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If you're a member of our nation's Armed Forces,
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- [Narrator] On this episode of Defense News Weekly,
we hear about a program to help veterans find work
in the growing commercial drone industry.
And need to get the most from your VA benefits?
meet VetsForever and hear how they want to help.
Plus, we speak to a producer
from Ken Burns latest film
on the American Revolution.
He talks through how they tackled telling
an iconic American story.
Also, defense dollars is back
with the inside track on defense contracting news.
Find out which country is buying new fighter jets.
It's the latest in news and analysis
from the Pentagon to the platoon
here on Defense News Weekly.
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Welcome back to Defense News Weekly.
With the cost of commercial drones continuing to fall,
there's an emerging need for qualified drone pilots
to do everything from real estate marketing
to search and rescue operations.
On our recent visit to Las Vegas for MCON 2025,
we spoke with Drones to Vets,
an organization that trains vets
to find careers in that growing market
to find out how former service members can take advantage
of a new opportunity.
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- My name is Tony Canaday and I am at MCON 2025,
and I am with Vets to Drones,
a nationwide nonprofit organization
that specializes in providing workforce development,
mental health resources,
and industry solutions to enable veterans
to become qualified in the UAS industry.
Currently in the UAS industry,
or what some people currently know it
as the drone industry, right?
There's many different echelons
and environments that you can use drones.
We train our veterans to have the industry standard
solutions to enable them to be successful
in most, if not all of them.
So once a veteran or one of our members
acquires their Part 107 license,
we help and assist them
in utilizing industry standard tools and capabilities
that are very industry specific,
real estate,
construction
mapping.
We also give them access to things like RGIS.
We are partnered with
emergency response resources such as Airdata
that enables us to provide
livestream capabilities of the drones
in a search and rescue environment
if there's a natural disaster.
None of our veterans pay a single dime
for any of our resources,
it is completely free to them.
The only thing that we ask of them is time
in order to study the material.
And then once they acquire their 107
and take their 107 test through the FAA,
they will purchase their own drone
and use the industry resources and capabilities
to go out and test those resources
and become comfortable with them.
That's the important thing.
Every veteran, in order to get them certified,
is ultimately dependent on them
and how much time that they invest into it.
The best trip or tick that
was given to me
was schedule your test first, don't study.
It gives you that capstone event, if you will,
that we're familiar with in the veteran industry of,
I have two weeks to study for this test
and I am scheduled to take this test in two weeks.
'Cause the test is expensive, it's $120.
And sometimes that can be a little overbearing
for a veteran, right?
But if you set that expectation
and you set that goal in two weeks,
I'm gonna go take that test,
then you invest yourself, investing yourself
in your future to go take that test,
and we see about a 97% pass rate overall.
For all of our veterans that are very interested
and might be nervous in getting into the UAS
or the drone industry,
it's okay to feel uncomfortable,
it's okay to feel nervous and anxious.
But rest assured that we have a network
of qualified veterans across the country
in every state that are ready to answer your questions
and provide guidance, direction, and support,
and enabled you to be successful in the drone industry.
In order for veterans to get involved with Vets to Drones,
all they have to do is go to our website.
It's www.vetstodrones.org.
You'll verify your veteran status
or your dependent status through ID.ME.
You'll answer a handful of questions,
and you'll get an onboard email
and give you all the instructions
in order to move on to the next step to be a full member.
So if you're a veteran, dependent, gold star family,
and you're interested in becoming a qualified UAS pilot,
feel free to go to our website.
And always remember,
to move forward, just look up.
- [Narrator] Also from our trip to MCON this year,
we spoke to VetsForever,
an organization that seeks to help veterans
get the most from their VA benefits.
- Hi, I'm Trinidad Aguirre,
I'm the CEO and Co-founder of VetsForever,
a VA accredited law group.
And we're here at MCON this weekend
really to help educate the, you know,
everybody here in this veteran community
about why accreditation matters.
What does VA accreditation mean?
What it means is we are actually trusted
and empowered by the VA to prepare, present,
and prosecute a VA claim.
So we are truly vetted by the VA
to help service the veteran
with the care and empathy that they need.
Anybody who does not have this accreditation
is allowed to really charge what they want.
They're unregulated.
Should we have much stricter, ethical standards?
You know, some of the work we do has to be pro bono.
And in a sense, you know, you know that you have
a trusted representative with the VA
to properly service that veterans.
