NGC2, one of the Army’s top priorities, is a clean-slate design for how the service communicates on the battlefield and passes data for operations, providing commanders and units a new approach to information sharing and C2 through agile and software-based architectures. The Army plans to spend almost $3 billion on the effort over the next fiscal year across procurement and research and development funds.

The $99.6 million other transaction authority agreement will span 11 months and cover Anduril’s work to prototype a system for 4^th Infantry Division, which will scale the capability all the way up to the division level. Prior, it was outfitted to an armored battalion, as well as higher headquarters elements, and tested at Project Convergence Capstone 5 at Fort Irwin, California, in March.

Anduril’s partners on the contract include Palantir, Striveworks, Govini, Instant Connect Enterprise, Research Innovations, Inc., and Microsoft, the company said in a statement Friday.

The OTA requires the team to provide an integrated and scalable suite of command and control warfighting capabilities across hardware, software and applications, all through a common and integrated data layer, the Army said.

The Army has pushed teams of industry partners to work on the NGC2 effort, calling for “self-organized” teams.

Anduril had been working previously on the NGC2 effort to produce a prototype that was tested at Project Convergence, along with other vendors.

The prototype award is not the end of the road for other vendors seeking entry into the NGC2 program. The Army said additional vendors can seek to participate through an open commercial solutions offering with additional OTAs expected to be awarded later in fiscal 2026 for prototyping with other units such as 25^th Infantry Division and III Corps headquarters.

“NGC2 is not a one-and-done contract, but a long-term effort of continuous contracting and investment in the technologies that will deliver needed overmatch for our force,” said Brig. Gen. Shane Taylor, program executive officer for command, control, communications and networks.

Army Futures Command has been in charge of the prototyping effort to date, testing a proof of principle and then a proof of concept to demonstrate what is possible, while the program office has been working on the eventual program of record, devising a contracting strategy and seeking vendors.

Army officials have maintained they want to inject and maintain a high level of competition within the program. If contractors aren’t performing, they will seek to build in mechanisms to offboard them and onboard new vendors.

Similarly, the constant competition is also aimed at avoiding vendor lock-in where one partner holds the bulk of the program for an extended period.

The commercial solutions offering allows the Army to maintain a continuous open solicitation with specific “windows” for decision points, the service said, providing opportunities for industry teams aligning incentives and continuously onboarding new vendors as the capability evolves.

“NGC2 uses a combination of flexible and innovative contracting techniques. This is a completely non-traditional, unbureaucratic way to equip Soldiers with the capabilities they need, using expedited contracting authorities,” said Danielle Moyer, executive director of Army Contracting Command – Aberdeen Proving Ground.  

The prototype OTA will allow the Army to continue its momentum toward delivering a solution for units while the commercial solutions offering enables the service to keep looking for capabilities to add to the NGC2 architecture in the future, the service said.

4^th Infantry Division will take the NGC2 system to Project Convergence Capstone 6 next year to test it out in a division holistically, to include the headquarters and enabling units, which have typically been neglected with communication network upgrades.

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The Trump administration announced in April that it awarded a contract to Boeing to build the F-47, a sixth-generation platform that’s part of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance initiative. Officials haven’t publicly disclosed how much Boeing received for the award due to classification of the project.

The DOD hasn’t publicly released full documentation for its 2026 budget request yet. But at a House Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon leaders discussed some of the department’s plans for key programs.

The budget allocates $3.5 billion for the F-47, Hegseth told lawmakers.

The system is being built “to dominate the most capable adversaries and operate in the most perilous threat environments imaginable,” he said in written testimony to the committee.

The platform will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable and supportable, have higher availability, and take less manpower and infrastructure to deploy than the U.S. military’s fifth-gen fighters, he told lawmakers.

“The F-47 will significantly strengthen America’s air power and improves our global position. It will keep our skies secure — even as it ensures we are able to reach out adversaries wherever they may hide,” he said.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in written testimony to the committee that the jet is the world’s first sixth-generation fighter and will offer superior “adaptability” compared to platforms that are currently in the fleet. He asserted that it would ensure “continued U.S. air dominance for decades.”

A graphic shared last month by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin on the social media platform X, indicated that the F-47 will have a combat radius greater than 1,000 nautical miles and a top speed higher than Mach 2. In comparison, the fifth-gen F-22 and F-35A stealth fighters have combat radiuses of 590 nautical miles and 670 nautical miles, respectively. The F-22 has a top speed greater than Mach 2 and the F-35A has a top speed of Mach 1.6, according to the chart.

