Air Force officials overseeing HACM told the Government Accountability Office that the program’s first design review was held in September 2024 — six months later than expected — because more time was needed to nail down the missile’s hardware design. As a result, the service will only have time to conduct five flight tests for HACM before it begins rapid fielding efforts in fiscal 2027.

“Program officials said that the delays will reduce the number of flight tests the program can conduct during the 5-year rapid prototyping effort from seven to five,” GAO said in its annual assessment of the Pentagon’s acquisition programs, published Wednesday. “These officials said that the program will still be able to establish sufficient confidence in the missile to declare it operational and to meet all the [middle tier of acquisition pathway’s] objectives with the reduced number of tests.”

Led by RTX subsidiary Raytheon, HACM is an air-breathing scramjet missile and one of the Air Force’s two main efforts to develop hypersonic weapons, which can fly at speeds of at least Mach 5 and are highly maneuverable mid-flight. Northrop Grumman is also on the program as a subcontractor that’s developing the scramjet engine.

Raytheon received a $985 million deal from the Air Force in 2022 to develop HACM under a middle tier of acquisition (MTA) contract, an alternative procurement pathway that requires systems to complete a rapid prototyping effort within five years. The company was later given a $407 million award in 2023 for additional work to enhance the HACM’s capabilities — bringing the contract’s total value to nearly $1.4 billion.

According to its budget request for fiscal 2025, the Air Force planned to mature HACM’s design and initiate flight test activities — including integration on the F-15E Strike Eagle and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, as well as all-up-round free flight testing of missile prototypes. The service intended to build 13 missiles during the rapid prototyping effort to use as “test assets, spares, and rounds for initial operational capability,” the GAO report noted.

Program officials told GAO that HACM’s first design review was delayed to allow for more time to finalize the missile’s hardware design and “validate an initial configuration of the system for use in the first flight test,” the report stated. Another review to certify the system’s “fully operational configuration for use in the final flight tests” was scheduled for sometime in 2025. 

An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment on the current status of HACM’s development, citing “enhanced program security measures.” Raytheon did not respond to DefenseScoop’s request for comment.

Furthermore, GAO said that Raytheon is now “projecting that it will significantly exceed its cost baseline” for HACM, although Air Force officials told the watchdog that removing two flight tests could offer some savings. The program’s development cost as of January 2025 was estimated at close to $2 billion — a two percent increase from the watchdog’s 2024 assessment of $1.9 billion, according to the new report.

HACM would not be the Air Force’s first hypersonic missile to face challenges during development. Its other program — the Lockheed Martin-developed AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) — had a rocky test campaign. At least one of the weapon’s flight tests was deemed unsuccessful, prompting the service to shift priority to HACM’s development.

Issues during ARRW’s testing led the service to axe the weapon’s procurement in FY’25 so the Air Force could reassess the program for future budget requests, casting doubt on ARRW’s future. However, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin recently revealed that the service has included funds to buy ARRW missiles in its upcoming fiscal 2026 budget request.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW. The other is HACM,” Allvin said last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Although both ARRW and HACM are hypersonic weapons, they each have different propulsion systems that give them different characteristics. ARRW is a large boost-glide missile that uses a rocket motor to achieve hypersonic flight and is thus limited to being carried by bigger platforms, such as the B-52 Stratofortress bomber. On the other hand, HACM is a smaller cruise missile powered by an air-breathing jet engines, or scramjet, meaning it can be launched from more tactical aircraft like fighter jets.

Despite their differences, Air Force officials have previously stated that both ARRW and HACM are “complementary” to one another.

Moving forward, the Air Force is working with Raytheon to create a new schedule for HACM that still follows the five-year rapid prototyping timeframe mandated for MTA programs, GAO noted in the report. The government watchdog also said the Air Force has altered HACM’s transition strategy to support faster delivery of more missiles, while also improving the weapon’s design for large-scale manufacturing and expanding the industrial base’s capacity for production.

The service currently plans to use the rapid fielding effort in FY’27 to deliver missiles developed during HACM’s initial prototyping phase and then iterate on the weapon’s design. That work will inform a concurrent major capability acquisition pathway program the Air Force will start production for in fiscal 2029, according to GAO.

“The program office stated that based on global power competition and urgency to address threats, the Air Force changed the focus of the HACM program from a prototype demonstration to a program that would deliver operational capability in fiscal year 2027,” per the report. “The program stated that, with this shift, it is focused on meeting schedule as the priority and maintaining velocity toward fielding an operationally relevant capability — the minimum viable product that meets user-defined performance requirements — in fiscal year 2027.”

