Navy

The Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force have fully abandoned an attempt to axe the acquisition of E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft, and to use E-2D Hawkeyes to help fill the resulting gap. In something of a twist, the Pentagon has proposed cutting U.S. Navy E-2D purchases, as well as raiding a classified Air Force account, to keep the E-7 program going. The House Appropriations Committee has now pushed back on the E-2D part of that plan. The back-and-forth underscores the critical importance of airborne early warning and control aircraft and the strain on existing U.S. fleets.

Defense News drew specific attention to the new jostling over funding for the E-7 in a report earlier today. Breaking Defense had been among the first to report the basic points yesterday. The House Appropriations Committee had released the details in a report accompanying a draft defense spending bill for the 2027 Fiscal Year, which we will come back to in a moment.

To recap quickly, roughly a year ago, the Pentagon and the Air Force disclosed their intention to axe the E-7 program, which had suffered delays and cost overruns, and acquire additional E-2Ds as an interim gap-filler. Questions about the future survivability of the Wedgetail were also raised. The Air Force’s long-term goal was then and still is now to eventually push most air moving-target indicator (AMTI) tasks into space, though that is still years away from truly becoming a reality. Congress subsequently intervened to save the Wedgetail, appropriating billions for the effort in Fiscal Year 2026. The E-7 was again missing from the Air Force’s proposed 2027 Fiscal Year budget, which raised the prospect of a new battle with Congress.

Top Pentagon and Air Force officials subsequently said that the viewpoint on the Wedgetail had fundamentally changed, and submitted an amendment to the budget request to include funding for the program. Per a memo earlier this month from Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) at the White House, this was done in two ways. $898,549,000 was taken from “Other Procurement, Air Force” section of that service’s budget proposal, while another $650,549,000 came out of “Aircraft Procurement, Navy.”

The combined $1,549,098,000 was moved into the “Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Air Force” account. According to Vought’s memo, the funding would go toward “priority requirement to deliver two E-7 Wedgetail prototype aircraft and continue Engineering Manufacturing and Development activities for a program of record.”

The Air Force already has seven E-7s on order now, including the two jets to support rapid prototyping efforts. It is unclear when the service expects to begin flying Wedgetails operationally. Before the attempt to cancel the program, the target date for initial operational capability had already slipped from 2027 to 2032. It should be noted here that variants of the E-7 are already in service in Australia, South Korea, and Turkey, and that the United Kingdom is set to field a fleet of Wedgetails, too.

The report the House Appropriations Committee released yesterday included important additional context about the latest funding plans.

“While the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 did not include funding for the E–7 Wedgetail program, the Secretary of the Air Force and Secretary of Defense testified before the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee that they support this critical platform and have submitted a budget amendment to the Office of Management and Budget to restore funding for the platform,” it explained. “The shift in mindset at the Department of Defense translated to requested transfers from the Special Update Program in Other Procurement, Air Force, and the E–2D program in Aircraft Procurement, Navy for a total investment of $1,549,098,000 for E–7 in Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Air Force in fiscal year 2027.”

“While the Committee wholly supports the E–7 program and funding realignment, the Committee also restored the E–2D program to six aircraft for fiscal year 2027,” the report added. “The Committee understands the operational necessity of the E–2D platform; the complementary nature of the E–2D and E–7; and believes that more aircraft, not fewer, are necessary to support our warfighters now and in the future.”

It is not immediately clear whether the draft spending plan that the House Appropriations Committee has now put forward still includes the full $1,549,098,000 for the E-7 program, as well as the restoration of funding for the E-2D purchases. The memo from OMB had stressed that its intent in shifting funding around was not to add to the roughly $1.5 trillion topline for its proposed 2027 Fiscal Year defense budget. Congress can, of course, appropriate additional funds as it sees fit, and often does.

Regardless, this new debate over how and where to find funding for the E-7 highlights larger issues surrounding airborne early warning capacity within the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy.

“The conflict in Iran has reinforced the need for the Air Force to maintain a credible airborne battle management capability, currently being met with the Air Force’s E–3 Airborne Warning and Control System and the Navy’s E–2D Hawkeye programs,” the House Appropriations Committee’s report also notes. “As the E–3 is set to retire, the E–7 Wedgetail will serve as [a] modern replacement for lost battle management capability, commensurate and interoperable with assets already being utilized by key allies.”

This is all true, as TWZ has previously stressed in detail, long before the latest conflict with Iran erupted in February. Airborne early warning and control is absolutely vital to the prosecution of modern air operations, and even more so now in an age of exploding drone and cruise missile threats. The substantial deployment of E-3s to Saudi Arabia was one of the clearest indicators that a major campaign against Iran was increasingly imminent. The same had been true about the lead-up to the operation to capture ex-Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro.

Not mentioned in the report, however, is the Air Force’s slashing of the E-3 fleet in recent years, the service’s repeated deferral of any plans to acquire a replacement for those aircraft, and the loss of Sentry on the ground in an Iranian attack in March. The strain on the Air Force’s E-3s has been readily apparent for years now.

The House Appropriations Committee report also leaves out any broader context about the planned E-2D purchases for Fiscal Year 2027. When it released its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 back in 2024, the Navy had no plans to order more Hawkeyes, at least over the next five years. In its 2026 Fiscal Year budget request, the service asked for funding for four E-2Ds, presumably as part of the plan to cancel the E-7. Congress subsequently appropriated funding for three Hawkeyes in that fiscal cycle.

When it rolled out its latest budget request earlier this year, the Navy outlined all-new plans to buy 12 E-2Ds – six in Fiscal Year 2027, two in Fiscal Year 2028, and four in Fiscal Year 2029 – explicitly “to replenish accelerated service life burn down of existing force structure due to Overland Airborne Early Warning (AEW) tasking.” This underscores operational strain on the Hawkeye fleet, which can only have been further added to by operations in relation to Iran over the past few months. This also points to E-2Ds supplementing E-3s in providing overland coverage.

Just yesterday, the White House sent Congress a separate supplemental funding request for nearly $90 billion, primarily to help cover various costs associated with the war against Iran.

How exactly the E-7 program gets funded in Fiscal Year 2027, as well as what happens to the plans to order more E-2Ds, remains to be seen. The House Appropriations Committee’s draft defense spending plan could still evolve in various ways in the coming weeks and months, and will need to be reconciled with companion legislation making its way through the Senate. Once Congress passes the bill, President Donald Trump will still need to sign off on it, too.

It’s also worth noting that other potential options for providing additional airborne early warning and control capacity in the interim are emerging.

What is clear is that both the E-3 Sentry and E-2D Hawkeye fleets remain as critical as ever, but have been even more stressed by recent operations against Iran, with new E-7s still years away from entering service.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

More than three decades after decommissioning the USS Long Beach, the Navy is finally preparing to dispose of what’s left of the world’s first nuclear-powered surface combatant. The cruiser – which already had its distinctive boxy superstructure as well as its bow and stern sections removed – has been moored at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility since being decommissioned in 1995.

After a long process to determine what to do with Long Beach, the Navy on Wednesday put out a call for companies willing and able to perform the extremely complex and lengthy operation to transport, dismantle, de-militarize, and dispose of what was once a 721-foot-long ship that displaced 15,540 tons, including its two defueled reactor plants. Long Beach was launched in 1959 and commissioned two years later.

You can read more about the ship, its unique character, armaments and exploits in our two-part interview with a master chief who served on Long Beach here and here.

This marks just the second time the Navy has opted to select a commercial yard to dismantle a nuclear-powered warship. The first was the ex-USS Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier from the same era as Long Beach. It is vastly more complex and expensive to dispose of nuclear-powered vessels than conventionally powered ones because of all the radiological concerns, even long after the reactors have been defueled.

We’ll get into more details about how difficult, time-consuming and costly a process this could be later in this story when we examine the pitfalls of the Enterprise situation, admittedly a much more complex undertaking for various reasons we will explain. However, first we need to understand how Long Beach got to this point.

The decision to go forward with the Long Beach dismantling process came after a Naval Vessel Historical Evaluation (NVHE) in April determined that the ship was ineligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) despite its history as the first surface combatant ever to have nuclear propulsion and combat service that ranged from the Vietnam War to Operation Desert Storm.

USS Long Beach (CGN-9)

“The ship was deactivated in 1994 and towed to Newport News Shipbuilding where the entire superstructure was removed and the reactors were defueled,” according to the NVHE. “After this work was completed in the winter of 1995, the hull was towed through the Panama Canal to Puget Sound where it has been waiting to be recycled.”

In 2012, the ship was sold for scrap.

“Long Beach had 10,000 tons of steel, 300 miles of electrical cable and 450 tons of aluminum, earning it the voice radio call sign ‘Alcoa’ after the aluminum maker of the same name,” Reuters reported at the time.

“More than a dozen scrap dealers have expressed interest in taking part in sealed online bidding for the hull, with more than 7.35 million pounds (3.33 million kg) of steel, aluminum and copper wiring, galley equipment, tables, chairs, lockers and bunks,” Government Liquidation president Tom Burton told the news outlet.

“It’s a two-year process but it could take 18 to 26 months,” Burton said. “What’s left is an inert hull.”

USS Long Beach CGN-9

It remains unclear what happened to that scrap sale. We reached out to the Navy for answers.

The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard subsequently completed a limited-scope hull preservation availability in 2015 that resulted in the removal of the bow and stern, according to the NVHE records. It was ultimately decided not to save the ship by placing it on the NRHP because “major alterations have been made in design that do not maintain the historic design of the vessel (loss of the superstructure and major hull elements),” the review found. “Character defining features of USN warship have been lost, such as main armament, superstructure, bow, and stern. Does not evoke the aesthetic of a 20th Century USN warship.”

Moreover, a 60-day period for stakeholders to comment expired earlier this month with no responses.

With all the hurdles to ultimate destruction now out of the way, the Navy will host an Industry Day meeting on June 24 and 25 in Washington, D.C. for companies interested in learning more about what is involved in the final dismantling of the USS Long Beach.

Whoever gets the job will first have to transport it from Puget Sound to the shipbreaking yard by “dry transport via semi-submersible barge, deck barge, or semi-submersible heavy lift vessel” because the ship’s “current structural condition precludes an open ocean tow,” according to the RFI.

“Dismantling and disposing of ex-Long Beach is necessary in order to comply with Navy policy for inactive nuclear-powered ships stricken from the Naval Vessel Register, and Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP) statutory responsibilities,” the RFI explains. “The requirement for disposal includes dismantling, demilitarizing, and recycling the remnant hull sections at an authorized commercial facility in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws, and removing and packaging the reactor plant components for transportation and disposal as low‑level radioactive waste (LLRW) at an authorized radioactive waste facility or facilities.”

There are no timelines or cost estimates associated with the RFI, nor is there any guarantee that a request for proposal will be issued. We’ve reached out to the Navy for more details.

Our past reporting offers some insights into the tremendous time and money it takes to dismantle a nuclear-powered warship, as evidenced by the saga of the aforementioned Enterprise. However, it should be noted that there are some big differences between that vessel and Long Beach. The carrier is far larger and more complex, had eight reactors compared to two, and had less prep work done in advance.

In 2019, the Government Accountability Office found that it could cost the Navy more than $1.5 billion to fully dispose of Enterprise.

The GAO report also stated that a complete process could take more than 15 years to finish.

From our previous story about the dismantling of the ship known as the Big E: 

“The Navy officially decommissioned Enterprise, also known by its hull number CVN-65, in February 2017, after more than five decades of service. The ship had already effectively been in mothballs since 2012 and Newport News Shipbuilding completed a lengthy ‘inactivation’ process, which included removing nuclear fuel, mission systems, and other items from the ship, in April 2018.

‘At approximately 76,000 tons, CVN-65 will require an unprecedented level of work to dismantle and dispose of as compared to previous ships,’ GAO’s review, which the congressional office published on Aug. 2, 2018, said. ‘Regardless of the approach the Navy chooses, CVN-65 will set precedents for the processes, costs, and oversight that may be used to dismantle and dispose of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the future, such as the Nimitz-class carriers which the Navy will begin to retire in the mid-2020s.’”

The first of those, the USS Nimitz, the Navy’s oldest operational carrier, is scheduled to be inactivated in 2027, the Navy told us.

On March 13, the Navy signed a $95.7 million contract with Huntington Ingalls Inc. “for advance planning and long-lead-time material procurement to prepare and make ready for the accomplishment of the inactivation and defueling of USS Nimitz (CVN 68). Work will be performed in Newport News, Virginia, and is expected to be completed by March 2027.”

Meanwhile, the Navy originally projected that it would cost somewhere between $500 and $750 million to scrap the Enterprise, but by 2013, this figure had grown to over $1 billion. The difficulties involved forced the service to push back the start of the process more than once.

The regulatory and logistical picture was equally tangled. The Navy and the NRC disagreed on what standards should apply if a private company did the work, and NRC only has direct authority in 13 states, potentially limiting where the job could even be done. Conducting the work at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard — the Navy’s proven approach — risked worsening an already serious maintenance backlog for active ships. The commercial route could be faster and cheaper, but no private yard had ever handled military nuclear reactors at this scale, and the highly classified nature of U.S. naval reactor design added another layer of complexity. 

You can read more about the challenges involved with breaking up a nuclear behemoth in our deep dive into the problems with the Enterprise effort here.

The Decommissioning Of The USS Enterprise

The challenges of disposing of Enterprise, however, continued even after a final decision was made about what to do with the vessel.

On May 30, 2025, the Navy awarded a $536.7 million contract to dismantle the ship to NorthStar Maritime Dismantlement Services, LLC, of Vernon, Vermont, according to Pentagon records. The work was initially expected to be completed in November 2029.

“It was the first time a U.S. nuclear-powered warship will be dismantled through a commercial effort, representing a significant milestone in responsibly and safely closing out the legacy of one of the most iconic nuclear-powered warships,” the Navy noted at the time, according to USNI.

However, the effort unraveled over a legal battle over how the Navy handled final bid submissions, ultimately resulting in the service being “ordered to pause the project and reassess bids, while the appeal now puts the future of the contract back in question,” according to NBC15 News. “The Navy is expected to re-award the contract by June 2026.”

We have reached out to the Navy to find out the status of that contract as well.

USS Enterprise to be dismantled in Alabama

Even as the Navy is working to dispose of its first nuclear-powered surface combatant, it is planning for the newest one. The Navy says its proposed Trump class battleships will be nuclear-powered as well.

It remains to be seen how the complications the Navy has faced trying to dismantle Enterprise will affect the disposal of Long Beach and what lessons will be applied, if any. The answers to some of those questions should come into sharper focus next week when interested parties get to ask the Navy for themselves at the Industry Day.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

WASHINGTON — After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut nine Navy officers, including all the women, from a promotion list, several female officers say they see the unusual intervention as a sign that their careers now have a ceiling and worry for the future generation of female military leaders.

The Navy had selected 31 sailors to promote from the rank of captain to one-star admiral, but Hegseth recently intervened to strike nine people from the list, including three women and two Black men, according to a Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information not permitted to be released publicly.

As a result, the Navy is not promoting a single woman to the one-star admiral rank this year even though women make up about one-quarter of all Navy officers and nearly one-third of the sea service’s midgrade ranks, according to military data from 2024.

The Associated Press spoke with eight female Navy officers of varying ranks and time in service after Hegseth’s cuts, which were reported earlier by the New York Times, became public. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from their superiors.

The more junior officers said they saw the development as a sign that their careers would become politicized if they rose too far in the ranks, and some said they felt they now had a limit on how far they could be promoted. Some said it made them feel less valued within the military and wondered whether that wasn’t part of the intent.

The Pentagon has not offered any rationale on why the women, or any of the other six people, were removed from the promotion list.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, said on social media last week that “military promotions are given to those who have earned them” and that the Pentagon “will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request seeking further comment.

