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- [Narrator] "Defense News," is proudly sponsored
by Navy Federal Credit Union.
If you're a member of our nation's Armed Forces,
the Department of Defense, or if your family is,
we'd be proud to serve you too.
On this episode of "Defense News Weekly,"
we take an in-depth look at the hypersonics race.
As global powers press forward
with a transformative military technology,
we talk to an expert on where the US stands
in comparison to its rivals,
what programs are working for the US
both for offensive weapons
and defensive counter hypersonics.
We learn about how the Pentagon is keeping pace
with the most advanced weaponry in a generation,
plus an update from the defense contracting world.
Join us for 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."
Hypersonic weapons offer a fearsome prospect,
traveling at five times the speed of sound or more.
They can carry independent warheads
that travel on unpredictable paths,
making them incredibly hard to defend against.
Since their development, a race has been on
between China, the US, and Russia to field the missiles
and the systems capable of defeating them.
To get a sense of where things stand now,
"Defense News," Hope Seck sat down with Deborah James,
a former secretary of the Air Force and member
of the Atlantic Council's Hypersonic Capabilities Task Force
to talk about it.
Have a look.
(air whooshing)
- Secretary James, thank you so much for being here today.
- Thanks for having me, Hope.
- So in October, the Hypersonics Task Force
that you co-chair rolled out its final report
and made a little bit of buzz in Washington.
And there were recommendations
specifically about surging efforts
to field the first hypersonic systems
and about establishing a munition czar
to oversee some of the work going forward.
And it's been about two months since then,
so I wanted to ask what traction are you seeing
on some of those recommendations?
- Well, so far, so good Hope,
but of course it's still early days.
So, what we have done since we rolled out the report
and made what I think are those critical recommendations,
we've briefed senior officials in the Pentagon about this.
And particularly, the notion of czar,
I think fits quite well with this administration's approach.
They've done a czar for Golden Dome.
They've done a czar for drones.
And most recently, they've named
Lieutenant General Dale White of the Air Force
to be what they call a DRPM,
a direct reporting program manager, which is czar-like,
over some very important Air Force program.
So, we've briefed the our view
of the importance of hypersonics and suggested a czar,
as well as our other recommendations to the Pentagon.
We've also extensively briefed key members of Congress.
Among them, the co-chairs of the Hypersonics caucus
in the House, Congressman Messmer and Norcross,
very, very interested in the report.
They both sit on the House Armed Services Committee,
of course.
So we're anxious to see the results of the NDAA,
the National Defense Authorization Act,
and also anxious to see what happens on funding.
We do know that of course our call was for increased funding
for these first generation of weapons to get them fielded
at some level.
We think we need to do it at scale,
having many of these weapons in our inventory.
And it is promising what we have seen,
but we think Congress can do more.
So, we're waiting to see what happens there.
- Well, I'm glad you brought up the NDAA.
That's definitely the new news in town.
We have at least the full agreed upon text of the bill.
And first of all, there is some much heralded investment
in hypersonics weapons program,
so let's start with that.
What are you seeing in the bill?
Is the investment enough and what will it enable
over the next year?
- Well, I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
and I have not yet read the full bill,
but I believe there's about 3.9,
let's call it $4 billion
for research and development of hypersonic weapons.
Now that's good, but of course one of our calls to action
in our report is that we need to move
beyond the research and development phase
and get into production.
So, it's not clear to me within that budgetary framework
how much of that could actually launch some of the weapons
of today, which are ready for production.
At least as I understand it, they're close to being ready.
I'm talking about the HACM
and the Arrow in the Air Force.
I'm talking about the Conventional Prompt Strike of the Navy
and the Dark Eagle of the Army.
I'm not clear on how much of that would be
to actually produce and field some of those weapons.
I think the funding is a good start.
I think Congress can do better
and I hope that if not this year,
certainly in the following years, they will do so.
- What else do we need
to get some of these programs underway
and crucially, as you said,
to get them fielded in our arsenals,
even if they're not like the perfect weapon system
that we want down the road?
- Well, I think we certainly need,
in addition to the enabling legislation
and a sense of urgency on the part of the Pentagon
to get this done, just as there's a sense of urgency
for Golden Dome and for drones as an example.
In addition to that,
we need a very close partnership with industry
'cause after all, industry is who will produce these weapons
and will be able to advance the state of the art for us.
So, what does industry need to produce?
They need stable funding.
