threat

The U.S. Air Force is continuing to expand on the capabilities of the Angry Kitten electronic warfare pod, which just recently made its combat debut on the F-16 fighter in the latest conflict with Iran.

New testing has focused on improving the ability of HC-130J Combat King II combat search and rescue aircraft carrying the pods to receive reprogramming updates in near-real-time via satellite. HC-130Js just recently flew extremely high-risk and high-profile sorties over Iran as part of the effort to rescue the crew of a downed F-15E Strike Eagle. Being able to rapidly refine and optimize Angry Kitten’s capabilities will help the system remain as effective as possible, even in a very quickly evolving threat environment, and could be a stepping stone to more advanced functionality.

The Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center (AATC) recently shared details about new testing of Angry Kitten on the HC-130J during an iteration of the Bamboo Eagle exercise. Bamboo Eagle is a large-scale air combat exercise series focused on preparedness for a high-end fight in the Pacific. AATC has already been test flying Angry Kitten on the HC-130J for more than a year now.

The pods have also been test flown on Air Force A-10 Warthog ground attack jets and Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters. As noted, it is now being employed operationally on Air Force F-16s, as well. Angry Kitten was originally developed to replicate hostile electronic warfare threats during testing and training, as part of a cooperative effort between the Air Force and the Navy, and worked so well that it was adapted to operational use. We will come back to this later on.

During Bamboo Eagle, “AATC’s primary evaluation centered on the Angry Kitten electronic warfare pod integrated aboard a HC-130J Combat King II. The force development evaluation built directly on an operational assessment completed the previous year, which found the system potentially effective and suitable on the platform,” according to a press release that the center put out last week. “Testers incorporated recommendations from that assessment while the 130th Rescue Squadron flew the pod against simulated ship-based and ground-based threats during exercise vulnerability periods, evaluating both survivability and the system’s broader electronic attack capability.”

The 130th Rescue Squadron is part of the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing.

“Running alongside that effort, AATC continued maturing the Ka/Ku-band communications suite, which enables over-the-horizon communications and near-real-time electronic warfare reprogramming via satellite link,” the release adds. “The suite compresses what was previously a multi-day technique development and distribution process to near-real-time between sorties.”

AATC has previously disclosed that it has been working on this capability, which looks to be unique to the integration of Angry Kitten on the HC-130J, at least currently. The Combat King II has the benefit of a wide-band satellite communication system, which is also found on U.S. special operations C-130 variants and other aircraft. The HC-130J carries the pod using a Special Airborne Mission Installation and Response (SABIR) system installed in place of its left rear paratrooper door.

“The C-130 testing features innovative real-time updates to electronic warfare techniques,” AATC said in a previous press release in March 2025. “Unlike the F-16 tests, where pre-programmed mission data files were used, the C-130 testing includes development engineers aboard the aircraft who can modify jamming techniques mid-mission based on feedback from range control.”

As can be seen above, to date, AATC has largely framed the benefits of this reprogramming capability within the context of accelerating continuing test and evaluation of Angry Kitten. At that same time, this would also be extremely valuable in an operational context.

In general, electronic warfare systems use built-in threat libraries to accurately detect, categorize, and respond to waveforms. In turn, their effectiveness is inherently determined by the breadth of data in that library. Specialists, often working in purpose-built reprogramming laboratories far from the front lines, have to work tirelessly to keep these systems up to date. Historically, this has been a very lengthy process, and one that has increasingly had trouble keeping pace with the rate at which threats are evolving.

As noted, Angry Kitten was developed first as a training and testing tool. It is a direct outgrowth of the AN/ALQ-167 electronic warfare pod, variants of which have been used in those contexts for decades to mimic hostile electronic warfare threats. However, Angry Kitten was designed from the start to be more readily updatable and modifiable in order to make it easier to adapt it to new and evolving threats.

“At the core of that technology is Angry Kitten’s Technique Description Language architecture. Georgia Tech designed TDL as a hybrid that pairs dedicated hardware modules for speed and bandwidth with software for complex decision-making,” according to a press release Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) put out last month. “The practical result: government programmers can reprogram the jammer to counter new threats without sending it back to the contractor for expensive, time-consuming code changes. When an adversary adapts its radar tactics, NAWCWD’s team can update the jammer’s response in days instead of waiting months for a contract modification.”

