Nearly $20 million would go to air vehicle development and about $15 million to mission systems development and integration. The rest of the funding would be allotted for systems engineering, control segment development and integration, and development support.

Officials noted that the spending plan for 2026 increased since the last budget submission.

The project, known as MUX TACAIR increment 1, will leverage previous work that the Corps has done for its Penetrating Affordable Autonomous Collaborative Killer-Portfolio (PAACK-P), which received funding in previous years under the Pentagon’s Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve initiative.

“We are experimenting with unmanned aircraft like the XQ-58 Valkyrie working alongside crewed platforms such as the F-35. Recent tests validated their ability to conduct electronic warfare, execute autonomous tasks, and support Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) missions — all of which improve the survivability and effectiveness of manned Marine aviation in high-threat environments,” Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith told members of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee in written testimony last month, adding that investments in collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs) and other technologies will reduce risk to personnel and increase the speed and accuracy of decision making.

The Marines want highly autonomous next-generation drones to serve as robotic wingmen that could take on high-tech foes such as China in places like the Indo-Pacific.

MUX TACAIR, or Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) unmanned aerial system expeditionary tactical aircraft, would be expected to support “mass buildup of a Joint Force against a peer/near-peer adversary,” according to budget documents, which noted that they could play a significant role in electronic warfare and reconnaissance missions.

“Project efforts focus on operations from austere Expeditionary Advanced Basing Operations (EABO) airfields in support of Marine Littoral Regiment (MLR) and/or Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) operations serving as the Stand in Force (SiF) for a Joint Force, providing lethal and flexible support to support from the land and sea. This project increases MAGTF lethality, capacity and interoperability in the reconnaissance and electronic warfare mission areas, complementing existing and future TACAIR capabilities and enhancing combat reach into the INDOPACOM Area of Responsibility (AoR), or wherever enhanced, stand-off lethality is needed by the Joint Force,” officials wrote in budget justification documents to support the fiscal 2026 funding request for research, development, test and evaluation.

The Marines plan to award up to three other transaction authority agreements to contractors before the start of the next fiscal year to support the program.

Prototyping and experimentation efforts slated for 2026 include expeditionary air vehicle components and subsystems focused on launch and recovery, conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) capability, electronic warfare subsystem and payload enhancements, interoperability via communications and datalinks, mission systems computing, command and control (C2) integration architecture interoperability, and open architecture applications, according to officials.

Demonstration of prototyping activities, including mission system integration and minimum viable product (MVP) flight tests teamed with crewed aircraft, “will maximize collaborative evaluation environments, which enable developmental and operational evaluation of prototypes and tactics development” by Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Two Four (UX-24) and Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One (VMX-1)) during fleet exercises as well as weapons and tactics instructor courses hosted by Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1), according to budget documents.

Officials noted that the Corps plans to use a “spiral approach” to capability insertion for the program.

“MUX TACAIR Increment I will rapidly accelerate the time between development and fielding, ensuring rapid and relevant capability delivery of a Minimum Viable Product … to the warfighter,” per the budget documents. “Each spiral will have an associated MVP that is operationally relevant and balances schedule and technical complexity. The requirements within each MVP spiral will detail a minimum set of threshold capabilities required for training and tactics development with a unit of employment (e.g., fleet squadron).”

Development spirals will include enhancements in areas such as command and control, electronic warfare, mission computers and datalinks, according to officials.

Efforts in fiscal 2026 are expected to support an acquisition decision memorandum for Middle Tier of Acquisition rapid prototyping entry.

The Marines aren’t the only U.S. military service pursuing CCAs. The Air Force plans to spend $807 million in fiscal 2026 on its program.

Budget documents noted that the Marines will be “maximizing alignment” with Air Force and Department of the Navy CCA efforts “to reduce duplication and enhance interoperability through the use of compatible C2 implementations, mission systems, and common control architecture.”

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While the budget proposal would allot just $5 million for the effort — a small portion of Cybercom’s $1.3 billion research and development spending plan — the stand-up of the program follows congressional direction to prod the command to develop an AI roadmap.

In the fiscal 2023 defense policy bill, Congress charged Cybercom and the Department of Defense chief information officer — in coordination with the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, director of the National Security Agency and the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering — to jointly develop a five-year guide and implementation plan for rapidly adopting and acquiring AI systems, applications, supporting data and data management processes for cyber operations forces.

Cybercom created its roadmap shortly thereafter along with an AI task force.

