The potential deal was made possible by the U.S. Department of State’s approval of a Foreign Military Sale to Italy of 5,031 BAE Systems Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) II guidance systems.

The APKWS, which can be inserted between the warhead of an unguided missile and its motor, features four fold-out wings which each carry a laser seeker, turning a missile that costs less than €100,000 ($117,000) into a guided weapon.

The solution would allow the Italian Air Force to avoid firing missiles like the AMRAAM – which costs ten times that – to destroy cheaply produced drones.

“The proposed sale will improve Italy’s capability to meet current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense and serving as a deterrent to regional threats,” the State Department said.

The FMS approval also covers launchers, warheads and rocket motors, as well as technical support, taking the potential deal to $364 million, the State Department added.

Sources in Italy told Defense News no contract had been signed and the technology was still being evaluated. The likely recipient of the APKWS would be Italy’s Eurofighter jet, which is already guarding Europe’s borders against drone incursions.

This month, an Italian Eurofighter taking part in NATO air policing mission in the Baltics shot down an unidentified drone which flew into Latvian airspace.

In May, the Royal Air Force announced it was already using the system on its Eurofighters after a rapid acquisition which saw testing and deployment completed in two months.

“The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) gives RAF pilots a highly accurate option to destroy aerial targets and allows them to engage drones at a fraction of the cost of traditional air-to-air missiles,” the RAF said at the time.

The United States, which has been at war with Iran since Feb. 28, requested their temporary deployment under an agreement governing the joint use of military facilities.

Iran said at the time that their deployment would constitute complicity in “aggression and war crimes”, a charge that Sofia dismissed.

The two U.S. Air Force KC-135 planes left Bulgaria on Friday, Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told reporters.

The U.S. authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.

The deployment of the aircraft, approved by Bulgaria’s parliament on July 22, led to protests by nearby residents who feared the planes would be attacked by Iranian missiles and drones.

Stoyanov said all the aircraft’s flights during their temporary deployment had been training missions over allied countries and that Bulgaria had “no information about direct threats to our national security.”

“We are working in full coordination with the U.S. government and had prior information, which is why all our decisions were well-founded,” he said.

India’s Defense Ministry told parliament this month it had “initiated efforts in a concerted manner to co-join” the effort.

The ministry stated earlier this year that India would try to join one of the two consortia working on a new generation fighter aircraft – at that time one involved France, Germany and Spain. The second includes the UK, Italy and Japan.

In June, however, France and Germany abandoned their joint effort to develop the landmark combat fighter at the heart of the program, opening the door for Paris to collaborate with a new partner.

India is exploring a potential partnership with France at a time when New Delhi lags behind in key fighter jet technologies, particularly engine development, and is also trying to beef up the fleet strength of its air force.

At the moment, India’s most advanced fighter jets are its 4.5-generation French Rafales.

The country is also pursuing a domestic project to develop a multirole fifth-generation fighter, with a prototype flight targeted for later this decade.

However sixth-generation fighters are expected to incorporate technologies that go beyond the stealth and advanced radar capabilities of fifth-generation aircraft. The futuristic jets center on a core fighter jet supported by drones and powered by what has been described as a “combat cloud.”

India’s objective in exploring a partnership with France, analysts say, is to gain access to advanced capabilities needed to develop the next generation of combat aircraft.

“India still has to transition to fifth-generation technologies so it would be good to make a parallel start on a sixth generation program to bridge the serious gap we face. That is why it is a good idea to get in with a grouping or a consortia working on the next generation fighter,” retired Air Marshal Anil Chopra told Defense News. “And some of the sixth-generation technologies that we may acquire might also be helpful as we develop our fifth generation program.”

In a report presented in Parliament on Aug. 9, a parliamentary committee which scrutinizes defense policies recommended that the defense ministry “step forward the planning process” for the development and acquisition of sixth-generation (6G) aircraft to enhance India’s air domain capabilities.

Analysts say China’s rapid air modernization is a major strategic consideration for India as it initiates efforts to join a development program for a next-generation jet.