Angry Kitten is also known to make use of advanced Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) technology. Using DRFM, radio frequency (RF) signals can be detected and ‘captured.’ Those same signals can then be manipulated and retransmitted. As an example of what this means in practice, signals from enemy air defense radars or radar seekers on incoming missiles can be recorded and pumped back in a way that creates false or otherwise confusing tracks. That same data can also be used as part of the reprogramming process to improve the stability capabilities, as well as be further exploited for general intelligence-gathering purposes.

This all already contributed to the evolution of Angry Kitten into an operational system.

“We had a jammer called ‘Angry Kitten.’ It was built to be an adversary air jamming tool,” now-retired Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, then commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), told TWZ and other outlets back in 2022. “And all of a sudden, the blue team said, ‘you know, hey, we kind of need that, can we have that for us?’ And so I see this iterating and testing our way into this.”

When it comes to near-real-time updates for Angry Kitten, even if the communications suite used on the HC-130J won’t fit on smaller tactical jets, it could potentially be ported over into a capability that is readily deployable to forward locations. Another possibility is that an aircraft with a wide-band satellite communications system could then pass updates for Angry Kitten to other aircraft within line of sight using other datalink capabilities.

The underlying developments have further implications when it comes to developing so-called cognitive electronic warfare capabilities. Cognitive electronic warfare is a broad area of development focused on new technologies to further automate or otherwise accelerate the reprogramming process. The absolute ‘holy grail’ of the overall concept is an electronic warfare system that can adapt autonomously in real time to new threat waveforms, or known ones being modulated in unexpected ways, even right in the middle of a mission. You can read more about all of this here.

Ongoing work to expand and improve Angry Kitten’s capabilities will also now benefit from lessons learned from the employment of the pods in combat sorties over and around Iran.

The multi-day effort to recover the crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle downed in that country earlier this month also highlighted the immense risks involved in combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations, and the importance of adding new self-protection capabilities to the HC-130J, specifically. Air Force Combat King IIs can expect to face far greater threats while conducting CSAR missions during a conflict with a near-peer adversary like China. This has prompted questions about the utility of HC-130Js and other traditional CSAR assets in the context of any future high-end fight.

In the meantime, Angry Kitten continues to evolve in significant ways, including its growing ability to receive key updated data remotely in near-real-time when paired with the HC-130J.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

WASHINGTON — NASA recaptured the world’s attention with Artemis II, which took astronauts to the moon and back for the first time in half a century. But the agency’s scientific projects could again be under threat as the Trump administration makes a renewed push to drastically cut their funding — including at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The cuts, proposed in the Trump administration’s 2027 budget request to Congress, would pose further challenges to the already weakened Caltech-managed lab and could be broadly damaging to American efforts to bring back new discoveries from space. They echo last year’s attempt by the administration to slash NASA funding, which Congress rejected.

Though the Artemis project is billed as laying a foundation for a crewed NASA mission to Mars, exploration of the Red Planet is among the endeavors that could be slashed. The rover currently exploring Mars’ ancient river delta and a mission to orbit Venus are among projects with JPL involvement targeted for spending cuts, according to an analysis of the NASA budget proposal by the nonprofit Planetary Society.

“This isn’t [because] they’re not producing good science anymore. There’s no rhyme or reason to it,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, which led opposition to the administration’s similar effort to cut NASA funding last year.

Storm clouds hang over the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Feb. 7, 2024.

(David McNew / Getty Images)

This time, the administration is asking Congress to cut NASA funding by 23% — including a 46% cut to its science programs, which are responsible for developing spacecraft, sending them into outer space to observe and analyzing the data they send back.

The proposal would cancel 53 science missions and reduce funding for others, according to the Planetary Society analysis. The effort to pare down NASA Science comes amid the Trump administration’s broader effort to cut scientific research across federal agencies.

The plan swiftly drew bipartisan criticism from members of Congress, who rejected the administration’s similar 2026 proposal in January. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA, indicated last week that he would work to fund NASA similarly for 2027, saying it would be “a mistake” not to fund science missions.

Moran plans to hold a hearing with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman before the end of April to review the budget request, a spokesperson for his office said. The president’s budget request is an ask to Congress, which ultimately holds the power to allocate funding.

But until Congress creates its own budget, NASA will use the plan as its road map, which could slow grants and contracts. The proposal “still creates enormous chaos and uncertainty in the meantime for critical missions, the scientific workforce, and long-term research planning,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose district includes JPL.

A NASA spokesperson declined to comment Friday. In the budget request, Isaacman wrote that NASA was “pursuing a focused and right-sized portfolio” for its space science missions in order to align with Trump’s federal cost-cutting goals.