The service plans to buy upwards of 185 F-47s over the course of the program.

Hegseth also told lawmakers Tuesday that the 2026 budget will “fully fund” the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, which aims to field high-speed, next-generation drones that can fly with manned fighter jets like the F-47 and perform air superiority missions.

“We believe in the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the loyal wingman concept, this idea that you project power more robustly through autonomous [and] semi-autonomous systems … that amplify our lethal effect,” he said.

Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, who is performing the duties of Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer, said the 2026 budget request includes $804 million for CCA.

The Air Force has given fighter designations to the CCA prototypes that General Atomics and Anduril are developing, referred to as YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively. Both companies have started ground testing of their systems, and senior defense officials on Tuesday said first flights are expected to take place before the end of this fiscal year.

According to the graphic shared by Allvin last month, CCAs will be stealthy and have a combat radius greater than 700 nautical miles. Their top speed is classified.

The Air Force plans to buy more than 1,000 of the next-gen drones in increments.

Last week, the service announced that an Experimental Operations Unit for CCA was elevated to a “fully operational squadron equivalent” during a June 5 ceremony at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

According to a press release, the unit will integrate into the Virtual Warfare Center and the Joint Integrated Test and Training Center Nellis to “conduct realistic simulations and refine non-materiel considerations of CCA employment concepts in a virtual environment.” It also plans to conduct “live-fly experiments to verify simulation results and optimize tactics, techniques and procedures.”

“Our experimental operations will ensure that CCA are immediately viable as a credible combat capability that increases Joint Force survivability and lethality,” Lt. Col. Matthew Jensen, EOU commander, said in a statement.

The Air Force aims for the F-47 and CCA drones to be operational before 2030.

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This partnership between the two contractors will allow military operators to have a software-defined solution built to deploy fast and operate anywhere with Palantir’s stack running natively on Menace systems.

Menace is described as is a family of fully integrated, turnkey command, control, communications and computing capabilities for users at the tactical edge and on the move. To outpace evolving threats in contested environments, it’s designed to equip operators with automated and resilient comms, data and software.

The two companies are working on a new Menace-I configuration that supports Palantir Edge. This will allow Menace customers to access Palantir capabilities such as Gaia — a geospatial map overlay providing operations and intelligence integration — Target Workbench — a target management system that enablers users to centrally manage intelligence and target identification — and Maverick. Another system known as Menace-T, will be used for on-premises and edge customer deployments.

“The goal is simple: give people in the field access to the software they need on hardware that’s built to withstand the conditions they actually face,” Tom Keane, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering, said in response to questions.

The U.S. military anticipates it will be operating in austere environments in the future where forces will have to move rapidly to avoid being targeted on an increasingly transparent battlefield, with limited reachback to enterprise capabilities and in congested information spaces.

“The tactical edge is where missions succeed and fail. It’s the most challenging environment- from rugged terrain and spotty communications to the extreme temperatures and external threats,” Keane said. “This partnership ensures that warfighters have near real-time information when and where they need it most. Menace provides more reliable communications pathways, portable systems to bring computing to where it is needed, and durable and rugged hardware. It’s also incredibly quick and easy to set up – and enables warfighters to be up and running in minutes.”

The two companies have been working together for some time, but Keane described this partnership as a formalization of the ongoing collaboration.

He explained that Menace systems supported Palantir software at recent field events, such as Project Convergence Capstone 5. Menace was the compute platform for Palantir software in disconnected and mobile environments and ran Andruil’s Lattice software, acting as a node within the broader Lattice mesh network and demonstrating how multiple tools can operate side-by-side in a single system.

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The tests represent a critical milestone for the CCA program, which is part of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems. The drones are expected to fly alongside the service’s manned platforms — including the sixth-gen F-47 fighter jet — to conduct a range of missions and augment the organization’s aircraft fleet. The ground tests bring the two vendors one step closer to conducting first flights of their drones, scheduled for sometime this summer.

“This phase bridges the gap between design and flight, reducing integration risks, boosting confidence, and laying the groundwork for a successful first flight and eventual fielding to the warfighter,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a statement.

The upcoming ground test phase will include “rigorous evaluations” of both vendors’ prototypes, according to an Air Force statement. The tests will focus on the platforms’ propulsion, avionics, autonomy integration and ground control segments to “validate performance, inform future design decisions, and prepare the systems for flight testing later this year.”

