“The United States must aggressively adopt AI within its Armed Forces if it is to maintain its global military preeminence while also ensuring, as outlined throughout this Action Plan, that its use of AI is secure and reliable,” the 28-page AI Action Plan document states.

Released on Wednesday — ahead of several corresponding executive orders in the publication pipeline — America’s AI Action Plan broadly promotes more widespread use of AI and machine learning, and seeks to reduce administrative and other hindrances limiting government deployments. 

“The Action Plan’s objective is to articulate policy recommendations that this administration can deliver for the American people to achieve the president’s vision of global AI dominance,” officials wrote.

The strategy prioritizes three pillars: driving innovation, building out infrastructure, and leading in international AI diplomacy and security.

It builds on the American AI Initiative launched under the first Trump administration, and was prompted after the president rescinded a Biden administration AI mandate in January at the start of his second term.

Because of DOD’s “unique operational needs,” the new action plan carves out policy recommendations custom for the department — such as the new AI and autonomy proving ground. The process for that new test range will begin “with scoping the technical, geographic, security, and resourcing requirements necessary for such a facility,” officials wrote.

The plan also directs the Pentagon to develop a streamlined process for classifying, evaluating, and optimizing workflows involved in its major functions and, eventually, a list of its priority workflows for automation with AI.

Personnel are additionally told to “prioritize DOD-led agreements with cloud service providers, operators of computing infrastructure, and other relevant private sector entities to codify priority access to computing resources in the event of a national emergency so that DOD is prepared to fully leverage these technologies during a significant conflict.”

Further, Trump’s framework calls for new talent development programs to meet the Pentagon’s AI-related workforce requirements — and to grow its Senior Military Colleges “into hubs of AI research, development, and talent building, teaching core AI skills and literacy to future generations.”

On a call with reporters Wednesday morning, a senior White House official said that more than 10,000 responses were submitted to the administration’s request for information to inform the action plan’s development.

“It was probably one of the most diverse sets of individuals from across the country and across different sectors — from civil society, to Hollywood, to academia, to the private sector. It really represented and showed the intense interest that the American people had in this and the responses from that RFI ultimately were reflected in the report,” the senior official said.

The guidance does not explicitly name the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office in regards to carrying out any of these new responsibilities.

Editor’s note: FedScoop’s Madison Alder contributed reporting.

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Navy officials revealed earlier this year that the sea service would be expanding operational tests and other deployments of small unmanned vessels around Naval Base Ventura County and the Ventura and Channel Islands harbors between April and August.

“An incident occurred at approximately 3:28 p.m. [local time] on June 23 within the Channel Islands Harbor Marina involving the overturning of a support boat by an unmanned vehicle that was being towed out of the harbor,” a spokesperson from Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) said. 

The area is considered somewhat of a hotspot for Navy-supporting autonomous technology development and demonstrations. It includes controlled and cornered off locations designed for the secure demonstration and refinement of uncrewed vessels of different types and sizes. 

Granted anonymity to speak freely, a source familiar with the June 23 incident raised concerns that the captain of the support boat appeared to be in danger after the towboat was overturned by the maritime drone.  

The NAVWAR spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the operator involved declined medical attention after they were recovered by the emergency responders.

“A preliminary investigation indicated that the unmanned vehicle received an inadvertent command that turned the engine on, causing the towed vehicle to accelerate past and capsize the support boat. As a result, the training activity immediately held a safety stand-down with all members of the activity and is implementing additional safety procedures,” the spokesperson said.

They did not respond to follow-up questions regarding whether the “inadvertent command” that resulted in the flip came from a human or technical malfunction.

NAVWAR spokespersons also declined to confirm if the drone involved was a Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft, or GARC, which sources initially suggested. The Navy recently unveiled plans to boost production of the 16-foot GARC — an unmanned surface vessel built by BlackSea Technologies, formerly known as Maritime Applied Physics Corp.

A spokesperson from BlackSea acknowledged DefenseScoop’s inquiry last week, but did not respond to questions regarding whether it was a GARC that flipped the tugboat.

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Reed — a command pilot with more than 3,500 flight hours — held a variety of joint, headquarters, and base-level roles, and steered a numbered air force, wing, expeditionary operations groups, and a flying training squadron before he assumed leadership at Transcom late last year. 

He’s in charge at a time when the command’s assets, workforce and close commercial partners are in high demand to move Defense Department equipment and personnel by rail, road and waterway in support of a broadening range of contemporary missions. 

