The framework, announced Thursday, includes initial spare parts plus 10 years of modification kits and sustainment. It also covers orders from foreign customers, with production continuing at 156 aircraft per year, according to Lockheed.

In exchange for the decade-long commitment, Lockheed will self-fund at least $7 billion in initiatives supporting the F-35 program, the Pentagon said.

“With the greater certainty that comes from the U.S. government’s transformative approach to F-35 production and sustainment, we can make the upfront investments needed to expand capacity, improve efficiency, and build a more resilient supply chain,” Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said in a statement. “That’s good for the taxpayer, good for our suppliers and, most importantly, good for the United States and its allies.”

Neither announcement gave a total value or per-jet price. Lockheed said the F-35 Joint Program Office and the company will work out terms, pricing and schedules in a formal contract if Congress approves a multiyear buy and provides the money in the coming months.

A multiyear buy lets the Pentagon purchase a weapon across several years under one contract instead of negotiating annually, which generally lowers unit cost. Lockheed said the framework is expected to save taxpayers billions of dollars through “long-term pricing and industry volume discounts.”

“We have fundamentally changed how we stabilize the American defense industrial base to produce at speed and scale,” said Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment. “This agreement with Lockheed Martin proves it. By aligning financial incentives with actual performance, we are ensuring our warfighters are equipped with the lethal capabilities they need to fight and win.”

Neither the Pentagon nor Lockheed described those performance-based incentives.

At 850 jets over 10 years, the framework averages 85 U.S. aircraft per year. That matches the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 request for 85 F-35s across the services. In fiscal 2026, Congress funded just 47 F-35s.

The framework comes days after the Air Force told Congress it needs 1,509 combat-coded fighters, or jets assigned to combat units, by 2035. The request came in a force structure report sent Oct. 16. F-35As would make up about 40% of that fleet.

The House and Senate versions of the annual defense policy bill would both let the Pentagon sign multiyear F-35 contracts. The House passed its bill in July. Senate Democrats blocked theirs from reaching the floor that month, and leaders have put it off until after the November midterm elections. The framework can’t become a contract until both bills pass and are merged into a single law.

The framework also faces a funding hurdle. Congress has not yet approved a full-year defense budget. A stopgap funding law keeping the government open through Dec. 11 holds spending at last year’s levels and generally bars the Pentagon from starting new programs or multiyear buys.

Lockheed pitched the framework as a readiness fix, saying steady orders will improve the F-35’s mission-capable rate, the percentage of time jets can fly at least one assigned mission.

“Predictable demand from long-term contracts with suppliers will enable bulk procurement of raw materials and critical parts, slashing turnaround times and reducing logistics bottlenecks,” Lockheed said. “This will result in better mission-capable rates by eliminating the annual contracting cycle that has historically strained the industrial base.”

A Government Accountability Office report in June found that the rate fell from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44% in fiscal 2025, while the share of time jets could fly all assigned missions dropped from 38% to 25%. Later that month, F-35 program chief Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello told senators the fleet had outgrown its support system.

The F-35 deal follows a string of Pentagon framework agreements aimed at speeding up weapons production.

In January, Lockheed reached an agreement to speed PAC-3 MSE output, then signed another weeks later to quadruple THAAD interceptor production. The THAAD deal led to a contract worth more than $35 billion in June. Last year’s defense bills had already approved multiyear buys for both interceptors.

On Oct. 19, the Pentagon announced a framework with BAE Systems covering up to seven years of buys of Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System laser-guidance kits.

Lockheed said the program will support 317,000 U.S. jobs and roughly $79 billion in yearly economic activity over the decade.

Lt. Gen. David Tabor, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, described the report at an Oct. 20 Pentagon roundtable with reporters, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported. Reporters did not receive a copy of the report, and the service did not respond to a Defense News request for it by publication.

F-35s would make up about 40% of the fleet by 2035, up from about 30% today, according to figures Tabor cited. F-22s and their replacement, the F-47, would make up about 20%. The service plans to replace its F-22s with about the same number of F-47s, Tabor said.

F-15s and F-16s would split the remaining 40% about evenly. The figures exclude A-10s, which are not currently part of the Air Force’s plans for 2035.

