Boeing’s BSU-111/B Payload Delivery Unit is a wing-and-turbojet engine kit that converts a 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) into a long-range JDAM (JDAM LR) dubbed the GBU-75. The result is a gravity bomb with the reach of a cruise missile.

Boeing said it has spent nearly $100 million of its own money on the program.

“Scaling production of the GBU-75 will provide the fleet with an affordable, sustainable solution designed to eliminate long-range land and sea-based threats to U.S. and international forces,” said Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems.

The BSU-111/B wing-and-engine kit is the latest modification to the JDAM family, which has previously seen the gravity bomb receive a tail kit that steered it roughly 15 nautical miles and a wing kit that further stretched that distance to 40.

The Kratos-designed TDI-J85 engine pushes that past 300.

The JDAM LR’s capabilities go beyond land strikes. The QuickStrike Long Range mining variant pairs it with a bomb carrying a ship-tracking sensor. Boeing has shown concepts loading large numbers onto Air Force bombers, though no Air Force buy has been announced.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, buys JDAM for both the Air Force and U.S. Navy. The first GBU-75s are bound for the Navy.

The Navy demonstrated the weapon back in April, when Super Hornets released two JDAM LRs over the Point Mugu Sea Range off California.

The April 1 round separated cleanly, fired up its engine and flew 34 minutes before landing within meters of its target. The April 3 round added altitude changes and maneuvering. Each covered roughly 200 nautical miles.

When announcing those tests in April, Capt. Sarah Abbott, the Navy’s Precision Strike Weapons program manager, emphasized the need to give the fleet’s JDAMs greater standoff range.

“As Naval Air Forces in theater continue to rely heavily on JDAM systems, the program recognizes a critical need to provide the fleet with greater standoff range,” she said. “This new capability allows pilots to engage targets from significantly safer distances, maintaining a tactical advantage in contested environments.”

Reusing existing infrastructure is a key aspect of the program’s appeal.

Navy budget documents describe JDAM LR as a modification to the baseline program, built on the existing production line and guidance hardware. Any jet that can drop a conventional JDAM can carry the new variant without modification, according to Boeing’s release.

The award, which had not appeared in the Pentagon’s daily contract announcements as of Aug. 5, is an undefinitized action, meaning Boeing began work before the two sides agreed on a price. The Government Accountability Office has long called these contracts risky because contractors are reimbursed for allowable costs, regardless.

Boeing’s release did not say how many GBU-75s the contract buys, how much they cost or when deliveries begin.

The announcement builds on an eventful few weeks for the company’s Corsair drone boats.

On July 12, three Corsairs struck Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base in what U.S. Central Command called the first combat use of unmanned surface vessels by American forces.

Weeks earlier, a Navy-operated Corsair helped rescue two soldiers after their Army AH-64 Apache went down near the Strait of Hormuz, a mission Central Command called another first of its kind by an unmanned surface vessel.

Founded in 2022, Saronic first unveiled plans for Port Alpha in February 2025 but stopped short of naming a site or a cost. Plans now include an initial 835-acre site in Cameron County, with room to grow to nearly 4,400 acres. It’s an investment the company puts at more than $3 billion. The site was chosen over competing sites in California and Virginia, among others.

Construction is set to break ground this year, with the yard expected to open in 2028. Initially, the facility will be capable of building vessels up to 850 feet, about the length of a U.S. Navy Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, though future expansion could support vessels longer than 1,200 feet, the company said.

Saronic estimates Port Alpha could create up to 10,000 direct jobs over the next decade, from welding and machining to robotics, software engineering and naval architecture. The company also projects $264.5 billion in economic impact for Texas and $160 billion for Cameron County.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who announced the project from Saronic’s Austin headquarters, said a fully built-out yard would deliver about $750 million a year in wages, a sum he called “game-changing for the population of Texas.”

To help land the project, the state extended an $80 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund, according to the governor’s office.

Last month, Cameron County commissioners approved a 95% tax abatement for the project over roughly two decades, according to USNI News. The agreement is contingent on Saronic filling 35% of the yard’s jobs with local residents, and the tax break shrinks if the company misses its local hiring targets, the Texas Tribune reported.