They need to know how much they will be able to deal with
and over what period of time.
They need a signed contract.
Industry needs to embrace new techniques.
Some parts of industry are doing that, others are slower,
but new techniques
like advanced manufacturing additive process.
They need to embrace things like open systems architectures.
So that as weapons are produced,
they're not locked in to certain technology
and certain software.
They can be upgraded more easily through the years.
Government needs to also do some things.
They need to be willing,
as increasingly government has been,
to adopt commercial practices
and invite in some commercial younger companies,
where there's a lot of venture capital behind them.
And that can be a source of helping to advance the ball,
not just solely relying on taxpayer dollars.
I think we need to say to industry,
"Look, this is what we want.
We want certain capability and we want it fast.
Here's the timeframe we want it
and these are the behaviors we need from you.
What incentives do you need to come from the government
to make that happen?"
So, that's some of what needs to happen next.
(air whooshing)
- [Narrator] When we come back,
more from a top expert at the Atlantic Council
on the US' hypersonic weapons efforts.
Stay tuned.
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(air whooshing)
Welcome back to "Defense News Weekly."
Hypersonic weapons
are one of the most disruptive developments
in military technology.
For more on their impact in the defense sphere,
we return to our talk with Deborah James,
former Air Force Secretary
and an expert at the Atlantic Council.
(air whooshing)
- As you mentioned,
there are a number of programs out there,
Dark Eagle, Arrow, Conventional Prompt Strike, HACM.
Do you see some or one of the services
as further down the road to the kind of conversations
that you're mentioning and the kind of openness
to collaborate with industry
or some further along the road than others right now?
- Well, of course, I'm most familiar with the Air Force
and I do think that, you know, the Air Force
is trying to collaborate more with industry.
There's always the fine line that you walk.
You have to be fair to all parties.
So it's not always an easy line to walk,
but I do believe both Arrow and HACM
have advanced the ball sufficiently,
where they ought to be ready for production,
if not now, very, very soon.
And so, this would be a perfect example
of where the Air Force should be having
those conversations with industry.
- I really appreciate about this capabilities task force
that it's co-chaired by two former service secretaries,
yourself and former Secretary of the Army, Ryan McCarthy.
You have so much benefit of perspective
in the seat that you're sitting in.
Can you look back
and share some lessons learned.
You know, if the services had to do it all over again,
what have you learned about jointness
when it comes to these programs?
What have we learned about execution
and the order of steps?
If there were do-overs to be had,
what would you recommend?
- Well, first of all, jointness is something
that I think ever since Goldwater-Nichols
back in the 1980s is something that we have collectively,
no matter what administration we've worked on,
we've collectively tried to do better and better.
And I think the level of jointness in today's military
is at an all time high.
And certainly Secretary of McCarthy and I came at it
from that angle.
It requires listening.
It requires sometimes compromising
on some of what you wanna come out with,
some of the capabilities.
So, I do think jointness is at an all time high.
The other lesson that we've collectively learned
over the years, and this was certainly repeated
in our recommendations
and in the spirit of the work that we did together,
and that is that we need to get
increasingly less burdensome on industry.
We need to remove as much of the red tape as possible.
We need to look to those commercial practices.
We need to simplify, because all of this will help
both on the innovation front and on the speed front.
And I do think this administration,
like every previous administration,
is doubling down to try to get that done
and to speed things up in the acquisition process generally.
Now, they are really making large efforts
and I applaud them for it.
And certainly, we made it a point in our commission
to go as quickly as we could to develop this report,
get it out there so that it could be timely
for both Congress and the Pentagon,
as well as to come up with actionable recommendations.
So that it hopefully won't sit on the shelf and gather dust,
but rather it'll make a difference
to our country and to our defense.
- You talked about simplification, always important.
Are there moments you look back on in the programs
as they developed where you could say with the benefit
of the knowledge and perspective you have now,
we should have done this differently
or taken a more efficient path perhaps?
- Well, speaking of acquisition in general,
I certainly would've wished we would've gotten the OTA,
the other transaction authority religion
earlier than we collectively did in the Pentagon.
That authority has been around for decades
and it was used a little bit.
It's being used a lot more these days.
So, that is certainly one lesson learned.
The same with commercial practices.
There have been the ability to use commercial practices
and by in a more commercial way for years and years,
but collectively we have been slow to adopt it.
Now, there's always reasons for this, Hope.
So if you go back in time
and how did we get to where we are,
there were concerns about competition.
