The directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the formation of the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) to “better align authorities and resources to rapidly deliver [joint counter-small unmanned aircraft system] capabilities to America’s warfighters, defeat adversary threats and promote sovereignty over national airspace,” the memo states.

Hegseth also directed the Army secretary to disestablish the Joint Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office, or JCO, which was created in 2019 and led by the Army. It will cease to exist once JTIAF 401 is established, the memo notes.

The unit that blends operational, acquisition and interagency roles under a single command will be empowered with procurement authority, flexible funding and streamlined personnel authorities, operating under the oversight of the deputy secretary of defense.

The move comes as U.S. forces in the Middle East and Eastern Europe face increasingly sophisticated drone swarms from state and non-state actors. Cheap, disposable quadcopters and fixed-wing models have been used to knock out armored vehicles, overwhelm air defense and harass bases at a fraction of the cost of defending against them.

Ukraine’s daring drone attacks against Russian warplanes on Russian soil in Operation Spiderweb earlier this summer served as a wake-up call in modern warfighting.

The JCO made some headway by narrowing the Pentagon’s crowded field of more than three dozen drone defense prototypes to a handful of approved systems, running joint demonstrations at Yuma Proving Ground— which helped several companies gain traction in the military — and establishing common training and testing protocols.

But critics say the office lacked the teeth to buy and deploy gear quickly and was hamstrung by the Pentagon’s budget cycle.

The new task force aims to fix that. JIATF 401 will be able to direct procurement decisions, allocate up to $50 million per initiative and hire outside the normal federal process to pull in technical experts.

It will also consolidate work on drone forensics, exploitation and replication programs and tie into the Defense Innovation Unit’s Replicator 2 initiative on mass-produced autonomous systems, according to the directive.

Additionally, the task force will have 30 days after initiation to make recommendations on establishing a dedicated C-sUAS test and training range.

The reorganization is designed to compress timelines from years to months.

“We’re moving fast — cutting through bureaucracy, consolidating resources, and empowering this task force with the utmost authority to outpace our adversaries,” Hegseth said in a statement.

The new task force could help reshape a growing market projected to reach tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. Companies that won spots in JCO-sponsored demos, from directed-energy and high-power microwave startups to electronic-warfare specialists, will now face a more centralized buyer with discretionary funding that could keep competition high and fast-paced.

The task force will undergo a formal review after 36 months, giving Congress and the Pentagon a chance to assess whether the new organization delivers.

“On January 7, 2025, the Deputy Secretary of Defense [Kathleen Hicks] directed the [Missile Defense Agency] to cease development of one of the elements, the AN/TPY-6 radar, but to retain the currently fielded panel as an experimental asset with potential to develop for operational use within the [Guam Defense System] in the future,” the report states.

While Hicks’ decision came at the end of her tenure under the Biden administration, GAO notes the changes are not binding on the new administration.

The Pentagon’s plan to develop an elaborate air-and-missile defense architecture is beginning to take shape and will be pieced together over the coming years in order to protect Guam from increasingly complex threats emerging in China and North Korea.

MDA had shipped its first AN/TPY-6 panel on a boat headed to the island last summer, planning to use it to track a threat launched from a C-17 plane in a first flight test of current capability coming together for the defense of Guam at the end of 2024.

The new radar uses technology from MDA’s Long-Range Discrimination Radar positioned in Alaska at Clear Space Force Base, which will have its own test next year ahead of declaring operational capability.

The Guam Defense System will also rely on a variety of systems still in development, mostly within the Army. The Navy will provide technology and capability from its Aegis weapons system. The land service plans to bring to Guam currently fielded capabilities, like the Patriot system and its Integrated Battle Command System, or IBCS, that connects any sensor and shooter together on the battlefield, as well as Mid-Range Capability missile launchers, which were first fielded at the end of 2023.

The Army will also incorporate Patriot’s radar replacement, the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, which was just approved for production, and its Indirect Fire Protection Capability launchers, which are reaching the end of the prototyping phase.

With the termination of AN/TPY-6, for now, Hicks directed the MDA prioritize remaining Aegis Guam systems development funds “toward delivering minimum viable Aegis C2 [command and control] and datalink capabilities to enable Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) engagements off remote track from AN/TPY-2 and LTAMDS over the JTMC [Joint Track Management Capability] bridge,” according to GAO’s report.

The Pentagon’s memo required upgrading the JTMC bridge to address all missile threats from China and achieve a Joint Tactical Integrated Fire Control capability — the future joint track architecture for Guam — “for coordinated battle management, combat identification and electronic protection,” the report states. Those upgrades should be completed no later than 2029.

The memo also directed MDA to accelerate key command-and-control integration work, including getting the Army-operated Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system to work within IBCS.

