“Every service has their own interpretation of JADC2,” Wanda Jones-Heath said July 26 at an event hosted by the Potomac Officers Club, adding that they are “all different.”

“I’ve looked at all of the documentation associated with all three,” she said. “We are not aligned with what we need to be to be interoperable.”

Jones-Heath advises the Air Force secretary on all cyber programs. She also oversees cyberspace recruitment and the training of cyber mission forces, as well as assessing their readiness. She previously served as a chief information security officer.

To make JADC2 a reality, the Army, Air Force and Navy have taken their own tack.

The Army has Project Convergence, a crucible at which cutting-edge technologies are put to the test. This year’s event, PC 22, will include international players, both participating and observing. The Air Force has the Advanced Battle Management System, a next-generation command and control that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has sought more tangible results from after expressing doubts in 2021. And the Navy has Project Overmatch, arguably the most clandestine of the bunch, as officials rarely disclose information about it.

A formal strategy, an implementation plan and a cross-functional team are also meant to help bring the concept to fruition. A public version of the strategy was published in March. The implementation plan was approved by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks that same month.

Jones-Heath’s comments are the among the latest doubts raised about JADC2 feasibility and execution — how, exactly, three multibillion-dollar endeavors, each with their own idiosyncrasies, will coalesce to create seamless streams of information flow across land, air, sea, space and cyber.

Lawmakers in versions of the annual defense bill this year sought a review of JADC2 price and progress; a digest of timelines, goals and potential shortfalls; as well as related investment in the Indo-Pacific, where a joint headquarters alongside a combatant command could soon rise.

House staff have said audits will help gauge the state of play and will inform where and when resources are applied.

Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush on July 11 floated the idea of a dedicated office that could organize JADC2 efforts. He likened it to the Army’s counter-unmanned aircraft systems office, which he said “actually helps prioritize our investments from a joint perspective” and makes sure requirements align.

Jones-Heath on Tuesday similarly said a unifying force is necessary.

“Someone needs to just push us where we need to go,” she said, “because we are way out here.”

Those changes have rolled through the Corps over the past three years. But the heart of the service’s ­success, many current and past leaders say, is its ­Marine air-ground task force concept.

The “air” part has remained in a holding pattern as top aviators rethought how the air side will fit into the new Force Design 2030 plan.

In early May, the Corps’ top aviators released the service’s aviation plan, its first in nearly three years after what had been an annual report.

Some of the work remains the same — support the MAGTF with aviation for sensing, strike and hauling Marines and their gear around the battlespace.

But, as Commandant Gen. David Berger signaled in his 2019 planning guidance, significant changes are afoot.

Marine Corps Times researched key themes in the aviation plan with responses from Marine Corps headquarters and interviews with retired Marine ­experts and a former top aviator, three-star general and prior commander of Combat Development and Integration.

The target year, 2030, is fast approaching as the Corps looks to push aviation into the next fight.

Highlights include exquisite sensor-laden platforms such as the F-35 jet, heavy hauling capabilities in the CH-53K helicopter, long-range fires, sensor and transport support in the KC-130J tanker and a long-overdue step into unmanned platforms that hold great promise for those future operations.

But questions loom on how the Corps will manage the transition from current aging aircraft such as the F/A-18 and AV-8 Harrier to newer but fewer replacements, and if the toe-in-the-water approach to drones is enough to get the service where it wants to go.

“Change is not easy, even if the outcome is of superior quality and abilities,” Maj. Jorge Hernandez, spokesman for the Deputy Commandant of Aviation Lt. Gen. Mark Wise, wrote in an email response. “To ensure a successful transition of this scale will require an all-hands effort for Marine Corps aviation.”

A Force Design focus

Wise laid out a plan, in a May 2 roundtable with reporters, which his team built to guide the direction of Marine aviation in the coming years. The work ­involved war games, experimentation and hard thinking.

In each phase of modern warfare, new aviation technology has pushed fliers and flying capabilities into new areas.

Berger said so himself in his 2019 planning guidance. He specifically cited experimentation with “lethal long-range unmanned systems capable of traveling 200 nautical miles.”

The top Marine envisions small teams on tiny islands. They’ll sneak around, gather crucial data, pop up to launch an anti-ship missile — then disappear only to reemerge at another location, gathering and harassing.

The aviation role here is under construction as the force experiments.

Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and senior adviser at the Washington think tank Center for ­Strategic and International Studies, sees a reduced aviation footprint in the current plan. Though that coincides with a reduction in the number of infantry battalions that aviation supports, he sees it as disproportionate.

“Everything is getting smaller as the number of infantry battalions go down,” Cancian said.

Another retired Marine, Lt. Gen. Bruce Knutson, who spent more than four decades serving the Corps both as an active-duty officer then as an official senior adviser post-retirement, said tinkering with aviation can have an outsized impact.

