitable for striking hypersonic targets as well, the company adds.

Hypersonic missiles, which fly at roughly five times the speed of sound, have become a priority across all U.S. military branches.

The Army, Air Force and Navy are all developing hypersonic missile programs, including: the Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon; the Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile; and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike programs.

While the services have aimed for hypersonic weapons since the early 2000s, development has lagged while Russia and China have gained advantages in this arena.

In a notable divergence, Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles are designed to field nuclear warheads, while U.S. hypersonics are not.

“Most U.S. hypersonic weapons, in contrast to those in Russia and China, are not being designed for use with a nuclear warhead,” according to a Congressional Research Service report published last August.

The report predicted that U.S. hypersonics would “likely require greater accuracy and will be more technically challenging to develop than nuclear-armed Chinese and Russian systems,” while also noting that Russian and Chinese systems would have a potential advantage since nuclear weapons can inflict devastating damage without need for accuracy.

China has a robust hypersonic program and has conducted up to 20 times as many hypersonic missile tests than the U.S., and is also investing in underground facilities, per the report.

“Analysts disagree about the strategic implications of hypersonic weapons,” the report notes, adding that Congress has previously restricted funding due to concerns of nuclear escalation.

“Differences in threat perception and escalation ladders could thus result in unintended escalation,” the report concluded.

During the Army’s first annual Best Drone Warfighter Competition in Huntsville, Alabama, the Fort Rucker-based aviation chief shared his insights about the impact of drones on military doctrine.

“The application of drone technology is only limited by your creativity,” he said. “It’s this constantly evolving game of technology and craftsmanship to create the desired effect that you want on the other end.”

While Army aviators are no strangers to unmanned systems, drones being fielded today are immensely different from those developed over the last two decades, many of which tended to be larger and required more manpower to operate, Gill said.

“In the last five to 10 years I would say we have seen a complete shift in what drone technology is and how it can be used,” Gill said. The net result, he added, is that drones are “no longer just the purview of Army aviation.”

“I would argue now with the proliferation of small drones and how cheap and effective they can be that Army aviation is just one minor user now. … Everybody is going to have drones in the airspace to some degree.

“It’s going to change everything. The nature of war is the same. It’s always an endeavor of human conflict. But the character of war is just fundamentally different.”

Lessons from Ukraine

Drones have been used successfully as a force multiplier in a variety of global conflicts, from Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan to the Middle East and Ukraine.

While the U.S. Army is adapting its approaches based on observing other forces around the world, Gill stressed that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to drone warfare.

The U.S. Army must develop drone combat doctrine in line with its unique capabilities, he said.

“We’re not the Ukrainian army, nor are we the Russian army,” he said. “We just fundamentally operate differently.”

Gill told Military Times that observers from the Army Aviation Center of Excellence are currently embedded with Ukraine’s Security Assistance Group, or SAG-U, to study lessons from the conflict.

However, fighting methods from Ukraine should not be broadly applied to American forces, he noted, due to differences in U.S. tactics and capabilities.

“We would be fools not to pay attention and not to take a lot of lessons from them, which we’re doing, but we can’t take the wrong lessons,” Gill said. “Just because it didn’t work in Russia-Ukraine doesn’t mean it might not work for us.”

Project Victor

The tactical element of the Army’s drone competition gave soldiers the chance to test drone aviation abilities while leveraging field skills on a hunter-killer mission, during which each team was afforded a single reconnaissance FPV drone and up to five “killer” drones.

“That really is the application of the technology,” Gill said. “They have to be able to use the technology in the context of what it is that we do, not just fly the drone.”

The tactical challenge gave leadership an opportunity to observe with the aim of refining training, doctrine and approaches to drone combat operations.

Gill explained that restructuring within Army commands has allowed analysis teams to be established at each Army Center of Excellence, including those dedicated to aviation, maneuver and fires.

“We’ve restructured our subordinate teams and we have something called a Transformation Integration Directorate, TID, and within them they have a Transformation Lesson Learned Manager, a TLLM,” he explained.

These managers are responsible for evaluating all observations and establishing what lessons are useful to the Army before uploading them into a new database system called Project Victor.

