Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spotlighted these and other related plans — all associated with the ongoing, disruptive campaign to eliminate what the Trump administration views as wasteful and duplicative spending across the federal government — in a brief video posted online Wednesday. 

He said this move to restructure the Defense Department’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (ODOT&E) is envisioned to promote more efficiency so “that warfighters get what they need faster.”

According to a memorandum Hegseth penned Tuesday to senior Pentagon leadership unveiling the forthcoming reorg, the decision was informed by results from “a comprehensive internal review” that identified “redundant, nonessential, non-statutory functions within” the long-standing office, which are impacting the military’s ability to quickly access cutting-edge systems.

In the memo, the secretary first directs ODOT&E to “immediately eliminate” any non-statutory or redundant functions.

“Second, and as recommended by an internal study, ODOT&E will deliver its core statutory function through a reduced staff of 30 civilian positions, with no more than one Senior Executive Service (SES) member and 15 assigned military personnel. ODOT&E will be reduced to this size through a targeted, deliberate, and expeditious civilian reduction-in-force (RIF),” Hegseth wrote.

The office’s total workforce numbers ahead of these planned cuts are not specified in the document. 

A defense official told DefenseScoop that DOT&E had 94 personnel prior to the reorganization decision — 82 civilians and 12 military.

All civilian personnel who are not going to be retained in one of the office’s 30 positions that are kept will receive a specific notice within seven days of the publication of the memo.

Chief Pentagon Spokesman and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell noted Wednesday in an email to reporters that civilian personnel employed by military departments at ODOT&E will be transferred back to their service organizations, while other civilians will receive the RIF notices.

“This decision eliminates redundancy in the defense acquisition system, returns DOT&E to its statutory intent as an oversight body, and empowers the Services and Combatant Commands with greater trust to ensure the warfighter is efficiently equipped to address emerging challenges and to preserve our decisive advantage,” Parnell said.

The new test and evaluation guidance also calls on the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment to require “cognizant contracting officers to end all contractor personnel support supplying contracted employees” to the office, no later than seven days after the memo’s release. 

Hegseth appointed Carroll Quade — the official currently serving as the Department of the Navy’s deputy for test and evaluation — to perform the duties of the director of ODOT&E and oversee this transition.

“These actions will save more than $300 million per year and reflect the department’s commitment to continued reform and reducing bureaucracy,” Hegseth wrote.

Following the memo’s release, one former senior defense official who spoke to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity raised concerns about what they view as multiple open questions that stem from the new T&E instructions. 

They noted that the memo does not clarify who conducted the Pentagon’s study — or explain why officials opted to retain exactly 30 personnel and how they landed on the estimate of $300 million in potential savings.

They also called into question how these reductions might impact the DOD’s ability to test and field in-demand AI and autonomous capabilities.

“And in addition to the risks of the services taking T&E shortcuts, there’s the other risk of this slowing down ongoing and future programs. It’s not quite as bad as skipping critical testing, but not far behind either,” the former senior defense official told DefenseScoop.

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Hosted by the White Field Research Laboratory, the 3,000-square-foot lab space is home to a quiet wind tunnel able to simulate hypersonic flight at speeds up to Mach 10 — or 10 times the speed of sound. The Navy served as the funding agency for the tunnel’s fabrication, with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane acting as the contract monitor, and future operations will be funded through research grants and contracts.

DefenseScoop received an exclusive first look at the new facility, which is designed for both fundamental hypersonic research and programmatic testing for the government and industry. The wind tunnel is expected to help the Pentagon address gaps in hypersonics research, testing and workforce development.

“Hypersonic flight represents unique challenges and opportunities, and these facilities are vital to our test and evaluation efforts, enabling us to stipulate and study the extreme conditions that hypersonic vehicles will encounter,” Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Christopher Grady said during the ribbon cutting ceremony at the University of Notre Dame. 

Hypersonic weapons are maneuvering missiles that fly through the atmosphere at speeds of Mach 5 or higher, making them difficult for adversary air defense systems to intercept them. Their development has been a top priority for the Defense Department in recent years, especially as adversaries like China and Russia continue to tout their own advancements in high-speed missiles.

