U.S. DEPARTMENT of STATE
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MODERATOR: So good afternoon everyone from the State Department’s European Regional Media Center, or the Brussels Hub. I would like to welcome everyone joining for today’s virtual press briefing. Today we are very honored to be joined by Brigadier General Curtis King, Commanding General of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, and Colonel Christopher Hill, Senior Director at Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate. Very happy to have both of them here today.
Finally, a reminder that today’s briefing is on the record. And with that, why don’t we get started? So if we could start with Brigadier General King just with some opening remarks, that would be great.
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: No, thank you very much. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to everybody, and good afternoon and good morning for those joining us today. So as said, I’m Brigadier General Curt King, Commanding General for 10th Army Air and Missile and Defense Command. What I’ll do is just give you a few opening remarks of what we’ve executed over the last two weeks with our U.S. soldiers and our NATO Allies as we’ve completed two significant efforts in this time period. We’ve demonstrated a combat-proven system, counter-UAS capability in Poland, and we’ve executed Project FlyTrap 4.5 in Germany. And both these efforts were about strengthening NATO’s eastern flank deterrence line against the drone threats, specifically against what we’ve called one-way attack drones, or those larger drones such as Shaheds.
On the 18th of November in Poland, U.S., Polish, and Romanian soldiers had all trained together for about 10 days on a mobile counter-UAS capability called MEROPS that has been combat proven in Ukraine. Many of you saw the coverage of how these small teams used radars and interceptor drone electrical optical sensors to intercept and defeat a target replicating a Shahed drone. That counter-UAS system demonstrated our ability to move very quickly in NATO to integrate new capabilities, and it also demonstrated our capability – just as FlyTrap did – to integrate with industry to move very quickly to employ a capability that’s lethal, it can defeat the Shahed-type threats, but also it demonstrates our ability to place capabilities that are much cheaper than some of our other previous systems that we’ve been using to date to ensure that we are able to build the capacity against the drone threats that could be placed into the air.
And then, last week also at Project FlyTrap 4.5 in Putlos, Germany, we took that same counter-UAS problem set and opened it up to a broader set of industry partners. Colonel Chris Hill will talk in more detail about this, but we had originally over 200 different industry partners that had submitted proposals to meet the capabilities we were asking for – to be able to detect and defeat drones. And then ultimately we had 11 finalists that competed in a competition with soldiers using their equipment at FlyTrap where we demonstrated our ability to, again, work very rapidly with industry to integrate active and passive sensors through our software integration, to be able to pass data from classified to unclassified domains near real time, and to demonstrate the ability of, again, different effectors that industry was developing and bringing in to us and let soldiers train on that equipment and then employ that capability to defeat drones, all very rapidly, again, with our NATO Allies. Those are not just U.S. countries; those are also some industry partners from within Europe.
So I’ll pause there. Again, really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you all, and I’ll turn it over to Chris Hill.
COLONEL HILL: Hey, thanks, sir, and really appreciate the opportunity as well to talk to everyone. If you hear me shivering a little bit, I’m standing outside. But the – this has been an awesome opportunity. I’m the director for the Global Tactical Edge Acquisition Directorate. And what does that really mean for what we’re doing here in Europe from an eastern flank deterrence line standpoint? And really from a more strategic level, what are we doing for the U.S. Army in order to take innovative efforts and operationalize them and put them in the hands of our soldiers in order to either deter threats, or from an offensive perspective, in order to present a dilemma to our – for our near-peer adversaries?
We have been in theater for about 90 days now, and during that time what we are looking to do is: How do we bring Army acquisition enterprise to the tactical edge? There’s been a lot of press over in the United States about how slow our acquisition process is and how bureaucratic it can be, and how fast warfare moves, and how the acquisition process cannot keep up with the pace of warfare. So what we were asked to do was to put together a very small, focused team – which we have and we brought here to Europe. And General King mentioned a couple of the examples where we were able to operationalize capabilities that we may have seen but would not have had the opportunity to use the acquisition authorities to physically acquire that capability and put it in the hands of our soldiers. We were able to do that with the MEROPS capability not in – only in the hands of U.S. soldiers but also facilitate getting that equipment in the hands of our Polish and Romanian friends.
