Federal agencies have been operating under a continuing resolution since the beginning of October, meaning spending for the Defense Department and other agencies has largely been frozen at fiscal 2023 levels. The budget instability has caused Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, program executive officer for command, control, communications and battle management (C3BM), to pump the brakes on some of his plans for this fiscal year.

“Not having a budget, it’s quite frankly what’s killing me,” he said during a media roundtable at the annual AFA Warfare Symposium. “My budget was supposed to double this year, so my ability to do what we need to do at scale is literally completely hamstrung right now.”

Cropsey is charged with leading modernization for the Department of the Air Force’s C3BM enterprise, which is its contribution to the Pentagon-wide effort known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2). The concept seeks to connect all of the U.S. military’s sensors, shooters and data streams under a more unified network to enable improved, real-time decision making.

Rather than tackle C2 modernization using what Cropsey has referred to as “big bang acquisitions,” his office’s strategy is to simultaneously run multiple smaller contracts for enabling capabilities that will operationally demonstrate and prove the concept can be done. The strategy is to start at the very basic foundational level, then slowly roll out new capabilities and scale them up incrementally, he said.

“You’re going to see lots of very targeted, specific kinds of awards that are coming out to do a thing over here, a thing over there, do some integration, present another capability, and then work it back into the operational scene as quickly as we can,” Cropsey told reporters.

The Air Force has experienced some successes with initial C3BM capabilities that have recently deployed, but Cropsey said that operating at fiscal ’23 spending levels has prevented his office from scaling those technologies. Instead, the Air Force has been prioritizing ongoing efforts using funding from the CR, he explained.

For example, the service delivered the cloud-based command and control (CBC2) capability to U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command in October, and those have become operational at the Eastern and Canadian air defense sectors.

Cropsey told DefenseScoop at the roundtable that the plan is to expand CBC2 to other air defense sectors throughout the year. But because deploying the initial capability was a top priority, “I will kick everything else to the curb in order to keep CBC2 on schedule and on delivery — which we have done — but it’s been at the expense of being able to expand that software pipeline into other places and other capabilities,” he said.

The Air Force also deployed 16 Tactical Operation Centers-Light (TOC-L) kits to different locations around the world. The kits — which Cropsey called the “basic building block for where we’re going for infrastructure for C2” — are now being integrated into exercises at both the joint and service levels, he said.

TOC-L is a lightweight, scalable battle management system that can integrate and fuse data from hundreds of feeds in order to create an accurate air picture for battle managers, Cropsey explained.

“Really what we’re talking about is computers, software and the particular apps that you need to manage the data and the decisions that are going to the person that’s got to make them,” he said.

The Air Force wants to move into a phase 2 of the capability that will allow Cropsey’s office to scale the kits out to even more locations, but the contract to do so is dependent on funds that would come from a fiscal ’24 budget — meaning it’s possible that effort will get pushed back, he said.

At the same time, Cropsey has been able to award smaller contracts for different micro-services under CR funding. Two contracts were recently given for “track-fusion integration” — one to a Lockheed Martin-Numerica team and a second to SciTec.

That effort is “going to be on basically a six-month sprint,” Cropsey said. “They’re going to be charging the hill with regards to what we need to do on that front with algorithms and data fusion.”

The Air Force is also working on its Distributed Battle Management Node, which will combine the different individual pieces of the C3BM enterprise into a single capability offering. The effort is ready for initial deliveries to air control squadrons in multiple different areas of responsibilities, he told reporters.

“That’s all going on right now [with] the budget that I can still eat through with a continuing resolution. But to get after it for real I gotta get the [fiscal 2024] drop,” Cropsey said.

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“We view FY24 and the overall passing of both the NDAA and the appropriations bill as a critical moment that now aligns the responsibilities and authorities within U.S. Cyber Command analogous to those of U.S. Special Operations Command,” Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, currently Cybercom’s deputy commander, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday during his confirmation hearing. “With the passing of the FY24 appropriations bill, U.S. Cyber Command will now have the responsibility for the cyber mission force budget, will have the responsibility for the acquisition of the capabilities for our cyber mission force and have the authority to set the training standards.”

Cybercom has, for the most part, been modeled after Socom, which possesses its own budget and enjoys certain service-like authorities such as procurement and the ability to direct training — all of which is unique for a combatant command.

Beginning in fiscal 2024, Congress has granted the command enhanced budget authority, meaning it has greater oversight over the dollars involved in the capabilities and platforms the services are building on its behalf. This is viewed as a critical step regarding Cybercom’s maturation and maturity as it continues to grow since its creation in 2010.