The new project within Cybercom’s R&D budget aims to develop core data standards in order to curate and tag collected data that meet those standards to effectively integrate data into AI and machine learning solutions while more efficiently developing artificial intelligence capabilities to meet operational needs.

The effort is directly related to the task of furthering the roadmap.

As a result of that roadmap, the command decided to house its task force within its elite Cyber National Mission Force.  

The command created the program by pulling funds from its operations and maintenance budget and moving them to the R&D budget from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2026.

The command outlined five categories of various AI applications across its enterprise and other organizations, including vulnerabilities and exploits; network security, monitoring, and visualization; modeling and predictive analytics; persona and identity; and infrastructure and transport.

Specifically, the command’s AI project, Artificial Intelligence for Cyberspace Operations, will aim to develop and conduct pilots while investing in infrastructure to leverage commercial AI capabilities. The command’s Cyber Immersion Laboratory will develop, test and evaluate cyber capabilities and perform operational assessments performed by third parties, the budget documents state.

In fiscal 2026, the command plans to spend the $5 million to support the CNMF in piloting AI technologies through an agile 90-day pilot cycle, according to the documents, which will ensure quick success or failure. That fast-paced methodology allows the CNMF to quickly test and validate solutions against operational use cases with flexibility to adapt to evolving cyber threats.

The CNMF will also look to explore ways to improve threat detection, automate data analysis, and enhance decision-making processes in cyber operations, according to budget documents.

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Details on the decision are sparse in the documents, but officials wrote that the Chief Digital and AI Office’s CTO “no longer exists or manages resources.” 

President Donald Trump directed federal agencies at the start of his second term to drastically reduce their workforces and assess existing contracts, with aims to ultimately cut back on what his team views as wasteful spending and inefficiencies. The efforts have included initiatives overseen by Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, teams.

While AI is a major priority for the U.S. government under Trump, since then, the Pentagon’s CDAO has seen an exodus of senior leaders and other technical employees.

“As part of broader DOD efficiency efforts, CDAO realized organization efficiencies in FY26, including eliminating the CTO directorate,” a CDAO official told DefenseScoop on Wednesday. “This move has minimal mission impact as CDAO has a strong technical workforce embedded within each of its directorates.”

Budget materials show that the directorate was allocated more than $340 million in fiscal 2024.

The CDAO official declined to share more information regarding how the CTO’s employees, responsibilities and investments were dispersed following the elimination.

Shortly after standing up the CDAO in June 2022, Defense Department leadership hired nearly a dozen senior leaders to serve in its top positions — including Bill Streilein as inaugural CTO. Streilein had previously served as a longtime leader at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory and is now back at the lab working as a member of its principal staff.

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Next Generation Command and Control is a clean-slate design for how the Army communicates on the battlefield and passes data for operations, providing commanders and units a new approach to information sharing and C2 through agile and software-based architectures.

In the past, warfighting functions, such as fires and intelligence, were all separate and distinct silos on the network for those communities, creating stovepipes and challenges for sharing timely battlefield information. Now, the Army is trying to fix that with an integrated architecture that allows data to flow more freely, on-the-move, and enable better and faster decision-making.

The nearly $3 billion funding number is an approximation based on figures provided by the Army for its total portfolio request surrounding NGC2, which added up to about $2.95 billion. The Army’s budget request for its network has always been spread across several funding lines, making it difficult to parse out an exact tally.

This year’s request attempts to move toward a clearer portfolio, as officials aim to improve that in the out years.

“The Army is consolidating C2 resources, requirements and funding lines into a combined capability portfolio of hardware and software supporting NGC2 to provide commanders with increased speed, precision, and adaptability for decision advantage,” a spokesperson from program executive office for command, control, and communications network, said. “This shift is a ‘zero sum’ realignment for the Army that uses existing resources and directs funding toward priority capabilities in order to support NGC2 equipping and experimentation at the Division level, while introducing competition for best of breed commercial capabilities.”

Officials have maintained that the Army would not be asking for extra funds at the moment for the NGC2 effort, but rather, using what was already appropriated and realigning it.

The spokesperson noted that the Army realigned funding corresponding to the NGC2 technology stack layers, which include:

—Transport for moving data across the battlefield.

—Infrastructure or integration, which uses artificial intelligence to triage the data that comes in to lessen the cognitive load for commanders.

—Data that proliferates shared information across warfighting systems.

