Navy's UAV Acquisition Overhaul

Navy's UAV Programs Largely Excluded From New $19B Unmanned Systems Portfolio

BLUF: The Navy's new Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems will consolidate 66 unmanned programs worth $19 billion over five years, but excludes the service's three major UAV programs—MQ-25 Stingray, MQ-4C Triton, and MQ-9A Reaper—worth $15.3 billion. This bifurcated structure undermines the reorganization's stated goal of improving coordination and technical standardization across Navy unmanned aviation, while assigning the new portfolio office high-risk surface and subsurface programs on compressed timelines that will test whether organizational reform can actually accelerate capability delivery.

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The U.S. Navy's most ambitious acquisition reorganization in decades will consolidate up to 66 unmanned programs under a single Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Robotic and Autonomous Systems, but a critical limitation revealed in the draft implementation plan significantly constrains the effort's potential impact on unmanned aviation: the Navy's three major UAV programs remain outside the new portfolio structure.

The MQ-25A Stingray carrier-based tanker, MQ-4C Triton maritime surveillance aircraft, and Marine Corps MQ-9A Reaper—collectively representing $15.3 billion in investment over the next five years—will not fall under PAE RAS authority, according to a draft consolidation plan reviewed by USNI News. This exclusion means 45% of Navy unmanned systems funding remains under traditional Program Executive Office management, perpetuating the organizational fragmentation the consolidation was designed to eliminate.

"This is our first PAE and they are moving," acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition Jason Potter said in November 2024 while speaking at the American Society of Naval Engineers conference. The reorganization follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's "Arsenal of Freedom" speech emphasizing speed as the organizing principle for defense acquisition reform.

However, the decision to exclude the Navy's most mature and operationally significant unmanned aircraft raises fundamental questions about the portfolio's scope, authority, and ability to enforce the cross-platform coordination and technical standardization that constitute the primary rationale for consolidation.

What's In, What's Out: The $34 Billion Split

The PAE RAS will oversee approximately $19 billion in unmanned systems acquisitions over the next five years across a diverse portfolio of primarily surface and subsurface platforms, according to the draft plan. The portfolio spans programs from early concept development through low-rate production, unified under a single acquisition executive reporting directly to the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition.

Major programs included in PAE RAS:

• Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC): Congress provided $2.1 billion from the Reconciliation Act supplemental for this program, which supersedes previous Large and Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicle efforts. MASC will notionally carry two 40-foot shipping containers and cruise at 25 knots for 2,500 nautical miles, providing distributed magazine capacity for weapons like the containerized MK-70 Typhon launcher that fields Tomahawk and Standard Missiles.

• Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG): This effort, receiving $1.53 billion from the Reconciliation Act for small unmanned surface vessels, emerged from the Replicator Initiative to address specific operational problems including potential Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan. The program supports the Pentagon's "hellscape" concept—swarming aerial, surface and subsea drones to attack adversaries.

• Extra Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (XLUUV): The submarine-launched UUV program is currently transitioning away from Boeing's Orca design, according to the draft plan.

• Small unmanned systems: Including the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft (being transitioned away from Black Sea Industries), small destroyer-based UAVs, and various developmental platforms.

• Enabling technologies: Command and control software, autonomy systems, and other cross-cutting capabilities.

Major programs excluded from PAE RAS:

• MQ-25A Stingray: Boeing's carrier-based aerial refueling system represents the Navy's most mature unmanned carrier aviation effort, with Initial Operating Capability planned for 2026. The FY2025 budget included approximately $1.4 billion for the program, which will procure 76 aircraft. The MQ-25 achieved its first carrier landing in 2021 and is progressing through developmental testing and low-rate production at Boeing's MidAmerica facility.

• MQ-4C Triton: Northrop Grumman's maritime surveillance platform, based on the Global Hawk airframe, has achieved operational status with aircraft deployed to Guam for Indo-Pacific surveillance. The Navy requested $823 million for FY2025, supporting procurement toward a 68-aircraft program of record. The Multi-Function Active Sensor radar upgrade begins integration in 2025.

• MQ-9A Reaper: The Marine Corps' variant of the Air Force's hunter-killer UAV provides persistent ISR and strike capabilities for expeditionary operations.

The exclusion of these programs fundamentally limits the PAE's ability to function as a true portfolio manager for Navy unmanned aviation. Any common technical standards, control system architectures, or autonomy approaches enforced within the PAE RAS portfolio will need to be negotiated with—rather than mandated across—the platforms that represent the bulk of Navy UAV investment and operational employment.

Strategic Context: Speed Meets Reality

The PAE RAS establishment reflects the Pentagon's broader push to accelerate capability delivery in response to Chinese military modernization. Secretary Hegseth's November 7, 2024 speech laid out the new acquisition philosophy.

"Speed to delivery is now our organizing principle," Hegseth said. "If our warfighters die or our country loses because we took too long to get them what they needed, we have failed. It is that simple. The sense of urgency has slipped too much, and when you look at what we face, we have to recapture it."