After receiving contracts in 2024 for Increment 1 of the CCA program, General Atomics and Anduril completed critical design reviews of their prototypes last fall. The Air Force in March designated the platforms as the first-ever unmanned fighter aircraft, with General Atomics’ prototype dubbed the YFQ-42A and Anduril’s Fury platform now referred to as the YFQ-44A.

“The CCA program represents a groundbreaking new era in combat aviation, and we remain on schedule to test and fly YFQ-42 in the coming months,” General Atomics President David Alexander said in a statement. “Our work on YFQ-42 will further expand the field of unmanned aviation, and we remain excited for the future.”

Air Force leadership have touted the service’s rapid and flexible approach taken with the CCA program, as it plans to field systems in increments. A competitive production decision for Increment 1 is expected in fiscal 2026, with the first batch of drones planned for fielding sometime before 2030.

“Together, Anduril and the United States Air Force are pioneering a new generation of semi-autonomous fighter aircraft that will fundamentally transform air combat,” Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president of air dominance and strike, said in a statement. “By delivering YFQ-44A at unprecedented speed, we are ensuring that warfighters have ample opportunity to experiment and build the trust required to support operational fielding of CCAs before the end of the decade.”

While General Atomics and Anduril are developing Increment 1 CCA platforms, the Air Force is separately working with five unnamed vendors that are developing the autonomy software for the first batch of drones.

Meanwhile, the service intends to begin development of the next batch of CCA drones, known as Increment 2, during fiscal 2026 to expand mission applications and integrate emerging technologies.

In recent months, Joseph Kunkel, director of force design, integration and wargaming at the Air Force Futures organization, has suggested that future CCA increments could feature a range of options in terms of cost and capabilities — including some attributes that aren’t considered “exquisite” in order to keep price tags low.

Along with initiating ground tests, the Air Force announced Thursday that the CCA drones will be based at California’s Beale Air Force Base, which has been designated as the CCA Aircraft Readiness Unit (ARU).

“The mission of the ARU is to provide combat aircraft ready to deploy worldwide at a moment’s notice. CCA are semi-autonomous in nature so the ARU will not have to fly a significant number of daily sorties to maintain readiness,” the service said in a statement. “The aircraft will be maintained in a fly-ready status and flown minimally so the number of airmen required to support the fleet will be substantially lower than other weapons systems.”

Updated on May 1, 2025, at 3:40 PM: This story has been updated to

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Anduril describes its new Copperhead technology as a “high-speed, software-defined family of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) built for delivery by autonomous systems.”

The munition variant has been dubbed Copperhead-M.

“Despite the rapid advances in autonomous vehicles across air, surface, and subsea domains, torpedoes aren’t built at scale and production remains frozen in Cold War-era designs. Current systems are expensive, slow to produce, and tightly coupled to legacy platforms like nuclear submarines and warships. In addition, the U.S. and its allies need far more autonomous, quickly-deployable subsea systems that can integrate with the existing manned fleet and expanding fleet of autonomous subsea, surface, and air vehicles,” the company stated in a press release.

Anduril’s new platform comes in two models — the Copperhead-100 and Copperhead-500 — with different payload capacities.

The 100 model has a 12.75-inch diameter vehicle that’s about 2.5 meters in length and carries 100 pounds dry weight, while the 500 model is 21 inches in diameter and carries roughly 500 pounds dry weight. The top speed for both systems will be more than 30 knots, according to Shane Arnott, vice president of programs and engineering at Anduril.

The hull form is more square-shaped than a traditional torpedo which will make it easier to produce, Arnott told reporters ahead of the official announcement.

“Our production system is aimed at being able to produce very high hundreds to thousands of these systems a year,” he said.

Anduril already builds unmanned submarines, such as the Dive-XL, that the company says will be able to carry “dozens” of the smaller Copperhead-100Ms or “multiple” Copperhead-500Ms.

The contractor also envisions the new torpedoes being air-launched from cargo planes or large drones. An unmanned aerial system in the Group 4 category could carry the Copperhead-100. Because of its heavier weight, a Group 5 UAS would be needed to carry the Copperhead-500, Arnott said.

He noted that the Copperhead uses the company’s Lattice software platform.

“Given our products are software defined with Lattice means that as the threat evolves, we can upgrade our seeking technology so as the threats move and change their signature, etc., we can move with it and at the pace of relevance with just software upgrades alone,” he said.