Secondly, we had FlyTrap 4.5 last week that allowed us to look at active sensors, passive sensors, effectors to defeat UAS threats as well as some threat representatives. And what is exciting about the role that GTEAD is playing here in Europe is we’re not just stopping with the counter-UAS fight; next up on the list is ground autonomy and ground-launched effects – as I mentioned earlier, the offensive systems that we’re going to use to create a dilemma for our adversaries – then we’re going to move to air autonomy and air-launched effects – again, another offensive system to provide a dilemma.
And last but not least, of everything that we’re doing here in Europe for the eastern flank deterrence line, starting in January I’ll have another small, focused team that will be in USARPAC, in U.S. Army Pacific. We’re going to replicate the same processes there in the Pacific region in order to not only support our U.S. units there but also our international partners in Australia, in South Korea, in Japan, and other partners there in the region.
So we are looking at how can we bring innovation to the tactical edge and not just by doing demonstrations but by doing soldier-led assessment, soldiers on the judging teams, and on the back end of these demonstrations be prepared, from an acquisition standpoint, to actually put dollars toward these capabilities and give these companies something to look forward to from a contract standpoint. And I’ll pause there.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you both very much for those opening remarks. So we’re going to turn to the question-and-answers portion.
First we’re going to start with one of the pre-submitted questions, so if Carley Welch is on the line right now we can have it asked live, otherwise I will go ahead and ask it. This is from Breaking Defense.
Carley, are you there?
Okay, so I’ll ask this one. So the question was: “What were the biggest lessons learned from the exercise on November 18th?” And I believe it was Brigadier General King who was interested in addressing this.
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: Ian, thank you very much. So what I’d start out with is with our cooperation with Ukraine and the lessons learned that we are receiving from the fight that the Ukrainians are in, we know you’ve got to have a layered defense. There’s no one capability that’s going to defeat all the threats, detect all the different threats, defeat all the different threats. You’ve got to have different capabilities, you’ve got to have a layered defense, and you’ve got to have a data architecture network where you can get this data, one, to get it over different classifications, to get it to all the relevant organizations who need it, but you can also analyze this data. And we found that software is very rapidly developing to allow us to do that.
So what we did over the last two weeks with both FlyTrap and our MEROPS event, the one on 18th of November specifically, is one, back to some of the points Chris made, we were able to move fast with industry. We had an industry partner that had a proven capability in Ukraine that we rapidly brought that capability into Europe. We got Poland, Romania that provided soldiers to train on this equipment. We had industry partners that were with us to rapidly integrate this equipment, to take the lessons learned of how the Ukrainians had employed this capability and to replicate that in Poland within a few short weeks. Within 10 days we trained on the system and we configured the system technically based on how the Ukrainians had done it and then to have a successful live-fire demonstration.
So that, one, that shows that we’re moving very quickly with industry and to be able to not just get capability here but to make rapid adjustments to those systems, whether that be a radar, whether that be an effector; we were able to make adjustments to the software to ensure that we optimize that system to be very lethal. And then we reinforced that this is a NATO mission and that this wasn’t just U.S. Again, this was U.S., Poland, and Romania doing this – to be able to employ a capability that adds a layer of detection and a layer of defeat to their existing capabilities.
So again, this doesn’t replace – this MEROPS system won’t replace DC, an aircraft or another type of effector. We still need to make sure we have that, but we add that to that and this may become the optimal or this might become first choice to engage – one, because it’s lethal but also because it costs about a tenth of what a Shahed drone costs. We’re also demonstrating how we’re being cost-effective – we’re maintaining our lethality but we’re also being cost-effective as we move forward.
And I would turn it over to Chris if he has any points he wants to add.
COLONEL HILL: Sir, you hit the major points. One of the things that we’re looking to do is, how do we create the proper demand signal for industry? Because there are a lot of industry partners that have capabilities. However, as we move forward with the demonstrations that we’re going to do in order to produce those contractual outcomes that I mentioned earlier, every capability that comes to the demonstrations has to be able to tie into the network. They have to be able to be integrated into the network. We have to have the ability to move the data up and down, regardless of classification because, again, we’ve dealt over the years with capabilities that were one-off capabilities that required a different routing of data, that required a different user interface. But we’re moving in the direction of how do we store data, move data, and not just on the U.S. side but from a NATO coalition standpoint? How do we share the appropriate data in order to see what the sensors are seeing and allow us to use the best effector possible based upon the threat?