Most people, even Marines, don’t understand the role of Marine aviation, he said. It is not a small air force. It is the mobility and striking power of the MAGTF.

The air power enables that task force operation, which is how Leathernecks do business.

“You start taking things away from Marine Corps aviation, it’s a lot more significant, a lot more serious than if you start downsizing a battalion,” Knutson said.

The retired three-star commanded a then-young Capt. David Berger when the senior Marine headed 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in the early 1990s. He also knows and respects Wise, he said. But he ­fundamentally disagrees with the current approach to force design and the warfighting concept it supports.

The core of the Corps’ fight is to do long-range reconnaissance and strike with small, disparate units.

“The Marine Corps, I don’t think ought to be in that business,” Knutson said.

The transition

One notable transition that aviation plan authors note themselves is the strain that transitioning from old platforms to new platforms creates.

Both the technology and the personnel will face such challenges. Wise pointed out in his talk with reporters that the F/A-18 community provides more than half of all tactical air requirements that the ­Marine Corps delivers both for the service and joint commitments.

Its replacement is coming, but that takes time. The service is about a third through fielding F-35B fighter jets.

“Starting to capitalize on this aircraft as more than just a fighter,” Wise said. “It has a sensor suite that is extraordinary, it’s like nothing we’ve ever had before.”

The hope is that the advanced capabilities will give far more to units that have the F-35 at their back as compared to the decades-old F/A-18.

Wise said that F-35B squadrons have been reduced from 16 to 10 aircraft. That shift provides 10 airplanes in the deployment cycle, with two in a backup role and leaves room for maintenance and attrition.

“That is the model that we believe is the right ­direction to go for the (Marine Expeditionary Unit),” Wise said. “That way you’re deploying a whole squadron as well. You’re not leaving pieces behind.”

That’s a reference to breaking up squadrons, which can strain support and basing, to meet various area tactical needs.

But all platforms, especially fighter jets and heavy lift helicopters, Cancian sees problems.

These aircraft need sophisticated support crews and equipment to remain airborne. Not all of that can be done at sea.

“The point I get stuck on is, how are you going to base them?” Cancian said.

The goal is for 18 active and two reserve F-35 squadrons, or a total of 420 advanced fighters. The juggling act will come with moving F/A-18 and Harrier pilots to the F-35 cockpits and ensuring a steady flow of new F-35 pilots coming into the force.

Current F-35s pilot manning sits at about 40%, which parallels with Wise’s one-third fielding ­comment. Current training schedules project

500 F-35 pilots on the job (they’ve got 197 pilots now) for a target of 420 aircraft.

Knutson knows how transitions work.

The former aviator entered the Corps in 1969 and retired in 2001. During that time, he started out flying the F-4 Phantom and transitioned to the F/A-18 in 1991.

He agrees that the F-35 “is a whole new game,” for aviation. But there are other considerations.

“You could have the 100 best airplanes in the world but have requirements to be in 200 ­different places, then they don’t have enough airplanes,” Knutson said.

Those transitions, all admit, create strain.

“You continue to tax and use the community a lot and cut back on funding…you have the potential for both stress and danger,” Cancian said.

Vertical lift & long-range support

In the close fight, Marines long have relied on helicopters or other vertical lift forms like the MV-22 Osprey.

The aviation plan calls for a cut to the Osprey fleet. Instead of 14 squadrons of a dozen aircraft each, their new plan calls for 16 squadrons of 10 aircraft each. The shift removes eight Ospreys from the total aircraft fleet.

Knutson said the Osprey provided ­previously ­unheard-of operational depth to MAGTF ­commanders, multiplying the distance from about 30 miles to more than 200 miles.

“We cut the MV-22, we’re cutting at the heart of maneuverability,” Knutson said.

The decrease of 24 to 21 infantry battalions is a drop of about 13%, Cancian said. The light ­helicopter attack squadron reduction, as one example, nearly double at nearly 23%.

“I think that short-range helicopters just don’t fit this new version of the Marine Corps,” Cancian said.

That’s because of the range. Distances in the Pacific, especially puncturing the weapons reach of China, are farther than those aircraft can fly.

When asked about potential gaps in rotary wing capacities, Hernandez responded that the Corps would continue upgrades to existing platforms and others to fill the needs that these platforms provide.

“This is a multi-prong approach in leveraging the myriad capabilities Marine Corps aviation provides the MAGTF,” he wrote.

Unmanned Future

To cover the tactical support, sensor, strike assault and hauling, the Corps leans hard on unmanned assets. But there’s a problem.

“Right now, the Marine Corps planes for ­unmanned is incomplete and quite inadequate,” he said. “I keep beating up the Marine Corps about the small size of its UAV fleet.”

The leap-ahead answer was the MAGTF ­unmanned aerial system expeditionary, or MUX. This high-level, ship-based, do-it-all drone would have run nearly the whole battle space, serving as a node to link all fires to the fingertips of a single Marine on the ground.