However, if Congress fails to pass these bills, it could jeopardize the combatant command’s ability to continue to mature and address certain challenges.

“The most important thing would be the passing the FY24 appropriation bill. With the FY24 NDAA and the appropriations bill, that will give us those authorities. Without that, we will operate in our previous model until the budget’s passed and then we’ll have to undo that work and redo it,” Haugh said.

This authority will also help organization address readiness issues associated with its cyber mission force — the 133 teams that each service provides the command to conduct cyber operations. From a readiness perspective, Haugh said that’s “the top issue for Cyber Command.”

“With those authorities it allows Cyber Command to set the investment in our training infrastructure, in our training courses and allows the services to focus on recruiting, initial skills training aligned to our standard, and then to leverage the retention capabilities that Congress has given to the services,” Haugh said. “Those are areas now that really change the dynamic of how we will approach cyber readiness, if confirmed.”

Each service has its own identity, culture and way of classifying and providing forces to Cybercom. Many observers argue that this has been to the detriment of the command given these personnel are soldiers or airmen or sailors first, with a secondary focus on cyber.

Senators have been concerned regarding the readiness of these teams and personnel, passing various measures in successive years to remedy them in recent annual policy bills.

“There are a number of pressing issues that will require your attention. First and foremost, it is widely understood that our Cyber Mission Forces are struggling with readiness shortfalls caused primarily by difficulties in training and retaining personnel in key positions requiring special skills,” said committee chairman Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. “In order to mature the cyber force and advance our nation’s capabilities to conduct cyber operations and supporting intelligence operations, the military services must provide qualified and trained personnel to your Command on time and at the beginning of their tours.”

The committee’s ranking member seconded such concerns.

“I’m concerned that our cyber readiness may suffer because of cyber mission forces serving brief tours at Cybercom,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said. “The services are providing personnel to Cybercom who lack necessary cyber skills, technical expertise and training. I would welcome your views on how to correct readiness shortfalls within the cyber mission force including how you would work services, training across the department and increase the resiliency of the cyber workforce.”  

Haugh noted that in addition to the authorization and funding measures still pending, Congress has already provided the command the ability to build necessary training ranges, advanced training modules and resources to scale such training.

“As we look at that force, one of the things that we want to ensue as U.S. Cyber Command is that we’re setting that baseline standard, so that we can ensure across the department we get the baseline right and allow the services to do that baseline training,” Haugh said.

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That $58.5 billion — $45 billion across unclassified and classified IT investments and $13.5 billion for DOD-wide cyber activities, which DefenseScoop previously reported on in March — would be a bump up from the $55.2 billion the department received for fiscal 2023. The department describes the budget as “steadily increasing” year over year.

While the Biden administration’s budget proposal released in March gave some insight into defense IT and cyber programs the Pentagon wants to support in 2024, this topline number for total IT spending was previously unreleased.

The breakdown shows that the vast majority of this requested IT/cyber budget would go toward business, infrastructure and battlespace support, and cyber security operations. The remaining portion would go to cloud and artificial intelligence activities, though other organizations across the DOD like the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) support other efforts in those spaces. The DOD asked for $1.8 billion for AI and machine learning, per earlier budget documents.

With these numbers, it shows that top-level IT and cyber make up just 7% of the DOD’s larger $842 billion budget request for fiscal 2024.

Despite low funding — $2.3 billion — relative to other categories of IT spending, cloud and software modernization are heavily featured in the overview materials.

“Today’s warfighters require a cloud environment capable of greatly accelerating speed to capability, providing assured cybersecurity, and rapidly adapting to changing mission needs. As a key component of the DoD Digital Modernization Strategy and the DoD Software Modernization Strategy, DoD will accelerate cloud adoption via a cloud smart policy by ensuring that there is a mature portfolio of cloud contracts and enabling cloud adoption through automation for the DoD to transition to cloud computing. The cloud funding within the IT/CA budget steadily increased over the last 5 years, representing a fundamental Department shift towards the adoption of cloud services and the reduction of legacy infrastructure,” the overview reads.

The total request shows the scale of Pentagon IT operations compared to the civilian side of government. Across dozens of civilian agencies, the White House requested $74 billion for their IT functions in 2024.

