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Today's Topics:
1. What the US Defense Department R&D budget proposal says about
the future of war (Stephen Loosley)
2. Secure comms with allies is hard. The Pentagon wants to
change that (Stephen Loosley)
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:47:24 +0930
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] What the US Defense Department R&D budget proposal
says about the future of war
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
What the R&D budget proposal says about the future of war
The Pentagon?s research-and-development section heralds several quiet,
monumental shifts.
By Tatjana de Kerros July 1, 2025 11:26 PM ET Commentary Technology Defense
Budget
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/07/what-rd-budget-proposal-says-about-future-war/406467/
If you want to understand tomorrow?s doctrine and industrial policy, zip past
the $879 billion topline of the Defense Department?s 2026 budget proposal and
dig into the section that details the $179 billion plan for research,
development, test and evaluation.
Like a predictive index for how the military intends to fight in five to 15
years, shifts in this year?s RDT&E proposal suggest the emergence of
software-defined weapons, agile acquisition models, space-based sensing
architectures, and a growing emphasis on autonomy and electronic warfare.
The most meaningful indicators are not steady growth areas, but targeted surges
that reveal where institutional urgency and emerging threats intersect. Some of
the most interesting shifts are taking place in these areas:
? Hypersonics: The $802 million devoted to the Hypersonic Attack Cruise
Missile?without an evident cut to current capabilities?suggests the weapon is
moving beyond experiments toward fielding. This aligns with Air Force desires
for a China-relevant, air-launched hypersonic standoff option.
? Space-based ISR: The Space Force?s Ground Moving Target Indicator
quadruples from $256 million in FY25 to $1.06 billion in FY26, reflecting a
break from aircraft-based JSTARS-style ISR toward orbital alternatives,
resilient against anti-access environments.
? Missile tracking goes low orbit: Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking
in LEO sees a $882 million bump, indicating maturation of tracking
constellations to detect maneuverable hypersonic threats.
? Agile electronic warfare and drone development: Two new Army RDT&E lines
collectively receive over $500 million, representing a pivot to Ukraine-style
improvisational capabilities, particularly for counter-UAS, EW spoofing, and
loitering munitions.
? Kill-chain AI: ?AI for Maneuver and Fires,? funded at $88 million, is
not basic research. It?s a signal of intent to deploy AI into operational
command structures, not as an advisor, but as a co-pilot for battlefield
decision-making.
Related articles
Defense Department budget request goes hard on AI, autonomy
How drone warfare fares in the 2026 budget
There?s no line in the new budget proposal for software-defined weapons?that
is, systems whose targeting, guidance, EW profiles, fuzing, etc., can be
updated or adapted by injecting new code rather than physical modification. But
there is strong evidence of a shift toward this model, which promises more
versatility, faster adaptation, and even lower long-term costs.
For instance, the Army's new lines for agile EW development (0609277A/78A ) and
UAS-launched effects (0609345A/46A) together receive over $500 million in
funding and emphasize adaptability, modular payloads, and software-first
configuration. Rather than having a fixed function, they earmark a new
framework.
Moreover, the funding for ?AI for Maneuver and Fires? program (0605055A)
indicates a desire to build weapons that respond not only to operator intent
but to algorithmic interpretation of changing environments.
This trend reflects a decade of lessons from Ukraine, where both sides have
learned to reconfigure their weapons with rapid software adjustments to drone
flight patterns, EW countermeasures, and targeting systems. This enables the
clashing forces to iterate in days, not months. Drones are re-coded in hours to
counter enemy jammers. EW units update techniques weekly, based on live
adversary behavior.
Focus on agility
Perhaps the most consequential development in the FY2026 RDT&E budget is the
breakout investment in agile, modular electronic warfare, and drone systems.
The emergence of agile RDT&E lines?over $500 million worth?demonstrates an
intent to build capacity for near-term, on-the-fly innovation.
This is not just an increase in budgetary terms; it?s the creation of a new
operational tier, one built on battlefield improvisation, rapid adaptation, and
scalable autonomy.
What makes this shift so notable is its doctrinal underpinning. These programs
signal a departure from stovepipe systems and embrace an architecture where
components are meant to be constantly iterated, mixed, and reassembled based on
evolving threats. They aim to replicate the kind of flexibility observed in
Ukraine and Russia.
This shift has three broader implications:
? Tactical agility becomes doctrine: flexibility is no longer a bonus;
it?s the metric.
? Smaller firms can now enter: modular kits create openings for
software-native firms.
? Rolling procurement gets a path: these programs function as field labs,
compressing innovation-to-application cycles.
The future of electronic warfare and unmanned operations may not lie in massive
programmatic structures, but in flexible, federated toolkits.
The R&D plan also reflects the divergent nature of U.S. competitors. Russia,
with its counter-drone technologies, low-cost EW jammers, and
field-programmable sensors, compels adaptation. China, meanwhile, requires
orchestration. The U.S. is clearly preparing for a conflict with a
technological peer: low-Earth-orbit-based ISR and tracking, hypersonic strike,
and AI-enhanced targeting are the budget's answer to a conflict fought across
domains at machine speeds.