Tabor said the analysis was based on what regional commanders say they need to carry out their missions at medium risk. The military rates risk on four levels: low, medium, significant and high. At medium risk, forces would likely achieve their goals but could be strained in long operations.

The analysis began before the war with Iran this year and was not driven by it, Tabor said. He cautioned that the 1,509 figure is likely to change with world events, new requirements and the rise of new technology.

Reaching the goal depends on Congress funding the jets and on Lockheed Martin and Boeing building them in time, Tabor said. Industry has “assured us that they can, and we believe them,” he told reporters, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Air Force officials have long said the service needs to buy 72 fighters a year. The fiscal 2027 request seeks 38 F-35s and 24 F-15EXs, a total of 62. Tabor said purchases can increase over time.

The budget counts on $2.34 billion to pay for 14 of the 38 F-35s. That money would come through a reconciliation bill, a budget package that can pass the Senate with a simple majority. If that bill fails, Tabor said, the service could pull money from other programs or push the buys to 2028.

The Air Force is seeking multiyear contracts for the F-35 and F-15EX, a request now pending in Congress. Tabor said such deals would give industry more stability to expand production.

Older F-16s reach the end of their service lives in the mid-2030s, Tabor said, but the service has not decided whether to buy a new-build F-16, tentatively called the F-16G. That decision likely won’t come in the fiscal 2028 budget, he said.

The 1,509 figure does not count Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCAs, the drone wingmen that will fly alongside crewed fighters. The Air Force plans to field 500 CCAs by 2032. Tabor said the drones are not yet changing the fighter requirement but could reduce it in future reports.

APKWS kits convert unguided 2.75-inch rockets into laser-guided munitions. All four services field them, and the weapon has become a cheaper alternative to air-to-air missiles for shooting down drones.

Congress still has to approve and fund the buy, the department said. BAE said it will increase production while the two sides work out a multiyear contract. Neither side announced the deal’s cost.

The framework also outlines a path to increase output to 35,000 kits a year for U.S. allies. The department said that added capacity will come online as partner nations formally request kits through the Foreign Military Sales program.

“By securing multi-year demand, this agreement keeps production lines running at capacity, provides our forces with interceptor inventory, and flips the cost calculus in the taxpayer’s favor,” Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, said in the announcement.

BAE, which builds the kits in Hudson, New Hampshire, and Austin, Texas, said in February that it had delivered its 100,000th kit.

The 25,000 figure in this framework agreement matches capacity BAE has cited before. A company official said in 2023 that APKWS was in full-rate production with room to grow to 25,000 units a year.

“APKWS delivers proven, reliable and affordable precision at scale to counter evolving threats and ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage,” said Tom Arseneault, president and CEO of BAE Systems Inc.

The Navy’s current five-year APKWS contract with BAE, awarded in August 2025, is worth up to $1.74 billion. It covers up to 55,000 kits for the Navy, the Army and foreign customers, with work expected to be completed by December 2031.

Among allied buyers, Saudi Arabia won State Department approval in July for a possible $1.96 billion package that includes up to 20,000 APKWS kits, split evenly between air-to-air and air-to-ground versions. Italy is also weighing a buy of 5,031 kits for counter-drone defense.

The APKWS agreement is the latest in a series of framework deals the Pentagon has signed this year to boost munitions production.

In January, Lockheed Martin agreed to more than triple production of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, or PAC-3 MSE, interceptor.

In March, BAE and Lockheed agreed to quadruple production of seekers for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptor. A separate THAAD framework signed in January led to a June contract worth more than $35 billion for the interceptors themselves.

The company’s stationary Cheongwang laser air defense weapon and a 30-kilowatt-class vehicle-mounted laser took part in the live-fire event, held during the Army’s TIGER+ Future Warfare Integrated Combat Exercise. About 500 people attended, according to Hanwha, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Kim Kyu-ha.

Cheongwang fired on a drone overhead that “caught fire and fell from the sky,” The Korea Times reported from the exercise at a training ground in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province. The laser was one part of a layered counter-drone demonstration that also included electronic jamming and a K21 armored vehicle firing on incoming drones.

