We have soldiers for land, sailors for sea, airmen for air, and guardians for space. But in cyberspace, a borderless domain where American forces are engaged with adversaries every day, we still do not have a military service whose central purpose is to build a quality, expert force, equipped with the most cutting-edge capabilities, for war-fighting in the cyber domain.

For more than a decade, Washington has tried to patch this problem instead of fixing it. Congress has granted U.S. Cyber Command new authorities. The Pentagon has adjusted organizations, budgets and training pipelines. Senior leaders have made the current structure work better than it should. But those reforms have not changed the basic fact that there is no military service that sees organizing, training and equipping forces for the cyber domain as its first and primary priority.

Cyber Command’s job is to employ cyber capabilities in military operations. But it still depends on the existing services to recruit, train, retain, and develop the people who carry out those missions and equip them with the capabilities to do so. In the rest of the military, that division of labor is clear: services build forces, and combatant commands employ them.

Cyber remains the exception. The Navy must build fleets, the Army must build land power, the Air Force must attain air superiority, and so on. Each service has cyber responsibilities, but each also has core missions that naturally, and appropriately, come first. Cyber matters to all of the services, but it is not the central organizing mission of any of them.

The result is a weaker cyber force than the country needs. The military’s cyber enterprise still struggles with inconsistent recruiting and retention problems. A young American who can write code, spot weaknesses in software or understand how digital systems break may be exactly who the country needs, even if that person does not fit the standard mold the existing services were built to recruit, promote and retain.

Cyber talent does not grow by accident. It must be recruited deliberately, trained continuously and retained through a career model that rewards technical mastery, instead of forcing top operators to move into command or management roles just to advance. The country needs people who can spend years becoming experts in offensive and defensive cyberspace operations, not personnel forced through systems that were never built for the mission.

The threat is evolving too quickly to justify continuing marginal fixes to the current system. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and criminal actors are targeting U.S. networks, critical infrastructure and military systems. Artificial intelligence will only increase the speed and scale of cyber operations. The United States cannot keep relying on a cyber force stitched together across multiple services, each with different priorities, incentives and personnel rules.

A new report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows how to build a Cyber Force with a clearly defined mission, not a sprawling bureaucracy. Its job should be to organize, train and equip forces for offensive and defensive cyberspace operations. It should not take over every military information technology network or absorb every technology function inside the Department of Defense. The existing services should continue to operate and secure the networks and systems tied to their own missions.

A Cyber Force would also strengthen Cyber Command. Too much of this debate treats a new service as a judgment on Cyber Command’s performance. It is not. Cyber Command houses some of our nation’s most talented cyber warriors. What they need is a better force-generation system behind them.

The U.S. military has adapted before when new domains became central to warfare. The Air Force was created because airpower became too important to remain secondary to another service’s priorities. The Space Force was created because space needed its own culture and focus. Cyberspace has reached the same point: American forces are already in daily contact with adversaries online, cyberattacks can disrupt military operations and civilian infrastructure alike, and artificial intelligence is making the domain faster and more dangerous.

For too long, cyber has been treated as everyone’s responsibility, and therefore no one’s first priority. Our adversaries are not waiting for us to get organized. They are building capabilities, probing our defenses, and preparing for the next conflict. The United States should not enter that fight with cyber forces generated as a side mission by services built for other domains.

If cyberspace is truly a domain of warfare, it deserves its own service built to fight in it.

Dr. Erica Lonergan is an assistant professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and previously held several positions at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy and is now the senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

They both served on the CSIS-FDD Commission on U.S. Cyber Force Generation.

But berthed in port — or sailing on the surface while transiting to and from port — these powerful yet fragile boats can be sitting ducks for drones, mines and even anti-tank rockets.

What once seemed the plot of thriller novels has become reality. Ukraine claims it successfully used an underwater drone to damage a Russian submarine in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk last year. Guerrillas and terrorists lurking along a waterway could use anti-tank guided missiles or handheld anti-tank rockets to ambush an unwary sub.

To face the new threat, the U.S. Navy is looking to develop better methods of protecting its missile subs, as well as the shore installations that support them.