It would have given advanced sensor, electronic warfare and a host of other options, too.

But Congress balked at the project. Instead, the Marines did what Marines do — found a cheaper entry point.

That meant acquiring the MQ-9 Reaper drone: a big advance for Marines but old news for the rest of the services. The platform has been running since 2001. As of April, Jarheads had two MQ-9s in the fleet. The goal is to field 18 MQ-9s by 2025.

That’s more than two. But, as Cancian’s analysis in published reports shows the Army has 201 Group 5 drones while the Air Force sports 351.

“They are way behind and have no plan to catch up,” Cancian said. “This is a minimalist approach.”

Berger’s plan calls for as much as 40% of all Marine aviation to be unmanned in the coming decade, Cancian said.

These moves won’t get the Corps where it wants to go fast enough, both Cancian and Knutson said.

“If they want to continue down this road, they ought to do an appraisal, full court press, we need a crash course, we need to get into UAVs and we need to do it in a hurry,” said Knutson.

But aviation leaders are cool to this.

Wise and his staff explained that the MQ-9 is far from the end state. In fact, they’re developing capabilities, such as electronic warfare, on the ­platform but independently. That way, the advancements can fit onto whatever flies them in the future.

Hernandez’ response to Marine Corps Times noted that MQ-9 experimentation begins in fiscal year 2023. Areas include using the platform as a “network gateway” to pass information, airborne early warning, autonomous takeoff, landing and hazard avoidance as well as cyber-secure C2 data links.

In other words, they’re still pursuing MUX, just not with a nice, new platform … yet.

Opening photo by Lance Cpl. Becky Cleveland/Marine Corps.

Now, Leonardo DRS Chairman and Chief Executive Officer William Lynn says, the company is working on ways to advance capabilities such as sensor integration and using directed energy and electronic warfare to take out drone swarms. Leonardo DRS is the U.S subsidiary of the Italian defense firm Leonardo SpA.

Speaking July 18 at the Farnborough Air Show in England, Lynn said the RADA merger will directly help it with two of its four primary markets: force protection, which includes its Mobile Low, Slow Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Integrated Defense System, or MLIDS, counter-drone system used by the U.S. Army, and advanced sensing. Leonardo DRS also concentrates on network computing to create battle management systems, and electric propulsion systems for Navy vessels like Columbia-class submarines.

When it comes to advanced sensing, Lynn said, bringing RADA’s radars into Leonardo DRS’ portfolio “provide[s] the one sensor we don’t have.” This will be crucial as sensor integration becomes increasingly important in Army vehicles like tanks, Strykers and Bradley fighting vehicles, he said.

“Think Tesla,” Lynn said. “You have a backup camera and you have the side mirrors with collision detection. What Tesla’s done now is integrate all that into a single picture — so good, in fact that it can drive the car.”

That’s where the Army is headed with integrated sensing and battlefield management, he added.

“You get a comprehensive picture of the battlefield [with integrated sensing], you’re able to take all that data [collected by various sights and sensors] and make it actionable and decision-quality data,” Lynn said. “We want to be a part of that, and having a radar is critical. We think what’s going to happen is the sensors and the computing are going to fuse.”

This interview was edited for clarity and space.

What are some of the biggest challenges in trying to weave together these various sensor systems and getting them to talk to each other reliably and accurately?

That’s where the network computing, the battle management system that’s already in the computer, can take all of these feeds and give you a single picture. It’s technology that’s within our grasp. It’s more a matter of, how do you take the existing systems and bring them all together? If you use the existing network computing, you actually don’t need to replace them all. Instead of having each individual in the vehicle have a separate screen, you give the same picture to all of them with all of the inputs.

It’s the infrared sensors, the weapons sights, it’s the driver vision and enhancement system. And on the ones that have the active protection systems, each has radar that supports that, so you can use that as an additional input as well.

This is something we’re working on. The sensors are already in the field, and the network computing is already in the field, but the fusion of all of it together is not yet there.

How long do you think it’s going to be before that becomes a reality?

I think it could be done in three or four years. But it takes putting together a program of record and moving forward on it. The Army is definitely talking about it, but they haven’t gotten to the point of setting up the program.

What benefit does knitting all those sights, infrared and other signals together provide?

You get far better data by using all of the sensors together so that you’re able to pull in a better quality of information, and you’re able to use that information to set the options for the commander. For example, identifying a target, giving the coordinates where that target is, ensuring that target is indeed an adversary, not a friend, and giving them a firing solution could all be done in a single integrated picture.

Counter UAS is a big area of focus for DRS. Where do your efforts stand there, and what capabilities do you feel have promise in the next couple of years?

We’re producing the current system that’s in the field now, the MLIDS system. That’s the current generation, that’s a two-vehicle solution. [One vehicle carries the sensors to detect the drone, and the second has the weapons used to take it out.] We’re investing in a single vehicle solution with some of our other industry partners. That would be more compact, more mobile, less vulnerable. We’re in the testing phase right now [for a one-vehicle MLIDS], hoping to complete that within a year.