—Applications that provide software apps for all echelons that will replace the stovepiped systems specific to warfighting functions. For example, the fires community will be able to execute their mission via an app on the system, which takes in all shared battlefield data, as envisioned.

The request includes funding for prototyping and experimentation efforts that will be undertaken by the Command and Control Cross Functional Team under Army Futures Command.

Regarding the transport and infrastructure layer, the fiscal 2026 budget request includes roughly $2.58 billion in procurement funds that would go toward satellite communications, radios and other transport, as well as computing infrastructure, for delivery to operational units, the spokesperson said. On the R&D side, the service is requesting $101.4 million for these layers to continue development based on prototyping and experimentation.

For the applications and data layers, the Army is only requesting R&D money, approximately $344.9 million. This includes funding from several programs that previously provided isolated warfighting function systems but now will transition to integrated software applications and data in the NGC2 program, the spokesperson said.

The Army has sought a faster, agile and software-based approach to NGC2, in the hopes it will be able to not only deliver quicker, but make more timely changes based on battlefield conditions.

The aim is to turn what only a few years ago would have been a decades-long process into a two-and-a-half-year process, based on reinvestment efforts as part of the Army’s Transformation Initiative, Gen. James Mingus, vice chief of staff, said Wednesday at an event co-hosted by AUSA and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Army has said it expects to award initial contracts as part of the official NGC2 program of record — for which PEO C3N stood up the office in April — later this year.

Service officials said they had a successful demonstration of a NGC2 prototype “proof of principle” at the Project Convergence Capstone 5 event at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, in March, that will help inform the program of record.

4th Infantry Division as well as elements from 25th Infantry Division will continue that prototyping effort into this year, working to scale it all the way to division to include all enabler units.

Mingus noted that the prototype is quite mature and will likely help speed the delivery to units going forward.

“We are going to give it to 4ID, starting this summer, they are going to experiment with this — prototype is still what we’re calling it, but I would say it’s an advanced, proven prototype. Once we have shown that this is demonstrated … we think we’ll be able to very quickly scale this across the entire Army,” he said.

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After divesting of much of its EW tool set following the Cold War, the Army has sought to rebuild its arsenal and tactics within the spectrum. That includes the gamut of electromagnetic spectrum operations such as electronic attack, or jamming, electronic support, or sensing the environment for enemy signals, and electronic protect, or guarding friendly systems and units from enemy jamming.

Observations from Ukraine have solidified the importance of robust and redundant capabilities, particularly within the spectrum.

In addition to having jammers for offensive actions, U.S. forces must possess a raft of other tools to be able to protect themselves from enemy jammers, hide within the spectrum and deceive the enemy.

As evidenced in Ukraine, units can be located and targeted with munitions solely based on their emissions within the electromagnetic spectrum.

“Commanders must be able to see themselves to control their emissions and defeat the enemy’s ability to sense, identify, locate, and target them. This is critically important when observations from current conflicts around the world show there are eight minutes from identification in the EMS to artillery impacting on the detected location of said emission,” the Army’s Multidomain Operations Range Guide states.

As such, the Army’s budget request would place more investments in these key areas of understanding its signatures and protecting forces with a combination of new-start programs, repurposed portfolios and existing efforts.

The Modular Electro-Magnetic Spectrum System (MEMSS) is a new start this budget cycle, stemming out of a prior science-and-technology effort called Modular Electromagnetic Spectrum Deception Suite (MEDS). Officials have previewed the effort in years past, noting some prototyping had gone toward developing it.

The Army is requesting $9.1 million in 2026 for the effort in its research-and-development budget. Specifically, it would provide force protection and freedom of maneuver through “radio frequency technical effects,” a term the Army uses to describe classified capabilities.

MEMSS will look to prioritize iterative development with commercial-off-the-shelf capabilities, a top priority for the Army and its electronic warfare portfolio overall.

The budget documents note that the system will be given to units as part of the Army’s transforming-in-contact (TiC) initiative, which aims to speed up how the service buys technologies and designs its forces and concepts by injecting emerging capabilities into units and letting them experiment with them during exercises and deployments.

The documents note that these units will receive prototyped capability and, as part of the program, fiscal ’26 funding will support testing to ensure it performs as expected against realistic threats to include both lab testing and evaluation from soldiers from TiC 2.0 units, which now involves armored formations as well as Multi-Domain Task Force and Army special operations units.

Another new start within the Army’s budget request is a program called Counter Surveillance Reconnaissance (CSR). It’s envisioned as a family of systems to provide force protection at echelon — specifically ground-based capabilities for division, corps and theater commanders — through enhanced situational awareness, operational planning tools for effects coordination and electronic support capabilities.