“It has been a perpetual problem in Indian defense policy that India tends to lag almost one or two cycles behind what others are doing. But that space is no longer available given how rapidly air power is evolving and how quickly China is developing its capabilities,” according to Harsh Pant, the vice president of studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

Analysts say discussions with France are likely to focus on issues such as a role in industrial participation, design and development, and access to intellectual property.

“At the moment India is engaged in exploratory discussions with France. We will want industrial workshare, but engine and radar technologies will have to come from French companies. So talks will center on what technology will be offered to India. France seems to be more open to sharing technology,” said Air Marshal Chopra.

India has a longstanding defense relationship with France, particularly in the aerospace sector. Besides the Rafales already deployed by the Indian Air Force, the two countries are presently engaged in negotiations for 114 more Rafale fighters for New Delhi, whose purchase India has approved.

“India needs a trusted partner as it tries to secure a place in the next generation technology cycle before it becomes too difficult or too expensive to catch up, and France is a good fit. It has been willing to engage in defense cooperation with New Delhi without the same political lens or considerations that some other suppliers have,” said Pant.

Dassault Aviation CEO Eric Trappier has repeatedly said that France has the know-how and the technology to independently develop a next-generation fighter jet.

The hiccup is that France’s public finances are under significant strain, with the country having one of the European Union’s highest debt burdens and largest budget deficits, complicating the funding of a future fighter project that may cost tens of billions of euros.

France is currently the only country in Western Europe with a fully sovereign, end-to-end modern fighter ecosystem, centered around the domestically developed Rafale. The fighter is built by Dassault Aviation, with avionics and radar supplied by Thales, an after-burning turbofan engine developed by Safran, and a range of missiles supplied by MBDA.

Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris contributed to this report.

The goal is to create a variant of the SeaSparrow that can be used by the 12 nations in the NATO SeaSparrow Project Office consortium, or NSPO, according to the Navy Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Oct. 19.

The NSPO is looking for a weapon that can be employed against a wide variety of threats. The NSV SeaSparrow “should have capability against current and future threat classes spanning a variety of threat characteristics including velocity (low-speed to high-speed), altitude (sea skimming to high diver), maneuverability (non-maneuvering to high Gravitational (G)-Force maneuvers), and signatures,” the Navy said.

The NSV is also meant to defend the fleet against massed salvos of missiles and function despite jamming.

The weapon “should be able to work in complex natural, contested, Radio Frequency (RF), Electro-Optical (EO), and/or Infrared (IR) environments.”

“The missile should have the capability to discriminate and resolve between multiple closely spaced targets and provide threat-track measurements to support missile guidance, navigation and lethality functions,” the Sources Sought notice continues. “The missile should have the capability to handle threat countermeasures.”

The notice included a graphic that appeared to depict surface ships — including two aircraft carriers — being targeted by a dozen missiles and torpedoes, plus a hostile fixed-wing aircraft and a helicopter. The friendly ships appeared to be using active illumination to paint some threats, while the SeaSparrow used its on-board sensors to intercept others.

NSPO seeks a modular, open-source design that would give the U.S. government “maximum rights in technical data, computer software, and computer software documentation (including source code), design artifacts, and interface specifications.”

“This approach will simplify future upgrades, promote interoperability across consortium platforms, and outpace evolving threats,” the notice said.

The NSPO wants contractors who can provide a complete missile system, including airframe, propulsion, guidance and software. The missile should have no more than a 10-inch diameter and fit inside a Mark 41 vertical launch tube.

The Sources Sought notice emphasized that the missile and its technical data should be releasable to the entire NATO SEASPARROW Consortium: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. Other users include Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

The Block II RIM-162 Evolved SeaSparrow is currently manufactured by Raytheon, which doubled production to more than 350 missiles in 2025. Amid naval operations in the Persian Gulf, where Iran has launched numerous missiles and drones against dwindling stocks of U.S. and allied interceptors, future demand for short-range air defense weapons is likely to be brisk.

First fielded in 2004, the Evolved SeaSparrow is descended from the 1950s AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided air-to-air missile.