All this has implications for the companies that serve the Pentagon.
Traditional defense firms optimized for hardware lock-in may find themselves
outpaced. The RDT&E portfolio hints at a transition to a ?defense software
stack? model:
? Agile lines suggest an embrace of continuous delivery pipelines over
waterfall procurement.
? Open systems architecture (visible in multiple autonomy and EW lines)
implies competitive refresh, where subcomponents rather than platforms are the
battleground.
? Companies capable of iterative, modular releases with built-in
testability and secure update mechanisms will shape future procurement
preferences.
This tilt towards modular ecosystems suggests that the DOD will be making a
strategic move where capabilities can be developed independently, vendors will
compete on more traditional software metrics, and industry winners will be
those who can iterate the fastest.
This is a positive signal for American dual-use companies, venture-backed
startups, and commercial integrators that have struggled to break into the
DOD?s rigid acquisition cycles?although this still does not solve the
much-debated procurement cycles that are at the heart of stifling innovation.
This is not a full transition to a software-as-a-service model, it?s a clear
directional move that will have effects long beyond this budget, and may
reconfigure the DOD.
FY2026 represents a quiet but consequential shift in how the Pentagon thinks
about modernization. It?s less about acquiring new things, and more about
enabling things to evolve. The budget suggests the Pentagon is no longer trying
to match what adversaries are building, it?s trying to out-invent them.
The bet is clear: in tomorrow?s conflicts, it won?t be platforms or materials
that win, but configuration speed, modularity, and code. For those building the
future of defense, the signal couldn?t be clearer: this is the year the DOD
began fighting with software.
Tatjana de Kerros is a dual-use and defense tech expert, with 15+ years
experience in venture capital and private equity in the defense and MIC sector
across the Middle East and Europe. An economist, she is the Managing Partner of
MIR Capital, a technological and economic foresight advisory based in Zurich,
Switzerland.
--
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:48:29 +0930
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Secure comms with allies is hard. The Pentagon wants
to change that
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Defense Systems
Secure comms with allies is hard. The Pentagon wants to change that
The department is working on an effort to streamline a complex set of
classified networks they use with allies and partners.
By Lauren C. Williams Senior Editor June 28, 2025 Communications
Asia-Pacific Pentagon
https://www.defenseone.com/defense-systems/2025/06/secure-comms-allies-hard-pentagon-wants-change/406393/
The Pentagon wants to simplify its classified networks?so it?s testing out a
secure, cloud-based network on a British aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific,
a top defense tech official announced Thursday.
The Defense Department has been working on a new initiative designed to sketch
out possible ways to collapse or reduce the number of secure networks the
military has to use to communicate with allies and partners, Leslie Beavers,
the Pentagon?s principal deputy chief information officer, said during Defense
One?s Tech Summit on Thursday. It?s called mission network-as-a-service.
?If we actually get to the point where we tag the people, tag the data and know
what's happening, then having a separate [unclassified network] and [secret
classified network] is not the way we would need to secure our network,?
Beavers said.
?We've also been working really hard with our allies and partners to get after
that interoperability piece, because at the end of the day?.that's where the
biggest challenges [are] within the department. It's largely based on
cooperation, and it's cooperative engineering that is required between the
international partners and us.?
The Defense Department has been working to simplify use of and secure its
networks using zero trust principles.
But communicating between countries and their militaries often involves a
complex set of networks and devices?a problem U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the
Army have spent recent years working on.
Related articles
Pacific multidomain task forces are looking for long-range drones
Army brigade tests renewable tech in Pacific exercise
The mission network-as-a-service prototype is designed to be a joint network to
include all of the U.S. military services and is currently being tested aboard
the HMS Prince of Wales at the secret level, Beavers said.
It uses multiple cloud service providers without cross-domain solutions, which
are typically used to communicate between networks of different classification
levels.
The joint carrier task force is ?testing the security controls and kicking the
tires on that and making sure that it's functional for the warfighter?first and
foremost?that it's scalable?that we can repeat, that it is simple enough that
we can sustain it, and that our partner nations can sustain it, and that it is
also secure,? Beavers said.
If successful, the prototype will be the foundation for a larger architecture
on how the U.S. connects with allies and partners with the goal of being
fielded broadly in the next two years.
?Then we take it to NATO, and we get the NATO cloud initiative moving in the
same direction, because there's a lot of engineering work that has to be done
in the partner nations, as well as in our nation, that has to work together and
grow together,? Beavers said.
?So, we've fielded it, and we're learning how to make that work. And then
that'll be the foundation as we grow all of these efforts together. That
seamless integration that has been?so far away for years, for me personally, is
now just right at our doorstep. I see that happening in the next year or two.?
--
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