And ultimately, [Leonardo DRS wants] to focus on the next-generation threat, which will be swarming drones. With single drones, you can deal with them kinetically [and] shoot them down one at a time. With swarming drones, you could have too many to really do that. And so you’re going to want to look at solutions that are not kinetic, like electronic warfare, jamming, directed energy. There’s some of that right now in the current generation, but you’re going to want to expand those capabilities to deal with a swarming drone threat. We’re looking at what kind of upgrades you can do with MLIDS [to handle swarming drones].

When might these capabilities be ready for the field? Are we talking five years or so?

It’s more how fast the Pentagon wants to move, how urgent they see the need. It could be much faster than five years if you want to accelerate.

There’s always going to be a balance between kinetic and non-kinetic, but you’re going to want to shift it more in favor of non-kinetic to deal with that [swarming] threat. [Capabilities such as electronic warfare and directed energy to take out drone swarms] are all programs in R&D that are underway now. It’s a question of how fast do you want to accelerate that development and move it into production.

The Pentagon is moving forward on directed energy [and] a single vehicle solution. We’ve got to do some more testing to show which technologies are going to prove out the best, and then you need to put those into production.

What’s the trickiest part of trying to adapt capabilities like directed energy and electronic warfare to deal with a swarm of targets that may be coming from multiple directions?

The single hardest piece is the power requirements for directed energy, and how do you make that power mobile. It takes a lot of power, and so you need to develop more efficient ways of producing that power such that you can do it in a package that you can put on a vehicle, rather than use it just in a fixed site.

Where do things go next for the RADA merger?

Both boards have approved the deal. The next step is an [Securities and Exchange Commission] filing, which will be in the next couple of weeks. Once the SEC has reviewed that [data submitted by Leonardo DRS], there’s a vote of the RADA shareholders. We’re looking at sometime mid-fall as the closing date. I don’t think we’re going to see regulatory challenges.

This summer, scientists and engineers descended on the area, not to hunt for the mythical beast, but to experiment with communication technologies meant to reinforce U.S. Army capabilities in difficult terrain.

Officials said weeks of testing at the fourth annual Network Modernization Experiment, or NetModX, at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst brought the service’s aerial tier network one step closer to reality, where it could be used to bounce battlefield information across valleys, neighborhoods and other isolated areas.

“We really saw how the aerial tier could extend our network, but we wanted to do some further evaluations,” Army Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey, director of the Network Cross-Functional Team, told reporters July 21. “NetModX and EDGE were really able to help us in that, and now we’re going to introduce it back into Project Convergence 22, which will allow us to potentially take it further and get it into the hands of our soldiers.”

Aerial tier networking — one of dozens of focuses at the experiment — ensures connectivity by using airborne assets such as drones to overcome large, signal-impeding obstacles including mountains and buildings. Unlike satellites, which take time to arrange and can be jammed or destroyed, aerial tier gear can be deployed quickly overhead when and where soldiers need it, providing a critical link to friendly forces.

The Army is investing in the aerial tier network as the U.S. postures itself for larger-scale fights with world powers, the sort of conflicts that spread troops out and demand rapid information sharing. To that end, the Army has identified network modernization as one of six pressing priorities; others include long-range precision fires, air-and-missile defense and next-generation combat vehicles.

The location of NetModX, amid countless trees and other challenging landscapes, provided real-world conditions that the research community and industry leveraged. Realistic data and insights, officials said, are paramount to developing technologies best suited for a future fight.

“I’ve told my team that we don’t need to test where everything’s wide open and flat because we need to test operationally, where we think we might be,” said James Tucker Swindell, chief of the radio frequency communications division at the C5ISR Center. “If you pull up your Google Maps and you look around the world, there are a lot of trees, a lot of foliage, and that can be very temperamental when it comes to specific frequencies in the RF spectrum.”

Among the C5ISR Center’s interests at NetModX was the Relay for Aerial to Non-line-of-sight Ground Environment, or RANGE, a science-and-technology program aimed at creating a “transformative tactical radio relay capability,” according to Swindell.

“We’re pushing for high throughput non-line-of-sight tactical comms, providing resilient options for communications-denied environments, all while incorporating the modular form factor for” unmanned aircraft systems, he said. “The reason why we’re doing that is if we build it for a UAS, when you need to scale it up for manned aircraft, it’s a lot easier to go that direction than the reverse.”

The RANGE team is working intimately with the Future Vertical Lift Cross-Functional Team to study and connect unmanned and other aerial systems to boots on ground.

At last year’s Project Convergence, a comprehensive exercise that contributes to Joint All-Domain Command and Control, a small drone was used to pass on communications and maintain contact. The Army hailed it as a success.

