CSPAN - Defense Officials Testify on Drone Program

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May 1, 2025 19:38-20:20 - CSPAN

41:50

Defense Officials Testify on Drone Program

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rob wittman

rep/r 05:40

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carlos a gimenez

rep/r 02:57

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Regulations.
		Then Jordan Schwartz with the Harvard Youth Poll talks about the latest survey of students' opinions on politics and the factors that influence political engagement.
		And Rachel Janfaza, author of the Up and Up Substack newsletter, talks about how Generation Z is engaging in politics and how they are responding to the Trump administration.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
		Join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Friday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org.
		Next, a House hearing on the U.S. military's drone program.
		Defense Department officials testify on ways to solve tactical procurement issues and threats posed by drones to critical infrastructure.
		This is an hour.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Tactical Air and Land Forces of the House Armed Services Committee is hereby called to order.
		We'll begin our efforts by opening remarks from the chair and the ranking member.
		In the interest of time, in the interest of getting to the testimony from our witnesses and questions, I'm going to dispense with my opening remarks, have them entered into the record.
		And with that, I yield to Mr. Courtney.
unidentified		Great.
		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		And I'm going to do likewise.
		I'm going to do likewise.
		But again, just for the record, just want to note that I'm just sort of pinching here today for Congressman Norcross, who's on the mend from his setback.
		He is watching.
		He texted me this morning to say that he's following this on streaming TV and has read all the materials.
		And this is, I think, on day one, going to be ready to go in terms of picking up where he left off.
		And again, I want to just thank the witnesses for being here.
		And without a yield back.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Very good.
		Well, thanks, Joe.
		And Don, if you're watching.
		We'll hope you get better soon.
		And we promise that we will carry on in your stead.
		So with that, let's go ahead and begin with Director Beck and his testimony.
		Director Beck, all yours.
unidentified		Thank you, sir, Chairman Whitman, Ranking Member Courtney, and we send our best wishes for a speedy recovery to Rank Member Norcross.
		Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee today and for all Congress has done to put DIU in a position to help make a difference.
		At DIU, we're focused on working with our teammates across the department to deliver the very best commercially derived technology with the focus, speed, and scale needed to deter major conflict or win if forced to fight.
		Nowhere is this imperative clearer than in the case of increasingly agile, lethal, and autonomous unmanned systems.
		In Ukraine this past December, I had the opportunity to see firsthand the eye-watering pace of change in UAS and counter-UAS technologies and the tactics, techniques, and procedures employed at the front line in an underground unit spread throughout Kyiv, all evolving constantly in a life-and-death struggle of innovation and counterinnovation.
		The resulting demand is supported by an incredibly dynamic ecosystem of hardware and software providers who are rising and competing to meet the challenge.
		DIU is embedded with the Security Assistance Group Ukraine to help capture these lessons for both offense and defense and then apply them to our own critical needs globally.
		But we must do far more.
		The required pace of change in scale is something the commercial tech sector that I come from, fueled by constant and fiercely competitive updates, would find daunting.
		For the government's traditional approach to defense budgeting, procurement, testing, and fielding, it is simply unattainable.
		On offense, we must take advantage of the best emerging tech to put our joint force in a position to defeat our adversaries and to overcome their rapidly evolving counter-U.S. capabilities.
		On defense, we must meet the exponentially growing challenge from ever more capable drone attacks and stop being forced to choot down drones that cost a few hundred dollars with multi-million dollar weapons that are hard to produce and even harder to replenish.
		We must do this now, and we must do this at scale.
		This is what DIU is focused on helping all of us to execute.
		First, in partnership with the services, we are helping put concrete UAS capabilities in place where warfighters need it most.
		In just one example, we partnered with the Army on company-level small UAS using the agile funding that Congress has authorized to enable them to prototype and actually deploy this capability in just six months.
		We are now working with the Army to accelerate in fiscal year 25 while they work to ensure scaling in future years.
