AUSA 2025

While both Ukraine and Russia have sustained large amounts of helicopter losses due to dense traditional frontline air defenses, in some cases, drones, and attacks on bases, the U.S. Army is taking a measured approach in applying lessons learned to the future of its own rotary-wing fleet, a top commander told us. Maj. Gen. Claire Gill, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence is adamant that not everything that happens in Ukraine applies to the U.S. Army and it’s absolutely critical that only the right lessons should be heeded.

“When we talk about Ukraine, there are a lot of lessons to be learned,” Gill told us on the sidelines of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual conference in Washington, D.C.. “We focus on the right lessons to be learned.”

“There are some differences between positional warfare with drones – they’re doing World War One with drones right now in Ukraine – and the way that the United States Army fights, particularly as a member of the combined arms team and as a member of the joint force,” he added. “So, there are a lot of things that we should pay attention to there, but they’re not flying at night. They don’t plan like we plan. They don’t bring all the collective elements that we could bring to bear when we execute our operations.”

Ukraine and Russia are likely using deception as part of their operations, “but…using the night, using the terrain, using the degraded visual environment, we’ve got some pretty exquisite capabilities, and some well-trained folks, as do the Ukrainians,” Gill noted.

Gill is less convinced about Russian training.

“On the Russian side, I’ve seen some shoot downs that make me wonder, flying around the daytime, at altitude, flying the same routes. That just makes me think you can’t equate the way that they’re flying with the way that we might fly. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity there for us to learn some things, but not throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

“This is something when I talk to young aviators about what we should take away from some of the decisions that are being made in terms of divesting aircraft out of the army and investing in [unmanned aerial systems] UAS,” Gill added. “We have to make changes, right? We have to see the world the way it is. I know we’re not done with rotorcraft like I told you. Everything that we’re flying right now is going to be on the ramp for a long time.”

Army aviation assets include UH-60 Black Hawks, CH-47 Chinooks, AH-64E Apaches and heavily modified MH-60M Black Hawk, MH-47G Chinook, and AH/MH-6R Little Bird helicopters. You can read more about the future of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s (SOAR) aircraft in our recent story here. In the coming decade, the Bell MV-75 Valor tilt-rotor aircraft is slated to come online as well. More on that later in this story.

The fate of helicopters in Ukraine has hammered home the need for missions to be mapped out with excrutiating detail before launching, Brig. Gen. Philip C Baker, the Army’s aviation future capabilities director, told us.

“We’ve got to have that ability to have really good planning tools going into mission sets,” Baker explained. “And planning tools is really driven by our data integration across all of our combat systems, intel, maneuver, fires. So when you look at NGC2 [Next Generation Command and Control] that provides us an integrated data path to bring in as much of information early on to planning, so our crews, both manned and unmanned, can plan them out right mission sets so they understand enemy, they understand the electronic spectrum, they understand weather, they understand all that before they go in.”

In addition, “when you look at the battlefield data and the speed of data that passes around the battlefield, we’ve got to be able to have that inside of our operation cells, and we’ve got to have that inside of our aircraft. And so we’re doing a lot this year onboarding new communication capability onto platforms that will bring into our experiment in March, that brings in satellite-based communication, that brings in mesh networks onto platforms to be able to drive that data flow onto platforms inside of our operation cells.”

Having standoff munitions capabilities is also key, Baker posited, pointing to the Army’s developing launched effects effort, a broad term that the U.S. military currently uses to refer to uncrewed aerial systems configured for different missions, like reconnaissance or acting as loitering munitions, which can be fired from other aerial platforms, as well as ones on the ground or at sea. For the Army, one example of a longer-range weapon being fielded for Army helicopters is the Israeli-designed Spike-NLOS. It gives Apaches the ability to hit moving targets far away with exacting precision. Far longer-ranged launched effects will also become available, including those that can decoy, jam, and attack targets many dozens, or even hundreds of miles away.

“The role of launched effects is to provide that standoff capability, not like a Hellfire at eight kilometers, but multiple, multiple kilometers out, so we can make contact with the enemy early, understand what the enemy is doing, and then have an effect on the enemy,” Baker suggested. “So that’s really the role of launched effects.”

New and improved sensors will also help rotary-wing aircraft survive by making them better able to operate in a degraded visual environment, Baker added.

“As we bring new sensors onto the aircraft, we want to be able to truly operate in those environments that give us the highest capability and survivability,” Baker pointed out. “So during darkness hours, during dust, during, you know, the environment where we need we can operate not in daytime. So we’re bringing on sensor capability to our platforms that allow us to even enhance our ability to operate at night.”

Asked about what the right lessons from Ukraine are, especially for a potential fight against a peer adversary like China, Baker said they are “really tied to that standoff range. We know standoff is going to be critical to be able to stay outside of weapon engagement zones so we can operate kind of a sanctuary.”

The Army also wants “to rely on that data network to be able to pass information quickly so we can strike quickly and affect the enemy,” Baker added. 

Lessons learned from Ukraine are informing how the Army is developing the Valor, Brig. Gen. David Phillips, program executive officer of aviation, told TWZ.

“I would offer, from equipment perspective and a sustainment perspective, you can look at the equipment decisions that we’re making on MV-75 and tie them directly to these lessons learned, how we integrate launch effects, how we integrate networks, how we integrate the survivability on the platform, the survivability off board the platform, and just the aircraft survivability itself. I think we’re absolutely integrating those into our design efforts today, as we’re headed toward the critical design review that’s coming up in the spring.”

With many Russian helicopters being lost from attacks on their bases, Maj. Gen. Lori Robinson, Commanding General of Army Aviation and Missile Command, said it will be important to keep an eye on the skies.

“I think the right lesson is that everyone does have to look up,” Robinson told us. “And that includes your sustainment footprint on the ground. So we’re looking into how to make that mobile. We don’t have a mound of stuff on the ground. And then every soldier out there, whether you’re in the aircraft or you’re sustaining the aircraft on the ground, is going to have to be aware of what is above them.”

When it comes to thinking about lessons learned from Ukraine, Gill said one thing stands out. While crewed rotary wing aviation will be in the mix for years to come, uncrewed systems will ultimately be at the pointy tip of the spear.

“The Army made a decision to move toward unmanned capability,” he noted. “And so I think the lesson that I take from Ukraine and this nature of warfare is you lead with unmanned systems, right? So whether you want to create an effect, whether you want to create a diversion, whether you want to find something, and then you introduce people. When you need humans to do the things that humans are really good at doing,”

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The next stage in the evolution of the Gray Eagle Short Takeoff and Landing (GE STOL) drone sees General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) team up with South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace for co-development and co-production of the uncrewed aircraft system, with work set to begin immediately. A demonstrator for the medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) drone has already operated from a South Korean amphibious assault ship, but the new partnership will see production of the Gray Eagle STOL for all customers taking place in South Korea.

GA-ASI and Hanwha Aerospace had an official signing ceremony at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium today. That ceremony took place alongside GA-ASI’s company-funded Mojave STOL drone, which has been flying for years and is being used as a proof-of-concept demonstrator for the Gray Eagle STOL.

