The U.S. State Department on Friday announced it has approved the sale of 32 F-35A Joint Strike Fighters to Romania in a deal worth roughly $7.2 billion.

Romania’s deal for the Lockheed Martin-made F-35s will also include F135 engines made by Pratt & Whitney for each jet and a spare engine.

The sale would provide Romania, a NATO member, its first two squadrons of F-35s, and the country wants to later buy 16 more jets to make up a third squadron. If the deal is finalized, it could make Romania the third Eastern European country to fly the F-35, in addition to Poland and the Czech Republic.

Romania said in September 2023 that it expected to receive its first F-35s in 2030. Romania’s planned purchases could make it NATO’s largest F-35 operator on the eastern flank at a time when Russian aggression in Ukraine has worried allies.

The proposed sale would “improve Romania’s capability to meet current and future threats by further equipping it to conduct self-defense and regional security missions while enhancing interoperability with the United States and other NATO members,” the State Department said. Improving this NATO ally’s security would support the U.S.’s foreign policy and national security goals, it said.

The purchase would also provide logistics and maintenance support, navigation, communications and cryptographic equipment, ammunition and weapons, training for pilots and other personnel, and simulators. Lockheed primarily makes F-35s at its Fort Worth, Texas, facility.

The State Department also cleared a $4.1 billion deal for Japan to buy up to nine KC-46A Pegasus refueling tankers from Boeing.

The massive strike by tens of thousands of Boeing machinists in Washington state will affect the company’s work on the KC-46 Pegasus refueling tanker, the company’s chief financial officer Brian West said Friday.

West’s comments to the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference came hours after more than 30,000 union members voted overwhelmingly to reject a contract and go on strike.

“The tanker program is going to be impacted by the (Boeing Commercial Airplanes) factory disruption, and now work stoppage,” West said. “That is going to flow through the tanker rates, which is going to be more cost pressure.”

The extent to which KC-46 production might be impacted was not immediately clear, nor was how the strike could impact other Boeing defense programs, such as the U.S. Navy’s P-8 Poseidon. Boeing builds the KC-46 on its 767 line in Everett, Washington, and the 737-derived P-8 in Renton, Washington.

Further statements from Boeing and the Defense Department on the strike’s defense program ramifications were not immediately available.

Boeing management and leaders of the International Association of Machinists districts 751 and W24 reached a tentative agreement on a deal for 33,000 union members that would include a 25% wage increase over the four-year life of the contract.

Union leaders this week told members that while the contract did not deliver everything they sought, it would be “the best contract negotiated in our history” and recommended accepting the deal.

“We have achieved everything we could in bargaining, short of a strike,” District 751 president Jon Holden said in a Monday message to union members.

But that deal fell short of the 40% increase the union originally sought, angering rank-and-file members. On Thursday — the final day of the old contract — more than 94% of union members voted to reject the contract and 96% voted to go on strike. Union members are now picketing Boeing facilities in Washington.

West said the company was “disappointed” by union members’ decision to reject a contract and go on strike.

“Initially, we were pretty pleased,” West said. “We had an unprecedented temporary agreement that was unanimously endorsed by union leadership. Over the last few days, it became loud and clear with our union members that that offer didn’t meet the mark. So there was a disconnect.”

Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s new chief executive, is now speaking directly with workers to hear their concerns and figure out how to find an acceptable agreement, according to West.

A lengthy strike will hurt Boeing’s production, deliveries and operations and jeopardize its ability to recover from its many woes, West said. Those troubles most notably include quality and safety problems with its Max series of airliners.

In July, Boeing pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the crashes of two 737 Max aircraft. That followed a January incident in which the door plug of another 737 Max blew out in flight.

If the machinists’ strike is not resolved quickly, it could present further dangers for Boeing and its defense sector, which have already weathered one blow after another.

Fitch Ratings, one of the top international credit rating agencies, said Friday that Boeing “has limited headroom for a strike.” If the strike lasts a week or two, Fitch said, the company’s investment-grade credit rating is not likely to change.

