The extent of the drone war is underestimated, with Ukraine and Russia each using roughly 10,000 drones a day, the former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said, speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington.

“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said. “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”

For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.

But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.

“Really, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,” he said.

The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.

“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.

Washington is making “some commendable steps” toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.

“But my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,” Petraeus said.

That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”

“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.

Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech, with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components — including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable — becoming the domestic industry’s production bottleneck.

The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington’s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”

The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September.

“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

In a federal lawsuit, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Battalion Search and Rescue and Southern Border Communities Coalition argue the Trump administration is misusing so-called “national defense areas” to circumvent longstanding restrictions on military participation in civilian law enforcement.

In a statement, Brian Netter, legal director at Democracy Forward, one of the teams representing the plaintiffs, called the “national defense area” designation “an extraordinary abuse of power with devastating consequences for the people who live, work, worship, recreate, and carry out lifesaving humanitarian work along the border.”

“Public lands do not become military installations simply because the president says so, and the military cannot be handed sweeping new authority to police civilians by drawing a line around land that belonged to the public,” he said, adding, “Our Constitution and laws impose clear limits on the use of the military for civilian law enforcement for a reason.”

The Trump administration began sending troops to the area in March 2025 to support border security and has since expanded the military’s presence along the border in other states. By April of that year, the Defense Department assumed jurisdiction over the 109,651 acres from the Department of the Interior.

The designation made the land, officially named the New Mexico National Defense Area, an expansion of Fort Huachuca for three years. The Defense Department said the designation allowed troops to detain people accused of trespassing in the military area after crossing the border illegally.

However, the lawsuit argues that the federal agencies exceeded their authority to transfer public land through emergency powers. “No statute authorizes the creation of ‘national defense areas,’ let alone permits carving one out of formerly public land,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit adds that the Defense Department has historically used such land restrictions only temporarily to protect people or property during accidents or emergencies.

“Creating a semi-permanent military zone along the southern border for purposes of immigration enforcement is directly contrary to the agency’s longstanding practice,” the lawsuit says.

Beyond alleging violations of federal law, the plaintiffs say the military zones are disrupting their work by limiting access to public lands used for recreation and conservation; supporting border communities; and providing humanitarian aid.

James R. Holeman, founder of Battalion Search and Rescue, said his organization leads volunteers who search for people in distress in remote areas and recover the remains of migrants who died crossing the border. Over the past three years, he said, the group’s monthly searches along the Arizona and New Mexico border have uncovered more than 100 death sites.

“Imagine how many more people could be found if we had the access, resources, and support to search systematically. Instead, we’re being locked out,” he said, adding that vast stretches of borderlands are “virtually inaccessible to humanitarian searchers” because of federal designations.

“Now the government is closing off even more territory. We don’t find weapons or drugs. We find Bibles, prayer cards, love notes, and the belongings of people simply trying to survive,” Holeman said. “There is no meaningful, systematic government effort to search for the missing and the dead. They don’t search, and now they’re preventing us from searching.”

During a review period from June 1, 2024, through May 31, 2025, the VA made at least one error in 17,900 cases, roughly 38%, regarding disability decisions for painful scars, according to a recent VA Office of Inspector General report.

920 of those decisions, per the report, led to millions in overpayment and will continue to accrue without “corrective action.”

For service-connected painful scars, as a result of burns, surgeries, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, among other sources, the VA requires a physical examination to support a veteran’s claim.

However, the OIG found that the Disability Benefits Questionnaire “does not clearly define objective versus subjective evidence.

Therefore, claims processors sometimes provided evaluations for painful scars without objective evidence to support the evaluations, which led to overpayments in disability compensation.”

In addition, the report found that physical manifestations of the disability were often evaluated under two separate diagnostic codes, often resulting in “pyramiding” and overpayment.

The report notes that more than a half-million veterans currently receive VA disability benefits for painful scarring caused or worsened by military service, but it took a random sample of 70 decisions from a review population of 47,300.

It further notes that the OIG took the findings to the VBA in February 2026 and following the briefing, “30 additional decisions completed from January 1 through January 31, 2026… identified a 43 percent error rate.”

The VBA, while agreeing with many of the OIG’s recommendations, including revising the “Scars/Disfigurement” section of the DBQ; ensuring employees understand how to accurately evaluate painful scars; and reviewing and correcting the processing errors on decisions the Office of Inspector General team identified, took issue with the statistical sample and the contextualization of those estimates.