This program, along with many others, is included in the Army’s new Electronic Warfare Agile Systems Development program.

For this budget request, the Army sought to secure agile funding for a limited pot of systems: electronic warfare, unmanned aerial systems and counter-UAS. This agile funding allows the Army to consolidate capabilities into a single portfolio to better move money around and be more responsive to real-world events, as opposed to having to ask Congress for reprogramming requests. The budget documents note this pilot effort provides enhanced capabilities through fostering innovation and the accelerated development of promising technology.

The Army is requesting $34.4 million in R&D funding for CSR in fiscal 2026. The program aims to use technologies that will hide units’ locations within the electromagnetic spectrum. So-called low-probability-of-detection/low-probability-of-attribution non-kinetic effects will establish “unobserved” positions and preserve combat power, the documents note.

The CSR program will provide three distinct lines of effort for counter-space surveillance that will be controlled by an overarching mission planner and common execution software to plan and employ non-kinetic effects to protect friendly forces.

The prototype development for all three lines of effort are scheduled to begin in second quarter of 2026. The first unit issued for the first line of effort is scheduled for third quarter 2029, with the second and third slated for fourth quarter 2030.

The Army’s budget request is also asking for $1.5 million in R&D funding for a program to develop an integrated multi-mission electronic warfare force protection system.

That program, Integrated Electronic Warfare Systems, shifted in funding and terminology compared with last year’s budget release. It has now been moved to the agile funding pilot.

Additionally, in the previous budget proposal, the Army sought mainly to fund Counter-Radio Controlled Improvised Explosive Device (RCIED) Electronic Warfare (CREW), a term that is a relic of the Global War on Terror when insurgents used radio devices to trigger roadside bombs.

The CREW technology, however, is still relevant today as it can be used for counter-UAS and counter-communications.  

Now, the program is aiming to prototype an integrated multi-mission electronic warfare force protection system that can respond to changing signals of interest employed by adversaries.

When a signal is discovered that isn’t in a unit’s library of known signals, a countermeasure must be devised, which historically could have taken months. That pace is unacceptable for the fast-paced warfare of the future. The Army and other services are looking at rapid reprogramming on the battlefield, in part, by leveraging artificial intelligence.

“Electromagnetic warfare (EW) capability gaps exist across several areas, including the need for development of more sophisticated countermeasures, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics into EW operations. Specifically, the development of advanced countermeasures that can effectively disrupt or neutralize enemy EW capabilities is crucial, especially in the face of evolving technologies and tactics. Integrating AI and advanced analytics into EW operations will significantly enhance the ability to quickly identify and respond to threats,” the budget documents state. “VMEWS is intended to provide a suite of electromagnetic warfare capabilities to protect wheeled and tracked vehicles against a wide range of radio frequency-controlled threats.”

The Army expects a competitive commercial solutions offering that leads to an other transaction agreement for a tech demonstration of a vehicle mounted multi-mission electronic warfare force protection system to accelerate technology maturation and prototyping.

A new procurement effort for the Army in the budget request is the Spectrum Situational Awareness System (S2AS), which will provide sensing and visualization of what units look like in the spectrum and allow commanders to be able to sense and report in real-time their command post signatures, sources of electromagnetic interference — either from coalition partners or the enemy — and threat emissions.

The Army awarded 3dB Labs earlier this year an other transaction agreement to develop and demonstrate a prototype. S2AS had already undergone a prototyping effort prior to the award.

The fiscal 2026 budget request includes $17.6 million in procurement funding for S2AS as a new start in procurement and under the “Electronic Warfare” program, which is also new this year as part of the agile pilot. Those funds would enable procurement, delivery, training and initial sparing of S2AS, according to budget documents, which state the Army plans to buy 20 systems.

The budget also asks for $8.9 million in research-and-development funding for S2AS.

The Army will be using transforming-in-contact units to help inform how the program matures.

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The command’s research-and-development budget proposal includes $117.2 million under a portfolio called “Data and Sensors.” In last year’s budget release, the command anticipated spending just $20.8 million in FY26 in the future years defense program for that same portfolio. The fiscal 2025 request for the portfolio was $21 million.