But a longer strike, Fitch said, could seriously affect Boeing’s operations and financial outlook and increase the risk of a downgrade.

West said he is confident Boeing can balance its finances and debt and keep its credit rating investment-grade.

However, Boeing Defense, Space and Security is “still in recovery mode” and is likely to lose money in the third quarter, West said. These losses will in part be caused by cost pressures in Boeing’s fighter sector, as it ramps up production of the F-15EX Eagle II fighter and winds down work on the F-18 Hornet, according to West.

“Development hurdles” on the T-7 Red Hawk and MQ-25 Stingray programs, which are fixed-price contracts leaving Boeing on the hook for cost overruns, have also driven up costs, West said.

The U.S. Air Force awarded Boeing a $2.3 billion contract in November 2023 to build 15 more KC-46s, bringing the total number of Pegasus tankers on contract to 153. But the company has also taken significant losses on the program’s fixed-price contract, with the cost overruns topping $7 billion.

WARSAW, Poland — As Slovakia’s government wobbles over the previous Cabinet’s plan to buy 12 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters from the United States, Ukrainian officials are intensifying their lobbying in Washington to secure the aircraft for their defense against Russia.

The U.S. State Department in July approved a tentative foreign military sale of 12 Vipers, made by Bell, to Slovakia for an estimated $600 million, a hefty increase compared to the initial offer of $340 million extended to the previous Slovak government. The discount was in part due to the fact that a deal with the initially envisioned recipient of the U.S. equipment, Pakistan, had fallen through.

A senior industry official close to the talks said Bratislava’s efforts have since aimed at decoupling the discount from the Vipers and instead apply it to other prospective purchases like F-16 warplanes and air-defense systems. That has left officials in Washington miffed, the industry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations.

Meanwhile, Vadym Ivchenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker for the Batkivshchyna party, told Defense News that Ukraine has shown interest in the 12 Vipers since 2022. At that time, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces filed a letter of request to the U.S. to obtain the aircraft through a foreign military sale.

“We need these helicopters for our soldiers who are fighting on the frontline in the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and other regions but also leading an operation in the Kursk region,” Ivchenko told Defense News.

As a member of the parliamentary Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, Ivchenko said he has written letter to U.S. lawmakers to convince the Biden administration to reroute the Vipers to Kyiv if Slovakia turns them down.

“Slovakia should decide what kind of weapons and equipment they require for their military, and if they don’t need these helicopters, then their delivery to Ukraine should take place as soon as possible,” he said.

Ivchenko said that officials in Kyiv are also making efforts to host the production of Bell helicopters at a designated Ukraine-based facility.

“We wish to deepen our industrial cooperation with the United States to produce such helicopters in Ukraine,” according to the lawmaker. “This foreign investment would be guaranteed by the Ukrainian government.”

In March 2023, then-Slovak Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď announced the U.S. had offered to Slovakia the copters along with AGM-114 Hellfire II air-to-ground missiles, valued at about $1 billion, for roughly a third of their regular price to compensate the country for its donation of Soviet-designed Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets and 2K12 Kub air defense systems to Ukraine.

However, since a new Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Robert Fico was sworn in last October, Bratislava has suggested that attack helos are no longer high on its shopping list. Instead, the Slovak ministry would rather use the offered discount to buy Patriot air defense systems or additional F-16 fighters on top of the 14 jets it ordered in 2018, local officials suggested.

Naď, who chairs the opposition Demokrati (Democrats) party, told Defense News the new government in Bratislava, which is more aligned with Russian interests, still has gripes about the transfer of outdated fighters and air defense systems to Ukraine during the early days of the war. Fico officials now claim those donations had no basis in law, making Slovakia the only country of Eastern European allies to Kyiv where legal trouble is brewing over military aid to Ukraine, Naď said.

Industry officials have noted that the latest U.S. offer for the Vipers no longer includes Hellfire missiles, attributing the change in scope to growing discontent in Washington.