Because for us,
accreditation is really not guiding vets,
but representing veterans before the VA
regardless of where they are
in the VA disability claim process.
So whether they're in, you know,
they're filing the first claim,
or they've had appeals and denials that need to overturn,
we can actually represent them
as a VA accredited law group.
Additionally to that,
we have access to what is the VA actually saying
about their case,
so we can really give them
that in-depth knowledge that we all seek.
When we take that CMP exam and we're a little nervous,
we lower that anxiety and that stress
so they can navigate, you know,
the complexity of that process,
knowing that an attorney is taking care of them.
Why does VetsForever exist?
Our three co-founders,
we are all a hundred percent service disabled veterans.
So when you talk to us,
we're actually walked the walk
and gone through this journey ourselves.
So why should veterans go?
Well, several reasons.
One, not only are the life-changing,
non-taxable benefits that we all talk about and love,
but there are additional benefits,
whether it's CHAMPVA,
whether it's chapter 35 for your kids,
should the service member pass,
they can get DIC benefits so their spouse
and or their family members can be taken care of.
It's more about taking care of the veteran and their family,
and you know, that's what we're there to help facilitate.
Veterans can connect with us
going to our website at www.vetsforever.com.
Schedule a free case evaluation
so that way we can, you know,
really go through, you know,
from an A to Z standpoint on what hurts today?
What could we offer them, and tell 'em, like,
you probably need to go get a doctor's appointment
so it's medically diagnosed,
or, you know, let's, do you have anything
in your service treatment records
so we can get a better case profile.
So when we do the work,
it's seamless and flawless for them.
So going to our website at www.vetsforever.com,
it's the best and easiest way to contact us.
We could not have been more excited
about being here at MCON,
because this really has been a refreshing,
invigorating experience when we get to talk
to our veteran community,
really hear firsthand what's going on,
what's on their minds,
so we can better serve our veterans.
We're blessed and we look forward to being here next year.
- [Narrator] When we come back,
our defense dollars segment returns
with the latest from the military contracting world.
Stay tuned.
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Welcome back to Defense News Weekly.
On this edition of Defense Dollars,
it's all about fighter jets.
Who's buying France's latest generation aircraft,
and is the US selling F-35s to Saudi Arabia?
Stay tuned to find out.
- Welcome Defense Dollars,
a weekly update on the deals, contracts, and sales
from around the international defense industry.
Let's dive in.
First up on Monday,
France and Ukraine announced they had reached an agreement
for the embattled nation to buy 100
of its Rafale fighter jets in the coming decade
according to the AP.
the Rafale is the latest generation jet from Dassault
and joins the Gripen as part of Ukraine's growing fleet
of European-made war planes.
A few weeks ago, Ukraine signed a similar agreement
with the Swedish government
for a similar number of its fighters made by Saab.
The deal between France and Ukraine
also includes commitments to purchase other weaponry,
including drones and ground to air systems,
along with armaments to be mounted
on the French fighter jets.
No price was named for the purchase agreement,
which French president Emmanuel Macron called a new step
in defense relations between the two countries.
Next up, speaking of aircraft sales in Europe,
the Netherlands and several NATO partners
announced recently they will abandon plans
to buy new Airborne Warning and Control Systems,
also known as AWACS from US Maker Boeing.
The Dutch Ministry of Defense said
that following the United States' decision
to move away from buying E-7 Wedgetails,
it would also look elsewhere to update its fleet.
At stake was the sale of six Wedgetails
to improve the NATO AWACS core,
currently a fleet of 14 aircraft based in Germany.
Those jets will reach the end of their lifespan in 2035
according to the Dutch MOD.
The US, for its part,
said it would end the Wedgetail program
earlier this year, citing survivability concerns,
cost increases, and a desire to move
towards more space-based systems.
Over the summer, it said it planned
to simply cancel the acquisition of the E-7.
that raised prospects for Swedish based Saab,
which makes the GlobalEye, an AWACS alternative
that mounts radar and other sensors
on a Bombardier long-range business jet.
Saab's CEO said the company was seeing huge interest
in the GlobalEye from NATO countries.
But is the American E-7 program dead?
New reporting from Defense News is Stephen Losey this week
showed that the bill reopening the government
signed recently by the president
contains $400 million in funding
to keep development of the Wedgetail on track,
despite the Pentagon's efforts to kill it.
So is it gone?
We'll be tracking it closely.
And on the subject of the government shutdown
with civilian employees back to work at the Pentagon,
the Department of Defense released
a number of backlogged contract announcements
covering a wide range of systems.
