The ship left Naval Base San Diego on Nov. 21, 2025, as part of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. It remained at sea even after the carrier group moved on and the Lincoln returned to its home port.

As of Oct. 29, the ship has been deployed for 342 days, a time period that far exceeds the Navy’s commonly cited seven-month deployment benchmark for ships based in the United States. It also comes as the service contends with a persistent surface-ship maintenance backlog, delays at private shipyards and warnings from senior Navy leaders that extended operations could create years of additional pressure on the fleet.

For families waiting at home, the uncertainty has become its own burden.

Marie Bailey, whose husband serves aboard Spruance, told Military Times that families have repeatedly been told the ship would return soon, only to see that expectation pushed back.

“We are hearing they’re supposed to come home sometime next month, but we’ve been hearing about ‘next month’ for several months,” Bailey said.

Extended deployments are not new to the Navy, but that offers little comfort to families counting down the days until a homecoming that continues to appear just out of reach. For them, another extension is not simply a change to an operational schedule, but yet another period of uncertainty.

“We don’t know what to expect anymore, but it’s hard getting your hopes up time and time again,” Bailey added. “Most of the families are just worried about their sailors, knowing how long they’ve been gone.”

Some Spruance sailors also say they feel their experience has been overlooked compared with the sweeping national attention given to the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Two of those sailors, who were granted anonymity due to fear of reprisal, noted that life aboard a destroyer brings its own challenges, even when the ship receives less public attention.

“It’s tight, cramped and just as challenging on the destroyers, if not more than bigger ships,” one sailor said.

The other sailor pointed to the families waiting at home, arguing that the size of a ship should not determine how much attention its crew receives.

“Our boat isn’t as big as an aircraft carrier, but our 300+ families matter to us just as much as anyone else’s,” the sailor said.

The frustration reflects a basic reality of carrier strike groups: Destroyers may operate in the shadow of the aircraft carriers they accompany, but their crews endure the same prolonged separation from home.

For families waiting on a return date, the distinction between a carrier and a smaller warship offers little consolation.

Spruance is not the only Navy destroyer facing an unusually long deployment. The USS John Finn, USS Mustin and USS Rafael Peralta have also had expected return dates pushed from 2026 into 2027, with some planned to stretch over 14 months, according to Defense One.

The extensions illustrate the demands facing the surface fleet, although the Navy has not publicly provided a comprehensive count of destroyers that have had deployments extended.

A fleet under sustained pressure

The Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan organizes a 36-month cycle for ships homeported in the United States. The Government Accountability Office describes the cycle as allocating eight months to depot-level maintenance, 10 months to training and 18 months to deployment and sustainment operations.

Extended deployments can disrupt that sequence, pushing scheduled maintenance later and compressing the time available for repairs, training and preparation before a ship is needed again.

GAO has documented longstanding maintenance challenges across the Navy’s surface fleet. Private ship repair companies took nearly 10,000 days longer than planned, cumulatively, to repair destroyers between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, according to a February 2025 GAO report. The Navy’s surface-ship maintenance backlog reached $2.3 billion in deferred work by August 2022, GAO reported.

In a May 2022 report, GAO found a nearly $1.8 billion backlog in depot-level maintenance for Navy ships, including approximately $1.7 billion for surface ships. About $1.2 billion of the backlog was associated with ships the Navy had proposed for early decommissioning. GAO found that maintenance backlogs contributed to decisions to retire nine ships.

A separate GAO analysis of 10 surface-ship classes between fiscal years 2011 and 2021 found increases in maintenance cannibalizations, casualty reports and delays in depot-level maintenance. Steaming hours declined and costs per steaming hour rose for most of the classes examined.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle warned Oct. 26 that the effects of extended deployments could reverberate through the fleet’s maintenance schedule for years. Speaking at the United States Navy Memorial, Caudle said maintenance availabilities, particularly for destroyers, could snowball as ships return from deployments exceeding 300 days.

“You’re talking hundreds of availabilities and millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars have to be applied to that problem as we start retrograding these destroyers back into their maintenance period,” Caudle said.

“But this is a years-long recovery,” he added. “There is no workaround on that.”

Rear Adm. Kavon Hakimzadeh, commander of Norfolk Naval Shipyard, also warned of capacity constraints as destroyers return from the Middle East. Speaking at a September roundtable hosted by the Center for Maritime Strategy, Hakimzadeh said shipyards would have to manage the volume of returning ships.

“There’s some choke points just based on capacity out there for all the destroyers that are going to be coming back,” Hakimzadeh said. “We’re running the destroyers really hard out there, and I suspect they’re all going to need to go into the same dry dock, and we’re going to have to sequence them in.”

The remarks highlight a constraint beyond identifying the repairs each ship needs: Shipyards must also have the capacity and workforce to complete the work.