The deal was not without local opposition. According to the Border Chronicle, at least 40 people testified or submitted written statements against the abatement, some questioning why a company valued at $9.25 billion needed a tax break. The June 16 vote passed only after two earlier delays and hours of testimony.

Port Alpha would become Saronic’s third site. It runs a plant in central Texas that turns out the 24-foot Corsair, for which the Navy awarded a $392 million production contract in December, and last year it bought a former Gulf Craft yard in Franklin, Louisiana, where it is spending $300 million to build the larger, 180-foot Marauder.

Dino Mavrookas, Saronic’s co-founder and chief executive, did not specify which ships Port Alpha would build but told reporters the company envisions autonomy playing a role in larger hulls over time, according to USNI News.

“Those ships might not be fully autonomous or fully unmanned on day one,” he said. “But over time, as we look at building out the tech and building out the industry as a whole, there’s no reason that you can’t unman those ships completely.”

Port Alpha arrives amid a federal push to rebuild a U.S. shipbuilding base that has fallen far behind China’s. Saronic tied the project to an executive order on maritime dominance that President Donald Trump issued in April 2025, along with the SHIPS for America Act and a federal Maritime Action Plan, all aimed at reversing decades of decline in commercial and naval ship production.

“America’s maritime future depends on our ability to build again,” said Mavrookas, adding that the yard was built “to deliver ships at a speed and scale not seen since World War II.”

Saronic is one of seven companies competing for the Navy’s medium unmanned surface vessel contract, with at-sea testing set to run through October.

The company said it will work with Texas, Cameron County and local schools to build training and apprenticeship programs for the yard, but did not say when it expects to name customers or specific ship classes for Port Alpha.

The deals fall under the U.S. Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, or FAMM. The Defense Department said it reached agreements with Anduril for its Barracuda-500, CoAspire for its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile and Zone 5 Technologies for its Rusty Dagger.

The move boils down to cost-effectiveness. The Air Force is betting that low-cost weapons can do the work the service once reserved for far more expensive munitions.

Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, designed to be fired at heavily defended targets from a safe distance, cost more than $1.3 million apiece. The service wants its new missiles for a fraction of that, closer to $218,000 per round, cheap enough to shoot many for less than it once cost to shoot one.

The FAMM program splits into a lugged variant carried by fighters and bombers (FAMM-L) and a palletized variant dropped from airlifters (FAMM-P), both with ranges of 250 to 500 miles.

Anduril said its framework agreement runs seven years, with deliveries starting in 2027. According to the company, the Air Force intends to buy up to 8,000 FAMM rounds a year across both variants and all the competing vendors.

The deals are framework agreements, not orders for missiles. They set the terms and promise the companies steady business, giving them a reason to invest in bigger production lines.

The Defense Department said the missiles still have to complete testing and qualification, and that the actual buys depend on Congress approving the multiyear deals the Pentagon is seeking.

Anduril pitched its missile as proof that cheaper weapons can be built at volume.

“Barracuda-500 is specifically designed to expand the United States’ stand-off strike capability,” Anduril said in its release. “By augmenting existing critical munitions inventories with a more affordable, producible, and flexible option, Anduril is enhancing America’s arsenal of munitions, ensuring that we have the capability required to deter our adversaries.”

To keep the vendors competing, the Pentagon is splitting the work among all qualified suppliers under firm fixed-price terms with a minimum order floor, and companies that beat their production schedules become eligible for additional orders.

Budget projections call for 28,000 missiles across all vendors over five years for $12.6 billion, reaching 7,990 rounds in the final year.

The agreements stem from the Acquisition Transformation Strategy, the Pentagon’s push under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to buy weapons faster and from nontraditional suppliers.

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey said the FAMM deals showed the department “expanding the defense industrial base, fielding capabilities faster, and attracting private investment.”

Zone 5 runs its U.S. operation from California but was acquired in June by Kongsberg, a Norwegian defense company. Anduril and CoAspire are based in California and Virginia, respectively.