		Together, we are bridging the valley of death and delivering warfighter impact and also delivering a successful reference case for private sector investment.
		Second, DIU has leveraged its commercial relationships and its commercial solutions opening process to extend critical enabling command and control, automatic target recognition, and collaborative autonomy capabilities, as well as the ability to update them constantly as the technology and needs evolve.
		Third, DIU is working to catalyze the defense industrial base through the Blue UAS Initiative.
		Blue UAS provides a continuous approach to rapidly prototyping and scaling capable and secure commercially derived UAS tech for DOD without Chinese parts or Chinese money.
		To meet the need for dramatically greater scale, DIU is now overhauling Blue UAS from the ground up to rapidly vet a much broader set of UAS platforms and components at speed and year-round.
		Finally, DIU is working to help our commercial partners scale to meet the Department's growing demand.
		Earlier this month, DIU announced the Blue Manufacturing Initiative, which pairs defense tech hardware and software companies with the very best advanced manufacturing providers right here in the United States to help enable the scale we need.
		I'm happy to discuss this and our Blue UAS revamp more during questions.
		Turning to defense, DIU's primary role is again to work with teammates across the Department to put advanced counter-UAS capability into the field fast.
		DIU is also driving Replicator 2, a whole-of-department and interagency effort to improve counter-small UAS protection for critical assets, largely centered on the homeland.
		Across all counter-UAS efforts, DIU is focused on leveraging the best commercially derived technology to accelerate our warfighters' ability to sense, decide, and act under incredible complexity from combat environments overseas to population centers here at home.
		For example, we are working with NORTHCOM and the services to defend homeland military sites and installations, including with low-cost sensing, flyaway kits, and low-collateral solutions for site defense.
		In conclusion, the DOD team is already addressing the rapidly transforming arena of unmanned and counter-unmanned technologies and the enormous challenges and opportunities it presents that require us to bring the very best American innovation to bear.
		DIU is at the heart of these efforts with our partners across the department, many of whom are sitting with me today, but we need to be doing much, much more.
		We must put capability in place now.
		We must dramatically improve our capacity and speed to update unmanned and counter-unmanned technologies, and we must build the muscle to do so at greater and greater scale.
		To do this, we need your support to ensure sufficient authorities and resources are in place to help develop solutions and scale up production capacity.
		We can't take tenuous or incremental steps here.
		We need to take bold leaps, and we need your help to do so.
		We will also need your help in changing our collective culture surrounding risk.
		We must be willing to take the right kinds of risks today to avoid taking unacceptable risk, risk to mission, risk to force, and strategic risk for our nation due to our inability to meet the threat because we move too slowly.
		Thank you.
		I look forward to your questions.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Director Beck, thank you.
		Very sage advice.
		We will now go to Lieutenant General Eric Austin, United States Marine Corps.
		Lieutenant General Austin, the floor is yours.
unidentified		Good morning, Chairman Whitman, Representative Courtney, distinguished members of the subcommittee.
		I would like to echo Mr. Beck's well wishes to Representative Norcross for a speedy recovery.
		Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
		I am honored to represent your Marine Corps, and I look forward to discussing our efforts to address the growing threats and opportunities posed by small unmanned aerial systems.
		The Marine Corps continues to responsibly and necessarily modernize our force in the context of a dynamic and rapidly changing character of warfare aligned with our strategic guidance and in concert with our sister services.
		Guided by our Commandant's priorities, we are balancing our role as the Nation's force in readiness with our aggressive effort to modernize, which certainly includes integration of small unmanned aerial systems and integration of systems to counter threat unmanned aerial systems.
		Our mission is clear: to equip Marines with the tools to dominate in a contested environment while providing active and passive capabilities, necessary training, and other solutions to protect them from an increasingly complex and capable threat.
		Through a rigorous campaign of learning informed by lessons from current conflicts, we are adapting to a battlefield, in many cases redefined by small UAS.
		The Marine Corps is fielding unmanned aerial systems like the Scadio X-2D, the Skyraider, R-80 Delta, the Stalker, at the battalion level and below.