The Navy’s maintenance challenges have persisted despite billions of dollars in repair funding.

A December 2025 Congressional Budget Office analysis found that maintenance for Navy destroyers and amphibious ships takes 20% to 100% longer than the service plans for. The cumulative burden for destroyers is substantial: Roughly nine years of a ship’s planned service life is expected to be spent in maintenance, or about one year out of every four.

GAO found that the Navy received nearly $25.9 billion for combat surface-ship maintenance from fiscal years 2020 through 2023, roughly $1 billion more than it had requested. The service reported obligating 99.7% of those funds by the end of fiscal 2023.

GAO has also identified shortages of spare parts and qualified maintenance personnel, along with deferred work, among the constraints affecting maintenance schedules.

What Spruance’s schedule shows

Navy budget documents show that the planned timing of Spruance’s next maintenance period has shifted.

The Navy’s fiscal 2025 operations and maintenance budget listed a scheduled restricted availability for the destroyer from July 3, 2026, through Feb. 21, 2027. A restricted availability is a period when a ship is taken out of normal operations for maintenance and repairs.

In the fiscal 2027 budget, the planned period had shifted to Jan. 19 through April 28, 2027. Based on those dates, the scheduled start moved 200 days later, while the planned completion was bumped to 66 days later.

The availability of sailors to perform maintenance at sea is another factor in the Navy’s efforts to keep ships ready for operations.

In a September 2024 report, GAO surveyed personnel aboard 232 Navy ships about their ability to carry out maintenance while underway. The survey received a 91% response rate.

Sixty-three percent of responding executive officers said it was moderately to extremely difficult for their crews to complete repairs underway with their assigned sailors; 64% said it was similarly difficult to conduct sailor-led maintenance while also meeting classroom training requirements; and 75% reported that it was moderately to extremely difficult for sailors to complete repairs.

GAO also found that the Navy did not track how many sailors assigned to ships were unavailable for duty.

What comes next for Spruance

GAO has recommended that the Navy compare planned depot-maintenance durations with typical availabilities for ships of the same type, while accounting for factors such as age, condition and maintenance requirements.

Such comparisons, according to GAO, could help establish whether a ship’s maintenance period is unusually long.

Spruance’s post-deployment assessment and actual maintenance schedule will show what work the Navy identifies as necessary and how long the destroyer remains unavailable for operations.

Until those details are established, the effect of its record deployment on its future readiness remains uncertain.

The Navy did not respond to Navy Times’ request for comment by publication.

The Government Accountability Office discovered that 29 of 64 efforts outlined in the Defense Department’s Responsible AI Strategy and Implementation Pathway remained incomplete as of April 2026.

According to a report published Oct. 14, the GAO also found that staffing shortages had hindered the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer’s ability to take additional steps to implement responsible AI, which the department uses to help accelerate AI adoption.

GAO recommended that the department address staffing needs in its Responsible AI Division, which falls under the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, and issue a formal charter for the working council.

“Responsible AI should be considered the same as operationally effective AI,” said Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

Effective testing, evaluation, verification and validation practices can help the military manage risks while ensuring systems operate as intended and operators understand their strengths and limitations, Daniels said.

Council ‘at risk of lapsing’

The GAO found that the Responsible AI Working Council did not meet from late 2024 until August 2025.

Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer, or CDAO, officials told the watchdog agency that other priorities, including developing guidance for generative AI and contributing to government-wide AI risk-management resources, had prevented the Responsible AI Division from organizing meetings.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., raised a related concern about accountability during a May 2025 hearing regarding the Pentagon’s AI posture.

“It’s my observation that the Defense Department doesn’t lack in the number of principals, but rather, it often struggles with too little clarity in who is responsible for what.”

Officials from four DoD components told the GAO they faced implementation challenges during the hiatus that could have benefited from greater collaboration.

Six of the 10 DoD components surveyed said sharing responsible AI resources and best practices would increase their ability to incorporate the department’s six Responsible AI tenets into their AI use cases.

The council resumed meetings in August 2025, but the GAO found it still lacked a formal charter defining its responsibilities and specifying how frequently it should meet.

“Without a charter that defines roles and responsibilities for the council … and that specifies the frequency of council meetings, the council is at risk of lapsing again,” the GAO report reads. “Such a lapse could increase the risk of DOD facing Responsible AI implementation issues that it would not have the collaborative capacity to swiftly and effectively resolve.”

Slow staffing

CDAO officials told the GAO they were unlikely to fill vacant positions or increase staffing while the office underwent restructuring, following its realignment to the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.

In response, the GAO argued that “by … taking action to ensure it has staff in place to meet those needs,” CDAO could make better progress toward its goal of accelerating AI across the department.

Daniels said the staffing shortfall could make it more difficult to build AI literacy throughout the force.