The Navy’s process for choosing which officers to promote to the one-star rank has been relatively constant and transparent over the years. The service convenes a group of officers, called a promotion board, that examines the records of eligible officers and chooses those deemed to be the most qualified.

The board that selected the initial slate of 31 officers for promotion was directed by then-Navy Secretary John Phelan, an appointee of President Trump, to “recommend for promotion the best qualified officers within their respective competitive category.”

The order from Phelan, who abruptly departed his post in April, said the board should consider an officer’s performance, competence and character, among other traits, as part of those qualifications.

It also said that given China’s prominence in the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy, “special consideration shall be given to officers who have excelled in their knowledge of the political military affairs and U.S. strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region, and operational contingency planning for Indo-Pacific war plans.”

Hegseth has long argued, without offering evidence, that women in the military benefit from preferential treatment and are not suited for combat roles.

“For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” Hegseth told hundreds of military leaders in September.

The approach, he asserted, made the Pentagon “less capable and less lethal.”

‘A break from tradition’

Phelan’s order said the Navy cannot discriminate based on criteria such as race and sex, and it specifically noted that “this guidance shall not be interpreted as requiring or permitting preferential treatment of any officer or group of officers on the grounds of race, religion, color, sex.”

The full list of 31 people to be promoted was approved by Phelan, other Navy leaders and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, before it reached Hegseth, who chose to make the changes, the Defense official said.

While Hegseth is within his rights to intervene in the list, “it’s just not the norm” and is “a break from tradition,” said Katherine Kuzminski, a researcher specializing in military recruiting and retention at the Center for New American Security think tank. She said that promotions historically have been seen as “the services’ business.”

Kuzminski noted that “this is a decision that’s not being made by the Navy — it’s being made by the secretary of Defense,” and she said Hegseth’s growing interference in operational aspects of the military services such as promotions is creating “tension” about what “normal” will look like going forward.

Some of the more senior Navy officers who spoke with the AP expressed concerns about the message it sends to the next generation of young sailors.

In addition to pulling the recent promotions of three women to admiral, Hegseth shortly after he took office fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the service’s top officer and the first woman to hold the job. He never explained his rationale.

Since then, he also has fired two other female three-star admirals without explanation.

Some of the officers who spoke to the AP said that while they were encouraging female sailors to stick with the Navy, they acknowledged that message is coming at a difficult time.

Kuzminski said the rhetoric and actions surrounding women in the military “affects individual service member decision-making and it also affects family unit decision-making,” including whether people make a career of the military.

Kuzminski said that following the months-long hold on military promotions by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) during the Biden administration, surveys showed that partisan politics spilling into the day-to-day lives of troops affected their decision-making.

One officer said this impact was not confined to women.

In conversations with other sailors in her unit, she said that male sailors were hesitant to deal with what appears to be a growing politicization of simply following the orders of previous administrations.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

For decades, the massive MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter has served as the Navy’s primary airborne mine countermeasure platform, dragging massive mine hunting sleds through waters all around the globe. However, the Sea Dragon’s days are now numbered, with the last 11 aircraft scheduled to sunset sometime next year. With the MH-53E’s demise on the horizon, we reached out to one of its former pilots, Steve Jones — a man who came to know this monster intimately during the Global War On Terror. He had plenty of stories to tell and provided us with a new understanding of the often misunderstood counter-mine mission.

The MH-53E’s mission is also, of course, extremely topical right now thanks to ongoing tensions with Iran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently told senators that the Islamic Republic mined “large segments” of the Strait of Hormuz, endangering shipping in the region.

As it currently stands, the mighty Sea Dragons, which are considered one of the military’s most dangerous to fly due to numerous fatal mishaps, are being phased out in favor of the smaller MH-60S Seahawk paired with a suite of new aerial mine countermeasures systems, as well as other new technologies, like uncrewed underwater and surface vessels. The Navy’s overall mine hunting force is going through a transition that is controversial, to say the least, with many questioning if the Pentagon is investing enough resources in this critical missions set.

With all these issues in play, in an exclusive, wide-ranging, two-hour interview, Steve Jones offered in-depth insights about the Navy’s airborne counter-mine mission, the Sea Dragon’s capabilities and dangers, current mine sweeping operations, as well as everything from what it was like to narrowly avoid getting entangled with a surfacing sub to his experiences ferrying celebrities like Robin Williams and Tom Jones around a war zone.

So, with the stage being set, let’s get into this incredible exchange.

Some of the questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity.

Q: How did you end up becoming an MH-53 Sea Dragon pilot?

A: During the time that I selected, you could choose SH-60 Seahawks, you could choose CH-46E Sea Knights and the MH-53 Echo. You could choose SH-3 Sea Kings, but they were kind of winding down the H-3s, which is the same as the presidential helicopter Marine One that they fly now, but they were flying out of Norfolk and Puerto Rico, primarily for VIP transport. 

So, I looked at the 53 for a lot of reasons. One, I liked the instructors that came from that community in the advanced helicopter training. And two, I just thought the helicopter just really looked awesome, and it was big, and so that’s why I chose it, and I just thought it would be a good personality fit, work fit for me, and it ended up being that way.

Q: What are the main differences between the Navy’s MH-53E and the Marines’ CH-53E Super Stallion?

A: It’s primarily the same aircraft. Except our aircraft has larger fuel sponsons, so we could carry more gas. The reason for that is ideally we’d want to be able to fly an hour to where the mission objective was, be able to stay on station for about an hour, and be able to fly back. That requires at least three and a half, four hours of gas and extra fuel in those side sponsors. And that allowed us to do that. So instead of a small sponson with two tanks, we had one big sponson with four fuel tanks that were inside each of the sponsons on either side of the aircraft.

Q: So how much gas would that larger sponson hold?

A: About 22,000 pounds of gas.

Q: Talk about the training and some of the biggest challenges of flying that huge aircraft. 

A: Typical Navy training is two years of flight school, and then after flight school, we went to our Replacement Air Group, which we call the RAG, that was in Norfolk, Virginia. You spend about a year, or up to 10 months, in Norfolk, Virginia, learning primarily how to fly the helicopter, how to land the helicopter, and we do that in the combination with the Airborne Mine Countermeasure Squadron. We used aircraft from Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron (HM) 14 to learn how to fly the different mission sets and learn aircraft familiarization. And then from there you either get assigned to HM-14, which was in Norfolk, Virginia, or HM-15, which was in Corpus Christi, Texas. HM-15 has now moved to Norfolk, Virginia. [Editor’s note: HM-14 sunsetted in 2022.]

The training takes about 10 months. Mine was a little bit longer because when I actually joined that community, the aircraft were down because of a crash off the coast of Corpus Christi, Texas. There was a problem called ‘thermal runaway,’ where the bearings in the main rotor head would fail, and they would seize together and get hot, and we lost a few sailors from HM-15. And until they figured out why and how to prevent it, it took about a year for those aircraft to come back up, so I was in Norfolk for maybe about a year and a half, almost two years, before I got to Corpus because of that bearing issue.

Q: What was it like when you finally got out there and learned how to fly while pulling a mine countermeasure sled?

A: There’s different types of equipment that you use and it takes a special kind of person to be able to maintain the situational awareness – both flying the aircraft and what’s happening in the back – because there’s dangers in the back. You have a very confined area, lots of equipment, and under lots of tension, and so the very first couple of times, the instructor is kind of handling everything, and you’re just kind of riding along.

Then eventually you start to do more tasks, physical tasks, in terms of flying and maintaining a stable platform for the men and women that are working in the back, and then over time those skills translate into a larger situational awareness, where you’re now a mission commander – where you’re flying the aircraft, but also, conducting the mission in the back is your primary responsibility. The positions are second pilot or co-pilot, and then you become a Helicopter Aircraft Commander (HAC), which is like the captain, and then you become an Airborne Mine Countermeasures Mission Commander (AMCM MC), meaning you’re flying the aircraft, you’re the commander of the aircraft, but you’re also commanding the mission.

Q: Did you become a mission commander?

A: I did. So I was fully qualified in the MH-53 Echo in my squadron, so I was a mission commander. I worked the maintenance side, so I was the maintenance check pilot and functional check pilot. It takes a lot of maintenance, and then post maintenance, and you have to do post maintenance flights to be able to make sure the aircraft is safe for anyone else to fly. So I spend most of my time in those areas in that squadron.

Q: What are the MH-53’s unique quirks and advantages?

A: One of the advantages was pure brute strength. You had three GE engines, so you could handle lots of torque, and the way that we hunted and swept for mines was pulling sleds in the water, which causes thousands and thousands of pounds of stress, so it’s really like a forceful instrument in the water. The operation requires the coordination of not only meteorologists and Operations Specialists, which are like intel specialists in mine warfare, but then you have the maintainer, you had two pilots and a crew chief, plus it could be up to four people in the back, depending on the type of gear you’re stowing in the back, so it really takes coordination from the front.

The disadvantage is that it’s a very expensive aircraft to operate. Every hour of flight, required 24 hours of maintenance, and if a squadron had 10 helicopters, which we did at one point in time, you’re looking at the largest deployable squadrons in the Navy, like 600-plus people to operate these aircraft.

With everybody working together, we advertise that we could be anywhere in the world in 72 hours, where there’s a mine threat. We could break down the helicopters, put them in a C-5 and then reassemble them anywhere in the world in 72 hours. After 9/11, for Operation Iraqi Freedom, we did deploy by C-5. We took half the helicopters to Sicily and the other half went to Bahrain and took 11 C-5s in order to move a squadron that size into those two locations, so big footprints, lots of money, lots of parts.

Q: How fast could the Sea Dragons fly?

A: The 53 is a fast helicopter. One of the fastest out there. We were limited to 150 knots for airframe preservation. Under towing conditions, we typically flew between 18 and 25 knots, depending on the device in the water.  Each vehicle had different performance parameters to properly deploy the device. Under rapidly changing conditions we always had to maintain proper speed and altitude control. 

Q: The Sea Dragon has experienced a notoriously high rate of mishaps. Did that ever concern you? What do you think contributed to this record?

A: It did. If you’ve ever seen one or been on one, been close to one, or heard one, you’ve got 100-foot long machine with millions of moving parts, right? 

Our maintenance crews were very good, I always felt safe flying. I think you have to if you choose to fly that particular weapon system, but there were a lot of accidents. And I knew folks that were killed in MH-53 accidents who I went to flight school with, and buddies.

Maintaining MH-53E’s

It’s a very complicated machine that did a very important mission, and accidents do happen, both mechanically, but also because of pilot error. In combination, you end up losing a lot of airframes. Besides the United States, there is only one other nation that flew that airframe, and that was the Japanese for their mine sweeping operation. It’s a very complicated, expensive machine, and that’s why not very many people flew it.

Q: Did the danger concern you?

A: You know, you’re in your 20s, right? So you feel a little bit invincible. I’ll tell you a story. When I switched from 53s and started flying C-130s, after the Haitian earthquake, I flew into Guantanamo Bay, and my old squadron was there on the same ramp as we were. So I walked over to see who I still knew there, and they had a 53 turning on the deck there, and I was just going, ‘wow, I couldn’t believe I used to do that,’ and not thinking about how many things have to go right in order to have a good day. And I just kind of said to myself, ‘it’s really a young person’s game,’ because you gotta kind of hit the ‘I believe’ button on a lot of things, because there’s just a lot of opportunity for negativity to come in. Weather, environment, and then the mechanics of things.

Q: What were the biggest factors contributing to the Sea Dragon mishaps?

A: With any aircraft system, the largest factor that contributes to any accident is the human factor. Yes, engines will fail, components will fail, but a lot of times it was human error that caused the ultimate catastrophe because when an emergency happens, you have three criteria in order to gauge when you should land.

The two critical ones are ‘land immediately,’ meaning if you do not ditch in the water or put the aircraft down, it is going to come apart in flight. The other critical criteria is ‘land as soon as possible,’ meaning as soon as you have a safe place to land, then you land as soon as possible. Then you have another condition where you can continue to fly, but flying is not recommended. And so that decision factor between land immediately and land as soon as possible, it’s a bit of a gray area, right? You have a set of skills you can fly, but you can never time when the aircraft is going to come apart.

Navy ‘Sea Dragon’ Helicopter Unsafe For Flight | NBC Nightly News

For example, in the Corpus Christi crash, they knew that they had a problem. I’m not second-guessing the pilot, but it was in that gray area between land immediately and land as soon as possible.

The aircraft commander chose to try to bring the aircraft closer to the beach, so you could survive a ditch, because putting a helicopter in the water – nothing is guaranteed, right? Then you have no control. However, bring it closer to the beach means you’re flying that much longer. So land immediately, there could have been more survivors.

Not to ‘Monday morning quarterback’ anything. I probably would have made the same call. And then with the new equipment that was put on the aircraft, there are lights now placed in a monitoring system that kind of took the gray area out of those decisions when it came to thermal runaway with the main rotor head. So now the decision is clear. Land immediately if certain indications happen, and land as soon as possible if certain indications happen. Prior to 2000, we didn’t have that.

Q: The Sea Dragon community has been well-documented for being neglected by the Navy. What was your experience when you were flying it? Why do you think that was?

A: It’s a unique mission set. It kind of came online during the Vietnam War and Haiphong Harbor, and clearing those mines, and then again in Desert Storm, when the USS Tripoli was hit by a mine.

Mining sea straits is a very cheap way to stop a huge navy, such as the one that we have in the United States. However, the Navy, in my opinion, didn’t necessarily see the value in that mission. There are very limited resources. There’s only so much money to go around, and large strike groups and ships just took priority. We were always probably a little bit underfunded, in my opinion, for a mission that’s important, which you can see today with the Strait of Hormuz. But it was definitely a huge problem that many people did not talk about during the first two Gulf Wars.

Q: Why was it a huge problem?

A: Well, when you try to move a carrier strike group into a small area like the Persian Gulf, by putting mines in the water, you create doubt in a captain’s head. The captain is responsible for thousands and thousands of lives, and the battle group commander is responsible for thousands and thousands of more lives, plus the strategic reason of why they’re there. If a mine is discovered, then everything has to pause. You can’t land Marines on the beach, you can’t move the strike group closer to the shore. The ability for you to project power ashore, all that kind of comes to an end. 

Q: How does the MH-53E go about this unique mission set? Can you walk us through what a mission would look like from start to finish? 

A: Depending on the intel, you’ll have a threat and the threat could be you suspect that there’s mines in the water, or that you know that there’s mines in the water. So, typically it’s ‘you suspect,’ right? And we used the AN/AQS-14, or “Q-14.” There’s about three different versions of the Q-14. It’s a side-looking sonar, which you drag in the water – we call it the fish. We would fly the fish at certain depths based on the terrain and what was in the water. That was called mine hunting. 

So initially you would always kind of begin with a hunting mission, where we could, or the OS operator, or the console operator would mark what they view as a mine-like contact. You’re really kind of looking at the sonar and distinguishing between man-made objects and natural objects. If you believe it’s a man-made object, and then you would mark a tape. You could also, real time, send that image back to the ship, but that capability came a little bit later.

We also had devices that allow you to sweep. A mine can be triggered by different mechanisms. Sometimes they’re triggered by contact.

Some mines are acoustically triggered, meaning you can set that mine to blow up for a certain type of ship acoustics. For instance, a destroyer has a different set of acoustics from an amphibious ship, from an aircraft carrier. If you want to let 1,000 destroyers pass you or a submarine and then wait for the aircraft carrier, you can tune it to that way. So we had devices that could mimic the sound signatures of different ships, and you could tow that in the water, you could tow it really fast. One of the reasons why we were successful is that we could do large areas of the ocean relatively quickly. 

