A Ukrainian serviceman inspects a first-person-view drone provided by the Come Back Alive foundation to a Ukrainian Airborne Brigade amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine in Kyiv on Feb. 14, 2024. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters/File photo)
AUSA stepped in with a $1 million donation to cover travel costs and fly in Army officers from around the world, allowing the service to continue its meetings with industry and push ahead on modernization plans.
Driscoll said the Army sees drones and counter-drones as "different sides of the same coin," noting that future soldiers will need to be proficient at both. "You can’t really defend against one without being an expert in the other," he said.
The service is also developing defensive networks that merge sensors and interceptors to protect key assets from aerial threats. "We’re using new technologies like drones to create a sensing layer that, paired with interceptors, will essentially allow us to build mini ‘Iron Domes’ over protected assets," Driscoll said.
PENTAGON EXPLORING COUNTER-DRONE SYSTEMS TO PREVENT INCURSIONS OVER NATIONAL SECURITY FACILITIES
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll briefed reporters on Army modernization. (Cheriss May/Getty Images )
Wright said the program aims to replicate the reliability of nuclear propulsion in Navy submarines. "These engines are installed, they run the life of the submarine without refueling," he said. "That changed the game for our Navy. And I think we can do the same thing for our Army with small reactors that can be deployed in all different settings."
The Janus reactors, which will be developed in partnership with the Department of Energy, are designed to be small and transportable. Driscoll said each would be shielded with armor-grade materials — "the same material you put around a tank" — and protected by the same layered sensor and drone network envisioned for base defense.
One of the biggest hurdles to scaling microreactors is uranium enrichment. The reactors require high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) — a higher concentration of uranium-235 than is currently produced for civilian use.
(Iryna Rybakova/Press Service of the 93rd Kholodnyi Yar Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces/Handout via Reuters)
"Nobody produces it today," Wright told reporters. "Congress allocated some money a couple of years ago, but it’s been sat on too long. We’ll be giving awards to accelerate the rise of American-owned enrichment capacity in America."
Wright said the goal is to restore the domestic uranium supply chain and eliminate reliance on foreign sources. "We built 100 reactors quickly, providing 20 percent of U.S. electricity — and then it stagnated for decades," he said. "Now nuclear provides around 5 percent of global energy output. This is deeply disappointing."
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Safety and security will be top concerns as the Army moves forward. "From a cyber perspective, no one is going to allow a nuclear reactor that is remotely operated," Dr. Jeff Waksman, the Army official in charge of the Janus Program, said. "They’ll be connected by fiber optic — there’s no remote operation possibility."
Waksman added that the reactors’ small size and design make them unattractive proliferation targets. The goal of the project is an eventual global scale, but for now, "these will be in the 50 U.S. states, not deployed to the front," he said. "They’re small targets, with very small amounts of material inside."
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