		We are experimenting with low-cost, trendable drones using first-person view guidance methods to provide additional lethality organic to the Marine Airground Task Force.
		To this point, just this year, in a response to the observed evolution of armed FPV drone technology and tactics today on the battlefield, we established the Marine Corps Attack Drone Team.
		This team is tasked to rapidly integrate lessons from modern combat, refined service-level requirements, and to train our Marines through a competition in arms program to increase and inform our organic lethality.
		Just last Friday, they completed their first test firing of a first-person view drone armed with a high-explosive charge on a Quantico-Arrange complex.
		It is exciting, and this construct is really working.
		Though we have fielded hundreds of small UAS and related capabilities, we have work to do.
		We must pursue faster and cheaper solutions.
		We are also fielding a portfolio of force protection capabilities to counter the UAS threat.
		We fielded the first of our Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MATIS, systems to three Marine Expeditionary Force and a prototype light variant of the same capability to all three of our Marine Expeditionary Forces.
		The latter is principally designed to support our Marine Expeditionary units.
		These capabilities tie into our command and control systems and can detect and defeat small UAS and other threats via both non-kinetic and kinetic means.
		The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment today is campaigning forward in Balakatan and exercising the MATIS system as we sit here today.
		This fiscal year, we will also field a prototype counter-UAS capability to protect dismounted Marines.
		This initiative will put manned, portable solutions into Marines' hands at the tactical edge.
		We are feverishly working in belief this will be a model for fielding and iterative improvement.
		We have developed an installation counter-UAS system to detect and defeat low-altitude UAS threats and protect our bases and stations.
		We fielded initial installations, counter UAS equipment sets, and will incrementally expand this critical capability to protect 34 sites starting this fiscal year.
		We have also identified a relocatable fixed site solution that we are integrating into our formations as part of our portfolio approach to counter small UAS.
		Despite these successes, challenges loom large, the relentless pace of technological change and adversary innovation demands we accelerate.
		We must go faster.
		We must rapidly learn, iterate, improve, adapt, and modernize.
		We must continue modernizing how we modernize the Marine Corps.
		And to that end, beyond strictly material solutions, we have established a mechanism to increase the velocity of our acquisition processes for key capabilities.
		The Marine Corps Fusion Center, which is located in Quantico, Virginia, is designed to drive a necessary and healthy cross-functional approach that combines experts from our science and technology requirements and acquisition teams to collapse the timeline from concept to fielded capability combined with the ability to work at a highly and a high-security construct.
		In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, this is a team sport, and we all must move faster.
		To this end, we are collaborating closely with the Defense Innovation Unit, the Joint Countersmall UAS Aircraft Systems Office, and our other sister services, certainly to include the Army.
		Your continued support and advocacy are valued and appreciated and central to our success.
		Thank you for this opportunity.
		I look forward to your questions.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Lieutenant General Austin, thank you so much.
		We appreciate it.
		Now we will go to Lieutenant General Robert Collins, United States Army.
unidentified		Chairman Whitman, Congressman Courtney, and I would also give a shout out to our ranking member.
		Our thoughts and prayers are with you for a rapid recovery and to members of the HASC subcommittee.
		Thank you for the opportunity to come out and discuss our unmanned aerial system and counter-small UAS modernization efforts.
		And I would say also our collaboration across this team of experts that I'm joined here.
		I would say first and foremost, we fully acknowledge the threat and the proliferation of these systems, both abroad and at home.
		And we collectively as a team are acting with urgency.
		We are generating momentum and we are aggressively pressing ahead.
		We have observed these activities, as mentioned, from Ukraine to the Middle East and also here in the homeland.
		We have lessons learned and taking those, making them applied as we learn about increasing speeds, altitudes, stealth, how they operate in contested environments, distance, all of those things that we need to take immediate action.
		And I would say in one particular instance here in the homeland, for example, at Picatenny, when we had that incident on the 12th of December, we were able to take immediate action and within about a 48-hour period, we were able to put KIT on the ground to be able to put that in place to take action and protect that critical infrastructure.