On any given day, Transcom has more than 400 airlift sorties inflight, roughly 200 railcars and 1,500 freight shipments en route, 15 or more ships underway, and an estimated 10 patients in air evacuation, according to its most recent statistics.

“I frequently get the question, ‘how is Randall Reed doing, and how does he feel about Transcom?’ And I tell them that as a warfighting commander, I cannot imagine commanding anything else, anywhere else, or serving with anybody else. And one of the things that makes this such an incredible opportunity is the nation needs us — and we’ve always been there,” the commander told DefenseScoop in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the recent Sea-Air-Space summit.

During the discussion, Reed shed light on his near-term technology priorities and some of the command’s most recent high-stakes operations, including those in support of the Trump administration’s mass deportation missions.

Better connectivity

The Maven Smart System is one of several AI-enable software options in Transcom’s technology arsenal that improves the commander’s decision-making on a daily basis. MSS processes imagery and video from drones, sensors and other sources and applies advanced algorithms to inform real-world battlefield and logistics operations.

“I see it as a tool. Maven is not the end-all, be-all,” Reed noted. “But it’s helping us do what we do, better.” 

He detailed how the Transcom team and some of its partners sought to “stretch” the system’s use during the Turbo Challenge exercise in recent weeks.

“In the course of the exercise, we worked really hard to see, one, how good we are at doing our job to support theater commanders, and in this case, the Pacific. And then as we start laying in the system, specifically Maven, how are we using it now? Is it truly satisfactory? And how can we stretch that? And then where can we inject it to everything that we do to go forward? And let’s assess that. What I can share with you is that Maven will continue. Everyone’s very excited about what we discovered, but the biggest piece is not the system itself, it’s that we’re actually changing behavior, and that’s the most powerful,” Reed said.

Each combatant command accesses their own custom interfaces in the platform.

“What it actually allows us to do is use authoritative source data. At the moment, I really don’t care if it’s 100 percent correct. But it is the source data that the subject matter experts actually use and they already trust, and so as they bring their source data to the front, they’re actually allowing the rest of us to become literate in their area but use our own experiences to think critically about that and make the connections,” Reed said.

As this continues, he said meeting times are being reduced because participants are clued in from the jumpstart and can share common operating pictures.

“The other thing too is with such a powerful way to level the understanding, we’ve actually changed the meeting schedules. And we actually have added layers to it, and now all the commanders are meeting every day, using Maven as part of the meeting to very quickly level the understanding, get onboard together in terms of how we’re going to start the day, and then we start the day,” Reed told DefenseScoop.

Regarding his big picture aims while commanding Transcom, the general said he hopes his legacy will be as “one of those energetic folks” who pushed connectivity forward — on both a technical and practical level.

“For the good of the crews, I need all of them in every conveyance we work with to be connected. I need the connectivity to be secure. I need it to be reliable, and in most cases, near instantaneous. And the more connected we are, the more folks that are going to be aware of the battlespace, and they’ll be able to make the local decisions they need to make to survive and actually get the job done,” Reed said.

The ‘unforeseen’

Shortly after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January mandating the U.S. military to take on a direct role in securing the southern border, the Pentagon announced plans to send 1,500 active-duty service members and additional air and intelligence assets to support the effort.

Early on, Transcom was named as a key member of the U.S. Northern Command-led task force launched by DOD to oversee the quick implementation of Trump’s border-related directions, in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security.

In Reed’s view, the interagency immigration and border security missions have improved connectivity and interoperability between DHS and DOD over the last few months.

“[That’s] been my experience whenever the interagency gets together to respond to something, if we’ve worked together on something before, we kind of pick up where we left off,” he said, adding that “in this case, for the most part, it’s the first time for folks to work together” on this particular issue.

Reports have indicated that the command supported deportation flights expelling migrants that the Trump administration deemed to be “high threat.”

“Northcom is actually the lead combatant command for this portion of the mission. And then if anything goes to [U.S. Southern Command], then Southcom is in charge of that piece. So we support them both. And so, we are working with them to plan for things that they know are coming up that they need to do. We support them in that. Otherwise they, for the most part, give us a tasking to fill, and we fill the tasking. So doctrinally, it’s fairly standard,” Reed said.

When asked if the border-related missions have been disruptive to the command’s capacity to carry out its many other responsibilities and deliveries — particularly as certain shipping routes in other parts of the world have become increasingly contested — he told DefenseScoop that his team uses data analytics and other capabilities to monitor its posture and “forecast” its resourcing and financial needs.