Hanwha did not say which system destroyed which drones, what kinds of drones were used, what vehicle carries the newer laser or the range of either weapon.

The Oct. 14 demonstration followed a Sept. 16 event at South Korea’s 2026 Defense Drone Technology Exhibition, where Cheongwang downed four drones and two larger unmanned aircraft in succession, Hanwha said.

Cheongwang, meaning “light of the sky,” in Korean is formally known as the Laser Air Defense Weapon Block-I. Hanwha developed it under a program led by South Korea’s Agency for Defense Development. The company calls it the world’s first operationally deployed laser weapon.

South Korea first fielded the system in December 2024 and had about five units at major government facilities as of June, including the Ministry of National Defense building, according to Korea JoongAng Daily.

North Korean drones have repeatedly violated South Korean airspace. In December 2022, five crossed the border, one reaching Seoul. Fighter jets, attack helicopters and warning shots failed to bring any of them down, Defense News reported at the time.

Hanwha says each Cheongwang shot costs about $1.50, in line with the figure South Korea’s arms procurement agency gave in 2024. Unlike guns or missiles, the system uses no ammunition and can continue firing as long as it has power. The company asserts lasers can counter cheap drones used for surveillance and strikes without relying on much costlier missile-based air defenses.

Hanwha is also developing a 50 kW Laser Armored Vehicle in-house for export customers and displayed a model of it at the MSPO defense show in Kielce, Poland, in September.

At the show, Hanwha Systems manager Hyungun Park told Defense News that the company had built a prototype and planned to begin production by the end of 2027. He said Hanwha was in talks with potential buyers in Europe, Asia and the Middle East about exporting Cheongwang.

South Korea’s 2027 defense budget proposal includes funding to begin research on a mobile Block-II version of Cheongwang, UPI reported.

The company said Oct. 14 that the expansion will help the plant reach record production levels and deliver components to final-assembly sites, including Camden, Arkansas and Troy, Alabama.

The project expands the plant’s manufacturing footprint to more than 735,000 square feet. The expansion adds 100,000 square feet of new space and converts 85,000 square feet of office space into factory floor space for automated, high-precision machining.

Nearly 800 production employees work at the plant, which produced 250,000 parts in 2025. Lockheed said it has added more than 30 high-precision machines in recent months and expects to install nearly 100 additional machines by the end of 2026.

Lockheed also said Hadrian, a California-based manufacturing startup, will install 24 automated machines at the Grand Prairie facility to produce missile parts. Lockheed employees will operate the equipment, which is expected to be up and running by early 2027. The project follows a memorandum of understanding the two companies signed in December 2025.

“The warfighter can’t wait on peacetime timelines,” Hadrian CEO Chris Power said in the release. “Rebuilding the Arsenal of Freedom at the scale America needs will take partnerships that combine expertise and speed, and this is what that looks like.”

The buildout supports a series of framework agreements the Defense Department has signed with Lockheed since January, designed to boost missile production and lead to long-term contracts. The first aims to increase PAC-3 MSE production from about 600 to roughly 2,000 interceptors per year over seven years.

The Army followed with a $4.7 billion contract in April, then converted it in July into a seven-year production contract worth about $58.6 billion in total.

A separate THAAD framework, signed in January, led to a June contract from the Missile Defense Agency worth more than $35 billion to quadruple interceptor production. Lockheed and the Pentagon announced similar agreements for the Precision Strike Missile on March 25 and for the AIM-260 on Sept. 17.

“Lockheed Martin has brought together commercial speed and combat-proven performance because America needs both,” said Jim Taiclet, Lockheed’s chairman, president and CEO. “By combining advanced technology with the expertise of our American workforce, we’re transforming manufacturing to deliver critical munitions at speed and scale.”

“This expansion is more than just a new facility; it is a stronger supply chain and a more resilient industrial base,” said Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment.

The Grand Prairie investment is part of Lockheed’s plan to spend $8 billion to $9 billion through 2030 to increase munitions production and modernize or expand more than 20 U.S. facilities. The company said it plans to create 6,000 jobs nationwide, including 2,000 in Texas.