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you very much. I’d like to take one of the questions – it looks like we have a journalist who wanted to ask a question themselves. So this is Alex Raufoglu; if you want to unmute and just introduce your outlet and ask your question, that would be great.
QUESTION: Yes. Thank you so much for doing this. Alex Raufoglu from Kyiv Post in Washington, D.C. I have two quick questions. Given the recent drone incursions, how does the U.S. military ensure that any rotational adjustment or troop cuts are not perceived by adversaries as a diminish of the commitments to the eastern flank deterrence line, especially when the threat remains high? And second question, if I may: Are there plans to rapidly scale this specific counter-UAS training and fielding to other NATO-allied nations that share similar airspace security concerns? Thanks so much.
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: Yeah, General King, and I’ll take – I’ll take some of this and then if Chris wants to add in, obviously we’ll pass this over to him. But to your first question, I mean, we’re in an alliance. The United States is in the NATO Alliance, a defensive alliance, and Romania is a central feature and part of that Alliance, and we’ll continue to maintain our commitment and to work and to assist in that collective defense, as we’re part of NATO with Romania.
And then to your second question, yes, there are ongoing efforts. I won’t go into all the details but there are ongoing efforts with numerous different NATO countries on not just MEROPS but other systems that we’ve demonstrated in FlyTrap 4.5 to be able to expand the capability of both detection and defeat, in the case of MEROPS, that we’ve got future demonstrations – some countries they’re leading their own charge, they’re doing this themselves, and then there are other demonstrations that Colonel Hill and I were involved with with other countries to be able to get this capability to them as well.
And then, Chris, if you want to add anything.
COLONEL HILL: Yes, thanks, sir. So on the scaling question – this is the other part that is new from a standpoint of how are we looking to go from innovation to a point to where we can actually output our outfit larger units with these capabilities – be it U.S. or be it our international partners. For – strictly from a GTEAD perspective, we put a lot of emphasis on the innovative efforts. We put a lot of emphasis on the type of industry partners that we are bringing to bear, and we put a lot of emphasis on soldiers being a part of the assessment.
The piece that we don’t talk about as much that is just as important is the PMs, those project managers that have the larger budget. Those project managers and those portfolio acquisition executives – which is the new term for the leader of the acquisitional organization within the United States Army – that have the larger dollars for scaling capability. We are now linking what’s going on forward to those organizations, to those PMs. For example, at FlyTrap 4.5, we actually had the PAE for fires. Lieutenant General Lozano was there. We had the director for JIATF 401, which is the OSD lead for counter-UAS, Brigadier General Roth. He was there. We had members of the teams from PEO Soldier or CPE Soldier. They were physically supporting the effort. So by bringing them forward to these demonstrations, giving them a first-hand look at these capabilities, what it’s doing is it is accelerating the pace for what capabilities become big R requirements that we can then put those dollars towards.
And from a NATO perspective, we’re working very closely with our NATO partners. You will hear a term out there called Task Force X, an organization being run by Brigadier General Chris Gent from UK that will be doing things extremely similar to what we’re doing in GTEAD. That partnership is going to allow us to not only look at scaling from a U.S. perspective, but absolutely scaling across the NATO Alliance.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you so much. I wanted to go to one of the earlier pre-submitted questions we have, and this was from Alexandru Cora from Adevarul, I think, a Romanian outlet, so asking: “How you assess the 100-kilometer drone tracks across three eastern Romanian counties today. How do you assess Romania’s drone incursions and MEROPS integration within NATO’s sensor coordination and counter-UAS posture?” Would either of you like to take that question?
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: Yeah, I’ll – what I say is I can’t speak to any of the details of the event, incident. But what I’ll say is what we’re – what Chris and I are talking about is the exact reason and purpose of why we’re moving so quickly to do this, to add capability, lethal capability, to detect any drone that makes an incursion, and that we can detect that early and that we can provide a lethal capability to engage that. And I think what we see is we already have a lot – we already have capability to do that now, as we’ve seen. We’ve got capability to detect those drones now. This adds a capability.