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Following a troubled flight testing campaign, the Air Force decided not to include any funding to procure ARRW in its budget request for fiscal 2025. At the time, officials said it would take time to fully analyze and understand data gathered during the test campaign before fully committing to putting more money toward the system’s development or fielding.

But comments made by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin on Thursday suggest the service has resolved to continue funding the ARRW program rather than end it.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW,” Allvin said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Developing hypersonic missiles has been a top priority for the entire Defense Department as U.S. adversaries continue to mature their own technology. The weapons are able to reach speeds of Mach 5 or higher and are highly maneuverable in-flight, making them difficult for air defense systems to intercept.

And while the Air Force, Army and Navy each have respective hypersonic missiles development programs, all of the weapons so far have yielded mixed results during flight test campaigns.

After a successful all-up-round test for ARRW in late 2022, the Air Force conducted three additional tests in 2023 and a final one in 2024 — but declined to share any results, casting doubt on whether all objectives were met during the campaign.

In 2023, then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall admitted to lawmakers that ARRW’s second test in March of that year was deemed unsuccessful. As a result, he said the service intended to reevaluate the program as it finished flight tests, but would shift focus to its other hypersonic missile program, known as the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM).

Furthermore, a 2024 report from the Pentagon’s weapons tester revealed that ARRW’s test campaign was also challenged by a lack of available infrastructure and insufficient means to collect critical flight data. 

Now, both ARRW and HACM are “continuing to develop and moving beyond [research, development, test and evaluation] and getting into the procurement range in the very near future,” Allvin told lawmakers Thursday.

Under development by Lockheed Martin since 2018, ARRW is a boost-glide missile that uses a rocket booster to reach hypersonic speeds, meaning the weapon is large and can only be launched via very big aircraft like the Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress bomber.

On the other hand, HACM is a smaller, air-breathing scramjet hypersonic missile that is compatible with more aircraft, including fighter jets. RTX was tapped to develop a prototype design for HACM in 2022, and the service was expected to conduct at least 13 tests between October 2024 and March 2027 before production decisions are made, according to the Government Accountability Office’s annual Weapon System Assessment report released last year.

“The Air Force plans to transition HACM to the major capability acquisition pathway at either development start or production start in 2027, depending on what capabilities the Air Force is willing to accept and whether production facilities are ready,” the GAO report stated.

The Air Force declined to provide additional details regarding ARRW’s fate until the FY ’26 budget is approved.

Lockheed Martin deferred specific questions to the Air Force, but a spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the company “has full confidence in the maturity and production readiness of ARRW hypersonic-strike capabilities. We continue partnering with the U.S. Air Force to meet the urgent needs of our warfighters.”

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Officials announced this week that the Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band pod, which will be mounted on EA-18G Growler aircraft, had reached the critical milestone — meaning the design, testing and production of the pod meets the logistical needs of the carrier air wings and Growler squadrons.

Overall, the NGJ — a cooperative program with the Royal Australian Air Force — is the replacement for the decades-old ALQ-99. The program was initially broken up into three separate jamming pods covering various ends of the electromagnetic spectrum based upon the criticality of current and emerging threats: Mid-Band, Low-Band (which L3Harris won in August 2024 after years of protest) and High-Band (for which there hasn’t been any line item in Navy budgets since at least fiscal 2020).

The pods are expected to be significantly more powerful than the ALQ-99, with extended range and the ability to jam multiple targets simultaneously. With the increase in sophistication and range of adversaries’ military systems — especially across the Pacific — such a capability could be critically important for the U.S. military in future conflicts.

“Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band improves our fleet’s warfighting advantage in the electromagnetic spectrum,” Rear Adm. John Lemmon, program executive officer for tactical aircraft programs, said in a statement. “This system provides enhanced capabilities to deny, distract and disorient adversaries’ radars, protecting our naval aviators and allowing them to carry out their missions in contested airspace.”

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Bedwell, EA-18G naval flight officer and NGJ-MB deputy integrated product team lead, noted that the Mid-Band pod will boost the fleet’s ability to maintain spectrum dominance, adding that the “era of isolated surface-to-air missile systems, which operate within a non-agile and limited frequency range, is behind us.”

Raytheon, an RTX business, won the initial Mid-Band contract in 2016 with follow-on awards for low-rate initial production in March 2023. The first production pods were delivered to the fleet in July 2023, according to the Navy.