Guam is home to a permanent THAAD battery called Task Force Talon, which serves as the critical component for defending the island against ballistic missile threats.

Additionally, the Army and MDA “shall integrate AN/TPY-2 measurement data into IBCS no later than 2030 and achieve full integration by 2033,” the report details.

The MDA has long used AN/TPY-2 radars to track ballistic missiles, but Raytheon just delivered a new version to MDA with Gallium Nitride, or GaN, which gives it the ability to track more complex threats at greater ranges like hypersonic weapons.

The first new radar with GaN will go to the Army’s eight THAAD battery. The radars can be used in a forward-based mode, providing cuing data to systems like the Navy’s Aegis ballistic missile defense system or the Army’s Patriot. It serves as the primary radar for THAAD.

The Army’s new LTAMDS radar, also developed by Raytheon, has GaN technology as well.

The office is concerned that without such a plan, the effort risks cost and schedule overruns and an infrastructure unready to accommodate the additional personnel required to operate the defensive shield.

In a report released May 22, the government watchdog notes that while the Pentagon has set up organizations to manage the Guam Defense System and has now designated lead services for sustaining and operating it, there is no strategy to transfer responsibilities from the Missile Defense Agency to the various service leads.

“As a result, DOD risks schedule delays for the deployment of GDS [Guam Defense System] elements and incomplete plans for organization, training, personnel levels, and facilities, among other things,” the report states.

The Army, which is leading the effort to establish the system on the strategic island in the Pacific, also faces hurdles to advocate for construction and installation support from the other military services well-established on Guam.

And the Defense Department has yet to come up with firm numbers for personnel required to operate and sustain the system and estimates of when they might arrive, according to the report.

“Without clear personnel requirements or deployment schedules, the services will not be able to adequately plan for necessary support systems, which will reduce service personnel readiness and may exacerbate existing infrastructure,” the watchdog states.

At the end of 2023, the Pentagon pointed to 2024 as critical for establishing the planned missile defense architecture on Guam. As the threat from China continues to grow, DOD pledged to deliver a foundational capability to help stave off a potential attack directed at Guam by the end of 2024. That schedule is already slipping.

Guam is an island of nearly 170,000 people that sits in a vulnerable position — it is closer to Beijing than it is to Hawaii. The island plays host to a significant amount of U.S. combat power and would therefore be an attractive target for China in the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

The Missile Defense Agency and the Army sought a combined $1.5 billion in the fiscal 2024 budget to begin preparing the island by moving assets into place and integrating capabilities.

The Pentagon designated the Army in 2023 as the lead service overseeing the acquisition and execution plan for defending Guam.

Competing for resources

The current plan, according to the report, is to distribute elements of the architecture across 16 sites on the island and establish a Guam command center. The Pentagon is planning for its first deployment to begin in fiscal 2027, with final GDS elements coming in fiscal 2032.

The architecture is a tall order, considering the Army’s previous experience establishing a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system on Guam in 2013.

The THAAD battery, known as Task Force Talon, was first deployed as expeditionary but became permanently stationed in June 2016 to defend against possible ballistic missile threats from North Korea.

Over a decade later, the report points out that the Army does not have sufficient installation support for the THAAD battery and has had trouble getting approvals from the Navy for construction to support the system. The Army’s status on the island leaves it without its own construction planners, forcing it to rely on other services.

For example, GAO reports that the THAAD unit did not receive approval to start environmental work until January 2024 to construct a temporary maintenance facility for equipment after a typhoon hit the island in May 2023.

The unit also has limited storage space for parts and has to leave some parts outside unprotected, resulting in continuous corrosion issues.

And austere conditions have resulted in “morale challenges,” GAO found. The THAAD unit had just installed a latrine with running water and an ice machine in 2023. There is still no drinkable water at the location.

The Army is going to require a much larger number of facilities to support the new missile defense architecture and wants to “make Guam a duty station of choice,” the report states.

The Army will continue to have to rely on installation support from the other services because it won’t be establishing its own base on the island, GAO said.

“The Army will likely face challenges in advocating for construction priorities and coordinating installation support across multiple locations.”

At the same time, the Pentagon is looking to move personnel to the island for the missile defense system. The Marine Corps is also relocating 1,700 Marines from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam. The plan is to move them all by 2029, the report notes.

The agency previously reported Guam’s limited housing is a concern as the Marines build up a presence there, and the Air Force and Navy both have construction priorities for their own bases that could compete for resources needed for the missile defense system’s establishment.

The Pentagon also struggled to determine which service would be responsible for operating and sustaining which elements of the Guam architecture. GAO indicated there were some internal disputes over the division of responsibilities for various aspects of the system.