Anduril is touting the Copperhead-M as a more cost-effective means of attacking adversaries’ unmanned underwater vehicles and uncrewed surface vessels.

Arnott declined to say what the unit cost of the Copperhead will be, but suggested it would be “a fraction” of the cost of existing torpedoes such as the Mk 48.

“As the fight’s changing, subsea is getting much more populated, particularly with enemy UUVs and USVs. It doesn’t really make sense that you would expend a Mark 48, for instance, on an enemy … UUV or a USV, where that munition actually costs multiple times the cost of the UUV,” Arnott said.

He told DefenseScoop that customers would be able to determine how autonomous the Copperheads will be in terms of selecting their targets.

“The systems are set up very similar to out other uncrewed systems, where you can give it parameters that are very much controlled by the customer or by the operator on what the engagement criteria are. So within parameters that are set by the operator, the robot can make decisions on which of the targets that it addresses,” he said.

Last week, Anduril also unveiled a new undersea sensing network capability called Seabed Sentry, which the company says can be deployed by autonomous underwater vehicles.

The contractor describes the tech as “AI-enabled, mobile, undersea sensor nodes networked together for persistent monitoring and real time communication,” that can “sense, process, and communicate critical subsea information at the edge.”

The systems have an endurance of “months to years” and a depth rating of more than 500 meters, according to Anduril.

The technology leverages Lattice software platform and, like the Copperhead, is designed to be deployable by unmanned underwater vehicles, such as the contractor’s Dive family of uncrewed submarines, according to a press release.

Arnott suggested Copperheads will be able to exchange data with their launch platforms, Seabed Sentry nodes and each other.

“The overriding software that sits on top of that is Lattice … that gives the ability for all of those systems to talk to each other,” Arnott said.

“We utilize acoustic technologies as well as some optical in order to talk under the waves. We’ve spent a lot of time in our software making sure that we can deal with the extremely low bandwidth that you get subsea. When you’re in the air domain, it is very easy to communicate, the laws of physics are much kinder to you. But we have spent a lot of time dealing with both low power but also the ability to pack a lot in very, very thin bandwidths, in order to enable that collaborative capability, which is central to all of our subsea products that we’re now going public with across a number of different segments here,” he said.

Anduril has been testing Copperhead and expects to move into production later this year.

“We are in the water with the Copperhead at the moment. We are working through finalization of that before we head into production,” Arnott told reporters.

The unveiling of the technology comes as the Navy is pursuing Project 33 and other initiatives to add more unmanned platforms and firepower to the fleet in preparation for a potential war against China in the Indo-Pacific in the coming years. The service has already been experimenting with using maritime drones to launch loitering munitions.

Arnott declined to say whether the company already has a U.S. military customer for Copperhead-M.

“We cannot talk publicly about who we’re working with on the government side,” he told reporters. “We can’t talk to the contracts.”

He noted that Anduril funded the initial development of the technology with its own money.

Anduril is expected to display the Copperhead system at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference this week.

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Under the three-year, $86 million deal, the contractor will serve as SOCOM’s “Mission Autonomy Systems Integration Partner,” according to a press release.

So-called “collaborative autonomy” capabilities are on the command’s technology wish list.

The organization’s new strategy document, dubbed “SOF Renaissance,” notes that special ops forces must be early adopters at the Defense Department of innovations in areas such as AI, autonomous systems and cyber to enhance irregular warfare capabilities in complex operating environments.

“AI and uncrewed systems are changing warfare through increased automation and autonomy. This leads to more precise targeting and reduced risk to human personnel. The distinction between optimizing and generative AI is crucial and will be a game changer. Swarms of low-cost drones and remote explosive devices, using AI and autonomy, blur traditional human-machine boundaries on the battlefield. SOF must also use these systems to improve decisionmaking and situational awareness,” officials wrote in the document.

The command wants a variety of uncrewed systems for the air, land and sea domains. Officials are even eyeing robotic platforms that can operate in multiple warfighting domains, such as “multi-domain” micro drones and “Drone in a Box” technologies.

“To achieve the benefits of affordable enterprise capability, operators must be able to task teams of diverse, multi-domain autonomous systems to work together and execute a given mission. This requires mission autonomy software capable of integrating and coordinating multiple vehicles’ control systems, sensors, weapons, and other payloads to synchronize effects on the battlefield,” Anduril stated in a press release announcing the new contract award.