An Oct. 1 memo signed by Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle directs the Army vice chief of staff to establish the U.S. Army Futures and Autonomous Systems Command, or FASCOM. It also tells the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, who oversees how the Army buys weapons, to put one office in charge of purchasing its priority autonomous systems. Telle wrote that he issued the memo under guidance from Hegseth’s Sept. 30 State of the Force address.

The memo does not say who will lead FASCOM, where it will be based or when it will be established. “Specifics on structure, command, mission, etc. will be announced at a future date,” Col. Marty Meiners, an Army spokesperson, told Defense News.

The new acquisition office, a Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Autonomy, would have single authority over buying the Army’s priority autonomous systems. The Army reorganized its weapons buying last year under six portfolio acquisition executives, each overseeing a group of related programs. This would add another for autonomy.

The memo also directs the assistant secretary to prioritize buying and fielding several types of autonomous systems no later than fiscal 2028. The list includes fires, the Army’s term for artillery, rockets and missiles; combat vehicles; watercraft resupply; breaching systems that clear obstacles such as minefields; reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition systems; and drones and robots working alongside crewed vehicles and aircraft.

The Army said in its release that the memo’s initiatives build on work already underway, including an office set up earlier this year to work autonomous technology into weapons programs across the Army. Neither the memo nor the release says whether that office, the Capability Program Executive Office for Mission Autonomy, will move under the new acquisition office.

The memo tasks the Army staff’s force management office, which shapes how units are organized and equipped, with quickly working out how to fit autonomous systems into at least six existing types of units: aviation, armor, fires, sustainment, engineer and training.

It also tells the assistant secretary of the Army who oversees manpower and personnel policy to add drone and robotics specialist positions to all applicable Army units.

Both specialties already exist: the 15X tactical unmanned aircraft systems specialist for enlisted soldiers, and the 390A robotics technician for warrant officers.

“The Army is rapidly advancing to maintain our lethal edge,” Telle said in a statement released by the Army. “We are forging the U.S. Army Futures and Autonomous Systems Command to get cutting-edge technology into the hands of soldiers, while prioritizing autonomy in our formations, our acquisitions, and our training to dominate the future of warfare.”

Hegseth announced the Autonomous Warfare Command, or AutoWarCom, during his Sept. 30 State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Military Times reported. He said the command would have service-like authorities to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the military.

Hegseth’s own memo, “Project Agincourt: Pathway to the Autonomous Warfare Command,” signed the same day as his address, puts the Pentagon’s unmanned systems office in charge of Project Agincourt, an effort to lay the groundwork for AutoWarCom.

Hegseth said in his address that the project is named for the 1415 battle in which an outnumbered English army used the longbow to defeat a larger, heavily armored French force. The memo argues that cheap, precise weapons built at massive scale now threaten the expensive aircraft, ships and vehicles the military has long relied on.

The Agincourt memo describes AutoWarCom as a four-star functional combatant command, a headquarters organized around a mission rather than a region, like U.S. Cyber Command. It says the command would have dedicated manpower, budget and authority to buy equipment.

Powers like those require an act of Congress, which gave U.S. Special Operations Command a similar setup when it was created in 1987. The memo directs the unmanned systems office to work with Congress on the needed legislation, with a goal of establishing AutoWarCom by Oct. 1, 2027.

The Agincourt memo says AutoWarCom will “define joint needs and integrate Service-provided forces in support of geographic combatant commanders,” the four-star officers who lead U.S. forces in regions such as the Middle East and the Pacific. A plan due by Oct. 30 is to lay out command relationships and what forces each service will contribute. Telle’s memo does not say how FASCOM will fit into that structure.

The new command’s name revives “Futures” a year after the Army inactivated Army Futures Command. In October 2025, the service merged Futures Command with Training and Doctrine Command to form the Army Transformation and Training Command, or T2COM, headquartered in Austin, Texas.

The memo does not address how FASCOM will relate to T2COM. A T2COM spokesperson referred questions about the new command to Army headquarters.

Asked how FASCOM will relate to T2COM and AutoWarCom and how the changes will be paid for, Meiners said the Army had no information to provide beyond its release.

The Nomad 100 fast pack fits four aircraft, mission-command software, power, communications and sustainment equipment inside one standard 20-foot shipping container, the company said in a release.