Determining density

Despite the deputy secretary of defense directing the Army in June 2023 to determine how many personnel would be required for GDS within 120 days, the service did not complete the task and still had not produced a number by August 2024, according to the report.

The Army told GAO it was waiting for the Pentagon to decide the lead organizations for operations and sustainment before determining personnel levels, facility needs and training plans.

The Pentagon has also not established a timeline for transferring responsibility, according to the report.

“DOD has proposed multiple military services to manage GDS, which makes developing a plan for operating and sustaining GDS particularly challenging,” the report states. “Specifically, DOD officials told us that this missile defense program will be the department’s largest and most complicated, presenting communication and planning challenges among the various DOD stakeholders.”

Without some prediction of personnel that will flow onto the island over what timeline, the Pentagon faces the prospect of “deploying personnel to Guam without adequate facilities or installation support services in place, including security of sites, fire protection and emergency management at bases operated by three different military services in Guam,” according to the report.

Some estimates state there will be a need for roughly 913 Army personnel in Guam by fiscal 2028, while another calculates a possible growth of 4,464 personnel by the same year.

Overall, the island’s population is estimated to grow from 17,917 personnel and dependents to 26,605 by fiscal 2034.

In its report, GAO recommends that the Pentagon develop a strategy with a timeline for transferring responsibilities to lead organizations and services for the various elements of the architecture.

The Army should also develop a “long-term strategy” for its organization as a supported command on the island.

And the defense secretary should determine personnel requirements needed for the architecture “to allow sufficient time for completing construction of necessary support facilities on Guam,” the report states.

“I’m pleased to announce that we have officially selected an architecture for this state-of-the-art system that will deploy next-generation technologies across the land, sea and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors,” Trump said. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they’re launched from space. And we will have the best system ever built.”

Trump also announced he has appointed Gen. Michael Guetlein, the Space Force’s second in command, to oversee the effort, which has become one of the president’s signature defense projects just months into his second term.

Guetlein, currently vice chief of space operations, previously led the Space Force’s primary acquisition organization, Space Systems Command. There, he oversaw major development efforts and helped streamline the space enterprise’s notoriously fragmented acquisition system. Earlier in his career, he served as deputy commander of the National Reconnaissance Office and program executive officer for programs and integration at the Missile Defense Agency — two of the organizations that will play a significant role in building out the Golden Dome architecture.

“I greatly appreciate your trust in me … and your trust in the team to deliver this,” Guetlein told Trump. “It is a great day for America.”

Trump first announced plans to develop an advanced, layered homeland missile shield in the early days of his second presidency, issuing an executive order that called for a 60-day study of architecture options. The capability is expected to include a mix of ground and space-based interceptors designed to defeat a spectrum of threats — from lower-end weapons to advanced hypersonic and cruise missiles.

While the current homeland missile defense system focuses on threats from rogue nations like North Korea and Iran rather than from peer adversaries like China or Russia, Trump’s homeland missile defense shield would focus on addressing threats from peer adversaries, as well as those rogue threats.

Beyond his cost and schedule projections — and an assertion that Canada had signed on to be part of Golden Dome — Trump was light on details about the architecture and approach to fielding what many analysts and officials have called a bold and challenging endeavor. He alluded to fielding space-based and hypersonic interceptors but offered little more about the scope of the project.

Trump’s promise Tuesday to deliver the layered, integrated system in around “two-and-a-half to three years” would require the Defense Department to field the more advanced elements of the architecture years ahead of schedule. For example, the space-based missile interceptors that he said will be part of the effort have not yet been developed. Meanwhile, hypersonic interceptors are not expected to be developed and delivered until the mid-2030s.

While the more advanced elements of Golden Dome will take time to deliver, several pieces of the architecture are already in various stages of development.

That includes a space-based missile defense and tracking layer comprised of satellites and sensors that can identify and monitor high-end missile threats, which MDA and the Space Force are currently developing and fielding. Those capabilities are part of the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and could potentially be scaled to support Golden Dome.

Republicans in Congress have largely been supportive of Golden Dome.

In February, Sens. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. — both of whom were in the Oval Office for Tuesday’s announcement — introduced a bill that proposes $19.5 billion for Golden Dome in fiscal 2026.

Their bill, the Golden Dome Act, proposes the addition of Aegis Ashore Systems for U.S. territory — which took years to install in Romania and Poland — and the use of blimps for detecting complex threats. The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, at Fort Greely, Alaska, would be expanded and upgraded with next-generation interceptors along with a brand-new interceptor site on the East Coast.

Meanwhile, the House GOP included $25 billion for the project in its budget reconciliation package for fiscal 2025 — a number that Trump referenced and validated in his remarks Tuesday.