These defenses include “prototype technologies to detect, track, identify, deny, and defeat unmanned systems across all domains,” according to a Sources Sought announcement. “This area seeks scalable solutions for shore-based installations and afloat operations in Port, Harbor, Littoral, and Waterways (PHLW) and open ocean environments.”

The Navy is also searching for ways to escort and protect its missile subs as they transit to and from port.

The goal is to “ensure the zero-failure secure movement of strategic maritime assets,” the announcement said. “This area seeks advanced maritime situational awareness, physical security enhancements for escorting SSBNs [nuclear missile subs], and the detection, avoidance, and mitigation of maritime mines, and the defeat of direct-fire kinetic threats (e.g., shore-launched ATGMs/RPGs) during transit through PHLW to and from dive points.”

The threat of anti-tank weapons even extends to the truck convoys hauling ICBMs to sub bases. The Navy is interested in active protection systems — sensors and shotgun-like launchers mounted on armored vehicles to destroy incoming anti-tank rockets — “for ground transport and convoy operations of strategic weapons and equipment.”

Other security items in the Sources Sought announcement, which lists 22 “focus areas” that the Navy’s Strategic Systems Program wants to address, include sensors to protect harbors. The Navy is also interested in security robots, including “Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) for waterside patrol, Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) for perimeter screening, and robotic inspection platforms that seamlessly integrate with existing response forces.”

Artificial intelligence has also emerged as a threat in the form of drone swarms or cyberwarfare.

The Navy is searching for countermeasures that “focus on defeating autonomous swarms, disrupting AI-enabled Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) directed at nuclear facilities, and hardening strategic security networks against AI-driven cyber-physical attacks or spoofing.”

The best defense for submarines is simply not to be detect in the first place. To that point, the Navy is seeking “prototype technologies that may mitigate the generation, radiation, propagation, and scatter of a variety of signal types (acoustic, chemical, optical, electromagnetic, radiological, hydrodynamic, and cyber) associated with submarine and unmanned system operations, to include both peacetime and wartime operations.”

Soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord cased the colors of the 1st Multi-Domain Task Forces Headquarters and 7th ID Headquarters Support Company and uncased the 7th Infantry Division (Multi-Domain Command-Pacific) Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion colors, in a merger that was first announced earlier this year.

“We are merging the operational endurance, flexibility and protection of our proven Stryker formations with the long-range sensing and precision fires of our multi-domain task force,” Maj. Gen. Bernard J. Harrington, the commanding general of the 7th ID (MDC-PAC), said in the Army release.

Central to the new command is what the Army calls the Cross Domain Contact Layer, a framework designed to connect intelligence gathering, electronic warfare and artificial intelligence into a continuous network.

It will combine sensors, drones, precision weapons and digital networks into a single architecture spanning land, air, sea, space and cyberspace.

“Through our emerging Cross Domain Contact Layer concept, our division will employ capabilities such as unmanned surface vessels; long-range, one-way attack drones; and launched effects to penetrate the adversary’s anti-access/area-denial network,” Harrington said in the release. “Every radar that emits, every node that transmits, every headquarters that commands, we aim to hold continuously at risk alongside our joint partners and allies.”

The change is part of the Army’s broader transformation initiative. According to the release, the redesignation reflects the service’s push to distribute advanced capabilities across maneuver formations operating in contested environments.

The redesignation builds on years of innovation in the Indo-Pacific, the Army said, including deployments by the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force, or MDTF, and collaboration with the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

“These soldiers have invested wholeheartedly in experimenting, deploying, and employing capabilities that work from the heavens to the earth, from the air to the sea, and flow with all the digits that go in between,” said Col. Charles W. Kean, the 7th ID (MDC-PAC) deputy commanding officer-effects and former 1st MDTF commander. “It has truly been inspirational to watch them in action.”

The Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay, or C-MIP, initiative is meant to modernize how the department encourages the Cyberspace Operations Forces, the military and civilian units responsible for cyberspace operations, according to a June 10 release.

“To incentivize our cyber forces and meet both Department of War and Defense Industrial Base needs, we need to shed legacy incentive models and invest directly in our people serving on the digital front lines. C-MIP does this,” Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in the release.

The C-MIP program drops the previous incentive models to a more flexible system that aligns pay with skillset mastery and performance of demanding tasks, the announcement says. The program was developed in 60 days by the CYBERCOM 2.0 unit.