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The program is for the Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band pod, which will be mounted on EA-18G Growlers. Raytheon won the initial contract for the Mid-Band pod in 2016.

Overall, the Next Generation Jammer — a cooperative program with the Royal Australian Air Force — is the replacement for the decades-old ALQ-99. The program was initially broken up into three separate jamming pods covering various ends of the electromagnetic spectrum based upon the criticality of current and emerging threats: Mid-Band, Low-Band (which L3Harris won in August after years of protest) and High-Band (for which there hasn’t been any line item in Navy budgets since at least fiscal 2020).

The pods are expected to be significantly more powerful than the ALQ-99, with extended range and the ability to jam multiple targets simultaneously. With the increase in sophistication and range of adversaries’ military systems — especially across the Pacific — such a jamming capability could be critically important for the U.S. military in future conflicts.

The award is part of the low-rate initial production and is one in a series that is also projected to be awarded in the future, according to an RTX spokesperson.

Raytheon was awarded the low-rate initial production in March 2023. The first production pods were delivered to the fleet in July 2023, according to the Navy.

“NGJ-MB is a revolutionary offensive electronic attack system for the joint force that puts a critical combat capability in the hands of our Naval warfighters,” Barbara Borgonovi, president of naval power at Raytheon, said in a statement. “We’re working with the U.S. Navy to ensure NGJ-MB provides the advanced electronic warfare solution needed as quickly as possible.”

The work under the contract will take place through 2028, Raytheon said.

The company also recently won a $192 million contract to develop an extended-range capability for the Mid-Band pod, known as NGJ-MBX. Last year, the Navy initiated a change to the Mid-Band program to develop an extended pod, NGJ-MBX, to provide increased range and address specific gaps in the upper frequency. This capability provides a frequency extension of the Mid-Band as the quickest way to address near-term threats in light of the High-Band capability that remains unfunded.

The RTX spokesperson said the contract award announced Thursday covers the baseline configuration, and the MBX capability will come in a future lot.

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Space Systems Command (SSC) awarded Millennium, a Boeing subsidiary, a second contract valued at $386 million for the service’s Resilient Missile Warning and Missile Tracking – MEO (MEO MW/MT) effort. Under both the new agreement and one previously given to the firm in 2023, Millennium will deliver a total of 12 space vehicles for the first phase of the program, known as Epoch 1.

“Once on orbit, Epoch 1 satellites will play a vital role in delivering advanced missile warning and tracking capabilities,” Lt. Col. Nathan Terrazone, materiel leader for the Epoch 1 space branch at SSC, said in a statement. “Our commitment is to rapidly deliver operational requirements. Awarding this additional plane lets us do that without skipping a beat.”

The announcement comes after the Space Force discontinued Raytheon’s (RTX) contract for the MEO MW/MT program in June. RTX was originally contracted to build three space vehicles for Epoch 1, but was ultimately dropped from the effort due to significant cost growth, slips in launch schedule and unresolved design challenges experienced by the company, according to SSC.

Millennium initially received a $509.5 million contract in 2023 to build six satellites for the MEO MW/MT program. The six original satellites are on track to deliver by fiscal 2026, and the additional space vehicles are expected to deliver in early fiscal 2028, according to SSC. Once launched, the 12 birds will be split evenly across two orbital planes, a press release noted.

Part of the Space Force’s plan to build a resilient architecture of missile warning and tracking satellites across multiple orbits, the MEO MW/MT constellation is intended to track a range of high-speed missile threats.

Much like the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture in low-Earth orbit, the constellation will be launched in successive phases — or “epochs” — every two-to-three years in order to incrementally build operational capabilities.

The Epoch 1 space vehicles will serve as the constellation’s baseline architecture, while its follow-on Epoch 2 will deliver initial warfighting capability in early fiscal 2029, according to SSC. The service released a request for proposal for Epoch 2 in August, seeking up to 18 satellites that will “provide the nation with expanded global tracking capability to counter hypersonic and other advanced missile threats,” an SSC press release stated.

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The program is for the Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band Extended (NGJ-MBX), which will be mounted on EA-18G Growlers. Raytheon won the initial contract for the Mid-Band pod in 2016.

Overall, the Next Generation Jammer — a cooperative program with the Royal Australian Air Force — is the replacement for the decades-old ALQ-99. The program was initially broken up into three separate jamming pods covering various ends of the electromagnetic spectrum based upon the criticality of current and emerging threats: Mid-Band, Low-Band (which L3Harris won in August after years of protest) and High-Band (for which there hasn’t been any line item in Navy budgets since at least fiscal 2020).