Although the Army, Navy and Air Force have ongoing programs to develop hypersonic missiles, the department has struggled to get the capability across the finish line — with several programs experiencing problems during their testing campaigns.

“Anything that is testing, anything that is like training ranges and those kinds of things, they often don’t get the heat and light that other things do. But woe be unto us if we don’t invest in those to make sure that we have the apparatus that underpins everything else,” Grady said in an interview with DefenseScoop.

The Pentagon uses wind tunnels to conduct ground testing and validate system performance. The complex facilities are designed to simulate hypersonic flight at austere speeds and atmospheric conditions, giving researchers insights into aerodynamics, thermal management and structural integrity.

But because the few facilities available to the Pentagon are in high demand, the department is turning to Notre Dame and other academic institutions part of the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics to help close that critical testing gap.

“When we see a university like this or across the entire consortium move into this space, that is really powerful because it adds to that testing ecosystem,” Grady said.

Notre Dame’s new facility is a quiet — or low-disturbance — wind tunnel, meaning it can test hypersonic systems without turbulence, allowing researchers to understand how wind tunnel “noise” impacts performance, Thomas Corke, the university’s Clark Equipment Professor in engineering and director of the university’s Hypersonic Systems Initiative, told DefenseScoop. 

“There are some situations in which the impact of the tunnel noise is not important, which then allows the government facilities to continue on that road,” he said. “So it’s very important — and that was in our thinking — to be able to take the same test articles that would be in a government lab … and be able to put the same article in our facility, and be able to make that contrast.”

There are only a handful of quiet wind tunnels in the United States — including a Mach 6 tunnel and a Mach 8 tunnel, both of which are located at Purdue University, and another Mach 6 tunnel operated by Texas A&M University. While Notre Dame’s new facility adds capacity to the hypersonic testing ecosystem, Corke also noted it will be critical to testing at speeds closer to Mach 10 where there are fundamental changes in aerodynamics that occur.

“Ground testing is important, and ground testing is meant to predict what happens in flight. And so if it doesn’t predict what happens in flight, it’s not doing the role it’s supposed to do,” Corke said.

Along with testing capacity, Notre Dame’s new wind tunnel will also address a gap in the workforce that is challenging the United States’ hypersonic systems development by training people who will carry their skills over to government or industry once they graduate.

“The role of a university like this to inflame passions on the part of young scientists and engineers and technicians, I think, is absolutely critical. But then somebody’s got to build this stuff when we finally figure out what the system is,” Grady said. “And so having a strong focus then on — I don’t call them workers, these are craftsmen and artisans of the highest order — is important if it’s going to work.”

Notre Dame is creating a master’s program in hypersonic systems, with a particular focus on developing pipelines from military academies that allow personnel to pursue an advanced degree, Corke said. The university is also training doctoral students on advanced topics related to hypersonics to ensure there isn’t a future gap in people who can teach future generations of engineers and scientists, he added.

The plans align with Grady’s push for workforce “permeability,” a concept he’s working on alongside Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, he said. The idea is to have people rotate to academia for a few years, and then return to industry or government — where they can receive security clearance — in a continuous cycle.

“We gain because we get all that expertise from academia or industry. I think they gain when they go back, because they understand what we want,” Grady said. “And so that’s the wave of the future in many aspects.”

Updated on Nov. 14, 2024, at 3:15 PM: This story has been updated to note that the wind tunnel is hosted by the White Field Research Laboratory. A previous version stated that it was hosted by the Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory.

Updated on Nov. 18, 2024, at 4:40 PM: This story has been updated to note that Texas A&M University has a quiet wind tunnel.

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According to a statement the San Francisco-based company shared exclusively with DefenseScoop, the outcomes of this new one-year contract will supply the CDAO with “a framework to deploy AI safely by measuring model performance, offering real-time feedback for warfighters, and creating specialized public sector evaluation sets to test AI models for military support applications, such as organizing the findings from after action reports.”

Large language models and the overarching field of generative AI include emerging technologies that can generate (convincing but not always accurate) text, software code, images and other media, based on prompts from humans.