The last piece for sweeping is the magnetic variation. Each ship is a metal hull, and as a ship is moving through the water, it has a magnetic signature, and then we have gear, which you could tune to mimic certain types of ships in the water, in order to have them explode behind the gear that we’re towing in the water.

So you hunt, that means you’re searching, and then you sweep, and then that means you’re clearing. Sometimes you can clear using other technology, such as sometimes the Avenger class ships would go in and sweep, and not us. Sometimes you would use dolphins to work with EOD teams in order to sweep mines. It just depends upon the threat, on what the second tool is used after you hunt.

Navy Dolphins Practice In Key West How To Find Mines In The Ocean

The most time that I spent was in the hunting phase of the mission set. In Bahrain, every week, a couple days a week, we would hunt. We would do the Strait of Hormuz. We would do the approaches into Saudi Arabia for the tankers. We would do the approaches into the Suez Canal, just to be sure that there are still no mines in that area.

That is for what we call change detection, meaning you map the ocean floor, and then over time, because of consistency, you’ll be able to tell if something changed. If something changed, then you went in to investigate further. It’s constant because the ocean floor is constantly moving, and then somebody could easily place a very cheap object that could be devastating.

Q: Walk me through how a mission would take place.

A: The intel can be good sometimes, sometimes the intel is lacking. The weather has to be at a certain sea state in order for it to be successful, and you can’t do it at night, right? You have to do it during a daytime in littoral situation, so you’re pretty close to shore and you are susceptible to threats that are on the beach. That is the mission set and if you don’t know where the mines are, that’s why you begin with hunting. The Q-14 is a relatively quick device to deploy. You can pull it in the water relatively fast. Then you can real-time send images back, or you can collect tapes to study for that change detection.

When you’re going out for a mission, you’ll have your standard aircraft brief, where the crews get together and talk about the state of the aircraft, the conditions, the environmental conditions of today. And then you’ll get into the mission brief on where the ship is, or where the shore is, and where actually the square, or the box, or the rectangle is, where we’re going to conduct a mission. We talk about the distances from that point that we’re going to deploy the gear, because it takes time to be able to do that, and then we’ll enter what we suspect is a minefield or an area of interest from which we want to be able to tow in.

Minesweeper Exercise

Then we fly what we call tracks. It’s almost like rows on a field, like cornrows, and we go up, down, up, down, and you have to stay within track by feet, okay? If you, if you stray as little as 20 feet off track, then you have to redo that track, because you want to have a continuous picture of the ground. And so it may take two or three sorties to cover an entire minefield.

And then times where the device may have strayed off track. It takes time, but we can do it quicker than a ship doing it on its own, like the Avenger class ship, and so between the aircraft brief and the mission brief, and executing, it’s like a six, seven hour day in the heat or in the cold, depending on where you are.

This is the Navy’s Largest Helicopter | MH-53 Sea Dragon

There’s no air condition on that helicopter. So everybody’s working in those conditions based on the information that we bring back. Then the tactics folks that are supplied to us by COMINEWARCOM  (Commander, Mine Warfare Command), which was our bosses, those intel folks will say what needs to happen next, meaning there’s nothing that needs to happen now, or we need to investigate this further. And then they pick the next tool for us to be able to deploy, or they go with the EOD and dive teams to go take a closer look.

Q: How fast are you flying, and how high are you flying? How deep do the sleds go?

A: The helicopters are anywhere between 25 and 75 feet over the water, depending on the gear, because the speed in which we pull through the water is extremely important. You could go as fast as 25 knots in some cases, which is about the top speed, or you’d have to go as slow as 12 knots.

Mine Countermeasures Unit Drops a Slocum Glider from a MH-53E Sea Dragon

Q: How deep do the sleds go?

A: The depth of some of the gear is classified, or at least it was at my time. I’m not sure now, but you could go relatively deep. It’s under lots and lots and lots of tension, and the reason why you had to go very deep is that some gear has to be able to get to the sea floor at certain distances, because there’s also the subsurface fleet that is operating down there, and mines will affect them as well.

Q: What’s the tension like when you’re dragging a sled?

A: You’re looking at around 15,000 to 20,000 pounds of tension. The aircraft will kind of buckle. You look at the side of a 53, it has a crease from the tension that goes on it.

If there is a swell in the sea state, sometimes the Doppler radar – which would kind of track how fast you’re going forward, backwards, or sideways – it’ll go from forward to negative, meaning we’re actually getting pulled backwards by the sea state. And the engines would automatically just start – the torque would come in as the blade did a bigger bite out of the air. And the aircraft will kind of turn, because of the torque. It’ll kind of turn and whine, and you’re just flying an out of balance flight, nose down.

Q: Did you ever have the sled get tangled up behind you?

A: Yes. It can get caught on things in the water, and the tension will spike. If the tension spikes too high, or the gear gets fouled in something, you always have the option to guillotine or cut the gear.

Q: Did the aircraft have other devices that helped in the mine hunting mission?  

A: Yes. In addition to the Q-14, we had the Mk 104 acoustic device, mine chain cutting devices and the Mk 105, a huge gas generator, which produces electrical charges in the water for those magnetic-seeking mines that change the magnetic variation.

HM-15 Sailors Recover Mk 104

There’s at least six devices that I know of that are used for hunting mines, including something as simple as what we call a MOP, which is stands for Magnetic Orange Pipe, which is what they used in Vietnam.

Essentially you have this pipe, it looks like a telephone pole, which is about the size of a telephone pole or larger, and it’s orange. It has a positive charge on one end and negative on the other end. It’s just a magnetic pipe that we would tow in the water. It’s probably the easiest thing that you can tow, and the simplest, but it’s looking for those magnetic variations. The problem with the magnetic orange pipe is you can’t change it, so it’s set for a certain amount of tactics. You can see how that could become obsolete in today’s environment.

Q: How does the Sea Dragon integrate with other mine hunting capabilities, like the Avenger class ships or other assets?

A: We worked as a team, but obviously we’re a tool in that larger mine warfare strategy. We were the speed aspect of that, meaning we could have left holes, but if you’re trying to move at the speed of war, then sometimes we were the tool that was required. And if you have 72 hours to be somewhere, speed is required. We could do that to be sure that the fleet can continue to do what it needs to do, but if you’ve got time, then you could sail a ship or move one of those slower small boats into that environment, that makes sense.

Q: Did you ever work together with Avenger class ships?

A: Maybe in the same AOR, but other than an exercise where you would see an Avenger class ship working the tow area, and then we will be working our tow area. It was under controlled condition. When I was doing change detection, and during work conditions, we were operating concentrated on our mission set, they’re probably concentrating on their mission set, and between the two pictures, they came together in the operation center to have a very clear picture.

Q: When was the Sea Dragon actually used for this mission operationally? How did it perform?

A: It was used throughout Iraqi Freedom, from Shock and Awe to the pull-out to the drawdown. If not every day, every week there was change detection in mine operations, because it’s always a threat. It’s a very cheap weapon that non-state actors can get off the black market. One mistake or one mishap causes devastating consequences for the individuals on that ship, but also the mission, so it’s a constant threat, and still is a threat. 

During my time, actively hunting for mines to be sure that those straits and those approaches remain clear, dominated my entire career in the community. From the time I started  and then I towed to my last days in the squadron, which was in 2005.

Q: How did the Sea Dragon perform?

A: I would say, since there was not a mishap, it performed as designed. It doesn’t mean that the mines were not there. During Iraqi Freedom, mines were put in the water, but we didn’t have the mishaps like we had before that I can recall. So I would say it was a success.

Q: Any close calls during any of your sled-towing flights? 

A: I got disoriented one time with vertigo. Like I mentioned earlier, you’re on an out-of-balanced flight, so your ears are doing one thing, your eyes are doing another thing, and sometimes there’s low fog over the water early in the morning. Under tow there was a time where I got vertigo and put the aircraft in an undesired state, but there’s two pilots. I recognized it and told the aircraft commander ‘I’ve got vertigo.’ He took the control and saved it. Being that close to the ground, getting vertigo could have devastating effects, right? We just ended up releasing the gear that day.

Q: How do the big rearview mirrors help with towing?

A: Mirrors are super important for situational awareness when lowering the equipment into the water and for ensuring the tow cable is staying on track. The co-pilot is crucial while under tow because they are responsible for making sure the aircraft remains clear of obstacles and threats. The pilot flying will be head-down monitoring performance of the helicopter and the gear deployed. The pilot flying will maintain navigation in the minefield and overall safety. When flying, looking out of the windows was a brief luxury. 

Q: Tell me about the time you encountered a surfacing sub while dragging your sled.

A: It was sometime in 2003 or 2004. We were flying over the Strait of Hormuz, towing a side-looking sonar to do bottom mapping. I’ve got a very loud helicopter in the air and a sonar that’s pinging on the bottom, so it probably was not a surprise where we were to the submarine, but their location was a surprise to us.

It’s a bright sunny day. The water looked beautiful, and we’re just doing a random tow. And all of a sudden, this big black submarine surfaced right in front of us. Just popped out of the water, and right in line with our track.

I think I was maybe 50 feet over the water and the gear is behind me. Now I have to turn like a semi truck, having to turn myself and the gear all at the same time to maneuver around the submarine. I said something like ‘holy shit’ and I remember I banked to the right because I think it was the easiest thing to do. There’s more space.

We ended up able to clear the sub, but it had a startling effect. So either they were in the wrong spot or we were in the wrong spot, I couldn’t tell you. But no one came and knocked on the door, saying that I did something wrong. So I’m gonna leave it as if they were in the wrong spot.

Q: What was it like aerial refueling such a monstrous helicopter and did you use it operationally often?

A: Very intimidating at first. However, it is all about training. Yes, you are very close to the other airplane, but that is not your focus. Your focus is on check points. Align your check points and the aircraft will plug. Once you connect and position the aircraft above the wing and propeller wash, the ride is smooth. When I switched over the flying C-130s, it would have been nice to go full circle, but never got the chance to give fuel.

We almost did aerial refueling during a possible mission scenario, but the plan was scaled back and we ended ship hopping. I only used the boom in training. I’m sure it happened, but didn’t know anyone who did it. They were there for a reason, and we trained for it.

Q: What’s the operational situation regarding Iran at the time you were flying?

A: Annoying. They have a lot of islands that are in the Persian Gulf that are their territory, and sometimes during operations, when you’re either delivering cargo or going to field a tow, it puts you in close proximity with those islands. At the same time, if it’s necessary, you could have your own boat team in the water as well. It was post-Cole [a reference to the October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole just a few years earlier by explosive-laden suicide boats at the port of Aden in Yemen. The blast ripped a 40-foot-wide hole near the destroyer’s waterline, killing 17 U.S. sailors and injuring nearly 40 other crew members.]

A Suicide Boat Attack Leaves the USS Cole Reeling from the Damage | Combat Ships | Smithsonian

So you have fishing boats in the water, and you don’t know who’s on that boat that is getting close to your ship. But when you got close to Iranian territory, they will speak up on the radio, and tell you to turn around, that you’re approaching their territory,. Even though you know exactly where you are, and you know exactly where this island is, they’re still going tell you are in violation of their airspace. 

Then it’s always a constant threat, right? So, if I were to have to ditch a helicopter or airplane in the water, they’ve got boats in the water. You wouldn’t want to get captured by them, where they could say you are in violation of their sovereign territory by mistake, and then it becomes an issue.

We were flying helicopters without GPS, so you’re using visual navigation maps and whatnot.  I’m sure there’s a GPS on those birds now, but at the time, I had a handheld GPS from Academy Sport, where I marked the islands myself, so I knew exactly where I was, or at least the best that I could manage with the equipment, to be sure that was in the right position. 

Q: Did they ever directly threaten you while you were on those missions?

A: No. They talked about violating their airspace, but they never intercepted or anything like that. I think that would be a huge mistake. It would not be a good day for them.

Q: Tell us about other locales where Sea Dragons operated.

A: We had detachments in South Korea for the North Korean threat from underwater mines. We did exercises in the Pacific. We did exercises with Japan because there’s a threat of mine in those straits, like the Strait of Malacca. 

There’s obviously a threat in the Pacific theater. But because of the situation with Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, I spent most of my time in the Middle East.

Q: Were there any difference between operating in the Persian Gulf area and the Pacific, or Europe?

A: A lot of the effectiveness of what we do is dependent upon water. The salinity of the water, the sea state, the amount of garbage and trash that’s in the water. So those environmental threats change the tactics. That’s why you need to practice out there.

In terms of the purpose of the mission, that does not change, but how you go about it does change. If you’re closer to a near-peer actor, it’s going to require better intelligence, different types of equipment in order to counteract the threat. I would say the Iraqi Navy was not near-peer in terms of mine tactics, but the Chinese could probably be very different in terms of mine tactics. They would be a more sophisticated enemy in this case, which would heighten everything.

Q: Did the Iraqi Navy or the Iraqis present a threat to your aircraft? Did they harass you, fire at you?

A: No, not during my time. I think maybe possibly during the first Gulf War. The threat was that there, it was always a threat when you’re operating close. So yes, something could have happened. They’ve got boats, they’ve got men in the water.

Q: What are your thoughts about the current MCM missions taking place now in the Middle East? Just how hard is it to clear an area of mines like the Strait of Hormuz?

A: I would say that it is difficult. All mine clearing operations are difficult because you’re talking about the needle in the haystack. Like literally, and you know they’re deploying something that can be hoisted by one person and thrown overboard into the water or by a machine, and you can deploy a lot of mines in a very short time in a concentrated, tactical way, or randomly. It really doesn’t matter, it’s still a threat. 

I would say it is difficult because people talk about how narrow and small the Strait of Hormuz is, but you have to remember the earth is large, and there is just a sheer volume of water, and square miles or square kilometers on which something can happen.

It is a very daunting task, and so having more MH-53E helicopters probably wasn’t the solution for the future.

From reading, and then from hearing from my peers that are still in, the tactics are different, but also the equipment that they use to detect this threat is also different. It is faster. It is unmanned. You can deploy more assets quicker because you’re not relying upon one machine or two machines at one time being deployed.

What kind of sea mines is Iran using in Strait of Hormuz?

Q: What equipment are they using now? What are the differences?

A: I retired in 2017 and it has changed dramatically. For one, it is more integrated into the fleet, so you’ll have multi-mission capabilities, meaning an MH-60Ss can be used for different sets of missions, from delivering cargo, to deploying different sensor arrays. You have AI for detection assistance. You have side-looking sonar, which instead of being towed are now on underwater unmanned vehicles. So I think more of what you’re looking at now is a mission package of sensors that can be deployed.

When you have sensor sets, it’s integrated into the larger Navy strategic picture better. I think that that was lacking in the past in a way, because you have to cover such a large volume of area, you need more sensors and eyes to be able to do that, and I think that’s the strategy today.

Q: Do you talk to any of the current pilots/crews of the last squadron flying them? What do they say about the current status of the fleet? Are they involved in the mine clearing operation in the Strait?  

A: So I talked with folks, there’s still some folks that are still active duty. Some of them have transitioned out of the 53 pilot-wise and have transitioned into the MH-60S community and so they are deploying those tactics and new systems.

I would say it is probably still a neglected community in their opinion. Everybody’s fighting for resources, but I think when you’re talking about the current situation with Iran in the straight, there’s always a time where mine countermeasures become a very hot topic, because people do forget about it. 

Q: Are the MH-53Es still performing airborne counter-mine missions?

A: I’m not sure. 

Q: What other missions does the MH-53 community perform? Can you talk about your experience with those and what they entail?

A: When you have that much capability, you move a lot of things. And so we did a lot of moving cargo. I could move an F-14 Tomcat engine with the afterburner completely attached. I could move it at 150 knots from shore to ship internally, so I didn’t have to sling it underneath the aircraft in a pod. I can have the engine assembled together and be able to move it. So we moved things that the C-2 Greyhound couldn’t.

