Upgrades ahead across the special operations helicopter fleet
TAMPA, Fla. – Special operators are upgrading nearly every aspect of their helicopter fleet as they await the Army's newest addition to the rotary wing section.
From the MH-6 light attack assault 'Little Bird,' to the MH-60 medium attack assault 'Blackhawk,' to the MH-47 heavy assault 'Chinook,' officials who develop the aircraft showcased ongoing upgrades Thursday at the Global SOF Foundation Special Operations Forces Week.
Developers continue to tweak the Little Bird, the small but powerful aircraft unique to SOCOM.
'It is your streetfighter,' said Paul Kylander, product manger of the aircraft for Program Executive Office-Rotary Wing. 'When operators want to get to your front door, this is the aircraft they use.'
The 'R' model project is finding ways to lighten the aircraft for greater speed and range by resetting the entire fleet's fuselage with lighter materials.
Hegseth champions special operations as the force for today's threats
The project is also upgrading the cockpit for better avionics management and an advanced airborne tactical mission suite, Kylander said.
Those upgrades are part of ongoing efforts that will continue until 2034 for the aircraft. Then, plans call for a Block 4 upgrade or a possible divestment between 2035 to 2042.
They're also lightening main and auxiliary fuel tanks and both the attack and assault planks for the aircraft.
The MH-60 is seeing some of its own upgrades.
Software updates, navigation tools for degraded visual environments, improved sensors, sensor data fusion and next generation tactical communications are currently being installed on the MH-60 fleet, said Lt. Col. Cameron Keogh.
There's ongoing work to improve the engine life of the YT706 engine, and future efforts include building an open architecture common cockpit.
On the weapons side, the Blackhawk is adding the joint air-to-ground missile, a conformal lightweight armament wing, M-230 recoil dampers, the GAU-19 Gun Pod and a helmet display tracking system.
Those additions provide more options to Blackhawk crews.
'Having a quiver full of tools to do your job is pretty handy,' Keogh said.
The Blackhawk will also see an improved crew chief seat, AN/PQ-187 Silent Knight Radar nose door reconfiguration and upturned exhaust suppressor II, engine inlet barrier filter for dusty environments and the GE T901 Improved Turbine Engine.
On the heavy side, the MH47G Chinook is seeing increased demand for payloads, range and speed, said Lt. Col. Thomas Brewington, product manager for the Chinook at the PEO.
The oldest frame in the Chinook fleet will retire soon after 59 years of service, Brewington said.
But the aging platform is seeing its own set of advancements with a replacement of the existing flight control pallets, which augment manned flight by using a system called the Active Parallel Actuator Subsystem.
The system 'augments manned flight by providing tactile cueing to prevent the pilot from exceeding an aircraft performance limit resulting in increased safety and operational usage while reducing pilot workload during the most critical stages of flight,' Brewington said.
An October 2024 test of the system allowed a 'hands off' landing on a predesignated point by a Chinook crew at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, Brewington said.
The system is a 'stepping stone' to autonomous pilot assist, he said.
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3 hours ago
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Palantir, Meta, OpenAI, And Thinking Machines Just Had Their Executives Sworn Into The US Army Reserve
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WIRED
a day ago
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The other newly commissioned officers include Kevin Weil, OpenAI's head of product; Bob McGrew, a former OpenAI head of research now advising Mira Murati's company Thinking Machines Lab; and Shyam Sankar, the CTO of Palantir. These middle-aged tech execs were sworn into their posts wearing camo fatigues, as if they just wandered off some Army base in Kandahar, to join a corps that is named after an HTTP status code. (Colonel David Butler, communications adviser to the Army chief of staff, told me their dress uniforms weren't ready yet.) Detachment 201, wrote the Army in a press release, is part of a military-wide transformation initiative that 'aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal.' The Army's Executive Innovation Corps (EIC) commissioning ceremony in Conmy Hall, Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., June 13, 2025. Photograph: Leroy Council/DVIDS Don't blame Donald Trump for this. The program has been in the works for over a year, the brainchild of Brynt Parmeter, the Pentagon's first chief talent management officer. Parmeter, a former combat soldier who headed veteran support at Walmart before joining the Department of Defense in 2023, had been pondering how to bring experienced technologists into service to update an insufficiently tech-savvy militia when he met Sankar at a conference early last year. The idea, he says, was to create 'an Oppenheimer-like situation' where senior executives could serve right away, while keeping their current jobs. Both men collaborated on a plan to bring in people like, well, Sankar, who has been a vocal cheerleader of the Valley's recent embrace of the military, proclaiming that the US is in an 'undeclared state of emergency' that requires a tech-led military rehaul. When the Wall Street Journal wrote about the forthcoming program last October, Sankar vowed to be 'first in line.' In a sign that it's no longer taboo in the Valley to face the fact that its creations go hand in hand with boosting deadly force in the military, the program was fast-tracked and is now in operation. 