The company is touting its AI-enabled Lattice platform as an enabler of the autonomy software infrastructure that will give commandos the tools to interact and wage war with “teams of diverse autonomous systems” and deliver “coordinated mass effects.”

“As the Mission Autonomy Systems Integration Partner (SIP), Anduril will support USSOCOM in developing their infrastructure, enabling them to integrate, test, validate, and deploy government-owned and commercial mission autonomy software and enabling technology across their robotic platforms,” per the release.

The company plans to “prove out” software in the coming months via a series of demonstrations and integration events ahead of operational fielding.

This isn’t the first time that Anduril has been tapped by the Defense Department to provide these types of capabilities.

Last year, the company was one of three firms selected by the Defense innovation Unit to provide tools to facilitate “the automated coordination of swarms of hundreds or thousands of uncrewed assets across multiple domains in order to improve their lethality and efficiency.”

Anduril is offering its Lattice tech for that effort, which is supporting the Pentagon’s Replicator autonomous systems initiative.

“While these [unmanned] systems are valuable as single agents or swarms of like systems, they are most resilient and effective when they operate in combined teams that can collaborate with other types of systems across domains. Resilient C2 and collaborative autonomy vendors will enhance the effectiveness of these systems by providing user interfaces, collaborative autonomy architectures and software, and network orchestration,” DIU officials wrote in a release when the awards for the Autonomous Collaborative Teaming program were announced last year.

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Commanders at U.S. military bases are already seeing large numbers of incursions by small unmanned aerial systems. And those types of threats are expected to increase.

“We must continue to capture the lessons being learned in blood on active battlefields from Ukraine to the Middle East. We should pay special attention to the increasing importance of … the proliferation and effectiveness of drones,” Marine Commandant Gen. Eric Smith wrote in planning guidance issued last year. “We will continue to experiment with and invest in burgeoning capabilities that are defining the modern battlefield such as Ground Based Air Defenses, including Counter-small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.”

In early 2024, the Corps released a solicitation for Installation-Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (I-CsUAS). A few days ago, the Pentagon announced that Anduril beat out nine other offerors and snagged an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract worth a whopping $642 million to deliver, install and sustain a family of systems between now and March 2035.

“What they’ve selected here is not just a capability that is going to set them up for a future, but something that can deliver real capability to them today,” Kyle Erickson, general manager of air defense at Anduril, told DefenseScoop in an interview Thursday. “Our family of systems is deployed at scale with multiple services at multiple locations around the world. Has been in service for many years. It is proven, it is real, it’s in production. And so they’re picking something that is going to deliver value to them immediately.”

The contractor expects to field capabilities this year.

Erickson noted that the company has already provided a similar capability to U.S. Special Operations Command.

The family of systems that the Marine Corps will get under the new contract includes a variety of sensors and weapons to detect, identify, track and take down small UAS.

Erickson noted that Anduril will provide “an end-to-end capability” across the entire “kill chain,” to include all the fielding and sustainment support services.

“I can’t get into what we’re specifically going to provide for a specific installation in a given circumstance. Part of that is just due to the sensitivity of it, but partially also because different installations will have different priorities or threat profiles. And so I can’t talk about the specific case, but in the general case, you know the Marine Corps here is going to have access to our full family of systems, which includes multi-sensor detect, track, ID capability, including the radar and narrow-field-of-view infrared imaging capability in our Long Range Sensor Towers, the wide area infrared sensing with persistence in the Wisp sensor, as well as radio frequency sensing with the Pulsar capability and multiple defeat options, including low-collateral interceptors, like our Anvil interceptor, as well as the [electronic warfare] capabilities of the Pulsar,” he said. “So across that family of systems, you get multiple sensing modalities, multiple defeat or deter options to deploy flexibly depending on the threat profile or the authorities in a given situation.”

The company’s AI-enabled software platform, called Lattice, will be the centerpiece of the drone-killing architecture.

“Lattice is the software that stitches all this capability together. So it’s providing that command-and-control interface to the end users or operators so that they can command and control all the assets at a given installation from a single pane of glass. It’s also providing the autonomy capabilities on the different products themselves, so providing all the kinds of automated threat identification, sensor fusion, tracking — all the kinds of autonomy capabilities that help our operators to progress through the kill chain much more quickly and reduce the burden on them,” Erickson told DefenseScoop.

Anduril is taking a “software-first” approach to its family of systems, he said, which will facilitate future upgrades to the capabilities as new technologies become available.