This rapidly evolving realm holds a lot of promise for the Department of Defense, but also poses unknown and serious potential challenges. Last year, Pentagon leadership launched Task Force Lima within the CDAO’s Algorithmic Warfare Directorate to accelerate its components’ grasp, assessment and deployment of generative artificial intelligence.

The department has long leaned on test-and-evaluation (T&E) processes to assess and ensure its systems, platforms and technologies perform in a safe and reliable manner before they are fully fielded. But AI safety standards and policies have not yet been universally set, and the complexities and uncertainties associated with large language models make T&E even more complicated when it comes to generative AI.

Broadly, T&E enables experts to determine the baseline performance of a specific model.   

For instance, to test and evaluate a computer vision algorithm that differentiates between images of dogs and cats and things that are not dogs or cats, an official might first train it with millions of different pictures of those type of animals as well as objects that aren’t dogs or cats. In doing so, the expert will also hold back a diverse subset of data that can then be presented to the algorithm down the line.

They can then assess that evaluation dataset against the test set, or “ground truth,” and ultimately determine failure rates of where the model is unable to determine if something is or is not one of the classifiers they’re trying to identify. 

Experts at Scale AI will adopt a similar approach for T&E with large language models, but because they are generative in nature and the English language can be hard to evaluate, there isn’t that same level of “ground truth” for these complex systems. For example, if prompted to supply five different responses, an LLM might be generally factually accurate in all five, yet contrasting sentence structures could change the meanings of each output.

So, part of the company’s effort to develop the framework, methods and technology CDAO can use to test and evaluate large language models will involve creating “holdout datasets” — where they include DOD insiders to prompt response pairs and adjudicate them by layers of review, and ensure that each is as good of a response as would be expected from a human in the military.

The entire process will be iterative in nature.

Once datasets that are germane to the DOD for world knowledge, truthfulness, and other topics are made and refined, the experts can then evaluate existing large language models against them.

Eventually, as they have these holdout datasets, experts will be able to run evaluations and establish model cards — or short documents that supply details on the context for best for use of various machine learning models and information for measuring their performance.

Officials plan to automate in this development as much as possible, so that as new models come in, there can be some baseline understanding of how they will perform, where they will perform best, and where they will probably start to fail.

Further in the process, the ultimate intent is for models to essentially send signals to CDAO officials that engage with them, if they start to waver from the domains they have been tested against.

“This work will enable the DOD to mature its T&E policies to address generative AI by measuring and assessing quantitative data via benchmarking and assessing qualitative feedback from users. The evaluation metrics will help identify generative AI models that are ready to support military applications with accurate and relevant results using DoD terminology and knowledge bases. The rigorous T&E process aims to enhance the robustness and resilience of AI systems in classified environments, enabling the adoption of LLM technology in secure environments,” Scale AI’s statement reads. 

Beyond the CDAO, the company has also partnered with Meta, Microsoft, the U.S. Army, the Defense Innovation Unit, OpenAI, General Motors, Toyota Research Institute, Nvidia, and others.

“Testing and evaluating generative AI will help the DoD understand the strengths and limitations of the technology, so it can be deployed responsibly. Scale is honored to partner with the DoD on this framework,” Alexandr Wang, Scale AI’s founder and CEO, said in the statement.

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“The flight test did not occur,” Army spokesperson Ellen Lovett said in response to questions from DefenseScoop on Wednesday.

This marks the latest in a series of hiccups associated with the Army’s in-development Dark Eagle missile, which was previously known as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW). In March, a slated test was called off due to an issue with the battery activation. Another test planned around September was also held up due to a separate weapons issue.

Army officials had said they wanted to conduct another flight test before moving forward with fielding the system.

The service had originally aimed to field the weapon before the end of fiscal 2023, which came on Sept. 30. After the previously scheduled test was aborted, officials said they hoped to field the system by the end of the calendar year.

Lovett declined to provide more information about why the test scheduled for last week did not happen — and whether it was cancelled or a result of a major technical failure.  

“The Department was able to successfully collect data on the performance of the ground hardware and software that will inform the continued progress towards fielding offensive hypersonic weapons,” she said.

In response to further inquiries, the spokesperson also did not provide an updated timeline for when the Army is now anticipating it will field the weapon or comment on any potentially associated delays.

“Delivering hypersonic weapons remains a top priority for the DOD,” Lovett told DefenseScoop.