The U.S. Space Force should play a greater role in tracking factors related to human security, like food production, climate trends or energy distribution, for military decision-makers, according to a new report from RAND Corp., a federally funded research center.

That’s because the service’s access to communication, navigation and intelligence satellites provides a unique opportunity to monitor non-military factors that often lie at the heart of conflict on Earth, the authors argue.

The report from the public policy research firm highlights the military’s role in disaster prevention and crisis response, pointing to portions of the 2022 National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy that link national security to humanitarian challenges like food insecurity, energy shortages, climate change and terrorism.

“Although several U.S. government agencies and commercial partners collect and monitor indicators that are potentially related to human security, the [Space Force’s] role as a military service makes it a natural nexus for embedding human security principles and perspectives in the security workforce,” RAND states.

The report comes as Space Force capabilities to track missiles, monitor bad behavior in orbit and support military operations on the ground are in high demand. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News this summer that to meet current demand and expand into new mission areas, the service’s $30 billion budget needs to double or triple.

That kind of budget growth is unlikely in the near future, and RAND acknowledges this challenge in its study, noting an increasing appetite for imagery and data collection, in particular.

“Such an expansion is likely difficult to justify, given that the Space Force’s capacity cannot meet current operational demand,” RAND states. “Although the [Space Force] can potentially play a leading role in the human security area, it will need to rely on partnerships, likely with both public and private organizations, to provide the needed capabilities and capacities.”

Growing capacity and acquiring new systems will require long-term investment, but for now the service should lean on its relationships with international allies, commercial industry and other government agencies “define metrics related to human security through security cooperation training efforts.”

The Space Force should also develop training for its workforce on how to factor human security into its data collection and analysis, injecting relevant scenarios into wargames and exercises, RAND says.

As a case study on the impact space capabilities could have in preventing or managing humanitarian crises, the report explores the famine in Somalia, where over one million people have been displaced due to drought.

Space capabilities could be used to track environmental indicators like land degradation, water level changes and weather conditions. Satellites could also observe changes in food production, identify whether resources were being hoarded and identify migration patterns and indications of political violence.

“By using space capabilities to monitor such human security indicators as those proposed in this paper, the [Space Force] can help identify human security challenges as they are emerging, thus opening the door to interventions — potentially involving both resources on the ground and in the broader international community,” RAND states. “Such interventions might help prevent the escalation of cascading challenges.”

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s rare move to keep two Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East over the past several weeks has now finished, and the Theodore Roosevelt is heading home, according to U.S. officials.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered the TR to extend its deployment for a short time and remain in the region as fellow carrier Abraham Lincoln was pushed to get to the area more quickly.

The Biden administration beefed up the U.S. military presence there last month to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies and to safeguard U.S. troops.

U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier and the warships accompanying it has been an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began last fall, there has been a persistent carrier presence in and around the region — and for short periods they have overlapped to have two of the carriers there at the same time.

Prior to last fall, however, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the region.

The decision to bring the Roosevelt home comes as the war in Gaza has dragged on for 11 months, with tens of thousands of people dead, and international efforts to mediate a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group have repeatedly stalled as they accuse each other of making additional and unacceptable demands.

For a number of months earlier this year the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower remained in the Red Sea, able both to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. The carrier, based in Norfolk, Virginia, returned home after a more than eight-month deployment in combat that the Navy said was the most intense since World War II.

U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements, said the San Diego-based Roosevelt and the destroyer Daniel Inouye are expected to be in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s region on Thursday. The other destroyer in the strike group, the Russell, had already left the Middle East and has been operating in the South China Sea.

The Lincoln, which is now in the Gulf of Oman with several other warships, arrived in the Middle East about three weeks ago, allowing it to overlap with the Roosevelt until now.

There also are a number of U.S. ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, and two destroyers and the guided missile submarine Georgia are in the Red Sea.