Asked how confident he is that Congress will fully fund Golden Dome given the administration’s $175 billion cost projection, Trump called the process “easy.”

“It’s amazing how easy this one is to fund,” he said. “Some funding is tough and some is easy. When we say we’re going to save everyone’s lives in a crazy world, it seems to be very easy to get.”

Trump noted that Golden Dome systems will be made in the U.S., but didn’t confirm whether contracts had been awarded. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., highlighted the work that L3Harris, which is based in his home state, is doing to build out the current space-based sensor architecture.

Sullivan also referenced Lockheed and RTX, who have developed ground-based missile interceptors, while noting that the project will also likely involve more nontraditional defense contractors. Lockheed won the contract last year to build the interceptors that will replace the current ones.

“It’s all across the board in terms of companies. Sen. Cramer and I just met with a bunch of them last week that are interested in this,” he said. “Our technology sector is head and shoulders above any other place in the world, and they’re going to be a key part of this.”

The fifth-generation F-35A is the Air Force’s premier fighter, which includes stealth capabilities and advanced sensors and can carry a variety of air-to-air and air-to-ground guided weaponry.

The Pentagon previously surged the fighters to the Middle East amid the conflict in Gaza, while trying to contain a full regional war. While there, the fighters conducted airstrikes against the Houthis during the Biden administration’s campaign to reopen shipping lanes.

More than two weeks into the Trump administration’s intensified airstrike campaign in Yemen, Hegseth has rushed further military assets to U.S. Central Command. He’s extended the deployment of the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group in the Red Sea and announced the carrier Carl Vinson and its strike group would soon join it. The Pentagon has also sent multiple A-10 Warthogs to the region and at least six B-2 stealth bombers to Navy Support Facility Diego Garcia, a U.S. base in the Indian Ocean.

That means that roughly half of the Air Force’s B-2 fleet that is able to carry out missions is now deployed to Diego Garcia. The Air Force has 20 total B-2 Spirits, but only about 55% of them were mission-capable in 2024, according to service statistics.

At the same time, the U.S. has redirected multiple scarce air defense systems from South Korea to the Middle East, including two Patriot batteries and one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery.

“Secretary Hegseth continues to make clear that, should Iran or its proxies threaten American personnel and interests in the region, the United States will take decisive action to defend our people,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement Tuesday evening.

The posture changes send a clear signal to Iran, the Houthis’ main backer and America’s top adversary in the region. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened Tehran in recent weeks to cut its support for the group or risk American retaliation.

“The choice for the Houthis is clear: Stop shooting at U.S. ships, and we will stop shooting at you. Otherwise, we have only just begun, and the real pain is yet to come, for both the Houthis and their sponsors in Iran,” Trump posted on his Truth Social app on Monday.

The Houthis have been one of the most resilient parts of Iran’s regional proxy network, badly damaged after attacks from Israel over the last year.

Shortly after Israel’s war in Gaza began in the fall of 2023, the group began targeting commercial ships transiting the Red Sea with missiles and aerial drones. The Houthis continued those attacks despite repeated American strikes and a U.S.-led coalition launched to protect global maritime trade, which eventually rerouted elsewhere.

Still, despite two weeks of renewed U.S. strikes on Houthi sites across Yemen — hitting over 100 command posts, stockpiles, launch sites and even leaders — the group has not backed down and commercial shipping companies have not returned to the Red Sea.

Editor’s note: After publication of this story, an Air Force official called to inform Defense News that the country previously said to be hosting the fighters was incorrect. The official shared the true location, which is left out due to its sensitivity. The story has been updated to reflect the information.

President Donald Trump’s administration has made it clear it is not supportive of actions addressing climate change, despite the president’s close advisor owning an electric car company. During his first week in office, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He has also frozen funding related to initiatives on climate change.

Lawmakers’ recommendations in the 181-page document, obtained by Defense News, align solidly with the White House’s desire to abandon efforts addressing climate change, initiatives championed during former President Joe Biden’s administration.

The fiscal 2025 appropriations process has not been standard. A six-month stopgap spending bill passed by Congress last week may lower defense spending, but it also grants the Defense Department far more authority to decide how to spend its budget.

In the document crafted by the House and Senate appropriators, they recommended the Pentagon carve out $377.35 million worth of climate change initiatives and allocate that funding elsewhere, sending the message that funding related to those efforts is no longer supported by the people in power on Capitol Hill.

The majority of the cuts would take place within the Army’s research, development, test and evaluation portion of the budget, where efforts related to climate change initiatives could be cut from things like soldier lethality, ground, air and soldier system technology development.

Nearly half of the amount — a total of $167.2 million — was intended for funding hybrid-electric vehicle development work.