The primary mission was mines, the secondary cargo and people. We would do people movement, if a better ride wasn’t available to move an admiral or someone for an important meeting, then we would do so. Obviously, you know, it’s a very dirty ride.

Q: What admirals did you move?

A:  I can’t remember the admirals, because they kind of all blend together, but we did move fun people. We did Tiger Woods for all the USO engagements. Blink 182. We did Tom Jones, Robin Williams, a number of NASCAR folks and other celebrities. We did a lot of that.

Q: What was Robin Williams like?

A:  Funny. He was on from the time that we picked him up in Bahrain, and then giving him the brief. He liked talking with sailors and making jokes. Tom Jones was memorable because he’s got the hair right, and he didn’t want to wear a cranial or helmet on his head to mess up his hair before he did the show, and so that became a thing. But you know, the hair won out. The hair was not going to get covered by the helmet.

Q: What will the Navy miss when that last squadron is finally retired next year and there are no more Sea Dragons flying? Can the MH-60S handle the job?

A:  With the Greyhounds going away, I think even with the CMV-22, which is a very capable aircraft, a very fast aircraft, but in terms of lift capacity internally, there’s something to that. If it’s outsized or weirdly shaped or is on wheels, the MH-53E is your catch-all aircraft. The Navy will miss that and the large numbers of people that we can move.

During the start Operation Iraqi Freedom, when I was in Sigonella we spent four days offloading the Marine Corps battalion landing team from the Iwo Jima on to Souda Bay for them to be flown into the northern part of Iraq. With those two helicopters and in one helicopter with Helicopter Detachment 4, we moved hundreds and hundreds of Marines from a ship to the shore for them to be staged in order to be moved into Iraq in a matter of days. I don’t think that same amount of capability in terms of volume of moving at that speed can be done with what’s available today. So I think they’re going to miss the kind of the ad hoc nature of having a big aircraft to move odd things. It’s good to be a generalist sometimes.

Q: What about the mine countermeasures mission? Is there anything that the Navy will miss from the capabilities of the 53 from that standpoint?

A: I can’t speak on it with the new equipment, because I’ve never operated it, but I think what the Navy won’t miss is the price tag, and maybe the lack of full mission capability. We operated a lot of times in that partial mission capability, because of the complexity of the equipment and the machine, and then you have to get the equipment and the machine to work together, the machine being the helicopter. I don’t think the Navy will miss that part of it.

Q: Can the MH-60 do the job?

A: They can do the job, but they don’t conduct it the same way we did. They can’t pull big sleds like we did for underwater sonars because of power and tension. And you can’t send as many crew members in the back in order to make that mission successful. But the 60 is a very capable platform in order to conduct the mission the way they do it now.

Q: What’s the difference between what they do and what you did?

A: They’re deploying sensor arrays and underwater vehicles from the thing, so they have standoff distance. They’re capable of not putting the helicopter in the same proximity to danger. They can’t put a Mk 105 in the water, but they don’t need to, because they have other types of technology to do it. 

Q: What was your most fear-inducing flight in the Sea Dragon?

A: For me, I was on the sea wall in Corpus Christi, Texas, about to do a towing training mission off the coast of Texas. In the 53 you have three engines, and then you have an auxiliary power unit – another gas turbine that’s above the cockpit.

The purpose of the auxiliary power unit is to run the hydraulics and various components and accessories when the engines and the rotor head aren’t turning. The idea is, once you get the engines going and the main rotor is turning, there is a shaft that goes from the main gear box into that auxiliary power unit, where all your generators and hydraulic systems are run. So we had the engines running, we were on the sea wall – we had a hanger, and then we had an apron, and right there was the Corpus Christi Bay.

I was taxiing out to take off from the helipad, and you’re over the water as soon as you take off from the sea wall. Well, that shaft sheared while I was taxiing up. I have to push the cyclic (the stick) forward in order to tip the rotor head forward to pull me along the ground. If you lose hydraulics in a 53 there is no amount of strength that you or the other copilot has to help to change the path of that helicopter. 

When the shaft broke, it meant whatever condition that rotor head was in, it was not going to move, and that rotor head was in position for me to be able to take off, but I did not have enough power in order for me to lift off. Even if I lifted off, I probably would have just careened into the water. 

So we were going in a situation where I heard it pop, and then all of a sudden the controls froze, and I told the co-pilot, Ty Jurica, that I was so concentrated at that point because I could not control the aircraft. I said ‘I don’t have control, I cannot move the controls.’ But Ty’s quick thinking noted that he could get the hydraulic power unit started again, which it takes time to spool up, but he was able to hit the start on the APU, and we managed to spool up to get hydraulics back, and as soon as the pressure came on at 3000 psi, I was able to move the controls again.

We stopped the aircraft where we were, and we shut it down at that particular time, but in a few seconds, maybe, we probably just would have taxiied off over the sea wall, and into a very bad situation.

Q: What was your best memory of a mission you flew, or a moment during one of your missions in your time in the Sea Dragons? Put us in your shoes of what that was like.

A: Oh man, my best day there? There were a lot of good days. A lot of times, we would fly in formation – two ships going out to whether it was an aircraft carrier or whatever – and we would take off before sunrise. When you’re flying in formation low over the water, and the sun is coming up over the Persian Gulf, those are those are great days. Because everything is working. You have two planes actually going to conduct the mission and not training. I don’t care who you are, it’s always a lot of fun. 

You’re going relatively fast. I mean, we’re not Hornets or whatever, but we were low and fast at that time for us, and we thought we were pretty cool.

You couldn’t touch us on those days.

Author’s note: we added three additional sets of questions and answers to this story. We asked Jones about how fast the Sea Dragons could fly, how helpful the big rearview mirrors were when pulling a sled and what it was like conducting aerial refueling in the giant helicopter.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

Boeing is now conducting test flights of its MQ-28 Ghost Bat drone out over the Pacific from the U.S. Navy’s base in Point Mugu, California. The company says its main goals are to demonstrate the maturity of the design, originally developed for Australia, and promote export sales. The specific choice of testing location also seems notable given Boeing’s involvement in the Navy’s still-evolving carrier-based Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) plans.

The MQ-28 has now flown at least three times within the Point Mugu Sea Range off the coast of southern California, according to a Boeing press release. The expansive range is routinely used for a wide array of research and development and test and evaluation activities, as well as training. Naval Air Station Point Mugu, part of Naval Base Ventura County, sits right on the coast, surrounded by farmland, with direct access to the range and minimal risk to bystanders. Its location makes it well suited for uncrewed aircraft operations, and it already has a major role in this regard in relation to the MQ-4C Triton and managing target drones.

MQ-28 first international flights

“This testing shows the MQ-28’s ability to operate seamlessly from allied facilities, which helps Boeing demonstrate the aircraft’s maturity and potential export opportunities to international customers outside Australia,” per the press release from Boeing. “Tests at Point Mugu validate autonomous systems while following required airspace, range safety and regulatory approvals.”

Boeing also described this as “MQ-28’s first international operation in allied airspace,” but it is unclear when the first sortie from Point Mugu occurred.

In December, the Pentagon released a video of Secretary Pete Hegseth visiting Naval Air Station Point Mugu with an MQ-28 clearly visible in the background. However, the drone seen in that footage also had an early-style paint scheme with high-visibility orange trim. Pictures and video that Boeing released along with its announcement of the Point Mugu Sea Range flight testing show a Ghost Bat with a two-tone gray livery. It also has an infrared search and track (IRST) sensor system in the nose, something not seen on the example in the Hegseth video. The MQ-28 is a highly modular design, with the nose section designed to be readily swappable.

There have also at least been indications of Ghost Bat flight testing in the United States in the past. The U.S. Air Force previously said it had made use of at least one MQ-28 to support advanced uncrewed aircraft and autonomy development efforts.

Boeing itself released a picture of an MQ-28, again with the early paint scheme and no IRST, at MidAmerica Airport outside of St. Louis, Missouri, back in 2023. In that instance, the Ghost Bat was displayed alongside the demonstrator the company had been using to support the development of the MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone for the Navy.

How many Ghost Bats are currently in the United States is unknown. TWZ has reached out to Boeing for more information.

The MQ-28 has been flying in Australia since 2021, two years after the design was first shown publicly. Boeing’s subsidiary in Australia had already been working on the design before then under the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) Airpower Teaming System (ATS) program. To date, RAAF has received eight Ghost Bats in a pre-production Block 1 configuration.

Boeing is now working to build the first of a batch of nine Block 2 drones, which are seen as an intermediate stepping stone to an operational Block 3 version. The Block 3 type is expected to be substantially larger and have greater range. It will also feature an internal weapons bay that could accommodate a single AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), two GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs (SDB), or equivalently sized stores.

Boeing and the RAAF have already conducted at least one live-fire AIM-120 launch from a Block 1 Ghost Bat, with the missile having been carried aloft on an external pylon under the drone’s fuselage.

Uncrewed MQ-28 Ghost Bat showcases its combat capability

Block 1 MQ-28s have also been used to demonstrate other important capabilities in testing to date. This includes crewed-uncrewed teaming with RAAF E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft and F/A-18F Super Hornet fighters. The ability to operate from allied facilities that Boeing says the Point Mugu sorties demonstrate could be valuable just for Australia for future coalition operations.

MQ-28, Wedgetail, Super Hornet: Drone Intercept Behind-the-Scenes

Boeing has also been open about its interest in pursuing sales of the MQ-28 outside of Australia. The company has publicly named Japan as a potential customer and has said it is exploring potential opportunities with other unnamed countries in the Indo-Pacific region. In March, Boeing Australia announced a partnership with Rheinmetall in Germany to pitch the Ghost Bat to that country’s armed forces. A carrier-capable version of the design with a tail hook has been pitched to the United Kingdom in the past, as well.

This latter point brings us to what is largely absent in Boeing’s announcement about MQ-28 flight testing from Point Mugu: the U.S. Navy.

In September 2025, the Navy confirmed that it had awarded Boeing, as well as Anduril, General Atomics, and Northrop Grumman, contracts to develop “conceptual” carrier-based CCA drone designs. At that time, the service also announced that Lockheed Martin was under contract for work on an accompanying common control architecture.

In April 2025, Navy Capt. Ron Flanders, public affairs officer at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquisition (RDA), had also told TWZ directly that “the U.S. has expressed strong interest in leveraging the MQ-28’s AI-driven autonomy and modular design for future air combat operations.”

As mentioned, Boeing is also developing the MQ-25, a production representative version of which just flew for the first time in April. Beyond the important aerial refueling and other capabilities the Stingray is set to bring to the Navy’s carrier air wings, the service routinely describes it as a “pathfinder” to future uncrewed aviation capabilities.

MQ-25A Stingray First Flight

All this being said, the Navy’s CCA plans are still very much evolving. The service, by its own admission, has been trailing behind the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marine Corps in the development of CCA-type drones.

Flight testing now from Point Mugu is certainly an important development for the MQ-28 program as a whole, and one Boeing hopes could open the door to new opportunities for the Ghost Bat. Whether or not that includes deeper U.S. Navy involvement remains to be seen.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao’s remarks come as US President Donald Trump gives mixed signals on the sale.

A top United States military official has said Washington is pausing a $14bn arms sale to Taiwan to conserve munitions for its war on Iran.

Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao provided the update to lawmakers during a Senate hearing on Thursday, a week after the weapons sale took centre stage in talks between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.

“Right now, we’re doing a pause in order to make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury – which we have plenty,” Cao told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

“But we’re just making sure we have everything, but then the foreign military sales will continue when the administration deems necessary.”

Cao said any decision to move forward with the sale – which would be the largest ever weapons transfer to Taiwan – would be made by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The war has been paused since the US and Iran agreed to a ceasefire on April 8, but the sides have yet to reach a permanent peace deal.

The US Congress approved the weapons package for Taiwan in January, but the sale requires Trump’s sign-off to move forward.

If approved, the sale would surpass a record-breaking $11bn arms package for Taiwan approved by Trump in December.

Taiwanese Premier Cho Jung-tai told reporters on Friday that Taiwan would continue to pursue arms purchases, according to Taiwanese news outlet FTV News.

William Yang, senior analyst for northeast Asia at the Crisis Group, said in a social media post that the pause will “exacerbate anxiety and scepticism about US support in Taiwan and make it difficult for the Taiwanese government to request additional defence budget for the foreseeable future”.

Trump, who has confirmed that he discussed the arms sale with Xi, said last week in an interview with Fox News that he “may” or “may not” approve the package.

Trump has also suggested that the package could be used as a “negotiating chip” – despite a decades-old precedent against consulting with Beijing on arms sales.

China claims self-governing Taiwan as part of its territory, and objects to Washington’s ongoing but unofficial support for Taipei.

The US government does not officially recognise Taiwan but is committed to helping the island to defend itself under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, enacted shortly after Washington severed diplomatic ties with Taipei.

Trump has continued to test the status quo on Taiwan in other ways, saying earlier this week that he would consider speaking to Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te about the arms deal.

Such a move would break with four decades of diplomatic protocol against direct talks with the Taiwanese leader and almost certainly provoke an angry response from Beijing.

Trump held a phone call with former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen after his 2016 election win, but their talks took place before he was sworn in as president.

The U.S. Navy sees a future in which uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUV) work together with submersibles loaded with SEALs. The service has already been conducting tests to explore how crewed-uncrewed teaming under the waves might work. UUVs could help extend the operational reach of operators riding in SDVs, as well as help reduce their vulnerability, but there are communications and other challenges still to overcome.

Navy Capt. Mike Linn shared details about the Navy’s plans for teaming UUVs and various types of swimmer delivery vehicles (SDV) with our Howard Altman on the sidelines of the annual SOF Week conference yesterday. Linn currently works within the Naval Special Warfare program office (PMS 340), a division of the Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA) Program Executive Office for Unmanned and Small Combatants (PEO USC).

“That is the goal,” Linn said when asked about the Navy’s view of teaming UUVs with SDVs, the latter of which the service also refers to as SEAL Delivery Vehicles.

As it stands now, the main workhorse of the Navy’s SDV force is the Mk 11, which is just under 22 and a half feet long. It is operated by a crew of two and can carry six passengers. Also referred to as the Shallow Water Combat Submersible (SWCS), the Mk 11 is what is known as a “wet” submersible design, where the occupants are exposed to water the entire time during their voyage. The Mk 11, like its predecessors, can be launched and recovered from submerged submarines with specialized Dry Deck Shelters (DDS) attached to their hulls.

The Navy has also acquired several new Dry Combat Submersibles (DCS) in recent years, which feature a pressurized cabin with space for a crew of two and eight passengers. This means the larger DCSs can operate at greater depths than the SWCSs. They also deliver their occupants to the destination dry and relatively warm, helping to reduce operator fatigue and certain potential health risks. The DCS does have the limitation of being too big to fit inside existing DDSs. At least publicly, this is understood to translate to the need for support from a mothership on the surface.

There are multiple UUV designs in the Navy’s inventory today, as well. These are largely torpedo-shaped designs intended to be deployed from and retrieved by vessels riding on the surface or submarines. In recent years, the service has been working to expand its ability to launch and recover UUVs from submerged submarines without the need to send out divers to help. Historically, underwater retrieval of UUVs, in particular, has been a largely manual affair, often conducted via DDS.

In terms of the potential benefits of UUV-SDV teams, “underwater systems like the SDV and UUVs afford reach underwater,” Capt. Linn explained. “So, if you can get somewhere in an SDV and then launch a UUV to go do something, then that would make you more capable.”

“You could extrapolate, just as you would have an unmanned wingman in an aircraft, or a maritime surface co-pilot, the same can be said for underseas,” he continued. “So, if you have an unmanned system with you underwater, then I suppose you can use your imagination.”

