Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Abby Shepherd is a Navy reporter. Before joining Inside Defense in November 2023, she was an intern with Politico's E&E News and a city government reporter with the Eudora Times in Kansas. She graduated from the University of Kansas in May 2023, with degrees in journalism and political science.
The House Armed Services Committee's draft fiscal year 2026 defense authorization bill would approve the procurement of two Ford-class aircraft carriers and allow for the use of incremental funding, while uncertainty surrounds the program’s future as the Navy seeks to remain competitive with China.
Raytheon's Barracuda Mine Neutralization System has been tested in its first untethered, semi-autonomous operation, the company announced Tuesday.
As the Navy prepares to combine medium and large unmanned surface vessel efforts into one program, fresh details have emerged in the service's fiscal year 2026 budget request, which details research and development plans for the new Modular Attack Surface Craft program.
Following delays and software defects, full-rate production has been approved for the F/A-18 E/F Infrared Search and Track system, according to a Navy spokesperson, with an acquisition decision memorandum scheduled to be signed this summer.
The Office of Naval Research is seeking proposals for the rapid design, build and testing of the Ocean Explorer Large Underwater Vehicle, an "ultra-large" autonomous undersea vehicle capable of conducting lengthy, ocean-scale missions and carrying a large modular payload.
A new Defense Department inspector general's report finds that the Navy has not been able to sufficiently recapitalize its surge sealift fleet and faces challenges in filling these gaps due to high costs and legal restrictions.
Aided by the first overseas deployment of two new weapon systems, the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment recently completed a deployment that included three bilateral exercises focused on the Indo-Pacific.
Several Navy programs continue to face delays and setbacks, including a key unmanned underwater vehicle platform which now may never transition to a program of record, according to a report released today by the Government Accountability Office.
The Pentagon is requesting $62.9 billion for Navy and Marine Corps procurement in fiscal year 2026, betting big that Congress can pass a partisan reconciliation package containing an additional $32.3 billion in procurement dollars that will be needed to avoid significant cuts to priority shipbuilding programs.
A draft fiscal year 2026 spending bill released today by the House Appropriations defense subcommittee would bolster funding for the Navy’s F/A-XX next-generation aircraft program by nearly a billion dollars while further reducing funding for the troubled Constellation-class frigate.
Though technology and artificial intelligence adoption can be particularly difficult for the Navy -- due to ships being away at sea, difficulty obtaining data rights and a lack of connection between computer programs -- there are solutions and plans in place to counter these problems, according to a Navy official.
Amid a "reorganization" of the White House shipbuilding office -- following Michael Waltz's abrupt departure as head of the National Security Council -- shipbuilder HII is maintaining a steady relationship with the group and interacting with its members regularly, according to CEO Chris Kastner.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Ultra Maritime have partnered to further airborne detection and tracking of enemy submarines, according to a news release this week.
The Navy is seeking more unmanned underwater vehicle technology, asking industry members to come forward with commercial-off-the-shelf products that could be included under a small UUV program of record.
The Navy plans to hold an industry day next month for a new open-ocean, high-endurance, non-exquisite, autonomous vessel to show industry members how it would fit into an evolving surface force.
Lawmakers today continued to express their dissatisfaction with the Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 defense spending request, as they hold concurrent hearings on Capitol Hill to sort through budget priorities across the Defense Department.
The Navy has witnessed substantial interest from industry experts and developers on a potential expansion of clean energy generation through nuclear power sites on underutilized military land, an official told lawmakers Wednesday.
The Pentagon's chief weapons tester was not consulted and did not sign off on a Navy decision to forgo a milestone B test and evaluation master plan update for the MQ-25 Stingray program, despite the service's initial plan to submit the update to the office of the director of test and evaluation by the end of March.
Since the establishment of a nuclear-armed, sea-launched missile program office in March 2024, the Navy remains on track to achieve a key milestone by next year, as it assesses potential warhead options and researches how to best integrate the missile into Virginia-class submarines, a service official told lawmakers Wednesday.
The Navy is requesting industry input on a potential long-range, tactical unmanned aircraft system that would be used by an international partner for maritime domain awareness as well as search and rescue operations.