“Operationally, the force needs to become AI literate, as warfighters will be responsible for determining when to deploy AI-enabled systems,” he said.

Service members need to understand AI systems’ limitations and recognize when delegating decisions to machines may be inappropriate, rather than defaulting to a machine’s judgment, Daniels said.

“Exercising meaningful human control — or to use the department’s term, appropriate levels of human judgment — over a military AI system requires robustly understanding a system’s operating boundaries through development, rigorous testing and evaluation, and training,” he said.

Congress’ role

The DoD agreed with the GAO’s two recommendations to issue a charter for the Responsible AI Working Council and address the Responsible AI Division’s workforce needs, according to the watchdog.

The GAO also urged Congress to order the department to implement earlier recommendations, including defining the responsibilities of organizations involved in AI activities and assigning responsibility and a timeline for identifying and managing the department’s AI workforce.

In a Sept. 21 letter, Sens. Jack Reed, D-R.I., Mark Warner, D-Va., and Chris Coons, D-Del., expressed concern that the Pentagon’s AI push could be outpacing its governance efforts.

“Recent events have given us growing concern about the extent to which agencies under your oversight have prioritized acceleration of AI capability adoption and ‘experimentation’ over effective governance,” the letter reads.

Reed has also called for Congress to establish clearer guardrails for military AI.

“Congress must do its job and provide balanced oversight, standards, and rules of the road,” he said.

The system uses UNITAS, Honeywell Aerospace’s battle-management software, to integrate sensors and effectors from different manufacturers.

“There is no one solution that solves every threat out there,” said retired Air Force Col. Tom Konicki, director of business at Honeywell Aerospace.

The threat ranges from recreational drones flown into restricted airspace to unmanned aircraft that could be used to attack military installations or other critical infrastructure. Konicki said counter-drone systems need to detect, track, identify, classify and ultimately defeat drones, regardless of the operator’s intent.

“The threat is real, and the threat is now,” he added.

While SAMURAI stands for Stationary and Mobile UAS Reveal and Intercept, UNITAS is not an acronym. Konicki said the name was inspired by football player Johnny Unitas.

Counter-drone systems can combine several types of equipment. Radar detects objects at a distance, while radio-frequency sensors can detect signals associated with drones or their controllers. Remote identification equipment can receive identifying information broadcast by compliant drones. Electro-optical and infrared cameras allow operators to examine objects more closely, while acoustic sensors can help detect drones by their sound.

Depending on the threat and equipment available, counter-drone systems can also use electronic warfare, directed-energy systems, conventional weapons or interceptor drones to defeat an aircraft. Some systems use nets to capture drones, an approach that can be designed to reduce the risk of debris falling onto people or property.

Konicki said operators of some counter-drone systems must monitor six, seven or eight separate screens for radar, cameras, radio-frequency sensors, jamming equipment and other capabilities. That can require one operator to track multiple information streams simultaneously. UNITAS is designed to consolidate the feeds so operators can view information from multiple sensors together in one interface.

“We call it a single pane of glass,” Konicki said. “There could be seven different sensors that have identified it and are feeding that into our software.”

Konicki said the interface is designed to be straightforward for operators, including younger service members who may be assigned counter-drone duties without extensive experience operating the different systems. He said Honeywell Aerospace has demonstrated the software to U.S. government and military representatives, as well as local law enforcement and state and city representatives.

The software also uses an open-architecture approach, allowing customers to integrate equipment they already own instead of replacing it with products from a single manufacturer.

“We’re not asking them to go buy new stuff,” Konicki said. “We can integrate with what they already have.”

Customers can choose equipment suited to their needs and update components as detection technologies and countermeasures evolve. Konicki said Honeywell Aerospace works with other companies to incorporate their technologies rather than lock customers into a single vendor’s products. He said the company seeks equipment mature enough for operational use rather than untested technology.

At the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting, Honeywell Aerospace displayed a mockup of the mobile configuration mounted on the back of a Ford F-150. Konicki called it the “Green Beast.”

Honeywell Aerospace is also developing an airborne application of SAMURAI with Odys Aviation. Announced in March 2026, the collaboration aims to adapt the system for Odys’ long-range Laila uncrewed aircraft. The companies said the effort builds on more than a year of joint development and systems-integration work. Laila is intended to be the first airborne application of SAMURAI, extending the system beyond ground-based and mobile configurations.

Konicki said SAMURAI can also be configured for fixed-site protection and maritime operations. Depending on the mission, customers might position equipment around a building or installation, use a mobile configuration for temporary protection at an event, or place sensors at distributed locations to cover a larger area.

Separately, Honeywell Aerospace announced Oct. 12 that its wholly owned subsidiary, EMS Defense Technologies, was selected for a Department of Homeland Security counter-drone contract vehicle. The five-year, multiple-award vehicle has a $1.5 billion ceiling, was awarded July 31 and took effect Aug. 1.