The program will feature two layers: skill incentive pay and special duty pay.

Skill incentive pay, or SIP, is considered the foundational layer that rewards an individual for skill level, whether it’s basic, senior or master.

Special duty assignment pay, or SDAP, is a monthly incentive for members who perform duties CYBERCOM deems “exceptionally demanding” and scale their skills by serving in roles such as trainers or more advanced cyber positions.

“By breaking down the bureaucratic norms of government incentives, this framework enables increased lethality by driving the skills, roles and duties most vital to mission success,” Katie Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, who will lead the execution of the program, said in the statement.

The pay incentive program is slated to begin Oct. 1, per the release. The announcement did not specify the pay incentive amount for either program level.

This initiative follows a recent push from some lawmakers to advance the creation of an independent Cyber Force military service.

A report from two D.C. think tanks examined how a proposed Cyber Force could take over the “service-like” responsibilities that CYBERCOM is currently expected to perform.

However, it would take at least one year and $10 billion to stand up the new force.

The Marine Corps wants to develop robots that can do the grunt work of laying down the matting used to quickly construct Expeditionary Airfields, or EAF, in amphibious beachheads and other remote locations.

“Currently, assembling EAF matting is a manual process carried out by Marines — a task that is physically demanding, labor-intensive and exposes personnel to potential hazards,” explained the Small Business Innovation Research proposal, which has a deadline of June 3.

The project, titled “Automated Expeditionary Airfield Assembly,” calls for robots capable of operating on “uneven or unstable surfaces.” They must also “manipulate and position heavy EAF mat sections with precision” while enduring “harsh environmental and operational conditions,” according to the proposal.

The Marine Corps envisions robots with sufficient autonomy to “navigate and control without human assistance, which includes obstacle avoidance, path planning and grasping,” according to the SBIR.

Contractor solutions will be expected to explore “various robotic configurations — such as mobile manipulators and assistive technologies — for their effectiveness in EAF mat handling, alignment and interconnection across diverse and austere terrains,” the proposal states.

Phase I of the project involves demonstrating “the technical feasibility of a robotic system capable of automating or augmenting the assembly of EAF prefabricated surfaced aluminum (PSA) Flat Top-Nested (Top-N) Trackway mats.”

Robots will be evaluated on metrics such as “payload capacity, reach, manipulation precision, power consumption and operational endurance,” according to the proposal.

Phase II calls for a functional prototype capable of automated or semi-automated operations.

“The robot shall be able to handle the PSA mats in some manner to aid in the assemble of the airfield, be a closed system and able be able to operate in a realistic environment,” the SBIR specified. “The system will be judged on feasibility, time to assemble, ease of use and overall size and mass.”

Phase III requires a deployable system for field testing. The SBIR emphasizes that the robot “will undergo hardening against electrical, environmental and cyber threats.”

“The resulting system must demonstrate sustained operation in deployed environments, achieving significant reductions in manning requirements, operational costs and/or deployment time,” the proposal states.

The Marine Corps has been working to ease the difficulty of expeditionary airfield construction, including adopting commercial lightweight matting.

Meanwhile, robotics companies are developing robots optimized for construction work, including four-legged and even two-legged humanoid robots.

For airport operations, Japan Airlines is testing humanoid robots for baggage handling.

The C-UAS Close-In Kinetic Defeat Enhancement project focuses on aided target recognition, or AiTR. This uses concepts such as AI, machine learning and computer vision to create a system that can detect threats — and distinguish them from non-threats such as birds — faster than a human operator can.

The first phase of the project is aimed at remote weapons stations, and specifically the ubiquitous Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, or CROWS, turrets fitted to a variety of military vehicles.

“The primary objective is to accelerate the engagement timeline, initially focusing on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), with a secondary focus on other threats like vehicular and man-sized targets,” explained the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation. The deadline is May 15.

Prototypes must “demonstrably improve” the ability of current remote weapons stations to detect, track and engage Groups 1 and 2 — targets with a weight of 55 pounds and under.

Detection should be at ranges greater than 600 meters, and engagement at a minimum of 100 meters. The system should be effective against drones moving at speeds of at least 30 meters per second, or 67 miles per hour, per the solicitation.

The second phase of the project seeks to boost C-UAS capabilities on “both moving and stationary platforms, including ground and maritime environments,” the solicitation said.