Powered by generative AI technology, the system will give soldiers broad access to whitepapers, studies and useful information about operating drones in the field.

“That should be a database where any soldier can just go in,” he said. “That should be up and running by this summer.”

Enduring need for human pilots

Despite the nearly unlimited applications of drones in war, Gill emphasized that they will never replace the ability of humans and do not compensate for the skills of trained Army aviators.

“Ultimately, to put an assault force onto an objective, you need manned aviation,” he said.

Gill cited the recent operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as an example of the finesse Army aviators bring to the table.

“That was a very exquisite demonstration with some our best aviators and some of our best aircraft,” he said. “We continue to crank out the world’s best rotary aviators.”

The enduring need for human expertise was borne out in the tactical lane of the competition itself, as some teams experienced difficulty using the drones and soldiers tapped into combat training fundamentals for success.

“A lot of people seem to think that because we’re moving so quickly in the unmanned space that it means we’re moving away from the manned space,” Gill said.

“We need to have both.”

For many Americans, the U.S. Army is nearly synonymous with its helicopters. Think of popular films such as Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, and Apocalypse Now.

But in recent months, the service announced a plan to pare down its helicopter fleet, catching many of its aviators off guard.

The cuts are part of a larger reorganization as the Army prepares for the changing landscape of warfare with one of the services’ smallest budget increases. The War Horse spoke with Jeremiah Gertler, senior analyst at the Teal Group defense and aerospace consulting company, to better understand why the Army is nixing so many of its iconic aircraft, what might replace them, and what might happen to the soldiers who work with them.

First, some background and a look back at how we got here.

Heavy helicopter losses among Russian forces in Ukraine led top U.S. Army officials to question the survivability of manned rotorcraft in future conflicts. Last year, the service cancelled the development of a new attack and reconnaissance helicopter, with Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George pointing out that sensors and weapons mounted on unmanned aerial systems—think drones—are “more ubiquitous, further reaching, and more inexpensive than ever before.”

That effort accelerated in May, when the Army said it will reduce one air cavalry squadron per active-duty combat aviation brigade.

In the months since, the Army said it would also divest many of its older UH-60s and AH-64s and inactivate the helicopter units in both of its Reserve expeditionary combat aviation brigades. Inactivate is not the same as deactivate, which means a permanent closure, but the Army has not announced plans for what it intends to do next with the units.

Q: What does the U.S. Army use helicopters for?

The Army generally uses helicopters for attack and logistics missions, Gertler explained. The AH-64 Apache carries an arsenal of rockets, missiles, and a 30 mm chain gun in the attack and reconnaissance role. Meanwhile, the smaller UH-72 Lakota, medium-sized H-60 Black Hawk, and large H-47 Chinook helicopters carry troops, medical supplies, ammunition, humanitarian aid, and other cargo in and out of battlefields and crisis zones.

Q: Why does the Army want to get rid of so many helicopters?

Gertler said it is the result of two influences: budgetary pressure to reduce the number of units in the Army and analysis of the war in Ukraine, where large numbers of surface-to-air missiles threaten helicopters, and modular, affordable drones can perform low-altitude attack and reconnaissance missions.

“That is part of what’s informing it, just the fact that pretty much anything that flies on that battlefield dies,” Gertler said about the shrinking helicopter fleet.

He said the divestments are unrelated to the safety issues plaguing Army aviation in recent years, even before 67 people died on Jan. 29 when an Army Black Hawk collided with an American Airlines flight outside Washington, D.C.

Q: Can drones do what helicopters do?

“Well, right now the Army is looking to experiment and find out what really works,” Gertler said.

Both armies in Ukraine use drones extensively in reconnaissance and surveillance roles, as spotters to guide artillery strikes, and as jammers to disrupt enemy communication and navigation systems. They have also proven useful in limited attack roles by dropping small munitions such as hand grenades or by loitering above a target before striking like a missile.

Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, a top Army aviation official, wrote in Army Aviation Magazine that drones “should do the ‘dirty, dull, dangerous’ work” that do not require a human’s rapid decision-making or ethical judgment.