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The department is requesting $55.4 billion to fund the Air and Space Forces’ research, development, test and evaluation efforts in fiscal 2024 — including investments in a dozen brand new programs that the department believes will help it maintain technological superiority over adversaries. But development cannot begin until Congress approves the DAF’s budget — a process that in recent years has been significantly delayed.

The next fiscal year begins Oct. 1, but Congress often fails to pass appropriations bills on time and federal agencies — including the Defense Department — have had to operate under continuing resolutions that generally don’t allow for new-start programs to begin.

“The problem that I have is the amount of time I have to wait for Congress to act,” Kendall told reporters during a media roundtable at the Space Symposium. 

To bypass potential wait times from the budget cycle, the Pentagon submitted a “Rapid Response to Emergent Technology Advancements or Threats” proposal to Congress that would give the services authorities to begin development of new-start programs all the way up to preliminary design review, Kendall said.

The authority would allow the Air and Space Forces to “leverage an emergent technological advancement of value to the national defense” or “provide a rapid response to an emerging threat,” according to the proposal, which was submitted to Congress on April 12.

Kendall pointed to the seven operational imperatives he created to serve as roadmaps for the department’s modernization efforts. The imperatives include programs like the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems — including the loyal wingman concept known as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) — and resilient space architectures.

“We finished that work about a year ago. A year ago, I had in my hand a number of recommendations on how to most effectively and rapidly spend money in order to get to better capabilities,” Kendall said. “I could have started a lot of those things a year ago, but now we’re going to wait a good year, I would expect — and I’m worried that it might be longer than that.”

One of the new-start projects Kendall noted he is concerned about is the CCA program, for which the Air Force is asking lawmakers about half-a-billion dollars in fiscal 2024 for research, development, test and evaluation.

The limited authority would allow the department to conduct development all the way through the preliminary design review — including the requirements tradeoff process, systems engineering and potentially risk reduction — as a way to move the program forward, Kendall said.

“That would buy us … at least a year-and-a-half or two years in terms of lead time. And it is essentially free,” he said.

Kendall noted that conversations he has had with lawmakers regarding the authority have been positive, although the approval would require Congress to be more flexible than usual.

“One of the reasons this hasn’t happened in the past is because Congress is reluctant to give up even this much authority,” Kendall said. “I think it’s a minimal amount of authority to give up for a very high return.”

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The sea service plans to buy 64 CPS missiles in fiscal 2024-2028 at a total cost of more than $3.6 billion. The “flyaway unit cost” would average $51 million, and the gross weapon system unit cost would average $56.5 million.

By comparison, many of the Navy’s other advanced missiles cost a few million dollars per round or less.

Hypersonic weapons are highly sought by the Pentagon because they are designed to fly faster than Mach 5, be highly maneuverable and pose a major challenge to enemy air defenses. Potential adversaries such as China and Russia have already fielded these types of capabilities.

“The CPS weapon system will deliver a hypersonic conventional offensive strike capability through a depressed boost-glide trajectory to prosecute deep-inland, time-critical, soft and medium-hardened targets in contested environments,” according to Navy budget documents.

The services plans to begin deploying the capability on stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers in fiscal 2025 and on Virginia-class submarines in fiscal 2028.

“Procurement efforts under this program element will provide a weapon system capability that: (1) is non-ballistic over the majority of the flight path; (2) controls stage drop; (3) provides positive control and precision accuracy from launch to impact; (4) provides adequate cross-range/maneuverability to avoid over-flight issues; (5) provides prompt lethal effects on targets; and (6) is man-safe and deployable for surface and submerged platforms,” the new budget justification documents stated.

Fiscal 2024 is the first year of procurement for CPS all-up rounds and accompanying canisters.

The service plans to buy eight CPS missiles in 2024 at a cost of $341 million; 10 in fiscal 2025 for $441 million; 11 in fiscal 2026 for $663 million; 16 in fiscal 2027 for $989 million; and 19 in fiscal 2028 for $1.18 billion.

Lockheed Martin had been tapped to provide program management, engineering development, systems integration, long lead material, and special tooling and equipment in support of CPS missile production. The contractor is expected to provide launcher systems, weapon control, all-up rounds, and platform integration support.

The hypersonic systems will have various technology insertions that will affect the per unit cost over time, according to the Navy.

“Technology Insertion – 22 (TI-22) is the first hypersonic system to be fielded onboard ZUMWALT Class DDG. The TI process enables the program to continue accelerated and iterative improvements to system capability, manufacturability, and affordability and provide for obsolescence management. In FY 2025, the procurement profile consists of eight TI-22s and two TI-24s. The different TI unit costs drive the unit cost increase displayed in FY 2025. The associated Procurement Support costs for that year will also reflect a mixed unit cost,” the budget justification documents stated.