“Built into that forecast is an understanding that we always come into contact with reality and something will happen somewhere that we didn’t plan on. And historically, there seems to be a certain amount of that that drives a certain amount of use for the platforms and crews. And so we kind of build something in for that unforeseen. And right now, this just happens to fit into that unforeseen [realm]. But it’s not so big that it’s really consuming all of the unforeseen,” Reed explained.

In recent years, Transcom has played a major role in the delivery of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine. And over the last few months, the command has also maneuvered forces and cargo for multiple exercises in the Pacific region and provided sustainment for Department of State missions to multiple countries. Transcom also recently started another critical mission that involves moving service members and their families via a new program called the Global Household Goods Contract.

Reed emphasized that the command’s personnel and their deep partnerships with commercial suppliers underpin the organization’s ability to execute so much.

“They all know what they’re doing, and they’re incredibly good at what they do — and none of us are as smart as all of us, none of us are as strong as all of us. And when we come together, magic happens, and in the end, it does make a difference,” he said.

At the same time, his leadership team is also eager to explore more applications of emerging technologies — like autonomous uncrewed aerial vehicles and maritime drones — to innovate how Transcom moves and delivers cargo.

“We know that someone now can potentially take a drone, and you could place an order for groceries and they can deliver your lettuce,” he noted. “But that range right now is not very far for some of what the rest of the [U.S. military’s] joint force is looking for.”

Reed pointed to the Indo-Pacific region, where commanders need drones that have the capacity and endurance to go from one island chain to another and operate in contested areas where communications could be limited.

“You look at all of these things to see where it’s at. But what I will tell you is eventually we’re going to get there, and eventually we’ll have things that can go hundreds and thousands of miles and can carry hundreds and thousands of pounds worth of [payloads]. And when that technology gets there, Transcom will be waiting to catch it,” Reed said.

Under an existing cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with National Aerospace Research and Technology Park and the Atlantic County Economic Alliance, the command is currently testing the feasibility of using drones for light, short logistics operations.

“We’re into delivering. Period. So when that technology gets there, we’ll embrace it,” Reed said.

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The one-step call for proposals falls under AFRL’s Autonomous Decisions, Algorithms, and Modeling multiple authority announcement that was released in March.

“The objectives for the program are to develop new algorithms for tracking and sensors resource management, modifying existing algorithms, conduct experiments to measure effectiveness of combat identification (CID), integrate with other CID algorithm improvement efforts, and simulate scenarios to measure algorithm performance,” officials wrote.

In U.S. military operations, combat identification of objects on the battlefield may include friendly forces, enemy forces, non-combatants or other entities. It’s used to support engagement decisions for the employment of fires.

A more detailed statement of objectives for the SOUP program hasn’t been publicly released because it contains controlled unclassified information. Interested vendors must request it from the Air Force.

However, officials have broadly described the technical areas of focus for the Autonomous Decisions, Algorithms, and Modeling multiple authority announcement, which include multi-domain sense making, sensing autonomy, sensing and effects analysis, multi-sensing knowledge, and sensing management.

To boost “multi-sensing knowledge,” officials aim to “provide techniques for timely, high confidence behavioral and physical knowledge generation from denied and difficult targets using multiple sensors, domains, and types to include algorithm development across multiple distributed, homogeneous and heterogeneous sensors. Efforts will commonly include data association, entity detect/track/ID, information fusion, contextual reasoning, training with limited measured data, data/performance modeling, and scenario specific algorithm performance assessment,” as well as the “application of machine learning techniques to address technical challenges in contested environments,” according to the announcement.

AFRL also intends to explore ways to improve sensing management across ISR, strike, electronic warfare and cyber “mission effects chains.”

“These efforts include techniques to manage sensor data flow through collection, communication, and reasoning for processing and dissemination; to generate anticipatory responses; sensor resource planning, allocation, and scheduling; and control flexibility across multiple distributed sensing capabilities. Efforts will focus on technologies including sensing interface/architecture development and assessment, experimentation, sensing decision-making strategies, representation, sensing data and knowledge management, cross-mode sensor management and registration, distributed processing, and joint inference and control,” officials wrote.

The AFRL initiatives come as the Defense Department is looking to make its ISR enterprise more effective and efficient through the integration of new AI tools that optimize system employment and reduce cognitive and physical burdens for human operators and analysts, via autonomous capabilities and decision-making aids.

The estimated program cost for SOUP is $3 million, and the anticipated award date is July 25, according to the solicitation.