The draft PAE plan, assembled by a review led by RDA military deputy Vice Adm. Seiko Okano, positions the Navy as an early adopter of this reform approach. The PAE's first two major tasks directly reflect the urgency imperative:

Leading the MASC competition with $2.1 billion in Congressional funding and expectations for rapid contract award and accelerated delivery. The program must demonstrate that distributed magazine concepts can be fielded quickly to address near-term operational gaps in surface warfare capacity.

Managing DAWG acquisition with $1.53 billion for small USVs supporting the hellscape operational concept. The Navy has established small USV test units to inform development, but transitioning experimental concepts into acquisition programs of record typically requires years of requirements refinement, technology maturation, and testing—timelines that conflict with the Secretary's emphasis on speed.

Both programs represent high-visibility, high-risk efforts with immature technologies, unclear requirements, and compressed schedules. Assigning them as the PAE's inaugural responsibilities creates substantial pressure to demonstrate rapid results while simultaneously establishing new organizational structures, hiring staff, defining processes, and absorbing 66 programs from 18 different offices.

"Every time you reorganize, you create 6-12 months of reduced productivity while people figure out who they report to, what their authorities are, and how to navigate new processes," said one defense industry executive with three decades of Navy program experience. "The contractors lose their established relationships with government program managers. Decision-making slows while everyone waits to see what the new structure actually means."

The Requirements Problem: Unchanged

The most persistent challenge in Navy UAV development has been requirements instability driven by competing stakeholder interests—a problem that organizational restructuring alone cannot solve, particularly when requirements generation remains entirely separate from acquisition management.

Requirements for Navy capabilities continue flowing from the Chief of Naval Operations through Naval Warfare Development Command, warfare development centers, and the Requirements Oversight Council process. These organizations remain independent of PAE RAS, meaning the portfolio manager will receive requirements from multiple stakeholder communities with potentially conflicting priorities but will lack authority to directly shape requirements generation.

"You can reorganize the acquisition side all you want, but if the requirements process continues generating unstable, unaffordable requirements, you haven't solved the fundamental problem," said a Government Accountability Office analyst. "The organizational boundary between requirements generation and acquisition execution is where problems occur, and this reorganization doesn't address that boundary."

The MQ-25 program illustrates both the problem and a potential path forward. Originally conceived in 2006 as the Unmanned Combat Air System Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) emphasizing strike capabilities, the program evolved through Carrier-Based Aerial Refueling System (CBARS) before becoming MQ-25 with reduced specifications to control costs and accelerate fielding. These requirement shifts reflected organizational politics—competition between strike warfare, carrier aviation, requirements generation, and acquisition communities.

Ultimately, MQ-25 stabilized not through organizational structure but through disciplined requirements scoping, mature technology selection, experienced contractor management, and incremental development planning with Block upgrades for future capability growth. The program's relative success occurred entirely outside any portfolio management framework.

The PAE theoretically possesses organizational standing to adjudicate requirements disputes more rapidly than individual program managers. However, without formal authority to question or reject requirements from the CNO staff, the portfolio manager faces the same constraints as traditional program executives—receiving requirements rather than shaping them.

For the PAE's small destroyer-based UAV program, requirements instability risks loom large. Destroyer commanders want maximum capability in minimal space, aviation communities prioritize safety and reliability, fleet commanders demand affordability and availability, and operational commands envision multiple conflicting mission sets from over-the-horizon targeting to electronic warfare to close-in surveillance. Without clear mechanisms for adjudicating these competing demands, the program will face the same requirements conflicts that plagued previous efforts like the MQ-8 Fire Scout, which experienced requirements creep that drove the shift from smaller MQ-8B to larger MQ-8C airframes, schedule delays, and cost growth.

Budget Realities: Constrained Flexibility

The PAE RAS's $19 billion portfolio represents substantial resources but less flexibility than the portfolio structure might suggest. Congressional appropriations remain tied to specific program elements, and statutory limits constrain the Navy's ability to move money between programs. The Missile Defense Agency's portfolio structure provides relevant precedent—MDA has somewhat greater flexibility than traditional acquisition organizations but still faces substantial Congressional oversight and must justify any significant reprogramming above $10 million thresholds.

Defense appropriations law distinguishes between research, development, test and evaluation funding; procurement funding; and operations and maintenance accounts. Portfolio managers cannot move money between these appropriation categories without Congressional approval, fundamentally limiting practical budget flexibility regardless of organizational structure.

Moreover, much of the $19 billion comes from supplemental appropriations rather than base budget growth. The Reconciliation Act provided $3.6 billion in additional funding, creating near-term resource availability but uncertain sustainment beyond the Future Years Defense Program. The Navy's base budget remains under severe strain from shipbuilding commitments—the Congressional Budget Office's 2024 analysis estimated the service needs approximately 25% more funding than currently projected to achieve its 30-year shipbuilding plan. This constraint affects all Navy programs, including unmanned systems.