Konicki said Honeywell Aerospace works with international partners, including Lithuania, Slovakia and Colombia, and can integrate locally sourced equipment when customers want to use particular sensors or effectors.

For customers protecting an air base or another site, Konicki said the company can assess where radar, cameras and other sensors should be positioned to maximize coverage.

Its planning process can map areas with adequate coverage, identify gaps and recommend adjustments to equipment placement. The company can then conduct what Konicki described as a red-team assessment, examining where an adversary might launch a drone and how that approach could affect the site’s defenses. The analysis will help customers tailor sensor placement and other system components to the site and its potential threats.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed AUSA attendees at the Project Agincourt panel on Wednesday, sharing that the Pentagon is requesting roughly $50 billion in reconciliation funding to support the push to scale autonomous and robotic systems.

This request is part of an effort to make the technology available in far greater numbers.

The figure is separate from the Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $53.6 billion for the Drone Dominance initiative. That request covers $16.9 billion for unmanned-system procurement, $14.4 billion for counter-unmanned systems, $13.5 billion for contested logistics, $4.5 billion for collaborative autonomy and $4.3 billion for institutional systems and personnel. The budget request does not establish that the reconciliation funding Hegseth cited is the same money or that it is dedicated entirely to drone purchases

Hegseth characterized the funding as a one-time investment rather than a recurring annual allocation, intended to accelerate the development and production of autonomous and robotic systems.

“Ultimately we will be dealing with hundreds of thousands of one-way attack systems this year and into the millions in years to come at a pace that this department’s never ever seen before.”

The Defense Secretary said the Pentagon must make it easier for new companies to compete in a defense market long dominated by established contractors and costly platforms. Traditional defense firms remain important, he said, but the department also needs lower-cost systems that can be manufactured at scale.

The Army’s Drone Dominance program offers a concrete measure of that ambition. In a December 2025 announcement, the Army said a $1 billion initiative would fund approximately 340,000 small unmanned aircraft systems for combat units over two years. The service said it expected to deliver tens of thousands of drones in 2026 and hundreds of thousands by 2027.

Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle said the service is broadening access to its programs for companies outside the traditional defense industrial base. The Army, he said, must make room for new entrants while continuing to work with established suppliers.

Telle also described plans to coordinate the Army’s autonomous-systems efforts while distributing capabilities to operational units. The service is developing an approach that incorporates drones, autonomous ground systems, autonomous fires and autonomous lift into future combat operations.

“We have an MOS in the Army, 390A, where warrant officers could keep the speciality and the skills over the duration to teach our soldiers how to do robotics,” Telle added.

Expanding access to Army test ranges is another part of that effort, Telle said. Greater access gives developers more opportunities to test systems and receive feedback from military users. He also described efforts to share lessons across the force rather than have individual units and organizations solve the same problems independently.

Hegseth said the department must remove bureaucratic barriers that slow the adoption of new technology, telling the panel, “I want you to tell me which rules can be signed away.” He urged officials to identify rules and directives that could be changed without involving new legislation to accelerate progress.

During Project Sandhills 2.0, soldiers planned flight routes and operated Bumblebee V2 small unmanned aircraft systems at Range 63.

The project tested how unmanned systems could support contested obstacle breaching, while soldiers and industry partners collected feedback to inform future Army capabilities.

The Army said the effort included autonomous trucks, robotic breaching payloads, drone swarms, mine detection and counter-UAS tools operating on the same problem.

A counter-UAS turret used a human-authorized effector, underscoring that autonomy did not mean removing people from critical decisions. Human decision-making remains central to the Army’s approach.

The experiment illustrates the larger question raised by retired Army Col. Dave Rowland and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Brian Hester in a Sept. 29 Modern War Institute analysis: Autonomy becomes consequential not when the Army adds an individual robotic system, but when it has enough autonomous systems, performing enough missions, to change how an entire brigade fights.

That difference becomes more consequential as autonomous systems are integrated across a battlefield shaped by drones, sensors, electronic warfare and precision fires.

Rowland and Hester argue that persistent observation and long-range fires make large formations easier to find and attack, threatening the maneuver that allows combined-arms forces to concentrate combat power.

They envision autonomous systems moving ahead of manned formations to identify enemy positions, obstacles and usable routes. Other systems could provide counter-drone, electronic-warfare, sensing or deception capabilities, while autonomous platforms could move supplies through exposed areas.

Beyond experimentation

The Army is moving beyond experimentation into acquisition and organizational changes, with its fiscal 2026 budget justification including an “Autonomy Formation” effort intended to accelerate robotics for armored and infantry formations.