The agreement comes on the heels of a May announcement that tapped the same three companies, along with Leidos, for the Army-led Low-Cost Containerized Missiles program, a parallel push for ground-launched affordable missiles.

The Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, or DRPM-UxS, will become “the single joint integrator for all unmanned and autonomous system programs” in the department, according to a June 29 memo the Pentagon made public Wednesday. Its director, yet to be named, will answer to Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg and oversee how the military develops, buys, fields and sustains unmanned systems in the air, on the ground and at sea.

The office’s reach is wide, including small drones in unmanned aircraft groups 1 through 3, unmanned boats, ground robots and counter-drone systems. It also covers the artificial intelligence and swarming software that guides them. Unmanned underwater vehicles will be handled jointly with the Pentagon’s submarine portfolio manager.

The office’s authority stops short of the Pentagon’s major defense acquisition programs, the big-ticket programs that already follow a separate approval process set in law. That means large airframes like the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft and the Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray and MQ-4C Triton stay with the services, as does the Navy’s medium unmanned surface vessel.

Two existing organizations are now moving under the new office. Joint Interagency Task Force 401, which has led the fight against small aerial drones, will expand to countering unmanned threats in every domain. The Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, the Pentagon’s effort to mass-produce cheap drones, becomes a subordinate element. Neither will see its staff or positions relocated, the memo notes.

The new office inherits one of the largest spending increases in the Pentagon’s budget. The department’s latest budget request set aside $53.6 billion for autonomous drone platforms, part of what Pentagon officials called an unprecedented commitment to drones and counter-drone systems.

Separately, the memo names the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon’s link to commercial tech firms, as the single point of contact for the new portfolio.

The office holds significant power. It will act as the milestone decision authority for its programs, the official who decides whether a weapon advances through development, and it will take precedence on drone acquisition matters behind only Hegseth and Feinberg.

The office can act as the top buying official on its contracts, order the services to shift money between programs through the Pentagon comptroller, and stop any system from reaching the field.

The move also centralizes congressional engagement through the DRPM-UxS, requiring every part of the department to clear its drone-related plans with the office before contacting lawmakers.

The memo says the office’s programs, jobs and people are exempt from the department’s hiring freezes, personnel reductions and reductions in force, and gives its chief the power to hire directly. The memo also lays out a staffing timeline. Once a director is named, hiring is to begin within 30 days, an organizational plan is due within 60 and a full list of the programs moving over is due within 90.

The reorganization is the latest step in Hegseth’s push to field weapons faster, a broader “speed to delivery” initiative that has already drawn warnings from the government’s top auditor.

A Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday found the Pentagon’s independent testing office, which Hegseth cut from 126 civilian jobs to 30 last year, now watches just 15 of about 110 active programs on one fast-track buying pathway, Defense News reported.

It is the latest of several direct reporting portfolio managers Hegseth’s team has stood up to pull the department’s top priorities under Feinberg, and the widest in scope. What this all means for the drone programs already underway inside the services is not spelled out in the memo.

The Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) is the Pentagon’s independent authority on whether new weapons work as intended before reaching the field. In fiscal 2024, DOT&E received $10.6 million specifically to expand its oversight of programs using the Pentagon’s middle tier of acquisition (MTA) pathway, a streamlined process designed to field new capabilities faster by bypassing traditional acquisition steps.

As of February 2026, DOT&E’s oversight list included just 15 of roughly 110 active MTA efforts. The office’s action officers, the staff responsible for assessing individual programs, warned that the services could use MTA and other rapid prototyping pathways to sidestep the operational and live-fire testing requirements written into law.

The gap traces back to a Pentagon reorganization that hollowed out DOT&E’s workforce starting in May 2025. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the office cut from 126 authorized civilian positions to 30, eliminated all but one Senior Executive Service (SES) position and ended contractor support within seven days, according to the memo GAO reviewed.

Hegseth’s memo projected $300 million in annual savings and said the changes would “improve the lethality, readiness, and efficiency of our Armed Forces.” Defense News reported at the time that the cut amounted to more than 50% of the office.