Specifications include the ability to hit a Group 1 drone — under 20 pounds — moving at 7 meters per second, or 16 miles per hour, at a range of 50 to 200 meters. Weapons should be able to engage targets while depressed to minus 10 degrees or elevated directly overhead to 90 degrees, the document stated.

This requires contractors to provide a prototype that can “be fired in land and maritime environments,” the solicitation says, “rather than just a laboratory setting at time of pitch.”

Most noteworthy, meanwhile, is the third phase of the project: adding aided target recognition to small arms carried by dismounted troops.

“Desired solutions include systems capable of deflecting or self-aiming standard-issue rounds to increase hit probability against manually selected, transient targets, while integrating networked sensor and small arms fire control systems,” DIU said.

The system must be capable of engaging drones moving at least 7 meters per second, and “must be adaptable to dismounted legacy small arms, scalable across calibers and configurations, and maintain baseline weapon performance in the event of system degradation or failure,” the document states. “A semi-automatic, live-fire capable prototype is required.”

The final phase of the project seeks to improve integration between sensors and weapons.

“A commercial wireless edge network architecture that bridges to military systems and the reverse is essential across all stages of this effort to manage data transfer from sensors and weapon/fire control systems,” the DIU wrote.

The U.S. military is beginning to embrace aided target recognition. The Army is already testing small UAVs equipped with AiTR to help infantry squads control drones.

But the Pentagon is also aware that AI and targeting is controversial.

The DIU project specifies that there must be a human in the loop. Solutions must strictly adhere to DOD’s AI Ethical Principles. Non-compliance “will result in immediate disqualification,” DIU warned.

After overseeing rapid growth at the state-controlled firm following his appointment in 2023, Cingolani was released last month when the Italian government decided not to give him a second three-year mandate, surprising industry experts.

Instead the top job was given to Lorenzo Mariani, a former co-general manager at Leonardo and effectively Cingolani’s former number two, who moved a year ago to run MBDA’s Italian operation.

In an online press briefing on Wednesday “to say goodbye” to journalists, Cingolani recalled how Leonardo had added 20,000 staff and grown its share price from 10 to 64 euros on his watch.

Growth at the firm had been “unprecedented”, he said.

On Wednesday, Leonardo reported a 33% year-on-year rise in first-quarter core earnings.

Cingolani, 64, said the firm’s industrial plan was “rolling”, adding, “The strategy is built, capitalized and contracted. The job now is execution not strategy. Deviation from the plan could be detrimental to the success of Leonardo in the future.”

As an example of a new product roll-out, Cingolani cited the Michelangelo Dome, an air-defense system designed with open architecture to allow partner countries to link existing assets and make them interoperable.

The system will be tested in Ukraine against drone attacks in November, he announced.

Cingolani defended his “bullets and bytes” strategy which focused on turning Leonardo “from a defense company to a global security company” specializing in cyber, energy and infrastructure security.

Some experts have suggested that Cingolani fell out of favor in government circles because he was seen as not prioritizing the mass production of munitions and hardware needed as war rages on Europe’s border.

Cingolani however took pride in his focus on digitalizing operations at Leonardo. “We were a non-digital company. Now we have one terrabyte of memory per employee,” he said, adding, “We were creating a digital brand.”

Despite seeing his time at Leonardo truncated by the Italian government, Cingolani said he approved of government stakes in defense firms.

“I believe that you cannot consider a defense company to be 100 percent independent of the state,” he said. “If we pursue only profit and we are independent of public institutions we could decide to sell assets to an enemy country. A state stake in a defense company is justified in ensuring the firm behaves according to the alliances the state approves of,” he added.

“I might not be happy to not be renewed on the one hand, but on the other I understand the state supervises such a delicate issue as defense,” he said.

That said, Cingolani said he believed five-year rather than three-year mandates would be better at the top of Leonardo.

“Three years is too short because this is a mid-term or long-term strategy industry. It is not beneficial for the company. It could be beneficial to extend the mandate,” he said.

Asked why his mandate had not been renewed, Cingolani said, “It is not necessary that I understand. The state can do whatever is needed.”

He added, “Sometimes good results are not enough.”