“A good example might be a harbor,” he added. “Technology is in a state where passing through the mouth of a harbor, a choke point, is maybe much more well defended. Or it is a choke point, and they don’t want to pass there with a big manned platform. So if you send a smaller unmanned platform through, then that’s pretty logical.”

“It can be an overall risk-reducer,” he further noted. A key mission set for Navy UUVs is scouting ahead for mines and other potential hazards, and otherwise helping commanders establish a better ‘view’ of the battlespace above and below the waves. This could all be especially valuable for SEALs during high-risk missions, including ones being conducted covertly or clandestinely.

Capt. Linn was also candid about the challenges the Navy still has to overcome to make this underwater teaming ability a reality. He described both crewed SDVs and UUVs as being “deaf, dumb, and blind” in terms of their current ability to communicate and coordinate with each other to ensure they are both in the right place at the right time.

“Through-water data transfer is difficult, and so the modality that you choose while remaining survivable is kind of difficult. And, also, in order to do that, you have to have pretty well synchronized systems,” he said. “We’re looking at all ways of transferring data through water. It can be acoustic, [and] there’s light-based transfers.”

There are other questions still be answered around how UUVs teamed with the SDVs would operate, including where the uncrewed companions would be launched from. If the SDVs have to carry them to the launch point themselves, this could present additional challenges.

“You’ve got to consider your volume in the SDV, which is not great,” Capt. Linn noted. “Are you going to strap it to the outside?”

He did confirm that testing is already being conducted to delve deeper into this potential pairing. He said that the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD), headquartered in Panama City, Florida, has been leading the charge.

“I think we’re still years away from having something at the reliability level that they want,” Capt. Linn added. “Again, back to the actual ones and zeros, and the modality of data transmission, [being at the] right time, right place,” and doing all of this “where you have to be survivable, that’s difficult.”

As Capt. Linn has made clear, significant hurdles will need to be cleared before UUV-SDV taming can become a reality. However, there are also real operational benefits that would come from pushing toward this goal.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Two US Navy jets collided during an air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, sending both aircraft crashing to the ground in front of spectators. All four crew members ejected safely before impact.

Two E/A-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft collided during the Gunfighter Skies Air Show in Mountain Home Idaho on Sunday, in a mishap captured in dramatic videos. The four crew members of the aircraft, from Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 129‘s NAS Whidbey Island-based Growler Airshow Team, were able to eject right after the collision and are being evaluated by medical personnel, according to media reports. The incident took place two miles northwest of the base, according to the 366th Fighter Wing’s Facebook page. The Growler Airshow Team puts on two-jet displays.

Video of the incident showed the one of the Growlers close in on the other from behind and then collide, striking the lead aircraft’s rear with its nose from above. They then became entangled together, nose up, and then down, before tumbling to the ground. Four small explosions from ejection seats blasting out of the falling Growlers can be seen before the parachutes of the four crew members opened up. The Growlers hit the ground, exploding into a ball of flames, followed by the crew members floating down in their parachutes.

These still images show another view of the collision.

The crash caused a fire that was since contained, according to the base.

2 E/A-18G Growlers from the VAQ-129 Growler Demo Team are reported to have collided during the Gunfighter Skies Airshow at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho today. Both crews are reported to have ejected safely. pic.twitter.com/k5SWJ9mz1u

— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) May 17, 2026

⚠️ Important

Mid-air collision; Two EA-18G Growlers of the Growler Demo Team have been involved in a mid-air collision at the Mountain Home Airshow pic.twitter.com/9rwv2RGYID

— Open News© (@OpenNewNews) May 17, 2026

Initially, the base was placed on lockdown.

While the exact cause of the mishap isn’t confirmed, the leading Growler may have been in the under-nose blind spot of the trailing one right before impact. This is a condition we have seen become catastrophic in other airshow disasters. We will have to wait and find out if this was indeed a contributing factor.

As the jets rolled vertical, they seemed stacked on top of each other, making ejection extremely dangerous. Remarkably, the ejection sequences cleared the crews of each other’s aircraft.

You can check out what the display is supposed to look like in the video below:

EA-18G Growler Demo – Nellis AFB Airshow 2022

We will provide updates when available.

UPDATE: 9:45 PM EDT –

Navy CDR Amelia Umayam released the following statement:

“On May 17, 2026, two U.S. Navy EA18-G assigned to Electronic Attack Squadron (VAQ) 129 from Whidbey Island, Washington collided in mid-air while performing an aerial demonstration involving four air crew for the Mountain Home Air Force Base Gunfighter Skies Air Show, near Mountain Home Air Force Base at about 12:10 p.m. MDT.

All four of the air crew successfully ejected and they are being evaluated by medical personnel. First responders are on the scene.

The incident is under investigation. More information will be released as it becomes available.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy claims it has greatly expanded how it defines the Strait of Hormuz, which it has closed to most shipping since the start of the now-paused war. The move comes as that closure has wide-ranging impacts on the global economy and with U.S. President Donald Trump mulling new military actions against Tehran amid deadlocked peace negotiations and a tenuous ceasefire barely holding.

Under its new definition, the IRGC claimed a tenfold expansion “forming a complete crescent” of “about 20 to 30 miles to one now over 200 to 300 miles,” Political Deputy of IRGC Navy Mohammad Akbarzadeh said in a TV interview, according to the official Iranian FARS news agency.

“The Strait is no longer viewed as a narrow stretch around a handful of islands but instead has been greatly ​enlarged in scope and military significance,” Akbarzadeh noted. “In the past, the Strait of Hormuz was defined as a limited area ​around islands such as Hormuz and Hengam, but today this view has changed. The Strait is now defined as a strategic zone stretching from ‌the ⁠city of Jask in the east to Siri Island in the west.”

We asked the White House and CENTCOM for reactions to the IRGC Navy announcement. The White House dismissed it.

“During Operation Epic Fury, Iran was crushed militarily – their ballistic missiles are destroyed, their production facilities are dismantled, their navy is sunk, and their proxies are weakened. Now, they are being strangled economically by Operation Economic Fury and losing $500 million per day thanks to the United States military’s successful blockade of Iranian ports,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly told us. “The Iranian regime knows full well their current reality is not sustainable, and President Trump holds all the cards as negotiators work to make a deal.”

CENTCOM has not responded to our query.

The reported expansion is the second announced by Iran since the start of its conflict with the U.S. and Israel.

The IRGC did not specify what actions it would take under its expanded definition. However, while the vast majority of Iran’s naval forces have been destroyed during Epic Fury, it has been attacking ships in the region with cruise missiles, drones and its fleet of small attack boats that remains largely intact. In addition, Iran has reportedly continued mining the Strait even after the April 7 ceasefire.

Both U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and Iran say the IRGC launched strikes against U.S. Navy warships and commercial vessels they were helping to protect during the short-lived Project Freedom on May 4. That was an effort, created by Trump, to help guide ships through the Strait that was paused after about 36 hours. CENTCOM forces responded with strikes on attacking ships. Days later, another exchange of fire took place, with CENTCOM saying it bombed Iranian targets after destroyers came under fire transiting the Strait to the Gulf of Oman.

Meanwhile, the Navy has disabled four Iranian vessels trying to run the ongoing blockade.

The IRGC said the new definition was created in response to yesterday’s statements by President Donald Trump repeating that Iran’s Navy has been destroyed by U.S. attacks during the now-paused Operation Epic Fury.

“This very design and implementation of the new plan shows that this force is present on the scene with authority,” Akbarzadeh proffered.

As we noted yesterday, frustrated by the pace of negotiations, Trump threatened new military action against Iran ranging from resuming Project Freedom to new airstrikes against Iranian targets and perhaps even a ground incursion to retrieve Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

The closure of the Strait is having a direct impact in the U.S., spurring Trump to consider pausing the federal gas tax as a form of relief for American consumers as energy prices soar, The Washington Post noted. The move — which requires congressional approval to pass — would mark the latest in a string of government interventions to address fallout from the war.

“Since the war began in late February, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil, an international benchmark, has skyrocketed from about $70 to more than $107. U.S. gas prices — now an average of $4.50 a gallon — have reached levels not seen since 2022 and contributed to Trump’s falling approval ratings ahead of the November midterms,” the Post stated.

The impacts of the closure are even greater in Asia, which relies more heavily on oil that normally transits the Strait. For instance, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked his nation’s 1.4 billion people to spend less on fuel, fertilizer, and travel, The New York Times reported. 

Modi “made these sweeping recommendations in a national address on Sunday after securing a big win for his party in recent state elections,” the newspaper added. “With that victory in hand, he no longer has to worry that voters might punish his candidates for higher prices of fuel, food and transport, which are tightly controlled by India’s government. Instead of subsidizing the losses and running huge budget deficits, India’s leader appears emboldened to ask its people to bear the burden.”

The U.S. Navy’s near-total abandonment of surface combatants with nuclear propulsion after the end of the Cold War is “one of the largest mistakes” it’s ever made, according to the service’s top officer. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle made this remark today while voicing support for the recently announced decision that the future Trump class battleships will be nuclear-powered. He also explicitly highlighted challenges the Navy has faced when it comes to fueling conventionally-powered ships taking part in operations against Iran, something TWZ recently reported on in detail.

Adm. Caudle, as well as Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao and Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Eric Smith, testified before members of the House Armed Services Committee today. The focus of the hearing was on the Department of the Navy’s 2027 Fiscal Year budget request. The Navy disclosed that it had decided the Trump class warships will feature nuclear propulsion in its latest long-term shipbuilding plan, which was released on Monday.

“I know there have been many conversations and questions over the past few days regarding the news that the Trump class battleship will be nuclear powered. And, as you know, Virginia has a long history of nuclear shipbuilding. What specific design plans can you share at this point and can [you] speak to how nuclear power would enable this system to be successful?” Rep. John McGuire, a Virginia Republican and former U.S. Navy SEAL, asked Adm. Caudle directly.

“Sir, we walked away from surface nuclear power decades ago, and that was one of the largest mistakes the Navy ever did, and we’re bringing it back,” the Chief of Naval Operations said in response. “We need nuclear-powered surface ships to sustain combat operations with our nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.”

Though a major operator of nuclear-powered submarines, the Navy’s aircraft carriers are currently its only nuclear-powered surface ships. The service previously had a mixture of nuclear-powered surface combatants. This included three one-of-a-kind ships, the cruiser USS Long Beach, the destroyer USS Truxtun (later recategorized as a cruiser), and the frigate USS Bainbridge. There were also two California class and four Virginia class cruisers, the latter not to be confused with the subsequent Virginia class of attack submarines. All of these ships entered service in the 1960s and 1970s. Expensive and complex to operate compared to similar conventionally-powered ships, they were all retired in the 1990s as part of post-Cold War drawdowns across the U.S. military.

As Caudle highlighted, the central benefit of nuclear propulsion is functionally unlimited range since naval reactors can operate for decades without needing to be refueled. In the context of modern ships packed with ever-more advanced weapons and other systems, it can also offer an important boost in onboard power generation. As noted, this does come at a cost. Today, Russia is the only country anywhere in the world with a nuclear-powered surface combatant, the Kirov class battlecruiser Admiral Nakhimov. In terms of nuclear-powered surface naval ships of any kind, the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is the only other example. Russia also has several nuclear-powered icebreakers, but these are operated by the state-run nuclear company Rosatom.

“Imagine what that would have looked like in the Arabian Gulf if I’d had a nuclear-powered battleship there to give the air and defense and fires [sic] power that it could sustain – rotate ships that roll, that need gasoline around it,” Caudle continued today in his response to Rep. McGuire’s question. “So the imperative for this is crucial to develop that level of payload capacity.”

Navy officials have already acknowledged that Iranian attacks on friendly countries in the Middle East in the course of recent operations significantly disrupted established logistics chains. In particular, this impacted how the service delivered fuel to conventionally-powered warships in the region, as you can read more about here.

Threats to fuel supplies would be something the Navy would have to take into account in any future conflict, especially a high-end fight against China across the broad expanses of the Pacific. There are other logistics requirements that nuclear ships do still have in common with their conventionally-powered counterparts, as well, such as food for the crew and fuel for any embarked aircraft. Even with nuclear propulsion, maintenance and other requirements mean that ships cannot stay at sea indefinitely.

“We intend to, with all we can do, use pull-through technologies, [including] things from that we’ve worked on with DDG(X),” the Navy’s top officer added, speaking about the plans for the Trump class specifically. “It will have the SPY-6 radar. It will have the Baseline 10 Aegis combat system. It will pull through, of course, the A1B Ford class reactor plant and all the design that goes with that. The only thing inherently new to it will be the actual hull itself, and so most of the fixtures in it. And I would say the directed energy [weapons] and up gunning, that will also be new.”

Caudle had first shared the A1B reactor detail at another budget-related hearing earlier this week. It was previously known that the Trump class battleship program would leverage prior work done in relation to the now-defunct DDG(X) next-generation destroyer.

Multiple types of laser-directed energy weapons, as well as an electromagnetic railgun, are core elements of the planned armament package on the future Trump class warships. They are also set to be loaded with a mix of nuclear and conventional missiles, including hypersonic types, in several large vertical launch system (VLS) arrays, and have a pair of traditional 5-inch naval guns.

The Navy has previously stated that the battleships, now also referred to as BBGNs, will displace approximately 35,000 tons. This is very roughly three times that of the newest Flight III subvariant of the Arleigh Burke class destroyer. The Trump class vessels are expected to be between 840 and 880 feet long, have a beam (the widest point in the hull) between 105 and 115 feet, and be able to reach a top speed greater than 30 knots, as well.

It is worth noting here that Caudle’s comments today represent a huge change in tone from how he had previously talked about the prospect of nuclear propulsion for the Trump class. Speaking to the press at the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) main annual symposium back in January, he had notably appeared to downplay the possibility.

“I think it’s a logical question to think, hey, here’s a big capital ship. It’s going to be carrying a lot of load, you know, in places that we don’t necessarily need a strike enforcement air wing as a large ship there that’s in command of a flotilla,” he said at that time. “Wouldn’t it be logical to be nuclear powered? And that brings a tail to the construction of that that [sic] just really fell outside the scope of what we want to do on the speed to get this thing in the water. And so what you trade off with, with persistency that only nuclear power can do, is you end up having, you know, the ability to go produce that — it pushes the battleship into a timeframe that just didn’t meet the operational need of the ship.”

Just last month, former Secretary of the Navy John Phelan had also said making the Trump class ships nuclear-powered was unlikely, citing the need to balance cost and complexity against aggressive schedule demands. Phelan was fired unexpectedly just two days after making those comments. There have been reports that disagreements over plans for the battleships, specifically, as well as other friction within the Trump administration, factored into his dismissal.

“He’s a very good man. I really liked him, but he had some conflict with, not necessarily with [Secretary] Pete [Hegseth], but with some other[s],” President Trump said about Phelan while speaking to the press on April 23. “He’s a hard charger, and he had some conflicts with some other people, mostly as to building and buying new ships. I’m very aggressive in the new shipbuilding.”

As it stands now, the Navy still does not expect to order the first Trump class battleship until Fiscal Year 2028 and or see that ship enter service before Fiscal Year 2036. The first example, at least, currently has an estimated unit cost of around $17 billion, which is considerably more than the projected price tag of any of the next four Ford class aircraft carriers.

Even before the nuclear propulsion decision was announced, TWZ had raised numerous questions about the plans for these warships, including their exact operational utility, as well as the costs and risks involved. Caudle’s comments today about leveraging pull-through notwithstanding, nuclear-powered ships are inherently complex and expensive, which are the tradeoffs for the aforementioned boost in capability. A specialized workforce and supply chains are required to build such vessels. Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, is the only yard in the United States currently building surface ships with nuclear propulsion, in the form of new Ford class carriers, all of which have suffered delays.