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A senior committee staff official involved in the meeting briefed a small group of reporters Thursday about key issues the stakeholders’ referenced. They also shared new details about the bipartisan group’s six-month plan to influence major government reforms targeting capabilities transfer and acquisition options.

“[HFAC Chairman Rep. Brian] Mast and his fellow members of the committee on both sides of the aisle have long recognized the impact that the delays and lack of transparency associated with our current foreign arms sales process has on national security and our ability to boost interoperability with our partners,” the official said.

Mast, R-Fla., launched the task force in late March with Reps. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., and Madeleine Dean, D-Penn., at the helm.

America’s existing mechanisms for foreign military sales are seen by many as lagging behind global demand.

“In recent years, our allies must often choose between waiting on the U.S. for needed defense capabilities — or potentially looking elsewhere, at the expense of U.S. influence and strategic priorities, domestic defense manufacturing and American jobs,” the senior committee staff official told reporters.

The new group aims to build on progress led by a similar congressional “TIGER” team and task force that operated in a prior session, which the official noted put forward multiple policy and lawmaking recommendations, including some that were advanced to the committee.

“This time around, obviously, we’ll be working on a report that will further legislative and policy goals. And we’ve had initial engagements with the [second Trump] administration and we are waiting for the executive order, as well,” the official said. 

As they suggested, reports have recently surfaced that President Donald Trump’s new appointees are exploring an executive mandate that would ease certain rules that govern U.S. military equipment and service exports. 

“I think we’ve seen an extra ‘wind in the sail,’ in terms of what has been something that Congress has been involved with, that’s linked up with the administration,” the official said.

They noted that the new task force aims to expand upon some of the momentum Trump’s National Security Advisor Mike Waltz helped influence during his tenure serving in Congress and on that previous TIGER team in 2024. 

Beyond reporting and resources to help stakeholders “digest” any forthcoming executive orders, the team also hopes to pave the way for interdepartmental memorandums and other instructions or guidance for agency leadership.

“It’s fair to say this will be a pretty broad look. If we were to have this effort 10 years ago, maybe autonomous [systems] wouldn’t be as big of a focus, but I think it’s emblematic of an issue that needs additional attention as technology has advanced … [and this] challenging weapon sales process isn’t able to keep up with cutting-edge advances in technology that support the warfighter for ourselves and that of our allies,” the senior committee staff official told DefenseScoop.

In America, domestically produced defense assets and services that are delivered to foreign countries are regulated by Congress. These transactions generally entail either government-to-government sales (Foreign Military Sales, or FMS) or Direct Commercial Sales (DCS). 

“I will also quickly mention that the Trump administration is laser-focused on getting the FMS and DCS process where it needs to be — and President Trump has put the right people in the right positions to make that happen,” the official said.

They added that the new task force is “taking a wider view” compared to efforts led by Waltz and others during the last session, by focusing on reforms across both FMS and DCS.

Lawmakers who participated in Wednesday’s engagement heard insights and recommendations from nearly two dozen attendees. The official noted the industry participants were broadly “representing DOD primes, innovative startups, small arms manufacturers.”

Regarding main themes from the confab, the official said: “First, the foreign arm sales process as it stands today is overly complex, lacks transparency and poses significant risk to American competitiveness, to our national security and that of our allies. Second, charting an effective path forward will require bipartisan and interagency buy-in. Lastly, it’s safe to say that each participant recognized the urgency for making reforms to the process and ensuring America can get the right weapons to our allies and partners as fast as possible.”

Going forward, the task force will “continue to hear from those on the frontlines of this issue,” the official told reporters.

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However, the billionaire investor stopped short of revealing any immediate plans to disrupt the Pentagon’s ongoing Replicator initiative, which includes efforts to field thousands of uncrewed systems by August 2025.

“If confirmed, I will work with the appropriate stakeholders to review the value of initiatives like Replicator,” Feinberg wrote in response to advance policy questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee ahead of his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

That answer came after lawmakers’ inquiry into whether “a separate process like Replicator [is] needed within DOD to address the most pressing investment areas,” or if the existing acquisition and management mechanisms are sufficient to confront contemporary urgent needs.

Feinberg noted that, in his view, Replicator “tailors the rapid acquisition pathway to ensure rapid acquisition and deployment for items urgently needed to react to an enemy threat or respond to significant and urgent safety situations.” 

“I believe the department must utilize all of the authorities available to acquire capabilities to meet the most pressing and urgent needs, to include the capabilities being accelerated through Replicator,” he wrote.

