medium

The Navy has announced plans to buy 30 new drone boats, 10 from each of three companies, under its Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) program. The deals are an important step forward for the Navy’s latest attempt to field larger USVs after years of setbacks and shakeups, but it remains to be seen when these new capabilities might actually become operational.

Galliano Marine Services, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), and Saronic Technologies each received so-called Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreements in relation to the MUSV program today. OTA is a contracting mechanism designed to support rapid prototyping and other research and development work without having to use more traditional and often lengthy processes.

The awards “mark a significant step forward in translating the strategic vision into a tangible fleet capability,” Chris Miller, the Navy’s Acting Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (DRPM RAS), told TWZ and others at a media roundtable earlier today. “Each agreement is for the procurement of 10 MUSV at an average procurement cost of $40 million per vessel.”

Saronic and HII submitted their Marauder and Romulus designs, respectively, to the MUSV Phase I competition. Galliano Marine Services, which does business as Edison Chouest, does not appear to have announced its entrant publicly. At a unit cost of $40 million, the total price tag for 30 MUSVs, regardless of type, would be $1.2 billion.

“Production will begin immediately at shipyards in Loreauville, Houma, and Franklin, Louisiana, with deliveries starting as early as the fourth quarter of [Fiscal Year] 2027,” Miller added.

To take a step back quickly, the Navy has used a variety of definitions for what qualifies as a “medium” USV over the years. It’s also important to note that the Navy already fields several speedboat and jet ski-type USVs operationally that are capable of performing various different missions, including employment as one-way attack munitions.

Threshold MUSV program requirements the service put out in March included a range of at least “2500 nm [nautical miles] at 25 knots while carrying a 25 MT [metric ton] load on the payload deck in NATO STANAG 4194 Sea State 4.” Sea State 4 is characterized by wind speeds of 17 to 21 knots and wave heights between four and eight feet, per that NATO standard. The MUSVs also had to be able to carry forty-foot equivalent units (FEU) containerized payloads and refuel at sea at a rate of “2,000 gallons per minute of fuel through deck connections.” Various other operational and sustainment requirements were laid out at that time, as you can read more about here.

The OTAs announced today were awarded “following successful at sea testing” under Phase I of the MUSV program, according to a press release the Navy put out today. A total of seven companies competed in this initial phase, with the others being Birdon, Leidos, PacMar Technologies, and Sea Machines. That work was conducted under an earlier round of OTAs.

“The testing evaluated, among other things, the vessel’s ability to see and understand the surrounding maritime environment, how well the vessels navigated autonomously according to the international regulations for preventing collisions at sea, and the vessel’s ability to conduct a long-duration mission,” the Navy’s Miller said at the roundtable earlier today. “The demonstrations had to prove that the designs were mature enough to meet the Navy’s operational standards and our requirements.”

In terms of the long-duration mission requirements, “the test was that they had to be able to execute [over] roughly 26 hours and over 360 nautical miles with only a single input during that time from a C2 [command and control] station allowed,” Milleter further explained. “So, it basically demonstrated that the vessel could run for an excess of 24 hours at an extended range with very minimal input from the actual operator from a C2 station. This provided basically our input and our ability to assess how truly autonomous the functionality was of the platforms.”

Overall, the OTA awards “were based on the optimal mix of autonomy, performance, design, production schedule, and cost,” he added.

The MUSV Phase II contracting notice outlines additional parameters, including that submitted designs cannot be more than 295 feet (90 meters) long or displace more than 5,000 metric tons. The USVs also have to be able to accommodate “at least 2x Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) [containerized payloads] weighing 24,000 kg each and consuming 25 kW each” and be “capable of executing multi-day unmanned operations of at least 10 days.” The drone boats need to be “operable in NATO STANAG 4194 Sea State 4 and survivable in Sea State 6,” as well. The full lists of threshold requirements and desired attributes are reproduced below.

In addition, “to be considered for this Call for Solutions, the proposed MUSV must be ready for operational demonstration at the time of solution submission,” according to the Phase II contracting notice. “An MUSV requiring substantial modifications for the production platform compared to the as-demonstrated platform will not be considered.”

“The Phase II solicitation allows entrants to compete and existing vendors to submit updated product blocks and modular payload configurations,” Miller, the Acting DRPM RAS, said today. “Testing evaluations will begin as early as November 16th, and proposals will be assessed on a continually rolling basis over the next five years.”

Miller also drew attention to the elimination of the speed and at-sea refueling targets previously outlined in Phase I.