But manned rotorcraft writ large are not going away any time soon, particularly for the transport role. Army officials expect to operate the H-60 until 2070, and the service is steaming ahead on its replacement, the MV-75, a tiltrotor that can fly like a fixed-wing airplane and land like a helicopter, similar to the Osprey flown by the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. NATO experts also point out that changing Russian tactics have made its attack helicopter fleet more effective now than it was at the start of the war.

Q: Why the heavy cuts for the Reserve in particular?

“The helicopters in the National Guard have significant state roles for things like search and rescue and disaster relief, so it’s hard to draw those down,” Gertler said. “And because, frankly, Congress has traditionally defended the Guard more strongly than the Reserve.”

Q: What happens to the soldiers in those units?

The ideal solution is to retrain those troops in a new role, Gertler said, but not all unit members may want to switch. Some may try to find a helicopter job in a new unit, or leave the Army.

Command Sgt. Maj. Nathan Smith, the top enlisted leader in one of the units being inactivated, the 5-159th General Support Aviation Battalion, voiced the same concern.

“People that come here live and breathe flying Army helicopters,” he told The Virginian-Pilot. “Depending on where they are in their careers, the sentiment is, well, now what am I going to do?”

More than a dozen Army Reserve aviators told Military.com they were frustrated with the rollout of the decision, which they said was chaotic and poorly communicated.

Q: What’s the risk of divesting these aircraft?

Army leaders frame the transition as a way to stay relevant in modern war, though it’s not clear at this point what will replace the helicopters.

“Anytime that you reduce the budget for the military without reducing the number of threats, you’re taking a risk,” Gertler said. “The Army is also at a strategic risk now, because they are figuring out, as they come out of a very busy period over the last 20 years, what is their role going forward in a more globally oriented and Pacific-oriented fight?”

Hopefully, at the other end of that, Gertler said, the Army units losing their helicopters will find a new way to contribute.

“Whereas if they continued with the helicopter mission,” he said, “the unit might be in danger of going away entirely.”

This War Horse explainer was reported by David Roza, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.

In a joint statement published soon after the talks ended, the U.S. and Ukraine agreed to an “immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire,” which could be extended but first hinges on Russia’s acceptance.

“The ball is now in their court,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said of the Kremlin.

White House envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow this week to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the second such round of meetings. Rubio said Russia will receive the ceasefire terms through “multiple channels” for review.

“The deadline is we hope to do this as soon as possible,” Rubio said.

Last week, the U.S. paused hundreds of millions of dollars in American security assistance to Ukraine and stopped sharing intelligence, with President Donald Trump claiming Kyiv wasn’t “ready for peace.” The drastic step followed a catastrophic meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, which devolved into a shouting match.

If extended indefinitely, the pause could have sapped Ukraine’s stocks of ammunition while also hindering its ability to target Russian positions. European officials across the continent reacted to the decision with alarm and have begun multiple rounds of meetings on how they can sustain Ukraine’s self-defense without U.S. assistance.

Aside from the ceasefire proposal, U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said the U.S and Ukraine also discussed humanitarian concerns and what security guarantees Ukraine is seeking. To this point, Kyiv has sought an American military commitment to enforce any peace deal signed with Russia, which has broken past ceasefires and launched a full-scale invasion three years ago.

The Trump administration has been adamant that any security guarantees must come from Europe, part of an overall pivot away from U.S. military support for the continent. European countries have increased military spending in recent years but would still struggle to take on such an expansive role without American aid.

Meanwhile, Trump told reporters last week that America would question whether countries in NATO spent enough on defense before coming to their aid, a core part of the alliance.

“If you’re not going to pay your bills, we’re not going to defend you,” Trump said.

In an unprecedented escalation, armed Hamas fighters blew up parts of Israel’s highly fortified separation fence and strode into Israeli communities along the Gaza frontier, terrorizing residents and trading fire with Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies were scrambling to respond to the rapidly changing events. As the day wore on, the casualties quickly mounted.

Rescue Service Zaka, an Israeli group, said at least 200 people died in southern Israel and an additional 1,100 people were wounded.

At least 198 people in the Gaza Strip were killed and at least 1,610 wounded amid Israel’s retaliation.