Though the original Sparrow had a mixed combat record as an aerial combat weapon in the Vietnam War, the Evolved SeaSparrow was intended as a low-cost defense against anti-ship missiles, aircraft, helicopters and fast attack boats. The current version has an estimated range of around 30 miles.

The U.S. ‌has supplied large amounts of arms to allies while also using munitions in the Iran conflict, raising concerns about inventories of air defense and precision-guided weapons.

“We called on industry to rapidly scale up munitions output, and RTX is delivering,” Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao said in an X post. “This landmark Tomahawk contract ensures our warfighters continue to have the lethal firepower they need.”

In a separate statement, Raytheon said the contract would run for seven years and would allow annual Tomahawk production to increase to more than 1,000 missiles. The company currently makes just 60 a year.

The sea-launched Tomahawk, a mainstay of the Navy’s surface fleet, provides long-range precision strike capability against land targets from ships and submarines.

The formal announcement firms up a framework agreement that the U.S. military and Raytheon signed in February.

The administration of President Donald Trump is brokering multi-year deals with the biggest U.S. defense contractors, giving the companies confidence to invest billions of dollars in new facilities and equipment.

Earlier this month, the military signed deals to ramp up production of Patriot and THAAD interceptor missile parts.

Boeing’s BSU-111/B Payload Delivery Unit is a wing-and-turbojet engine kit that converts a 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) into a long-range JDAM (JDAM LR) dubbed the GBU-75. The result is a gravity bomb with the reach of a cruise missile.

Boeing said it has spent nearly $100 million of its own money on the program.

“Scaling production of the GBU-75 will provide the fleet with an affordable, sustainable solution designed to eliminate long-range land and sea-based threats to U.S. and international forces,” said Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems.

The BSU-111/B wing-and-engine kit is the latest modification to the JDAM family, which has previously seen the gravity bomb receive a tail kit that steered it roughly 15 nautical miles and a wing kit that further stretched that distance to 40.

The Kratos-designed TDI-J85 engine pushes that past 300.

The JDAM LR’s capabilities go beyond land strikes. The QuickStrike Long Range mining variant pairs it with a bomb carrying a ship-tracking sensor. Boeing has shown concepts loading large numbers onto Air Force bombers, though no Air Force buy has been announced.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, buys JDAM for both the Air Force and U.S. Navy. The first GBU-75s are bound for the Navy.

The Navy demonstrated the weapon back in April, when Super Hornets released two JDAM LRs over the Point Mugu Sea Range off California.

The April 1 round separated cleanly, fired up its engine and flew 34 minutes before landing within meters of its target. The April 3 round added altitude changes and maneuvering. Each covered roughly 200 nautical miles.

When announcing those tests in April, Capt. Sarah Abbott, the Navy’s Precision Strike Weapons program manager, emphasized the need to give the fleet’s JDAMs greater standoff range.

“As Naval Air Forces in theater continue to rely heavily on JDAM systems, the program recognizes a critical need to provide the fleet with greater standoff range,” she said. “This new capability allows pilots to engage targets from significantly safer distances, maintaining a tactical advantage in contested environments.”

Reusing existing infrastructure is a key aspect of the program’s appeal.

Navy budget documents describe JDAM LR as a modification to the baseline program, built on the existing production line and guidance hardware. Any jet that can drop a conventional JDAM can carry the new variant without modification, according to Boeing’s release.

The award, which had not appeared in the Pentagon’s daily contract announcements as of Aug. 5, is an undefinitized action, meaning Boeing began work before the two sides agreed on a price. The Government Accountability Office has long called these contracts risky because contractors are reimbursed for allowable costs, regardless.

Boeing’s release did not say how many GBU-75s the contract buys, how much they cost or when deliveries begin.

“The current industrial base has demonstrated significant challenges, including production delays, quality control issues, and critical obsolescence (i.e., diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages) across key engine components,” warned the Air Force’s Request for Information. The deadline is Aug. 28.

“The government will pursue a strategic competition requiring industry to innovate manufacturing and guarantee supply chain resiliency,” the RFI said.

The initiative comes as the Air Force struggles with its jet engines.

For example, F-35 fighter deliveries and upgrades have been delayed by engine issues, with a Government Accountability Office report noting last year that “the engine contractor is still not delivering engines to contract specifications after 20 years of production.”