In its planned configuration, two of the aircraft can be mission ready in under 15 minutes, and the other two available within four to six hours, according to Sikorsky.

The system is designed to launch without a runway from sites such as naval vessels, tactical vehicle staging areas and improvised landing zones. After a mission, crews can repack the container, load it onto a compatible vehicle and move it to a new site.

Depending on how a customer configures it, the kit could support intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting missions, as well as light attack and contested logistics, the company said.

Sikorsky said the U.S. military needs to rapidly expand its inventory of autonomous aircraft with compact systems that can be deployed, sustained and moved quickly in contested environments.

“By packaging aircraft, mission command, communications, power and sustainment into a single containerized system, we are making it easier to move, employ and reposition VTOL UAS capability with urgency and flexibility,” Rich Benton, Sikorsky’s vice president and general manager, said in the release.

The Nomad 100 has an 18-foot wingspan and is a Group 3 drone under the Defense Department’s classification system. It uses Sikorsky’s rotor blown wing design, which pairs a helicopter’s vertical lift and hover with the speed, range and endurance of a fixed-wing aircraft, and it flies with the company’s MATRIX autonomy software.

The company has not released the Nomad 100’s payload, range or endurance.

Sikorsky developed the aircraft with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, under its Early VTOL Aircraft Demonstration program, known as EVADE.

In July, Sikorsky said it had finished initial ground and flight testing of the Nomad 100 and would next put the drone through an intensive flight test campaign at a government facility. The company said DARPA chose MATRIX as the autonomy system for all five aircraft in the EVADE program.

Sikorsky introduced the Nomad family in October 2025, after an extended flight test of a smaller prototype, the Nomad 50, with a 10.3-foot wingspan.

Monday’s release did not say whether a fast pack has been built, or whether any military service has ordered or is evaluating one.

The four systems selected are AeroVironment’s Palletized High-Energy Laser, Epirus’ Leonidas high-powered microwave, Kord’s Firefly high-energy laser and Boeing’s Compact Laser Weapon System, the Defense Department said in a release.

The pilot is run by Joint Interagency Task Force 401, or JIATF-401, the Army-led organization set up last year to coordinate counter-drone work across the military and other federal agencies.

“High-energy lasers and high-powered microwave systems are tools that can be effectively used in a layered drone defense,” Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, the task force director, said in the release. “This pilot program will test these capabilities in an operational environment so we can understand how best to integrate and sustain them to defend the homeland.”

The department said the pilot will gather real-time data on how the systems perform, what they cost and what it takes to operate and maintain them.

Ross said in August the pilot will run for a year, with service members operating and maintaining the weapons at the bases. The task force is coordinating the pilot with the services, U.S. Northern Command and the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA.

In May, JIATF-401 selected five sites for the pilot: Fort Huachuca, Arizona, and Fort Bliss, Texas, both tied to the southern border mission; Naval Base Kitsap, Washington; Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota; and Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.

Officials said at the time that deployment plans would be worked out with installation commanders over 180 days, with operations expected later this year. Monday’s release does not say which system will go to which installation, how many of each will be fielded or what the systems and the pilot as a whole will cost.

Cost is the main selling point for lasers and microwaves, and one of the things the pilot is meant to test. Firing one costs a fraction of the price of a missile or even a gun round, and neither leaves unexploded ordnance on the ground.

Ross told reporters in August he was skeptical of per-shot math alone. “If I procure that system and it costs me $6 million and I take one shot a year, you can’t tell me that that shot only costs 8 cents,” he said.

Beyond cost, lasers and microwaves address different threats. A high-energy laser dwells on one drone at a time until it burns through. A high-powered microwave can thwart a swarm of drones in a single burst by overwhelming their electronics, though its wider footprint raises concern about effects on nearby systems.

Among the lasers, AeroVironment’s system is the company’s LOCUST laser in a roll-on, roll-off configuration, meaning it is packed onto a self-contained pallet that can be moved by truck or ship and set up wherever needed.

The company said in April that a palletized LOCUST tracked and defeated target drones aboard the aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush in an October 2025 live fire with the Navy and the Army’s rapid weapons development office.