As for the Gray Eagle STOL, this is the latest iteration of GA-ASI’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAS. At the center of the Gray Eagle STOL is its ability to operate from remote or austere locations with rough strips and limited logistical support. GA-ASI says the aircraft will be able to operate from semi-improved surfaces, including dirt roads, open fields, beaches, and parking lots. The same capabilities render it suitable for flying from aircraft carriers and big-deck assault ships, too.

In the past, GA-ASI has described the Gray Eagle STOL as its “most rugged UAS design,” although it’s worth noting that the basic MQ-1C Gray Eagle for the U.S. Army already put something of a premium on efficiency and usability. The original MQ-1C Gray Eagle was tailored for warfare in the Middle East, uses a heavy-fuel piston engine instead of a turboprop, and can be operated by a cadre of enlisted soldiers.

Under the new joint initiative, GA-ASI and Hanwha plan to build a production-representative Gray Eagle STOL aircraft, which should take to the air in 2027. The companies will, in the meantime, establish a production line that will be able to provide the Gray Eagle STOL to customers in the United States and South Korea, as well as globally, and which should result in cost savings for the drone. The first deliveries to customers should take place in 2028.

“GA-ASI and Hanwha are committed to investing in this project and building development and production capabilities in South Korea,” said GA-ASI President David R. Alexander. “We’ll be leveraging the expertise of both companies to quickly bring the Gray Eagle STOL to global customers.”

“This landmark agreement marks the beginning of a new phase in U.S.-Korea defense cooperation, extending beyond traditional alliance structures to deliver next-generation, runway-independent UAS solutions that maximize commanders’ options in the face of evolving mission demands,” GA-ASI said in a statement.

The next steps will see GA-ASI and Hanwha Aerospace working closely together to complete the design phase for the drone and then establish a production facility in South Korea. The final assembly and manufacturing of the GE STOL will be the responsibility of Hanwha in South Korea, with GA-ASI handling the final integration. Meanwhile, GA-ASI will continue to produce other Gray Eagle models at its plant in San Diego, California.

GA-ASI says the new partnership “offers the fastest path with lowest risk to operational capability.”

“Co-producing GE STOL in South Korea and the U.S. will create jobs and help Hanwha secure talent in related fields as well as foster our domestic (Korean) UAS industry ecosystem,” said Jae-il Son, president and CEO of Hanwha Aerospace. “Hanwha is poised to become a comprehensive UAS company capable of executing everything from design to production and maintenance based on our capabilities, which span from fighter jet engines to radar and avionics equipment.”

For Hanwha, the Gray Eagle STOL also presents a way of gaining a foothold in the South Korean military. The country’s armed forces already operate a diverse drone fleet, including Israeli-supplied aircraft. However, on the domestic front, this segment is currently dominated by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) and Korean Air, both of which already build drones for the South Korean military.

However, GA-ASI has already been working closely with the South Korean Ministry of Defense as it continues to develop the Gray Eagle STOL drone.

Last year, the Mojave demonstrator was used in a demonstration when it took off from the Republic of Korea Navy’s amphibious landing ship ROKS Dokdo, as it was underway off the coast of Pohang, South Korea.

The Mojave has also been used for takeoff and landing trials aboard the British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales in 2023.

Other milestones for the demonstrator drone have included live-fire testing at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, using the Dillon Aero DAP-6 Minigun, and operations from a dirt strip to prove its STOL credentials, something we have reported on before. The stated performance of the Mojave includes a takeoff run of 400 feet for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, or 1,000 feet when armed with 12 Hellfire missiles.

Clearly, having Hanwha Aerospace onboard the Gray Eagle STOL program, including local production, should make the drone even more attractive to South Korea.

As well as operating from the two Dokdo class amphibious assault ships — the drone doesn’t necessarily need a catapult for launch or arresting gear for recovery — the Gray Eagle STOL could be a valuable addition to the South Korean military’s land-based units.

For the Republic of Korea Army, the Gray Eagle STOL’s runway independence would be a huge advantage during any kind of conflict with North Korea. In the past, GA-ASI has outlined the fact that the drone’s commanders “can choose virtually any bases of operation and take advantage of unconventional locations not normally affiliated with unmanned aircraft or aviation operations as an added level of survivability and surprise.”

In such a scenario, it would likely be in heavy demand for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA), as well as strike. Meanwhile, its manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) capability could see it operate closely with the Republic of Korea Army helicopter fleet, including the AH-64E Apache.

The Gray Eagle STOL is also intended, from the ground up, to be rapidly deployed to remote locations by C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft, a type also operated by South Korea. GA-ASI says the drone can be ready to fly from austere locales in as little as 1.5 hours once rolled out the back of a C-130. This makes it ideal for different sorts of distributed and expeditionary operations.

As well as the aforementioned Mojave weapons, the Gray Eagle STOL is planned to be armed with launched effects, a capability that it inherits from the improved Gray Eagle 25M. The latter was developed to provide the U.S. Army with the option to procure a more advanced version of the MQ-1C, which would incorporate various enhancements to better meet the demands of a future conflict, likely to be expeditionary peer conflicts rather than a counterinsurgency fight.

GA-ASI has previously underlined the potential use of this drone to tackle enemy air defense systems in a large and very contested battlefield — just like the one that South Korea could face if it goes to war with its neighbor. In this scenario, the drone would lob its launched effects toward the air defenses before acting as a “quarterback,” relaying data gathered by the smaller drones to other friendly elements, be they aircraft, long-range fires, or other platforms.

At the same time, the growing questions around the survivability of drones like this need to be acknowledged. The Gray Eagle STOL and its relatives are potentially vulnerable even when faced by lower-end adversaries, a fact that has been underscored by the scale of losses suffered by U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones when faced by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen. The use of LEs at standoff distances and the addition of self protection and electronic warfare pods, as well as combined force tactics, will help them in the fight in the years to come.

The Gray Eagle STOL would also port other advanced technologies over from the Gray Eagle 25M, including the EagleEye synthetic aperture radar, which can detect and track ground targets out to 50 miles and maritime targets out to 124 miles. GA-ASI is also working to introduce an increased-range active electronically scanned array (AESA) antenna, which is intended to allow it to operate beyond the weapons effects zone of many threat systems.

As we have highlighted in the past, the Gray Eagle STOL would also seem to offer a broad portfolio of capabilities that could be of particular relevance to the U.S. military as it prepares for a future high-end conflict, especially one fought in the Pacific against China.

In the past, GA-ASI has specifically said that the “Gray Eagle STOL might go with American forces into an expeditionary base deep downrange, co-locating with them as necessary to support missions, including delivery of supplies with the range to reach from island chain to island chain for units separate from the main body. Operating from a semi-prepared landing zone, a dirt road, or any paved surface, it expands commanders’ options.”