		I would say first on the how, we certainly are adapting the how of how we more quickly iterate, how we scale the speed, and how we outpace our threat and we insert emerging technologies.
		A couple areas that we are looking at is changing our buying models.
		And I would say we are doing that through adopting commercial off-the-shelf technologies, working through agile funding to give us additional flexibility, one.
		Two, increasing our modularity and openness of how we do these particular areas as we attract and desire to attract some of the nontraditionals, increasing the competition as we do these iterative entranche buys to make sure that we get the best of breed of capability,
		focusing on software-centric and autonomous-capable systems, and also bending the cost curve as we scale up and make sure we're pairing the right intercept and defeat mechanism with the right target and threat.
		And we are certainly thankful for all the authorities and the tools that Congress has been able, has allowed us and enabled us to be able to accomplish this.
		On the what, I would say there is likely no single silver bullet, nor can we hyper-specialize on some of these areas, and we need a layered approach to be able to get after this.
		And that ranges everything from soldier common capability to things that may require a military occupational specialty for higher complex threats and capabilities and systems.
		We are shaping that what, I would say, in a couple areas.
		More flexible requirements where we describe what it is that we want industry to provide versus overly prescribe and use continuous iterations with soldiers to inform.
		I would say also we have soldiers and users actively involved in the process so we can get their feedback and do so through experimentation of realistic conditions.
		And overall, I think this helps from material to training to employment.
		On UAS, the layered strategy from Group 1 down at platoon level through our Group 2, our medium range, all the way up to our longer ranges at battalion and brigade, couple that with modular packages that can do anything from Intel comms, electronic warfare, all of which we can do so without putting soldiers at risk.
		On counter UAS, also continuing to modernize capabilities, not only through operational fixed sites for some of our operational units, as well as the soldier common kit and supporting operations in the homeland and focusing in on that sense, that decide the ability that we need to do so and pair those weapon systems and also intercept from non-kinetic, kinetic, and even at the homeland, low collateral capability given some of the urban environments.
		And finally, I would just collectively underscore it's imperative to keep pace with this and to continue to operate speed that we operate as a team, both with the Department of Defense.
		We've done great things with the DIU, with our joint services, and certainly with industry to share those best practices, insights, and a partner across many efforts.
		And I thank you very much for your continued support for your members and look forward to your questions.
		Thank you.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Sorry, Major General Andrew, I'm sorry, David Stewart.
unidentified		There we go.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Trying to change your name.
unidentified		Chairman Whitman, Congressman Courtney, distinguished members of the subcommittee, and of course, best wishes to Ranking Member Norcross.
		Thank you for inviting me here today to discuss counter-small UAS gaps, requirements, and projected capabilities.
		I serve as the director of the Joint Counter-UAS Office, or JCO, the DOD's executive agent for countering Groups 1, 2, and 3 UAS.
		The small UAS threat is present and constantly evolving.
		Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine demonstrate how advances in hardware, software, and tactics are making drones more autonomous, easily acquired, and deadlier.
		Compared to the IEDs that killed and injured thousands of American service members, UAS are more dangerous because they actively surveil, target, and deliver lethal effects from the air.
		Importantly, this threat is not just in operational environments abroad.
		Small UAS are becoming more prevalent here in the homeland.
		The JCO leads and synchronizes joint requirements, technologies, training, and doctrine to minimize duplication and redundancy.
		We are the connective tissue of the DOD, working daily across the department and interagency with industry, allies, and partners on all things counter-small UAS.
		The JCO assesses urgent capability gaps and accelerates materiel development to our warfighters and enhance their lethality, funding an enhanced common operating picture, investing in continued development of a cost-efficient counter-small UAS effector, and transitioning multiple systems to the services.
		The JCO has also funded operational assessments to multiple combatant commands to get kit in warfighters' hands and simultaneously inform future service rapid acquisition decisions.