Enterprise (CVN 80) Construction Update

There are two more yards in the country that make nuclear-powered submarines, both of which are already under strain to meet Navy demands. There is a particular need to keep on schedule with the new Columbia class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines to avoid any gap in capacity when it comes to the sea leg of America’s nuclear deterrent triad. Additional plans now to supply Virginia class submarines to the Royal Australian Navy, which Adm. Caudle said today he vehemently supports, can only further add to that workload.

The U.S. naval shipbuilding industry, collectively, has other demands to keep churning out conventionally-powered warships like Arleigh Burke class destroyers, as well. This is an industry that has contracted to a worrisome degree, overall, since the end of the Cold War, especially when compared to the completely opposite trend that has been observed in China. Efforts to reinvigorate America’s shipyards, and the continued challenges the Navy is facing in doing so, were key points of discussion at today’s House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Adm. Caudle’s broad statement of support today for a nuclear-powered surface Navy raises the additional question now of whether the service might be interested in expanding this capability beyond the Trump class. Some of the Navy’s prior nuclear-powered surface combatants were derived from conventionally-powered designs. At the same time, any such decision would run up against the same shipbuilding capacity and other questions facing the new battleships.

Just when it comes to the Trump class, the plans for the ships could easily still evolve further, or even come to an end entirely. The timeline laid out now has the battleship program continuing well into the next presidential administration, where the fortunes of a new nuclear-powered surface navy could change dramatically.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

WASHINGTON — When Kash Patel visited Hawaii last summer, the FBI took pains to note the director was not on vacation, highlighting his walking tour of the bureau’s Honolulu field office and meetings with local law enforcement.

Left out of the FBI’s news releases was an exclusive excursion that Patel took days later when he participated in what government officials described as a “VIP snorkel” around the USS Arizona in an outing coordinated by the military. The sunken battleship entombs more than 900 sailors and Marines at Pearl Harbor.

The swim, revealed in government emails obtained by The Associated Press, comes to light amid criticism of Patel’s use of the FBI plane and his global travel, which have blurred professional responsibilities with leisure activities. The FBI did not disclose the snorkeling session or that Patel had returned to Hawaii for two days after his initial stopover on the island.

“It fits a pattern of Director Patel getting tangled up in unseemly distractions — this time at a site commemorating the second deadliest attack in U.S. history — instead of staying laser-focused on keeping Americans safe,” said Stacey Young, who founded Justice Connection, a network of former federal prosecutors and agents who advocate for the Department of Justice’s independence.

With few exceptions, snorkeling and diving are off-limits around the USS Arizona. The battleship, now a military cemetery reachable only by boat, has stood as one of the nation’s most hallowed sites since Japan bombed and sank it in 1941. Marine archaeologists and crews from the National Park Service make occasional dives at the memorial to survey the condition of the wreck. Other dives have been conducted to inter the remains of Arizona survivors who wanted to rest eternally with their former shipmates.

Still, since at least the Obama administration, the Navy and the park service have quietly allowed a handful of dignitaries, including military and government officials responsible for management of the memorial, to swim at the site. The Navy and park service declined to provide details of those permitted to take such excursions.

Former FBI directors have visited Pearl Harbor on official business, but none going back to at least 1993 has gone snorkeling at the memorial, according to those familiar with their activities and a former government diver who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. The diver said it was unusual for a director or anyone not connected to the memorial to be granted such access because the swims come with physical risks and present security, safety and logistical challenges.

Patel has faced scrutiny over his leadership for the past year, with his use of government resources emerging as a recurring storyline of his tenure. The issue flared in February when video surfaced of Patel partying in the locker room  with members of the U.S. men’s hockey team after their gold medal win at the Winter Olympics in Milan.  Patel defended the trip as recently as this week as “purposely planned” in connection with a cybercrime investigation involving the Italian authorities.

Unanswered questions about exclusive outing

Patel’s excursion was in August as he spent two days in Hawaii on his return to the United States from official visits to Australia and New Zealand. On his way to those countries, he stopped in Hawaii to visit the Honolulu field office. An FBI spokesman did not answer questions about the snorkeling session.

The FBI said in a statement that top regional commanders hosted Patel at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam “as they commonly do with US government officials on official travel.” The Pearl Harbor visit, the spokesman said, “was part of the Director’s public national security engagements last August with counterparts in New Zealand, Australia, our Honolulu Field Office, and the Department of War.”

It was not clear how Patel’s snorkeling session was arranged. A Navy spokesperson, Capt. Jodie Cornell, confirmed the outing but said the service was not able to track down who initiated it.

Participants in Patel’s swim were told “not to touch/come into contact with” the sunken ship in any way, Cornell said. She added that the snorkelers were also briefed about “the historic significance of the Memorial as the final resting place/tomb for hundreds of service members.”

A ‘VIP Snorkel’

Government emails obtained by the AP through a public records request show military officials coordinated logistics and personnel for the “VIP Snorkel.”

The National Park Service, which administers the site in coordination with the Navy, told AP it was not involved in Patel’s swim and declined to comment on the excursion. It also declined to answer questions about any other such outings.

Among those afforded invitations to snorkel have been Navy admirals, secretaries of defense and interior, according to the former government diver. The diver added that the swims were intended to provide officials with insights into the memorial and its operations.

The Navy declined to provide examples or numbers showing how frequently it organizes such excursions. It described Patel’s outing as “not an anomaly.”

Hack Albertson, a Marine veteran, is part of a select group from the Paralyzed Veterans of America trained to dive on the Arizona annually to check on the condition of the wreck. He said it was inappropriate for Patel and other political figures to snorkel or dive at the memorial.

“It’s like having a bachelor party at a church. It’s hallowed ground,” he said. “It needs to be treated with the solemnity it deserves.”

Some family members don’t object to snorkeling

Some family members of Pearl Harbor survivors said they were not bothered by such official excursions, though some expressed a desire to also be permitted to snorkel at the site. They said they have not been permitted to do so.

“I have not heard of anyone who would object to these visits as they are very rare and there aren’t any survivors of the Arizona left alive,” Deidre Kelley, national president of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors, wrote in an email. “Their children might have some objections but I haven’t heard any.”

Patel visited Pearl Harbor several years ago during a trip he made to Hawaii while serving as chief of staff to Christopher Miller, then the acting secretary of defense, according to the former government diver.

Miller said he snorkeled over the Arizona during an official visit to the base, but Patel was not present for that excursion. Miller said he was invited to snorkel by regional military officials and was told such a tour was for “special occasions and for special visitors, of which you’re one.” He called it a “meaningful” experience.

“It was a very somber and meaningful event,” Miller said in an interview. “It was a historical tour. It wasn’t a recreational thing.”

FBI will not discuss Patel’s return to Hawaii

Beyond the snorkeling excursion, it is not clear what else Patel did during his second stop in Hawaii.

Flight tracking data for the Gulfstream G550 typically used by the FBI director show the jet remained on the island two nights during that stay before flying on to Las Vegas, Patel’s adopted hometown. The jet has a published range of about 7,700 miles, meaning the plane would have needed to refuel somewhere between New Zealand and Washington.

The snorkeling session happened one day after Patel stopped in Wellington to open the FBI’s first  standalone office  in New Zealand. The visit sparked controversy after the AP revealed that Patel had gifted that country’s police and spy bosses inoperable 3D-printed replica pistols that were  illegal to possess  under local gun laws.

Mustian, Tucker and Biesecker write for the Associated Press. Mustian reported from New York. AP writers Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, and Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

The U.S. Navy’s Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) competition to replace the T-45 Goshawk is accelerating toward one of the most consequential training decisions in decades. The Navy has now issued its eagerly-anticipated Final Request For Proposals – an inflection point in the long-running effort to field 216 modern jet trainers for the next generation of naval aviators.

Amid this pivotal moment, SNC is leading a powerhouse team that has developed the only clean-sheet design in the running: the Freedom Trainer. Built specifically to address the Navy’s evolving carrierborne training needs, the Freedom Trainer aims to deliver modern capability at significantly reduced lifecycle cost.

SNC is partnering with Northrop Grumman, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., and CAE, leveraging advanced production, manufacturing, and synthetic training expertise to create a comprehensive, integrated family of training systems. 

“SNC’s Team Freedom brings the agility of a disruptor and the reliability of our well-established defense partners to bear so that we can deliver what the Navy wants, on the aggressive timeline it set,” says Jon Piatt, executive vice president at SNC.

Why the Navy’s training model is changing

Core requirements for the T-45 replacement have shifted dramatically. Advances in automated carrier landing technologies and increasingly capable simulation environments have altered the Navy’s perspective on how student naval aviators should be trained. The service has already removed carrier qualifications from the T-45 syllabus, one of the most significant training changes in decades, and plans for UJTS could further reshape how training occurs ashore.

A major driver of this debate centers around Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP), the land-based surrogate for shipboard carrier landings. Traditionally performed to touchdown, these aggressive, un-flared landings, or “bouncing,” replicate the forces and precision required aboard the carrier. But for UJTS, the Navy has removed the requirement for FCLP-to-touchdown, instead calling only for FCLP-to-wave off.

This change dramatically broadens the aperture for competitors. Trainers designed for land-based operations can meet wave-off profiles without requiring the structural upgrades typical of Navy aircraft. But this also introduces concerns about the long-term impact on aviator proficiency, and whether foundational carrier skills can be taught effectively without actual touchdown repetition.

The FCLP equation and its implications for the fleet

FCLP has long been considered essential for preparing student naval aviators for the demands of carrier aviation. A Navy spokesperson reaffirmed to TWZ in August 2025 that “Field Carrier Landing Practice landings ashore are still required for graduation,” though did not specify whether touchdown was still necessary. 

Touchdown landings impose tremendous structural loads on an aircraft, particularly landing gear and associated components. Removing this requirement opens the competition to off-the-shelf trainers such as the T-7 Red Hawk, Korean-built TF-50N, and the Italian M-346N. These jets can perform FCLP-to-wave-off but not repeated unflared touchdowns without extensive structural reinforcement.

SNC argues that this shift elevates readiness and cost risk. “FCLP-to-touchdown is a tried and trusted method to train naval aviators,” says Derek Hess, vice president of strategy at SNC. “Not performing carrier qualification or FCLPs-to-touchdown  essentially defers that training to the fleet replacement squadrons with their 4th-, 5th-, and soon, 6th-generation fighters which would be a very expensive use of those precious assets.”

In other words: the Navy can remove the requirement, but the fleet will still pay the bill.

Why a clean-sheet matters

The Navy’s decision not to mandate touchdown capability fundamentally changes the nature of the competition. Legacy trainers can now be offered at lower upfront cost, but at the expense of performance characteristics essential to naval aviation.

SNC is blunt on this point: the Freedom Trainer is the only aircraft in the field that can perform FCLP-to-touchdown without major modification because it is purpose-built to meet Navy training standards. SNC believes this is the defining advantage of a true naval trainer.

Where its competitors adapt land-based jets for a naval training mission, the Freedom Trainer is engineered from inception for the pounding, the control margins, and the durability required for FCLPs-to-touchdown.

Clean-sheet means a whole new approach

The Freedom Trainer offers improvements over the T-45, while delivering dramatically lower lifecycle costs. Hess explains that lifecycle economics are central to SNC’s approach: only about 10 percent of lifecycle cost is tied to research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) and 30 percent for procurement, while roughly 60 percent stems from operations and sustainment.

“From a business perspective, you can pay more in the RDT&E phase and still dramatically reduce your lifecycle costs,” Hess says. “We’re employing a more businesslike approach to training that balances training costs holistically across the lifecycle of the aircraft.”

To achieve this, SNC leverages advanced digital engineering to reduce risk and ensure real-world fidelity. “Digital engineering has evolved significantly over the last 10 years,” Hess says, pointing to Northrop Grumman’s work on the B-21 Raider as a benchmark for its modeling environment.

The Freedom Trainer’s mission systems architecture is built using Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and is delivered with full technical and data rights – ensuring the Navy retains long-term control and interoperability.

Designed for the mission: performance and durability

The aircraft’s design reflects a deliberate choice to provide representative fighter performance at dramatically lower cost. The Freedom Trainer’s design reflects a deliberate philosophy: deliver the handling qualities and durability of a fighter‑representative aircraft without imposing fighter‑level sustainment costs. Rather than itemizing features in a list, SNC emphasizes that the jet’s airframe, engines and performance envelope all work together to meet the Navy’s demanding syllabus.

At its core, the Freedom Trainer is built around a 16,000‑hour airframe that’s engineered to withstand up to 35,000 carrier‑style landings. This level of durability is essential for repetitive FCLP operations, especially un-flared touchdowns that impose loads far more intense than standard runway operations. By designing the structure from day one to accept these stresses, SNC ensures the aircraft can train pilots to full carrier‑representative standards while avoiding the costly structural fatigue associated with modifying older, land‑based designs.

Power comes from a pair of Williams FJ44‑4M engines, selected not only for reliability but also for their lower operating cost compared to legacy trainer engines. These efficient turbofans help reduce support burdens by an estimated 40 percent relative to the T‑45, while enabling longer sorties on less fuel than the competition.

Performance‑wise, the Freedom Trainer provides the maneuvering capabilities student naval aviators must master before transitioning to fleet aircraft. With a −3 to +8 G envelope and angles of attack (AoA) reaching up to 27 degrees, the aircraft exposes students to the high‑AoA handling characteristics relevant to modern 4th‑ and 5th‑generation fighters. Yet SNC deliberately designed the jet to avoid the transonic regime, which typically demands larger thrust margins and higher fuel consumption to accomplish the same training maneuvers. By staying sub‑transonic, the aircraft maintains fighter‑representative handling qualities while keeping lifecycle costs far below those of high‑performance jets.

“You don’t need a fighter to learn how to fly a fighter,” Hess notes. “You need a trainer engineered for Navy training missions that create graduates who are ready for FRS training and beyond.”

LVC: The synthetic backbone of modern training

Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) training is now central to the Navy’s future training enterprise. The service intends to offload many carrier operations scenarios into synthetic environments as part of its modernization journey.

The Freedom Trainer’s LVC environment, developed with CAE, includes synthetic radar, targeting pods, and augmented reality tactical scenarios that replicate beyond visual range (BVR) and within visual range (WVR) engagements. Hess notes that many mission training functions can be downloaded from frontline squadrons, producing far more capable pilots at much lower cost. 

“Ultimately, flying 4th- and 5th-gen fighters with modern flight control systems isn’t hard these days,” Hess says. “The tough part is employing the aircraft. That’s where we excel with our LVC capabilities.”

Turning clean-sheet into reality: timeline and industrial base

The final RFP envisions Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) beginning with up to two contract awards in 2027, delivering four EMD aircraft followed by seven low-rate production jets beginning in 2032. The goal is initial operating capability in 2035.

Hess is confident SNC can meet the timeline. With a restructured Navy acquisition enterprise and strong industrial partners, the Freedom Team argues it is well positioned to deliver a future-focused foundation for Navy training.

“Our primary focus is to deliver a trainer that meets the demanding needs of naval aviation with zero compromise,” Hess says. “We believe the next-generation navy trainer must enable efficient sortie generation, evolve with technology, and strengthen the nation’s industrial base.”

The bottom line: improving training while reducing cost

SNC positions the Freedom Trainer as a solution that protects naval aviation’s most critical training standards while delivering significant lifecycle savings. The company argues that deferring essential skills like FCLP-to-touchdown to the fleet imposes an unnecessary cost and readiness burden.

“If aviators aren’t learning these key skills while they’re earning their Wings of Gold,” Hess says, “they will have to learn it in a much more complex, more expensive, and more scarce resource – frontline gray jet fleet fighters.”