According to budget justification documents, the increased funding would go toward cyber mission monitoring capabilities for the Department of Defense Information Network and expand operational technology asset installation at other Indo-Pacom defense critical infrastructure networks and systems. Moreover, the budget activity continues whole-of-government collaboration and coordination for sensor deployment, data sharing and lessons learned, and includes an expanded submarine cable landing monitoring capability, sensor placement in key networks and maintenance of automated alert capabilities to operators.

The documents also note that beginning in fiscal 2024 the DOD added funds within the portfolio for Indo-Pacom’s regional component of the National Defense Strategy to maintain and restore a comparative military advantage. Cybercom added resources and manpower to support the maturation and fielding of monitoring capabilities to hunt and trap adversaries across the DODIN’s priority edge devices and procure new hardware.

The portfolio’s enhanced sensing efforts are part of the larger Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a key effort to provide funding carveouts for Indo-Pacom to bolster its posture relative to China, and expand low-level network sensing and defense for key networks in the region, the documents state.

More specifically, the enhanced sensing investments in Cybercom’s budget request portfolio include support for specialized Indo-Pacom Low-Level Network Sensing and Defense capability, data feed, analytic resources and increased efforts to discover and characterize adversary networks — all of which are necessary to maintain or restore comparative military advantage and reduce risk of contingency plans in support of U.S. national security interests, according to the documents.

The investments have already supported the transition of existing DOD projects to Cybercom and expansion of new sensing and data analytic tools to strengthen the cyberspace defensive posture of Indo-Pacom networks, with a specific focus on defense critical infrastructure in Guam.

The budget touts examples of this, including the employment of over 3,000 operational technology assets that resulted in a 52 percent reduction in malicious and anomalous behavior in the environment and a 32 percent decrease in known vulnerabilities to key assets such as firewalls, switches and routers, to achieve 76 percent adherence to MOSAICS frameworks in industrial control systems.

Cybercom’s cyber protection teams — defensive teams focused on hunting adversaries within the network — performed 31 threat-hunting missions and investigated 58 additional artifacts across multiple networks, informed by the investments made in the portfolio. Those teams worked with local defenders within Indo-Pacom to bolster their tactics, techniques and procedures.

The command noted that that the work established real-time insight into the submarine cable landing in Guam to effectively monitor network traffic transiting to and from the island, including automated alert and visual interface tools for operators.

The scope is also different from the previous budget request, in which Cybercom articulated that most of the portfolio spending would go towards deployable sensors and the “fly away” kits that the command’s cyber protection teams use. Those teams sometimes deploy to sites locally that incur breaches — hence the need for specialized kits.

The funding for 2025, according to previous budget documents, was partially planned to go towards downselecting awardees for Joint Cyber Hunt Kits, standardized fly-away kits for both cyber protection teams and hunt-forward missions that involve physically sending teams to foreign countries to hunt for threats on their networks at the invitation of host nations.

Cybercom’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal moved funding for the Joint Cyber Hunt Kits to the procurement portion. A prototype effort was slated to be completed in June 2025, and a review of the capability was expected completed by August 2025 with a production award scheduled for FY26, the documents state.

In DOD parlance, China is the pacing threat. It has become more brazen in intrusions and probes into U.S. and defense networks, particularly in maritime or port environments to potentially limit an American military mobilization response if Chinese leaders decide to invade Taiwan.

Guam, a key U.S. military outpost, has been a top target for Beijing in recent years. Chinese hackers targeted critical infrastructure there, burrowing deep inside a couple of years ago and startling experts who referred to it as one of the largest cyber espionage campaigns against America.  

The group that conducted the operation has been referred to as Volt Typhoon, one of a number of cyber players from China that have been discovered in U.S. networks, troubling American officials. Volt Typhoon was discovered inside U.S. critical infrastructure using a technique in the cybersecurity world called “living off the land,” which means it’s using legitimate tools organic to the systems for malicious purposes.

What has particularly alarmed officials regarding Volt Typhoon is the paradigm shift of Chinese threats moving from espionage and intellectual property theft to holding critical infrastructure at risk.

In fiscal 2026, Cybercom plans to field hardware security capabilities and support sustainment of existing capabilities installed in fiscal 2024 and 2025, according the budget documents. It will also seek to implement improved or additional tools and tradecraft to keep pace with the dynamic and evolving threat landscape.

The 2026 funding request aims to complete full asset inventory to operational technology assets on Guam defense critical infrastructure for comprehensive and enduring monitoring to reduce malicious activity, address known vulnerabilities and ensure adherence to MOSAICS framework for industrial control systems, the documents state.