Here are some key takeaways from the multi-pronged attack that has suddenly plunged Israel into war.

Israel caught by surprise

The shock that Israelis felt on Saturday morning — on Simchat Torah, one of the most joyous days of the Jewish calendar — recalled the surprise of the the 1973 Mideast war. Practically 50 years earlier to the day, a full-scale Egyptian-Syrian attack on a Jewish holiday quickly turned into a disaster for an unprepared Israeli military.

Then, as now, Israelis had assumed that their intelligence services would be able to alert the army to any major attack or invasion well in advance. That colossal failure still haunts the legacy of then-Prime Minister Golda Meir and helped bring down the lengthy rule of the once-dominant Labor Party.

Now, the question of how the militants were able to stage such a huge and coordinated attack — which has already killed more Israelis than any single assault since the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago — without triggering Israeli intelligence concerns has already presented a major challenge to Netanyahu’s ultranationalist government.

The government’s supporters had expected Netanyahu and hard-line ministers with a history of anti-Arab rhetoric like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to take a particularly belligerent stance against the Palestinians and respond more forcefully to threats from militants in Gaza.

As political analysts lambast Netanyahu over the failure, and the casualty count climbs, Netanyahu risks losing control of both his government and the country.

Paragliders aid unprecedented infiltration

Hamas claimed its fighters took several Israelis captive in the enclave, releasing gruesome videos of militants dragging bloodied soldiers across the ground and standing over dead bodies, some of them stripped to their underwear. It said senior Israeli military officers were among the captives.

The videos could not immediately be verified but matched geographic features of the area. Fears that Israelis had been kidnapped evoked the 2006 capture of soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas-linked militants seized in a cross-border raid. Hamas held Shalit for five years until he was exchanged for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

In a dramatic escalation unseen in decades, Hamas also sent paragliders flying into Israel, the Israeli military said. The brazen attack recalled a famous assault in the late 1980s when Palestinian militants crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel on hang-gliders and killed six Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli army belatedly confirmed that soldiers and civilians were taken hostage in Gaza, but refused to provide further details.

Dangerous gamble by Hamas

Hamas officials cited long-simmering sources of tension between Israel and the Palestinians, including the dispute around the sensitive Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is is sacred to both Muslims and Jews and remains at the emotional heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Competing claims over the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, have spilled into violence before, including a bloody 11-day warbetween Israel and Hamas in 2021.

In recent years, Israeli religious nationalists — such as Ben-Gvir, the national security minister — have increased their visits to the compound. Last week, during the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli activists visited the site, prompting condemnation from Hamas and accusations that Jews were praying there in violation of the status quo agreement.

Hamas statements have also cited the expansion of Jewish settlements on lands that the Palestinians claim for a future state and Ben-Gvir’s efforts to toughen restrictions on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

More recently, tensions have escalated with violent Palestinian protests along the Gaza frontier. In negotiations with Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations, Hamas has pushed for Israeli concessions that could loosen the 17-year blockade on the enclave and help halt a worsening financial crisis that has sharpened public criticism of its rule.

Some political analysts have linked Hamas’ attack to current U.S.-brokered talks on normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. So far, reports of possible concessions to Palestinians in the negotiations have involved Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, not Gaza.

“We have always said that normalization will not achieve security, stability, or calm,” Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told the AP.

Israel in crisis

The eruption of violence comes at a difficult time for Israel, which is facing the biggest protests in its history over Netanyahu’s proposal to weaken the Supreme Court while he is on trial for corruption.

The protest movement, which accuses Netanyahu of making a power grab, has bitterly divided Israeli society and unleashed turmoil within the Israeli military. Hundreds of reservists have threatened to stop volunteering to report for duty in protest at the judicial overhaul.

Reservists are the backbone of the country’s army, and protests within the army ranks have raised concerns about the military’s cohesion, operational readiness and power of deterrence as it confronts threats on multiple fronts. Netanyahu on Saturday called up “an extensive mobilization of reserve forces.”

Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and exchanged fire numerous times since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority in 2007. Cease-fires have stopped major fighting in past rounds of conflict but have always proven shaky.

