🔷 MV-75 Fast-Track

January 18, 2026

🏈 Enjoy football playoffs this weekend, which will be much less enjoyable if you haven’t given up on dry January.

 

🚨 NEW POD! We chat with Christine Fox—the real-life Charlie from Top Gun—on these funky things called FFRDCs and UARCs. This is an inside baseball conversation, so if you work in deftech, it’s loaded with gems you won’t find anywhere else. Check it out on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Feed the algorithm—leave a rating and review!

In That Number

4%

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle recommended that U.S. defense spending be rebaselined to a "new normal" of at least 4% of GDP to support the ambitious "Golden Fleet" expansion.

On the Radar

L3Harris

SRM crunch. Despite the influx of solid rocket motor (SRM) companies, the DoD is still facing a "perilous crunch" in production. The issue isn’t the demand or the companies competing for contracts, but the unique chemicals in the supply chain that they all depend on. The list of choke points is long: ignition safety devices, nozzles, cases, and energetics.

  • The Merge’s Take: In a gold rush, there is a ton of money to be made in the boring ‘picks and shovels’ business. And there are a ton of SRM forty-niners (yes, where the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers gets its name), and one might even include the Pentagon. They announced a first-of-its-kind $1B direct-to-supplier investment with L3Harris to spin off their SRM business into its own company, with the Pentagon maintaining an equity stake. It sounds focused on production and scale (gold rush), though some details might not be public. For the picks and shovels, there are instances in the energetic supply chain where there is only 1 vendor in the entire U.S. industrial base. One example: HTPB-45M, a binding component that’s used in most SRMs. Helicon Chemical Company is trying to become the 2nd supplier, but is running into delays. #picksNshovels

 

Fortem

Replicator 2 lives. Joint Interagency Task Force 401 announced its first Replicator 2 (C-UAS) contract: the acquisition of 2 Fortem DroneHunter F700 systems. The F700 uses AI and radar to detect and track small drones and captures them with a tethered net system.

  • The Merge’s Take: It’s good to see that Replicator 2 lives on after its transfer from DIU. But with such a massive C-UAS threat surface, spinning up the Pentagon PR wheels over buying just 2 multicopters seems bonkers, almost like risk-averse government from yesteryear. Buy 200 then do a Pentagon press release. #dobetter

 

Bell

MV-75 fast-tracked. The Army has accelerated the Bell MV-75 fielding to late 2026—apparently years ahead of schedule.

  • The Merge’s Take: We don’t do Army math, but as of last year, the plan was to deliver the YMV-75 prototype(s) in FY2027 and get into early production in FY2028. But FY2027 starts October 2026, so if Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George is talking about the YMV-75, then presumably nothing has changed. But if he’s talking about early MV-75 production, that’s a BIG news story, given it would have to skip the operational prototype phase or concurrently start immediate MV-75 production while YMV-75 prototype learning is still going on….aka concurrency…aka the issue that plagued the early years of the F-35. Bell makes it sound like the latter, so buckle up for a ride on the pain train.

 

U.S. Army

Army software acquisition is going to get an overhaul. Army Undersecretary Michael Obadal announced that a new software directive will be released in the coming weeks to address the "color of money" issue that is stalling digital modernization.

  • The Merge’s Take: This is all about formalizing the use of what’s known as Budget Activity 08. BA-08 started in 2020 as a means to apply ‘colorless money’ for software projects. What began as a pilot program for R&D has slowly gained traction as a way to apply it broadly.

    [We’ll do a write-up on WTF ‘color of money’ is next week so this makes more sense]

TRIVIA

On this day in 1981, Iran released 52 American hostages who were held captive for 444 days.

The year prior, a rescue operation called Operation Eagle Claw failed, which led to a number of changes—including the creation of specialized units. Which of the following units was NOT created in the failed mission’s aftermath?

A) 1st SFOD-D (Delta Force)
B) 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Night Stalkers)
C) Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)

They Said It

“I maintained my composure the first time Dronebuster came up. This time I can’t…[it’s] fucking terrible.”

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll’s unvarnished opinion of the Dronebuster C-UAS system.

DZYNE Technologies, maker of the Dronebuster, clarified that the comments likely referred to an earlier variant—not the Block 4 that’s currently in use with soldiers.

We can only imagine the PR thrash from this off-the-cuff comment. With great power comes great responsibility.

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Knowledge Bombs

And finally…

  • The Army is seeking vendors for its $200M Long Range Precision Munition program, and continues a track record of terrible names. This is the ‘medium’ tranche within the ‘long range’ program, and the full name is a mouthful: Long Range Precision Munition Launched Effects – Medium Range (shortened to ‘LRPM Launched Effects – Medium Range,’ further shortened to ‘LE MR’ — an acronym nested in an acronym with another acronym) 🙃

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ANSWER
A) Delta Force was established in 1977, but Operation Eagle Claw was its first significant mission. The failed endeavor led to the creation of a unit to coordinate these types of operations (JSOC) as well as an Army unit purpose-built to support (160th SOAR).

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