First unveiled by former deputy Pentagon chief Kathleen Hicks in August 2023, Replicator 1.0 was then billed as a key military technology and procurement modernization campaign designed to counter China’s massive, ongoing military buildup by incentivizing U.S. industrial production capacity and the military’s adoption of drones en masse — through replicable processes — at a much faster pace. DOD was largely secretive about the initiative since its inception.

DefenseScoop reported that the first two tranches of selections — dubbed Replicator 1.1 and 1.2 — encompassed a variety of maritime and aerial drones, and associated counter-drone assets selected for mass manufacturing. In September 2024, defense leadership announced that, building on that success and momentum, Replicator 2.0 would accelerate the high-volume production of technologies designed to detect and destroy enemy drones.

Since Trump was elected in November and tapped Feinberg to serve as the Pentagon’s No. 2, many questions have swirled regarding the new administration’s vision for Replicator and whether plans are in the works to transform or terminate it. 

Feinberg’s responses to lawmakers’ questions suggest his intent to continue to prioritize efforts to deliver capabilities to support the military’s most critical operational problems, at scale.

“My understanding is that the Replicator initiative has focused on two critical areas: Replicator-1 is focused on delivering thousands of all-domain attritable autonomous systems to [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] to counter the pacing threat posed by the People’s Republic of China, and Replicator-2 is focusing on countering the threat posed by small unmanned aerial systems to our most critical installations and force concentrations. Both of these operational problems remain pressing challenges and, if confirmed, I will continue to ensure the department focuses on delivering innovative capabilities to warfighters in line with the secretary’s priorities of rebuilding our military and reestablishing deterrence,” he wrote.

The high-stakes initiative was not a major focus during Feinberg’s confirmation hearing. But in response to questions from Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., the nominee pledged to frequently brief and update Congress on the department’s plan for Replicator, and drones writ large.

“In regards to [threats from] swarming technology, Replicator’s a very important program,” Budd said.

At another point while testifying, Feinberg also emphasized that autonomous technologies and assets like those enabled by the pursuit will be vital to the U.S. military’s ability to deter foreign adversaries in the near term.

“Clearly, we need to develop autonomy — autonomy in significant numbers, with a centralized command, effectively ‘brain.’ And we have to make the right decision on whether we need to build a next-generation aircraft, or we can rely on autonomy. Of course, we’ve got to improve our shipbuilding. China is very strong there. Our nuclear capabilities are old, we have to upgrade them. And we have to develop hypersonics,” Feinberg told lawmakers.

A full Senate confirmation vote for Feinberg has not yet been scheduled.

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Much work remains, however. Company officials noted that in live testing, the firm has experimented with fewer than 100 platforms to date, although they hope to soon begin expanding that.

The technology, dubbed Autonomous Multidomain Operations Resiliency Platform for Heterogenous Unmanned Swarms (AMORPHOUS), gets at some of the difficult challenges the Defense Defense is trying to tackle as it relates to autonomy.

“One of the big problems that has yet to be solved is, how do you think about the control of not 10, not 100, not even 1,000 — but thousands of assets simultaneously? And that’s really not something that’s possible to do with human control only. You have to have a system that can be the orchestra conductor once it’s given a command,” Jon Rambeau, president of integrated mission systems at L3Harris, told reporters last week ahead of the company’s announcement on Monday. “We think the problem to be solved here for our Defense Department customers is, how do warfighters command and control autonomous assets at scale — that’s thousands of assets — and really do that in the combat scenario that’s going to involve not just the autonomous assets, but also manned assets, aircraft, surface vessels, subsurface vessels?”

Executives said AMORPHOUS and associated technologies have been on multiple contracts to date, and they believe the overall solution has a lot of room to scale and meet the DOD’s problems.

In designing the architecture, Rambeau noted that the company wanted to develop something that could be disaggregated given how fast and distributed the battlefield of the future is poised to be.

The so-called “mothership” concept, in which swarms of systems are controlled by a central brain, is likely not ideal, he said, given that capability could be thwarted by adversaries.

“We believe that’s not the best approach, because if something happens, that asset’s degraded, it’s attacked, it’s no longer able to communicate, then what happens? We’ve come up with an architecture that allows the control to pass from one asset to another seamlessly, so if the swarm is degraded, they continue to function,” Rambeau said.

The contractor has developed a single user concept where a warfighter could control assets with a tablet across all domains of warfare.

Company officials noted that AMORPHOUS has been designed with an open architecture to be able to integrate various platforms built by a variety of vendors. The software integrates onto any vendor’s hardware, they said.