Each agreement in the past has offered a period of calm, but the deeper, underlying issues of the conflict are rarely addressed and set the stage for the next round of airstrikes and rockets.

With its increased leverage in this round, Hamas is likely to push harder for concessions on key issues, such as easing the blockade and winning the release of prisoners held by Israel.

President Joe Biden in May tapped Collins to be the next MDA director, succeeding Vice Adm. Jon Hill, who has served as the agency’s leader since 2019.

Collins “has an ideal resume for MDA,” said Air Force Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, who served as a deputy to Collins when they worked together on the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent program. Bartolomei now serves as the Air Force’s program executive officer for weapons and leads the Armament Directorate. Collins also held those titles.

“I think his experience in space, nukes, aircraft and weapons has prepared him very well for this opportunity,” he told Defense News.

Among the agency’s efforts the next director will oversee are developing a capability to destroy hypersonic missiles, increasing the use of space sensors, and upgrading the homeland missile defense system to counter increasingly complex ballistic and non-ballistic threats. The agency also recently began building a robust air and missile defense architecture in Guam to protect the island from attack.

Collins “is going to be ideal for the job,” according to Trey Obering III, who led MDA from 2004 to 2008.

“Heath has a great background for not just going to space with his space experience, but also the integration,” he told Defense News “We are fighting in a very integrated world now where we have to tie space, air, land, sea, cyber all into a coherent, integrated warfighting capability.”

Defending the homeland

Collins is now MDA’s program executive officer for ground-based weapons systems at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. He oversees a $3.4 billion portfolio, which equates to roughly a third of the agency’s overall budget. The portfolio includes the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, which is undergoing major upgrades.

The GMD system, which dates back nearly two decades, is made up of interceptors in the ground at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, that are designed to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles, potentially fired by North Korea or Iran.

MDA is preparing to update the entire system, including its command-and-control elements, so it can both tackle more complex, emerging threats as well as remain operational. The most significant upgrade is a new, more capable interceptor.

During his tenure, Hill has prioritized homeland missile defense and keeping the GMD system capable of defeating rapidly emerging threats. Underway is a competitive development effort to replace current ground-based interceptors in the GMD system with a Next Generation Interceptor, or NGI.

A Northrop Grumman and RTX team is competing against a Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne team to replace the ground-based interceptors with Next Generation Interceptors.

The aim is to field the NGI by 2028, but industry competitors indicated they can move quicker. A 2021 independent analysis from the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office found NGI’s development price tag could total $13 billion, while procurement, operation and sustainment could come to a little more than $2 billion.

Since becoming program executive officer for ground-based weapons systems last summer, Collins has directly overseen the NGI program. The chief MDA role is a six-year term, although most directors serve three to four years. If Collins serves the full length, he could see NGI all the way to the developmental finish line.

“Given the singular importance of the Next Generation Interceptor — the program arguably most closely tied to MDA’s long-term institutional identity — it would be fortuitous for an acquisition professional so close to the program to be able to shepherd it and related efforts to fielding later this decade,” Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, told Defense News.

Space-based defense

Even with enhanced missile defense capability from the ground, the next MDA director will need to continue proliferating space-based sensors for tracking and defeating missile threats, Obering said.

Defending the U.S. from Iran and North Korea, while also keeping in mind possible threats from China and Russia, “is going to take a combination of space-based precise tracking and other types of tracking, as well as traditional interceptors with terrestrial capabilities.”

Collins’ experience with satellites dates back to 20-plus years, when he was the manager of advanced satellite payloads at the National Reconnaissance Office in 2001. After two years in the role, he became the chief vehicle engineer at the organization until 2005.

He then spent several years working on wideband satellite communications efforts at the Los Angeles Air Force Base, and about a decade ago he became a deputy director of space and special programs at a Pentagon intelligence office.

The MDA is working with the Space Force to get its Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor on orbit in fiscal 2023. Hill has said the existing sensor architecture allows for seeing and tracking some hypersonic threats, but being able to do so from space would bolster the agency’s capabilities.

The two HBTSS satellites are expected to launch later this year and will go through on-orbit testing over the next year. If successful, the sensors will be transferred to the Space Development Agency.