Other roles planned for the Gray Eagle STOL include logistics, and GA-ASI has explored the idea of underwing pods capable of carrying up to 1,000 pounds of cargo. This could be of particular interest for the U.S. military, as it looks increasingly at diverse distributed logistics chains as an essential requirement for supporting future operations in contested environments, especially in the context of a potential future high-end conflict, including in the Pacific.

With these kinds of peer and near-peer conflicts in mind, the Gray Eagle STOL is also intended to be more resilient to hostile electronic warfare jamming, especially to GPS networks. It will have vision-based navigation that can be used to overcome GPS jamming and have SATCOM anti-jam technologies.

Ultimately, the Gray Eagle STOL should emerge as a drone that’s able to fly a wide range of missions, from a variety of land bases and ships. It’s clear that, with their new partnership, GA-ASI and Hanwha Aerospace foresee interest from operators outside of the U.S. and South Korean militaries, too.

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On Monday, we reported on Sikorsky’s new U-Hawk cargo helicopter, which is a UH-60 Black Hawk that has been converted into an uncrewed hauler by removing the cockpit and adding clamshell doors in its place, fly-by-wire flight control systems, and additional modifications. You can read all about this aircraft, its genesis, and its capabilities in our report linked here.

Now we have gotten a tour of the actual helicopter on the show floor at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual conference just outside of Washington, D.C. Erskine “Ramsey” Bentley, Strategy and Business Development, Advanced Programs at Sikorsky, gave us the walk around, explaining all the U-Hawk’s features.

Check it out in the video below:

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The U.S. Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), better known as the Night Stalkers, has been exploring ways to ensure it can operate in more heavily defended airspace in the future. This includes making increased use of uncrewed aircraft, the employment of new electronic warfare and decoy capabilities, and just flying longer and faster. The U.S. special operations community as a whole continues to reorient itself around preparing for high-end fights, such as one across the broad expanses of the Pacific against China, after decades of low-intensity missions in much more permissive environments.

Army Col. Stephen Smith, head of the 160th SOAR, talked about planning for future operations in denied areas deep inside an opponent’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) ‘bubble’ during a panel discussion today at the Association of the U.S. Army’s main annual symposium. TWZ‘s Howard Altman was in attendance and had the opportunity to speak more with Smith directly afterward. The Night Stalkers publicly acknowledged fleets include a mixture of heavily modified MH-60M Black Hawk, MH-47G Chinook, and AH/MH-6R Little Bird helicopters. The 160th also has MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones. The unit expects to eventually receive special operations-specific versions of the Army’s future MV-75A tiltrotor.

“Over the last 20 years that I’ve been in the Regiment, we have been really, really good at deploying in an environment like GWOT,” Smith said, referring to the Global War on Terror era of operations in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. “What we have done over the last 10 years is, we’ve looked at the near-peer threats across the globe, and we looked at ‘how does the 160th expect to operate inside that environment?’”

“So, what we’re going to have on the aircraft to defend the aircraft, by itself, will not survive in the A2/AD environment,” he also said bluntly during the panel, speaking generally about the known Night Stalker fleets.

Specialized training for Night Stalkers to help them survive in more contested environments has existed, but there is clearly a new paradigm.

“What we realized was really two major takeaways. The number one takeaway is we can’t do it alone. The idea of ‘alone and unafraid,’ that does not exist in the denied area planning space,” he explained. “And then, second, we needed a team to look at that. So we stood up a five-person team that consisted of our aviation flight leads.”

“When we started looking at the training concept of how the 160th is going to operate, we leveraged the three range complexes on the West Coast of the United States to create an environment that provides us a ‘tyranny of distance‘ problem, but also the complexity of using those three ranges to replicate a near-peer,” he added.

The 160th’s commander says the unit has come from all this with new views on how it might operate in more heavily defended environments going forward. This includes additional emphasis on crewed-uncrewed teaming.

“Manned-unmanned teaming is the future. We’ve talked about the potential of launched effects off the aircraft, or a potential loyal wingman,” Col. Smith said. Launched effects is a broad term that the U.S. military currently uses to refer to uncrewed aerial systems configured for different missions, like reconnaissance or acting as loitering munitions, which can be fired from other aerial platforms, as well as ones on the ground or at sea.

“We see in the near future, for our primary mission of crisis response, and also denied area penetration, we still see a human in the loop,” Smith noted. “We don’t expect to send Kit [Col. Kitefre Oboho, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment] and his team to the X without Night Stalkers in the front of the aircraft.”

Smith highlighted how the 160th has already been teaming its crewed helicopters with its MQ-1Cs drones as something the unit is looking to build on. “So, when we train on the West Coast, we’ll use an MQ-1 to lead the half [a group of helicopters] into the objective.”

This also leads into the electronic warfare and decoy capabilities the Night Stalkers are looking at as part of future denied area operations planning.

“We can hang different capabilities on that platform [the MQ-1C]. So that platform could look like a Black Hawk. It could look like a [CH-]47. It could look like a Little Bird,” Smith said. “So we’re using that as a decoy, [and there are] potentially other capabilities on [the] side of that aircraft.”

The 160th is also exploring other new electronic warfare capabilities, including improved self-protect jamming systems, according to Smith. “We’re also looking at a layered effect of using cyber and space to create a pulse for us to be able to penetrate,” he added.

There’s also just the matter of being able to fly longer and do so faster. The 160th is already well known for conducting long-duration flights in challenging and hostile environments. The unit’s MH-60Ms and MH-47Gs are capable of being refueled in flight to extend their range. Night Stalkers typically fly their missions at extremely low altitudes and under the cover of darkness, using terrain to help mask their ingress and egress.

“Leveraging the cover of darkness, leveraging weather, flying at low altitudes, and flying where the enemy systems are not. That seems somewhat obvious, but that is really driving the basis of our Night Stalker fundamentals, [and] mission planning to create those contingencies so we can buy down a number of the risk,” Col. Smith said.

However, historically, 160th operations have often been punctuated by stops at temporary forward arming and refueling points (FARP) along the way, to and from objectives. Smith says extending the range of his fleets will be key to future operations in denied areas because of the vulnerabilities that landing in the middle of a mission creates.

“One of the things we’ve learned is, if you go to ground, you’re vulnerable,” he said. “And so we have leveraged our aerial refuel[ing capability] to get after that, and we look at some of our collapsible fuel systems inside the aircraft to do that.”

There is a question here that is increasingly facing the entire U.S. military, about how existing non-stealthy aerial refueling tankers will be able to support any fixed or rotary-wing aircraft operating deep in high-threat areas. The U.S. Air Force, which currently provides the bulk of aerial refueling support to the 160th, has separately been looking at ways to get after that problem set, as you can read more about here.

This is also where the future special operations version of the MV-75A, which is set to offer the 160th an important boost in speed and range, especially over its MH-60Ms, could also come into the picture. Those tiltrotors are also expected to have aerial refueling capability. Questions do also remain about what the final special operations configuration of the MV-75A may look like, though we know the core design is already being developed with specific features to make it more readily adaptable to that role.