To date, AMORPHOUS has only been live tested in “double-digit” numbers of systems, officials said, but they hope to see that go to “triple digits” in the not-too-distant future.

The ultimate intent is to control thousands of platforms — a concept that can be challenging to test given the scalability and availability of ranges and systems. There’s expected to be reliance on live, virtual, constructive methods.

The architecture L3Harris is using for AMORPHOUS, however, has already successfully stress-tested over 100 assets, despite AMORPHOUS itself not testing that much, according to company officials.

They expressed confidence in the system’s ability to be able to begin scaling given they are drawing from programs that have successfully operated at a larger scale.

While the capability and associated tech have worked with multiple military services, L3Harris officials noted there isn’t necessarily an on-ramp for a single service to onboard it, but rather, all the services desire the technology and it’s applicable to all.

“All the services are asking for the same thing. One of the reasons we formed an enterprise autonomy team inside of L3Harris is this is not service specific,” said Toby Magsig, vice president and general manager of enterprise autonomous solutions at the company. “This is taking a more centralized look at what is the right architecture, the right approach, the right technology to give all the services what they need to be able to do this multi-domain, multi-asset, swarm-of-swarm solution. I think we’re seeing them all ask for the same thing, but they all are benefiting from a multi-domain approach.”

While AMORPHOUS is being designed for a single user interface, officials explained they are also building it for the operational level of war and below, meaning there must be multiple user interfaces for others to have control.

In joint operations at the four-star combatant command level, operations towards objectives are carried out across multiple domains by multiple services. While an Army soldier likely won’t be controlling both land and maritime systems, there has to be a way for multiple users interfaces to monitor and provide direction for thousands of systems in a swarm on future battlefields.

“When you’re talking at this scale, there’s going to be multiple commanders that are interested in what the effects are and how this is being used,” Magsig said. “When you look at multi-domain, it’s really the joint commanders that are providing that level of joint integration across multiple domains, and are going to have control of the scale of heterogeneous swarm.”

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“Unmanned [platforms] will be a very important part of the way future wars are fought. Just the idea of survivability for human beings — to drive cost and time in ways that manned systems do not,” Hegseth said during his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

In responses to the Senate Armed Services Committee’s advanced policy questions (APQs) that were submitted to Congress ahead of that testimony, the secretary of defense nominee also made multiple statements pledging to support drone-enabling efforts across the individual military services and the joint force. 

Drones and swarms of unmanned systems are reshaping contemporary warfare and U.S. national security. Informed partly by lessons from the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as still-emerging conflicts in the Middle East, Defense Department leadership during the Biden administration launched several high-dollar efforts to accelerate production and ultimately expand the military’s arsenal of such capabilities.

As senators suggested at Tuesday’s hearing, Hegseth — a former Fox News host who retired from the National Guard in 2021 at the rank of major — is considered a controversial choice for U.S. defense secretary. He dodged multiple questions from Senate Armed Services Committee Democrats during the hearing about reports of unprofessional behavior in past work environments and Trump’s vision for the DOD, among other topics.

Still, during his testimony and in his APQ responses, Hegseth spotlighted his belief that “unmanned systems are a fundamental part of the future warfighting environment.”

At one point in the more than three-hour-long hearing, he pointed to significant challenges U.S. shipyards are confronting with manpower issues and other workforce shortfalls, and how unmanned systems could offset those.

“We also see adversaries that have been able to innovate themselves in ways that their ship-building capacity is — I won’t reveal it at this hearing — but multitudes and multitudes beyond our capabilities. So it needs to be a rapid investment, a rapid-field issue, and then we need to incentivize outside entities to fill the gap. You talk a lot about [unmanned aerial vehicles]. UAVs are very important. But there’s also a picture of UUVs — unmanned underwater vehicles — that will be a part of amplifying the impact of our Navy, because this administration has allowed our number of ships to drop below 300,” Hegseth told the committee.

In his APQ answers regarding the Navy, he said the DOD needs to “expeditiously move to integrate unmanned systems in [its] surface and undersea fleets.” 

“If confirmed, I will direct the Service Secretaries, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment, and the Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering to accelerate adoption and integration of cost-effective and highly capable unmanned systems to transition to the force of the future,” Hegseth wrote.

Further, if lawmakers confirm his nomination, Hegseth said he would also prioritize enhancing the Marine Corps’ ability to operate in contested littoral operation environments — “emphasizing long-range precision fires, advanced reconnaissance, and unmanned systems to support distributed operations.”

