WASHINGTON—Six anti-war protestors disrupted an autonomous warfare discussion featuring Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and the military service secretaries Wednesday at the Army’s annual conference. By the time the third protester shouted denouncements of the U.S.-Iran war, some members of the audience had begun chanting “USA, USA.” 

The politically charged atmosphere isn’t typical at the show. But this year, it served as a contrast for what appeared to be a more prominent international presence than previous years—from the number of international companies represented to the size of the displays.  

Ukrainian companies made their debut with a massive tent just two blocks from the convention center. Overall, there were 165 international companies and nine international pavilions on the showroom floor, representing Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Korea, and Norway, the Association of the U.S. Army, or AUSA, told Defense One.  

The roughly 2,000-member international delegation was about average, representing 92 countries—including 27 army chiefs, 14 sergeants major of the Army, 17 ambassadors, and two ministers of defense, according to AUSA. 

But the ambassador count this year was also higher, AUSA said. That could be an indication that while political tensions rise, there’s still an appetite for diplomacy—and foreign military sales. 

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1:1 with Mike Wior, CEO + co-founder of Allen Control Systems. ACS was one of 10 companies to land a counterdrone IDIQ contract with the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force-401 last month, and things haven’t slowed down since. The company makes a robotic turret, called Bullfrog, that can turn machine guns into a counterdrone weapon using AI and autonomy.

• “We just got our $500 million IDIQ. We are, obviously, working on getting funds into that as quickly as we can…getting to that point where we can prove on the battlefield, yes this works, and we should be replicating this across all the different services that need this type of capability,” Wior told Defense One during a break from the bustling AUSA conference showfloor.
• But the lack of a budget could stymie progress the Pentagon is trying to make in cultivating a tech-forward industrial base, he said.
• “Is the military going to be able to sustain this new ecosystem of defense tech companies? Can companies survive in this environment? What do they need to survive in this environment…when the military ultimately doesn't have full control over their own budgets?” he said. “It's a challenging environment as a startup.”
• But ACS is still pushing forward with a new facility. 
• “We just opened a 200,000 square foot facility in North Austin” with the goal of increasing production capacity beyond 50 turrets a month once the orders come in, Wior said. 
• “Whenever the orders come in, we start to fill out that IDIQ, and we can expand pretty quickly…by leveraging commercial off-the-shelf components, we have a lot of flexibility there, and then it's just a matter of expanding the workforce.” 
• And they’re eyeing international deals.
• “We want to see more of an international economy for defense products…and we want to make our technologies available to other countries. Because that's needed, I think, in this environment where if it's just the United States government and they have a two-year appropriations problem, you might lose some really, really great technologies to attrition—just the ability to stay around long enough and participate.”

Up, up, and away. The Army Space and Missile Defense Agency wants “a family of stratospheric systems,” such as high-altitude balloons, in a range of platform sizes that can provide “space-like capabilities” closer to Earth, Col. Joseph Mroszczyk, who leads the agency’s transformation integration directorate for space superiority, told reporters Wednesday.

• “From about 60,000 feet to 100,000 feet is what we focus on in the stratosphere. That operational space allows some persistence and broad coverage in an area where you can deliver space-like capabilities in terms of payloads” while also being able to “take advantage of winds that are pushing you where you want to go already…to get either launched effects or other types of payloads for sensing and communications.”
• The agency hopes to start multiple experiments in the coming year. 

Bonus: The agency is also “working on a virtual space training environment,” Mroszczyk said. “We're building the virtual space layer to be able to visualize and understand how space effects can play in modern operations.”

Biodefense prep. The Army wants biothreats to be a routine feature in major military exercises, as outlined in its updated biodefense strategy released last month. 

• Turning that doctrine into actual readiness requires incorporating biothreats into “big” military exercises where it's “an operational constraint, and the whole of staff has to come to bear against it,” Alison Tamasi, the Army Nuclear and CWMD Agency’s chief of survivability and effects analysis division, told reporters Monday. 
• “Our next target on the wall is looking toward some of those routine things like [Army warfighter exercises] where we can start to put bio defense in as one of the injects.” 
• Context: These can be tabletop exercises, typically at the corps level or lower, where commanders and subject-matter experts map out responses to proposed scenarios, such as a viral outbreak at a port. 

Making moves + other news

• Anduril will let employees sell shares through a tender offer, bringing the company’s value to about $90 billion. 
• BAE Systems now has two new counterdrone systems: a multi-domain artillery cannon system and high-power microwave.
• Leonardo DRS landed a $500 million IDIQ contract with the Pentagon’s counterdrone task force, JIATF-401, for tactical expeditionary sensing tech.  
• Merlin Aerospace completed the first flight test of its new autonomous pilot, which is being designed to aid in missions like “maritime search and patrol,” the company announced on social media. 
• The Pentagon signed an agreement with the Small Business Administration to increase access to strategic capital to help “defense-critical manufacturers, suppliers, and innovators.” In the deal, the Pentagon will identify companies that need financing through its Business Operators for National Defense (BOND) initiative and refer potential candidates to SBA.