“That’s a great question, and we don’t know, and that’s why we’re actually having that conversation,” Col. Smith told TWZ‘s Howard Altman after the panel when asked for more information about what the special operations configuration of the MV-75A might look like. “We have not determined what that looks like. Is it the version that we’re all in lockstep with, is that going to be the version? possibly. Is [sic] there some minor modifications? potentially.”

What is clear is that the 160th SOAR is looking hard at ways to ensure that it can bring its unique skill sets and otherwise survive, even in more contested environments, while taking part in future high-end fights.

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The U.S. Army continues to lag behind global trends when it comes to fielding drones and systems to counter their use by hostile forces, according to a top general overseeing soldiers in Europe. Units forward-deployed in the European theater are trying to break a cycle of seemingly endless experimentation to actually operationalize relevant capabilities, especially within smaller units, buoyed now by major U.S. military-wide initiatives.

Army Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, commander of V Corps, talked about issues relating to drones and counter-drone capabilities at a panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium yesterday. TWZ‘s Howard Altman was in attendance and had a chance to talk further with Costanza immediately afterward. From World War II through the Cold War, and for years afterward, V Corps was a key component of the Army’s presence in Europe. Inactivated in Germany in 2013, it was reestablished at Fort Knox in Kentucky in 2020, and a forward headquarters in Poland was subsequently stood up.

“We’re behind. I’ll just be candid. I think we know we’re behind,” Costanza said in response to a direct question at the panel from our Howard Altman. “We’ve been talking about counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] and UAS capability for a better part of a decade, since, really, we watched the war in Armenia and Azerbaijan go on, and saw very much the beginning of the drone UAS capabilities.”

Azerbaijan’s armed forces captured particular global attention with their use of kamikaze drones during a war with Armenia in 2020. They had already been employing those capabilities on a more limited level for years beforehand. The Israeli-made drones they employed traced their roots back decades, and came from companies that continue to be world leaders in this space, as you can read more about here. In 2020, Azerbaijan also employed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2s, a traditional fixed-wing design capable of employing precision munitions that has seen significant sales globally, including to Ukraine.

The propaganda video below from the State Border Service of Azerbaijan highlights how much of a fixture kamikaze drones were in the 2020 war between that country and Armenia.

“We aren’t moving fast enough,” Costanza continued. “And it really took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [in 2022], and the way they’re innovating, and Ukrainians are innovating, to realize, hey, we need to move fast.”

Both sides of the ongoing conflict now make extensive use of various types of weaponized drones, especially highly maneuverable first-person view (FPV) kamikaze designs, in and around the front lines, and now increasingly deeper behind them. Ukraine and Russia also employ longer-range kamikaze drones for attacks further inside each other’s territory. Various types of uncrewed aerial systems had already become steadily more significant factors in the fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country that followed Moscow’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“I think we do,” Costanza also said when asked specifically if the U.S. military needed a capability broadly in line with the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 long-range kamikaze drone. The Shahed-136 has become something of a household name as a result of Russia’s heavy use of variants and derivatives, including types it now produces domestically, in attacks on Ukraine. Last month, TWZ laid out a detailed case for why the U.S. military should already be buying tens of thousands of Shahed-136 clones, which you can find here.

As part of his response to the questions from our Howard Altman, Costanza highlighted Project Flytrap as a prime example of efforts underway to try to reverse these trends. Flytrap is an ongoing series of Army-led training events in Europe focused on counter-drone capabilities and tactics, techniques, and procedures to go with them.

“I think Flytrap is the start point to that, right? So I think Flytrap is taking the capabilities we have right now, identifying how we layer those capabilities, and then taking that, giving it back to the Army, and saying, here’s how you do it now, go make the acquisition purchase,” Costanza said. “Flytrap is just really trying to figure out what the systems are that we need. The scope and scale piece goes back to the Army.”

“What we learned is that there’s really no one system solution. It takes a layered approach. And you know, the way to think about it is, you have to detect what’s in the air, what’s a threat. You have to decide what you’re going to do about it, and that you need the means to actually do something about it,” Col. Donald Neal, commander of the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which falls under V Corps, also said yesterday while speaking alongside Costanza. “There’s no one system solution to protecting the air above you.”

A key “challenge has been getting the network straight, being able to have the data in a cloud-based environment that we can process it in a way that’s integrated, not just with the counter-UAS systems, but the larger, integrated air and missile defense network, and how we do that. So we’re working through that,” Costanza further noted. “What we need to do now is take those systems, integrate them with an AI [artificial intelligence] capable, data-driven mission command system, [and] sync it all together, not just [for the] U.S., but across all our NATO partners.”

The 2nd Cavalry Regiment has been taking a leading role in Project Flytrap, as well as separate but adjacent efforts to step up the fielding of uncrewed aerial systems, including weaponized types, within the service’s own formations.

“2nd Cavalry Regiment is standing up what they call Delta Company,” Costanza noted during the panel. “It’s taking all the different systems that can have effects, lethal, non-lethal – so not just kinetic, but EW [electronic warfare] – counter-UAS, [as well as] UAS, [and] creating one organization to synchronize those capabilities faster than what we’re able to do right now.”

The Army has already been experimenting with similar units, which have been referred to as Strike Companies and Multi-Purpose Companies (MPC) in the past, outside of 2nd Cavalry, which you can read more about here.

Project Flytrap is also tied in with a NATO-wide initiative announced earlier this year, dubbed the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, to bolster counter-drone and a wide array of other capabilities with a particular eye toward threats emanating from Russia. America’s allies in Europe have been seeing a surge in drone incursions, including over sensitive sites, as Moscow has been ramping up hybrid war efforts.

“I think Putin feels he’s in conflict with NATO right now,” Costanza told our Howard Altman in the interview after the panel. “I think he’s just going to continue to ramp that up until we stop it, and NATO knows that, but we still haven’t done that yet.”

When it comes to the broader issue of the Army lagging in the fielding of drones and counter-drone systems, Project Flytrap and the other work V Corps is involved in are clearly aimed at operationalizing new capabilities. The Pentagon has publicly lauded Flytrap as an example of the services moving to act on the new direction from the Secretary of War intended to address increasingly worrisome capability and capacity gaps that extend well beyond American forces in Europe.

In July, the Pentagon announced a sweeping array of policy and other changes structured around the central goal of getting huge numbers of drones, including weaponized types, into the hands of units, especially smaller ones, across the entire U.S. military. In August, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) stood up as the newest U.S. military organization intended to act as a focal point for the accelerated development and fielding of counter-drone systems for use on the battlefield, as well as to defend facilities and assets within the homeland.

At the same time, what Gen. Costanza talked about yesterday still sounds very much like the kinds of test and evaluation efforts that have been going on for years already. As he himself acknowledged, much of the work that has been done to date has not translated into major new operational capabilities, even as Ukraine and Russia, and many other countries globally, particularly China, have pushed ahead. The Army faced pointed criticism in July after touting the test of a grenade-dropping drone in Europe, a capability that has been in daily use for years now on the battlefield in Ukraine.