Drone threat identification can vary depending on the sensor modality, Erickson noted.

“You might do some track classification based on the kinematics of a radar track, for example, the different characteristics of that track as measured by the radar with something like a narrow-field-of-view optic. Yu can run computer vision algorithms on the imagery and train those over time as you see more data with a radio frequency sensor. As you can imagine, you can do some amount of identification based on the particular signal and the analysis of that signal,” he explained. “And when you have these multiple modalities layered in together, then you have much greater capability of identifying threats.”

While autonomy is a key element of the capability set, Erickson said there is room for a human in the loop, which is important to the Marine Corps.

“The autonomy is really designed to invite the user at key decision points through the kill chain process. So the autonomy is doing a lot of the initial detection, tracking and identification. When a threat is identified, the end user is notified and alerted. They then have an opportunity to make a decision about what to do, whether that’s making a phone call or working through their [standard operating procedures], or even tasking an integrated effector against the threat. So there’s not going to be 100 percent automated, full execution of the kill chain — and that’s very much by design. You know our customers want to have a human operator on the loop for these critical decision points, and that’s a key element in our design approach as well,” he noted.

The $642 million I-CsUAS contract is focused on addressing threats posed by Group 1 and Group 2 drones — which are on the smaller end of the UAS spectrum — but Anduril also has capabilities that can defeat Group 3 systems, Erickson said.

Kamikaze drones, also known as one-way attack drones or loitering munitions, typically fall into the Group 3 category, and they’re a type of weapon that the Marines and the U.S. military writ large are concerned about and want to counter.

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In that role, Obadal would be the Army’s chief management officer, helping oversee a budget of more than $185 billion and the manning, training and equipping of the force.

Obadal, a retired Army colonel, is currently a senior director at defense technology company Anduril, according to his LinkedIn profile. The firm has been racking up major contract awards from the Defense Department and working on key Army modernization initiatives, such as drones, IVAS and more.

Before joining Anduril, Obadal — a Virginia Military Institute graduate — served for more than 27 years in the Army, including as an attack helicopter officer and a unit and task force leader for Army Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command, according to his bio on the Special Operations Warrior Foundation website.

If confirmed, Obadal would work under Daniel Driscoll, the new secretary of the Army, who’s looking to shake up the service’s acquisition enterprise.

“[W]e must reinvigorate our industrial base and revolutionize our procurement processes. We are not ready for large-scale conflict with a peer adversary. But we must be. Together, we will forge stronger partnerships with the defense industry to ensure you have the firepower to dominate our enemies. No contract, company, or bureaucratic obstacle will stand in the way of this goal. The status quo is unacceptable. When our nation calls, we will not send you into a fair fight — we will ensure you have overwhelming superiority,” Driscoll wrote in a message to the force after being sworn in last month.

Modernization initiatives currently in the works for the Army include artificial intelligence tools, next-generation network capabilities, robotic combat vehicles and optionally manned fighting vehicles, air defense systems, directed energy weapons, new aircraft and drones, information technology, hypersonic missiles and hypervelocity projectiles, and augmented reality goggles, among others.

DefenseScoop reached out to Anduril spokespeople seeking comment from Obadal and more information about his role at the company.

Obadal’s nomination was submitted to the Senate along with a slew of other nominations for senior positions in the Trump administration and at the Pentagon, including Hung Cao to be undersecretary of the Navy; Daniel Zimmerman to be assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; Sean O’Keefe to be deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness; Michael Cadenazzi to be assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy; and Richard Anderson to be assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs.

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The two companies announced this week that they have progressed to the second phase of the Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program, beating out Integrated Solutions for Systems and Leidos Dynetics for the follow-on agreement. The effort initially looked to create an inexpensive air vehicle to test new capabilities and subsystems, but now the ETV prototypes are expected to become the baseline architecture for a future palletized munitions platform.

The down-select follows an initial award in April 2024, when DIU announced it was partnering with the Air Force’s Armament Directorate on the ETV program and had awarded contracts to Anduril, Zone 5 Technologies, Leidos Dynetics and Integrated Solutions for Systems. 

The vendors were first tasked with developing and flying an air vehicle that featured an open systems architecture to enable subsystem integration, as well as proving industry could rapidly build and scale production of the platform, Steve Milano, director of Anduril’s strike and air dominance sector, told a group of reporters Monday on the sidelines of the annual AFA Warfare Symposium. Companies were also required to prioritize commercial off-the-shelf parts to reduce supply chain bottlenecks and keep the platforms affordable, according to DIU.