The reorganization unfolded in stages over nearly a year. DOT&E issued six separate reduction-in-force (RIF) notices between June and October 2025 before a continuing resolution paused RIF activity government-wide that November. Staffing partially recovered, reaching 45 positions by September 2025, though it remains well below pre-reorganization levels.

The DOT&E cuts were not an isolated move. They foreshadowed a broader overhaul Hegseth unveiled in November 2025, when he announced the Pentagon would replace its program executive officers with “portfolio acquisition executives” under a system he renamed the Warfighting Acquisition System. “We mean to increase acquisition risk in order to decrease operational risk,” Hegseth said in his National War College address, where he also declared, “Speed to delivery is now our organizing principle.”

The reorganization of DOT&E’s independent testing office reflects an inherent tradeoff: faster fielding, with less independent scrutiny built into the process.

The toll shows up in the numbers. DOT&E’s overall oversight list, not just MTA efforts, fell from 265 programs in fiscal 2024 to 173 in fiscal 2025, a drop of more than 90 programs. The list had held roughly steady for years before that, ranging from 237 to 266 programs between fiscal 2021 and 2024. The one-year collapse marks a sharp break from that trend rather than a continuation of it.

Reasons for the removals, GAO found, ranged from completed testing and program cancellations to mergers and DOT&E’s own determination that oversight was no longer necessary.

Action officers told GAO that workforce reductions left them responsible for more weapons programs, often in areas outside their background, and pointed to specific expertise gaps in electronic warfare oversight. That increases the chance, GAO concluded, that weapon systems reach warfighters with “undocumented shortfalls related to effectiveness, suitability, survivability, or lethality.”

The finding points only to the risk, not a confirmed case of a fielded system reaching troops with an undetected problem.

GAO’s findings echo warnings raised when the reorganization was first announced. Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed, D-RI, called the move “reckless and damaging” at the time, warning that a skeleton crew with limited contractor support could leave DOT&E unable to adequately oversee critical defense programs, undermining independent oversight and exposing warfighters and taxpayers to untested systems. Reed made the remarks amid oversight concerns over the administration’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.

GAO’s review also found the cuts were not evenly distributed, with DOT&E protecting some capacity even as it shrank elsewhere. Two warfare-area directorates were eliminated outright, one covering net-centric, space and missile defense systems, the other handling strategic initiatives, policy and emerging technologies. Two new units focused on cyber and space were stood up and staffed up faster than most of the rest of the office, according to GAO’s data.

The reshuffling reached the top of the office as well. The reorganization eliminated DOT&E’s SES-level deputy director positions, which had given the office standing roughly equivalent to a two-star general in dealings with the services’ acquisition communities. In their place, the office dual-hatted non-supervisory GS-15 action officers into deputy roles. DOT&E’s current director told GAO he is working to convert those into senior GS-15 supervisory positions.

DOT&E has also missed a deadline set by Congress. The explanatory statement accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, directed the office to report to congressional defense committees within 60 days of the law’s enactment on how the reorganization affected its testing activities. As of May 2026, that report had not been submitted.

GAO issued no formal recommendations but raised several questions for lawmakers. One is whether MTA programs should be written explicitly into DOT&E’s statutory oversight authority, since the pathway currently falls outside the office’s formal mandate.

Another is whether deputy director positions should carry SES rank to ensure continuity. A third is whether DOT&E needs its own repository for test and evaluation data rather than relying on the Institute for Defense Analyses’ contractor-managed system.

The maneuver surfaced in a Wednesday report accompanying the House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2027 defense bill, and it runs on money the White House went looking for a week earlier.

In a June 17 budget amendment to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the Office of Management and Budget asked Congress to steer more than $1.55 billion into the Air Force’s research and development account to keep the airborne battle management jet alive — money the service had left out of its original request after the Pentagon moved to cancel the program just a year ago.

Getting there required two cuts and one deposit.

OMB carved about $651 million from the Navy account that buys the E-2D Hawkeye and $899 million from the Air Force’s other procurement account. It funneled the combined sum into Air Force research, development, test and evaluation.

The House report pins the Air Force half on the Special Update Program, one of the service’s classified procurement lines.