Meanwhile, B-52 modernization has been stalled in part by engine issues that have raised costs by $3 billion and delayed initial operational capability by 15 months, according to GAO.

In turn, the Air Force is now embarking on a multiyear fighter engine procurement project that envisions more than 180 engines per year by 2034. The RFI specifically cites engines for the F-15EX and F-16.

The RFI promises “five foundational pillars designed to drive a paradigm shift in engine procurement and sustainment,” as the government shifts from “legacy procurement toward incentivizing industry-led technological evolution and capacity expansion.” These include “holding vendors accountable” for delivering new engines that are more capable, reliable and cheaper.

The Air Force will focus “on the total lifecycle cost of the engine, not just the initial purchase price.”

Contractors are also responsible for ensuring reliable supply chains.

“We will implement an acquisition strategy that prioritizes ease of maintenance and establishes a resilient, sustainable supply chain from day one,” the Air Force said. “This effort is designed to solve key fleet-level issues by requiring a newer engine with improved supportability.”

“The result is a streamlined logistics footprint that reduces downtime, lowers the burden on our maintainers, and ensures the continuous flow of parts and support to maximize flightline readiness.”

Ultimately, the question is whether the U.S. defense industrial base can deliver. The Air Force intends to “enforce stringent producibility requirements.”

“We will select a partner capable of scaling production to meet surge requirements, guaranteeing a steady and uninterrupted supply of engines for USAF/FMS [Foreign Military Sales] aircraft (e.g. F-15EX and F-16) programs,” the RFI reads.

Companies responding to the RFI are asked to provide a variety of details, such as a timeline for developing and manufacturing an engine. They should also specify “at what minimum volume your supply chain can justify private capital investments (such as facility expansion, tooling modernization, or advanced automation) and how those investments will structurally lower your long-term unit costs.”

With nations competing to obtain raw materials — and China restricting sales of rare earths — the Air Force wants to be certain manufacturers can find the raw materials they need.

“From your company’s market perspective, what are the primary raw material constraints (e.g., specialized titanium/nickel alloys) or manufacturing process bottlenecks (e.g., advanced casting or forging capacity) that pose the highest risk to scaling up fighter engine production?” the RFI asks.

Lorenzo Mariani, Leonardo’s CEO and General Manager, said: “The introduction of the M-346F in Indonesia provides clear evidence not only of the aircraft system’s inherent quality, but also of the country’s continued and yet growing trust in our capabilities across domains.”

Leonardo said the sale “includes the localization of a range of support, maintenance, overhaul and training capabilities, as well as human capital development.”

The Italian-built M-346 is well known as an advanced jet trainer, but the F variant is a dedicated, multirole, light fighter. It has an active electronically scanned array radar, Link 16 data link, seven hardpoints for carrying weapons, aerial refueling capability and electronic countermeasures system.

The first M-346s should be handed over to Jakarta in 2030. This will make Indonesia the 23rd operator of the M-346, but the first Asian customer of the newest Block 20 variant.

“Just eight months after the first order, strong and rapid global demand for the latest version of the aircraft clearly demonstrates it is meeting customer requirements,” reads a Leonardo statement. The firm said the M-346 has logged 170,000+ flight hours to date.

Indonesia is currently inducting Dassault’s Rafale fighter, but the air force maintains a hotchpotch fleet that includes the American F-16, Russian Su-27/Su-30 and Korean T-50i.

Jakarta invested in the Korean KF-21’s development, and it has also professed devotion to the Turkish Kaan. However, neither has resulted in production contracts yet. Indonesia’s defense minister has also expressed a desire for the Chinese J-10.

If all these aspirations came true, Indonesia would end up operating perhaps the world’s most complicated and varied fleet of combat aircraft.

“The Indonesian Armed Forces have been facing existing challenges related to interoperability,” Alban Sciascia, director of consultancy firm PT Semar Sentinel Indonesia, told Defense News. “It’s no secret that Indonesia has been focusing on procuring different equipment from different countries, as part of its diversification strategy, and that its joint operations concept is limited because of the relative inability to get all this equipment interoperating on the battlefield.”