Some highlights from the recent data dump,
drone maker Anduril industries
was awarded $50 million
for development of its Altius 600.
The Altius is an unmanned loitering munition
that can be launched from land, sea, or air,
and is already in the running with the army
for a greater contract.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin also picked up a $78 million deal
for space vehicle development
with work to be done
at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
That's expected to be completed in early 2028.
Also in the realm of space,
Modern Technology Solutions in Virginia
was awarded an additional $111 million
for development of space-based interceptors,
bringing the total of its contract with the Pentagon
to 227 million.
That work is set to be done in Huntsville, Alabama.
And finally, RTX's Goodrich arm based in Massachusetts
was granted $197 million for production
of the MS-110 airborne reconnaissance system.
That's an order for the reconnaissance pods,
ground stations, engineering support,
and a range of associated costs.
And one more quick one before we go.
President Donald Trump on Monday
said he will sell advanced F-35 fighter jets
to Saudi Arabia.
- They've been a great ally.
They've gotta like us very much.
Look at the Iran situation,
what we did in terms of obliterating, you know,
we obliterated their nuclear capability.
Yeah, I will say that we will be doing that.
We'll be selling F-35s here.
- The president made the statement just ahead of a visit
to the White House by Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman.
Past administrations have been wary of such a move
motivated by a drive to keep Israel
as the dominant military force in the region,
and the concern that China,
which has close ties to Saudi Arabia,
will somehow obtain the F-35's technology.
President Trump's statement came in the hours
before we filmed today,
so we'll keep a close eye to see if the story updates.
And that wraps up your defense dollars for this week.
Join us on cheddar.com and defensenews.com
for more stories like those.
- [Narrator] When we come back,
the latest tips from our expert
on securing your financial future.
Don't go away.
(lively music)
Welcome back.
On this episode of Money Minute,
Jeanette Mack from Navy Federal Credit Union
is back with her latest tips
on how you can prepare for a bright financial future.
- As savings rates rise,
where you keep your money becomes increasingly important.
To make the most of your hard earned dollars,
get savvy about interest rates and savings accounts.
Start by exploring the big three,
traditional savings accounts, money market savings,
and certificates of deposit, or CDs.
Traditional savings accounts are great
if you're just starting out,
building emergency savings,
or for short- and long-term savings goals
because the funds are always accessible without penalty.
Money market savings accounts offer higher interest rates
in return for the higher balance you'll have
to maintain in the account,
and withdrawals are penalty free.
CDs offer the highest rates of the three,
which is great.
You just have to be sure
you won't need access to that money
for the set term On the account.
CD terms range from a year to 10 years or more.
Go with one or all three of these accounts.
The important thing is to save.
You work hard for your money,
make sure your money is working hard for you.
- [Narrator] To get more coverage
of military and defense topics,
lock on to the coordinates for militarytimes.com
and defensenews.com for more headlines.
And to be the most up-to-date drill sergeant
screaming at the recruits,
sign up for our Early Bird Brief,
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And if social media is how you stay up to date,
follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and X.
And we're on TikTok,
so go follow us there as well.
When we come back,
we hear from the producer of Ken Burns's newest film
on the American Revolution.
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Up next, Ken Burns spent nearly a decade
preparing a documentary series
on the foundational military conflict
of US history, the American Revolution.
As the series rolled out to viewers recently,
we spoke to a producer on the project
about how they decided to tell the defining American story.
- [Narrator] From a small spark kindled in America,
a flame has arisen.
- What do you hope this unvarnished look
at our nation's founding
brings to the American people?
Because like you said,
you spent a decade diving into the research,
and it's not just kind of, you know,
the elementary school line of this, you know,
small rabble fighting against the British Empire.
It's so much--
- But it is that too.
So it's, I don't think that there's
a part of us that's trying to, you know, dispel myths.
We're not myth busters out there
to make you poke holes in your understanding
of the American Revolution.
In fact, what we're doing is
taking what you already know, really rebooting it.
So you don't forget entirely what you knew
going in the door, but what you knew going in the door
was gonna be supplemented by all sorts of other information
that's gonna make what you already know
make much more sense.
I think all of us,
before we even have conscious memories,
have some concept of the American revolution.
You know, George Washington is on our currency,
the flag, it's all there for us, right?
4th of July.
And then we learn about it in elementary school.
We learn about it again,
maybe in middle school and high school,
and then we don't really learn about it.