The justification ran identically across all three amendments: The money would “deliver two E-7 Wedgetail prototype aircraft and continue Engineering Manufacturing and Development activities for a program of record.”

The Air Force already has seven E-7s on contract, including two rapid prototypes and five more added under a March modification. However, all are developmental jets meant to prove out the U.S. design before any production decision, which is why the money lands in research and development rather than procurement.

The committee pointed to the war in Iran to make its case.

“The conflict in Iran has reinforced the need for the Air Force to maintain a credible airborne battle management capability, currently being met with the Air Force’s E–3 Airborne Warning and Control System and the Navy’s E–2D Hawkeye programs,” the committee wrote. “As the E–3 is set to retire, the E–7 Wedgetail will serve as modern replacement for lost battle management capability.”

Panel pushes back on taking Hawkeye money

The Hawkeye money, though, was not OMB’s to spend. The House panel backed the E-7 realignment but rejected the Navy offset, restoring the $651 million the White House had taken from the Hawkeye program.

“While the committee wholly supports the E–7 program and funding realignment, the Committee also restored the E–2D program to six aircraft for fiscal year 2027,” the report states. “The committee understands the operational necessity of the E–2D platform; the complementary nature of the E–2D and E–7; and believes that more aircraft, not fewer, are necessary to support our warfighters now and in the future.”

For all the money in motion, it buys prototypes and development work, not a Wedgetail fleet. Lawmakers want to know what comes next.

The report orders the Air Force secretary to brief the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees, alongside the 2028 request, on “the full E–7 acquisition strategy, to include required quantity; funding requirements across the future years defense program; and schedules for development and production.”

Prior to the war in Iran, the Air Force wanted to scrap the E-7 program, a platform already flying with Australia, the U.K. and other allies, after an Air Force official said its per-aircraft cost had climbed from $588 million to $724 million, and amid doubts about whether it could survive in contested airspace.

The previous plan was to lean on extra E-2Ds and a future of space-based sensors instead.

The war with Iran undercut that case, exposing a near-term battle management gap that satellites cannot yet fill, compelling the Pentagon to reverse course this spring.

The Air Force made the announcement Wednesday, saying it reached the decision four months ahead of schedule. The contracts went to General Atomics for its FQ-42A and Anduril for its FQ-44A, as part of CCA Increment 1.

The two aircraft were previously designated the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A. Dropping the Y prefix signals their shift from prototype to production.

Often referred to as “loyal wingmen,” CCA are jet-powered, semi-autonomous unmanned aircraft built to fly alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35 and the planned F-47, extending their sensors and weapons while taking on risk that would otherwise fall to pilots.

“Collaborative Combat Aircraft change how we project power and generate mass in highly contested environments,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in the release. “Delivering this capability to our warfighters faster ensures our forces maintain the tactical edge required to deter and, if necessary, defeat any adversary.”

The Air Force is committing to a large CCA fleet, though it won’t happen all at once. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the contracts reaffirm the service’s confidence that it can buy more than 150 combat-capable CCA by the end of the decade, well below the program’s long-term goal of roughly 1,000.

“By moving fast from competitive selection into full-scale manufacturing, we position ourselves to field highly credible and combat-ready semi-autonomous systems to stay ahead of the pacing challenge,” Meink said in the announcement.

Separately, the Air Force opened a competition for the software that will operate the CCA.

“Mission autonomy is the cornerstone of the CCA concept, and leveraging a competitive, multi-vendor environment ensures we capture the latest technology,” Meink said, noting that this approach capitalizes on current technology while leaving room for future breakthroughs.

Six companies won spots in a six-year pool: Anduril, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Collins Aerospace and Shield AI.

From that group, the service picked three to begin work on autonomous software right away. Anduril, RTX Collins Aerospace and Shield AI will take part in the first of two six-month rounds of head-to-head competition.

The service said those three were chosen based on their ability to meet the program’s schedule and cost demands. The Air Force plans to name a single primary software provider for Increment 1 by summer 2027.

Using an approach the Air Force calls first-of-its-kind, the service will pay the full licensing fee only if a vendor “provides a combat capability aligned with warfighter needs and feedback.”