During his mandate, Cingolani created alliances with Germany’s Rheinmetall and Turkish drone maker Baykar, helped by his friendships with top managers at the firms. Asked if those alliances could suffer due to his departure, he said, “There is a risk but a multi-national company like Leonardo cannot depend on an individual. Those alliances were facilitated by personal relationships built on shared knowledge, vision and strategy. Once that is written in the industrial plan and approved by the board it is no longer a personal point of view.”

He added: “Governance avoids a personalization of the company.”

Asked what he plans to do next, Cingolani said, “I am getting on my motorbike and will travel around Europe for a while.”

Under the most favorable conditions for Russia, it could build up enough combat power for a regional challenge to NATO within a year after fighting stops in Ukraine, the MIVD wrote in its annual report. Russia’s goal would not be to defeat the alliance militarily, but to divide it through limited territorial gains, if necessary under threat of nuclear weapons use, the MIVD said.

As long as Russia is fighting in Ukraine, a conventional war against NATO is “virtually out of the question,” the Dutch intelligence service wrote in the report published on Tuesday. However, the MIVD said Russia is already making concrete preparations for a possible conflict with the alliance

“Russia poses the greatest and most direct threat to peace and stability in Europe, and thus to our national security and our interests,” MIVD Director Vice Adm. Peter Reesink said in a preamble to the report.

Western intelligence services broadly agree that Russia is actively preparing for potential conflict with NATO, though there’s less agreement on timing. Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said in February it doesn’t expect Russia to militarily attack any NATO member state in the coming year, indicating the assessment will likely be similar next year as Europe bolsters its deterrence.

The war in Ukraine is part of a long-standing effort to “fundamentally alter” Europe’s security architecture, according to the MIVD. With Russia seeking a multipolar world in which it is one of the superpowers, and with liberal-democratic values posing a threat to Russia’s leadership and internal stability, the war in Ukraine takes on an existential character, it said.

Conflict-mitigating factors in place during the Cold War, such as a clear world order, arms control and structured dialogue, now appear largely absent, the report said. At the same time, the world is on the eve of a technological revolution around artificial intelligence, quantum computing and bio-science “whose consequences are not yet fully foreseeable.”

Russia’s use of methods just below the threshold of open conflict “creates a real risk of unintended and therefore difficult-to-control escalation,” the MIVD said, adding that the current unpredictable United States security policy could influence Moscow’s cost-benefit calculations.

Russia in October tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-powered torpedo that will be equipped with nuclear warheads in the future, and has likely stationed the Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missile in Belarus, according to the MIVD, which said “these weapons have an extremely destabilizing effect during crises, partly due to the extremely short warning time.”

Russia suffered about 1.2 million permanent casualties since 2022, including more than 500,000 deaths, compared to about half a million Ukrainian permanent casualties, according to the MIVD which noted a “concerning” convergence in daily combat-death ratios in 2025 that’s unfavorable to Ukraine.

Despite the losses in Ukraine, Russia still expanded its armed forces in 2025 by recruiting and training personnel, producing heavy weapon systems, and preparing strategic ammunition reserves, according to the report. The economic feasibility remains to be seen, and ongoing high material and personnel losses in Ukraine could frustrate the planned growth, it said.

“As long as the Ukrainian defense holds, the build-up of a potential Russian military threat toward NATO territory is thereby delayed,” the MIVD said.

Combat experience gained in Ukraine and the ability to integrate this into training have resulted in a “significant qualitative improvement” in the Russian armed forces, particularly in unmanned systems, according to the MIVD.

The Zapad-2025 exercise in Belarus in September showed improvements in command and control and integration of unmanned systems at all levels, and the MIVD assesses the Russian forces are “demonstrating a strong adaptive capacity.”

“The Russian armed forces have not only grown larger but have also become more effective than before the war in Ukraine,” the MIVD said.

Russia has managed to keep up large-scale weapons production despite sanctions and limited access to raw materials and components, and large-scale deployment of one-way attack drones show the country capable of maintaining “an adaptive weapons industry both quantitatively and qualitatively.”

The Russian space industry has significantly weakened due to economic sanctions and a brain drain of highly-educated technical personnel, and a lack of independently developed satellites for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) means Russia “cannot fully achieve the pace required for modern warfare.”