A compelling candidate for the future fleet

The Navy’s next trainer will shape every aviator who enters the fleet for generations to come. The Freedom Trainer’s clean-sheet approach positions it as a contender capable of improving Naval training capabilities while reducing cost.

For a decision as consequential as UJTS, SNC’s argument is clear: choose a trainer designed for the Navy’s mission – not adapted to it.

The U.S. Navy says it is still aiming to see the AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range (AARGM-ER) enter operational service this year. This is despite the announcement of a planned “strategic pause” in purchases of the missiles in the 2027 Fiscal Year. AARGM-ER is set to give Navy carrier air wings a critical boost in their ability to neutralize ever-more capable hostile integrated defense networks.

AARGM-ER has been in the works since the late 2010s. Northrop Grumman is the current prime contractor, through its previous acquisition of Orbital ATK. The Navy has ordered dozens of the missiles already. Hence, it was very surprising when the service’s latest proposed budget for the 2027 Fiscal Year, rolled out in full last week, included no request for funding to buy more AGM-88Gs due to the aforementioned pause. All of this, coupled with previous delays and technical issues encountered in testing, had prompted new questions about the future of the program.

“U.S. procurements for the AARGM-ER program are planned to resume once the system has successfully completed all necessary testing and software updates. Our immediate priority is ensuring the weapon passes these rigorous testing milestones to achieve Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in September 2026,” a Navy spokesperson told TWZ. “After validating the software and testing, the plan would be to ramp up production to clear a backlog of over 150 missiles, with U.S. procurements officially restarting in FY28 [Fiscal year 2028]. In the interim, FY27 production will be allocated to Foreign Military Sales to fulfill our commitments to five signed international cases.”

The spokesperson did not name the foreign customers in question. However, Italy is a full partner in the development of the AGM-88G. The U.S. government has also previously approved sales of the missiles to Australia, Finland, and the Netherlands. Norway has publicly announced its intention to purchase AARGM-ERs, as well. The U.S. Air Force is also set to acquire these missiles. We will come back to this later on.

The AGM-88 family, also known as the High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM), traces its roots back to the 1970s. The AARGM-ER is a major redesign of the preceding AARGM variant, also designated the AGM-88E. The AGM-88G features a completely redesigned body optimized for high speed and range, as well as a new, more powerful rocket motor and control actuation system.

Inside, the AGM-88G reuses the guidance and control systems from the AGM-88E. By extension, this means the AGM-88G retains the same multi-mode guidance capability of its predecessor, which includes a GPS-assisted inertial navigation system and a millimeter-wave radar seeker. The AARGM-ER’s primary target set is hostile emitters, especially air defense radars, but the guidance package is designed to allow it to find its mark even if they shut down and stop sending out signals to home in on. The AGM-88E also has a more general, secondary ability to strike targets on land or at sea, including by just being directed to hit a specified set of coordinates.

AARGM F-18

The Navy sees the AGM-88G entering service first integrated with its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets, both of which can already employ the AGM-88E. AARGM-ER’s boosts in speed and range are seen as critical to ensuring the survivability and effectiveness of those non-stealthy aircraft in the face of an ever more capable air defense threat ecosystem.

AARGM-ER is also sized to allow for internal carriage on F-35A and C variants. There are plans to eventually integrate it for external carriage on all three F-35 variants, as well as legacy F/A-18C/D Hornets, as well.

As noted, the development of the AARGM-ER has had to contend with technical issues and delays over the years. Originally, the goal was to reach IOC on F/A-18E/F and EA-18G in Fiscal Year 2023.

“The AARGM-ER experienced significant delays as a result of rocket motor, structural, and software problems discovered during testing,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report published in June 2025. “Contracting officials noted that the program worked with the prime contractor to investigate the root causes of the identified deficiencies and implement corrective actions, including changes in the production process.”

“The program is still experiencing production delays as well. Since our last assessment, program officials stated that testing issues, supply chain challenges, and construction delays for a new production facility slowed completion of the first two production contracts by 1 year,” GAO’s report added. “We have found that starting production before demonstrating a system will work as intended – which the Navy did – increases the risk of discovering deficiencies that require costly, time-intensive rework.”

“In FY25 [Fiscal Year 2025], the [AARGM-ER] program attempted three IT [integrated test] weapon employment tests using F/A-18F aircraft against a threat-representative integrated air defense land target at the China Lake Range in California,” according to a separate report from the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), released in March of this year. “AARGM-ER successfully completed one of the three weapon events but exhibited performance discrepancies during the other two, to include one event during which range safety terminated the weapon after release. No further weapons employment testing was accomplished in FY25 pending implementation of updates required to address the problems that were identified.”

DOT&E warned in that report that the IOC schedule for AGM-88G could slip further to the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2027, which starts on October 1 of this year.

Earlier this year, the Navy somewhat urgently put out a contracting notice saying it was exploring options for a new long-range anti-radiation missile. The stated requirements for this Advanced Emission Suppression Missile (AESM) were very much in line with how the AARGM-ER has been discussed in the past, with one notable exception: a new demand for the ability to engage targets in the air, as well as on the surface. You can read more about why that is significant here. With the Navy confirming that it is still pushing ahead on AARGM-ER, it remains unclear how exactly the service sees ASEM fitting into its broader plans. There does not appear to be any explicit mention of ASEM in the Navy’s latest budget request.

As noted, the U.S. Air Force is also in line to acquire AGM-88Gs. An AARGM-ER subvariant with “improved warhead/fuze” is set to serve as a bridge to the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW), as well. Reportedly now designated the AGM-88J, SiAW is a derivative of the AARGM-ER being developed to provide a broader high-speed strike capability. The Air Force expects to primarily employ SiAW against time-sensitive and/or high-value assets on the ground, especially ballistic and cruise missile launchers, air and missile defense nodes, electronic warfare systems, and even anti-satellite weapons.

Despite the Navy’s “strategic pause” with AARGM-ER, the Air Force is asking for more funds to purchase additional SiAWs in Fiscal Year 2027. The Air Force has said in the past that it has been targeting 2026 for reaching IOC with SiAW on the F-35A. SiAW flight testing to date, at least that has been disclosed, has involved carriage by F-16 fighters, and it is possible the missile could be integrated operationally onto that aircraft and others, as well. As an aside, Northrop Grumman has also been pitching a ground-launched member of the AARGM-ER/SiAW family, called the Advanced Reactive Strike Missile (AReS).

As mentioned, the Navy has made clear that procurement of AARGM-ERs for foreign customers through the FMS program is also continuing.

Time will tell whether or not the Navy can meet its IOC target for AARGM-ER by September, or the timeline slips into the next fiscal year. Still, the service looks to remain committed to the program, at least for the time being, regardless of its intent to put a year-long pause on buying more AGM-88G.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Leonardo DRS has for the first time shown its Maritime-Mission Equipment Package (M-MEP) integrated on an autonomous unmanned surface vessel (AUSV). The M-MEP is a platform-agnostic suite of systems that are collectively designed to protect vessels from attacks involving single or multiple small to medium-sized unmanned aerial systems (UAS). M-MEP was demonstrated on a Sea Machines Stormrunner USV at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2026 trade event just outside Washington D.C.

Leonardo DRS has adapted its range of ground-based Counter-UAS (C-UAS) systems for sea-based operations under the M-MEP project. The modular design, coupled with an open system architecture, allows for the integration of multiple kinetic and non-kinetic effectors, software-definable sensors, and communication packages. Leonardo DRS says this flexibility ensures that the M-MEPs remain platform-agnostic, capable of being configured across a range of small-to-large USVs of varying sizes from 14 feet in length. The C-UAS sensors and effectors are designed to complement existing naval capabilities.

The M-MEP system utilizes active and passive radars and electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) systems, with situational awareness facilitated through real-time data processing and threat assessment, enabling faster decision-making and response. Leonardo DRS says that M-MEP employs a range of non-kinetic electronic warfare systems for the active disruption and neutralization of UAS guidance systems, while integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) is intended to help predict and mitigate emerging threats.

TWZ‘s Jamie Hunter spoke with Bo Mancuso from Leonardo DRS about the M-MEP program.

SAS Leonardo DRS v1 for review

U.S. Navy Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC-21) “Blackjacks” gave TWZ a personal tour of one of its MH‑60S Seahawk helicopters and filled us in on some of key capabilities during the Dubai Air Show in November 2025. 

The MH-60S is a versatile multi-mission, medium‑lift maritime helicopter that is designed for a broad range of missions, such as vertical replenishment (VERTREP) at sea, search‑and‑rescue, airborne mine countermeasures, anti‑surface warfare, and electronic warfare.

The U.S. Navy operates both the MH-60S and the MH-60R variants of the H-60 and the two share a common airframe, General Electric T700 powerplants and many avionics, enabling streamlined logistics, maintenance and training across the fleet while allowing each variant to be customized for distinct operational roles. The MH-60R is primarily configured for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) but it too has anti-surface warfare (ASuW) capabilities and has been used to shoot down drones.

The MH-60S features a modern glass cockpit, twin General Electric T700‑GE‑401C engines and a flexible, modular, mission‑systems suite that supports interchangeable payloads, internal fuel tanks, and advanced mission packages.

“Sikorsky is leveraging its global MH-60R and MH-60S Seahawk users to constantly iterate while we operate, ensuring the aircraft is mission ready and evolves. This commitment to production, sustainment and modernization enables the MH-60R to stay ahead of emerging threats and maintain its position as the premier global ASW platform,” the company commented to TWZ.

Check out the full MH-60S walk-around video below:

U.S. Navy MH-60S Pilot Talks Multi-Mission Roles Of The Seahawk

Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com

After Iranian missile and drone barrages disrupted U.S. Navy’s logistics by destroying port infrastructure and putting ships at risk, the service turned to a fleet of specially equipped commercial vessels to deliver fuel to warships away from the danger zone. These vessels proved so effective that one top Navy official said this week that he wants to see more of them pressed into service.

“Epic Fury has been a PhD course in logistics,” said Robert Hein, Director of Maritime Operations for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC), said during the Sea-Air-Space 2026 (SAS) exposition near Washington, D.C.  

“So traditionally, for 25 years, we’ve been at war in the Middle East and that war was effectively fought in the parking lot of a giant gas station,” Hein explained. “Iran has effectively shut down that gas station. So we’ve had to come up with really creative ways of, ‘how do we replenish the fleet?’”

The answer was shifting from having fleet oilers call on ports to executing at-sea replenishment of those oilers by using consolidated cargo operations (CONSOL) tankers – vessels leased by MSC that are specially equipped to offload fuel at sea. The concept isn’t new. After shifting away from using chartered ships to refuel oilers at sea in favor of conducting the transfers at port facilities, MSC reintroduced the CONSOL process in 2015, “as a way to utilize a flexible platform that allows MSC to operate worldwide in a variety of missions,” according to the Navy. Having a CONSOL tanker provide fuel to oilers means they don’t have to return to a port, reducing costs and increasing time on station to support the fleet. During a time of conflict, that can also mean less risk to the oiler, which is a critical asset that would be in very high demand.

The way the chartered tankers have been used in the Middle East during Epic Fury has taken this process to a new level.

The Navy created what Hein called a system of “tanker treadmills” at sea with “tankers cycling in and out” to replace the fixed infrastructure no longer available due to Iranian attacks.

“There are no more logistics hubs they’re going to,” Hein proffered. “All those nodes are now remaining at sea.”

In addition to the CONSOL tankers’ ability to refuel oilers at sea, “we’re putting an additional fuel delivery system on those tankers so they’ll be able to replenish destroyers and ships other than oilers,” Hein added. He did not provide details about what kind of system, however, the Navy has previously discussed developing what is called a Modular CONSOL Adapter Kit (MCAK).

“By installing it on the deck of a tanker, it can refuel other ships through the receiving ship’s fuel delivery hoses,” the Navy explained.

There are currently 15 CONSOL tankers available to the Navy worldwide. Rear Adm. Chris Stone, Director of Strategic Plans, Policy, Logistics and Warfighting Development for U.S. Transportation Command, said that’s not enough.

“If there’s one thing that I had the power to stroke a check on today, it would be to create more CONSOL tankers – those consolidated cargo replenishment at sea vessels,” he said at the same SAS panel. 

“We probably need something more than 15, because when there’s a crisis or a conflict around the world, the first thing that a geographic combatant commander asks TRANSCOM for is a CONSOL vessel, and we don’t have enough of them today without trade offs that create risk in other areas.”

“We’ve proven CONSOL capability during Operation Epic Fury,” Stone added. “We have a treadmill of vessels where one is on the front line, one is topping off, and they’re continually rotating to ensure that we’ve got support for the warfighter.”

CONSOL tankers, Stone posited, “are no longer supply ships. They’re not logistics ships. They’re force projection platforms that support our warfighters. They allow us to support the joint force and refuel them underway. It extends our operational reach and endurance, while reducing the reliance on predictable, vulnerable port visits. In less than two years, we’ve increased the capacity dramatically, and we’ll continue to do so.”

While a boon to the system, the CONSOL tankers are not without their issues. The main one being time. It takes about two hours for an oiler to refuel a destroyer, said Hein, while it takes about six hours for a tanker to get the job done.

“Unlike a quick trip to the gas pumps for a car, CONSOLing can take hours to complete,” the Navy noted in a story about the tankers. “This creates a unique set of challenges for the ships conducting the operations. CONSOLing is a dance between two ships. Each must maneuver alongside the other, and maintain a consistent speed and course. Because of their size, tanker maneuverability becomes a challenge.”

“We simply do not maneuver like the [oilers] do. They are graceful, gliding through the water,” said Capt. Michelle Laycock, Maersk Peary’s master. “There’s not a lot of ‘grace’ to a fully loaded tanker. We don’t glide, we plow through the water.”

The increased time and effort is worth it, Hein said.

“This is a capability that is needed that will help mitigate the lack of oilers right now,” Hein suggested. 

He wants to take the concept a step further.

“So while we can CONSOL for fuel, I’d like to get to a point where you CONSOL for food as well,” he stated. 

While CONSOL has provided a lifeline for vessels during Operation Epic Fury, its utility would be dramatically magnified during a war in the vast Pacific, one where ports at much farther distances would be under threat as would ships of all kinds over huge swathes of that theater. There have been consistent concerns about the size of the oiler fleet being a point of weakness for the Navy’s ability to project power in a near-peer conflict. Doubling-down on CONSOL and giving those vessels the ability to directly refuel surface combatants, carriers and amphibious warships could go a long way to buying down risk and fortifying operational planning.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

The U.S. Navy has shared details about what looks to be a previously undisclosed effort to rapidly arm ships in two carrier strike groups with radar-guided Longbow Hellfire missiles to protect against drones. This reflects a larger push to expand shipboard defenses against uncrewed aerial threats, which now includes four Arleigh Burke class destroyers sailing with new launchers to fire Coyote interceptors. TWZ was first to report on the appearance of one of these launchers on the USS Carl M. Levin, with Naval News subsequently sharing more information.

The dangers drones pose, including to Navy warships, are not new. Still, the service’s experiences in recent years during operations in and around the Red Sea, as well as against Iran, have firmly driven home the critical need for more shipboard defenses against uncrewed aerial threats.

“Supplemental funding was provided to rapidly field CUAS [Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems] solutions for the Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group (CSG) which included the procurement of Longbow Hellfire launchers, Coyote launchers, and the installation/integration work,” according to a line item in the Navy’s 2027 Fiscal Year budget request, which the service rolled out in full earlier this week. “Funding was also provided to rapidly field CUAS solutions on the Theodore Roosevelt CSG to include Longbow Hellfire Launchers, Coyote launchers, and the installation/integration work.”

“FY2024 and FY2025 [Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025] funding utilized to rapidly field CUAS solutions for the Gerald R Ford Carrier Strike Group (CSG) and the Theodore Roosevelt CSG, which included the procurements of Longbow Hellfire launchers, procurements of Coyote launchers, installations, and integration work,” the newly released budget documents also note.