“That aerial tier will thicken and extend our network, our communications,” Rey said, “and improve the range and resilience of our network across the board.”

The medium-range hypersonic missile was launched from the back of a Marine Corps logistics truck. Any USMC or Army trucks equipped with the Palletized Load System can be converted into a launch platform. The program uses missile round pallets that are designed to be used with the load handling systems on these vehicles. An Army artillery fire control system was used to initiated the launch as well.

An integrated systems critical design review of the OpFires program will be completed in 2022, DARPA said.

“This is a promising step toward a [transporter erector launcher] on-demand capability for accurately firing medium-range missiles from highly agile, readily available logistics trucks that are already in both the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps inventory,” Lt. Col. Joshua Stults, the DARPA program manager for OpFires, said in a statement. “Our successful agile hardware development approach prioritizes full-scale flight testing that will inform further design maturation this year.”

A Lockheed Martin project, OpFires integrates a throttleable boost motor into the hypersonic missile, which typically fly at faster that five times the speed of sound. The variable motor allows the missile to strike targets across the medium-range spectrum without having to preform energy-bleed maneuvers.

Lockheed Martin also adapted proven electronics and precision fires subsystems from High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems into the OpFires project, allowing for interoperability with the Army’s existing Advance Field Artillery Tactical Data System infrastructure.

HIMARS, another Lockheed product, have been making headlines for their effectiveness against Russian forces and countermeasures while in use by the Ukrainian military. They have been credited with the destruction of Russian supply depots, forward command posts and the commander of a VDV paratrooper regiment. The system currently is capable of striking targets over 300 km away, according to Lockheed Martin.

“The OpFires program is a great example of how DARPA, in partnership with industry, is helping the Department of Defense facilitate rapid development and testing of advanced hypersonic technologies to accelerate the delivery of transformational warfighting capabilities,” Michael White, principal director for hypersonics in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said.

Well, sort of new.

The WC-135R “nuke-sniffer” jet that landed July 11 at the Lincoln Airport — the 55th’s temporary operating base while Offutt’s runway is replaced — was actually built in 1964.

The former aerial New Hampshire Air National Guard refueling tanker has been refitted with new equipment capable of detecting atmospheric radiation, and updated with modern “glass cockpit” controls. And it has the same newer, quieter turbofan engines as the rest of Offutt’s RC-135 reconnaissance fleet.

“We have a jet here that the Air Force hasn’t seen before,” Lt. Col. Chris Crouch, commander of the Offutt-based 45th Reconnaissance Squadron, said in a statement. “We will have a lot more range to get to op areas that we were never able to reach before.”

It is the first of three refurbished National Guard KC-135s slated for delivery to the 55th Wing during the next year. All will fly the Constant Phoenix mission, collecting and analyzing air samples in support of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.

The mission dates to the Cold War era. Its importance has grown as tensions with Russia rise and North Korea ramps up its missile-testing program with a series of launches this year.

“The world needs this capability to sense nuclear tests,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a former 55th Wing commander, told The World-Herald in 2021.

During the conversion, the long refueling booms are removed from the tankers and the planes’ avionics and flight systems are upgraded to match the 55th Wing’s other aircraft.

They also are equipped with small sensing pods on each side of the fuselage, over the wing. Filters inside the pods capture tiny particles from a nuclear blast, giving analysts important information about the composition of the bomb or radiation source.

The work is being done in Greenville, Texas, by the 645th Aeronautical Systems Group, long known by its nickname, “Big Safari.”

The three new planes are replacing two decrepit WC-135s that have undergone few upgrades since Boeing built them in 1961 and 1962 and in recent years were notorious “hangar queens.”

One of the planes, a WC-135C with the tail number 62-3582, was retired in November 2020 during a tongue-in-cheek retirement ceremony before it was flown to a desert scrapyard in Arizona. Crew members described infuriating breakdowns and harrowing flights aboard an aircraft that the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron’s chaplain nicknamed “Lucifer’s Chariot.”

The second, a WC-135W with the tail number 61-2667, will continue flying for a few more months. But it has one of the worst maintenance records in the Air Force.

In fiscal year 2021, the plane had a “mission-capable” rate of 48%, according to Air Force data published by the Air Force Times, meaning it was capable of carrying out scheduled missions less than half the time. And it had a “break” rate of 47%, meaning it returned from almost half of its missions needing significant repairs. Early last year, it was sidelined in Australia for nearly two months because of hydraulic problems.

At the urging of Bacon and Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer, Congress approved $218 million in 2019 and 2020 to refurbish the three planes for the Constant Phoenix mission. The decision also followed a World-Herald investigative series, called “In-Flight Emergency,” in 2018 that spotlighted maintenance problems with the 55th Wing’s fleet of C-135 variant jets.

“Before we had to have a special cadre of very experienced aircrew who were able to fly with those old, small motors and deal with some of the issues they had,” Crouch said in the 55th Wing release. “Now we have a nice, updated, reliable jet that we can have any pilot, co-pilot and navigator fly on.”