NATO’s defense technology accelerator announced Tuesday it picked 10 companies to transition to the second phase of competition, which not only brings additional funding but tailored support as they look to break into the national security sector.

The firms are part of the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic’s inaugural cohort, which NATO announced last year. The organization, known as DIANA, chose 44 companies for Phase I, selecting firms whose technology could address needs in both defense and commercial markets.

The companies participated in a competition series last fall that took place across five cities: Tallinn, Estonia; Turin, Italy; Copenhagen, Denmark; Boston; and Seattle. During the events, companies used emerging technology to solve real-world defense challenges.

“To move into Phase II, innovators had to demonstrate progress in their commercial and defense market potential, the technical viability and novelty of their solutions, and their investment readiness,” NATO said in a statement. “Review panels comprised technical, defense and innovation experts.”

The 10 companies that will transition to the next phase of DIANA’s challenge series are:

· Aquark Technologies, a quantum firm based in the United Kingdom

· Astrolight, a laser communications company in Lithuania

· Dolphin Labs, an ocean-observation company in the U.S.

· Ephos, a computing firm based in Italy

· Goldilock, a UK-based privacy firm

· IONATE, a U.K. firm specializing in smart energy platforms

· Lobster Robotics, a mapping company based in the Netherlands

· Phantom Photonics, a Canadian quantum sensing company

· Revobeam, a polish antenna firm

· Secqai, a computing company in the U.K.

The selected firms will receive up to €300,000 ($330,000).

DIANA is jointly funded, which means NATO doesn’t draw from the common fund that allies are required to contribute toward. Instead, member nations choose whether to pay into DIANA. The U.S. Defense Department last year appointed Jeffrey Singleton, U.S. principal member and head of the delegation to the NATO Science and Technology Board, as the U.S. representative to DIANA’s board of directors.

The accelerator has more than 100 affiliated test centers across nearly every country that partners with NATO. That includes 28 “deep-tech” accelerators, two of which are located in North America.

The Russian military on Tuesday launched massive naval and air drills spanning across both hemispheres and including China in joint maneuvers.

The “Ocean-24” exercise spans the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic Seas and involves over 400 warships, submarines and support vessels, more than 120 planes and helicopters and over 90,000 troops, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The maneuvers will continue through Sept. 16, the ministry said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in comments to military officials that the war games are the largest of their kind in three decades, and that China’s warships and planes were taking part. China confirmed that on Monday, saying the two countries’ navies would cruise together in Pacific, but gave no details.

A total of 15 countries have been invited to observe the drills, Putin said, without naming them.

“We pay special attention to strengthening military cooperation with friendly states. Today, in the context of growing geopolitical tensions in the world, this is especially important,” Putin said.

The Russian leader accused the United States of “trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost,” seeking “to inflict a strategic defeat” on Russia in its war with Ukraine and to “break the established security architecture and balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“Under the pretext of countering the allegedly existing Russian threat and containing the People’s Republic of China, the United States and its satellites are increasing their military presence near Russia’s western borders, in the Arctic and in the Asia-Pacific region,” Putin said, stressing that “Russia must be prepared for any development of the situation.”

Russia and China, along with other U.S. critics such as Iran, have aligned their foreign policies to challenge and potentially overturn the Western-led liberal democratic order.

With joint exercises, Russia has sought Chinese help in achieving its long-cherished aim of becoming a Pacific power, while Moscow has backed China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and elsewhere.

Russia’s Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said the drills are aimed to train “repelling large-scale aggression of a potential enemy from ocean directions, combating unmanned boats, unmanned aerial vehicles, defending naval bases, conducting amphibious operations and escorting transports.”

Defense giant Boeing today announced plans to demonstrate quantum networking in space — a technological feat that, if successful, could help change the way the military processes data and identifies targets.

The company plans to launch the effort, dubbed Q4S, in 2026 using its own research-and development money. The experiment will demonstrate a concept called entanglement swapping — the ability to bring together, or entangle, the quantum states surrounding particles that haven’t previously interacted. The process is required to build expansive, hack-resistant networks in space.

