Contracts For Sept. 23, 2025

ARMY

Accurate Energetic Systems LLC,* McEwen, Tennessee, was awarded a $119,591,567 firm-fixed-price contract for the procurement of TNT. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 23, 2025. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island, Illinois, is the contracting activity (W519TC-25-D-0041).

The slow recognition of the changing character of warfare and the rapid innovation cycle of the adversary is eerily similar to the rise of drones on the battlefield. The drone threat mirrors the IED’s asymmetric cost dynamic.

That dynamic is what makes today’s counter-drone conversation feel like déjà vu. The Defense Department’s counter-drone strategy rests on five pillars: deepen understanding and awareness of trends and threats, disrupt and degrade threat networks, defend against threats, deliver solutions at speed and scale, and develop and design a force for unmanned systems warfare. Succinctly, the framework expands upon the three-pillar counter-IED approach and formalizes the need for rapid acquisitions.

To determine whether adopting a well-worn strategy is warranted, it is instructive to examine the similarities and differences between IEDs and drones. Both are ubiquitous on modern battlefields due to a single overarching attribute: cost asymmetry. Each benefit from an abundance of dual-use civilian components that enable scalable manufacturing and proliferation while complicating interdiction and control efforts. Technical know-how diffuses easily across the battlespace and, as with IEDs, effective drone defense still depends on well-prepared forces, intelligence fusion, and disciplined training.

Colloquially known in some circles as “the poor man’s air force,” drones deliver aerial effects once reserved for traditional militaries. All air forces rely on aerial platforms for reconnaissance and interdiction, but drones offer these capabilities at a fraction of the cost. Compared with a traditional air force consisting of manned aircraft, drones trade individual flexibility and platform capability for sheer volume and distribution.

Drones deliver a key capability over IEDs: the ability to hunt for targets. Whereas IEDs acted as ambush predators, emplaced along predictable routes, drones can search for and approach targets from multiple directions, erasing the perceived safe rear area. Drones extend area denial and constrain maneuver more effectively than IEDs or mines.

Drone networks also differ from IED networks in the number of key individuals involved. IED bombmakers were required to manufacture the devices, even though components were easy to obtain. In contrast, many drone systems draw from a mature global supply chain and require only simple assembly or modification. This shifts the importance from the manufacturer to the operator, specifically, the drone pilot. While skill levels vary, the gap between novice and expert drone pilots is narrower than among bombmakers, considering there are more prospective pilots. Drone piloting suits gamers well, and advanced simulators can speed up training. As autonomy improves, the significance of individual pilot skill will matter even less.

LONDON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Britain said it was pausing all trials of the Ajax fighting vehicle, the ​latest setback for the army's troubled 6 billion pound ($8 *billion) programme after years of technical faults and delays.

Luke Pollard, minister for *defence readiness, announced the pause on Thursday "out of an abundance of caution". It comes after he decided to pause the use of the vehicle in training and exercising in November ⁠to allow a safety *investigation to take place

The development of the vehicles, made by General Dynamics in south Wales, has ‍been beset by difficulties since Britain ordered them in 2014.

During army trials last month, 30 troops reported feeling unwell from noise and ​vibration, which reports said included shaking and vomiting.

Pollard said *the outcome of the safety review would be published shortly and he will assess whether to restart trials in the new year.

"Findings from the investigations into Ajax will be closely aligned to decisions in the Defence Investment Plan," Pollard said ⁠in a written ministerial statement.

The ​589 Ajax vehicles were slated to ​enter service around 2020, but this was pushed back to 2025. The contract was the single biggest ‍for a British ⁠armoured vehicle in 20 years.

Britain's independent spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has raised a string of issues ⁠with military procurement, highlighting budget overruns, poor financial planning and a failure *to make cost savings.

Defence Secretary John Healey has not ruled out scrapping the multibillion pound program led by General Dynamics, which was originally scheduled to launch in 2014.

Pollard confirmed that the MoD's Defense Investment Plan (DIP) will take into account the latest information regarding the Ajax initiative, which is worth £6.3 billion overall.