The delivery of new planes, or even refurbished ones, is a rare event for the 55th Wing. The last refurbished planes arrived in the mid-1990s, said Robert Hopkins III, a former RC-135 pilot who is now a Dallas-based historian of Air Force reconnaissance.

The last new planes were the RC-135 variants delivered in 1967 for several missions, including Rivet Joint and Cobra Ball. Many of those are still flying.

“This is a monumental moment for us,” said Col. Kristen Thompson, the 55th Wing’s commander, in the press release. She called the delivery of the WC-135s “a game changer.”

The next WC-135R is scheduled to arrive in the winter, according to the press release, and the third jet is expected in summer 2023.

In recent years, Raytheon’s Joint Precision Approach and Landing System, or JPALS, has helped Navy and Marine pilots precisely land on carriers and amphibious assault ships. JPALS uses GPS sensors, antennas and other equipment on ships to guide in aircraft in all types of bad weather and surface conditions.

Raytheon officials said Monday that the company’s new Expeditionary Joint Precision Approach and Landing System, or eJPALS, could help the Air Force establish a network of austere air bases to help it fight a future war against a major adversary as part of its Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, concept.

The Air Force has said that having forces concentrated in well-established bases could be a weakness in a war against a major adversary such as China. In such a conflict, the enemy could try to knock out or sideline large portions of the Air Force’s fleet with a series of cruise missile or other attacks targeting aircraft or infrastructure such as runways.

Spreading forces out at a variety of locations, including by setting up rougher and smaller bases in the field, could neutralize that threat as part of ACE.

In a briefing with reporters at the Farnborough Air Show in England, Eric Ditmars, president of secure sensor solutions for Raytheon Intelligence and Space, said eJPALS is a smaller, more versatile version of the traditional JPALS. It will help fixed-wing, rotary, and unmanned aircraft alike conduct precision landings, Ditmars said.

The systems used by eJPALS are also smaller, portable and more rugged than the old JPALS equipment, he said, so it could be flown in on a C-130 and set up by two people within an hour and a half in rougher environments, “which is really critical for our customers.”

A video posted on Raytheon’s YouTube account shows two airmen setting up an eJPALS system. It looks like a disc-shaped device on a tripod stand roughly the height of an adult, tethered to the ground.

“The beauty of eJPALS is [after two airmen set it up in an hour and a half], I can do combat operations for a few hours or days, and then pack this stuff up, fly it to a different place, set it up in 90 minutes, and I’m going again,” retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack McMullen, now Raytheon’s director of air superiority, said in the video. “The key to this system is the flexibility it provides to the air power strategist in this peer conflict we find ourselves in today.”

EJPALS will work in poor weather such as rain, Ditmars said, using its sensors to calculate wind speeds or other challenging factors and sending that information to the pilot for a successful, accurate landing. It can handle 50 simultaneous approaches to multiple landing sites in a 20 nautical mile radius, he said.

“We’ll be able to put this out in some really difficult environments,” Ditmars said.

And it maintains the encrypted anti-jamming datalink technology that lets aircraft maintain uninterrupted contact with the landing system, Ditmars said.

Raytheon is in the midst of the first deliveries of eJPALS to the military, and is looking for additional contracts to provide more, Ditmars said.

The fiscal 2023 defense budget request calls for nearly $63 million for rapid prototyping ― up from $11.6 million in fiscal 2022 and just $5.5 million in 2021. Those funds would be spent by the Marine Corps rapid capabilities office, established by then-Commandant Gen. Robert Neller in 2016 to fast-track “emergent and disruptive technologies” to the fleet.

The lion’s share of requested 2023 funds will be allotted to three efforts: a “Family of Integrated Targeting Cells,” or FITC, project, with $20.5 million in funds; enhancement to the MQ-9 Reaper drone, with $14.5 million; and development of low-cost attritable aircraft, at $14.4 million.

“The Marine Corps affirms with a high degree of confidence that the programs in this line item are executable,” the service stated in budget documents.

All prototypes to be assessed, whether they’re a commercial off-the-shelf technology, a developmental item or something in between, and need to be at technology readiness level seven or higher, according to the documents. This means they’re at or near operational capability and ready for a demonstration in an operational environment.

And while details are relatively scarce, demos do appear to be on the calendar for 2023.

The funding for the Family of Integrated Targeting Cells will support the start of key test events, according to budget documents. This test effort appears to support the broader force with a focus on the Pacific.

The Senate version of the NDAA included a $245 million increase for Joint All Domain Command and Control, or JADC2, which includes creation of a Joint Force Headquarters at Indo-Pacific Command and “acceleration and integration” of these targeting cells.

The idea of integrating and streamlining targeting operations for the benefit of the joint force has been a talking point for decades, but the existential threat of China in the Pacific ― a particular focus for the Marine Corps as it prepares for future missions focused on the littorals and operations from small expeditionary bases in austere environments ― has brought with it a greater sense of urgency.