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The Air Force is requesting nearly $3.5 billion in FY’26 to continue work on the F-47, a sixth-generation fighter under development by prime contractor Boeing. According to budget documents released Thursday, the allocation includes $2.6 billion in discretionary funds and $900 million from the GOP-led reconciliation bill currently under debate in Congress.

In contrast, the Navy’s sixth-gen fighter program known as the F/A-XX, would receive just $74 million in R&D funds — 84 percent less than the $454 million the service received in fiscal 2025. The decision comes after the Navy already delayed around $1 billion for F/A-XX in FY’25 due to spending caps imposed by the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“We did make a strategic decision to go all-in on F-47,” a senior defense official told reporters during a Pentagon briefing Thursday. The move was prompted “due to our belief that the industrial base can only handle going fast on one program at this time, and the presidential priority to go all-in on F-47 and get that program right, while maintaining the option for F/A-XX in the future,” they added.

President Donald Trump announced that Boeing had beat out Lockheed Martin for the F-47 contract in March, ending a months-long pause to the program’s selection process caused by budgetary and design concerns. The aircraft is envisioned as a long-range crewed fighter jet that will replace the Air Force’s fleet of F-22 Raptors and is expected to field sometime in the 2030s.

The F-47 platform is the centerpiece of the Air Force’s future Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems, which also includes robotic wingman drones called Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Budget documents indicate that the CCA program would receive a total of $807 million in FY’26, with a majority of those funds coming from $678 million added in the reconciliation bill.

Similarly, the carrier-based F/A-XX is expected to feature longer ranges, enhanced stealth capabilities and be more survivable than the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet it will eventually replace. After Lockheed Martin dropped out of the competition earlier this year, Boeing and Northrop Grumman are both vying to lead the program.

While budget documents at press time did not disclose the specific work planned for the F/A-XX in the next fiscal year, the funding would allow the Navy to “preserve the ability to leverage F-47 work” and prevent “over-subscription of qualified defense industrial base engineers,” the senior defense official said.

The details provided by budget documents end months of ambiguity over the sea service’s plans for the F/A-XX. After Trump’s dramatic rollout of the Air Force F-47 contract award in March, reports surfaced that the Navy would follow suit and name the prime contractor for its sixth-gen fighter the same month.

But that announcement never came, and subsequent reports from Reuters and Bloomberg indicated that funding disputes and industrial base concerns had delayed the program — potentially by three years.

The Navy’s decision to once again scale back funds to F/A-XX is likely to spark ire among lawmakers, many of whom have recently pressed service leadership to move the program forward.

“I’m concerned that any hesitancy on our part to proceed with the planned procurement of the sixth-gen fighters for the Navy will leave us dangerously outmatched in a China fight. We cannot wait,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said in May during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing with Navy leadership. “Further, we cannot expect to grow the industrial base by undermining aviation programs that rely on highly specialized supply chains and skilled labor that cannot be turned on and off like a switch.”

Ultimately, the final decision on the F/A-XX program’s fate is under discussion by Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump, a senior defense official told reporters Thursday. When asked whether the Pentagon was considering to create a joint Air Force-Navy program — repeating the F-35 Lightning II acquisition model — the official said “pretty much everything is under consideration to get the tactical air capability that our warfighters need as quickly as possible.”

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LASSO — which was a new-start program in the previous budget — is now part of the service’s Launched Effects family of systems and has been realigned under that line item in the 2026 budget.

Drone maker AeroVironment has been manufacturing Switchblade systems for the initiative. The Switchblade 600 carries high-precision optics and an anti-armor warhead. It has upwards of 40 minutes of loitering endurance, a range of 40-plus kilometers, and a “sprint speed” of 185 kilometers per hour, according to a product description from the vendor. The all-up round weighs 65 pounds.

The request for additional loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones or one-way attack drones because they’re designed to destroy their targets by crashing into them — in 2026 comes as officials are undertaking a new Army Transformation Initiative to modernize the force for future high-tech combat. The service is moving to divest of capabilities that are outdated and put more money into other equipment.

“The Army Transformation Initiative, or ATI, as we’ve coined it, is a strategic shift. We’re reinvesting resources to ensure our future dominance as part of the joint force,” a senior Army officials told reporters Thursday at the Pentagon during a background briefing about the budget. “We made some tough choices to shed outdated systems and programs that no longer meet our demands of the modern battlefield,” including divesting from legacy anti-tank missiles, they noted.