In July, the Army selected four companies for its Engineer Autonomous Breaching Capability program, which calls for prototypes capable of breaching complex obstacles and minefields under direct observation and fire using beyond-line-of-sight autonomous control. An assessment of the unit is planned for early 2027.

On Oct. 1, Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle signed a memorandum directing the establishment of the U.S. Army Futures and Autonomous Systems Command, or FASCOM. The Army announced the move Oct. 2, saying the command will integrate autonomous capabilities into aviation, armor, fires, sustainment, engineer and training formations.

It will also prioritize autonomous fires, combat vehicles, watercraft resupply, breaching, reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition, and crewed-uncrewed teaming for acquisition and fielding by fiscal 2028.

But the Army’s own research shows why turning that ambition into battlefield capability won’t be simple.

In a Sept. 30 Army Research Laboratory study, 13 soldiers operated a mixed air-ground formation during a two-week simulation. The formation included a manned control vehicle, two robotic combat vehicles, a Future Vertical Lift platform and shared launched effects, operating against a human-controlled opposing force under contested conditions.

Researchers found that the formation adapted rapidly, developed effective coordination patterns and maintained stable subjective workload as mission complexity increased. The findings suggest that air-ground teaming was feasible under the conditions tested and that soldiers could integrate autonomous capabilities without an unsustainable cognitive burden.

However, the study did not demonstrate autonomous maneuver by an operational brigade. It tested a specific human-machine formation in a simulation under defined conditions.

Another Army Research Laboratory study examining autonomous reconnaissance and screening identified soldier-robot trust, communications, shared understanding and cognitive load as areas requiring further research. Those issues become especially important when communications are degraded or denied.

That is where Rowland and Hester envision a fundamental change in command.

A brigade cannot scale autonomy if every unmanned vehicle requires a soldier continuously controlling it. The retired Army leaders describe a progression from operating individual systems, to supervising multiple systems, to coordinating mixed manned-unmanned teams and eventually commanding autonomous formations through mission command.

Ukraine offers evidence of what unmanned systems can already do, but also a warning against overstating the technology.

Rowland and Hester point to Ukrainian use of unmanned ground systems for logistics and casualty evacuation while noting that most remain remotely operated or have only limited autonomy. Their use demonstrates the value of shifting dangerous work from people to machines; it does not establish that fully autonomous formations are ready for combat.

Acquisition isn’t the only issue

The Army faces a problem bigger than acquiring machines alone. It must determine how many systems formations can absorb, how soldiers should supervise them, how networks can support them under attack and what happens when a machine encounters circumstances its programming does not anticipate.

Rowland and Hester argue the Army should learn those lessons before the technology is perfected. They call for brigades to train with meaningful quantities of autonomous systems at home stations, identify failures and refine tactics before those systems reach combat training centers.

The Army is now aligning its organizations, acquisition efforts and training around that broader push. The unresolved question is whether those efforts can produce something more difficult than a successful demonstration: a repeatable way for a brigade to see, survive, sustain and maneuver when an adversary is actively disrupting its communications and attacking its forces.

General Dynamics Land Systems is showcasing a 1/8 model of the Wolf XM30, the company’s candidate to replace the M2 Bradley, along with PERCH 2.0, M-SHORAD Increment 4 and the F600 Leonidas at the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting this week.

The Wolf is one of two vehicles competing in the Army’s XM30 program, with American Rheinmetall delivering its first Lynx XM30 prototype to the Army in September.

Retired Army officer Scott Taylor, General Dynamics Land Systems’ director of U.S. growth, told Military Times that the Bradley has reached the limits of its ability to accommodate additional capabilities and weight.

The Wolf is designed with greater capacity in mind, while improving fightability, lethality and survivability, Taylor said. General Dynamics Land Systems delivered its first Wolf prototype to the Army in August.

PERCH 2.0 allows M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks and Stryker vehicles to launch Switchblade 300 loitering munitions while keeping operators under armor.

One PERCH 2.0 prototype has been provided to the Army for experimentation, with three more on the way. Soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, known as “Thunder Horse,” are currently testing the prototype at Fort Hood, Texas, Taylor noted.

The system grew out of General Dynamics Land Systems’ development of PERCH 1.0, which the company developed in less than four months after senior Army leaders discussed observations from the war in Ukraine during a 2025 event, Taylor said. Soldiers with the 1st Cavalry Division then tested the system at Fort Hood and provided feedback that led to changes in loading procedures, use of space and integration with the tank’s loader display.

The Army initially experimented with Switchblade 600 before asking the company to focus on the smaller Switchblade 300, according to Taylor. General Dynamics Land Systems continued developing PERCH 2.0 with its own independent research and development funding before the Army contracted for three additional prototypes under the Abrams program office.

The Army will evaluate the design after the experimentation and could compete the capability or purchase it, depending on the results, Taylor explained.