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The new contract, which has a value of $7.8 million over nine months, is for prototyping the ATEC Integrated Mission Management System (AIMMS), which is intended to replace legacy platforms, some of which are decades old.

The command, which oversees developmental testing and independent operational tests and evaluations of military capabilities, supports Army Futures Command and other senior leaders as they make critical decisions for acquisition and force modernization.

However, the organization’s thousands of personnel and many installations are spread across the country, which creates challenges. AIMMS is intended to better connect its various elements through improved enterprise IT capabilities and enable its digital transformation with more comprehensive tools.

The command “cannot effectively execute its Test & Evaluation (T&E) mission as test officers/ evaluators … are unable to work across a geographically dispersed organization without a shared system,” according to Army slides for an industry day held in 2021.

The purpose of the AIMMS effort is to “replace the capabilities of several obsolete, siloed, legacy information systems, improve ATEC’s efficiency and effectiveness, and support Army goals to make T&E data more visible, accessible, understandable, linked, trustworthy, interoperable, and secure,” per the slides.

The service expects the new technology to enable test officers and evaluators to initiate, plan, manage, analyze and report on all test-and-evaluation projects; facilitate monitoring and oversight of the command’s various efforts; permit internal and external stakeholders to easily search, discover, access and analyze T&E-related information; and provide a cloud-based application compatible with other Army business systems.

The new system will support more than 3,000 users, according to an Army release last year.

The Project Management Module, ATEC Decision Support System and the VISIOM Digital Library System are some of the older systems slated be replaced by AIMMS.

BigBear.ai, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, has been selected as the single-source vendor for the final phase of the prototyping effort, which is expected to lead to production if all goes well.

The company “is taking a ‘clean sheet’ approach, leveraging a leading commercial off-the-shelf automation workflow platform, advanced analytics, and AI/ML technologies such as robotic process automation and federated search, in order to drive a higher form of decision intelligence for decision makers,” Ryan Legge, president of integrated defense solutions at BigBear.ai, said in a statement to DefenseScoop.

According to a release, the company will provide the Army with a “modern no-code/low-code solution” for ease of use. It will be a cloud-based, “API-centric” platform combining project and portfolio management, enterprise content management, workflow management, application integration, business intelligence and data analytics capabilities.

“The solution is scalable and secure, and can fully integrate and automate existing and future T&E processes,” according to the firm.

“Our solution will provide ATEC access to essential data, saving time and resources needed to centralize and distribute data,” Legge said in the release.

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The open call, posted on the office’s Tradewind marketplace, comes as the U.S. military is making a push to develop and field “responsible AI” capabilities and autonomous platforms and weapons. Officials also recognize the need for warfighters to have confidence that the technology will work as advertised on the battlefield, or else they won’t be inclined to use it to its full potential.

The DOD “needs a comprehensive way to measure user trust in AI-enabled systems — including how trust may break down into various dimensions and its relationship to other concepts or constructs. For instance, dimensions of trust might include the extent to which an individual has confidence in the system’s accuracy vs. the extent to which an individual trusts the system because they hope that it will work; under vs. over-reliance on the system; etc. Related concepts or constructs include whether a user’s degree (and kind) of understanding of how the system functions contributes to their trust in the system; whether distrust is a separate construct from trust (vs. whether it is on the same scale); etc.,” the Tradewind announcement states.

“The assessment must enable a rich understanding (and prediction) of the descriptive psychological and behavioral states of users interacting with the system. The test must also provide sufficient data to support normative evaluations about the level of trust in the system, such as whether the trust in the system is justified given the evidence, or whether users over-trust the system in a way that impedes meaningful degrees of human judgment and control,” it notes.

The CDAO program aims to develop metrics and tests for assessing and evaluating user trust in AI-enabled systems; enable the continuous monitoring of operational users’ trust; and facilitate assessment of trust “among various dimensions and its relationship to relevant constructs and concepts.”

Interested organizations are invited to submit a two-page “discovery paper” outlining the value proposition, operational impact and end-user demand for their proposed solutions.

After papers are evaluated, vendors may be invited to a “digital proving ground” where they can pitch their innovations to contracting officers who will be looking to make rapid pilot project awards.