To compensate, Russia is turning to solutions including publicly available satellite imagery, buying off-the-shelf satellites and satellite imagery from Chinese companies, and deploying alternative intelligence sensors such as unmanned aerial vehicles.

“The MIVD observes a concerning collaboration between Chinese companies and the Russian state in the field of space technology,” the report said. “This collaboration is expected to intensify further in the coming years.”

China maintains a position of “pseudo-neutrality” regarding the war in Ukraine, but in practice has “significantly intensified” military cooperation with Russia over the past year, according to the MIVD. The experience of Russian forces in Ukraine is of “great interest” to the People’s Liberation Army, which has little combat experience, the Dutch intelligence service said.

The MIVD said indications are of Chinese leadership drawing a connection between the theaters in Europe and East Asia, meaning the threat posed by China is “broadening and deepening.”

The People’s Liberation Army reorganized its cyber units in 2024, which the MIVD assesses allowed China to better integrate offensive cyber capabilities with military operations, and the country is now likely on par with the U.S. in terms of offensive cyber capabilities.

Chinese cyber espionage systemically targets the Western defense industry, according to the MIVD. The service estimates likely only a “limited portion” of Chinese cyber operations against Dutch interests are detected and mitigated.

The world is in the early stages of a new nuclear arms race, with a substantial expansion of China’s strategic nuclear arsenal, according to the intelligence services.

Weak arms control, the prospect of China as a third nuclear super power and advancing technology, “particularly the potential impact of artificial intelligence and quantum computing on nuclear decision-making processes,” create such a complicated security situation “that this arms race will be more difficult to curb than during the Cold War,” the MIVD said.

The conclusions, reviewed by Reuters, also found that Russian and Iranian hackers were collaborating in the cyber domain. They represent the most detailed account yet of how Russia has provided secret support to Iran since Israel and the U.S. launched their assault on Feb. 28.

Russian satellites, the undated assessment said, made at least 24 surveys of areas in 11 Middle Eastern countries from March 21 to 31, covering 46 “objects”, including U.S. and other military bases and sites including airports and oil fields.

Within days of being surveyed, military bases and headquarters were targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, the assessment said, in what it described as a clear pattern.

A Western military source and a separate regional security source told Reuters that their intelligence also indicated intense Russian satellite activity in the region and said that imagery had been shared with Iran.

Nine surveys covered parts of Saudi Arabia, including five over the King Khalid Military City near Hafar Al-Batin, in what appeared to be an effort to locate elements of the U.S.-made THAAD air defence system, the Ukrainian assessment said.

Areas of Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also came under satellite surveillance twice, while places in Israel, Qatar, Iraq, Bahrain and Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia did once, it said.

In an emerging trend, the assessment added, Russian satellites were actively surveying the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for a fifth of global oil and LNG flows where Iran has imposed a de facto blockade to all but “non-hostile vessels”.

Permanent communications channel

U.S. space-tracking firm Kayhan Space said analysis of the orbital data it gathers indicated Russian satellites were repeatedly overhead of parts of the Gulf region during the period March 21 to March 31, including some that were capable of Earth observation, reconnaissance, imaging or surveillance.

The company said its analysis suggested Russian satellite activity over the region during the late-March period may have been more extensive than that detailed by the Ukraine assessment, while overhead activity does not confirm that imagery was collected.

White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said that no external support for Iran from any country was affecting the operational success of the United States. The Iranian foreign ministry had no immediate comment. The defense ministry in Russia, which invaded Ukraine four years ago, did not respond to a request for comment.

European leaders pressed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the issue at a G7 meeting last month. Two diplomats said Rubio had not responded to the accusations, although he has publicly dismissed Russian aid to Iran as insignificant.

The Ukrainian assessment said that the exchange of satellite imagery was being organized through a permanent communications channel used by Russia and Iran and could also be facilitated by Russian military spies stationed in Tehran.

The regional security source confirmed a specific incident detailed in the Ukrainian assessment that was disclosed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week.

In that incident, a Russian satellite took imagery of Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia days before Iran struck the facility on March 27, hitting a sophisticated U.S. E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft, the assessment said.

A Russian satellite passed over the same site on March 28 to assess the strike’s impact, the assessment said.