The Navy is asking lawmakers for $901 million in fiscal 2024 for research, development, test and evaluation work for the Conventional Prompt Strike program. The service has not yet released its RDT&E budget justification documents covering the full 2024-2028 time period.

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Budget documents released last year projected the Army requesting $201.1 million in fiscal 2024 for procurement of the Terrestrial Layer System-Brigade Combat Team, which is the first brigade-organic integrated signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber platform that will first be mounted on Strykers. It is part of a family of systems that also includes the TLS-Echelons Above Brigade, which is designed for higher echelons that will need to monitor and sense the battlefield across greater distances than lower, more tactically focused echelons.

However, the recently released fiscal 2024 budget request includes just $84.6 million for TLS-BCT procurement.

“This funding change was in response to an adjustment in the program’s Middle-Tier Acquisition Rapid Prototyping strategy to prioritize and accelerate the fielding of capability to [infantry brigade combat teams],” Ken Strayer, project manager for electronic warfare and cyber at Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, said in a statement to DefenseScoop. “The cost to equip an IBCT with a TLS-BCT manpack solution is lower than either the Stryker BCT or Armored BCT solutions.”

At the end of the Cold War, the Army divested much of its electronic warfare inventory. As a result, the service doesn’t have any program-of-record jamming capabilities and has historically relied upon quick reaction capabilities that fill gaps identified by commanders. These have consisted of the dismounted Versatile Radio Observation and Direction (VROD) and VROD Modular Adaptive Transmission system (VMAX) — the former surveys the field from an electromagnetic perspective, and the latter provides a limited electronic attack capability.

When it comes to developing programs of record, the Army is prioritizing filling immediate gaps.

The service has created a requirement for a dismounted capability associated with TLS-BCT that will be a manpack version. Officials have said soldiers will be able to take a backpack off the platform for dismounted operations.

Last year’s budget request for fiscal 2023 sought to procure six TLS-BCT systems, while projecting a 25 system spend in fiscal 2024. However, the new 2024 budget blueprint is requesting 56 total systems — 52 are the manpack version and the remaining four are for the Stryker production.

Fiscal 2024 funding would also go toward contract management required for an urgent operational needs statement for V Corps in support of the European Deterrence Initiative, budget documents state.

Strayer emphasized that the decrease in requested procurement funding does not equate to a slip in program schedule.

“The program is on-schedule for an Operational Demonstration in September 2023 that will inform the production and fielding decision. Additionally, the added [research, development, test and evaluation] funding will support the FY24 integration of the TLS BCT mission payload onto the Army’s new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) for Armored BCTs,” he told DefenseScoop.

“Additionally, a portion of this OPA reduction was shifted to the program’s FY24 RDTE request. This will allow the Army to issue the prototype Stryker-based systems to an operational unit in FY24 in support of more expansive operational testing prior to commitment to production and full fielding,” Strayer said.

The Army has yet to release budget justification books for research, development, test and evaluation with the new five-year spending projections.

The 2024 budget request included $859,000 for procurement for TLS-EAB, which was a new start this year regarding procurement under the TLS line item.

Requested funding would also go toward the planning for procurement of some of the most critical long lead items required for the initial TLS-EAB production systems, budget documents state. Last summer, the Army awarded Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics Mission Systems contracts to do design work, which includes software infrastructure and vehicle design worth approximately $15 million over an 11-month period of performance.

Both companies recently declined to provide updates to DefenseScoop on their efforts ahead of the Army’s award.

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The RDER effort is aimed at identifying and putting prototypes through their paces so that promising technologies can be more rapidly fielded to combatant commanders to address joint warfighting requirements. The Pentagon requested $359 million for the program in fiscal 2023. For fiscal 2024, it is asking for $687 million.

“It’s doubled because we’re doing two sprints,” Shyu said Wednesday at the annual McAleese and Associates Defense Programs Conference. “Typically looking at … around $300 million to $350 million per sprint.”

Some senior leaders wanted even more money to go toward RDER, according to Shyu.

“Initially, they came in and gave me a budget of $1.2 billion. I said, ‘We’ll, that’s a bit much, OK.’ I’m trying to temper down their appetite a little bit,” Shyu said, saying the $687 million would be “a little bit more digestible.”