AeroVironment has unveiled a new member of its Switchblade family of loitering munitions, the Switchblade 400. It is designed to offer similar capabilities, especially when it comes to destroying enemy tanks and other heavy armor, to the larger Switchblade 600, but in a package that a single individual can employ. It is also sized to fit into U.S. military standard Common Launch Tubes (CLT), which are typically used to fire precision-guided munitions and small uncrewed aerial systems from crewed and uncrewed aircraft, primarily within the special operations community.

Todd Hanning, product line director for what AeroVironment is currently calling its Mojave systems, which includes the Switchblade 400, talked about the new offering with TWZ‘s Howard Altman on the show floor at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium today. The Switchblade 400 was originally developed to meet a U.S. Army requirement under the service’s Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) program. LASSO is also part of a larger effort that the service calls its Lethal Unmanned Systems Directed Requirement (LUS DR). The Army has already been buying Switchblade 300s, which are smaller than the new 400 version, as well as the bigger 600s, to meet its LASSO/LUS DR needs.

Hanning explained that the core Army requirement that led to the Switchblade 400 was a total weight of 40 pounds for the All-Up-Round (AUR), which consists of the loitering munition and its launch tube. AeroVironment’s website says a single individual can carry the weapon and have it ready to launch within five minutes. The Switchblade 600 is available in a man-portable form, but is designed for employment by a team and takes twice as much time to set up.

Switchblade 400 needed to be a “single soldier lift,” Hanning said. “Switchblade 600, coming in at about 67 pounds, so right out of the gate, we’ve got to shed about 30 pounds off this thing. Yet we still want the same lethality for [sic; as] a Javelin.”

The Switchblade 600 notably features an anti-armor warhead based on the one in the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). AeroVironment also unveiled a Block 2 version of the Switchblade 600 today, which offers greater endurance and a new secondary payload bay for added flexibility, as well as improvements to its artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven automated target recognition capabilities.

Hanning said that the Switchblade 400 and Switchblade 600 Block 2 reflect a new modular, open-architecture approach AeroVironment is taking, which offers benefits when it comes to manufacturing and supply chains. The “same avionics, … the same camera architecture, same motor, [and] same power technology” are used in both models.

Overall, Switchblade 400 is “how do we take, really, a Block 2 [Switchblade 600], the next-gen, take 30 pounds out of it, and still do the same mission,” Hanning added. “Now you’re losing a little bit of endurance, right? We had to pull two cameras out, but you still have a gimbaled payload with probably the best optics out there on this kind of a platform, you’ve got the Javelin [warhead], you’ve got some new battery technology, and it’s very lightweight.”

AeroVironment’s website says Switchblade 400 has a maximum endurance of 35 minutes, and a speed profile that allows for 27 and 15 minutes of loiter time after reaching target areas 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) and 21.7 miles (35 kilometers) away, respectively. The company also says it can reach out to around 40 miles (65 kilometers) by handing off control to an operator closer to the target.

This all puts Switchblade 400 roughly in between current-generation Switchblade 300s and Switchblade 600s in terms of range and endurance, but with the ability to engage the same kinds of targets as the latter. Switchblade 300s have much smaller warheads weighing just under four pounds. Switchblade 400 also gives a single user a major boost in capability over a Javelin, which has a demonstrated maximum range of just under two and a half miles (4,000 meters) in its latest man-portable configuration, and no ability to loiter.

Hanning used the breadth of targets that Ukrainian forces have been using Switchblade 600s against to underscore the capabilities on offer. Ukraine has received tranches of both Switchblade 300s and 600s.

“They were shooting some tanks early on, but now you’re seeing them take out surface-to-air missile batteries constantly,” he said. “They’ve taken out some trains. A lot of command elements. But mostly what you’re seeing is those high-value assets, those mobile surface-to-air missile batteries.”

It is worth noting here that AeroVironment has been securing sales of Switchblade 300s and 600s to a growing number of countries beyond the United States and Ukraine in recent years. Last year, the U.S. government notably approved the potential sale of 720 Switchblade 300s to Taiwan. The Taiwanese armed forces have been stepping up their acquisition of a growing array of one-way attack drones as part of a larger strategy to challenge a potential intervention from the mainland, as you can read more about here.

That being said, lessons learned from the particular drone-heavy war in Ukraine have been very important for AeroVironment, according to Hanning.

“We take lessons learned from all of the systems that are in Ukraine, and rapidly inject that technology into the 400 and the 600 Block 2,” Hanning said. “So launching in different environments, on different ground surfaces, that was one. Tactics for range and for how you engage the target. So we’re engaging from higher altitudes. We’re engaging faster. We have different communication modes, silent modes, things like that.”

Hanning said the silent mode referred to here involves operating, at least for a time, without emitting signals that enemy forces could detect. He noted that members of the Switchblade family are designed around concepts of operations that involve a human at least ‘on-the-loop’ during any endgame attack run, despite their highly automated targeting capabilities.

In general terms of controlling Switchblades after launch, “we are running Silvus radio[s], but we are agnostic to radios. So we’ve also integrated an L3Harris radio. We did that about two weeks ago. Very easy,” he added. “So, we’re looking to, how can we shed weight at the soldier level so that we’re using all the common systems that they’re already carrying. So, if that’s a PRC radio that they’re already carrying, if we can leverage that for our C2 [command and control] scheme, then that’s what we’d want to do. … that’s part of that whole modular, open system architecture.”

Switchblade 400s, as well as 600s, could make use of their modularity in other ways going forward. Hanning highlighted the possibility of different warhead options by mentioning a test involving a different type supplied by a company called Corvid Technologies.

“We’re really open to whatever the DoD wants. When a lot of people come to us and say, ‘use my thing,’ and I’m like, well, what does the Army think about that?” Hanning said. “We need to know what they want versus what a vendor wants you to want. And so the best way to do that is to just be very open, hear the voice of the customer, and have the ability to integrate things.”

“When you start doing mixed payloads, you definitely want to play with some [things], maybe a smaller warhead, with some electronic warfare packages, things like that,” he continued. CACI is set to supply an electronic warfare package for testing on Switchblade 400 later this month.

AeroVironment’s emphasis on flexibility has already extended to launch modes. Launchers integrated into crewed and uncrewed armored and other ground vehicles, offering indirect fire and reconnaissance capabilities, have been put forward. The Switchblade 300, at least, has been test-launched from maritime platforms. Last month, General Atomics also announced a test launch of a Switchblade 600 from one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones.

Switchblade 400’s aforementioned ability to fit inside a CLT immediately opens up a host of additional potential launch platforms, including various crewed and uncrewed fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. CLT-launched munitions are a particularly significant part of the current armament package on the U.S. Air Force’s AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, something they inherited from the now-retired AC-130W variants.

When it comes to the Army requirement that drove the initial development of the Switchblade 400, the service is currently evaluating four different options, according to AeroVironment’s Hanning. A downselect of some kind is expected to come in time, but it’s unclear whether the service might choose to further pursue multiple entrants.