'Ten years ago this probably would have gotten me canceled,' Weil told me. 'It's a much better state of the world where people look at this and go, 'Oh, wow, this is important. Freedom is not free.'' This is an essay from the latest edition of Steven Levy's Plaintext newsletter. SIGN UP for Plaintext to read the whole thing, and tap Steven's unique insights and unmatched contacts for the long view on tech. The four new officers are full members of the Army Reserve. Unlike other reservists, however, they will not be required to undergo basic training, though they will undergo less immersive fitness and shooting training after induction. They will also have the flexibility to spend some of the approximately 120 annual hours working remotely, a perk not offered to other reservists. The Army also says that these men will not be sent to battle, so they will not be risking their lives in potential theaters of war in Iran, Greenland, or downtown Los Angeles, California. Their mission is to use their undeniable expertise to school their colleagues and superiors in the military on how to utilize cutting-edge technologies for efficiency and deadly force. One might assume the Army would have done an extensive study of the specific talents required for this pilot program and pulled those people from an open call for the best candidates. That did not happen. Sankar helped recruit the other three future officers—all male, which by intention or coincidence seems to satisfy the anti-DEI bent of today's military—and they all accepted. According to Butler, 'Lieutenant Colonel Sankar said 'I want to wear the uniform. And I have three other guys willing to go with me.'' Weil confirms that he joined after a request from Sankar. (Parmeter said to me that since this is a pilot program with an unknown outcome, a closed process was appropriate.) Clearly, the four new officers genuinely want to serve their country. Weil, who I've known for years, told me that when Sankar explained the program, 'I was just like, 'Yes, I want to help—that sounds amazing.'' But during a wave of widespread unease over privileges of tech elite—did you see those disgusting billionaire bros on that show Mountainhead ?—special arrangements for well-off digital achievers seems tone-deaf. My big question is whether these men could have provided the same assistance from the private sector. Parmeter and Butler both cited precedent of cases where top executives were directly commissioned, including a top railway executive in 1917, the head of a gas and electric company in 1944, and the General Motors Company president in 1942. But those were full-time roles during world wars. 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The expertise they offer, however, seems inseparable from the sectors of AI, VR, and data mining at the center of their companies' business models. Maybe it's just bad timing, but the month before Bosworth was sworn in, Meta announced a deal with Anduril, a defense contractor co-founded by former fired employee Palmer Luckey, to pursue military contracts. Around the time Lt Col Weil raised a hand beside Boz, OpenAI announced a $200 million defense contract: it's also working with Anduril to develop an air defense system. Sankar's employer Palantir has billions of dollars worth of government deals, including a $759 million Army contract for advanced AI systems. (Thinking Machines Lab, which McGrew advises, is still in semi-stealth, so there's no news of its plans for military contracts.) 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'But if we're off supporting an exercise somewhere, it's different that we're wearing the same uniform, having taken the same oath.' A more serious consequence might come from these men having dual loyalty when setting policy at their private companies. Companies like Meta, Open AI, and Thinking Machines Lab are helping create superintelligence that could profoundly impact the world. OpenAI is among those companies that prohibit their models from being used to harm others, and that includes developing weapons. But the mission of the US military is exactly the opposite. Working inside the Army, these recruits are explicitly charged with making the technologies more lethal—in fact, in a hearing this very week, Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll told Senators that the Army Transformation Initiative, which involves Detachment 201, will eliminate programs that do not contribute to lethality. Who will these officers be serving when they make those determinations? (Weil emphatically tells me that his service is a personal matter, and in any case there are plenty of uses for AI in the military that don't involve killing.) When I brought this issue up to Parmeter, he said that when determining the direction of future AI at their companies, the officers' wider perspective would be a plus. Then again, Parmeter did mention Oppenheimer, who created the atom bomb. Bottom line: Sankar, Bosworth, Weil, and McGrew are soldiers now, even if critics are already accusing them of being rich tech bros cosplaying the real thing. Considering the optics, they would do well to avoid any chest-thumping. Weil displayed humility when I spoke to him. But an op-ed Sankar wrote in the Free Press to explain his motives hit a sour note. Though much of it set out the benefits of a private tech industry in sync with the military, and his family's inspiring American immigrant story (which might not have happened under current Trump policies), he veered into self-aggrandizement. 