“What we learned from Phase I is that as you increase the speed requirements and some of these other things, it does present certain challenges for industry,” according to Miller. “So I’m trying to actually find the sweet spot in the market where there is healthy competition, and there’s opportunities, and we can have more things that potentially are dual use, both military and civilian.”

So far, the Navy has only offered limited insights into exactly what specific mission sets it wants the MUSVs to perform, even initially.

The “MUSV Phase I requirements were closely tailored to fulfill operational requirements for a specific mission set focused on demonstrated ability to carry containerized payloads while meeting specific vessel performance requirements for speed and range,” Miller said during today’s roundtable. “However, there is an ever-increasing demand signal that we must be ready to meet. To ensure scalability across the broader mission sets and to support our joint force, we issued a formal call for solutions for MUSV Phase II integration and testing.”

He also stressed that the modularity of the designs being acquired now would allow for the continued evolution of their capabilities as time goes on.

With the focus on containerized payloads, “honestly, inside you could have a sensor, you could have repair equipment for ships,” Rebecca Gassler, who was the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems (PAE RAS) until August, also told TWZ and other outlets back in March. “You could have any number of payloads inside those, and you basically are able to just swap them on.”

In announcing the new OTAs today, as well as discussing the Phase II MUSV plans, the Navy also highlighted continued opportunities for the other companies that had been involved in Phase I.

“Leidos, PAC MAR, and Sea Machines were determined to complete the project provided for in their prototype other transaction agreement and will receive a $15 million award as part of the previously established terms of the prototype OTs,” the Navy’s MUSV announcement today adds. “Alongside the OT awardees, will be accepted onto the Drones.mil hosted Maritime Marketplace, where they are now eligible to receive follow-on production agreements from authorized acquisition authorities across the DOW [Department of War].”

Birdon did not complete the required testing. Based on the terms of the Phase I OTAs, Galliano, HII, and Saronic will also receive $15 million awards and be included in the marketplace. The aforementioned Phase II CFS is intended “to expand its acquisition pipeline through a Maritime Marketplace to broaden offerings and satisfy future MUSV mission sets,” as well, per the Navy.

The Navy stressed the importance of this open-ended “marketplace” model as a way to accelerate the acquisition process when it first outlined the MUSV program to the public back in March, as you can read more about here. Just last week, the service also established a new Robotic and Autonomous Systems Warfighting Development Center (RASWDC) to serve as a focal point for “the development, operational integration, and employment of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) across the maritime domain,” to include the MUSV effort.

The Drones.mil marketplace also extends to all branches of the U.S. military and beyond just USVs. Miller today did highlight the potential for possible cooperation with other services on drone boat efforts through this framework. He also said the Navy might be willing to consider additional acquisition strategies, including leasing uncrewed platforms, in the future.

Larger USVs have long been seen as key to bolstering the U.S. Navy’s overall operational capacity above the waves, and doing so in a cost-effective and rapidly producible manner. They are also viewed as central to enabling new, more distributed concepts of operations designed to help expand operational coverage and reduce the vulnerability of crewed ships, especially in any future high-end fight in the Pacific with China.

“Unmanned technology is redefining operations and providing our combatant commanders with unprecedented scale, persistence, and risk tolerance,” the Navy’s Miller said at the roundtable.

At the same time, as mentioned, the Navy has attempted to acquire operational fleets of larger drone boats in the past without success. Today, the service’s capabilities in this regard remain limited to a pocket force of still largely experimental optionally-crewed designs.

Since the Navy first unveiled it in March, MUSV has already faced certain hurdles. This includes a major leadership shakeup in August that saw PAE RAS Rebecca Gassler, the first person to ever hold that post, removed from her post after just eight months for reasons that are still not immediately clear.

In July, it also emerged that Blue Water Autonomy and Saildrone had filed suit against the Navy over being left out of Phase I of the MUSV competition. The companies alleged that the service did not follow its own selection criteria. That lawsuit is still ongoing. Blue Water Autonomy, among others, had also previously made investments in response to requirements the Navy had laid out for a previous effort called the Modular Surface Attack Craft (MASC) last year. The MUSV program has now fully supplanted MASC.

In speaking at the roundtable today, Miller acknowledged potential budget limitations and other hurdles that could still impact MUSV going forward. “I’m trying to be prepared depending on where that demand goes,” he said.

As said at the start, today’s MUSV announcement is an important new step forward for the Navy’s efforts to acquire fleets of larger USVs, but the service still has to transition these efforts into operational realities.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

WASHINGTON — Under a light rain on Sunday at the Australian ambassador’s residence in Washington, CNN hosted its third annual tennis tournament, the Kangaroo Cup, pitting Beltway journalists against administration officials. The event aims to inject some levity into an historically adversarial relationship, reminding both sides of the spirit of the game. Themed drinks and tennis whites set the tone.