“In many ways, it’s become attrition-based warfare over there, and that’s not the way the U.S. Army or the U.S. Marine Corps or many of our allies fight,” Taylor said.

Also on the AUSA floor is the M-SHORAD Increment 4, a platform-agnostic air-defense system built around a Self-Loading Equipment Dock, or SLED, that can be mounted on different vehicles. Charles Woody, the company’s program manager for M-SHORAD Increment 4, told Military Times that the system is designed in part to reduce the cognitive burden on soldiers conducting air-defense and counter-UAS missions.

The configuration includes a 7.62mm machine gun, an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drone, a loitering munition and a counter-drone system.

The F600 Leonidas combines Epirus’ high-powered microwave technology for defeating drones with a commercially based Ford F-600 chassis modified for military use. The Army is expected to use a prototype to determine where the capability fits in its future air-defense plans.

The brigade completed the Army’s first-ever helicopter test flights using the Advanced Inflight Relief Universal System, or AIRUS, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, from Oct. 5 to 7. The testing examined the system’s airworthiness for use on Army helicopters.

Aircrews from 1-101 Attack Battalion “No Mercy,” 6-101 Assault Helicopter Battalion “Eagle Assault” and 7-101 Heavy Lift Battalion “Eagle Lift” completed human-factors surveys, checked AIRUS for fit and tested its ability to let them relieve themselves in flight. The crews believe AIRUS will help them stay in the air longer.

The brigade’s Holistic Health and Fitness, or H2F, team sought out AIRION, the aerospace medical systems company that developed AIRUS, to help reduce the number of pilots purposefully dehydrating themselves to limit the need for restroom breaks during missions.

“We had pilots tell us they tactically dehydrate,” Capt. Gena Baisa, lead dietitian for the 101st CAB H2F team, said per an Army release. “So, we thought, how can we get a system specifically designed to allow them to use the bathroom in air so they can stay hydrated and optimize their performance?”

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Collin McAllister, an AH-64 Apache pilot who tested AIRUS, said the system differs from previous systems that used bags containing coagulant, according to an Army account of the testing.

“As we look to fight in contested environments where we will need to stay a lot longer to support the ground force, this could be a great contribution,” McAllister said in the account.

Representatives from Redstone Arsenal observed the test to provide recommendations on AIRUS’ flight suitability. A critical aspect of the evaluation involved assessing how aircrews with different body types could move while wearing the system.

“We tested AIRUS to see its airworthiness and started with egress testing,” said Elizabeth Rhonenus, a human-factors engineer with the Aviation Flight Test Directorate, in the release. “We took our smallest participant around the fifth percentile and our largest around the 95th percentile and saw if they could get in and out of the aircraft safely.”

The testing marked a developmental milestone, transitioning the system into the Army’s rotary-wing fleet, according to the Army. It was AIRION’s first time testing with the Army and its first time testing the system on helicopters, according to Colt Seman, the company’s founder and chief executive officer.

“We tested to get the system integrated into the Apache, Black Hawk, and Chinook helicopters,” Seman said per the release. “The pilots were able to put on AIRUS, wear it, and be able to use it. It was comfortable, and it worked.”

Baisa said the brigade is preparing for upcoming missions, including the Long Range Large Scale Air Assault concept and the new MV-75 Cheyenne II helicopters’ ability to stay in flight longer.

“We are setting the foundation now to support the upcoming missions our Soldiers will face,” Baisa said. “Looking at L2A2 and the new MV-75 Cheyenne II helicopters’ ability to stay in flight longer, we want to improve Soldier readiness. The AIRUS is a capability that could help us achieve it across the enterprise.”

As of Sept. 14, two Navy guided-missile destroyers were operating in the Red Sea and another 13 were in the Arabian Sea, according to the U.S. Naval Institute’s fleet tracker, which uses both Navy and public data.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Stout also departed Naval Station Norfolk on Monday to begin deployment operations after months of training, maintenance and certification events, according to Naval Surface Force Atlantic.

The demand facing the class has been significant, even before the start of the Iran war.

The USS Carney spent 235 days deployed from September 2023 to May 2024 and conducted 51 engagements against Houthi-launched weapons, according to the Navy. The campaign demonstrated what operations around one of those chokepoints can demand from destroyers.

When USS Carney returned in May 2024, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti told the crew that the last time the Navy had directly engaged an enemy to that degree was during World War II.

The renewed demand for destroyers in the Middle East comes as the Navy’s maintenance system has struggled to keep the fleet on schedule.

U.S. Fleet Forces Command declined to discuss its current destroyer readiness posture, current operations or potential effects on future deployment schedules, citing operational-security and classification guidelines. The command also declined to provide historical aggregate data on destroyer operational tempo.

According to a December 2025 Congressional Budget Office analysis of Navy maintenance data, the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer overhauls that began between 2011 and 2024 took an average of 26% longer than the Navy’s final schedules estimated.