The pods are expected to be significantly more powerful than the ALQ-99, with extended range and the ability to jam multiple targets simultaneously. With the increase in sophistication and range of adversaries’ military systems — especially across the Pacific — such a jamming capability could be critically important for the U.S. military in future conflicts.

In 2023, the Navy initiated a change to the Mid-Band program to develop an extended pod, NGJ-MBX, to provide increased range and address specific gaps in the upper frequency. This capability provides a frequency extension of the Mid-Band as the quickest way to address near-term threats in light of the High-Band capability that remains unfunded.

According to a Raytheon spokesperson, the company was issued a study and risk reduction contract in December 2022, and now the engineering and manufacturing development award on Sept. 27, 2024.

A Raytheon release this week noted the new $192 million contract will serve to upgrade the current Mid-Band system providing a modification to extend the frequency range, counter additional threats and provide additional capabilities to improve operational effectiveness. The spokesperson noted the upgraded MBX arrays will be produced and integrated on new production pods and retrofitted to fielded Mid-Band systems.

“Offensive Electronic Attack provides a tremendous combat capability supporting strike packages and kinetic weapons across a broad range of missions,” said Barbara Borgonovi, president of Naval Power at Raytheon. “With this upgrade, we’ll ensure our naval aviators in all theaters are better prepared to counter new adversary threats and provide greater combat power throughout their missions.”

In fiscal 2025 budget documents, the Navy requested $86.7 million in research and development funds for the MBX effort. Work in fiscal year 2025 is projected to include detailed design development of the Advanced Frequency Converter Module and MBX arrays and a system critical design review. The plan for fiscal year 2025 is also to procure prototype material with aircraft/software integration efforts beginning along with preparation for testing efforts.

The documents note the Navy wants to deliver the MBX capability to the fleet as quickly as possible.

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The $197 million cost-plus-fixed-fee deal was announced Thursday evening by the Defense Department as part of its daily list of major contract awards. Bids were solicited via the internet and one was received, according to the Pentagon. The estimated completion date for the work is Sept. 30, 2027.

Army leaders are keen on Coyote weapons as a mean of protecting soldiers from adversaries’ unmanned aerial systems, which have become a growing threat on modern battlefields as American troops and others have come under attack from kamikaze drones and other platforms, including in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility in the Middle East.

Earlier this year, the service awarded a $75 million contract to RTX Corp., the parent company of Raytheon, to produce 600 Coyote Block 2C interceptors.

Thursday’s announcement about the new, nearly $200 million deal didn’t say how many interceptors were included or which variants. DefenseScoop has reached out to the Army seeking that information. RTX officials referred DefenseScoop to the Army for those details.

“We continue to see growing demand for our Raytheon Coyote family of effectors, which offer a low-cost and highly effective solution for defeating unmanned aircraft systems. Coyote can defeat multiple targets, singles and swarms, demonstrating reduced engagement timelines to defeat various threats,” Bill Darne, director for counter-UAS and short-range ground-based air defense requirements, capabilities and solutions at Raytheon, said in a statement.

Army officials have described the Coyote as a key component of its counter-drone “system of systems.”

The ground-launched, radar-guided interceptor — which comes in kinetic and non-kinetic variants — “integrates into fixed site-low, slow, small-unmanned aircraft system integrated defeat systems and mobile-slow, small-unmanned aircraft system integrated defeat systems,” the Army said in a release in January.

The term “kinetic,” in U.S. military parlance, generally refers to missiles or other traditional types of weapons that directly strike their targets. Non-kinetic capabilities like electronic warfare, high-power microwaves and high-energy lasers, offer alternative ways of thwarting enemy platforms.

Looking ahead, the estimated production requirement for Coyote-related capabilities in the fiscal 2025-2029 time frame is a minimum quantity of 6,000 kinetic interceptors, 700 non-kinetic interceptors, 252 fixed-site launcher systems, 25 mobile launcher systems, 118 fixed-site Ku-band Radio Frequency Sensors (KuRFS) and 33 mobile KuRFS, according to a notice posted on Sam.gov in December 2023.

The Army’s fiscal 2025 budget request, released in March, sought $116.3 million to procure Coyote interceptors.

“We’ve been developing counter-UAS systems for a number of years and fielding a lot — primarily to Centcom. The Coyote missile, for example, was started as a counter-UAS missile. That’s one of the most effective ones we have right now. So you will see additional funding for those things,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, told DefenseScoop during a budget preview with reporters.