White House officials played with grace. But the mood this year was altogether different down Pennsylvania Avenue. Despite a federal judge demanding the administration reverse course on President Trump’s punitive actions toward his disfavored news outlets — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — he has refused to resume full access to the storied cable news channel, dismissing its reporters as “fake news.”

It is only the latest attack on press freedom by a president whose drive to punish critics and exert influence over the media appears to be growing.

During last week’s lavish state visit for Xi Jinping, Trump praised China for having “the friendliest press corps” and dismissed their repression of speech, despite the World Press Freedom Index ranking China among the world’s worst offenders — at the bottom of the list, alongside North Korea and Eritrea — for restrictions on journalists.

Five times in the last two months, the president has sneered at and insulted female reporters, mocking their appearance or dismissing their credentials.

He has declined to name a successor for his former press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, whose final news conference, on Aug. 27, was one of only a handful of briefings held throughout the summer. His administration launched its own streaming service last week, called Trump TV, in an attempt to circumvent traditional cable news. And on Monday, he posted renderings of the White House briefing room reconverted to its former use as a presidential pool and spa.

Trump’s escalating attacks on the press come just weeks before the midterm elections, as former officials and election experts warn the administration could seek to undermine confidence in the results. They also come at a precarious moment for public trust in the media, with more Americans saying limits on the press can be justified to combat misinformation.

A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this month found that 73% of Americans regard a free press as “very” or “extremely” important to society. Yet the country remains deeply divided over whether journalists should be barred from reporting “inaccurate” information, with a majority, 53%, supporting limits in some circumstances — even if it means the government itself would have the final say in determining what is true.

Trump’s attempt to bar three outlets from the White House grounds came just three days after the Pew poll was released.

“Plenty of presidents have complained about the press before. And presidents have restricted certain forms of press access or press action during wartime,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the History Department at Washington University in St. Louis. “In the moment — and especially afterward — Americans condemned this as antithetical to the constitutional protections for press freedom and the national commitment to an open democracy.

“What I find most striking about Trump’s press action is that he has made it unabashedly personal,” Kastor added. “He doesn’t like the way media outlets are covering him, so he is going to punish them.”

President Nixon famously limited White House access for the Washington Post over its coverage of the Watergate scandal. But he never attempted to bar press credentials completely — and ultimately authorized the conversion of the pool facility into the briefing room that exists today.

Other presidents have jostled with the press. President Obama was accused of limiting access to independent photojournalists, and famously favored nontraditional media outlets at the advent of the social media age. President George W. Bush limited his personal interactions with the press and curtailed access to government records.

Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president, once stated he “deplored” the “putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.”

Yet, “it is however an evil for which there is no remedy,” he also said. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Trump’s particular style — as a showman and his own spokesman — makes his relationship with the media innately personal, said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency.”

“Presidents almost always feel that bad press is a feature of their staff’s poor communication of their policies — not that the policies themselves are unpopular or ill-advised,” Rudalevige said.

“Since President Trump does so much of his communication, though, this deflection is less available,” he added, and “thus the problem is with the press itself, not the policy or its purveyor.”

CNN’s legal fight continues, even after securing temporary reprieve from a judicial restraining order. So does the Associated Press’ lawsuit over the administration’s effort last year to punish the wire service for refusing to adopt Trump’s preferred name, “Gulf of America,” for the internationally recognized Gulf of Mexico.

While he keeps losing in court on 1st Amendment grounds, the president keeps testing new limits, looking for what will stick.

On the tennis court Sunday, at least, his administration won.

“Crunch, crunch.”

If the above sounds familiar, then you might already be a Wholigan — someone who routinely listens to the long-running celebrity podcast “Who? Weekly.” Part of the fun of listening to the thrice-weekly show (one being for Patreon members), aside from its hosts contextualizing a dizzying array of tabloid headlines, is learning its lexicon. For example, “Crunch, Crunch” spoofs a bit of sponsored content the pop singer Bebe Rexha did for Lay’s Potato Chips in 2019. Other popular phrases unique to the Who-verse: “Good form, Bella Thorne.” “Scar-Jo Yummy Pop.”

Launched in 2016 by pop culture journalists Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, “Who? Weekly” eagerly mines the growing world of lower-tier celebrity, with the two hosts categorizing trending names under two main umbrellas: the fame-hungry “Whos” (influencers, reality stars, a pre-royal Meghan Markle) and the instantly recognizable, likely critically acclaimed “Thems” (Tom Cruise, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé). Rounding out the paradigm are the “Nahs,” or folks who aren’t well known enough to claim “Who” status.