The DOD may decide to award other transaction agreements for prototypes to a single vendor or multiple vendors, with the potential for follow-on production awards, according to the announcement.

The end date for the open call is July 3.

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The recently released fiscal 2022 annual report of the Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation asserts that “the DOD’s abilities to assess against Red Teams portraying nation state adversaries remain limited due to persistent resource and personnel shortfalls,” adding “[a]nother persistent shortfall in the DOD’s cyber posture is the lack of adequate cyber test capabilities.”

The report notes that advanced adversaries such as Russia and China are devoting significant resources to offensive cyber operations directed at the U.S. — and comparable test capabilities are needed to assess DOD’s ability to withstand those feints.

While the report points to a lack of assessment of cyber tools, it notes there must be top level developmental and operational test capabilities. However, there aren’t enough skilled cyber operators to support such requirements.

The document highlights how the Pentagon is continuing to lose top talent to more lucrative private sector offers. As a result, the department is investing in more automated test capabilities to relieve overtaxed cyber operators and test teams..

A report published by the Government Accountability Office in December also highlighted the challenges DOD faces from the private sector and outlined the services’ attempts to compete with certain incentives and bonuses.  

DOT&E noted that additional changes to current Pentagon policy would allow for higher pay, more efficient hiring practices and more flexible work-from-home opportunities for certain personnel such as experienced red team operators.

A ‘fight-through’ objective

DOT&E’s cyber assessment program, a congressionally mandated effort that focuses on emulating realistic nation-state cyber threats during exercises, explained that despite improvements, the department’s cyber defenses continue to fall behind the growing offensive capabilities of adversaries.

The report notes that the most effective way to reduce the risk of cyber defense is to increase emphasis on training in contested environments, especially in major exercises.

“A cyber ‘fight-through objective’ should be established for every major exercise to provide warfighters and cyber defenders the opportunity to experience the full spectrum of cyber threats and effects, and allow them to improve their defenses, detections, and resilience,” DOT&E said.

In fiscal 2022, the Institute for Defense Analyses along with DOT&E’s cyber assessment program piloted a tabletop cyber warfare exercise, which garnered “promising” initial results and will be incorporated in future DOT&E cyber readiness campaigns.

Those readiness events are a series of assessments designed to help combatant commands and the services assess and improve cyber defense.

DOT&E had to scale back much of its work in this sphere last year due to Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, they did include unconventional cyber threats such as combined cyber and electronic warfare attacks as well.  

In a sign of progress, the report pointed out that combatant command staffs have hardened headquarters networks. In fact, red teams were unable to penetrate or maneuver when given network access to at least two commands, which were not specifically named in the report.

Network defenses have improved against low- and mid-level cyber threats, the report also noted.

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Congress allocated $798 million in fiscal 2022 to the Defense Department’s lab and test range modernization activities focused on space systems, the electromagnetic spectrum, hypersonics, directed energy, and targets. And for fiscal 2023, the Pentagon had requested $1.26 billion for “strategic test infrastructure improvements” as it looks to support testing of hypersonic weapons, electronic warfare, nuclear modernization, trusted AI, and multi-domain operations, according to budget documents.

But members of the Senate Appropriations Committee say that isn’t enough.

“While the Committee is encouraged to see that the fiscal year 2023 President’s budget request continues to make significant investments in test infrastructure, it notes that the requested funding does not adequately meet the needs of the test community. Therefore, the Committee recommends additional appropriations of $1,805,000,000 … for lab and test range upgrades for the following: electromagnetic spectrum, hypersonics, directed energy, space, targets, data management, artificial intelligence/autonomous systems, and the test & evaluation innovation hub,” said the report accompanying the chairman’s mark of the fiscal 2023 defense appropriations bill released last week.

The Defense Department’s major test ranges and facilities are a vast enterprise that includes 23 major sites across the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii and the Kwajalein Atoll. They employ 30,000 people and cover about 18,000 square miles of land — more than half of the land owned by the DOD — and 180,000 square miles of airspace.

U.S. officials have been banging the drum about the need for improvements as the Pentagon pursues a wide-ranging modernization effort to acquire new capabilities to compete with advanced adversaries such as China.