There were concerns about quality.
There were concerns about scandals that were real.
And money was wasted
and there was waste, fraud, and abuse and so on.
So, this is how the regulations and laws and so forth
were built up over time.
All started with good intention,
all started for a particular reason,
but the totality of the weight
that those sorts of things brought upon the system
just got to be too much.
And so for years now, we've been trying to strip it away.
I wish we had done it more quickly.
- Something else that stood out to me about the report
and its rollout was the conversation
about how hypersonic weapons
are the new strategic deterrent.
There's sort of this perspective
that we're not actually going to use our nuclear weapons.
It makes it less of a credible deterrent
just because of the weight and sort of catastrophe
that that using them would be.
Can you, again, this is sort of looking
10, 15 years down the road
as nations begin to acquire hypersonic weapons
and build them up in their stockpiles,
how do you envision they will change warfare?
What does it look as nations begin to acquire them
and even to employ them?
- Well, the definition of deterrence really,
if you peel that back to its core,
an adversary, a potential adversary
has to believe that you have the capability
and the political will to actually use certain weapons
against them.
And if they believe it,
they hopefully won't start a fight to begin with.
So, that's the essence of deterrence.
So right now, we don't have a deterrent value
in our hypersonics capability, because our hypersonics
have all been in the research and development phase.
They have not yet moved to production.
So, we don't have any of these weapons fielded.
We're hurt from a deterrent standpoint at this point
because of that.
I think we're also hurt
from a war fighting capability
the fact that we lack these weapons now.
At present, our potential adversaries
can put our bases overseas, our allies,
potentially even the homeland in some cases at risk
because of course these weapons are fast.
They're lethal.
They're very survivable, hard to shoot them down.
And if launched against us, it would only give us minutes,
vice perhaps hours, to react.
Meaning would we do a counterstrike?
Well, you got minutes to figure it out.
Could we possibly move out of the way?
Well, you've only got minutes to get it done, you see.
So, it really does put us at a disadvantage.
To field them at scale in our country,
first of all would help us, God forbid we get into a fight
because those weapons would be able to be very useful
in what's called the anti-access aerial denial environment.
These very complex abilities and sensors and so on
that could shoot down aircraft.
China, Russia, other potential adversaries have those.
These weapons could break through.
So, it would be very helpful
in such a a warfare environment.
So for both a deterrent value
and God forbid we get into war, we need these weapons.
We also need defense against these weapons.
So, this plays into Golden Dome.
This plays into our ability
to be able to through cyber effects,
through electronic warfare,
defeat somebody else's hypersonic attacks against us.
Now, how will this change warfare in the future?
I think warfare will be forever evolving.
It will never stand still.
So, it's very hard to say 20 or 30 years from now,
what will this do.
I worry more about the near future.
I worry more about the next five years.
What can we myself, someone like myself
who's been in the government who has certain knowledge,
but I'm now on the outside, what can I do to try
to still advance the ball in critical ways
that will help our country, and our allies,
and our mutual defense in the next five years, let's say.
I'm gonna have to leave it to the next generation
to worry about the next 30.
(air whooshing)
- [Narrator] When we come back, it's time to start making
those financial New Year's resolutions.
Hear from our finance expert
on planning to make the most of 2026.
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(air whooshing)
Welcome back.
On this episode of Money Minutes,
Jeanette Mack from Navy Federal Credit Union
returns with tips on how to kickstart
your financial goals in the coming new year.
(air whooshing)
- Solid financial footing starts with smart moves.
Let's make next year your year to thrive.
Planning for some big life changes,
a new job, a new home, or a growing family?
Update your goals and plans to match what's coming.
Now, review your savings.
Can you cover three to six months of expenses
if life throws you a curve ball?
If not, make building an emergency fund your top priority.
Treat it like a bill you pay yourself
consistently every month.
Set up an auto deposit to your checking account
and you won't have to think about it again
until you need it.
Next, tackle your debt.
Look for ways to lower interest rates or refinance loans.
Freeing up cash now means more room to save
and invest later.
And don't forget your future self.
Maximize your 401k, TSP,
or other retirement plan contributions.
And maybe open an IRA for tax benefits.
Also, make sure your insurance
covers those who depend on you
and check that your investments still fit your goals
and risk tolerance.
Finally, update your estate plan and will.
Life changes fast, so keep your plans current.
And before making any big money moves,
talk to a trusted financial advisor.