‘Comprehensive strategic partnership’

Russia and Iran have deepened military ties since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In particular, Ukraine and the West say Iran provided long-range Shahed attack drones to Russia, which in turn used them to bomb Ukraine, while also developing its own, more sophisticated variants. Iran denies supplying weapons used against Ukraine.

Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian then signed a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in January last year.

Article Four of the Treaty states that “in order to strengthen national security and counter common threats, the intelligence and security services of the Contracting Parties exchange information and experience.”

Cyber operations

The Ukrainian intelligence assessment and regional security source said Russia appeared to be providing assistance to Iran in the cyber domain.

Hacking groups controlled by Iran have stepped up operations since late February, targeting mainly critical infrastructure and telecommunications companies in the Gulf, they said.

The Ukrainian assessment said Russian and Iranian hacker groups were interacting via Telegram and noted collaboration between the Russian groups “Z-Pentest Alliance”, “NoName057(16)” and “DDoSia Project” and Iran’s “Handala Hack”.

For example last month, it said groups including Handala Hack published a warning on Telegram about attacks on the information and communication systems of Israeli energy companies.

The Russian groups simultaneously published access credentials to control systems at critical infrastructure facilities in Israel, it said.

Iranian hacker groups have also used some techniques in operations that indicated they had obtained them from Russian military intelligence hackers, it said.

For instance, it said, Iranian hacker groups “Homeland Justice” (UAC-0074) and “Karmabelow80” used ProfitServer, a Russian VPS provider from Chelyabinsk, to register domains.

The Geosynchronous High-Resolution Optical Space-Based Tactical Reconnaissance project — also referred to as “Ghost Recon” (as in the Tom Clancy novels and video games) — is intended to address a vulnerability in America’s space-monitoring capabilities.

The problem is that DOD “lacks sufficient satellites capable of providing high-resolution space-to-space imagery and maintaining custody of both friendly and adversarial satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO),” according to the solicitation.

Hence, the Pentagon is looking for commercial satellites that can be launched within two years after the contract begins. Within three years, those satellites would become government owned and operated. Within four years, they will have to demonstrate the ability to “perform at least one drive-by (Sub or Super Sync) or an inclined track design reference mission (DRM) per week through the first year of government operations,” the solicitation states.

The goal is relatively inexpensive and scalable designs, including space vehicles, satellite buses and payloads that offer “high-resolution space-to-space imagery and accurate object characterization,” DIU said.

“These systems must reduce costs compared to existing and planned programs of record while achieving high-resolution image collection, allowing for increased collection frequency and detailed characterization of resident space objects (RSOs) in GEO. The successful deployment of these capabilities will significantly improve GEO RSO Characterization, Battle Damage Assessment (BDA), Positive Identification (PID), and Combat Identification (CID),” the solicitation notes.

DIU envisions a spacecraft that can move close to other satellites. The result would be “fully resolved imagery of an ESPA Grande-sized spacecraft and its key subsystems (i.e. star tracker, communications payload, mission payload) from a distance of no closer than 10 kilometers,” according to the solicitation. Ghost Recon satellites would also need to maneuver above or below GEO altitude to maximize solar lighting of the target.

Interestingly, DIU suggests satellites from other nations may be less than cooperative when it comes to having their picture taken, such as moving away from American space vehicles. The solicitation cites the possibility of using “several [space vehicles] to support collection of tasked RSO, [which are] used to support collection for uncooperative RSOs.”

While Ghost Recon satellites would mainly track space objects that have already been detected, they may have to search for targets themselves, including “detection and localization of untracked or non-cooperative RSOs,” according to the solicitation.

Contractors are asked to detail the capabilities of their designs, including the cost for a Ghost Recon satellite to revisit another space object every 30 days for 10 years. Companies must also specify slew rate, mission payload angular resolution and modular transfer function.

Minimum requirements include the ability to “successfully perform rendezvous and proximity operations,” according to the solicitation. Satellites must also be capable of operating for at least three years in GEO, meet National Security Space Launch medium and large standards for launch integration, and use Unified S-Band protocols.

Though DIU wants affordable spacecraft that can be deployed within two years, the solution mentions the possibility of refueling these platforms “to extend spacecraft lifespan, increase maneuverability for follow-on missions, and reduce replacement cadence.”

The project deadline is March 3.