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HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is looking for inexpensive but high-tech solutions, including artificial intelligence, to help protect the massive acreage that make up its sites where munitions are made and stockpiled.
In one instance, a local duck hunter got out of his boat, grabbed his shot gun and waded right into the protected area of a munition site, Brig. Gen. Ronnie Anderson, Joint Munitions Command commander, said Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
These 13 operating sites under the purview of Joint Munitions Command have also seen 42 drone incursions, Anderson said, without specifying the timeframe.
“What are they doing? We don’t know. Is there anything nefarious or is it just someone who’s curious? We don’t know because we don’t have the ability to interrogate the [unmanned aircraft system] or the person who’s operating.”
The worst-case scenario, Anderson said, is a hobb..

U.S. and Lithuanian personnel were still working Thursday to recover four missing U.S. soldiers whose Hercules armored vehicle was found submerged in a body of water at a training site in Lithuania on Wednesday, officials said.
The soldiers, all part of 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, have been missing since early Tuesday, when they were conducting a maintenance mission to recover another Army vehicle during a training exercise, according to U.S. Army Europe and Africa. The training site is the General Silvestras Žukauskas Training Area near Pabrade, north of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania.
Search and recovery efforts have continued without pause since the soldiers were reported missing, the Army said in a statement Thursday. The initial search included military helicopters, Lithuanian diving teams and hundreds of U.S. and Lithuanian soldiers and law enforcement officers looking through thick forests and swampy terrain.
Now, personnel are focusing on the area where the armored vehi..

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Marine Corps’ answer to mobile, long-range fires now features a multirocket launch system and autonomous tech.
Oshkosh Defense unveiled the newest iteration of the Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary Fires, or ROGUE-Fires, at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, this week.
The payload-agnostic platform, carried by the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, allows for long-range fires, autonomous resupply and logistics operations, according to a company release.
Ship-sinking missile for Marines headed to test fire
“As the battlefield continues to evolve, we are leveraging the mature and proven Oshkosh families of vehicles to design payload-agnostic autonomous platforms that deliver unmatched flexibility, enabling forces to outpace emerging threats and maintain operational dominance,” said Pat Williams, chief programs officer at Oshkosh Defense.
The Marines first awarded a $40 million ..

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army plans to conduct a live shot with its Typhon missile system in Australia this summer during the Talisman Sabre exercise, marking the first firing of the long-range strike weapon on foreign soil, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space.
The Army will deploy its second battery and will fire an SM-6 missile from the system’s launcher, he told Defense News in an exclusive interview at Redstone Arsenal amid the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium.
The other Typhon battery, also referred to as the Mid-Range Capability missile system, was transported to Luzon, Philippines, in the spring of 2024 as part of the Salaknib exercise, marking the first time the new capability, deemed vital to the U.S. Army’s Indo-Pacific strategy, was deployed.
The mobile, ship-sinking system has remained in the country since then, much to the disapproval of China.
The Typhon launcher traveled more tha..

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army plans to send major elements of its most modernized air and missile defense capabilities to the Pacific and European theaters, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, program executive officer for missiles and space.
For example, the service will send two of its Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensors, or LTAMDS, to Guam, Lozano told Defense News in an exclusive interview at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.
Additionally, the Army will send an Indirect Fire Protection Capability platoon with prototype launchers to South Korea and will also send some of itsIntegrated Battle Command System capability to Europe to modernize a Patriot air defense battalion there.
Lozano had been tasked by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George to examine the possibility of sending new air and missile defense capabilities still in the prototype phase to global hotspots.
Both the Raytheon-developed LTAMDS and Leidos’ Dynetics-made IFPC have seen successful t..

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is just weeks away from making a production decision for its new missile defense radar, following an extra year of ironing out any kinks, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, the service’s program executive officer for missiles & space.
The Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, “is a huge, significant capability,” Lozano said in an exclusive interview with Defense News at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. “We anecdotally say it doubles legacy Patriot radar capability and not only does it double it, it provides you 360-degree capability.”
The radar is a major modernization element for the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense system along with a fully modernized command-and-control capability called the Integrated Battle Command System, which is already fielded.
Building the radar rapidly – the Army awarded a contract to Raytheon in 2019 to deliver prototypes over five years – “was always going to be incredibly ..

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Army is looking to increase autonomy through artificial intelligence solutions to reduce the manpower needed to manage Golden Dome, President Donald Trump’s desired homeland missile defense architecture, the service’s program executive officer for missiles and space said this week.
As the Army contributes a large portion of the in-development air and missile defense architecture for Guam, it is looking to adapt those capabilities for a Golden Dome application, Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano told Defense News in an interview at Redstone Arsenal on Wednesday amid the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
Some of the Army’s major contributions to the Guam Defense System include new modernized radars, an emerging Indirect Fire Protection Capability and its new Integrated Battle Command System, or IBCS.
“What we’re trying to do is three things,” Lozano said. “We’re wanting to integrate more..

Coming out of an entire career in the operational Army, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, now the director of the Army’s command-and-control modernization, said it hasn’t been uncommon in the field to see critical data jotted down on a piece of cardboard in the back of a platoon sergeant’s tank.
“There’s probably a headquarter somewhere today at an exercise where an intel officer is going to write everything down on a piece of sticky note that came out of his intel system, walk across the [Tactical Operations Center], hand it over to the fires guy who has to type it into the fires system to make it work,” he said in a Monday press briefing at the Pentagon. “We realize this is just not the approach to speed that we need in the United States Army.”
The Army’s command-and-control, or C2, architecture, which enables commanders to plan, decide and execute missions, was cobbled together over 20 years during the Global War on Terror. Most warfighting functions..

The U.S. Army has scheduled a test of its Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW, for December, the service’s program executive officer for missiles and space told Defense News in a recent interview.
After a lengthy delay as the Army and Navy struggled to test a jointly developed hypersonic glide body capability, the Army said earlier this year that it would field its ground-launched missiles to the first unit by the end of fiscal 2025.
In fact, the Army is forecasting that the first unit to get the hypersonic capability will begin receiving the rounds at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, in the May time frame, Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano said.
The 1st Multidomain Task Force, 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade unit at JBLM received all equipment for the LRHW capability except for the actual live rounds in 2021. The unit was supposed to get the missiles in the fall of 2023 but several aborted test events forced the Army to push back its field..

PARIS — Norway plans to nearly double its fleet of self-propelled artillery, proposing to buy an additional 24 K9 Thunder howitzers from Hanwha Aerospace for a budget of 5.65 billion Norwegian kroner, or $534 million.
The 155 mm howitzers will equip a new artillery battalion within the planned Finnmark brigade being set up to bolster Norway’s defenses in the high north, according to a government proposal published on Friday. The purchase plan is part of 17 billion kroner in proposed spending that also includes more sea mine-clearing capability, new military trucks and spending on facilities.
Norway already has 28 tracked K9 howitzers as well as 14 K10 ammunition resupply vehicles, and will exercise an option in its contract with Hanwha for the additional purchase, the government said. The spending plan still needs to be approved by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting.
“We are in a serious security policy situation,” Minister of Defence Tore Sandvik said. &ldq..