The 225 DDG-51 overhauls CBO analyzed also required 8% more labor than scheduled.

CBO projected that DDG-51 destroyers will spend an average of more than nine years, or about 27% of their planned service lives, in maintenance. That is more than twice the roughly four years envisioned in the Navy’s 2012 class maintenance plans.

The federal budget agency identified several factors contributing to longer maintenance periods, including the aging fleet, postponed maintenance, late inspections and contract awards, unexpected additional work, delays in parts and materials and modernization work.

The average age of the DDG-51 fleet rose from 10 years in 2011 to 20 years in 2024.

The Government Accountability Office has found broader problems across the Navy’s conventional surface fleet.

In a January 2025 review, GAO found that the Navy requested nearly $24.9 billion for combat-surface-ship maintenance from fiscal 2020 through 2023 and reported that nearly $25.9 billion was appropriated. The Navy reported obligating 99.7% of that funding by the end of fiscal 2023. Yet, GAO found that the service continued to face shortages of spare parts, insufficient qualified maintenance personnel and a continuing need to defer maintenance.

CBO’s analysis covers maintenance events beginning in 2011 and points to longstanding factors, including the age of the destroyer fleet and postponed work.

The Corsair, operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59, helped recover two U.S. service members. A month later, three Corsairs were used for something entirely different: striking a submarine and ship maintenance facility at the Bandar Abbas naval base in Iran, marking the “first time American forces have employed sea drones in combat operations,” CENTCOM confirmed.

The two missions illustrate how quickly unmanned systems have moved from experimentation and exercises into the demands of an active war.

A U.S. official told Military Times that American forces are now using unmanned systems “on, above, and below [the sea],” in support of military objectives and said they have been effective, particularly in reducing risk to U.S. forces personnel.

Joshua Tallis, director of Ally and Partner Security Affairs at the Center for Naval Analyses, or CNA, said real-world use of uncrewed systems gives the Navy an “unrivaled opportunity” to learn how to command and deploy robotic systems and refine their deployment, employment and sustainment.

Deployment of unmanned systems

The Navy began Task Force 59 in 2021 to accelerate the integration of unmanned systems and artificial intelligence into operations across the Middle East. The task force used unmanned platforms to expand maritime awareness and work alongside crewed ships and aircraft.

In a 2022 exercise, unmanned vessels identified training targets and relayed information to command centers ashore, while the Navy said the additional sensors could help position crewed ships to respond more rapidly.

By 2024, the service had established Task Group 59.1 to focus on the operational deployment of unmanned systems teamed with manned operators. Task Force 59 personnel participated in more than 30 exercises and operations under its previous commander, according to the Navy.

The Navy’s February 2026 Fighting Instructions lay out specific roles for unmanned platforms. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle described medium unmanned surface vessels as designed for “scouting, screening, and striking,” while identifying unmanned underwater vehicles for water-space denial, survey and mine warfare. The 2026 guidance also calls for attritable, easily replenishable unmanned surface vessels as part of the fleet’s force design.

That Navy effort is now unfolding alongside a separate CENTCOM push to put unmanned systems directly into combat.

CENTCOM has already begun building a combat-focused unmanned force. In December 2025, the command established Task Force Scorpion Strike as the military’s first dedicated one-way attack drone squadron in the Middle East.

The task force employed low-cost one-way attack drones during Operation Epic Fury. At the same time, CENTCOM used unmanned attack vessels during the July strikes on Iranian port facilities, according to the command.

In August, CENTCOM announced plans for Task Force Falcon Strike, a multinational, multidomain attack-drone task force that will use one-way attack drones from above, on and below the sea. CENTCOM said Falcon Strike would expand attack-drone capabilities across the Middle East with regional partners.

The Fighting Instructions also envision unmanned and manned units operating with varying degrees of independence. Caudle said the Navy will use “Delegated Autonomy Levels” to define “what a unit manned or unmanned can do independently,” based in part on its ability to sense the battlespace, synthesize what matters and deliver effects without waiting for higher headquarters.

Combat risks

Combat puts additional demands on unmanned systems, including maintaining communications, operating for extended periods, navigating contested waters and remaining useful when an adversary is actively trying to interfere with them.

The systems are no longer being judged only in an exercise environment. They are being judged in real time by what happens when an adversary is working to stop them.

Despite the opportunities provided by deploying uncrewed systems in the current conflict, Tallis cautioned against drawing broad conclusions from it. The public examples from the war, he said, should be viewed as “an iterative learning moment, not a fully formed vision of the future fight.”

Cost is one unresolved issue. Open-source estimates put a Corsair at about $1.1 million, Tallis said. That raises a broader question about what it means for an unmanned system to be considered “attritable,” “consumable” or “expendable.”