So the only way that we've really discussed it
is in those elementary school ways,
or maybe in middle school or high school,
we get a little bit more time with it.
But your teacher's worried that, you know,
this is a survey course on American history.
They're worried they're not gonna get to the 20th century,
much less the 21st century
if they spend the time that they,
that it deserves to spend on the American Revolution.
I think also
a lot of us are hungry for,
curious for history and knowledge and
miss being able to dive into this sort of history.
So for adult learners like you and me,
here's an opportunity.
And yeah, there's just a lot more out there than
the stuff that we learned when we were kids.
But the stuff that we learned when we were kids
is still very much part of this story.
I think that people are gonna come away with this
with different interpretations.
I am grateful for that.
I welcome that for sure.
Our intention is not to make you think a certain way.
It's definitely not to make you feel a certain way,
but maybe we can give you something to think
and to talk and to feel about
and to communicate with other people
and find out how they did the same.
So I'm glad that you had good experience with it.
- And we kind of touched on this a little bit too but,
you know, the war is,
you know, a war for independence,
but it's also a civil war and a world war.
How does the series address its magnitude?
- So, you know, one of the things that
I feel like I should have known this,
but was surprising to me
when making this film is the American Revolution,
While it absolutely did win American independence,
of course, and unite the states
and create the republic that,
you know, we still live under,
none of those were on the table at the start.
Those weren't war objectives on April 19th, 1775.
They became necessary to win the war.
They're kind of outcomes of the war rather than goals.
What they were really trying to do at the start was
to liberate Boston and to,
you know, get a redress of grievances
and to bring things back to the way they were
under the British Empire
when things worked out the way that they did.
But in order to win the war,
they had to involve all sorts of American people
who otherwise might not get along.
And coalition building made it
a war about liberty,
made it this
fight for union,
and it just gets bigger and bigger,
and then in order to win the war,
they had to involve foreign powers.
French came in, the Spanish came in
as the allies of the French,
the Dutch declared war on the British.
And the war ends up being fought, not just,
you know, it begins on Lexington Green,
it spreads all throughout,
not just the original 13 colonies,
but over the mountains to the Ohio River country
along the Gulf Coast,
even out to the Mississippi River.
It's also in the Caribbean.
It's fought off of England
with John Paul Jones at Flamborough Head.
It's fought in the Atlantic Ocean.
It's fought along the coast of France,
fought along the coast of Africa.
It's even fought in the Indian subcontinent.
And that's just the war.
The ideas
just grow and grow and inspire revolutions
and have inspired revolutions for the past 250 years
all throughout the world.
Ho Chi Minh, when he declared Vietnamese independence,
had two United States OSS officers standing next to him
and was quoting in Vietnamese Thomas Jefferson.
- And then kind of turning more towards the war itself.
You know, the revolution is almost kind of the definition
of when Ulysses S. Grant,
one of my favorite scenes
is we'll look 'em tomorrow.
And we lose a majority of the battles against the British.
Yet we emerge victorious, kind of,
this is a broad question, but how?
- Yeah, I mean, well, okay,
so my previous experience studying war
was with the Vietnam War.
So I would, I could be colored by that interpretation
where it's just, you know, this is an insurgency,
an insurgency just has to outlast
the counterinsurgency.
Outlast the counterinsurgency.
But I don't think George Washington realized that at first.
And so it's something that he learned
through the war
initially when they were,
when his continental army forces were ringing Boston,
he proposed
going across the ice
of the Charles River
and invading Boston, occupied Boston,
you know, that very likely would've been bad.
And he took good counsel and they told him,
you know, don't do that.
And he agreed with them, didn't do it.
But then the next year after they had had taken Boston,
he put armies on Long Island and Manhattan
in a time when Britain rules the waves.
You know, this is rule Britannia.
The British Royal Navy is the,
the best military force in the world,
probably at that time,
just completely supreme on the high seas.
And New York is surrounded by water.
Horrible mistakes were made
in the Battle of Long Island in the lead up and after.
So the how there, I mean,
I think that the,
that if you take the Vietnam interpretation,
it's hard to imagine Britain ever beating
a united insurgency in the face of this.
But it wasn't that united in 1776.
There's still very strong Loyalist presence
and also lukewarm Patriots.
And Washington, if he had been captured
at the Battle of Long Island,
it could have been a completely different story.
- [Narrator] Well, that's all we have time for
in this episode.
Thanks for joining us,
and we'll see you next week.
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