Some of these borders are very large. We can expand that capability, or then we can now, as we said, like with MEROPS, we can provide a lethal capability that does this at a much cheaper cost point, again roughly a tenth of a cost of what we think Russia is paying to build a Shahed that we can provide, and that it’s mobile. These capabilities are – obviously, aircraft are mobile, but now we’ve got another ground capability that can be very mobile as well, that can be moved around as we detect these systems earlier to get them to the point we need to make a – destroy these drones. Over.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you. So I want to now go to one of the questions that was asked in the chat previously. This is from – was from Cal Biesecker. And they’re asking, “Can you tell us the contractor for MEROPS and who won FlyTrap 4.5, and describe their solution?”
COLONEL HILL: So I’ll take that one. So MEROPS is a company called Napatree, and the actual portfolio of capability that they have is called Project Eagle. The MEROPS capability that we’ve talked about, the Shahed-killer, is one of three capabilities that they provide. They also provide a Bumblebee and a Hornet, which are both one-way attack drones that have other capabilities as well.
For FlyTrap 4.5, there was actually four companies that were selected. Again, we judged across four different areas. We judged across passive sensors, active sensors, effectors, and threat representatives. I’m going to have to – I will get back with you with the actual names. I want to make sure that if I speak any, that I speak them all correctly. I don’t have that data in front of me. But I will push that data back to you. But there were four companies that were successfully assessed out of the back end of FlyTrap 4.5. Each of those companies have signed master business agreements.
And what does that mean? They have left equipment behind in the hands of our soldiers, which allows us to continue to assess the equipment. And also, the most important thing is to provide additional feedback from soldiers because when we are prepared to go in and procure additional sets of equipment, the companies – the expectation is those companies would have made iterative improvements to their capability based on direct feedback from the soldiers.
So these companies will go into what we call the GTEAD global marketplace, which will give anyone access to going straight to these companies from a contractual standpoint. FlyTrap 4.5 and that competition satisfied all legal competition requirements. So they are all available. We know the capabilities work. And right now, based upon that equipment that they left behind, over the next probably, I would say, 45 to 60 days, we’ll take that feedback, provide it to those companies, and be prepared to go in and procure additional kits that could very easily be utilized on any of the borders along the eastern flank. Over.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you very much. Let me go to one more of the pre-submitted questions. This was from Christian Wehrschuetz from the ORF. And the question is: “How intensive already is the cooperation with Ukrainian companies and DF concerning UAVs and drones?”
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: This is Brigadier General King —
COLONEL HILL: Oh, sir, I’ll —
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: Oh, go ahead, Chris.
COLONEL HILL: Go ahead, sir. No, no, no. Go ahead, sir.
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: Yeah, so I’ll defer any contractual-type discussions or anything of Chris. But what I would say is our cooperation overall and learning from the technology is we’ve got a constant feed of information coming in. I mean, when you look at the organization, such as the Security Assistance Group – Ukraine, I mean, that’s part of their core mission set, is to work with our Ukrainian partners and then push that back out to not just U.S. but NATO organizations. And then we share this around the globe as well. And so we have a constant learning environment.
I mean, obviously you’ve seen in previous instances, many cases, we’ve – when there’s been training that’s been conducted, there’s been training with Ukraine soldiers. But with this mission set, again, those – some of those key points we’ve learned is just how fast the fight is changing and evolving with technology, especially in the – and then we’ll focus – and we’ll talk about the drone fight. I mean, some have described this, and I forget the actual name, so I won’t attribute any name to this, but I’ve heard it from a couple different sources. I don’t know who originated it, but a 21-day or a 31-day war cycle with the technology of especially these drones, meaning that within 21 to 30 days, a technology that enters the battlefield, it may take the adversary, the other party, that long to counter that threat. And – but about in that 21-day cycle, and you’ve seen some very innovative technologies come on.