Whether or not the Army ultimately acquires Switchblade 400s, it looks to be a significant new addition to this family of loitering munitions, which is seeing growing popularity globally.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Sig Sauer says it has been able to trim the weight of the Army’s new 6.8x51mm M7 service rifle by nearly a pound, or just over 10 percent, in response to feedback from servicemembers. The M7’s weight compared to the gun it is set to replace, the 5.56x45mm M4A1, was among the criticisms that an Army captain very publicly leveled against the gun earlier this year. Sig had subsequently issued a vehement rebuttal, but acknowledged that the design was still evolving.

Jason St. John, senior director of strategic products for the Defense Strategies Group at Sig Sauer, gave an update on the M7 rifle, as well as the companion 6.8x51mm M250 machine gun, to TWZ‘s Howard Altman on the show floor at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium today. Sig Sauer has also been working on a shorter and lighter carbine variation of the M7 for the Army. Sig Sauer did show the lightened “product-improved” M7, also known as the PIE M7, at the biennial Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition in London earlier this year, but does not appear to have had the carbine on display at that event.

The M7 and M250 (previously designated the XM7 and XM250), together with the associated family of 6.8x51mm rounds and the computerized XM157 optic, form the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) ‘system.’ The service selected Sig Sauer as the winner of its NGSW competition in 2022 and now plans to replace a substantial portion of its M4A1s and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW) with M7s and M250s, respectively. Sig is also supplying the ammunition, but the XM157s are being procured separately from Vortex Optics.

“So, we’re talking about the Army’s and our continued teaming effort to improve the M7 and the M250, based on our recommendations, and their suggestions, and feedback from the field,” Sig Sauer’s St. John said.

“There’s basically two combined efforts going on within the M7,” he continued. “We have a carbine version, and then we have a lighten, improved version of the M7. And so when you look at the standard M7 that’s been issued to the troops, the overall weight of the firearm was 8.3 pounds. Now, the improved M7 is 7.6 pounds, and the carbine version weighs 7.3 pounds. So we’re getting closer and closer to [a] rifle weight system similar to the M4.”

The PIE M7 also has a 13.5-inch barrel, while the one on the carbine version is 10 inches long. A standard M4A1 with its 14.5-inch barrel, as well as just a sling and a loaded magazine, weighs in at 7.62 pounds, according to the Army. It is important to note that optics and other accessories add appreciable weight to both the M7 and M4A1. The XM157 optic is notably larger and heavier than the ones the Army typically issues for use on M4A1s.

In terms of how the PIE M7 was lightened, “there’s the upper receiver, we’ve redesigned and taken some weight out of it. We’ve lessened the barrel profile slightly to get some weight out of it,” according to Sig’s St. John. “We’ve done some lightening efforts within the operating system, as well as remove the folding stock hinge. By removing that hinge, we save some weight.”

The original M7 featured a stock that was both adjustable in length and could be folded to one side. The M4A1’s stock is only adjustable in length.

“What we just found is really that the Army and the soldiers have fed back … [that] they’d rather have the weight savings than the folding stock,” St. John added. “They aren’t using the folding stock enough to justify that additional weight.”

The video in the Tweet below shows a placard with additional details about the PIE M7 and the carbine version at around 0:41 in the runtime.

Sig Sauer has also made important changes to the M250’s design based on discussions with the Army and feedback from soldiers.

“You’re going to see, instead of having a removable front handguard, now you have a hinged captured handguard, so it stays on the weapon system – rotates forward and away,” St. John explained. “The feed tray cover is extended with the big rail, so that now I have more adjustability for the optics that I put on there, and eye relief to the individual soldiers, and now I can move my optic further back or forward depending on what’s wanted.”

“I’ve got improved bipods. I’ve got [an] improved gas valve,” he continued, also highlighting improvements to how the M250 can be fitted to a tripod and how ammunition is carried on the gun. “Basically the feedback from everyone is, what can we do to improve this weapon system, make it more easy [sic] to use, and more robust and reliable.”

Work has also been done to improve the common sound suppressor for the M7 and M250.

“We’ve also redesigned our suppressor to make it shorter,” per St. John. “We’ve added a titanium heat shield on it that does two-fold [things].”

The heat shield helps reduce the chance of contact burns as the suppressor heats up during use. It also reduces thermal bloom, which could make it easier for enemies to spot friendly forces from their heat signature. St. John cautioned that no one should be rushing to grab the suppressor, especially with bare hands, after sustained use, even with the new heat shield.

When it comes to the M7, St. John said that the Army is now in the process of deciding how to proceed in fielding the PIE and/or carbine versions.

“You could see there’s probably a couple of decision points. Do they stick with the standard length M7 that’s been lightened by 0.7 pounds? Or do they and or do they move to the carbine completely?” he said. “Do they keep the carbine for specialty troops and still issue the M7, or do they take the carbine and utilize that as the new rifle across the board? So they’re trying to make those decisions.”

St. John pointed out that the Army had gone through a similar evolution in thinking in the decades that followed the fielding of the A1 variant of the M16 in the 1960s. The service adopted a succession of full-size rifle versions before transitioning to the shorter and lighter M4A1 as its standard service weapon.

That the Army is looking at lighter variations of the M7 at all is significant. The weight of the rifle was among the criticisms that Army Capt. Braden Trent had highlighted in an unclassified report he wrote while he was a student at the Expeditionary Warfare School, which is part of the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Trent also called attention to the comparative size and weight of the 5.56x45mm and 6.8x51mm rounds, as well as the shorter barrel on the M7 compared to the M4A1. Trent’s findings, which raised safety concerns about the rifle and cited other issues that called its operational utility into question, came to more widespread attention after he presented them at the annual Modern Day Marine conference earlier this year.

There is one particular “major fault in the XM7, and that’s the UBL … or universal basic load. It’s a metric that can be applied to almost any weapon system, and it essentially means the amount of magazines and associated ammunition that a system uses and is expected to be carried into battle,” Trent said at Modern Day Marine. “So the XM7 [and] the M4A1 actually have the same number of magazines in their UBL seven, but remember, we’re talking about that capacity difference. The total round count a soldier carries into battle with the XM7 is 140 rounds compared to the 210 rounds of the M4A1. Now again, a 70-round difference may not seem significant, but to the soldier in the fight, it absolutely is a difference. Not to mention that every magazine added to the XM7, each 20-round loaded magazine adds another 1.25 pounds to the soldier’s load, meaning that if troops equipped with the XM7 tried to match their old UBLs [in terms of round count], they’re going to have even more weight being carried.”

“The final thing I’d like to mention is the Chief of Army Infantry’s stated goal of a 55-pound total soldier load,” he added. “If we just take the XM7 and its seven UBL magazine load, we’re almost at half that weight, and that’s before the soldier is put on body armor, water, a rucksack, or anything else that they’ll need in the fight.”

The Army’s position has been that the M7 and its new cartridge offer improved accuracy, range, and terminal effectiveness that are worth the added bulk. Concerns about soldiers being outranged, as well as improvements in adversary body armor, were key drivers behind the NGSW program. Trent’s report also calls this into question based on data he collected regarding expected infantry combat engagement distances.