“If we expect the department to attract the world’s best and brightest to produce state-of-the-art technologies, we must modernize our laboratory and test ranges,” Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu told members of the House Armed Services Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Subcommittee during a hearing in May.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said more funding is needed to address the infrastructure challenges that the DOD is facing.

“It is shocking that we face a massive backlog in laboratory investment, more than $5.7 billion in the latest report to Congress. These challenges affect not just the pace and breadth of innovation, but also our ability to attract and retain the top-tier talent that we depend on. I’m committed to doing everything in my power to address this issue,” he said at the hearing.

Provisions in the Senate Appropriations Committee’s version of the defense spending bill will have to be approved by the full Senate and then reconciled with the House’s version before they can be enacted. So it is unclear how much funding Congress will ultimately appropriate for DOD’s labs and test ranges in the next fiscal year.

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Unlike warheads on detectable rockets for ballistic missiles used in previous conflicts, when in-the-making and ultramodern missiles reach and maneuver at hypersonic speeds — or more than 5 times faster than the speed of sound — they become almost impossible to track or deter. America has attempted to master hypersonic flight in fits and starts over the last few decades, but recently sharpened its focus and started massively boosting investments to enable associated assets, largely in response to its competitors’ ambitious programs pushing rapid development. 

The SASC’s proposed defense policy bill for fiscal 2023 continues that upward trend in investing in hypersonics, with provisions that would mandate significant funding for the Defense Department’s hypersonics-aligned initiatives. But notably, the lawmakers behind it also revealed they are uneasy about the government’s capacity to assess such sophisticated capabilities and bring them into full fruition. 

China, on the other hand, last year shocked the Pentagon and the world with the first reported successful test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, which lawmakers and national security leaders considered a “wake up call” for the U.S. 

“The committee notes the [DOD’s] overdue investment in fielding hypersonic defensive and offensive capabilities. The committee encourages additional funding for defensive and offensive capability to enable the department to not just pace, but leap ahead of peer competitors,” members of that committee wrote in a report accompanying their passed version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2023.

The added: “However, one of the greatest concerns of the committee is the ability to test hypersonic systems, which requires extensive range space and sophisticated testing capabilities.”

To that end, the congressional cadre called for the defense secretary to provide a briefing to congressional defense committees by March 31, 2023 ”on the capabilities and shortfalls of existing and planned DOD, academia, and industry testing facilities to ensure the on-time development and fielding of these critical hypersonic systems.”

Facilities for this sophisticated type of testing essentially simulate the unique conditions of hypersonic flight, like speed and pressure. China reportedly has the world’s first operational wind tunnel that can assess a full-scale hypersonic missile through the key stages of flight.

SASC’s version of the NDAA for the next fiscal year incorporates a number of hypersonic-related funding proposals — including almost $300 million for the Pentagon’s glide-phase interceptor initiative to combat such capabilities, which is in its early stages and being steered by the Missile Defense Agency. 

Separately, while the department’s budget request included $2 million in a specific line for Navy weapons industrial facilities, the committee instead recommended an increase of $25 million for that line, specifically for a hypersonic test facility.

“The committee believes that further investment in hypersonic test infrastructure is vital to the rapid fielding of emerging hypersonic weapons technologies,” the senators wrote in their accompanying report. 

They also recommended an increase of $30 million for major range and test facility base improvements. 

In their report, the committee members wrote that they understand “that the test and training range in the eastern Gulf of Mexico has aging infrastructure and inadequate instrumented airspace to test the newest generation of weapons and munitions.” They also noted concerns “that open-air test ranges of the major range and test facility base are not capable of supporting the full spectrum of development testing required for current and next generation technologies, including hypersonic and autonomous systems.”

Further, the lawmakers encouraged DOD’s Test Resource Management Center (TRMC) to accelerate the making of launch and down range tracking facilities to support robust testing of both offensive and defensive hypersonic weapons. Alaska, in their view, is one unique geographical location where hypersonic testing could be conducted with “unrestricted flexibility” to meet mission objectives.

This overarching issue is top of mind now, but DOD has been grappling with its deteriorating hypersonics research infrastructure for years. 