The Marine Corps’ investment in experimentation with attritable aircraft, essentially, cheap and plentiful drones that can be deployed in swarms or on riskier missions because their loss won’t break the bank, is a relatively new line of effort for the service.

Plans include the start of “development of partnering crewed assets with attritable, risk-worthy uncrewed assets that will employ weapons, sensors, and communications suites to execute mission sets in an operationally relevant environment,” budget documents state.

This description aligns with “loyal wingman” drone concepts such as those developed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing. Boeing, which has partnered with the Royal Australian Air Force on the effort, debuted an attritable unmanned aircraft that can partner with manned fighters ahead of the 2021 Dubai Air Show.

While the Air Force has defined “attritable” aircraft as costing between $2 million and $20 million, Marine Corps budget documents describe the prototypes it wants as “highly attritable,” indicating it is after an even cheaper and less exquisite platform.

In addition to giving warfighters greater situational awareness on the ground and in the air, the unmanned systems the Marine Corps wants to develop need to be “capable of operating in austere environments,” documents state.

This echoes the priorities of Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger, stated in his Force Design 2030 planning document.

In this vision for the force, he said the Marine Corps was overinvested in short-range, nonlethal flying drones, but fell short when it came to long-range unmanned systems that could carry lethal payload and operate both from ships and from shore.

He directed planners to focus on range and endurance when it came to unmanned platforms “given the expanse and non-contiguous nature of IndoPacific geography and the ever-expanding range of threat systems.”

In that 2020 document, he also said the force needed six active-component unmanned aerial vehicle squadrons, up from the current three. And after a long journey to acquire MQ-9 Reaper drones, the first Marine Corps UAVs that fit into the largest “group 5 UAS” category, the service is ready in 2023 to innovate and put these systems through their paces.

After several years of leasing Reapers from General Atomics ASI, the Corps took possession of two of its own MQ-9s in 2021.

In 2022, Berger announced the service would stand up a first Reaper squadron in Hawaii as part of its Pacific focus. In 2021 GA-ASI also debuted a short takeoff-and-landing, or STOL, version of the MQ-9 that can launch from ships, a modification that would allow the drone to better support Marine expeditionary units and provide cover and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as Marines move from ship to shore.

In May, the Navy published a presolicitation notice announcing its intent to procure hardware needed to integrate the SkyTower 1 Pod onto the Reaper.

This would give the drone Link-16 networking and communication capabilities, allowing for communication and coordination with ground forces. Marines would receive that capability later in 2022, InsideDefense reported, adding that additional electronic warfare capabilities are on the way as well as payloads that enhance the Reaper’s ability to conduct essential Marine Corps missions in the Pacific, such as airborne early warning and maritime surface search.

Earlier in 2022, Berger suggested the Corps’ need for organic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance would drive it to invest in even more large drone platforms. The service scrapped plans for a ship-based drone called MUX in 2020, but still sees a need for a capable and deadly eye in the sky that can operate wherever Marines do.

“So absolutely, we’re going to expand in Group 5, large-scale, big-wing, medium-altitude, long-endurance, uncrewed aircraft,” Berger said, according to a report from Seapower. “That’s so we can have, for the naval force, persistent organic ISR access from the MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force] level on down to the squad level.”

The FITC, MQ-9 and attritable aircraft development efforts are all expected to be complete by the end of 2024, according to budget documents.

“This is getting to the end of the Skyborg program, is where we are,” Jeffrey Herro, senior vice president for business development in Kratos’ unmanned systems division, said in an July 18 interview with Defense News at the Farnborough Air Show in England. “And then it will morph into other programs.”

Kratos’ Valkyrie drones have carried out flight tests before as part of the Air Force’s Skyborg program, an artificial intelligence-driven wingman that had its first flight test in a drone in April 2021.

Herro said the most recent flights differed from previous tests, though he would not specify exactly how.

“We definitely were looking at envelope expansion,” Herro said when asked if these flights entailed testing more advanced capabilities.

Herro also would not say where the tests took place or exactly when, aside from saying they took place within the last two months, and that they were successful. Kratos declined to say exactly how many flights occurred, aside from saying two Valkyries were involved, and there was a series of tests.

Skyborg will likely be wound down and the capabilities it has proven will feed into new systems for the Air Force in the near future, Herro said — possibly within a year.

“The future is here,” he said. “The Skyborg program has progressed to a place where the things that they’ve learned from it will almost assuredly be applied in a future and morphed program. What they have learned will definitely inform the follow-on programs to Skyborg.”

The Air Force in recent months has intensified its focus on teaming autonomous unmanned aircraft up with piloted fighters, with Secretary Frank Kendall calling it one of his top priorities. Kendall said he envisioned teams of about five autonomous drones — what the Air Force now refers to as collaborative combat aircraft — flying alongside F-35s or the Next Generation Air Dominance platform.