The next phase — expected to last around six months — is “intended to not just iterate on the existing design of that platform, but also demonstrate some of the network collaborative autonomy,” Milano said.

Anduril conducted a successful flight test of its offering for the program — the Barracuda-500 autonomous air vehicle — in September 2024, the company announced Tuesday. The test demonstrated a “successful vertical launch from a cell designed to emulate palletized employment from air-lift aircraft, autonomous navigation and flight for over 30 minutes, successful capture of a GPS coordinate target identified in Lattice and autonomous terminal guidance to the target,” according to a statement from Anduril.

Zone 5 Technologies’ ETV prototype is a system called Rusty Dagger Open Weapon Platform, which “has rapidly demonstrated mature system capability and quickly transitions towards scaled production and mission readiness,” the company said Wednesday in a statement. “Rusty Dagger has successfully performed end-to-end mission demonstrations, including palletized launch, pylon launch, long duration missions, and high accuracy terminal engagement.”

One mission set that DIU and the Air Force are eyeing for the ETV platform is the Franklin Affordable Mass Missile (FAMM) program, which seeks a palletized munition that can be deployed in large quantities via air drop from cargo aircraft.

Milano explained that once the second phase of the ETV program concludes, it will transition into “a formalized requirement to go after a capability set, and that capability set is answered by a program of record called FAMM.”

Anduril’s flight tests in 2025 will demonstrate simultaneous vertical launch of multiple Barracuda-500 vehicles, in-flight communications and how the company’s autonomy stack can enable collaborative autonomous flight, according to an Anduril press release. The company will also produce the air vehicles to prove out the platform’s ability to be rapidly and affordably manufactured, it noted.

The Air Force is also pursuing a separate effort to use the ETV platform for its Extended Range Attack Munition program, intended for foreign military sales to Ukraine, according to a report from Aviation Week. However, the status of the program is unknown due to the pause in military assistance to Kyiv. At the same time, the ETV program was selected for the Defense Department’s Replicator initiative, which aims to rapidly field thousands of small drones in the Indo-Pacific to counter China’s ongoing military buildup. 

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DIU — a Silicon Valley-headquartered organization which has embedded personnel at Indo-Pacom and Eucom to help tackle some of the combatant commands’ tech-related challenges.

On Wednesday, DIU announced that Scale AI was awarded a prototype contract for the new Thunderforge capability, which will include the company’s agentic applications, Anduril’s Lattice software platform and Microsoft’s large language model technology.

“The Thunderforge technology solution will provide AI-assisted planning capabilities, decision support tools, and automated workflows, enabling military planners to navigate evolving operational environments. By leveraging advanced large language models (LLMs), AI-driven simulations, and interactive agent-based wargaming, Thunderforge will enhance how the U.S. military prepares for and executes operations,” the unit said in a release.

DIU issued a solicitation for the program last year via its commercial solutions opening contracting mechanism.

“The joint planning process is complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. Planners and other staff members must synthesize large amounts of information from diverse sources, consider multiple courses of action (COA), and produce detailed operational plans and orders – often under significant time pressure. As the operational environment becomes more complex and dynamic, there is a need to accelerate and enhance joint planning capabilities while maintaining rigor and human judgment,” the document stated.

In a statement Wednesday, Bryce Goodman, Thunderforge program lead and contractor with DIU, noted that current military planning processes rely on decades-old technology and methodologies.

The U.S. military wants new tech that can quickly ingest, process and summarize large volumes of information relevant to military planning; identify key insights, patterns and relationships; produce draft operations plans, concept plans and operations orders; and perform automated wargaming of courses of action and provide comparative analysis of advantages, disadvantages and risks.

“Our AI solutions will transform today’s military operating process and modernize American defense. Working together with DIU, Combatant Commands, and our industry partners, we will lead the Joint Force in integrating AI into operational decision-making. DIU’s enhanced speed will provide our nation’s military leaders with the greatest technological advantage,” Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang said in a statement.

According to DIU, initial deployments of the system to Indo-Pacom and Eucom are expected to support “mission-critical” planning activities such as campaign development, theater-wide resource allocation and strategic assessment.

If the tech meets expectations, plans call for scaling the Thunderforge capability across the U.S. military’s combatant commands in the future.

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