Lawmakers recommend zeroing out $100.25 million in funding for a Light Tactical Wheeled Vehicles HEV prototype effort, as well as $38 million for another emerging technology HEV prototype initiative and $27 million to pursue prototypes for an HEV variant of the Army’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

Another $66.9 million would be cut from efforts to modify service equipment with electric or hybrid propulsion systems, and $11.5 million would be cut from Medium Tactical Vehicles development work on hybrid power options.

The Army has long tinkered with the idea of making some of its vehicles electric or hybrid, and while the technology has become commonplace in the commercial vehicle industry, the service has yet to follow.

Companies have continued to put technology in front of the service in order to show the purported benefits, arguing that the technology is ready for prime time in the Army’s modernization plans.

The Army has evaluated the possibility of converting combat vehicles like the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle for hybrid propulsion, an effort led by the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office.

Army leaders have maintained that just because it hasn’t fully committed to hybrid capabilities in tactical or combat vehicles doesn’t mean the service is disinterested.

“It’s not a hard sell to anyone in the Army,” former Army acquisition chief Doug Bush told Defense News last fall. “I think wheeled vehicles is our biggest opportunity. It’s the same exact tech that’s all over the commercial sector now. A lot of people drive these cars. It’s becoming kind of normal.”

The Army is “just working on carving out the money to do it,” Bush said at the time.

While the investment is significant up front, “the long-term payoff, even a 10 to 15% fuel reduction, multiplied times a bazillion vehicles, is huge,” Bush said. “If we do this right, it’ll free up money down the road because we’re being more efficient with the vehicles.”

The capabilities a hybrid vehicle would bring are also becoming increasingly important in the modern battlefield, where silent watch and silent drive help U.S. troops evade detection by increasingly sophisticated sensors.

Additionally, the Army intends to make its Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle replacement a hybrid system, and companies competing to ultimately build the vehicle have created designs answering that requirement. The vehicles were expected to be introduced around 2030.

Lawmakers are suggesting the Army cut nearly $45 million in funding for Next-Generation Combat Vehicle technology that addresses climate change initiatives.

Other technology development areas, such as Future Vertical Lift — costing roughly $10 million — and soldier lethality — another $15 million — would see cuts to their climate change work if the Army were to take the lawmakers’ recommendations.

The Army has been working on a variety of efforts that would align with its official climate strategy that address everything from installations in the U.S. all the way to the tactical edge of the battlefield. It is unclear if the strategy itself still stands or if it will be scrapped.

The Pentagon is already busy canceling work related to climate change, including studies that look at whether a warmer Earth could lead to increased instability and insecurity in certain places around the world.

In a recent post on X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, “The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.”

As a result, the NTSB is recommending helicopter flights be immediately prohibited on “Route 4″ — where the fatal crash occurred — between Hains Point and the Wilson Bridge along the Potomac River when planes are landing or taking off on runways 15 and 33 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).

The board is also recommending an alternative helicopter route between Hains Point and the Wilson Bridge when that segment of Route 4 is not open to rotary-wing traffic.

The on-scene investigation of the collision between the American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, and a UH-60 Black Hawk over the Potomac River concluded Feb. 14

When the aircraft collided, the fuselage of the commercial jet broke apart in three places and was discovered inverted in waist-deep water in the Potomac. The helicopter wreckage was found nearby. All 64 people aboard the passenger jet and all three Army crew members aboard the Black Hawk — Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, Cpt. Rebecca M. Lobach and Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara — were killed.

Meanwhile, the investigation continues off-site in various labs and other secure locations, according to Jennifer Homendy, NTSB chair. The preliminary report lays out what happened but not how or why the crash happened, Homendy said in a briefing Tuesday.

“For this investigation, we’re reviewing airport operations and prior incidents, including near midair collision events,” Homendy said, using information from voluntary safety reporting programs and the Federal Aviation Administration.

That data shows that from 2011 through 2024, a “vast majority” of reported incidents occurred on approach to landing, and initial analysis found that at least one Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, Resolution Advisory was triggered per month at DCA due to a helicopter’s proximity, Homendy said.

Unlike traffic advisories, which are issued when an intruding aircraft is about 20 seconds or 0.3 nautical miles from the closest point of approach, TCAS resolution advisories signal a collision threat and require immediate action, Homendy said.

In over half of the encounters from 2011 to 2024, the helicopter may have been flying above the route altitude restriction, which is limited to a ceiling of 200 feet above the ground, Homendy said. Two-thirds of the events happened at night.

From October 2021 through December 2024, there were 944,179 commercial operations at DCA with 15,214 “close proximity events” between commercial planes and helicopters “in which there was a lateral separation distance of less than one nautical mile and vertical separation of less than 400 feet,” Homendy said.