In a 2014 study, the Institute for Defense Analyses warned that “no current U.S. facility can provide full-scale, time-dependent, coupled aerodynamic and thermal-loading environments for flight durations necessary to evaluate these characteristics above Mach 8.” The nation’s facilities and areas for experimentation have evolved since then, but more recent federal evaluations of the department’s assets to mature these capabilities have not been released to the public. 

SASC’s version of the NDAA also aims to require several further assessments related to this topic—including a proposal to require the Defense Secretary to “submit a report on estimated costs for conducting not fewer than one full-scale, operationally relevant, live-fire, hypersonic weapon test of the systems currently under development each year by the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy, once such systems reach initial operational capability.”

It’s not yet clear if the provisions mentioned will be included in the final version of the NDAA. The Senate has yet to vote on this version, while House lawmakers have already passed their chamber’s. The two versions will have to be reconciled in committee before the hefty bill becomes law. 

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The DOD and its industry partners have been building prototypes for multiple variants of hypersonic missiles, and the Pentagon hopes to transition the technology into production and begin fielding the weapons over the next few years. But officials are also looking at developing more advanced capabilities.

“We’re taking our future look and creating a future strategy that we’re calling national hypersonics initiative 2.0.,” Michael White, principal director for hypersonics in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said at a conference hosted by ExecutiveBiz on Tuesday. That initiative includes pursuing “disruptive and advanced warfighting capability.”

The initial set of systems that are already in the works include “capability phasing plans,” he noted, which will allow for incremental upgrades. However, the DOD is also pondering “what’s the next set of capabilities that give us that next leap and impact and effect that we can achieve with hypersonic systems,” and how the department can “repopulate” the R&D pipeline to pursue those, White said.

Defense officials are engaging with a broad set of government agencies, industry partners and the broader innovation ecosystem to figure out what the department should do to mature future concepts through organizations such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the Strategic Capabilities Office.

The aim is to use investments to replenish the pipeline of advanced capabilities moving forward for both offensive weapons and counter-hypersonics capabilities.

“That activity is moving forward and we’re working with the broader community … to populate that future set of concepts,” White said.

White didn’t lay out all the new concepts that are under consideration but noted that there is interest in reusable hypersonic capabilities that could be used for purposes other than blowing up high-value targets.

“We’re thinking a little bit further out about how do we develop reusable capabilities that would provide leap-ahead systems that allow us to operate both for responsive [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and targeting as well as delivering effects on the battlefield — and maybe even responsive access to space in, let’s say, the first stage of a two-stage to orbit system. So we are looking at — beyond the expendable weapon portfolios — what we need to do to leverage hypersonic capability for reusable systems,” he said.

Another pillar of the hypersonics 2.0 initiative is to try to make new weapons more affordable so the DOD can buy them in large quantities.

“We will not be able to field capability and buy capability in the numbers we need if these systems are not, essentially, in parity relative to cost with traditional systems,” White said.

To tackle that affordability issue, the DOD included about $500 million in its budget plans for the next three years to bolster the industry’s ability to manufacture systems that would have a lower price tag than today’s prototypes.

“We’re working really hard to identify what the key investment needs are with industry first being driven by the current programs and what they need to move their production techniques and production environment in a direction that allows more affordable fabrication, as well as looking at future automation and how do we bring new technology into the production environment for future capability builds,” White said.

Other pillars of the initiative include investing more money in the science and technology ecosystem and the workforce so they can help develop new concepts for capabilities and production and materials development.

It also calls for boosting funding to improve test and evaluation infrastructure and to achieve “leap-ahead capability” in these areas. The fiscal 2023 budget request includes about $1.5 billion across the future years defense program (FYDP) for that purpose, according to White.

Overall, the Pentagon plans to invest about $25 billion on hypersonics efforts across the FYDP, according to White. Such weapons can travel faster than Mach 5 and are highly maneuverable, making it difficult for traditional missile defense systems to defeat them. The technology is a top modernization priority for the U.S. military as it tries to compete with China and Russia, which have already fielded hypersonic systems. The Army, Navy and Air Force are pursuing ground-launched, sea-launched and air-launched variants, respectively, and the Pentagon is working on boost-glide systems as well as hypersonic cruise missiles.

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