Kamikaze drones have played a major role in the Ukraine-Russia war, and U.S. military leaders are taking lessons from that conflict as the seek to modernize their forces.

The Army is aiming to deliver five brigade combat teams-worth of loitering munitions in fiscal 2026. The budget request includes about $68 million for 98 fire control units, 294 all-up rounds and other program elements under LASSO. Nearly $13 million in reconciliation funding would procure an additional 19 LASSO production systems.

“Infantry Brigade Combat Teams (IBCTs) lack adequate proportional organic capabilities at echelon to apply immediate, point, long range, and direct fire effects to destroy tanks, light armored vehicles, hardened targets, defilade, and personnel targets, while producing minimal collateral damage in complex terrain in all environmental conditions,” officials wrote in budget justification documents.

Army leadership wants to give troops new kamikaze drones to fill that capability gap.

The man-portable LASSO is a day/night capable, lightweight, unmanned aerial anti-tank weapon that includes an all-up round and fire control system, according to an Army description of the technology.

“The LASSO range requirement is to fly less than or equal to 20km (straight line with auxiliary antenna) with a flight endurance that enables the Soldier to make multiple orbits within the IBCT typically assigned battlespace, to acquire and attack targets within and beyond current crew served and small arms fire. The range/endurance enables the unit to utilize reach back capability and maximize standoff. Unlike existing direct and indirect fire weapon systems, LASSO’s discreet payload and unique capability delivers Soldiers the ability to abort against targets in a dynamic situation (e.g., use of human shields) or prosecute targets that would have been deemed non-viable in past due to the higher collateral damage associated with alternative munitions,” according to budget documents. Follow-on increments are expected to support capabilities for company and below echelons, focusing on increased range, enhanced lethality and advanced payload options.

Officials noted that the program is aligned with ATI and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive for Army transformation and acquisition reform.

It’s also intended to support the Army’s transforming-in-contact initiative — an effort spearheaded by Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George with a particular focus on unmanned aerial systems, counter-UAS and electronic warfare capabilities — and expand prepositioned stocks in the Indo-Pacific region, where the U.S. military is concerned about a potential future conflict with China.

The LASSO program will use other transaction authority for contracting, which is intended to cut through bureaucratic red tape and help the military field new technologies faster than traditional acquisition processes. Officials also intend to award up to four hardware contracts to modernize the industrial base and generate domestic ammunition stockpiles, according to budget documents.

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Detailed budget materials are being released on a rolling basis this week, but the officials provided insights into the nearly $1 trillion spending plan in an off-camera press briefing Thursday morning.

“This budget is the first year that we are calling out — specifically — our autonomy line in its own section. So, it will be $13.4 billion for autonomy and autonomous systems,” a senior defense official told DefenseScoop. 

“For counter [unmanned aerial systems], the total request is $3.1 billion across the services,” they also confirmed. 

The new requests for additional drone and counter-drone funding come as the U.S. military confronts serious challenges integrating and defending against the rapidly evolving weapons, which often cost much less to produce than the multimilllion-dollar missiles that have been deployed to take them down.

The senior defense official supplied a high-level breakdown on the robotics and autonomy-enabling budget lines.

“For unmanned and remotely-operated aerial vehicles, it’s $9.4 billion; autonomous ground vehicles, $210 million; on the water autonomous systems, $1.7 billion; underwater capabilities, $734 million; and enabling capabilities — that’s the autonomy software, the things that underlie all these systems, working and operating together as a central brain — it’s $1.2 billion to work across all those platforms on autonomy,” they said.

A senior Navy official at the briefing also pointed to what they consider to be a “big increase” associated with autonomy investments for the sea service.

“[It’s] $5.3 billion across all systems. And that’s $2.2 billion above FY 2025. That includes procuring three MQ-25s, which we’ll have our first flight in 2026 — and then additional unmanned air [assets], new efforts in unmanned undersea and in unmanned surface, to include procuring our medium unmanned surface vessel. So, we have a lot of efforts across all domains,” the senior Navy official told DefenseScoop.

Two aircraft carrier strike groups operating in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility are “engaged in combat every day” against enemy-launched drones, they noted.

“We have the [USS Gerald R. Ford] that is just now deploying. Ford will deploy with some additional counter-UAS capabilities, and then we’ll continue to look and learn and develop those kits that we sent before, and [applying] part of what we’re learning,” the senior Navy official said.

Representatives from the other military services did not share information about their departments’ autonomy toplines during the briefing.