		We continue to invest in future technologies like low collateral effectors, high-powered microwave, and directed energy.
		To further inform service acquisition decisions and accelerate future system development, the JCO hosts instrumented demonstrations where our industry partners showcase capabilities and we invest in promising service-led RDT ⁇ E efforts.
		Beyond material, The JCO executes rapid response teams to combatant commands, providing expertise on system emplacement and operations.
		We funded creation, we funded the creation and further development of the DOD's only joint counter-U.S. university and online modules to build doctrinal and training foundations.
		We also contributed to the DOD's counter-UXS strategy and assist with policy development.
		Lastly, there is no silver bullet.
		The breadth of this threat requires a layered systems of systems approach.
		With your continued support, we aim to move faster for our warfighters and government-wide stakeholders to outpace this threat at home and abroad.
		Thank you.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Major General Stewart.
		I appreciate the testimony of our witnesses, and we will now proceed to questions.
		Let me start by asking the entire panel this question.
		Where we see ourselves today is in the middle of a significant threat by unmanned aerial systems, small and otherwise.
		Most of what we've seen is small.
		We've seen incursions at places like Joint Base Langley-Eustis, at Piccatinny Arsenal.
		Those things should concern us deeply as I have gone and gotten the briefs on these threats.
		It's very clear to me that this is more than just a hobbyist that mistakenly flew a drone over a U.S. military facility.
		This is purposeful.
		It's meant to not just gain information, which much of it can be gained by other sources, but it's meant to probe.
		It's meant to determine what is the reaction of the United States.
		What capabilities do they have?
		And how will they act?
		And then how can our adversaries counter that if they did choose to do something?
		To me, that's very, very problematic.
		Major General Stewart, I want to ask you, if there was a major incursion tonight at the United States military base, what would the response be?
		You talk about having kit, is there a kit at these bases?
		Is there a kit that's in a mobile unit that can go?
		What would we do?
		How would we respond?
		How would we do things in a way, too, that not only eliminates the threat, but I think as importantly, gives us the opportunity to gain intelligence on the source of that threat, the capability of that threat.
		You know, it's one thing to completely kinetically destroy something, but it's another thing to be able to take it out to take the threat away, but also to recover enough information to where we can take another step forward in our countermeasures.
		So how do we do that?
		And how do we take lessons learned at Langley, especially where, in my mind, there was a complete breakdown in decision-making?
		I felt bad for the base commander there who said, hey, I want to be able to act.
		This platform was there for over 45 days repeatedly.
		There were, unfortunately, responses we had to make in relation to that.
		As this base commander asked people above him, they said, oh, don't worry about it.
		You have the authorities.
		If you think it's an imminent threat, then you can use them.
		And he said, that's not the question I'm asking.
		I'm asking, if I use that authority, will you back me?
		Nobody above him would say that.
		They'd say, oh, you have the authorities.
		You can do it.
		So here you have an 06 at a base that's 18 months away from retirement and is trying to make sure he's doing the right thing but is not quite confident that the folks above him have his back.
		And then when we asked the folks from the Pentagon to come in and give us their assessment of that, we got a nice long assessment that was word salad.
		And then when I asked, well, what's the Pentagon's response going to be?
		Pentagon says, well, we're going to empanel a work group.
		My head exploded.
		So I want to know, Sands empaneling a work group, how are we going to address this?
		I understand the cross-jurisdictional issues.
		I think the authorities are clear in what the United States military has.
		I understand concerns by FAA, FCC, all of those different entities.
		But I would argue that the protection of our men and women in uniform and those facilities are job one, and that should be the priority.
		So Major General Stewart, I know I've given a lot of background there, but I want to get your perspective on where would we be today if the same thing happened today at Langley or Picatinny.
		What would our response be, and could we act immediately to counter that and to gather the necessary information to make sure we're learning about the nature of this threat?
unidentified		Each service and each installation will have different circumstances based mostly on the threat.
		And what we're finding with the threat is there are multiple ways to navigate, whether that's using radio frequency uplink, downlink, using waypoints through satellites, or loading optics in to use the terrain to fly.