Of those 15,214 events, there were 85 very close calls involving lateral separations of less than 1,500 feet and less than 200 feet of vertical separation, according to Homendy.

Through evaluation of the crash, the NTSB found that the Black Hawk was not flying in the very limited area it should have been flying near DCA.

“At the maximum altitude here of just 200 feet, a helicopter operating over the eastern shoreline of the Potomac River would have just 75 feet of vertical separation from an airplane approaching runway 33,” Homendy said.

Following the accident, the U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy immediately restricted helicopter traffic from operating over the Potomac River at DCA until March 31.

“As that deadline nears, we remain concerned about the significant potential for a future midair collision at DCA, which is why we are recommending a permanent solution today,” Homendy noted.

Homendy acknowledged that fully closing Route 4 between Hains Point and the Wilson Bridge when runways 15 and 33 are in use would restrict a key aviation corridor for Coast Guard patrols, law enforcement and government operations.

However, she noted that requiring controllers to hold helicopters north or south of DCA during those times could also add to controllers’ workload and increase risk. To that end, NTSB is recommending the FAA establish an alternative helicopter route between Hains Point and the Wilson Bridge when that segment of Route 4 is closed.

Although the preliminary report is out, Homendy said her team “has a lot of work to do,” including simulations, visibility studies and additional interviews related to helicopter operations and air traffic control.

When asked in the briefing whether the NTSB would call the resulting crash an oversight, Homendy said, “I mean, it’s stronger than an oversight, right? … The data we have pulled is from a voluntary safety reporting system that FAA could have used anytime. That data from October 2021 through December 2024, they could have used that information any time to determine that we have a trend here and a problem here and looked at that route.

“That didn’t occur, which is why we’re taking action today, but unfortunately, people lost lives and loved ones are grieving.”

On the ground, there isn’t someone with a standard gaming stick controller maneuvering the small drone. Rather, it is receiving all directions by someone’s voice.

“Doing that with the sticks is a lot of work,” Lee Ritholtz, CEO and co-founder of Primordial Labs, said during a recent demonstration of the capability at a local park in Leesburg, Virginia.

“He just told it to do a lot of things that would have required a lot of manual engagement,” Ritholtz said of his senior product manager and former Marine Raider, Jordan Dross, who was in the midst of talking the drone through its mission via a simple headset and push-to-talk radio.

Ritholtz and his co-founder Adrian Pope — both with roots at Lockheed Martin, including at Skunk Works, where they focused on advanced development programs and Sikorsky — created Primordial Labs in 2021 with the intent of developing technology that helps tackle large problems pervasive in human-machine interactions on the battlefield.

Defense technology often just recreates problems it intends to solve, such as cognitive overload, manpower requirements, physical workload and training burdens, Ritholtz said at the demonstration.

Ritholtz worked extensively on the Stalker XE program and knew there was much to solve when it came to the ground control conundrum.

“People love the airplane, but people always said this ground control station software sucks, and we just didn’t have a better way of doing it at the time,” he said. “And that’s where Anura comes in.”

Dross said he was hired after spending his military career using Stalker XE and not sugar-coating its user experience during his interview. He had no idea at the time that Ritholtz had worked extensively on its development.

The company developed the software Anura, which allows a human controller to simply speak to the drone to get it to do what they want.

“Some of the challenges that exist right now with the current set of interfaces for drones, for all kinds of robots … even using one robot, is overloading,” Ritholtz said. “We’re focused on new machine collaboration, two pieces that are really core to our mission, it’s easy and natural, and our focus … is about making it more human, the interaction more human.”

Anura’s key feature is the use of natural language.

“In the past there’s been work done trying to apply voice to these systems, oftentimes they are voice commands and they are really memorizing keywords, memorizing phrases. That’s doomed to fail, that will never work,” Ritholtz said.

The system is “truly natural language. You’re talking to it, you can say things in lots of different ways to express the intent,” he said. “There’s an element of feedback loop from the systems in Anura. That’s the battle space awareness … You can talk about things that emerge in real time.”

For example, when a controller talks to a robot, Anura understands the intent, breaks it down into a sequence of instructions that is feeding the robot, measures the status of those instructions and can make changes on the fly, Ritholtz explained. “That’s our autonomy under the hood. Our autonomy is essentially a wrap around other people’s autonomy.”

The software is designed to be able to work on any platform or system. At the demonstration, Anura was integrated onboard both a small Skydio quadcopter and one from Teal Drones — both competitors for the Short-Range Reconnaissance program in the U.S. Army.

“Wherever we’re needed to live, we’ll find a way to fit in,” Ritholtz said. “We don’t use any big black boxes. There aren’t any [large language models] being used here. We’re not calling out to, kind of, any open [artificial intelligence] servers. Everything is running locally and it’s because we own our pipeline.”