In September, the Army awarded AeroVironment a $464.8 million deal to produce its 30-kilowatt LOCUST X3 under the Enduring-High Energy Laser program, which the company called the first production contract for a U.S. directed-energy weapon. The Pentagon release does not say whether the pilot systems are drawn from that buy.

Boeing’s Compact Laser Weapon System, or CLWS, is a lower-power laser. Lower power generally means a laser must remain on a target longer to destroy it, but the system itself can be smaller and easier to move.

Boeing said in 2024 that a 5-kilowatt CLWS defeated Group 3 drones, which can weigh up to about 1,320 pounds, at the Red Sands counter-drone exercise in Saudi Arabia, using targeting data from the Army’s Forward Area Air Defense network. At the time, the company said the system had defeated nearly 500 drones in testing and demonstrations at ranges from about 200 meters to 2.5 kilometers.

Boeing also said CLWS units had returned from a multiyear overseas deployment with the Marine Corps but did not say whether they engaged hostile drones.

Kord, a KBR subsidiary, markets Firefly as a palletized, mobile laser scalable from 5 to 40 kilowatts. Company officials told reporters at an August demonstration near Guntersville Dam in north Alabama that a truck-mounted version typically needs a few seconds on target to down a small drone.

Leonidas is the only microwave counter-drone system in the pilot. Built by Epirus, it is the basis for the Army’s prototype high-power microwave for defending troops and sites against drone swarms, part of the Indirect Fire Protection Capability program.

The Army awarded the company $66.1 million in December 2022 for four prototypes and another $43.5 million in July 2025 for a second-generation version.

Epirus said in September 2025 that a Leonidas disabled all 61 target drones across five scenarios at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, including a 49-drone swarm in one burst.

The pilot follows a rough start for lasers in domestic airspace. In February, the FAA briefly closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas, after a counter-drone laser was used near Fort Bliss without coordinating with the FAA, the Associated Press reported at the time.

To address safety concerns, defense and FAA officials held a live-fire demonstration in March at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. AeroVironment later said the system tested was its LOCUST laser, the same family as the palletized system named in Monday’s pilot announcement.

On April 10, the FAA said a safety review found that the laser systems tested, with proper safety controls in place, “do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft.”

The department said it will continue evaluating other directed-energy technology and will host a shoot-off in December at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, for additional laser and microwave systems.

Ross, the task force director, said in August the shoot-off is being set up so systems that perform well “can immediately result in a purchase order that allows us to start building the production lines to get these systems into the field.”

The pilot is one piece of a greater, ongoing effort. On Sept. 29, the Army announced that JIATF-401 had awarded 10 contracts worth up to $4.15 billion combined for sensors, optical sights and gun-based systems to support Domestic Shield, the push to protect priority Defense Department sites within the United States.

The announcement comes during a busy week for Boeing. On Tuesday, the U.S. Navy selected the company to build its F/A-XX sixth-generation carrier-based fighter under a development contract worth more than $20 billion. The same day, the Air Force signed a $2.38 billion order for 22 more F-15EX Eagle II fighters.

The Grey Wolf contract, worth roughly $85 million and including some sustainment work, was awarded Sept. 25, a Boeing spokesperson told Defense News. The company expects to deliver the four helicopters in 2028 or 2029.

The order brings the total number under contract to 42, with 27 already delivered. Six of the earlier helicopters were test aircraft, and the rest came from production lots ordered before this first full-rate lot.

“This milestone validates key readiness levels for Grey Wolf and supports the service’s fielding plans to secure vital national assets across the country’s strategic missile fields,” Kathleen Jolivette, vice president and general manager of Vertical Lift Programs at Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said in the company release.

Air Force Global Strike Command announced Aug. 31 that the Grey Wolf reached initial operational capability, or IOC, Aug. 10, meaning the first crews and helicopters are cleared to fly real-world missions.

The IOC declaration allows the Grey Wolf to begin taking over intercontinental ballistic missile security from the aging UH-1N Huey, which it will replace at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana; F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming; and Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota.

The MH-139A is a militarized version of Leonardo’s commercial AW139. Global Strike Command says it is nearly 50% faster than the Huey, carries twice as many troops and has improved defensive systems.