Sig Sauer had also provided a lengthy rebuttal to the technical issues that Trent raised. You can read more about all of this in TWZ‘s in-depth report on the ensuing controversy following his presentation.

“I think that soldiers and citizens should want Sig Sauer, the U.S. [Army] program office to continue that practice of continually evolving and developing and improving their soldiers’ weapons systems. And I think we anticipate that we’re going to undergo those improvement processes for the next 25 to 30 years,” the company’s St. John had told TWZ at the time. “There’s going to be improvements in manufacturing [and] materials processes. The soldiers on the ground and the U.S. Army are going to dictate different operational requirements and standards for the weapons systems, and we’re going to have to react to those modifications that are going to optimize that weapon system as that evolves through time and history.”

“It should be no surprise, in my opinion, that specifically in the infancy of a weapons program that there’s a very aggressive improvement effort to ensure that the Army and the soldiers get the weapon system that they deserve,” he added.

From what we know now, the Army’s plans for the M7 are already evolving significantly, with criticisms about the rifle’s weight, in particular, having been taken to heart.

Howard Altman contributed to this story.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Northrop Grumman has been doing detailed design work that lays a path to air-launching its Lumberjack loitering one-way attack drone from Kratos’ stealthy XQ-58 Valkyrie uncrewed aircraft. Multiple crewed and uncrewed aircraft are being eyed as potential platforms for employing Lumberjack, which is already being tested in surface-launched modes and will have the ability to drop its own smaller precision munitions.

In a statement to TWZ today, Northrop Grumman confirmed that “Valkyrie is one of the multiple platforms we’re doing detailed design work for to ensure compatibility with Lumberjack” and that “Valkyrie is a good representation of a possible use case.” The XQ-58 is prominently featured in the Lumberjack product card available on Northrop Grumman’s website at the time of writing. It also depicts a Lumberjack launching a Hatchet miniature precision-guided glide bomb, which the company also produces, and that we will come back to later on.

Our own Howard Altman also recently had a chance to talk with Michael Bastin, Northrop Grumman’s director of programs for Lumberjack, to get a broader update on its ongoing development. The new one-way attacker was first unveiled in April at this year’s Modern Day Marine conference.

Since then, Lumber has “participated in both of the T-REX events this year. So, those are the technology, readiness, and experimentation events hosted by OUSD(R&E) [the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, also now referred to as the Office of the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering],” Bastin said. “Those are really valuable for us. We got a chance to get operators to look and engage with the system, [and] actually do an end-to-end simulated mission in a relevant type of environment with a lot of capabilities that people were looking for.”

At the T-REX events, Northrop Grumman also demonstrated Lumberjack’s “ability to launch from two different styles of [ground-based] launchers, the electric rail launcher and the pneumatic launcher,” both provided by other companies, he added. “We are launcher agnostic. So we don’t really develop the launchers ourselves. We just show up to the ride.”

Bastin declined to elaborate further on the mission scenarios and the capabilities demonstrated at the T-REX events. He also acknowledged that the same kinds of launchers could be employed in shipboard scenarios, but said that Northrop Grumman’s current focus in terms of the surface-launched mode is on ground-based applications.

When it comes to current plans for air-launched applications, “Lumberjack is the size, the length anyway, of the Small Diameter Bomb. So, we’re looking to be compatible with a wide variety of aircraft, [fixed-]wing and rotorcraft, manned and unmanned,” Bastin said. “Effectively, we’re looking at anything that could carry a Small Diameter Bomb.”

“We’re designing that [Lumberjack] for multiple BRUs. So, a couple different BRU installations are compatible against that sort of Small Diameter Bomb length,” he continued, using the U.S. military-standard abbreviation for Bomb Rack Unit. “We are working with two different customer communities right now, working through large plans and experimentation for next year. So that’s part of our flight test plan that we’re developing for next year.”

The GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) is a 250-pound-class precision-guided glide bomb that is just under six feet (1.8 meters) long. Northrop Grumman’s website says Lumberjack has a very similar form factor, but has a maximum gross weight of around 290 pounds.

Lumberjack’s weight is payload-dependent, which Northrop Grumman’s website says could include a “combination of kinetic and non-kinetic sub-munitions, or ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] sensors.” Without any payload or fuel for its small jet engine, the core system, with its composite material structure, only tips the scales at around 79 pounds, according to the product card.

How heavy a Lumberjack might be would also impact its range in both air and surface-launched modes. So far, Northrop Grumman has only said that the system is expected to be able to fly “several hundred” nautical miles. The company has also said that it will be able to cruise at around Mach 0.3 (some 230 knots) at an altitude of 20,000 feet.

“We have done testing with both kinetic and non-kinetic [payloads],” Bastin said. “Hatchet is certainly a candidate. It’s not the only type of kind of sub-munition that we’d be interested in being able to deploy. So, as I said, if customers come with whatever kinetic effect they want, as long as it fits on the center bay, we’re capable of integrating it.”

Hatchet is a roughly six-pound precision glide bomb that Northrop Grumman currently offers with one of three guidance options: a GPS-assisted inertial navigation system (INS), INS-only, and dual-mode GPS/INS and semi-active laser guidance. Versions that use GPS-assisted INS and INS-only can only be employed against static target coordinates. Laser guidance allows for the engagement of moving targets as long as they can be lazed either by the launching platform or another offboard source.

Each Hatchet has a three-pound high-explosive warhead, which Northrop Grumman claims is of an advanced type that is 50 to 80 percent as lethal as a 500-pound-class bomb, depending on the target type. Point-detonating, delayed, and air-bursting fuze options are available.

From the start, Hatchet has been presented as particularly well-suited as an armament option for drones because of its size. Multiple uncrewed aircraft have already been demonstrated as launch platforms for these munitions.

When it comes to munition options for Lumberjack, “there’s a variety [of other options] out there. I mean, everything from things like Hatchets to integrating existing artillery shells or custom kinetic effects,” Bastin noted. “So different customers have different interests in terms of what their target is and what their payload would want to be in terms of the kinetic effectiveness against their target.”

Lumberjack is being developed with modularity and adaptability, potentially even under field conditions, in mind. Another company, Palantir, is providing an artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) infused software backend to help with the rapid integration of now payloads and other capabilities, as well as help with “maintenance and reducing operator burden.”

In any configuration, Lumberjack already offers the ability to reach target areas at standoff distances. Its ability to launch unpowered gliding payloads like Hatchet, or even potentially small powered ones, only extended its operational reach. This would all be further magnified by pairing it with an aerial launch platform like the XQ-58. The Valkyrie has its own internal payload bay, said to be able to carry at least two SDB-sized stores, and can also carry payloads under its wings. Lumberjack’s range would also help keep the launching platform further away from threats. A full operational scenario might see a Valkyrie or similar launch platform use its own survivability to get close to an especially high-threat part of the battlespace before launching a Lumberjack, which then delivers munitions into the highest risk area. This could even involve taking out hostile air defense assets that threaten the launching aircraft.