This arrangement affords the Air Force the ability to acquire and implement state-of-the-art technology that is continually evolving.

Despite three companies getting first crack at developing the autonomy software, the Air Force may award software licenses to any of the six vendors within the pool at any point over the next six years.

Providing the foundation for this strategy is the government-owned Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, a modular, open-systems approach that enables the Air Force to move software between aircraft and avoid being locked into a single vendor.

The service said in February that it had integrated government-owned autonomous software into both prototypes using that architecture, which it called proof the software could move across vendors and platforms.

The contracts come on the heels of the service’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which marked the first time it asked Congress for money to buy CCA rather than just develop them.

The service declined to disclose the value of the contracts or how many of each aircraft the two companies will build.

The mission capable rate, which measures the percentage of time aircraft can perform at least one of their tasked missions, dropped from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, GAO found.

The full mission capable rate, the share of time aircraft can perform all assigned missions, slid from 38% to 25% over the same period.

Air Force officials attributed part of the fiscal 2025 drop to new jets that couldn’t perform their missions because of software delays, along with scarce parts and corrosion problems, according to the report.

“The F-35 is DOD’s most costly weapon system, but it hasn’t met performance goals and costs to sustain the aircraft continue to increase,” GAO wrote in a summary accompanying the report.

The F-35 Joint Program Office’s answer to the decline in readiness is what the office officially calls the Global Support Solution Reset. The strategy, launched in June 2025, aims for an 80% mission capable rate and a 65% full mission capable rate by 2030.

Getting there won’t come cheap: JPO estimates it will take $13.7 billion more than previously planned through fiscal 2031, money the services must request in their annual budgets.

The GSS Reset addresses concerns GAO has flagged for years, including spare parts shortages, maintenance problems and heavy contractor reliance, among other long-running issues.

Only about $2.2 billion of that total is for the GSS Reset, according to the report. The other roughly $11.5 billion covers the gap between what the services had budgeted and what F-35 sustainment actually requires.

JPO officials told GAO that readiness will likely worsen before it improves, and program documentation suggests improvements may not materialize until late 2026 or later.

GAO identified several risks that could keep the GSS Reset from succeeding.

“JPO will be reliant on the private sector to deliver more than $7 billion in additional parts and other material. But capacity constraints persist for key parts,” the report states.

A 2025 study by Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-35 and leads its sustainment alongside engine maker Pratt & Whitney, found 48 parts that the supplier base can’t produce enough of, including canopies, which GAO has previously identified as a top driver of grounded jets.

Costs keep climbing, too, threatening the services’ ability to pay for the Reset. By the mid-2030s, GAO projects the services will face a roughly $1.2 billion annual gap between what their F-35s cost to sustain and what they say they can afford.

Those estimates may understate the problem. GAO noted the fiscal 2027 projections were developed before Operation Epic Fury and may not capture the costs associated with additional flight hours.

Incentives spent on readiness haven’t delivered as intended, GAO found, echoing a Pentagon Inspector General audit published in December.

From 2020 through 2023, the program office paid Lockheed more than $114 million of roughly $269 million in available incentive fees meant to improve full mission capable rates and parts supply, even as both metrics generally stagnated or worsened.

Lockheed’s incentive fees were tied to readiness thresholds. In 19 of 39 performance periods, the JPO and Lockheed adjusted the recorded full mission capable rate upward, citing factors outside the company’s control, such as service-caused delays, which qualified the contractor for higher payments. Had fees been paid on the raw rates alone, GAO estimated Lockheed would have earned roughly half as much.

Pratt & Whitney, the program’s other prime contractor, has met its engine sustainment targets since 2022 after fixing problems GAO flagged in earlier reviews, the report noted.

“Lockheed Martin continues to partner with the Joint Program Office and our industry partners to ensure we are delivering efficient and effective sustainment for the warfighter,” a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said in a statement to Defense News. “We have recently invested more than $2 billion in advanced funding to accelerate spare parts to increase readiness rates across the F-35 fleet.”