In May, the service released to industry a request for information related to a future increment of its maneuver short-range air defense (M-SHORAD) capability. Among the characteristics sought are the ability to support mounted and dismounted operations with multiple effectors — including interceptors like the Coyote — and sensors integrated on a single platform or “manned/unmanned pairs.”

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Space Systems Command notified Raytheon of the discontinuation in May and held a design closure event earlier this month, an SSC spokesperson said in an email. The service decided to drop the company from the program “because the RTX Epoch 1 development effort was facing significant cost growth from the original agreement baseline, projecting slips to the launch schedule, and had unresolved design challenges,” they added.

Raytheon received an other transaction agreement in 2021 to design digital models of three space vehicles for Epoch 1 of the MEO MW/MT program. The planned constellation is intended to track high-speed missiles from medium-Earth orbit (MEO), and is part of the Space Force’s plan to build a resilient architecture of missile-warning satellites in multiple orbits. 

Similar to the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the MEO MW/MT satellites are being developed in phases — referred to as “epochs” — that are designed to deliver the latest capabilities in increments. Raytheon is also contracted with SDA to build satellites for Tranche 1 of the PWSA’s missile tracking layer, which will be launched into low-Earth orbit.

“RTX remains committed to supporting the U.S. Space Force now and in the future,” a company spokesperson said in a statement when asked to comment on RTX’s discontinuation from the Epoch 1 effort.

Boeing-subsidiary Millennium Space Systems received a contract at the same time as Raytheon in 2021, to design six satellites for the constellation. In June 2023, L3Harris became the third vendor for Epoch 1 when the Space Force awarded it a one-year contract for sensor payload design.

The service announced in November that the six satellites from Millennium passed space system critical design review, and the SSC spokesperson noted the company also achieved CDR for its ground segments in March. In addition, L3Harris completed critical design review for its infrared sensor payload designed for Epoch 1 in May, according to the company.

The SSC spokesperson noted that the decision to remove Raytheon from the program has not impacted the other vendors nor the program’s schedule to launch the satellites sometime in 2026 or 2027.

To replace the three scrapped space vehicles, the Space Force now plans to either build additional space vehicles from another vendor contracted for Epoch 1 or through its upcoming competition for Epoch 2, the next iteration of the MEO MW/MT constellation.

A request for proposal for Epoch 2 of MEO MW/MT is expected to be released in July, according to the spokesperson.

“We are still on path to deliver to our Epoch 1 goals to provide an initial missile tracking capability, prototype several key technologies, and refine operational concepts in MEO,” they said. “The MEO program has done an outstanding job of creating a sustained competitive environment, allowing us to execute this action without compromising our ability to meet the requirement to provide a resilient missile warning and tracking capability for the nation.”

News of the service dropping a vendor emerged in the detailed funding tables of House appropriators’ fiscal 2025 defense spending bill, first published by Politico on Monday. Lawmakers proposed a $75 million decrease in funds allocated due to “MEO vendor termination,” as well as an additional $10 million drop for “Epoch 2 ops and integration early to need” and another $10 million cut for “management services excess to need,” the documents show.

In total, House appropriators allocated $750 million in research and development dollars for the MEO MW/MT program. The Space Force had originally asked for $846 million in its budget request for fiscal 2025.

Along with the MEO MW/MT program cuts, House appropriators’ proposal would pare down the Space Force’s fiscal 2025 budget to $28.7 billion — around $900 million less than what the service requested in March, and about 5 percent less than what the Space Force was allocated in fiscal 2024.

The House defense appropriations bill must be reconciled with the Senate version during conference before becoming law, so it remains to be seen how much funding will ultimately be approved by Congress.

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The award was made Jan. 16 “in direct support” to the Pentagon’s counter-unmanned aerial systems mission, according to a release.

The move comes amid an uptick in kamikaze drone attacks against U.S. troops in the Middle East.

“The contract supports a Coyote Interceptor demand increase and subsequent need to increase production capacity,” the Army said in the release. “The Coyote is a key component of the counter-UAS system of systems. It is a ground-launched, radar-guided interceptor, with kinetic and non-kinetic variants, that integrates into fixed site-low, slow, small-unmanned aircraft system integrated defeat systems and mobile-slow, small-unmanned aircraft system integrated defeat systems.”

The term “kinetic,” in U.S. military parlance, generally refers to missiles or other traditional types of weapons that directly strike their targets. Non-kinetic systems, such as electronic warfare tools or high-powered microwaves, use other types of capabilities to take out enemy systems.