Boeing set out to tackle the entanglement swapping challenge in 2021 with the goal to move as quickly as possible to push quantum technology as far as it could, according to Jay Lowell, chief engineer for disruptive computing, networks and sensors. Through the demonstration, the company hopes to learn more about how to build quantum networks that could prove transformational for a number of industries, including defense.

“We chose a goal that nobody else had accomplished, and we saw no one out there trying to do this,” Lowell told Defense News in a recent interview. “We knew it needed to be done to get where we want to go, which is the development of global quantum networks that connect sensors and computers around the world.”

The U.S. government spends about $1 billion each year on quantum technology development through its National Quantum Initiative, which it established in 2018 to help maintain an edge over China.

In the last decade, China has conducted several significant experiments aimed at reaching breakthroughs in quantum networking. In 2016, the country’s Quantum Experiments at Space Scale demo showed that it was possible to establish quantum keys across long distances. In 2022, it followed up that effort with the Jinan-1 launch, generating keys at a much faster rate.

Lowell described entanglement swapping as “more than twice as hard” as key distribution.

“From an impact perspective, these are the technologies that we need to validate are going to work in order to have the hope of building the quantum networks we want to build,” he said.

The yearlong mission aims to demonstrate entanglement swapping between two sources within a single satellite. Working with its payload and technology partner, HRL Laboratories, Boeing has completed several key design reviews and will run an integrated payload test this month. The payload is slated to be delivered within a year, Lowell said.

California-based Astro Digital, which is building the satellite the payload will fly on, will start production of the spacecraft in 2025.

Boeing’s focus throughout design and testing has been to build backups and contingencies into the system to reduce risk of mission failure, Lowell said.

“There are only a few things that, if they fail, we’re dead,” he said. “We’re pretty confident that if those few things work, everything else will go fine and we will get very useful information out of this experiment.”

If Q4S is able to demonstrate entanglement swapping within one spacecraft, Boeing’s next target is to develop a multi-satellite experiment to prove the capability works within a small, space-based network. Lowell said the company is exploring government and commercial partnerships for the next phase, but could also build the mission with internal funding.

Q4S and any future experiments are part of a broader emphasis within Boeing on demonstrating new technologies as well as how those capabilities fit within the company’s existing portfolio, he noted.

“The better we do that, the easier it is for our customers to understand the context of what it is that they’re getting in a way that’s recognizable to them,” Lowell said. “The better conceived the demonstration is, the closer it allows the customer to see the vision that we have and to start sharing in that vision or even pull us along further towards their vision.”

MILAN — The Ukrainian military has begun utilizing first-person-view drones with a thermite spray capability over forested areas where Russian troops and equipment are hiding, a tactic that experts say can be a legitimate weapon of war, but only under strict circumstances.

On Sept. 2, footage emerged online showing what appeared to be a Ukrainian low-cost first-person-view drone, or FPV, carrying an incendiary burning mixture that it sprayed along a dense line of trees where Russian troops were suspected.

It was later reported by Ukrainian media outlet Militarnyi that the Ukrainian Mountain Infantry had received thermite munitions – which include a powdered mix of aluminum and iron oxide capable of burning at temperatures exceeding 2,200 degrees Celsius – that were mounted on drones and dropped on Russian positions.

Experts believe that the use of such weapons is two-fold, acting as both a cheap way to expose enemy locations and to cause fear among the invading troops.

“The primary use of these thermite FPV drones is as a defoliant to remove the tree and foliage cover that Russian troops and vehicles are using for concealment in tree lines; and secondarily likely intended as a psychological weapon due to the nature of the effects thermite would produce in contact with skin,” Justin Bronk, senior research fellow at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, said.

In addition, the high-temperatures of the blend can damage or destroy caches of equipment and ammunition in a single sortie, Federico Borsari, resident fellow at the U.S. Center for European Policy Analysis, noted.