The nominee additionally committed to comprehensively examining how the Pentagon can best further its missions to counter larger UAS. Notably, he left open the potential for a reallocation of roles and responsibilities with respect to the Joint Counter Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Office (JCO).

Currently, the Army functions as DOD’s executive agent for that office.

“The conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have reinforced the need for the Department to effectively counter small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS), and that is inherently a Joint effort. If confirmed, I will wholeheartedly support the effort to effectively counter sUAS to ensure that the Joint Force has the protection it needs,” Hegseth wrote.

Following this hearing, Hegseth’s nomination now faces a vote of the full Senate for confirmation.

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America’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Richard Marles, and Japanese Minister of Defense Nakatani Gen detailed their latest cooperation agenda in a press briefing immediately following the fourteenth Trilateral Defense Ministers’ Meeting (TDMM) Nov. 17, where they’d solidified these aims.

“We’re excited to build advanced capabilities with Japan and Australia,” Austin told reporters there.

“We’re moving forward with our trilateral research, development, test and evaluation projects arrangement focusing on composite aerospace materials and autonomous systems. In the same vein, we’re deepening our discussions on cooperative combat aircraft and autonomy, and we’re also discussing opportunities to boost cooperation with Japan on AUKUS Pillar 2,” he said.

Broadly, the senior officials vowed to enhance their nations’ defense cooperation pursuits across four focus areas: expanding trilateral operational cooperation; building advanced capabilities together; planning together; and demonstrating presence in the region.

Among a range of fresh announcements, they confirmed new goals to cooperate on establishing a networked air-and-missile defense architecture designed to counter threats intensifying across the Indo-Pacific, and agreed to deepen collaboration with regard to trilateral training, exercises and exchanges.

They also launched a new plan for “Trilateral Defense Consultations” to more concretely align policy and operational objectives between America’s military services, the Japan Self Defense Forces, and the Australian Defence Force.

“There actually has been a real history and record of us working closely together. But what we are announcing today gives expression to the fact that — as three countries — we now seek to do this in a more and increasingly coordinated way. And that will be a benefit to our capability. We believe it will be the benefit to the collective security of the Indo-Pacific, and we believe it will make a significant contribution to the global rules-based order,” Marles said.

The trilateral partners also expressed concerns about intensifying, destabilizing actions being carried out by adversaries in the region — including what they called “dangerous conduct” and coercion that they attribute to China.

“The security environment is very severe right now, and very complex. We need to cooperate closely, from peacetime to contingency,” Nakatani said.

In terms of new plans for joint technology acceleration in the near term, Austin noted that through the AUKUS alliance, the U.S., U.K. and Australia are working together on Pillar 2 tech to “provide real capability to the warfighter as quickly as we possibly can.”

“We expect that Japan will join AUKUS Pillar 2 at some point in the not-too-distant future to work on specific projects that have yet to be named,” the defense secretary said.

“But again, there are just so many things that we can work together on and are working together on — whether it’s you know quantum capability, whether it’s [collaborative combat aircraft or CCA], or what you would describe as man-unmanned teaming aircraft, and just a number of other things that include long-range strike, and so many other things that I believe our work is going to kind of pay significant dividends to the warfighter here going forward,” Austin told DefenseScoop.

Ahead of the trilateral meeting, the defense leaders participated in a troop engagement with Australian soldiers and U.S. Marines rotationally based in Darwin — and were shown tanks, drones and other assets they are developing and deploying.

At one point, Australian Army Sgt. Jake Fauser briefed the officials on some uncrewed aerial systems and radar capabilities being leveraged for detection and reconnaissance operations. He notably answered follow-up questions from Austin regarding the range and reach of the various assets.

On the sidelines of the event, Fauser told DefenseScoop about some of the drones on display.

“For our close-range reconnaissance we have the Black Hornet, which can move between that sort of zero-to-two-kilometer radius. In our intermediate we have our Parrot drone, which [operators can move up to four kilometers] — and then we have our Wasp capability that can punch from out to five [kilometers]. And we’re in the process of getting the Puma being a new long-range drone which can increase our capability out to 40 kilometers,” Fauser said.

In his view as a soldier, deepening partnerships in this way is boosting Australia’s national stability and security.

“It has been an excellent experience. Last year, my platoon was attached to an American combat team. Being able to experience the different ways that the Australian Army does things with the U.S. Marine Corps and learning off each other, being able to learn off each other, and then we’d be able to cover each other’s gaps in a future conflict, if the need is there,” Fauser told DefenseScoop.

