Belgium is getting a 6th-gen fighter. Brussels announced it will join France, Germany and Spain on the FCAS (Future Combat Air System) program in June 2025. At that time, more details of their participation will be announced.
- The Merge’s Take: The 2025 timing is revealing, since Belgium will be joining the team immediately after the program picks 1 of the 4 competing designs. We don’t think Belgium is going to compete with partner industries for the bulk of work, which has been a key point of friction between France’s Dassault, Germany’s Airbus, and Spain’s Indra. That said, Dassault has been throwing shade at Belgium in recent weeks for their decision replace their F-16s with F-35s and not Dassault’s Rafale fighter—though you don’t see them picking on Germany, the biggest economy in Europe who is buying F-35s too. <- Now replace with people’s names and re-read it like it’s a reality show.
Anduril unveiled a subscale jet-powered Roadrunner drone that can do surveillance or intercept other drones.
Boeing is out of the running to build the Air Force’s E-4B Nightwatch “Doomsday” plane replacement. Boeing said they could not come to terms with the Air Force on the contract to replace the aging fleet of 4 Boeing 747 National Airborne Operations Centers.
- The Merge’s Take: Boeing is under immense pressure to stop losing money on defense programs with fixed price contracts, and this sounds like that’s what happened. Though Boeing is out, all signs indicate the program will leverage used 747-8s (#awkward). SNC, once thought to be an underdog, is now the only (known) bidder for this $8B program; they’re already building a massive facility in Ohio to accommodate.
DZYNE Technologies is building a huge drone factory in California to support Department of Defense projects. The company, which we have no idea how to pronounce, specializes in the rapid design and development of manned and unmanned platforms.
- The Merge’s Take: That’s quite the investment. We wonder if it’s preparing for a contract to support something that rhymes with ‘Meplicator’?
The Army awarded Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman contracts for Launched Effects (LE) payload development.
- The Merge’s Take: At first glance, it might seem odd that a contract for some small payloads only went to the primes. We think it has less to do with ‘effects’ and more about the ‘launched’ aspect. These things hit 80+Gs when shot out of the tube—which is brutal on sensitive electronics and one of the biggest reasons you don’t see many LE sensor options. These primes have experience with missiles and seeker integration, and tapping them is what we’d do if we wanted to crack this nut.
The Netherlands wants to join Europe’s defense consortium. Known as OCCAR (Organization for Joint Armament Cooperation), the group manages a $6.5B portfolio of 17 projects—some big some small.
- The Merge’s Take: We’ll talk about OCCAR someday, but today aint that day. Instead, we want you to keep the Netherlands on your radar. They have been making several significant moves in defense tech over the past months. They aren’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of European defense tech—and it looks like they are serious about changing that.
AUKUS isn’t just about submarines (Pillar I); Pillar II (advanced capabilities) is finally getting some love. The latest press release promises the establishment of an “AUKUS Advanced Capabilities Industry Forum”, streamlining industrial base collaboration, a process to establish trilateral defense tech requirements, and a bunch of other things.
- The Merge’s Take: The 3 call-outs above are intentional—all are required to achieve meaningful impact. Export restrictions, limited distribution characterizations, and security classification barriers are still stuck in the 1980s—and all balls in the government’s court.
Link-16 is now operating in space. The Space Development Agency (SDA) successfully used Link 16 datalink to connect 3 Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to ground-based radios as a first-of-its-kind experiment. The satellites, developed by York Space, are part of the larger 400-satellite Transport Layer that should be functional by 2028.
- The Merge’s Take: Cool, but Link-16 is a 1980’s datalink with limited bandwidth and a very narrow, easily jammable frequency range. We hope it’s a placeholder for a better datalink and those satellites are built with that in mind.
- The Merge’s Spicy Take: 1 point for technology, 2 points for bureaucracy. The US Air Force had to deploy to another country to do this experiment, likely due to the on-going fight between the Pentagon and FAA over Link-16 transmissions. Approval for this experiment came from an international regulatory agency (the ITU), which was easier to obtain.
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