The budget “reinforces U.S. leadership in space science through groundbreaking missions, completed research, and next-generation observatories,” Isaacman wrote.

Jared Isaacman testifies during his confirmation hearing to be the NASA administrator in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Dec. 3, 2025.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

At JPL — which has for decades led innovation in space science and technology from its La Cañada Flintridge campus — questions had already swirled about the lab’s role in the future of NASA work.

Multiple rounds of layoffs over the last two years, the defunding of its embattled Mars Sample Return mission and a shift by the Trump administration toward lunar exploration and away from the type of scientific work that JPL executes had pushed the lab into a challenging stretch.

It has had a steady stream of employee departures in recent months, and those left have been scrambling to court outside funding from private investors, sell JPL technology to companies and increase productivity in hopes of keeping the lab afloat, according to two former staffers, who requested anonymity to describe the mood inside the lab.

“If we’re not doing science, then what are we doing?” asked one former employee, who recently left JPL after more than a decade there.

A spokesperson for the lab declined to comment, referring The Times to the budget proposal.

The NASA programs marked for cancellation or cutbacks support thousands of jobs at JPL and other centers, said Chu, who has led a push for increased funding for NASA Science. After last year’s layoffs, JPL “cannot afford to lose more of this expertise,” she said in a statement.

Among the JPL projects that appear to be slated for cancellation are two involving Venus, Dreier said. One, Veritas, is early in development and would give work to the lab for the next several years, he said.

The project would be the first U.S. mission to Venus in more than 30 years, Dreier said, and aims to make a high-resolution mapping of the planet’s surface and observe its atmosphere.

The Perseverance rover, which is on Mars collecting rock and soil samples, could face spending reductions. The budget request proposes pulling some funding from Perseverance to fund other planetary science missions and reducing “the pace of operations” for the rover.

Though how the Mars samples might get back to Earth is uncertain, the rover is still being used to explore the planet and search for evidence of whether it could have ever been habitable to life.

Researchers hope the tubes of Martian rock, soil and sediment can eventually be brought back to Earth for study. The team has about a half a dozen more sample tubes to fill and the rover is in good shape, said Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and Arizona State University professor who leads the camera team on Perseverance, which works daily with JPL.

He said NASA’s spending proposal put forth “no plan” for the future of the agency’s work.

“Are people just supposed to walk away from their consoles,” Bell asked, “and let these orbiters around other planets or rovers on other worlds — just let them die?”

The NASA document did not clearly show which programs were targeted for cuts and did not list which projects were targeted for cancellation. The Planetary Society and the American Astronomical Society each analyzed the proposal and found that dozens of projects appeared to be canceled without being named in the document.

Across NASA, other projects slated for cancellation according to the Planetary Society’s analysis include New Horizons, a spacecraft exploring the outer edge of the solar system; the Atmosphere Observing System, a planned project to collect weather, air quality and climate data; and Juno, a spacecraft studying Jupiter.

The administration’s plan also doesn’t prioritize new scientific projects, Bell said, which further jeopardizes long-term job stability and space discovery at centers like JPL.

“We’re going through this long stretch now with very few opportunities to build these spacecrafts,” Bell said. “All of the NASA centers are suffering from the lack of opportunities.”

Last year, the Trump administration proposed to slash NASA’s 2026 funding by nearly half. Instead, Congress approved funding in January that provided $24.4 billion for the agency — a cut of about 29% rather than the proposed 46%. The 2027 budget request asks for $18.8 billion.

Congress kept funding for science missions nearly steady, allocating $7.25 billion for science missions, about a 1% decrease from 2025. The administration had proposed cutting the science investment down to $3.91 billion. This time, the budget requests $3.89 billion.

Under the Trump administration, NASA has put an emphasis on moon exploration, including this month’s successful Artemis II mission. Isaacman, who defended the proposed cuts on CNN last week, touted the agency’s lunar plans, including a project to build a base on the moon.

The agency has indicated commitment to some existing science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the to-be-launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly spacecraft set to launch for Saturn’s moon in 2028, and other projects.

“NASA doesn’t have a topline problem, we just need to focus on executing and delivering world-changing outcomes,” Isaacman said on CNN.

Scientists have urged the government not to choose between funding science and exploration but to keep up investment in both.

“It’s ultimately kind of confusing, especially on the heels of the Artemis II mission,” said Roohi Dalal, deputy director for public policy at the American Astronomical Society. “The scientific community … is providing critical services to ensure that the astronauts are able to carry out their mission safely, and yet at the same time, they’re facing this significant cut.”