The company focused its original scope of the technology development on unmanned aerial systems within Army aviation and the Special Operations Command universe. But that work has expanded.

Primordial Labs has also worked with the Army’s program executive office for ground combat systems to experiment on a number of platforms, according to Ritholtz.

The company continues to find ways to work both with government customers and original equipment manufacturers to incorporate the capability. Primordial Labs currently has contracts with four program executive offices and five OEMs that include both air and ground platforms.

In addition to working with potential candidates for the Short-Range Reconnaissance program, Anura has also been integrated for demos on the micro-drone Black Hornet, which is the Army’s Soldier Borne Sensor system.

In 2025, the company is providing the Army’s “transformation in contact” brigades and divisions —designed to test technologically ready, innovative capabilities in operational environments — a minimum of 8,000 Anura licenses to support human-machine integrated formations experimentation.

Primordial Labs supported a major prime at Project Convergence in 2024 and is participating in the Army’s Expeditionary Warrior Experiment in April.

Across the board, no matter what program Anura is supporting, “there is one Anura,” Ritholtz emphasized. “Even when we are using Anura for different applications, it’s the same software. Every time we have a new application, we create a fork of Anura and then we figure, is this something that has legs?”

Every time Anura gets a new application, “it makes Anura better for everything,” he noted.

At the demo, the company also showcased how it is able to control multiple drones at once as a team, which is key to finding a solution for controlling large swarms of drones at once to flood the battlefield and overwhelm the enemy.

A swarm of a thousand drones can’t be controlled by a thousand people, and if even if the ground control was whittled down to a few controllers, the “graphical user interfaces break down when you have lots and lots and lots of objects and you can’t build enough dropdown menus and buttons to communicate all the constraints you want to an intelligent system,” Ritholtz said.

“As these robots get more and more intelligent … it’s kind of what we call the bad coworker problem, where you have an intelligent being that joins the office, but they don’t know anything about how you operate,” he explained. “They don’t know anything about your culture, your workplace culture, and so they’re kind of annoying to work with. That’s how I believe the robots of the future are going to be unless we find a better way to interact with them.”

The Midas touch of Pentagon bureaucracy has just hit President Trump’s “Iron Dome” missile defense shield, which shall be henceforth known as “Golden Dome.”

The billionaire president – known for his love of incorporating gold details into his own residential aesthetic – in his opening line of his inaugural address, promised a “golden age in America.”

Naturally, such an endeavor is best protected by a dome in matching colors.

Trump signed an executive order in January to develop a next-generation homeland missile defense shield.

The order – titled “The Iron Dome For America” shared a name with the successful, lowest tier of Israel’s multilayered air defense system of the same name.

Yet the name sparked confusion that the order actually called for the use of the specific Israeli system to defend the homeland, which was never the case. Missile defense experts agree Iron Dome would be ill-suited for such a mission to provide air and missile defense to a vast territory like the continental U.S.

And, in fact, Iron Dome is a trade-marked name owned by Israeli defense firm, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

“Please note the Department of Defense has renamed this program from “Iron Dome for America” to “Golden Dome for America,” a Feb. 24 amendment to a request for information from industry, posted to the federal business opportunities website, Sam.gov, reads.

The Missile Defense Agency’s RFI posting notes that since the deadline to receive information from industry on developing a new missile defense shield is Feb. 28, the agency will continue to use Iron Dome in reference to the program as answers are submitted to avoid confusion.

In other words, the bureaucracy has yet to catch up on the metallurgical magic.

The Missile Defense Agency and the Pentagon referred queries on the reasoning behind the name change to the White House. The White House did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Additionally, the helicopter crew may have received inaccurate altitude data inside the cockpit, NTSB officials said at a media briefing at NTSB headquarters about the ongoing investigation.

The on-scene investigation of the collision of the American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, and a UH-60 on a flight over the Potomac River has concluded, Jennifer Homendy, NTSB chair, said. The investigation will continue off-site in various labs and other secure locations.

When the aircraft collided, the fuselage of the commercial jet broke apart in three places and was discovered inverted in waist-deep water in the Potomac. The helicopter wreckage was found nearby. All 64 people aboard the passenger jet and all three Army crew members aboard the Black Hawk — Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, Cpt. Rebecca M. Lobach and Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara — were killed.

When asked if there was any indication the Black Hawk crew could see the impending collision in the seconds before impact, Homendy said NTSB investigators “do not have any indication” that the crew would have seen it.

Homendy also said it is now believed the helicopter crew were likely wearing night vision goggles throughout the flight because the check-out flight for the pilot was particularly focused on testing their ability to fly with the goggles.

“Had they been removed, the crew was required to have a discussion about going unaided,” Homendy said. “There is no evidence on the cockpit voice recorder, or CVR, of such a discussion.”