The same line item is present in the Navy’s proposed budget for the 2026 Fiscal Year, but makes no mention of the Hellfire or Coyote integration efforts. An early type of naval launcher for Coyote was first seen on Arleigh Burke class destroyers assigned to the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group last year, and we will come back to developments on that front later on.

The Navy’s latest budget documents do not say which ships in the Gerald R. Ford and Theodore Roosevelt CSGs may have received the Longbow Hellfire launchers, or whether they are currently installed. TWZ has reached out to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), as well as the Long Hellfire’s prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, for more information about this integration work and what it has entailed to date.

The millimeter-wave radar-guided Longbow Hellfire, which also carries the designation AGM-114L, has a demonstrated counter-drone capability, as well as the ability to strike targets on land or at sea. The Navy previously announced modifications to its Freedom class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to allow them to engage uncrewed aerial threats with AGM-114Ls fired from launchers specifically designed for those vessels. However, LCSs are not a component of a typical carrier strike group. On the surface, Navy carriers are usually escorted by a mix of Ticonderoga class cruisers and Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

In June 2025, Naval News did report that two Arleigh Burke class destroyers – the USS Jason Dunham and USS The Sullivans – had previously been involved in testing of various new capabilities, including Longbow Hellfire in the counter-drone role. Neither of those ships were assigned to the Gerald R. Ford or Theodore Roosevelt CSGs at that time. No specific details were available then about what the integration of AGM-114L had consisted of, either.

In March, Lockheed Martin did unveil a containerized Hellfire launcher called Grizzly, development of which started last year. At the time, the company said Grizzly could be adapted for shipboard use.

As an aside, the Navy has talked about a containerized counter-drone launcher able to hold up to 48 Hellfires as being a future armament option for its forthcoming FF(X) frigates. There has been no indication, though, that this is an operational capability now.

Lockheed Martin has also been developing a ship-based launch capability for its AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM), which is derived from the laser-guided AGM-114R variant of the Hellfire. For more than a year now, the company has been publicly displaying a model of an Arleigh Burke class destroyer fitted with six four-cell JAGM Quad Launchers (JQL; pronounced jackal). At the same time, there have been no signs so far that the Navy is actively moving to field those launchers on ships of this class.

Hellfire, in general, does have a long history at this point of being integrated onto a wide variety of platforms, including helicopters and ground vehicles. A tripod launcher even exists for laser-guided variants of the missile.

With all this in mind, it is not surprising that Longbow Hellfire in some configuration would be an attractive immediate option for the Navy to help bolster shipboard defenses against ever-growing drone threats.

As the Navy’s latest budget documents note, the service has also been working to add other counter-drone interceptors to its ships, such as the combat-proven Coyote. The USS Carl M. Levin, as well as the USS John Paul Jones, the USS Paul Hamilton, and the USS Decatur, have all now received new eight-cell Coyote launchers. All of those warships are currently assigned to the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group. This builds on the integration of the earlier four-cell launchers on at least two other ships in the class, the USS Bainbridge and the USS Winston S. Churchill.

“This is the first deployment of this launcher which increases the cell count from four to eight and provides increased marinization,” a Navy spokesperson told TWZ when asked for more information after Carl M. Levin emerged with the new Coyote capability. “We are working [on] plans for future carrier strike group deployments to install these and potentially other containerized launchers.”

“This is a non-permanent change; launchers can be removed after the completion of a deployment and transferred to other ships—accelerating the deployment of advanced capabilities throughout the Fleet,” that spokesperson added.

The Navy has previously confirmed plans to integrate Anduril’s Roadrunner-M counter-drone interceptors on additional surface warships. The service has also been working with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) on the development of Roadrunner-M, as well as another interceptor called White Spike from Zone 5 Technologies, under a project called Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems – NEXT, or Counter-NEXT.

Zone 5 White Spike Counter UAS drone interceptor flight tests

Navy plans for additional shipboard counter-drone capabilities go beyond physical interceptors, as well. Just this week, the service disclosed a live-fire test of a palletized version of the AeroVironment LOCUST laser counter-drone system onboard the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. You can read more about that test, which occurred in October 2025, here.

Demand within the Navy, as well as the rest of the U.S. military, for an array of layered counter-drone capabilities is likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. As noted, these threats are not new and are continuing to expand in scale and scope, driven now in large part by advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Automated targeting and fully networked swarming capabilities are not only proliferating, but the barrier to entry, even for non-state actors, is low.

More launchers for counter-drone interceptors, whether they are loaded with Longbow Hellfires, Coyotes, or something else, are only likely to continue appearing on Navy warships as the service works to further address this threat.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the Navy’s top civilian official, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, is leaving his job.

In a statement posted to social media, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Phelan was “departing the administration, effective immediately.”

Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao will become acting secretary of the Navy, Parnell said.

The sudden departure comes just a day after Phelan addressed a large crowd of sailors and industry professionals at the Navy’s annual conference in Washington, and spoke with reporters about his agenda.

Phelan’s departure also comes just weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the Army’s top officer, Gen. Randy George, as well as two other top generals in the Army.

Phelan had not served in the military or had a civilian leadership role in the service before President Trump nominated him for secretary in late 2024.

Phelan was a major donor to Trump’s campaign and founded the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC. According to his biography, Phelan’s primary exposure to the military came from an advisory position he held on the Spirit of America, a nonprofit that supported the defense of Ukraine and the defense of Taiwan.

Toropin and Finley write for the Associated Press.

ATLANTA — A man charged in a string of shootings near Atlanta that left three people dead, including a Department of Homeland Security employee who was walking her dog, died in jail Tuesday night, authorities said.

Olaolukitan Adon Abel, 26, was found unresponsive in his cell, according to a statement from the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office. Officials provided medical treatment to the U.S. Navy veteran, but he was later pronounced dead.

The official cause of death has not been determined, but officials don’t suspect foul play, according to the office. Officials are conducting an internal review.

Adon Abel was accused of killing Prianna Weathers, 31, and Homeland Security auditor Lauren Bullis, 40, in last week’s attack. Authorities also had been seeking an additional murder charge for Tony Mathews, 49, who was injured in the attack and died Sunday.

Authorities haven’t offered a potential motive for the shootings. It’s unclear if Adon Abel knew any of the victims. Police have said they believe at least one was targeted at random.

Adon Abel was represented by a public defender, and the state council overseeing defenders’ work said Wednesday in a statement that his death denies him “the opportunity to contest the charges in court.”

“We also regret that the families, friends, and colleagues of the victims may now be left without the fuller answers a public legal process might have provided about how these deaths occurred,” the statement said. “That is a painful and sobering reality for everyone affected.”

Adon Abel faced state malice murder, aggravated assault and gun charges over last week’s attacks, court records show. He also faced a federal charge of illegally possessing the gun as a person previously convicted of a felony, which was filed Friday.

His roommates told the Associated Press that shortly before the shootings, he got in an intense argument over the air conditioning in their home and stormed out. He lived with six others in separate units of the home.

The United Kingdom native was granted U.S. citizenship in 2022 while serving in the U.S. Navy and stationed in the San Diego area.

The attacks in Georgia quickly drew the Trump administration’s attention, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin raising concern that Adon Abel was granted U.S. citizenship when Democrat Joe Biden was president. Mullin cataloged a litany of Adon Abel’s previous alleged crimes, but it is unclear whether any of them occurred before he became a citizen.

Military records show the Adon Abel enlisted in the Navy in 2020, last serving in the Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron in Coronado, Calif., and as a petty officer received a Navy “E” Ribbon for superior performance for battle readiness.

Adon Abel pleaded guilty in October 2024 to assaulting two police officers with a deadly weapon and attacking another person when he was stationed in Coronado, near San Diego, according to California court records.

The attorney who represented him in that case, Brandon Naidu, has described him as polite, calm and soft-spoken in their interactions. He said Wednesday that his obligation to protect the confidentiality of their conversations limits what he can say publicly but, “Mental health was absolutely at the center of his San Diego case.” ““t was fueled by suicidal ideation as a result of mental health that he was self-treating with substances,” he said.

He added: “Nobody wins in this. We’ll never know the motives, what could have been done beforehand or even afterward. Nobody gets proper closure on this.”

Hanna and Golden write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan., and Golden, from Seattle.

The U.S. Navy has handed Lockheed Martin a formal contract to integrate the Patriot PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (MSE) surface-to-air missile with the Aegis Combat System. The Navy’s main Aegis-equipped ships today are its Arleigh Burke class destroyers. The service is also seeking just over $1.73 billion to order its first-ever tranche of PAC-3 MSEs, 405 in total, as part of its proposed budget for the 2027 Fiscal Year.

The idea of combining PAC-3 MSE and Aegis, as well as the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS), first emerged in 2023. Since then, TWZ has highlighted how this offers the Navy a valuable alternative source of anti-air interceptors, and maybe even eventually a replacement for the venerable Standard Missile-2 (SM-2).

Lockheed Martin announced it had received the PAC-3 MSE/Aegis integration contract, said to be a multi-million dollar deal, earlier today, around the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space exposition, at which TWZ is in attendance. The Navy has separately shared more details about its PAC-3 MSE acquisition plans as part of the full rollout of the Pentagon’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2027, which also occurred today.

Per the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request, the service sees PAC-3 MSE integration with Aegis as providing an additional means of intercepting “a wide range of threats, including tactical ballistic missiles, air-breathing threats, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial systems.” As mentioned, Arleigh Burke class destroyers make up the vast majority of American warships equipped with the Aegis Combat System today. There are also a steadily shrinking number of Ticonderoga class cruisers with this combat system.

PAC-3 MSE has been in full-scale production since 2018. Pairing it with Aegis “has been in the works, I probably think, close to 10 years,” Chandra Marshall, Vice President and General Manager of the Multi-Domain Combat Solutions business unit within Lockheed Martin’s Rotary and Mission Systems division, told our Jamie Hunter on the floor of Sea Air Space. She added that the goal now is for the Navy to achieve initial operational capability (IOC) with this combination in approximately 18 months, or by the end of 2027 if the clock starts now.

“So, there’s two pieces of it. So the PAC-3 missile, there’s a small update to it to be able to communicate with S-band radar. So, currently it communicates with X-band [radars]. So, now with this update, it will be able to communicate both with S and X-band,” Marshall explained. “And then we have to integrate PAC-3 as a missile type with the Aegis Combat System.”

“We have a very open architecture [with Aegis], so the way that we componentize everything, we feel like it’s a very short putt for the Aegis integration of the PAC-3 missile,” she added. “So, it’ll just be another missile in the inventory for the Navy to be able to diversify based on the threat.”

You can read more about the Aegis Combat System and how it has evolved to adopt a modular, open architecture approach, specifically to make it easier to add new capabilities and functionality, in this previous TWZ feature. Lockheed Martin has already demonstrated the ability of a modular and scalable version of the system, called the Virtualized Aegis Weapon System, to fire a PAC-3 MSE from a containerized Mk 41-based launcher on land.

Aegis: Capable. Proven. Deployed.

No changes to the Mk 41 VLS – another Lockheed Martin product – are planned or required as part of the PAC-3 MSE integration. Work has been ongoing on adapting the interceptors into launch canisters, allowing them to slot right into existing Mk 41 cells. At just over 17 feet long, PAC-3 MSE should fit in shorter so-called tactical length versions of the Mk 41, as well as one with longer strike-length cells.

Lockheed Martin has said in the past that each canister will contain a single PAC-3 MSE missile. At around 11 inches wide, the PAC-3 MSE is just over half the maximum diameter available in a Mk 41 cell. This raises the question of whether future canisters could be designed to hold multiple interceptors, which would give ships valuable additional magazine depth.

From a capability standpoint, PAC-3 MSE is generally discussed in comparison to SM-2 surface-to-air missiles in the Navy’s arsenal today. In terms of missiles that can be fired via the Mk 41, SM-2 is a middle-tier anti-air capability that sits between shorter-range RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM; which can also be quad-packed into a single cell) and upper-tier SM-6s and SM-3s. The SM-6 is a multi-purpose weapon that can also be employed against targets on land and at sea. SM-3s, of which there are multiple variants in service today, are specifically designed as anti-ballistic missile interceptors.

“A lot of places the Navy has said ‘I got red or yellow challenges that I can’t deal with.’ This missile does a really good job at that. When you marry them all together, it is very complimentary to SM-6,” Chris Mang, Vice President of Strategy & Business Development at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control, told TWZ at last year’s Sea Air Space conference. “You’d always want a layered defense, right? I’ll pick the longest shot I can get, but then at a certain point, MSE really starts to outperform in certain envelopes.”

For the Navy, PAC-3 MSE also presents important logistics, cost, and supply chain benefits. The latest conflict with Iran has only underscored now long-standing concerns about U.S. munition expenditure rates, especially when it comes to anti-air interceptors. A large-scale, high-end fight with a near-peer adversary like China would put much more pressure on munition stockpiles and the U.S. industrial base working to restock them. As such, it would be a boon for the Navy to have an additional stream of interceptors to arm its warships.

As noted, the Navy is already moving to buy hundreds of what documents currently refer to as the “PAC-3 MSE / Navy” missile, as well as launch canisters. The service’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request puts the unit cost for each missile at $4.05 million. The canister adds another $200,000 to the price tag. The Army’s Fiscal Year 2027 proposed budget says the unit cost for standard PAC-3 MSEs has risen now to $5.3 million. The exact reasons for the cost discrepancy between the Army and Navy versions are unclear.

“Both quantities and unit cost are estimates based on U.S. Army contract pricing. Both quantities and unit cost will adjust based on award of DoN CLINs [Department of Navy Contract Line Item Numbers] on ARMY contract in execution and final cost of the Navy components (radio, canister, etc),” per the Navy’s latest budget request.

At $4.05 million, the Navy’s PAC-3 MSEs will be slightly cheaper per missile than the Block IA version of the SM-6. The service’s latest budget request puts the unit cost of the latter missiles at $4.348 million. The cost of a current-generation Block IIICU variant of the SM-2 is unclear, given that they have often been procured as upgrades of existing Block IIICs rather than new-production missiles. Historically, the average price point for an SM-3 Block IIIC has been around $3.6 million.

“By leveraging the high-volume Army PAC-3 MSE production contract, the Navy achieves significant cost avoidance through economies of scale, as unit price decreases with larger quantities,” the Navy’s latest budget documents also note.

Lockheed Martin announced in January that it had reached an agreement with the U.S. government to ramp up annual PAC-3 MSE production, for domestic and foreign customers, from 600 to 2,000 missiles. Last week, the company received a contract to help further accelerate production of these missiles. This could all help drive down the unit cost of the missiles going forward, as well as speed up their delivery.

Lockheed Martin Receives Contract to Accelerate PAC-3® MSE Production

It is worth pointing out here that PAC-3 MSE’s performance in the Middle East, as well as in Ukraine in recent years, has also prompted a significant increase in demand from the U.S. Army, as well as foreign Patriot operators. The overall Patriot user base is also expanding.

Adding the Navy to the mix will add to that demand, even with the production ramp-up, and could add to already growing concerns about production backlogs now. Integrating PAC-3 with Aegis and the Mk 41 VLS could also spur additional interest from other navies globally that have ships with that combat system and/or launchers.

Reuters reported just last week that U.S. officials had informed allies and partners in Europe that deliveries of unspecified munitions could now be delayed due to American needs in relation to the war with Iran. When it comes to PAC-3 MSE, the budget documents the Army released today, at least, do not appear to show any changes to the delivery schedule for foreign customers.

Regardless of any of these issues, the Navy is now pushing full steam ahead on integrating PAC-3 MSE with Aegis and the Mk 41 VLS.

Jamie Hunter contributed to this story.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com