		We're now even seeing tethered.
		So back to the point that there is no one silver bullet, there's no one single way to detect these different threats.
		So you need a system of a systems approach for sure.
		Each service will look at the individual installations and the requirements that are required for capability.
		But beyond materiel, you point out some very good observations that training is essential, rehearsed, regularly rehearsed battle drills, and just really understanding policy, which the JCO has produced videos to help installation commanders understand their authorities.
		And then lastly, I would just say I believe and assess that the capability is there.
		We have a bit of a capacity problem across each one of the services at installations, but each service is prioritizing installations based on maybe critical infrastructure as well.
		And lastly, I know the NORTCOM commander is looking for flyaway kits.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		I think that's critical.
		It'd be great if you could provide for the subcommittee an inventory of kit that's in place on these bases.
		I understand each service branch is responsible for their base.
		And then I think mobile kit is critical too for maybe bases that don't have quite as high a level of threat, but if something's there, we can mobilize kit within 12 hours and have it on site to do both sensing and efforts to be able to neutralize these efforts.
		So if you could give us current assessment of that, that would be great.
		I want to now go to my colleague, Mr. Courtney.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		Mr. Beck, in your testimony, actually on page three, you actually spelled it out in writing about the fact that the traditional approach to defense procurement, testing, and fielding is simply unattainable.
		That's why DOD, with support from Congress, must reinforce progress made over the last few years.
		You know, as I think every member knows in the committee, Chairman Rogers and Mr. Smith, Ranking Member, are very focused in terms of this year's NDAA in terms of acquisition reform.
		I mean, is there specific ways that we can help solve this issue of traditional procurement obstacles?
		So I would love to spend the next 40 minutes and the next day talking about that because the energy and passion that I've got and that we've all got about getting after that is so enormous.
		I guess maybe to kind of just hit a couple of points really quickly.
		First, I think you've got to, you know, if you look at the world and the way that we operate this whole kind of defense procurement universe, we have the most dynamic market economy in the world here in the United States.
		And the only place in our entire economy that operates kind of like an old-style Soviet five-year plan is actually the way that we do kind of defense procurement and budgeting over time.
		And if you compare that to the commercial tech world that I come from, which is dominated by massive demand that you have confidence in, but uncertainty about where that demand is going to come from, and massive competition all the way up to the moment of sale, we live in a very different world in defense.
		So a couple of concrete things that I think we should do differently that learn from that world.
		The first one is a shift from a very complex requirements-based approach to a needs-based approach.
		So from a 300-page document that tells the tech sector, here's exactly what we want you to go build, even though we may not know because they're the experts, it's their tech.
		It's a statement of the problem that we need solved operationally with the warfighter working together with the tech leaders to then come up with solutions to that problem.
		That's actually what we do at DIU, but we need to scale that across the department.
		That will help us go fast and also leverage tech to really solve the problem.
		Second, it's about changing the dynamic to move to flexible funding as we have at DIU thanks to the Congress as of last year.
		But we need to have that, I think, at greater scale and in the services as well and move from an approach that's based on programs of record, which may make sense for certain categories of activity, but for technology that moves at an incredibly rapid pace, it makes no sense to be identifying exactly what you're going to buy in two years when the thing doesn't exist yet.
		And so moving from programs work to something that looks more like a portfolio of record, together with the right kind of transparency so that Congress can provide the oversight necessary to be able to move within that portfolio.
		Third, it's about having the talent and the porosity of talent for the department to be able to move in the right people in and out to be able to help with all of this.
		And we have massive numbers of people who'd actually like to help, but we make it very hard for them to do so.
		And then fourth, it's about the approach to risk and that dynamic that I mentioned at the end of my comments.
		We've got to go from a kind of zero defect world to one in which, you know, in the company that I used to work for, we used to talk about 100 no's for every yes.
		If you think about what it took for SpaceX to get to the kind of launch capability they have and how many failed launches there were before they got to those successes, compare that to the way that we do it in the government system.