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That large-scale modernization affair — Autonomous Warrior 2024 — marks AUKUS’ signature event this year and is part of the alliance’s new Maritime Big Play series of integrated trilateral experiments and exercises, two senior defense officials told a small group of reporters on a call Wednesday.

“Maritime Big Play allows AUKUS partners to practice fielding and maintaining thousands of uncrewed systems, gaining valuable experience operating in coalitions to solve realistic operational problems, such as improving undersea situational awareness,” said Madeline Mortelmans, acting assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities. 

The AUKUS alliance is structured around two pillars. 

While the first of those encompasses the co-development of a nuclear-powered submarine force for Australia, Pillar 2 focuses on the co-creation and deployments of emerging and disruptive military technologies.

Via Pillar 2, Mortelmans noted, AUKUS members are “implementing a fundamental shift to more closely integrate our systems and break down barriers to collaboration at every stage and in every part of our system.”

Broadly, the MBP series is designed to push forward the Pillar 2 objective to rapidly translate cutting-edge capabilities into practical, asymmetric assets delivered quickly to service members in the field. 

Through it, the international partners aim to collaboratively test and refine the alliance’s capacity to jointly operate uncrewed systems at sea, transmit and process intelligence and reconnaissance data from all three nations, and supply real-time maritime domain awareness to strengthen decision-making. 

“What we’ve been doing with this experimentation campaign is to ensure that when different gear shows up in the fight and into theater, it can be included seamlessly to provide common operating pictures and common control systems, and to ensure effects as and when we choose to have them as a coalition,” a senior defense official who joined Mortelmans but spoke on the condition of anonymity, told reporters on Wednesday. 

DefenseScoop asked the two officials whether any of the autonomous or other combat capabilities were identified by AUKUS participants as a tool that would make sense for more rapid fielding and use in military operations in the near term.

“Some of them already are,” the senior defense official said. “There are some systems — uncrewed surface vessels in Australia  — that have been put out on the ocean. And some of the things that we saw during this experimentation campaign was data coming back from those systems in real-time to maintain a common operating picture.”

They further told DefenseScoop: “Part of doing the Maritime Big Play is to see the realm of what’s available and to make those kinds of decisions. But at this point, we haven’t even completed the exercise, so no decisions have been taken to acquire or rapidly accelerate any system.” 

On the call, the two senior defense officials opted not to explicitly name any of the technology brands or companies that made the sensors, platforms, drones, or network and communications systems the U.S. brought to Autonomous Warrior 2024.

However, in an email from Australia shortly afterwards, Pentagon spokesperson Army Maj. Pete Nguyen shed more light on the exact prototypes and technologies America demonstrated during the event.

The list he provided includes, among others:

• High Altitude Balloons (HABs) that “augment the space domain by providing resilient communications in a denied environment from the stratosphere by carrying a range of mission capable payloads” — from Aerostar, based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
• Greenough Advanced Rescue Craft (GARC), which are “low-cost attritable [small uncrewed  surface vehicles or sUSVs] that can deploy independently or as a formation … and provide an uncrewed means to respond to Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD)” — from MAPC, in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Sea Stalker sUSV that’s “designed to serve in multiple maritime missions to include reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence collection” — from Swift Ships, a small business based in Morgan City, Louisiana.
• Triton “multi-model Autonomous Underwater and Surface Vessel capable of persistent operation in a contested environment with threat detection and evasion capabilities” — from Ocean Aero, a small business in Gulfport, Mississippi.
• A “Government-Owned, Non-Proprietary Common Control System” that gives “U.S. Navy uncrewed vehicles hardware and software that works across several different systems” and helps process data from sensor payloads.

“This is only the first in our series of experiments and demonstrations. Over time, Maritime Big Play will grow and evolve to reflect emerging technologies, new systems and new operational requirements,” Mortelmans told reporters Wednesday.

Notably, during that call she also mentioned that members of the Japanese military joined this round of Maritime Big Play experimentation as “observers.”

AUKUS leaders have made it clear that they are open to expanding the trilateral security partnership to include other nations — solely under Pillar 2, not Pillar 1 — to jointly strengthen the interoperability of their maritime drone systems. 

“Planning for the next exercise is underway. So the full details of what [Japan’s] participation will be in the future hasn’t yet been determined, but I think that they will move from being an observer to being a participant in the activity. And what a participant means could be bringing Japanese systems and platforms participating in that command-and-control architecture. There’s a wide range of opportunities and we’re really eager to explore those,” the senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

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