“We came of age reading all the [gossip] bloggers, from Perez Hilton to Liz Smith,” Weber tells The Times of why she and Finger originally started “Who? Weekly,” which technically began as a newsletter before it morphed into a podcast.

Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger have co-written the newly released book, “I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity.”

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

Finger also cites influence from “Oh No They Didn’t,” a 2000s-era LiveJournal page that aggregated celebrity headlines and invited users to comment (kind of like a proto-Subreddit). “You read the story just as you read the comments, which were integral to the story,” Finger says. “All of the inside jokes, the additional commentary. That’s what ‘Who? Weekly’ has become, especially in our Patreon Discord. [Listeners] are always chiming in and creating their own language and extensions of the ‘Who? Weekly’ universe.”

That universe is about to expand again: In conjunction with the pod turning 10 this year, Weber and Finger are releasing a new book, “I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity,” which looks at fame and celebrity through a historical lens while also exploring how the line between Whos and Thems got that much blurrier in the social media age. “I feel like we were always barreling towards a book,” Weber says. “Both of us are trained journalists. We were always kind of like, ‘When are we going to put our money where our mouth is?’”

To demonstrate how the binary is evolving into a spectrum, Weber and Finger revisit juicy pop cultural anecdotes (remember when Courtney Love threw her compact at Madonna at the VMAs? Or when Ariana Grande dated Pete Davidson? Or when Katy Perry flew into space on the Blue Origin?) while blanketing every chapter with an elucidation of why, no matter what decade we’re in, society just can never get enough gossip.

Meanwhile, unlike the podcast, “I Want to Be Famous” gives the hosts ample room to go deeper into the cultural framework of modern celebrity than they normally have time for. Each week, Weber and Finger dedicate one episode to unpacking a prepared list of Who-y headlines, and a follow-up episode, titled “Who’s There?,” is dedicated to listener calls. Which is to say, Weber and Finger usually spend more time explaining and trading jokes about what each micro-celeb is known for rather than how celebrity itself has evolved.

Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger are celebrating the 10th year of their podcast “Who? Weekly.”

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

“The pod is on the surface funny, [but] if you are a real fan, you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s actually some interesting stuff beneath the funny,’” Finger says. “We wanted this book to be the opposite, where it’s actually outwardly interesting and smart, and then inwardly funny when it can be.”

The writers’ tone might lean more academic within “I Want To Be Famous,” but longtime fans of the pod will recognize dozens of niche names, stories and extremely online subjects that were at one point or another discussed on the show. The authors present their grand theory of Whos and Thems by opening with the story of how former Who Meghan Markle shot to Them-dom after marrying Prince Harry. Other chapters observe what happens when Thems date or marry Whos. There’s a history of how celebrities say sorry (where there were once press releases there are now Notes app apologies) and a conversation about how nepo babies fit into the framework. As the book moves across history and demonstrates how the internet has completely upended the binary, they also show what hasn’t changed about the way fans relate to their favorites. “What we want most in a celebrity is authenticity,” Weber theorizes.

For Weber and Finger, the chance to tie the disparate threads they discuss on “Who? Weekly” was a major incentive to work on their book. “I kept being like, ‘Is this the first time anyone’s ever written about this in a book?’” Weber says with a laugh. “Because some of it was so stupid — these references to fandoms and Club Chalamet and niche things that are newer … I’m like, ‘Oh my God, are we doing this thing where now people have to read about Club Chalamet in 100 years?’ Obviously that would be incredible.”

“There’s a temporality to our show that is not the case with this book, which is very exciting,” Finger adds. “Because our show kind of exists to go in one ear and out the other. And I say that because it goes in one of our ears and out the other too, as the creators.”

Woven into the conversations around Whos, Thems, Thems behaving like Whos (see: brand deals), and Whos aspiring to be Thems is the authors’ palpable anxiety about the decaying role of entertainment journalism in an age in which celebrities can simply promote themselves via social media — or host their own podcasts. The authors are also painfully aware that most audiences have less of an appetite for reading, period. A chapter titled “The 2010s Killed the Cover Star” looks back what is thought to be the greatest piece of celebrity journalism ever written (Gay Talese’s 1966 Esquire classic, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”) and contrasts it with today’s style of uncritical, PR-friendly celebrity Q&As that boast nothingburger headlines that don’t tell us much of anything.