The F-35 Joint Program Office concurs with the report’s findings and fully supports its three recommendations, a spokesperson told Defense News.

“Through our Global Support Solution Reset initiative, the JPO remains focused on achieving our 2030 readiness goals and ensuring strict fiscal accountability for every sustainment dollar spent,” the spokesperson said.

GAO also found the F-35 JPO could not produce consistent records of its incentive fee payments. It calculated fees using a formula that differed from the contract without documenting the change, and over the course of GAO’s review, provided three different versions of its incentive fee spreadsheet.

JPO officials told GAO they abandoned the contracted formula because it overstated Lockheed’s performance, and the corrected formula they used paid the company an estimated $3.7 million less than the flawed one would have.

GAO found the incentive problems extend to the current contract, covering 2025 through 2028, which includes no incentives tied to full mission capable rates at all, instead rewarding parts supply metrics with targets GAO found fall below the program’s own goals.

“Until JPO ensures the future use of incentives better achieves desired performance, it risks rewarding contractor performance that does not help meet program goals,” GAO stated.

GAO wants the Pentagon to do three things: build risk mitigation plans for efforts like the GSS Reset, covering technical data access, industry capacity, affordability and alignment with service goals; rethink how it structures contract incentives, possibly including penalties for poor performance; and build a reliable system for tracking what it pays in incentive fees and why.

GAO has now made 46 recommendations on F-35 sustainment since 2014. As of March 2026, the Pentagon had implemented 14.

The Pentagon did not provide formal comments on the report but said in draft comments that it agreed with the recommendations, according to GAO.

Despite the program’s readiness troubles, the F-35 remains the backbone of America’s fighter fleet. The Pentagon operates more than 800 of the jets and plans to buy about 1,700 more by the mid-2040s, with lifetime U.S. sustainment costs estimated at $1.6 trillion as of 2024.

Announced June 3, the live-fire demonstration paired the radars, Sanctum software and launcher to destroy the target at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, according to the company. Lockheed said it integrated the system and completed live-fire testing in under 45 days.

The Fortem R-40 comes from a counter-drone partnership Lockheed strengthened in April, when it invested $25 million into the Utah-based firm to incorporate its radars and interceptors more tightly into the Sanctum system.

The test builds on GRIZZLY’s first live-fire in March, when Lockheed fired a Hellfire missile from the same container system during a vertical-launch test at Yakima Training Center, Washington, six months after the program began.

The launcher is designed to fire both the Hellfire and JAGM and borrows design elements from Lockheed’s M299 launcher. Where March proved the launcher, the June test added the JAGM and a full detect-track-engage kill chain against a live Group 3 drone target, a class the Defense Department defines as drones weighing up to 1,320 pounds and flying below 18,000 feet at under 250 knots.

“Built on existing prototype architecture, GRIZZLY enables users to employ the ready-to-fire Sanctum C-UAS system without extensive infrastructure and logistical footprints. By integrating advanced sensor, battle management and missile technologies, Lockheed Martin delivers a decisive C-UAS capability that aligns with our customers’ needs for agile and distributed lethality,” the company said.

The GRIZZLY holds up to eight missiles in a 10-foot shipping container, offers toolless reloading and can operate from ground sites or ships. Wireless links among the radars, battle manager and launcher allow for quick setup. Lockheed billed the system as a low-cost way to shield forward bases, key assets and vessels.

The maritime pitch tracks with Navy interest in containerized weapons that can ride on unmanned surface vessels to add firepower at sea, a demand signal Lockheed cited when it first showed the launcher in March.

“The ability to integrate GRIZZLY’s proven launch architecture with Sanctum’s battle manager on an accelerated timeline demonstrates how Lockheed Martin is applying battlefield innovation and cross-program collaboration to rapidly deliver layered defense capabilities to the warfighter,” said Randy Crites, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Advanced Programs.

“This test demonstrates a rapid, low-cost and modular point-defense solution that can be deployed on land or maritime platforms within days,” added Paul Lemmo, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Sensors, Effectors and Mission Systems.

The demonstration comes as the Pentagon and allies push for better layered protection against growing drone threats.