The RDER funding requested for 2024 would go toward “experimentation and evaluation of advanced technologies to deliver ready capabilities that advance the Joint Warfighting Concept,” according to DOD budget documents.

During the DOD budget rollout earlier this week, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks highlighted RDER, saying it would be “hastening the pathway from joint concept to experimentation to fielding systems.”

The department hosted a major industry day related to the program last year, and it has been deluged with white papers.

“We work very closely with the Joint Staff to understand what are the critical requirements, critical capabilities they’re looking for in a highly contested war. And then what we end up doing was taking those capabilities they desired, working with the services to figure out, are there prototypes that they know of that industry is working on as well as themselves that could close these capabilities in terms of providing something in the relatively near term,” Shyu said.

Focus areas include resilient communication, joint command and control, and contested logistics.

“As a part of the RDER activity, what we want to do is be able to say, out of the prototypes we’ve tested, if it’s effective, if the Joint Staff, the [combatant commands], the services say, ‘This performed great, let’s get into rapid fielding’ — OK. And [the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment] has already defined multiple different pathways that can help pull products through much quicker,” Shyu said.

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Broadly, Project Overmatch marks the Navy’s complex contribution to the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) pursuit — a multi-billion-dollar plan to securely connect forces and military assets across all domains, including space and cyberspace. Each service is bringing its own elements to the table for JADC2, but many details about the Navy’s program have been kept secret over the last several years since its inception.

During the annual McAleese and Associates Defense Programs Conference in Washington on Wednesday, Gilday alluded to Project Overmatch-aligned progress now unfolding in California, via the homeport for Navy Carrier Strike Group One (CSG-1) and its current flagship, the USS Carl Vinson.

“I want to use the USS Vinson to accelerate the scaling” of Project Overmatch, Gilday told DefenseScoop after his keynote at the conference.

Investments the Navy has made and continues to make will ultimately enable that next-generation operational architecture, which during his keynote Gilday said “will be the bedrock for the joint tactical network of the future.”

He added that the in-the-making systems and technologies will allow Navy officials to “take any data and push it over any network in a software-defined environment, where the software decides what to prioritize information and how that data is going to flow to the endpoint — whether that’s a decision maker or whether that’s a weapon system.”

Though brief, in his keynote Gilday also mentioned that his team recently scaled Project Overmatch “to a carrier strike group, operating up the coast of California now” — and is “looking to scale that fleet-wide after that, and to scale even further across the Navy.”

In response to DefenseScoop’s follow-up question on that specific work, Gilday said he is “expecting big things” out of Vinson and that carrier strike group in fiscal 2024 to inform how Project Overmatch can be unfurled across the sprawling enterprise.

“I want to see a successful instantiation in the Vinson strike group as they deploy,” he noted.

Much like the Navy’s Fifth Fleet is doing with drones, Gilday said this work represents experimentation and delivery of capabilities “against real-world problems” — and is not simply “experimentation for experimentation sake.”

The Navy is requesting $192 million for Project Overmatch in fiscal 2024 — less than the enacted amount for fiscal 2023, which was $226 million.

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The request comes as the U.S. is facing growing threats to its space systems, including cyber warfare activities; electronic attack platforms; lasers designed to blind or damage satellite sensors; ground-launched missiles; and “space-to-space orbital engagement systems” — in other words, satellites that can attack other satellites.

The enhanced operational test and training infrastructure that the Space Force plans to invest in “will be the backbone of our readiness as we prepare for high-intensity fights. This infrastructure will allow guardians to execute realistic training against simulated adversaries to validate our tactics,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said at the McAleese and Associates annual Defense Programs Conference.

In September, Space Training and Readiness Command conducted its inaugural Black Skies exercise, which focused on electronic warfare. “Through these events, we are continuing continuously enhancing tactics and operational concepts to create a ready force for the emerging threats,” Saltzman said.

However, the training infrastructure still isn’t sufficient.

Saltzman told DefenseScoop that the Space Force is “still working through all the details” about where it will invest the $340 million.

“But just in general terms … [in the past] we thought of space as more of a benign environment. Our focus was on how do we get satellites to last as long as possible on orbit doing the missions that we need … It wasn’t prioritized in the same degree about thinking about a contested domain. Now, we are prioritizing that, obviously, but I don’t have the training facilities and infrastructure that allows us to do the kinds of simulations and training that we need” to fully prepare for that, he said.