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Congress funded the F/A-XX project to the tune of $454 million in fiscal 2025. However, the Defense Department wants to slash spending to just $74 million in 2026, according to budget documents viewed by DefenseScoop. Meanwhile, the DOD plans to spend $3.5 billion in the next fiscal year on the Air Force’s next-gen fighter, the F-47.

The 2026 request “slows” the Navy’s program “due to industrial base concerns of two sixth-generation programs occurring simultaneously,” according to the document.

Lawmakers this week expressed concern about the projected cuts.

“We know that in the FY ’25 [continuing resolution] there was $453.8 million … put towards that — I’ll get the number right — and in reconciliation $500 million. So you can see Congress is consistently pushing ahead and saying, ‘This is … where we need to go.’ And we’d be a little surprised if the support for this fell off, especially since we’re looking at the requirements and not seeing any change there,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said Thursday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Wittman asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who was testifying during the hearing, if the requirements that military officials previously laid out for that platform are still the same.

“As we look at the threat picture out in the Pacific, the requirements themselves I think are still valid. I think it comes down to a question that many of the folks on the committee have talked about, and that’s the ability [for industry] to produce at a particular time. And I’ll defer to my civilian leaders on the timing and synchronization [of] that program. But we do need, you know, capability that is mobile, whether it’s F/A-XX or others, that enable us to win on the battlefield to the future,” Caine replied.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was testifying alongside Caine, said the fiscal 2026 budget request “funds the complete design of F/A-XX.”

However, he suggested the Pentagon is reevaluating plans for the program.

“We’re certainly reviewing it — working with the Joint Staff, working with the [combatant commands] — at its application around the globe. So it’s in the mix, but we recognize we need — we also need a capability as quickly as possible for the threats that we face,” Hegseth said.

Navy officials have said the F/A-XX is expected to be extra stealthy, have significantly longer range than the fighter jets that are currently in the fleet, and incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities.

The service also wants the manned jet to be able to team up with advanced drones.

“It will also, with the integration of AI and other technical advantages, allow us to have increased battle space management. And it will be our next platform that, instead of being man in the loop, will truly be man on the loop and allow us to have fully integrated architecture with our unmanned systems that we’re going to be fielding with concepts like the CCAs — whether it’s those collaborative combat aircraft, the small increased mass, or also teaming with larger unmanned vehicles that we may foresee into the future,” Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly, then-director of the air warfare division, N98, in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference in April.

At the same conference, acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby said the Air Force isn’t the only service that needs a sixth-gen fighter for a potential conflict against advanced adversaries like China.

“We need F/A-XX in the United States Navy,” he said. “We’re talking about a fight in the Pacific. We fight together as a joint force, so having that capability is very important for us.”

Many observers had expected the service to award a large development contract to either Boeing or Northrop Grumman in the spring.

However, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, who stepped into his new role in March, told lawmakers Wednesday that officials continue to look at force structure needs for the future.

“As it comes to next-gen fighters … we’re looking at the full composition of the air wing of the future. And so we have to focus on the capabilities and technologies for years to come that are going to win, and that includes manned and unmanned platforms that we have to look at,” he said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

He noted that he also has concerns about the industrial base and how some of the Navy’s other programs are faring.

“I do not have a lot of confidence. All of our programs are in trouble. We have number of companies that are not performing. We’ve got to get those done. So I think looking at this system, sixth-gen is important. And I know it’s important to the admiral [Kilby], he should always give you his best military advice. I think we’re looking at the whole panacea of what we’ve got and then … what makes the most sense to use in the future. And so I think we have to get more confidence in the [industrial] base,” Phelan said.

“This is a system that you know, as I said in my opening statement about readiness, readiness means, like ready, like today and then in the future — and how is that future changing and how do we think about that? And so that’s we’re looking at it, evaluating it, and trying to make sure that we’re not back here in two years saying, ‘We told you it was going to cost X, it’s actually going to be X plus 50, and by the way, it’s going to be late,’” he told the committee.

Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., said the Pentagon shouldn’t be cutting funding for the F/A-XX.

“We need that money for a lot of reasons,” she said at Wednesday’s HASC hearing. “China is … already testing and flying J-50s and J-36 fighters, which is their sixth-generation fighter. The Navy to be competitive with that has got to make that investment.”

The Trump administration has not yet submitted its full fiscal 2026 budget request to Congress. Lawmakers may end up appropriating much more money for the F/A-XX than the Defense Department proposes.

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