		We've got to be much more comfortable with failure on our way to success.
		And we also, that means we need to be partnered with Congress differently because we need the Congress to help support the concept that we will fail on our way to success.
		Great.
		That's very helpful.
		And honestly, it's really aligned a lot with some of the testimony we've heard from industry over the last few months or so.
		And we are going to get to a place pretty soon when we start putting pen to paper in terms of MDA this year.
		And certainly if you or your staff follow up with our committee staff, I mean, really, I think there is a window of opportunity here on all those issues about requirements, reform, funding flexibility, workforce and risk.
		I mean, those are we want to make sure we can help unclog the system here, because obviously it is the urgency of everyone's testimony this morning, I think, is the overwhelming message.
		So thank you all for being here.
		I yield back.
		Thank you, sir.
		Very good.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Courtney.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		And when I go to Mr. Jimenez.
carlos a gimenez ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		And amen, Mr. Beck.
		I think that my time here, it is pretty evident that the DOD is got a culture of fear of failure.
		And I have quoted what Musk does with SpaceX a lot, where failure to him is success, because that means that is one more point of failure that won't happen because they figured it out.
		And so we need to get to that, where DOD doesn't have a fear of failure.
		And then we in Congress also have to change our MO because can you imagine if Starship were actually a NASA thing and then the second one blew up or the first one blew up, the second one wouldn't have flown for five years, okay?
		And yet he just continues to fly.
		So we need to get to that, all right?
		And failure is just part of the process to get us there.
		I'm going to pivot a little bit.
		In 2017, I went to, at the time I was the mayor of Miami-Dade County, and I went to Israel because I had a fear, and I still have that fear, that our critical infrastructure, in my case, we operated the Miami International Airport, was going to be vulnerable to drones.
		And if I had five drones, I could probably stop air travel worldwide, all right, if I do something coordinated.
		So my question is, by the way, we haven't done anything since 2017 that I have seen to protect our critical infrastructure, especially airports, et cetera, and transportation infrastructure.
		Do we share information with the civilian sector?
		And how can we accelerate the sharing of information so that we can protect the homeland better?
		I know we are trying to do it for our warfighter.
		I am okay with that.
		I am happy with that.
		I think that is our responsibility.
		But are we leaving the civilian sector behind because they are just as vulnerable as the warfighter?
		Anybody want to take that one up?
		Well, Mr. Beck, it's going to fall on you.
unidentified		Okay.
		I can lead off.
		Congressman, I believe initiatives like Replicator 2 and what is happening on the southern border will help DOD and the interagency advance our learning and coordination to identify problems here in the homeland, which is really helpful.
		Also, I think NORTHCOM being designated the synchronizer will help here at the homeland as well.
		From a JCO perspective, we have demonstrations that we do with our partners in industry.
		We also monthly meet with four to eight industry partners to bring them in and share our perspective and then learn from them.
carlos a gimenez ▲ ● ▼		When you're talking industry, are you talking about the people that are making the stuff that shoots these things down?
		Or are you talking to like the airport authorities and transportation authorities and said How to harden their infrastructure against these attacks.
		Mark my words.
		Mark my words.
		Okay.
unidentified		Absolutely.
unidentified		And I would say.
carlos a gimenez ▲ ● ▼		This is not a question of if it is going to happen.
		Right.
		Because Murphy says if it can, it will.
		Okay.
		And so are we working with our civilian partners that have critical infrastructure to bring some kind of capability to defend against these unmanned aerial systems?
unidentified		Yes.
		One example of that is we perform tabletop exercises where we bring in 30 interagency partners from all over the government, state and local, to address policy and legal issues.
		And then we bring up issues, both CONUS and then looking at what has been learned in Ukraine and in the Middle East.
		So we do bring that body together to share ideas and come up with common solutions.
		If I could augment two as well, General Collins from the Army, I would say, yes, we have in one particular example, as we learned activities at Picatenny, the ability to do that cross-collaboration with State, local, and Federal authorities.