Hypersonic threats

MDA is also in the early phases of a program to develop an interceptor to defeat hypersonic missile threats in the glide phase of flight.

From July 2020 to July 2022, Collins was the Air Force’s program executive officer for weapons. In that role, he oversaw the service’s hypersonic weapons programs, including the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, a boost glide hypersonic weapon; and the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, which uses a scramjet to breathe in air to reach hypersonic speed.

The AGM-183A ARRW, developed by Lockheed Martin, experienced three test launch failures during 2021 before recovering with a string of successful flight tests in 2022. But a failed all-up round test in March 2023 dealt a serious blow to the program, and its future is now in question.

Collins had ushered the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile program through its systems requirements phase; just prior to his 2022 departure, he announced the Air Force would pick a vendor later that year to continue development. A few months after he left the job, the Air Force selected an RTX and Northrop Grumman team to develop the weapon.

If confirmed by the Senate as MDA director, he will manage the agency’s Glide Phase Interceptor, or GPI, effort for regional hypersonic missile defense. The agency has tapped Northrop and RTX to rapidly develop prototypes.

Hill has said MDA wants to accelerate the plan, which now calls for the first delivery in the early 2030s.

‘The hardest three-star job’

The MDA director job “is probably the hardest three-star job in the military,” Obering said, “because first of all it has been controversial … because it causes the divide between Democrats and Republicans, between the arms control and the warfighting folks, between even things like the use of space for warfighting or for peace.”

Collins will need “people skills and leadership skills” to navigate those complexities and bridge divides, Obering added.

And according to Bartolomei, Collins is just that. “He is a good listener. He is cool under pressure, very steady. I think he is an excellent strategic thinker.”

Collins declined a request for an interview ahead of the confirmation process.

When Hill took the MDA director job in 2019, he told Defense News his No. 1 challenge was dealing with the “poorly defined” MDA charter provision that required the agency, once it finished developing a missile defense capability, to transfer it to one of the services.

MDA transferred the Patriot air and missile defense system to the Army, for example, but Hill said not every program lends itself to such a move.

At the time, lawmakers wanted to move the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense program to the Army. Hill warned that transfer could end up “fracturing a program during a time where it’s most critical to have those programs stable and taking care of the warfighter.”

Lawmakers ultimately backed off, but the debate could resurface, as Collins is likely to face increased attention from Congress on MDA’s work.

For instance, a group of New York lawmakers is pushing for a third homeland missile defense site on the East Coast, something previous MDA directors resisted due to budget constraints.

Also in recent years, lawmakers showed interest in what MDA and the services were doing to develop an air and missile defense architecture for Guam, in addition to pushing for a missile defense radar in Hawaii that the agency refuses to fund.

For example, a provision in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s FY24 defense authorization bill requires MDA to produce a strategy for “developing, acquiring and operationally establishing an integrated air and missile defense architecture” for not just Guam but the entire Indo-Pacific theater.

The House version of the bill calls on the agency’s director to produce a report on options for enhancing missile defense protection of the homeland “to hedge against the uncertainty of the future missile threats and technical risk in the U.S. missile defense development plans.”

It had the music and marching onto the Marine Barracks Washington parade field, the passing of the Corps’ official battle colors, and the reading of Berger’s orders to relinquish command and retire.

But as Berger passed the colors to Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith, the ceremony’s narrator did not read orders for Smith to take command of the service. And the “Home of the Commandants,” the nearly 220-year-old white house at the end of the parade field, will sit empty upon Berger’s departure.

For the first time since 1910, there is no Senate-confirmed commandant of the Marine Corps at the helm of the service.

While Smith and his wife, Trish, won’t be moving their boxes into the house quite yet, he will have the powers of a confirmed Marine commandant.

“To make sure that there is no confusion: All orders, directives and guidance in effect this morning remain in effect, unless I direct otherwise,” Smith told the crowd attending Berger’s retirement ceremony. “Further guidance to the force will follow.”

Federal law required Berger to step down Monday, four years after he became commandant.

Berger, who has been a Marine since 1981, has said he plans to spend time at the family farm with his wife, Donna, as well as with his four sons and his grandchildren, before deciding what work may come next.