“The simulators are built around procedural currency with the weapon systems, not necessarily interacting with a thinking adversary. So we want to enhance the simulators. We also recognize that range activities, which are so important to all of the other services to practice their skills to validate concepts to validate tactics — we don’t really have that either. So we’re expanding our capabilities to do constructive virtual training and ranges so we can conduct those kinds of events,” he added.

DefenseScoop asked Saltzman if guardians will be practicing for offensive as well as defensive operations.

“That’s a great question because, you know, I don’t think about it in those terms,” he said. “Operations can be offensive or defensive. And of course, we’re going to practice the full spectrum of operations so we can offer the secretary of defense and the president the full scope of independent options. That’s what’s required of us. But you know, we don’t talk about offensive F-35s and defensive F-35s [when it comes to Air Force fighter jets, for example] — it’s the operations they’re performing. And actually going through those war games and going through the exercises is where we develop those operational concepts.”

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The sea service is also looking to buy eight “all-up rounds” and associated canisters for CPS weapons in 2024, marking the first procurement of the missiles. The Navy intends to procure a total of 64 rounds in fiscal 2024-2028, according to budget documents released Monday.

Hypersonic weapons are a high priority for the Department of Defense writ large as it tries to catch up with China and Russia in this area. These types of missiles are designed to fly faster than Mach 5 and be highly maneuverable against enemy air defenses.

“The CPS weapon system will deliver a hypersonic conventional offensive strike capability through a depressed boost-glide trajectory to prosecute deep-inland, time-critical, soft and medium-hardened targets in contested environments,” according to Navy budget documents.

The service is partnering with the Army on a common hypersonic glide body (CHGB) that consists of a 34.5-inch two-stage booster and a thermal protection system.

“The Navy will design, develop, and produce the missile booster, as well as integrate the missile booster with the CHGB. Each service will use the common hypersonic missile while developing individual weapon control systems and launchers tailored for launch from sea or land,” per the budget documents.

The Navy plans to begin deploying the capability on stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers in fiscal 2025 and on Virginia-class submarines in fiscal 2028. Some weapon systems are slated to be removed from the destroyers to allow for integration of CPS technology. Engineering efforts are also planned for fiscal 2024 to support future integration on Virginia-class Block V hulls, in-air launcher testing, construction of the underwater launch test facility and fabrication of specialty equipment to facilitate testing slated for fiscal 2025, according to budget documents.

In February, the service announced that Lockheed Martin had been awarded a $1.18 billion cost-plus-incentive-fee and cost-plus-fixed-fee contract modification, to provide program management, engineering development, systems integration, long lead material, and special tooling and equipment in support of CPS missile production. If all contract options are exercised, it would be worth up to $2.22 billion.

Lockheed is expected to provide launcher systems, weapon control, all-up rounds, and platform integration support, the contractor said in a press release.

The Pentagon has encountered challenges in testing hypersonics technology. Most recently, a missile flight test scheduled for March 5 had to be scrapped by the Navy and Army due to an issue associated with battery activation — not the missile itself.

During a press briefing on Monday during the fiscal 2024 budget rollout, Navy Undersecretary Erik Raven was asked about the service’s decision to request funding for CPS procurement given the current state of testing.

“On CPS, I think what you’re seeing here [in the budget request] is … an endorsement of the capability, again, very central to national pacing challenges [posed by China] in the Indo-Pacific. The point of testing is to learn things, but we have confidence that we’re going to be able to field the system as required. And we’ll work with our industrial partners to make sure that we stay on track,” Raven said.

At the annual SNA symposium in January, DefenseScoop asked Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro if he was confident that hypersonic weapons will be ready to be deployed on Zumwalts and Virginia-class boats by the target dates.

“What I am confident of, is that I’m going to put as much resources and much attention, as much intellectual capacity in terms of my management team, and work … as closely with industry as we can to make that a priority and a reality. Now, if we have technical challenges that develop along the way, we’ll deal with those. But what I do know is that if we put the right talent, we put the right resources into it, hopefully, we will get there [on the Zumwalts] by 2025 or shortly afterwards. But this is a major priority for the Department of the Navy, and I am completely focused along with the CNO on making this happen,” he said.

Last week, Vice Adm. Johnny Wolfe, director of the Navy’s strategic systems programs, testified during a hearing of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, where he and other Pentagon officials provided an update on where things stand with the department’s hypersonics efforts.

“I remain confident that the CPS program will be ready to field the hypersonic weapon system upon the availability of the Navy platforms,” Wolfe told lawmakers.

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