Conversations about media and journalism itself run through the podcast too, and that’s by design. “Sometimes we go so niche that it’s like, ‘Are we just making a podcast for our friends that work in media?’ And sometimes the answer is yes,” Weber says. “We can only speak from our experience. … But the most shocking thing about ‘Who? Weekly’ is that [media discourse] is actually quite interesting for lots of people.”

Finger adds, “Our past in media and our abundance of friendships with people who are still in media is like a crucial part of our show. It’s an industry we respect so much, you know, and we’re obsessed with the way it evolves. If we didn’t have that background, I don’t think the show would exist the way it does at this current moment.”

Even with a massive archive of episodes and no plans to stop, Weber and Finger are thrilled to have cemented their legacy with a book that could (and really should) be taught in media and communications classes. “Bobby and I both obviously love celebrities,” Weber says. “But we love media more.”

Brodsky is an L.A. culture and music writer. Her biography of Stevie Nicks, “Lessons & Lace,” published by Penguin Random House, is out now.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Leo XIV told journalists they were welcome to report on him, as he responded to the Trump administration’s attempt to bar U.S. media from the White House and affirmed the importance of journalists covering public figures.

Leo spoke to reporters Friday on his way to France for a four-day visit. Asked by a CNN reporter about the Trump administration’s attempt to bar CNN and other reporters, Leo said the media was welcome on his plane.

“I am very happy that here, you are all welcome,” he said. Good media coverage is important, he said, and equally important “that we have it all the way around, for everyone”

CNN, MS NOW and Politico were back at the White House on Thursday after a judge handed them a reprieve from President Trump’s ban, but the extraordinary showdown between him and outlets whose coverage he dislikes continued.

On a high-profile day when Chinese leader Xi Jinping was visiting Washington and attending a state dinner, no major American network was airing live coverage, and both CNN and MS NOW said their journalists were denied access to Xi’s state dinner arrival.

The American pope has long affirmed the need for free and independent press, a point he made in one of his first audiences as pope. Speaking to journalists who covered the 2025 conclave that elected him, Leo called for the release of imprisoned journalists and affirmed the “precious gift of free speech and the press.”

That said, since the COVID-19 pandemic, independent media have been prevented from covering photo opportunities inside the pope’s private studio when heads of state visit. Additionally, many of the pope’s private audiences with other groups and individuals are closed to non-Vatican press.

Leo had opposed Trump on the war

Leo’s airborne comments about Trump followed his April back-and-forth over the American president’s criticism of his opposition to the Iran war. Leo’s position won him points with some Parisans opposed to Trump’s policies who came out in droves to celebrate the first official state visit by a pope in 18 years.

“He dared, at his level, to oppose the American president,” said retiree Thierry Marien, who lined up hours early to grab a spot on the popemobile route to Notre Dame cathedral, where Leo was to celebrate vespers later Friday. “Not because he is opposed to the American president but because he’s opposed to countries where we can see there’s a risk of their political systems becoming a bit more dictatorial and there are already enough of those in the world.”

“I appreciated that he did that. He could quite easily have said to himself, ‘In my situation, I won’t criticize any heads of state,’” he said.

Leo took further distance from the Trump administration policies later Friday by making a lengthy visit to UNESCO, the U.N. cultural and educational agency, from which the U.S. has withdrawn as part of its retreat from the international organization.

Leo, who has championed multilateral diplomacy, toured the UNESCO grounds inside and out, greeted its employees and received a guided tour of some of its art collections. He then delivered a speech on the values UNESCO espouses to promote peace through culture and education.

Leo apologizes to reporters

Also on the flight Friday, Leo also apologized for missing an opportunity to speak with the press the last time he traveled internationally, when his Iberia charter broke down in Spain’s Canary Islands and he returned home solo on the king’s private jet, skipping his traditional airborne press conference.

More than 70 reporters and the Vatican delegation waited for several hours at the airport for a replacement plane to arrive. Leo addressed the media’s disappointment when he came to the back of the plane to greet reporters.

“A special mention I would like to make for those of you who were traveling with me when we returned to Rome from Spain,” he said. “I want to apologize personally for an incident, that I had nothing to do with, but which I know left a number of you unhappy with the fact that we couldn’t have the flight back together back to Rome.”

In other comments to reporters, Leo said he believed his alma mater Villanova would be the fan favorite when the Augustinian university plays the Catholic University of Notre Dame’s basketball team in Rome on Nov. 1.

“They tell me that the people coming to the match, 90% are Villanova and 10% Notre Dame, so the voice of the people of God will be very strong on the Villanova side,” Leo said.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.