The lack of Senate confirmation means Smith, who was nominated in May to become the 39th commandant, will perform the duties of the No. 1 and No. 2 Marines simultaneously, without a set person to whom he can delegate tasks.

The White House hasn’t yet nominated the next assistant commandant, who also would be subject to the hold on nominations by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Alabama.

Tuberville has single-handedly blocked hundreds of general-officer promotions in protest of a Pentagon policy that gives troops leave and travel expenses to help them access out-of-state abortions. Neither the Pentagon nor Tuberville shows signs of backing down.

The Senate does have a possible workaround: voting on individual nominees one by one, rather than relying on unanimous consent of senators to speed them through in batches. But that would require several weeks of Senate floor time for the five nominees for the Joint Chiefs of Staff alone, Defense News previously reported.

In the role of acting commandant, Smith told reporters June 29, he also won’t be able to release the planning guidance, which lays out the commandant’s strategic vision for the Corps.

Berger’s planning guidance, from 2019, played an important role in the service’s past four years by setting the stage for Force Design 2030 ― the 2020 plan to prepare the Marine Corps for conflict with a technologically sophisticated peer like the Chinese military.

“I can give guidance to the force as the acting commandant, but it does not carry the same weight, quite, as commandants’ planning guidance,” Smith said.

Until Smith gets confirmed, he will still be called “assistant commandant of the Marine Corps,” or “ACMC” (pronounced “ACK-mack”) for short, he emphasized Monday during his remarks at the ceremony.

“That is my title, and one that I’m proud of,” Smith said. “You can also say ‘Devil Dog,’ ‘leatherneck,’ ‘Marine’ or ‘Trish’s husband.’ I respond to all — probably most proud of the last.”

Smith said after the ceremony that he is the first acting commandant since 1910, when Maj. Gen. George Elliott aged out of the job and the Marine Corps did not have a replacement ready. Maj. Gen. William Biddle became commandant three months later.

As acting commandant, Smith will focus on continuing the overhaul of the Marine Corps while making sure the force is ready to respond to global crises, he said.

Smith has been a vocal supporter of Force Design 2030. At his June 14 confirmation hearing he called for the Corps to speed up that modernization as the budget allows.

Following the ceremony Monday, Smith said that he would not wait until his formal confirmation in order to go fast.

“I still retain the authorities of the office of the commandant, so as far as budgetary, experimentation, changing formations, I can still do all that,” he said. “And those things that are working well for us — long-range fires, et cetera — we will move faster on them as long as we have a defense budget.”

Force Design was widely embraced by the Corps, the Pentagon, Congress and industry — but it attracted its share of opposition, especially from a group of retired general officers who thought Berger was changing the Marine Corps for the worse.

Retired Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper Van Riper said that the pushback had nothing to do with Berger as an individual and everything to do with the nature of the reforms.

Asked what the group thought of Smith’s call to accelerate the modernization and if they’d continue to be as vocally against Force Design under the new leader, Van Riper said the “retired community desires to support General Smith in every way possible if he intends to rebuild a Corps able to respond globally as a combined arms force in an age of precision munitions.”

Retired Marine Lt. Col. Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow for defense programs at the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, said that although Force Design 2030 was Berger’s brainchild, Smith was perfectly positioned to continue and accelerate it.

In his 21 months as assistant commandant, Smith had to get into the weeds of programs and budgets, and work closely with his counterparts on the joint staff, Wood noted.

“While you could say Gen. Berger is kind of the idea [guy], making the argument — who is actually doing the grunt work and seeing where the obstacles are at and how to make sense of all this? That’s been Gen. Smith the entire time,” Wood said. “So I think there’s a natural progression.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who presided over the ceremony, and Berger both called for the Senate to confirm the next commandant, though they didn’t call out Tuberville by name.

“Smooth and timely transitions of confirmed leadership are central to the defense of the United States, and to the full strength of the most powerful fighting force in history,” Austin said in a speech on the barrack’s parade field.

“I’m with you, Mr. Secretary,” Berger said in a speech that followed. “We need the Senate to do their job so we can have a sitting commandant that’s appointed and confirmed. We need that house to be occupied.”