And then the other piece that we’ve seen is data, how important data is, and to be able to use software to optimize our weapons systems. What we did in FlyTrap – we talk about active and passive sensor integration. What we did with software integration to integrate those radars, just before that the only other way we had to do that was we would have had probably – I’m going to make a number – but five to six different hardware boxes, a whole bunch of cables that we would have had to connect and get them close on the battlefield. And now we just did that through a transport layer. We transported the information, and we used software to integrate those capabilities.
But the other key piece that we’ve learned is the data, is how important – we’ve got to have storage to that data in a cloud so that we can, one, quickly get that distributed to the right organizations at the right classification; but just as importantly is analyze that data so we that we can do real-time analysis and apply artificial intelligence, machine-learning tools to that, so that we can ensure that we’re not missing anything and we’re capturing how all the changes that are occurring to optimize our soldiers so that – I talked about low-cost effectors. But the other think that we demonstrated with FlyTrap and that Ukraine has shown us – and Chris mentioned autonomy earlier – is the technology is rapidly evolving so that we can get to enhanced decision aids and autonomy, which Ukraine has been rapidly developing so that I don’t need 10 soldiers to do a function. I don’t need 10 new soldiers. I can use the decision aids and the software and the autonomy of the weapon systems that we’re talking about, especially in the drone fight, that I can either have that same soldier do that, or I may need two soldiers additional versus 10 that we might have needed three or four years ago.
So Chris, over to you for any additional comments.
COLONEL HILL: Thanks, sir. The – you asked about the partnership and how much are we leaning on Ukrainian industry. For FlyTrap 4.5, we started out with over 229, around about, vendors, of which a little less than 30 were from our international partners. One of the things you will see as we continue the demonstration efforts – and we will be doing one per quarter, one per quarter within – and this is – these are GTEAD-led demonstrations, not total demonstrations from a USAREUR-AF perspective. But we’ll be doing specifically one per quarter, getting after the USAREUR-AF CG’s priorities.
And one of things that you’re going to start seeing is you will start seeing more and more international companies that are participating in these demonstrations because again, this is a NATO fight. So we want to make sure that the countries – that those industry partners within those countries actually have an opportunity to not only compete, but to win in those demonstrations. And one of the things that’s very important – be it Ukraine, be it Latvia, be it Estonia, Romania, whichever partner it is – when the industry partners from their country are participating in a the demonstration, we want to make sure that soldiers from those countries also are part of the assessment team, that they are part of the judging panel. Because once we decide that a company is worthy and ready to have a contract, we want to make sure that each of those countries were a part of seeing that capability up close, so that when their countries decide to put their dollars towards that capability, it’s not a decision that’s based on information that they were not a part of creating.
MODERATOR: All right. Thank you very much. We can do one more question and then we’ll go to closing remarks. So there’s a question from Inside Defense, Jason Sherman, which is: “How much 3D printing was done in these exercises? And what lessons are you taking back to the United States as the Army plans to wrap up its drone acquisition?”
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: Yeah, it’s General Brigadier King. What I will tell you, within FlyTrap 4.5 we did some – we did 3D printing of one of the drone interceptors. It wasn’t one of the competitive drone interceptors that Colonel Hill talked about as part of the competition that we – we had a demonstration of what our soldiers, working with some of the other organizations in Europe, had been doing and what they’re capable of to demonstrate on a very small scale our ability to build – to 3D print the design, the mold, the frame, the air frame, of a drone interceptor and then be able to integrate the parts. We did that on a very small scale. Again, it wasn’t part of the competition, but we highlighted that to what we are learning how to do very rapidly and what Ukraine has done very successfully and at a much larger scale.
So Chris, over to you.
COLONEL HILL: Yes, sir. Just to piggyback off that point, we were able to show the capability. We went and we saw the 3D printing capability that the soldiers were utilizing, and again, we’re talking about soldiers. We’re talking about probably the most innovative people in the world, which is Joe, the soldiers on the ground, who see problem sets up close and personal. And the power of that moment, when we were watching those soldiers talk about the frame of that interceptor that they had 3D printed was, again – my boss, Lieutenant General Lozano, was standing there, and immediately he asked a question of: Okay, so if we can alleviate some of that off of the enterprise to produce, then now the enterprise just has to worry about the electronics, some of the microelectronics and things that have to then be integrated into that body. And I could see the wheels turning.