The NTSB will be conducting a visibility study to see what the crew would have been able to see or not see using night vision goggles leading up to the collision, according to Homendy.

Messages ‘may not have been received’

About two minutes before the collision, at approximately 8:46 p.m. local time, a radio transmission from the tower could be heard on the commercial jet’s CVR informing the Black Hawk that just south of the Wilson Bridge was a jet at 1,200 feet circling to its designated runway, according to Homendy.

Data from the Black Hawk’s CVR “indicated that the portion of the transmission stating the [jet] was circling may not have been received by the Black Hawk crew,” Homendy said.

“We hear the word ‘circling’ in ATC [air traffic control] communications, but we do not hear the word ‘circling’ on the CVR of the Black Hawk. The [NTSB] Recorders Group is evaluating this right now,” she added.

About seven seconds later, the Black Hawk crew responded to air traffic control that they “had the traffic in sight.”

Twenty seconds before the crash, “a radio transmission from the tower is audible on both CVRs asking the Black Hawk crew if the [jet] was in sight,” Homendy said. “Audible in the ATC radio transmission was a conflict alert in the background.”

The traffic alert and collision avoidance system on the jet received an automated traffic advisory “stating ‘traffic, traffic,’” she noted.

Three seconds later, a radio transmission from the tower could be heard in both CVRs directing the Black Hawk to pass behind the jet.

“CVR data from the Black Hawk indicated that the portion of the transmission that stated ‘pass behind the’ may not have been received by the Black Hawk crew,” Homendy said. “Transmission was stepped on by a 0.8 second mic key from the Black Hawk. The Black Hawk was keying the mic to communicate with ATC.”

The helicopter instructor pilot can be heard telling the pilot flying that “they believe ATC was asking for the helicopter to move left toward the east bank of the Potomac,” Homendy added.

‘Bad data’

Preliminary investigations are showing the pilot of the Black Hawk, flying 1.1 nautical miles west of the Key Bridge at approximately 8:43 p.m., indicated the altitude was 300 feet. The instructor pilot indicated the aircraft was at 400 feet.

The maximum ceiling altitude at Key Bridge is 300 feet above the terrain.

“At this time, we don’t know why there was a discrepancy between the two,” Homendy said. “That’s something that the investigative team is analyzing.”

At approximately 8:44 p.m., the instructor pilot indicated the Black Hawk was flying at 300 feet and descending to 200 feet as it approached the Key Bridge.

As the Black Hawk continued south passing over Memorial Bridge at approximately 8:45 p.m., the instructor pilot told the pilot flying that the aircraft was at 300 feet and needed to descend, according to Homendy. The maximum ceiling for flying south of Memorial Bridge is 200 feet.

“The pilot flying said they would descend to 200 feet.”

The radio altitude of the Black Hawk upon impact with the jet was 278 feet, which it had held for the previous five seconds, Homendy said.

“We’re confident with the radio altitude of the Black Hawk at the time of the collision, that was 278 feet, but I want to caution that does not mean that’s what the Black Hawk crew was seeing on the barometric altimeters in the cockpit,” she said. “We are seeing conflicting information in the data, which is why we aren’t releasing altitude for the Black Hawk’s entire route.”

According to Sean Payne, NTSB Vehicle Recorder Division branch chief, radio altitude is gathered by bouncing a signal from the helicopter to the ground.

“This is good data,” he said.

However, radio altitude isn’t the “primary means” the helicopter pilots would have used to determine their height during flight, Payne said.

“It is often different from what they see on their primary altimeters.”

Barometric altitude that pilots use while flying was not recorded on the flight data recorder, or FDR, also known as the black box. The barometric pressure setting was also not recorded.

Pressure altitude is also something that helicopter systems “can tap into,” Payne said. “We have found that this parameter is not valid,” Payne said, referring to it as “bad data.”

“We are working to determine if this bad data for pressure altitude only affected the FDR or if it was more pervasive through the helicopter’s other systems.”

The investigation will provide answers to what altitude the pilots saw in their gauges as they were flying, according to Payne.

The lab is working with Sikorsky, Black Hawk’s maker, and Collins Aviation, which handles avionic systems, and the Army to understand how the bad information could have affected other systems, he said.

Payne said the wreckage of the helicopter also needs to be examined, including the remains of pitot-static and air data systems, which he said will be difficult as the systems were “badly damaged” in the collision.

The lab will also look at the altimeters themselves to determine independent functionality, he noted.

“I’d like to stress that we’ve just completed the on-scene phase of the investigation,” he said. “We need to follow our process and be meticulous. Ultimately, this work will determine the altitude displayed to the pilots and will be included in our final report.”