'None of these men need to pad their résumé,' he wrote of his Detachment 201 blood brothers and, by implication, himself. 'None have free time between fatherhood, demanding day jobs, and a dozen other demands. But all feel called to serve.' Forgive me for thinking that their sacrifices rank in the bottom rung of what the vast majority of soldiers experience. In our conversation,Weil, again, was humble about becoming an instant senior officer, a rank given to reflect his achievements in private life. 'I'm still a little bit sensitive to the title, because there's so many people that have given their lives or spent their lives dedicated to this,' he told me. 'So I want to earn the title.' I have no idea how their Army-mates will regard them, but all who hold lower ranks, including life-long soldiers and veterans of combat, will be required to salute the Detachment 201 lieutenant colonels on sight. According to Butler, these overnight officers haven't yet mastered the art of crisply returning those salutes. 'They've got a bit of work to do,' he told me. Weil is correct when he says that a decade ago, Silicon Valley would have condemned him for accepting his post. He was working for Facebook as Instagram's head of product during the time that Luckey was tossed out of the company for supporting Donald Trump and lavishingly expressing his fondness for the military. In my book Facebook: The Inside Story I describe how in 2016 Palmer Luckey alienated Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook workforce—by acting like Zuckerberg would act in 2025. All is copesetic now as the two are partners in developing VR technology for today's military. 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Business Insider
4 days ago
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Tech execs are joining the Army — no grueling boot camp required
Four top tech execs from OpenAI, Meta, and Palantir have just joined the US Army — no obstacle courses, shouted orders, or grueling marches required. The Army Reserve has commissioned these senior tech leaders to serve as mid-level officers, skipping tradition to pursue transformation. The newcomers won't attend any current version of the military's most basic and ingrained rite of passage— boot camp. Instead, they'll be ushered in through express training Army leaders are still hashing out, said Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman to the Chief of Staff of the Army, in a phone interview with Business Insider. "They'll do marksmanship training, physical training, they'll learn the Army rank structure and history, and uniforms," Butler explained. Of the boot camp-lite plans, "you could think of it as a pilot," he said, adding that the new soldiers are a part of the Army's larger effort to rapidly modernize. The execs — Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer for OpenAI — are joining the Army as lieutenant colonels, according to an Army press statement as part of an effort to turbocharge tech innovation and adoption. The service's decision to allow the four to skip "direct commissioning" boot camp, a shortened version of regular officer boot camp, is unusual, though not without historical precedence, Butler said. "The Army has allowed the direct commission of civilians since 1861 to bring experts with critically needed skills into the force," he wrote in an email to BI. William Atterbury, the president of the American Railway Association, received a direct commission into the Army in 1917 and served as the director-general of transportation for Allied Expeditionary Forces in France. Other notable examples include the president of the Columbia Gas and Electric Corporation of New York, Edward Reynolds, who commissioned as an Army colonel to serve as chief of the Medical Supply Service during World War II, and General Motors leader, William Knudsen, who direct commissioned as a lieutenant general and became the director of production for the War Department. The new tech lieutenant colonels will have to adhere to Army standards, Butler said, and will be expected to perform the service's annual fitness test to stay in good standing. They will spend around two weeks per year working, roughly the minimum required for military reservists. The name of their unit, "Detachment 201" is named for the "201" status code generated when a new resource is created for Hyper Text Transfer Protocols in internet coding, Butler explained. "In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems," read an Army press release. "By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal." Lethality, a vague Pentagon buzzword, has been at the heart of the massive modernization and transformation effort the Army is undergoing to build a force that is capable of fighting and winning 21st-century conflicts. The Army isn't currently planning a second wave of direct commission industry leaders and still has to get these new additions through an express version of basic training, though more similar iterations are expected down the road, Butler said, noting increased interest from other private sector leaders. It is common for the services to bring aboard officers at mid-level ranks — the vast majority of military officers join as second lieutenants, or at the rank of O-1. Historically, chaplains, veterinarians, and medical providers have been allowed to join the Army at slightly higher ranks. Other recent initiatives allow for a wider variety of commissions for highly skilled civilian workers from tech and cyber sectors, in some cases up to the rank of colonel, one level below a general.