And so again, these events are learning events. We’re going to learn something new at each and every one of these demonstrations. And that was a key takeaway, because as we move forward, that type of capability proliferates across the Army. Every small unit can have the capability to do small quantities of 3D printing, because everything matters. And now from an acquisitions standpoint, we just need to look at the parts that you can’t do forward, and provide that to those units in order to give them a true capability.
MODERATOR: Thank you very much for that. I want to give you both the opportunity for any closing final remarks you’d like to make. So let us know if you’d like to make those; and if not, let us know too.
BRIGADIER GENERAL KING: Ian, yeah, just from Brigadier General King – Chris made a really excellent point that I would just like to kind of highlight again in my – as far as part of my closing is the innovation of our soldiers with their industry partners was one of the other key points that I didn’t highlight when I talked about what we learned from FlyTrap, and the MEROPS demonstration. We did – we achieved success in three to four different areas when we talked about – based on our soldiers and our industry partners talking and working together, that we did things in 24, 48, 72 hours that if we had done this through our normal processes it might have taken us six months. Talking about soft radar, active and passive radar integration – that might have taken us six months if we’d done this under our normal business roles, for lack of a better explanation on that, that we did in 24 to 72 hours based on soldiers and industry partners sitting next to each other and talking and figuring out how to make things work. Just really – I mean, so it’s not just the integration of industry into the military to get capability faster; it’s also how do we operate this, how do we make this work, how do we improve things such as user interfaces, how do we improve the flow of data. I mean, this was – this was some of the real achievements that we learned from FlyTrap as well.
But again, it all goes into how do we quickly add capability – add capability, but then how – just as importantly, how do we optimize the existing capabilities that U.S. and NATO countries have along the eastern flank? How do we optimize those capabilities through software, through data integration of – integration of active and passive sensors to enhance the overall ability to defeat any drones that come into their air space?
Again, thanks for – thanks for the opportunity today, and Chris, over to you.
COLONEL HILL: So Ian, as a close, I will say this. Senior leaders within the Army are very keenly aware of what’s going on with the eastern flank deterrence line. They’re very keenly aware of what we’re doing with these demonstrations, and they’re also keenly aware that everything that’s going on in Europe has applicability in other theaters.
The point that General King just made cannot be overemphasized. I’m currently the PM for an extremely large program, IBCS. And I will tell you we have a lot of engineers that do a lot of work, but there is a lot of time spent where the engineers are not talking to soldiers. We will bring the capability to arrange and we will have time to sit with soldiers and learn. Where we are evolving from an acquisition perspective is you have to bring soldiers into the conversation quicker and more often. And FlyTrap 4.5 showed that. It showed that companies that are willing to have that conversation, that are willing to be innovative at the edge – because soldiers are more than willing to have those conversations, and those changes can be made in days, not weeks, and not months. Because changes that happen in days cost thousands of dollars. Changes that happen in weeks and months cost millions of dollars.
So that is an evolution that is happening within our Army, things that will continue to proliferate. And eastern flank right now is leading the path on how we do that. And we’re going to do that across all warfighting functions. The counter-UAS fight was extremely successful over the past two weeks, and we’re going to move to different warfighting functions. We’re going to at some point here in the next eight to ten months, we’ll be looking at offensive/defensive fires integration, all with a mindset – and I’m sorry for the loud noise in the background, but all with the mindset of how do we lower cost per kill; how do we have the same effect but with lower munitions in order to win a protracted fight against a near-peer threat.
MODERATOR: Thank you very much for that, and thank you for helping us to bring soldiers into the discussion we had today.
Just to give a little bit of information to the people who are listening about where it goes from here, shortly we’ll send out the audio recording of the briefing to all the participating journalists and provide a transcript as soon as it’s available. We’d also love to hear your feedback, and you can contact us at any time at TheBrusselsHub@state.gov. I know there’s a question about how something was spelled; you are welcome to contact us there, and then we should be able to find that out for you and get that information.
So thank you again, everyone, for your participation. We hope you can join us for another Brussels Hub press briefing soon. And that ends everything for today.
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