The war has also exposed the risks that come with putting unmanned systems into contested waters.

In September, Iran said it had captured an Anduril Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicle that had malfunctioned while surveying regional waters. CENTCOM said the vehicle was an older model that did not collect sensitive data or carry classified sonar or radar equipment.

More recently, CENTCOM said two Iranian boats attempted to take possession of a U.S. Saildrone unmanned surface vessel operating in the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. forces destroyed the boats, according to the command.

According to Tallis, there is an unanswered question of how much risk the military should accept when deploying uncrewed systems, including how to determine when a system has delivered enough value to justify its loss. Many unmanned systems are cheaper than crewed platforms, he said, but “not, per se, cheap.”

Tallis said unmanned systems remain particularly well suited to surveillance, consistent with their use by the U.S. over the past two decades. But there is not yet enough evidence to demonstrate a meaningful change in the use of unmanned surface vessels for strike.

Search-and-rescue missions could also require platforms to be positioned across a theater to provide quick reaction times, something Tallis said does not yet appear to be widely fielded.

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg gave industry leaders until Aug. 26 to submit plans for “significantly faster, more aggressive delivery schedules and/or increased production for critical capabilities,” according to his Aug. 5 memo.

Feinberg directed companies to identify ways to accelerate production and delivery, propose capital investments and facility expansions and explain how the Pentagon could enable higher production.

The memo identified 16 critical programs under consideration for accelerated production or increased procurement. The responses were intended to inform the department’s fiscal 2028 budget request.

The request came as the use of U.S. weapons during the Iran war put pressure on stocks of air-defense interceptors and other precision munitions.

U.S. inventories of Patriot interceptors had fallen from about 2,330 before the war to between 759 and 827 by the end of July, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis. THAAD stocks had fallen from 452 to between 234 and 278.

CSIS estimated production timelines of about 42 months for PAC-3 MSE interceptors and 53 months for THAAD interceptors.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about how many companies responded to Feinberg’s request or whether the department had accepted or funded any of the proposals.

General Dynamics also declined to discuss its communications with the department.

“We are not able to comment on our communications with the Department of War,” a General Dynamics spokesman said.

Lockheed Martin, a major supplier of U.S. missile-defense systems, did not provide a specific production timeline in response to questions from Military Times.

“We continue to have dialogue with the U.S. government to deliver what the department is asking of us and our team is pushing to do even more, faster,” a Lockheed Martin spokesman said. “We’re making significant investments in our workforce, infrastructure and production capacity and working with key suppliers to accelerate delivery of the critical capabilities that strengthen America’s Arsenal of Freedom.”

Lockheed separately announced Thursday that it had received its first PAC-3 MSE housing components from GM Defense, 22 days after the companies signed a production contract. The company said the components, which can traditionally take months or years to produce, were manufactured using GM’s casting and machining capabilities.

Lockheed said it is investing $8 billion to $9 billion to expand munitions production, including new buildings, facility expansions and thousands of jobs at more than 20 U.S. sites. The company also said planned expansions will increase its munitions production and warehousing space by nearly 50%.

The company did not say whether those investments were submitted as part of Feinberg’s Aug. 5 request.

New agreements

The Pentagon was already using framework agreements and contracts to accelerate production before Feinberg’s deadline.

On July 27, the department announced seven-year framework agreements intended to boost production of propulsion components for PAC-3 MSE and THAAD interceptors. L3Harris said its PAC-3 agreement would nearly triple production of certain propulsion products, while its THAAD agreement was intended to quadruple production of key propulsion components.

On Aug. 3, the defense department, in cooperation with Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, announced two framework agreements to expand production capacity for critical PAC-3 and THAAD interceptor components. The agreements were intended to support the department’s goals of tripling PAC-3 production capacity and quadrupling THAAD production capacity.

On Aug. 14, DoD announced two separate framework agreements with Boeing and RTX to increase production of components for SM-3 Block IB and SM-3 Block IIA interceptors.

On Aug. 17, the Pentagon announced a $22.9 billion Navy contract with RTX to accelerate production of Tomahawk missiles.

On Aug. 31, five days after the industry deadline, the Pentagon announced additional seven-year multiyear procurement agreements with Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics designed to increase production quantities and accelerate delivery schedules for critical missile subcomponents supporting PAC-3 MSE and THAAD.

The Pentagon separately identified production goals of tripling PAC-3 MSE production capacity and quadrupling THAAD production capacity, with funding subject to annual appropriations from Congress.

The public announcements did not identify those agreements as resulting from companies’ responses to Feinberg’s Aug. 5 request.

What remains unclear is whether the 21-day exercise changed what the Pentagon plans to buy, how quickly it expects industry to deliver it or what additional funding and infrastructure the department will seek in its fiscal 2028 budget request.