“The OIG examined 130 decisions, representing approximately 0.27 percent of the total review population of about 47,300 decisions, and identified 60 errors, which form the basis for the projected 17,900 errors referenced throughout the report,” per VA comments in the report.

“Importantly, only seven of the 60 errors OIG found resulted in improper payments, which represents about 5.4 percent of the sample, and when viewed across the full review population, only about 0.015 percent of all decisions reviewed. The remaining 53 errors, more than 88 percent of the sample, were technical or procedural issues that did not result in improper payments.”

The VA is working to complete the OIG’s suggestions by February 2027 at the latest.

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.

Earlier this year, the Defense Department awarded a nearly $41 million development contract to Singapore-based iX Biopharma to develop Wafermine, a small, ketamine-packed wafer that dissolves under the tongue.

Recently, the drug’s manufacturer announced that it is pursuing an emergency authorization that could make the medication available to troops before it receives full Food and Drug Administration approval, citing a September U.S. declaration of a military emergency that justifies the emergency use of drugs deemed necessary by the Pentagon.

A federal emergency use approval declaration by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 3 opened the possibility of early official authorization, giving the FDA a route to use unapproved medications to treat war wounds.

According to the notice, on July 15, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth determined “a military emergency, or significant potential for a military emergency, involving a heightened risk to U.S. military forces of an attack with a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agent or agents,” or an attack with agents that would cause life-threatening injuries.

The declaration continues: “Injuries arising from these attacks may cause those forces to experience moderate to severe acute pain and place them at risk of developing life-threatening hemodynamic instability, including shock or respiratory distress.”

Because of Hegseth’s determination, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. declared that “circumstances exist justifying the authorization of emergency use of drugs” identified by the Pentagon.

The notice did not elaborate on the emergency circumstances or state which drugs would be identified for emergency authorization.

A Politico investigation published Tuesday found that iX Biofarma’s domestic manufacturing partner lacks the Nevada license required to operate.

iX Biofarma called the non-opioid medication the “world’s first sublingual ketamine for acute moderate to severe pain,” and said the wafer enables a different delivery mechanism, letting patients absorb the ketamine through the mucous membrane into the bloodstream.

Typically administered via injection, ketamine can alleviate pain, increase euphoria and cause dissociation and amnesia.

A 2023 study found that opioid use to alleviate battlefield injuries decreased between January 2010 and December 2019, while ketamine use increased.

The researchers found that “ketamine is generally used first for more severely injured patients and has increasingly been employed by the U.S. military as the primary analgesic for combat casualties.”

The company said it received a “sole-source” award for Wafermine development, meaning it did not solicit other vendors.

In the complaint filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, Marine veteran Tristyn Edwards and active-duty Marine Morgan Stampfli allege that they experienced fraudulent charges on their financial accounts and an increase in spam messages because of the breach.

In September, the DMDC said it had discovered a vulnerability on July 16 in a file-sharing system that allowed unauthorized users to access unencrypted files containing personal information, including full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and military occupations.

According to the lawsuit, the vulnerability exposed millions of files containing information on service members and people affiliated with the military for approximately nine months before it was discovered.

The lawsuit also alleges that the DMDC failed to “promptly notify” affected individuals, some of whom were informed two or three months after the breach was found.

“The exposure of Plaintiff and Class members’ PII will cause various types of misuse in the coming months and years, including but not limited to, unauthorized credit card charges, unauthorized access to email accounts, identity theft, and other fraudulent use of their Private Information,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit argues that the Pentagon violated federal privacy laws by failing to protect personal records and maintain compliant cybersecurity systems, despite internal warnings about issues in its systems.

The complaint cites multiple reports from the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General describing failures by both the department and the DMDC to implement adequate cybersecurity controls.

In a report published days after the breach, the OIG said that “officials have not taken the necessary actions to demonstrate that they were operating at an effective level for 14 of the 20 [Inspector General Federal Information Security Modernization Act] core metrics.”

News of the Defense Department breach emerged alongside reports of a cyberattack targeting FBI personnel files. However, the group responsible for the FBI incident has not been linked to the Pentagon breach. The department offered affected individuals 12 months of credit monitoring and identity-restoration services.