The department is currently at loggerheads with the Treasury over DIP, which was originally due to be published in the fall but is now delayed to 2026.

Committee lays bare UK failures to Nato

Further concerns were also raised in the 19 November parliamentary report, which warned that the UK was failing to live up to its Nato commitments and would not be able to deploy in depth and sustain itself at length.

We were concerned to hear that the UK’s lack of mass is denuding its leadership in NATO”, the committee report stated, adding that the “lack of resourcing dedicated to the UK meeting its Article 3 commitments is a further failure of leadership.”

US officials in Nato have long held concerns over the UK’s ability to operate as a viable partner, with the committee reporting evidence that heard one US official no longer consider the UK to be a Tier 1 military force.

The lack of a Defence Investment Plan, already significantly delayed, was further hampering efforts to understand UK military procurement priorities, the committee warned.

It is unarguable that should the UK find itself embroiled in a conflict similar to that faced by Ukraine, the country would be unable to defend itself against modern threats. The UK lacks a layered air defence system to defend sites of critical national infrastructure, while the recent incursion by activists into a key RAF base highlighted apparent ease of access to UK military sites.

In addition, the UK is entirely incapable of engaging in full spectrum ballistic and hypersonic missile defence, capabilities that are defeating Ukraine’s extensive network that includes Patriot air defence systems.

“The lack of clarity about the Government’s approach to integrated air and missile defence, given the absence of European IAMD capability, is an area of critical importance that requires urgent action,” the committee warned.

The British Army meanwhile is a shadow of its former self, lacking sufficient numbers of armoured vehicles, ammunition, and modern capabilities like FPV drones to operate in the modern battlespace.

According to analysis conducted by Army Technology, any UK contribution to peacekeeping in Ukraine – in the eventuality that the conflict can be halted – would be minimal and around the same scale as its mission to Kosovo, in what is indicative of the UK’s inability to operate in depth and at scale.

Similarly, the Royal Navy and associated Royal Fleet Auxiliary have been in decline for decades, with available surface escorts down to single figures amid a shrinking fleet and sustainment problems. The less said about nuclear submarine ambition, the better.

Is the UK a weak link in Nato?

With the UK’s military capability, from leadership to logistics, C4ISR to combat operations, increasingly being called into question by allies, academics, and observers, it is possible that enemies infer a weakness that needs to be exploited, in a timeframe that London is simply incapable of operating within.

As friends and adversaries come to the same conclusion – that the UK’s is no longer a Tier 1 military entity – national notions of defence renewal appear fanciful.

By
Matthew Luxmoore
Follow and Nikita Nikolaienko | Photography by Svet Jacqueline for WSJ

Jan. 29, 2026 11:00 pm ET
SAMAR, Ukraine—Kyrylo Horbenko represented the future of the Ukrainian army.

Immediately after turning 18, he joined a program that fast-tracks military careers for Ukraine’s youngest recruits, hoping front-line experience would help him secure a spot at a military academy he hadn’t had the money to attend.

“I want to devote my entire life to military service,” the gangly teen told The Wall Street Journal last spring as he prepared to take his oath of service at a base in east Ukraine.

Less than six months later, Horbenko was dead. Thrown into combat on the most dangerous part of the front line, he was cut down by Russian artillery while en route to reinforce a Ukrainian position in Pokrovsk in October.

In the early years of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine largely tried to keep its youngest men away from the front lines. They would be needed to rebuild the country once the war was over.

The fate of Horbenko, whom comrades described as a committed patriot and an ideal future commander, underscores the severity of Ukraine’s manpower deficit in the face of a relentless onslaught by Russian units that often outnumber its own units 10 to one.

It also illustrates Ukraine’s impossible choice four years into a war that has decimated its professional army: how to safeguard and nurture a rising generation while at the same time ensuring a steady flow of bodies to the front line?

Most men willing to fight signed up long ago. Infantry units are full of older men unfit for arduous combat missions. Front-line stints are far longer than they used to be, compounding exhaustion. Many other men are either in hiding or have paid bribes to flee the country illegally.