Two helicopters from the 40th Helicopter Squadron flew the Grey Wolf’s first operational mission Jan. 8 at Malmstrom. During the six-hour mission, they escorted missile maintenance and armored security vehicles to and from a launch facility more than 100 miles east of the base without refueling.

“For more than half a century, the UH-1N Huey has been a key element of our Intercontinental Ballistic Missile security, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the crews who flew and maintained it over all these years,” said Gen. S.L. Davis, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command. “Securing these missiles demands our best efforts and the MH-139 will significantly improve our capabilities.”

IOC comes years late. The Air Force picked Boeing for the $2.4 billion Huey replacement contract in September 2018, and officials expected to reach the milestone in 2021. Testing delays, FAA certification setbacks and integration problems stretched the timeline, Military Times reported in January.

The program has shrunk over the years. The Air Force once planned to buy as many as 84 Grey Wolves, with some intended to shuttle officials around Washington. To meet spending caps in the 2023 debt-ceiling deal, the Air Force dropped that VIP mission in its fiscal 2025 budget and cut the buy to 42.

With fewer helicopters sharing the program’s costs, the unit cost rose past the critical threshold under the Nunn-McCurdy law, which forces the Pentagon to justify or cancel programs whose unit costs climb too high. The Pentagon later raised the buy to at least 56, bringing the price back under the critical threshold, according to a Selected Acquisition Report released in late August 2024.

For fiscal 2027, the Air Force asked for four more. The House-passed defense policy bill and the Senate Armed Services Committee’s version would allow eight, double the request, but neither has become law. The House appropriators’ spending bill, which actually provides the money, covers only four.

HH-60W combat rescue helicopters will take over the VIP mission instead of Grey Wolves, replacing Hueys that the Air Force says lack the speed, range and lift to provide cost-effective support.

The five-year contract, which includes two option years, is part of the Pentagon’s Arsenal of Freedom campaign to bolster weapons production. The department awarded it Sept. 25 and announced it Monday with RTX, Raytheon’s parent company.

The department said the award is a joint buy by the Air Force, the Navy and allies.

“We are working across the defense industry to ramp production and build the Arsenal of Freedom,” said Michael Duffey, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, in a statement. “This award strengthens our ability to equip the Joint Force and our allies with a proven air-to-air capability, ensuring our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage.”

The $20.7 billion ceiling dwarfs the Pentagon’s previous record AMRAAM award, a $3.5 billion contract issued in July 2025. That deal covered missiles for the Air Force, the Navy and allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

The department thanked Congress for multiyear procurement authority, which lets the Pentagon commit to buying missiles over several years instead of one at a time. It said it hopes lawmakers will provide more authority and funding to sustain production.

Congress hasn’t yet funded the full deal, according to Reuters, which called the award provisional. Industry executives have warned that defense contractors may hold off on big investments in parts and factories until lawmakers act, Reuters reported.

The award comes as the Pentagon works to rebuild munitions stockpiles drawn down by the war with Iran.

The contract follows five framework agreements Raytheon signed with the department in February, which set long-term production targets ahead of formal contracts. Under those deals, RTX committed to raising annual output to more than 1,000 Tomahawks, at least 1,900 AMRAAMs and more than 500 Standard Missile-6 interceptors.

Neither the Pentagon nor RTX specified how many missiles the new contract buys or an associated annual production rate.

Raytheon President Phil Jasper said in a statement that the company continues to invest in its workforce, supply chain and facilities to “rapidly scale production capacity and meet surging demand” from the Air Force, Navy and international customers.

RTX said it nearly doubled production of AMRAAM and other munitions in 2025 compared with 2024 and is now exploring international co-production.

According to RTX, AMRAAM is the world’s most widely deployed air-to-air missile, fielded by 44 countries, and the primary interceptor for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System. Reuters reported that the ground-based air defense system defends the Washington area and is used by more than a dozen other countries.

The Pentagon is also preparing to build AMRAAM’s successor. Earlier this month, the department signed a framework deal with Lockheed Martin to boost production of the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, which is being developed for the Air Force and Navy to outrange and eventually replace AMRAAM.