Lumberjack can also make use of its range for other purposes, including launching kinetic or non-kinetic attacks on geographically separated targets during a single sortie, as well as just loitering in a particular area. Equipped with a stand-in jamming capability and/or sensor packages, the drones could be used to form temporary force protection picket lines, and do so rapidly.

There is also a cost factor, with Lumberjack’s design being focused on a low unit cost and producibility, with a heavy emphasis on commercial and modified commercial components. Another firm, ESAero, which specializes in rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing, is also working with Northrop Grumman on this design.

“For every pallet that I would ship a fixed number of Small Diameter Bombs on, we can ship the same number of lumberjacks on, but each lumberjack performs multiple effects, multiple missions, and can go on multiple vehicles,” Bastin explained. “So it helps drive down that cost, as I said, within a Lumberjack, because we designed it with open architecture and a very modular center bay.”

Northrop Grumman previously told TWZ that it is targeting between a “cost per effect” of $75,000 to $100,000 for Lumberjack, somewhat nebulous figures that factor in things beyond basic unit price. It is also worth noting here that while Lumberjack is intended to be a one-way system when used operationally, work is being done to improve its recoverability when used in training. Being able to reuse the drones for training, as well as test and evaluation activities, would also offer cost advantages.

It’s interesting to note here that the XQ-58 is at the low end of the cost range for loyal wingman-type drones, also now commonly referred to as Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Kratos is separately continuing to expand and evolve its Valkyrie family as its customer base grows. The U.S. Marine Corps notably confirmed earlier this year that it is now actively pursuing an operational capability with these drones after years of experimental work with the design.

Lumberjack otherwise reflects a flurry of development, especially in the United States, of longer-range one-way attack munitions, as well as other systems that increasingly blur the lines between traditional drones and cruise missiles, as well as decoys.

If Northrop Grumman keeps to its current test schedule, we may get actual looks at Lumberjacks launched from XQ-58s and/or other aircraft in the coming year.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Northrop Grumman says past work on the abortive 25mm XM25 grenade launcher, nicknamed “The Punisher,” served as an “initial baseline” for a new design it is now working on with Colt. The Northrop Grumman-Colt launcher is being developed primarily to meet the U.S. Army’s requirements for a future Precision Grenadier System (PGS), a program that emerged after the XM25 was canceled.

Rylan Harris, Director of Strategy and Business Development for Northrop Grumman’s Armament Systems business unit, provided an update on the company’s work related to PGS during a press briefing today. TWZ, as well as other outlets, were in attendance. Currently, the new grenade launcher from Northrop Grumman and Colt is an 11-and-a-half-pound semi-automatic design that feeds from five-round box magazines and looks like an oversized rifle.

Development of the preceding XM25 had begun in the mid-2000s as a partnership between German gunmaker Heckler & Koch (HK) and Alliant Techsystems (ATK). In 2015, ATK merged with Orbital Sciences Corporation to form Orbital ATK, which continued to be involved with the Punisher. Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK in 2018, the same year the XM25 program came to an end. The Army citing weight and physical bulk, as well as cost, as factors in that decision. The current PGS program traces back to at least 2020.

“From the PGS side of things, I’d say the very initial baseline is from the Orbital ATK XM25 design,” Northrop Grumman’s Harris said today. “Similar caliber, I’d say similar programmable airburst round, which helps give that maturity.”

Programmable 25mm airbursting rounds were at the core of the XM25 effort, which was also known over the years as the Individual Semi-Automatic Airburst System (ISAAS) and the Counter-Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System. The weapon had a computerized fire control system that used a laser range finder to determine the distance to the target and then set the round to detonate at the optimal point in its flight. The Army’s main goal was to give soldiers a new way to get at enemy personnel behind hard cover at an appreciable range.

The PGS requirements the Army has publicly released to date still include a call for ‘counter-defilade’ rounds, but also ammunition types that can be used to engage lightly armored vehicles and small drones. There are also demands for the weapon to be able to help blow open doors and be usable in close combat scenarios. The launcher also has to have an effective range of at least 1,640 feet (500 meters). Overall, the Army expects the PGS to offer a significant leap in capability over its existing 40x46mm M203 and M320 grenade launchers.

The XM25 “system did not have a counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] capability, nor was there a door breaching capability developed at that point in time,” Northrop Grumman’s Harris noted today. “So, we’ve kind of completely revolutionized the fire control, as well as part of the ammunition suite, to provide a lighter weight [and] more reliable weapon system.”

So far, “Northrop Grumman has worked to develop four specific 25mm rounds to use with PGS, including our airbursting round, our county-UAS proximity round, a close quarter battle round, as well as a target practice round,” he also said.

Northrop Grumman and Colt have also previously shown prototypes and mockups of their launcher with the XM157 computerized sighting system from Vortex Optics and the SMASH-series computerized optic from Israeli firm Smartshooter. The company has told TWZ in the past that multiple options for optics are being explored. The launcher has a multi-button control system in front of the trigger, as well, but how exactly it works is unclear. The Army is already fielding the XM157 as the standard optic for its new 6.8x51mm XM7 rifles and XM250 light machine guns. The SMASH family is seeing expanding use within the U.S. military and elsewhere globally.

Northrop Grumman and Colt are not the only ones that are already positioning themselves to enter the Army’s PGS competition when it kicks off. In May, Barrett Firearms and MARS, Inc. announced that their Squad Support Rifle System (SSRS), a 30mm semi-automatic grenade launcher design, had been selected as the winner of the Army’s xTechSoldier Lethality design challenge, an effort adjacent to the PGS program.

There were two finalists in the xTechSoldier Lethality challenge, with the other being a different semi-automatic 30mm design from the American division of the Belgian gunmaker Fabrique Nationale (FN) called the PGS-001. Last week, FN America announced that it had secured a contract from the Army for continued development of what it now calls the MTL-30 as part of a risk reduction effort directly feeding into the PGS program.

The American subsidiary of German firm Rheinmetall has also been developing the Highly Advanced Multi-Mission Rifle (HAMMR) based on its 40x46mm Squad Support Weapon 40 (SSW40). Other companies may still be angling to meet the Army’s PGS needs, as well.

“We’re definitely keeping a strong bead on the competitive landscape there,” Northrop Grumman’s Harris said. “From our analysis, we feel that our offering, and 25 millimeter [ammunition], provides the least amount of strain on the soldier regarding weight, as well as kick to the weapon system, while providing the maximum amount of range to be able to take out threats well beyond what the warfighter can see.”

In response to a direct question from TWZ‘s Howard Altman about whether Northrop Grumman had received a similar contract to FN America’s under the aforementioned risk reduction effort, Harris said “we do have a track with the Army” that is separate, and declined to elaborate.

“We are working with the Marine Corps, as well,” he added. “So it’s not just a single service that’s interested in the PGS offering.”

The Army has yet to share a firm timeline for when it is expecting the PGS competition to officially begin, when it hopes to pick a winner, and when those launchers might actually reach operational units.

In the meantime, Northrop Grumman and Colt are continuing to work on their 25mm launcher, leveraging experience and lessons from the XM25.

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