“Had [the Defense Department] properly implemented standard cybersecurity controls — such as regular review of accounts, scanning for vulnerabilities, field encryption or tokenization of sensitive PII like SSNs, and routine monitoring of system logs for suspicious activity — the Data Breach could have been avoided,” the lawsuit says.

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.

Meyer will now serve as Hegseth’s senior advisor to the task force, which is tasked with addressing the military’s “unacceptable” living conditions, the defense secretary announced Monday in a video on social media.

“Our warfighters should be focused on training, readiness and defending this great nation,” Meyer said during the video. “They shouldn’t have to fight for basic living conditions when they come home at night.”

As senior advisor, Meyer will travel to installations across the country, looking at their barracks, meeting with service members and identifying how to curtail any issues blocking the resolutions.

The first group of installations Meyer is expected to visit are all located in California, with Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton on Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms on Thursday and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Friday.

If sticking to schedule, Meyer will have visited 21 bases across the country, with most along the East Coast, by the end of December, according to a map displayed during the social media video.

“I want you to ask this question for the next couple of months: Where’s Dakota?” Hegseth posed during the video. “Could he be coming to my base, to my installation, to my camp, my fort? Because he might be.”

“He’ll be traversing the country on behalf of the Barracks Task Force, on behalf of me personally inspecting, holding town halls, getting real input, and then providing real solutions,” Hegseth continued. “Be on the lookout for him.”

Hegseth first formed the task force in October 2025 to be led by the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment. The group is meant to identify investment opportunities and create department-wide policies for barracks standards.

The One Bill Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July 2025, gave the Defense Department $1.2 billion for barracks improvement, with $230 million allotted for the Marine Corps Barracks 2030 initiative and $425 million for enlisted boot camp barracks and other related facilities, as well as $1 billion for Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force restoration and modernization of military housing.

A Government Accountability Office report from August found that the Defense Department does not request enough funding to meet its installation maintenance and improvement needs, resulting in an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

Previous GAO reports found that some barracks were “chronically neglected,” resulting in poor conditions that impacted enlisted service members’ quality of life. Thousands of service members lived in subpar barracks, with some having potentially serious health and safety risks, according to a 2023 report.

Recently, the Barracks Task Force funded various projects at installations across the nation, including modernized housing at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia, and a housing installation at Naval Base Kitsap-Bremerton, Washington.

“From this point forward, there’s no confusion about who’s accountable,” Meyer posted on social media. “If we don’t get this fixed, there’s only one person to blame. Me.”

Former President Barack Obama awarded Meyer his Medal of Honor in 2011 for his service during the Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan in 2009 when he repeatedly entered an enemy ambush zone to rescue wounded comrades and recover the bodies of fallen service members. His actions were credited with saving 13 Americans and 23 Afghan personnel.

Meyer left the Marine Corps in 2010 and reenlisted in the reserves in April 2025, with his oath of enlistment administered at the Pentagon by Hegseth.

Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the prime minister, later confirmed to Reuters that Netanyahu had met with Hegseth at the Uvda Air Force Base in Israel’s southern Negev desert region.

Netanyahu and Hegseth discussed “the threats in the region” and the U.S.-Israel partnership in dealing both offensively and defensively with those threats, he said in a brief phone call.

Hegseth also thanked Israel for hosting U.S. forces, which Spielman said numbered in the thousands, and discussed President Donald Trump’s support for the prime minister.

“There’s a deep personal relationship here that was at the core of this discussion,” Spielman said.

On Sunday, Trump endorsed Netanyahu in next week’s parliamentary election in Israel, the country’s first ballot since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel.

The Pentagon has not publicly commented on Hegseth’s visit.

Hegseth earlier posted on X that he had visited U.S. service members in the Central Command area of responsibility, which covers the Middle East, northeast Africa and parts of Asia.

He did not specify where he had met with the forces.

Hegseth’s visit comes as tensions flare between the U.S. and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz and as Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis intensify their attacks on Saudi Arabia.

U.S. and Israeli forces launched joint strikes against Iran in late February, setting off the wider Middle East war. Netanyahu told Israeli media this month that he’s not seeking to attack Iran before the Oct. 27 Israeli election. Trump has said he will not attack Iran before U.S. midterm elections in November.

Israel has hosted additional U.S. forces, including military aircraft, since at least February as part of the war with Iran.

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.