Meanwhile, Leonardo, PT ESystem Solutions and the Indonesian Ministry of Defense also signed a letter of intent on July 21 for the prospective procurement of Leonardo AW149 medium helicopters for the Indonesian Navy.

“If followed by a contract, this could lead to the supply of AW149 helicopters for search and rescue and disaster relief, for both land-based and embarked operations,” Leonardo said in a statement.

The navy currently operates eleven Airbus AS565 Panther helicopters, but as guardian of the world’s largest archipelagic waters, it has a requirement for more shipboard helicopters.

The country’s security council, KYSEA, gave its initial approval earlier this year and approved the procurement contracts on Thursday, Nikos Dendias told journalists.

Greece wants to build a multi-layer anti-ballistic, anti-aircraft and anti-drone system, called “Achilles Shield,” with Israeli radars and missiles from Rafael and IAI defense companies forming the core of the system.

“It will be ready and fully operational within 35 months, starting from today,” said Nikos Dendias, adding that companies in Greece will produce at least 25% of the system.

Greece, which currently uses U.S. Patriot and old Russian S-300 systems to protect its airspace, plans to spend about €28 billion by 2036 to modernize its armed forces.

This includes buying up to 40 new F-35 fighter jets from the United States and frigates from France and Italy.

Dendias said that KYSEA had also approved the purchase of three C-390 military transport aircraft, 10 British-built VICTA mini-submarines for special operations, U.S. V-BAT unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Heron UAVs from Israel.

Greece spends nearly 3.5% of its gross domestic product on defense, a higher proportion than many fellow NATO countries, due to its long-standing dispute with Turkey.

With strong economic and diplomatic ties, Greece and Israel operate an air training centre on Greek territory, hold joint military annual drills and cooperate on anti-drone systems and cybersecurity.

Last year, Athens bought 36 Israeli-made rocket artillery systems for about €650 million.

The U.K.’s biggest defense company showcased a model of its new jet, Brontanax, derived from the ancient Greek words for thunder and king, at the Farnborough Airshow. It is about the size of a Hawk trainer and would be ready to start flight testing next year, BAE said.

As the global threat level rises and western nations re-arm, defense chiefs say the lesson from the Ukraine war is clear: nations need to control the skies to avoid Ukrainian-style attritional trench warfare and that requires air forces to bulk up.

BAE enters an increasingly crowded market for so-called Collaborative Combat Aircraft, with Airbus, Boeing, Anduril and General Atomics among a growing number of companies competing for business at Farnborough in a sector expected to expand rapidly.

Often described as “loyal wingmen,” CCAs are designed to fly alongside piloted aircraft and are expected to cost roughly a third as much as a traditional fighter jet.

Crowded marketplace

Britain’s new Defence Secretary Wes Streeting, who was appointed on Monday, said it was a “groundbreaking moment.”

“We will adopt this as our operational concept demonstrator, and we’re going to get it in the air in 2027,” he said at the airshow.

BAE has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in its CCA, pushing ahead without the government co-investment which usually underpins new platforms.

“We’ve put our money where our mouth is,” CEO Charles Woodburn told Reuters.

“We could see where the market was going,” he added, saying he hopes to secure a U.K. order, and that other countries in Europe and the Middle East could follow, with some already showing an interest.

BAE has developed Brontanax alongside the Royal Air Force, in a project dating back to 2022, and already has a fully assembled aircraft at its Warton facility in northwest England. It could enter service by 2030, BAE said.

That timeline compares to Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, on display at Farnborough, which has already started flight testing, and could be flying for Australia by 2028.

BAE said its CCA offered more stealth than rivals and it was aiming for it to have 70% to 80% of the capabilities of a fighter jet and to come in at under 25% of the cost, which could give it a price tag of around $25 million.

Its open architecture and modular design will allow software upgrades and changes to easily be made, with BAE looking at non-military suppliers to help with the build.

Britain said in its defense investment plan earlier in July that it would spend an initial £300 million ($401 million) to launch a sovereign CCA program it has named Storm Fighter.