Coyote Block 2 missiles can defeat single drones or swarms “of varied size and maneuverability,” according to RTX.

The Army has previously awarded contracts to Raytheon, an RTX business, for Ku-band Radio Frequency Sensor (KuRFS) radar and Coyote interceptors. Those capabilities have already been fielded.

Looking ahead, the estimated production requirement in the fiscal 2025-2029 time frame is a minimum quantity of 6,000 Coyote kinetic interceptors, 700 Coyote non-kinetic interceptors, 252 fixed-site launcher systems, 25 mobile launcher systems, 118 fixed-site KuRFS and 33 mobile KuRFS, according to a notice of intent to sole source, posted on Sam.gov in December.

Raytheon has also developed a reusable, non-kinetic Block 3 variant of the Coyote.

Last year, the Navy awarded the company a contract worth up to $147 million contract to support work on a modified Coyote Block 3 for the service’s Future Advanced Strike (FAST) effort, according to a Defense Department announcement. That work is expected to be completed by Dec. 25, 2024. 

Three years ago, the Pentagon announced that the vendor had been awarded a $33 million deal for work on a Block 3 “autonomous strike” capability. That work had an expected completion date of Feb. 26, 2024.

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RTX Corp., Draper Laboratory and BEAM Co. will each lead teams tasked with developing technologies to enable a “wireless energy web” that could help power U.S. military forces around the globe.

DARPA envisions a “distributed, resilient, multi-input, multi-output power, multi-path energy beaming network” that can generate and transmit power and “enable persistent operation of a new generation of distributed unmanned systems, sensors, and effectors,” according to slides from a proposers day that was held last fall.

The slides depicted sea-based energy harvesting platforms beaming energy up to unmanned aerial vehicles, which then beam it to other drones and aircraft, ships and unmanned underwater vessels, ground robots, special operations forces, forward operating bases, sonobuoys, and other “unattended sensors and effectors.”

The industry teams tapped for phase one of the POWER program will design and develop wireless optical power relays.

“Effective relays are a critical missing component necessary for a practical, flexible, and adaptive wireless energy web. These relays will overcome the unacceptable conversion losses that occur when changing from propagating waves to electricity repeatedly in a multiple-hop network. Relays also enable high-altitude transmission, which is vastly more efficient than beaming power through the thick, turbulent, lower atmosphere. This high-altitude optical layer will provide the long-range, high throughput backbone for the wireless energy web,” DARPA said in a release.

Phase one will involve conceptual designs and “benchtop demonstrations,” according to the agency.

Phase two — which will be preceded by an open solicitation slated for early 2025 — will include integration of the relay technologies onto an existing platform for a low-power, airborne demonstration with pods carried by existing aircraft.

The third and final phase will include a demonstration that uses three airborne relay nodes to transmit 10 kilowatts of optical energy from a ground-based laser up to high-altitude platforms, and back down to a ground receiver 200 kilometers away, according to DARPA.

The Defense Department is expected to provide high-altitude, long-endurance RQ-4 Global Hawk drones for the airborne relay demos.

“It is envisioned that the platforms will be operating at or around 60,000 feet to minimize atmospheric losses and enhance relay survivability. Efficient and precise redirection is necessary to avoid platform thermal challenges and to ensure the relayed beam effectively illuminates the desired target. To account for degradation of beam quality as the beam transits atmospheric disturbances, the relay must be able to correct the optical wavefront as needed to achieve system efficiency goals. Finally, the relays must be able to selectively harvest energy from the optical beam to provide on-board auxiliary power and thereby demonstrate necessary characteristics for future indefinitely persistent relay platforms,” according to a broad agency announcement that was issued before the contracts for phase one were awarded.

The kickoff of the POWER program comes as the Defense Department is looking to begin fielding larger numbers of unmanned and autonomous systems, including long-endurance platforms.

The Pentagon is also worried about operational energy challenges and contested logistics in future operating environments — such as a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific — where adversaries could make it difficult for the U.S. military to resupply its forces via traditional means.

“Energy underpins every human activity, including defense. We need ways to deliver energy that overcome the vulnerabilities and other shortcomings of our current paradigm,” POWER program leader Paul Jaffe said in a statement.

“This project has the potential to advance power beaming by orders of magnitude … A wireless energy web could unlock power from new and diverse sources, including from space, and rapidly and reliably connect them to energy-starved consumers,” he added.

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