“They can be employed for specific purposes for which explosive effects are not ideal, and be useful to burn abandoned vehicles, for instance, saving explosive warheads for missions requiring kinetic effects,” he said.

The two experts said FPVs are suitable drone variants to deliver the burning mixture at slow speed because of their low cost and precise maneuverability.

As incendiary weapons have become more common in the war, analysts have been flagging concerns over harm to civilians. For example, in 2023, Russia reportedly used thermite bombs in eastern Ukraine over residential neighborhoods, according to a video on social media that was picked up by the Youtube channel of The Telegraph newspaper.

Dangers in using thermite include the possibility of causing out-of-control fires that risk burning down civilian infrastructure and non-military targets.

The use of thermite munitions is not banned per say, but neither is it straightforward, experts say.

“It would be legitimate and legal to use them as defoliants to remove cover, and this holds unless they would a) hit civilians or b) there was a significant risk the subsequent fire would endanger civilians – contrast this with Russian use of thermite last year in an indiscriminate manner,” Matthew Savill, director of military science at RUSI, wrote in an email to Defense News.

Under the Geneva Conventions, deliberately targeting civilian areas with incendiary weapons constitutes a war crime, yet Moscow has paid little consideration to adhering to international norms during the course of the war.

Russian forces have used other fire-inducing weapons such as the 9M22S incendiary cluster rocket, used for the 122mm caliber Grad rocket artillery system, Bronk said.

Savill notes that throughout the war, Ukraine has largely been able to contrast its adherence to international conflict laws against Russian behavior, an important appearance he presumes Kyiv will strive to maintain.

“I would expect that however they choose to use thermite, they would want to keep that distinction,” he said.

The U.S. Army is planning to ask for more flexible funding for unmanned aircraft systems, capabilities to counter them and electronic warfare tools in its next budget as it takes lessons learned from Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, according to Christine Wormuth, the service’s secretary.

“I think some of the areas that [Gen. Randy George], the chief [of staff of the Army] and I feel very strongly that we need to invest more in, both from the perspective of the Army… but also the needs of the joint force, is in the areas of unmanned aerial systems, counter-unmanned aerial systems and electronic warfare,” she said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference.

For instance, a Ukraine battalion commander told Wormuth earlier this year during training in Germany, that Russian electronic warfare capabilities were increasing “in ways that were concerning,” Wormuth detailed.

“I think you’ll see that in the budget that goes up to Congress next spring,” Wormuth said. “That’s an area where I think we also need to have more agility in our funding mechanisms because of the technology in those capability areas is changing so rapidly that we can’t afford to get locked into something and then be only allowed to use that something for the next 10 years.”

Both Wormuth and George have discussed the possibility of budgeting differently in order to get some capability into the hands of soldiers much more quickly. One of those possibilities is asking Congress to fund pots of money dedicated for a specific capability rather than budget across a number of specific line items that tend to be a specific product or program.

But both have also acknowledged that getting congressional appropriators on board might not be so easy. “Historically, they’re generally… very skeptical of what they see as kind of slush funds. They have a lot of scar tissue around [overseas contingency operations], and how the department has used that over the years,” Wormuth said.

Even so, “there is such a deep realization that we have got to change more quickly and that technology is changing rapidly right now that we do need to have more agile mechanisms,” she added.

Overseas contingency operations, or OCO, funding, used during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for operations abroad, was a separate account with billions outside of the Pentagon’s base budget. It was often used to get extra funding for a variety of things rather than commit to paying for it within regular funding. Congress eliminated OCO funding beginning in FY22. Now the Defense Department must budget for any overseas operations within its base budget.

The Army plans to present a budget in these areas, according to Wormuth, that, for example, used to have 10 to 12 individual line items and now may have two or three.

“If we keep it relatively narrow and focused and we demonstrate that we can use that agility in those areas effectively, we may be able to sort of have a proof of concept,” she said. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”