Lockheed Martin said this month it’s eyeing a mix of expendable drone wingmen and more advanced autonomous systems for the U.S. Air Force to team up with its manned fighters. The service could fly the expendable drones in as soon as three years, the vice president and general manager of the company’s advanced development programs division, known as Skunk Works, said July 11.

Drone wingmen that are ‘attritable’ if not expendable

Skyborg’s recent successes will likely help shape the Air Force’s development of these autonomous drone wingmen, whether the service decides to use Valkyries or other unmanned aircraft, Herro said.

Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter told reporters at the Pentagon last month that the service is trying to move beyond demonstrations of the manned-unmanned teaming concept and field a platform that could serve in this role.

Herro said recent comments from Kendall have shown the service has “recognized the fiscal reality” that its drone wingmen will have to be “attritable” — a term the Air Force uses to describe an aircraft that is not quite expendable, but inexpensive enough that if one is lost on a mission it is not overwhelming for the service.

He pointed to Kendall’s recent comments to Breaking Defense at the Royal International Air Tattoo that after initially exploring the idea of autonomous drones to fly with B-21 Raider bombers, the service concluded it wasn’t cost-effective and scrapped the idea.

Herro said Kratos’ work on Skyborg with its Valkyrie has proven it is feasible to create an autonomous, unmanned system that the service could afford to have shot down.

“And if you lose it, you did not break the bank,” Herro said. “That’s the important part. But you can still accomplish the mission set, by and large,” and more elaborate, expensive systems are not put at risk.

The basic version of each autonomous Valkyrie would likely cost between $3 million and $5 million apiece, he said, but as capabilities are added to to allow it to carry out a specific mission — such as strike capability, electronic warfare or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — the price could as much as double. Herro predicted the per-unit cost would not top $10 million.

If the Air Force decides to move forward on its manned-unmanned teaming concept, Kratos could start ramping up its production of Valkyries immediately, Herro said. Kratos studies show the company would likely be able to produce 25 Valkyries at first, but within about three years could ramp up its production to anywhere from 250 to 500 annually.

The Air Force in April chose the Boeing-made Wedgetail to be its next battle management and command and control aircraft, replacing part of its aging E-3 Airborne Warning and Control fleet. But the service said in the announcement the first rapid prototype E-7 would be delivered in fiscal 2027, following a contract award to Boeing in fiscal 2023.

The Air Force wants to retire 15 of its 31 decades-old AWACS in 2023, years before the first E-7′s anticipated delivery, generating concern among lawmakers like Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., about a potential capability gap.

In a roundtable with reporters at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford in England, Andrew Hunter, assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, sought to temper expectations about how much the process could be expedited.

“I don’t know that ultimately, there’s a huge opportunity to dramatically accelerate” achieving initial operational capability for the Wedgetail, he said.

Adapting used airframes likely isn’t an option, Hunter said. While the Wedgetail is based on Boeing’s 737 air frame, it has a “unique combination” of components that means there aren’t many used airframes the government could acquire.

The Wedgetail acquisition will also require software development, making use of open systems architecture, Hunter said.

This software development will also take time, he said, but when Boeing has the first new Wedgetail air frame built and ready to be “missionized,” the Air Force will be ready to load that equipment.

“We’re going to have this as something that works in a completely integrated way with our Air Force fleet,” Hunter said.

He noted the Air Force has learned a great deal in recent years from mistakes made in the FAA certification process, such as underestimating the information the FAA would need and subsequently delaying the MH-139 Grey Wolf helicopter’s certification. While Hunter said he isn’t taking that part of the process for granted, he said he’s confident the FAA will certify the new E-7s.

The FAA is required to review the avionics and other systems of new military aircraft and certify they are safe and functional before the aircraft can be delivered.

In the May hearing in which Duckworth raised concerns about the timing of the Wedgetail delivery, Lt. Gen. Duke Richardson, Hunter’s military deputy, said the Air Force might be able to buy E-7s more quickly once the certification process is done. But he also cautioned not to rush the contract process.

The U.S. Air Force is talking to its Australian and British counterparts to learn how it can accelerate the process, he said. The Royal Australian Air Force has flown the Wedgetail for years, and the Royal Air Force has bought Wedgetails and is expected to start flying them next year.

The Air Force has also consulted the Navy, whose P-8 Poseidon is a modified 737 like the Wedgetail.

“There’s a community of interest around that aircraft, and that gives us some opportunity to work with our partners to get to the right answer,” Hunter said.

While the E-7 is a nearly two-decade old model, Hunter said it will provide a modern and considerable upgrade in capability from the aging E-3 Sentry. And its use of modular open systems architecture will allow its software-oriented radar systems to be regularly upgraded.

“The capability is impressive,” Hunter said. “It’s a night and day difference.”