This new year, leave bad money habits behind
and embrace smarter, more powerful moves.
Now that's thriving.
(air whooshing)
- [Narrator] To get more coverage
of military and defense topics,
direct your secret space-based surveillance systems
at militarytimes.com and defensenews.com
for more headlines,
And to be the most up-to-date airmen on the flight line,
sign up for our Early Bird Brief compiled each morning,
bringing you the most recent headlines.
And if social media
is where you collect open source intelligence,
follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Z.
And for you Gen Z troops, we're on TikTok,
so go follow us there as well.
When we come back, a look at the world
of military budgeting and contracting
and our latest edition of Defense Dollar.
Don't go away.
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(air whooshing)
Welcome back.
On this week's edition of Defense Dollars,
it's that most wonderful time of year, budget season.
The latest version of Congress's Defense Funding Plan
is out.
So, we turn to our friends at "Cheddar," for an update.
Have a look
(air whooshing)
- Welcome to Defense Dollars, a weekly update
on the defense and aerospace markets around the world
and what is making the numbers move.
Let's dive in.
Starting with some news here at home,
Washington is making defense headlines.
Congress's compromised National Defense Authorization Act
is calling for an increase in military spending,
adding about $8 billion
above the Pentagon's fiscal 2026 request.
That brings the grand total
for the 2026 budget to $900.6 billion.
The bill includes 162 billion for procurement,
146 billion for R&D,
291 billion for operations and maintenance,
and 234 billion for personnel and healthcare.
It funds several of President Donald Trump's key priorities,
including the Golden Dome Missile Defense Program,
the Air Force's F-47 and Navy's F/A-XX fighters,
the B-21 Raider, drone wingmen, submarines, and warships,
but it does not formally rename the Pentagon
as the War Department, which would require new legislation.
The NDAA also authorizes more than $38 billion for aircraft,
26 billion for shipbuilding,
and over 25 billion for critical munitions.
It also approves 47 F-35s
and directs the military to build a 90-day stockpile
of spare F-35 parts by the year 2028.
The bill saves the Air Force's E-7 Wedgetail
from cancellation, requires the service
to keep 103 A-10 Warthogs through 2026,
and provides nearly $2.6 billion
for the F-47 Next Gen fighter.
(air whooshing)
And from across the pond,
General Dynamics is looking for some sure footing
after one of its UK division's premier defense products
came under scrutiny as of late.
The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense
announced earlier this month
it was launching an investigation
into what caused a number of crew members
in its Ajax line of armored fighting vehicles to get ill
when operating the systems during a recent exercise.
The Ajax line is made by General Dynamics Land Systems UK
and features a family of armored systems
in a total of six variants.
Armored fighting vehicles are smaller than tanks
and the Ajax line is intended to do everything
from reconnaissance to logistics support
to intelligence gathering,
all while defending itself with high tech weapons.
The British MOD said the troops presented problems
related to noise and vibrations from their time
in some of the vehicles and put an immediate hold
on using them.
This is not the first time the Ajax line
has dealt with vibration and similar issues,
complicating the future for a set of systems
intended to be a centerpiece for the British Army.
The UK Minister of Defense said canceling the Ajax line
was not out of the question
and all options were on the table for moving forward
once the investigation was concluded.
General Dynamics was trending slightly lower in trading
earlier this week following the news,
but is up more than 25% from the start of the year.
GD reached a peak of about $353 a share
and is now trading about $20 short of that high watermark.
(faintly speaking)
And one more today before you go.
Do you like mysterious military tech
that can think for itself and prowls the skies
looking for enemies?
Northrop Grumman last week unveiled
a new autonomous wingman program called Project Talent.
For those unfamiliar, autonomous wingmen
are AI-powered aerial drones meant to fly
with manned military aircraft to act as scouts, decoys,
and added unmanned firepower.
Also called collaborative combat aircraft,
the sleek high speed drones
are a fixture of the Air Force's plan for the future
and the focus of a competition among arms makers
to become the supplier.
Northrop had a previous entry
in the autonomous wingman competition
that was not pursued by the military,
but says Talent is cheaper and faster to build
and worth another look.
Northrop Grumman stock has been in the green in 2025,
up more than 17% since January.
And that wraps up your Defense Dollars for this week.
Join us as always on cheddar.com
and defensenews.com for more stories like these.
(air whooshing)
- [Narrator] Well, that's all the time we have
in this episode.
Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next week.
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