The May 13 report, “U.S. Aircraft Combat Losses in Operation Epic Fury: Considerations for Congress,” draws on news accounts and statements by the Defense Department and U.S. Central Command to compile the list.

The CRS, the nonpartisan research arm of the Library of Congress, works from open sources and has no access to classified damage assessments.

The CRS authors note their count “may remain subject to revision due to multiple factors, which may include classification, ongoing combat activity, and attribution.”

The first losses came March 1-2, when a Kuwaiti Air Force F/A-18 Hornet mistakenly shot down three F-15E Strike Eagles over Kuwait. All six aircrew ejected and were recovered. The shoot-down occurred during active combat that included attacks from Iranian aircraft, ballistic missiles and drones, CENTCOM said.

A fourth F-15E was shot down over Iran on April 3, with both crew members recovered in separate search-and-rescue operations.

A KC-135 Stratotanker went down over western Iraq on March 12 during a refueling sortie, killing all six aircrew. The crew members are the only fatalities on the CRS list. The loss was not the result of hostile or friendly fire, CENTCOM said. A second KC-135 involved in the same incident landed safely at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.

The toll on the tanker fleet grew two days later, when Iranian missiles and drones struck Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, damaging five more KC-135s on the ground and bringing total tanker losses to seven.

An F-35A Lightning II took Iranian ground fire over Iran on March 19 and returned to base.

Iran hit Prince Sultan again on March 27, damaging an E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control aircraft. A May 7 Washington Post report cited by CRS said the E-3 had been parked on an unprotected taxiway.

An A-10 Thunderbolt II went down April 3 after taking enemy fire during a search-and-rescue mission. The pilot ejected and was recovered.

Two days later, U.S. forces blew up two MC-130J Commando II special operations aircraft on the ground in Iran during the broader rescue effort for the downed F-15E weapon systems officer, after the transports couldn’t fly out of a forward airstrip. All aircrew were evacuated. An HH-60W Jolly Green II combat search-and-rescue helicopter took small-arms fire during the same mission.

Drones, meanwhile, took the heaviest hit, accounting for 25 of the 42 losses. The list includes 24 MQ-9 Reapers and one MQ-4C Triton lost in a mishap reported April 14.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach told the House Armed Services Committee on May 20 that the Reaper had been the campaign’s standout platform despite the losses.

“Perhaps maybe the most valuable player was unmanned,” Wilsbach said. “No other platform is even close to the MQ-9.”

Notable gaps and omissions

Multiple outlets reported the E-3 was not just damaged but destroyed. Photos of tail 81-0005 published days after the March 27 strike showed the rear fuselage burned through, with debris scattered around the airframe.

The Jerusalem Post and Air & Space Forces Magazine both called the airframe a write-off. The Air Force operated only 16 E-3s before the war began, six of them deployed to Prince Sultan.

The HH-60W count is also likely low. At his April 6 news conference, Joint Chiefs Chairman Air Force Gen. Dan Caine described two helicopters in the rescue flight taking fire, with a crew member on the trailing aircraft suffering a minor injury. The Aviationist noted the account suggests both airframes were hit, not one.

The report does not list any AH/MH-6 Little Birds. Between two and four Little Birds operated by the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment were intentionally destroyed at the same Iranian airstrip where the two MC-130Js were demolished in place, The War Zone reported in early April, and photos geolocated by open-source analysts showed the burned-out helicopters next to the C-130 wreckage.

The 160th SOAR operates under U.S. Special Operations Command, and the absence of a DoD or CENTCOM statement on the Little Birds may explain why none appear in the CRS list.

Cost of war continues to climb

Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee on May 12 that the cost of operations in Iran has risen to $29 billion, up from the $25 billion figure he provided April 29.

“So, at the time of testimony from the ask, it was $25 billion, but the joint staff team and the comptroller team are constantly looking at that estimate, and so now we think it’s closer to $29 [billion],” Hurst told Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif.

Hurst blamed the increase on “updated repair and replacement of equipment costs and also just general operational costs keep people in theater.”

The figure does not include the cost of repairing damaged air bases and other U.S. installations in the region.