		And this was everything from how we sensed in particular environments when you have a lot of collateral and you had to deconflict that, to, I would also say, in the intercept to make sure that we look at things like the ability to have like net capture or tangle drones to be able to bring them down without having significant challenges in spectrum deconfliction, I would say those are other areas.
		And as we go through all of those battle drills, as was discussed, how you have that cross-communication and clear lines of authority are absolutely the things that we are starting to get after, not just on the M side of material, how we do that, all the coordination that goes to effect in that infrastructure with other agencies.
carlos a gimenez ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, Mr. Menez.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		We will now go to Mr. Carbajal.
unidentified		Sir, sir, can I add one quick thing to that?
		I am not good at this, but I would just add maybe two quick points.
		The first one is that one of the areas that we are spending an enormous amount of time on is particularly around the technologies and sensing to be able to have a much broader reach of sense, including some of the unique ways that we can do that, not just leveraging kind of acoustic radar, 5G, LTE, but also the data that exists out there in highly populated areas, leveraging all of that to do a better job of sensing, and then leveraging AI to be able to pull all that together and do rapid decision-making based on it.
		So that's one thing.
		Second thing is the general mentioned Replicator 2 initiative.
		We've actually had the FAA directly involved as part of that initiative as we've been going through it.
		And we will be launching just next week a low collateral defeat DIU CSO focused on those low collateral technologies for defeating drones, particularly in highly populated areas, and the FAA is part of that effort.
		Very good.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
rob wittman ▲ ● ▼		Mr. Carvajal.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
		Thank you to all the witnessing here today.
		Being a Marine, I always get excited when we have Marines on the panel.
		I have been glad to see different parts of DOD lean into commercially available technology like DIU with the blue list.
		Obviously, we need to push the cutting edge and rapidly prototype to innovate and to adapt to get the warfighter what they need.
		Mr. Beck, can you walk me through the rationale behind the blue UAS refresh that took place in 2024?
		And are you worried that removing companies from the blue list will erode trust with the industrial base?
		So I'm really glad that you brought this up because the so first I'll answer your specific question about what we did in 2024, but then maybe walk quickly through the evolution of Blue.
		And I mentioned in my prepared remarks that we are right now doing a complete revamp of Blue to get after exactly the challenge that I think you just alluded to.
		So the first is in 2024, we did a major refresh of the list in order to reflect the huge change that's come in the technologies themselves.
		And that was fundamentally about changing the quality, everything from electronic warfare resiliency to lethality, as well as cost because we need these things to be less expensive, frankly, than they were.
		And so that's what that was all about.
		Now, as a reminder, the Blue list primarily is from its inception was about ensuring that providers of unmanned systems were vetted to be compliant with the law in terms of Chinese parts and Chinese capital.
		And one of the things that sort of has happened over time is, frankly, the scale of the industry and the pace of the industry has outgrown the processes and the way that we work through it.
		So for example, when we started Blue in 2019, there were a couple dozen companies to be thinking about vetting.
		By the time we actually did the first list, there were over 100 that try to get on the list, of which there were a couple of dozens that actually meet those hard criteria established in the law.
		Now, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands that could meet that list, and we were still using that same sippy straw effectively in order to vet them all in a very white glove way, one at a time, to issue an ATO.
		And so we're changing that now so that the compliance piece that says, does this company meet the standard that's been established in the law and therefore are they legal to buy, we are making that, working very closely with industry who we've been spending a lot of time on how do we revamp this.
		We're making that a truly compliance-based list that anybody who meets those criteria can get on and that's done constantly on an ongoing basis so that you meet the criteria, you can be on the list.
		And then we're taking those that actually reach that higher standard and that include those quality requirements and they're really the best of the best in terms of including, for example, one that just came on the list during this last revamp.
		That's the first U.S. company using only U.S. parts that's getting to Ukraine levels of both cost with just a couple thousand dollars and dropping and thousands of units a month and rising.

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