The PAE structure might enable more ruthless prioritization within the $19 billion portfolio—canceling lower-priority programs to sustain higher-priority ones—but won't increase overall resources or provide authority over the $15.3 billion in excluded UAV programs. The early indication that the Navy is "shifting away from Boeing's Orca for the XLUUV program and Black Sea's GARC for the small USV program" suggests the PAE will immediately engage in program restructuring and potential contractor changes—activities that typically introduce 18-24 months of schedule delay and consume substantial management attention during the critical organizational standup period.

Technology Maturity and Execution Risk

The PAE RAS inherits programs at various stages of technical maturity, many involving developmental technologies that present significant execution risk:

MASC program: While the concept of distributed magazines is operationally sound, developing unmanned vessels that can operate reliably in open ocean conditions, maintain station with crewed ships, and transfer weapons or supplies at sea represents substantial engineering challenge. The Navy's previous Large USV program faced Congressional skepticism about operational concepts, autonomy maturity, and insufficient testing—concerns that led to funding reductions. MASC must address these same challenges on accelerated timelines.

DAWG and hellscape capabilities: Swarming autonomous systems operating in coordinated fashion to overwhelm adversary defenses requires autonomy technologies still under development, particularly adversarial machine learning robustness, multi-agent coordination algorithms, and reliable communications in contested electromagnetic environments. The Defense Science Board's 2023 Task Force on Autonomy noted that achieving trustworthy autonomy in contested environments remains a significant technical challenge requiring continued research investment.

Destroyer-based small UAVs: Finding suitable UAVs for guided-missile destroyers presents integration challenges that have defeated previous attempts. Destroyers lack dedicated aviation facilities, requiring UAVs that can launch and recover in severe sea states from compact installations, withstand harsh saltwater environments, and integrate with ship combat systems. Previous efforts including Fire Scout variants struggled with destroyer integration.

Command and control software: The draft plan identifies new C2 software development as an early PAE priority. Software development for complex military systems notoriously exceeds schedule and budget estimates. The Defense Innovation Board's 2022 report on software acquisition noted that organizational structure matters less than process discipline, technical debt management, and continuous integration/continuous deployment practices.

XLUUV contractor transition: Shifting away from Boeing's Orca design mid-program suggests the PAE is inheriting a troubled effort requiring reset. While potentially necessary, replacing the prime contractor typically introduces 18-24 months of schedule delay while new contractors establish design authority, develop production capabilities, and build supplier relationships.

The draft plan indicates it remains unclear whether the PAE will be a military or civilian position and when the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Robotics and Autonomous Systems will be named. This leadership uncertainty during the critical standup period compounds execution risk—programs being transferred need clear direction on priorities, authorities, and decision-making processes that cannot be provided until leadership is in place.

Historical Precedents: Modest Expectations

Defense acquisition history provides sobering context for organizational reorganizations. The Army's repeated restructuring of future combat systems programs, the Air Force's multiple reorganizations of space acquisition, and the Navy's own evolution of PEO structures demonstrate that reorganization often becomes a substitute for addressing fundamental program management challenges.

A 2023 Government Accountability Office report on Navy unmanned systems documented significant overlap in control station development, with at least five separate efforts to develop common control interfaces for different platform types. These parallel efforts cost hundreds of millions in non-recurring engineering while limiting operational flexibility. The PAE RAS could theoretically enforce common standards, but the exclusion of MQ-25, MQ-4C, and MQ-9A means the largest UAV programs will continue developing independent control systems, autonomy software, and mission system interfaces.

Any future carrier-based UAVs developed within the PAE portfolio will need to interface with systems and standards established by excluded programs. Without authority over MQ-25, the PAE will need to coordinate carrier integration requirements across organizational boundaries, potentially recreating the coordination problems the consolidation was meant to solve.

The most realistic benefit from portfolio management is gradual organizational learning over 5-10 years as the PAE RAS develops institutional expertise in unmanned systems across domains. Currently, program managers typically spend 3-4 years in position before rotating, limiting institutional memory. A unified portfolio organization could develop deeper bench strength—staff who understand both technical and operational aspects of unmanned systems and provide informed advice.

However, this organizational learning depends critically on personnel stability and career path development. If the Navy treats PAE RAS positions as routine rotational assignments, institutional knowledge won't accumulate. The Navy's Strategic Systems Programs office, managing ballistic missile submarine systems, provides a positive model through specialized career paths, selective personnel assignment, and sustained institutional focus that has maintained technical excellence for decades.

Congressional Oversight: Heightened Scrutiny Ahead

Consolidating programs under unified portfolio management increases Congressional visibility into comparative program performance, potentially leading to more intensive oversight rather than greater flexibility. The House Armed Services Committee's Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee has demonstrated aggressive oversight of Navy unmanned systems, reducing funding for Large Unmanned Surface Vessel programs by $100 million in the FY2024 NDAA, citing concerns about operational concepts, autonomy maturity, and insufficient testing.

The substantial supplemental appropriations—$3.6 billion from the Reconciliation Act—signal strong Congressional interest but bring heightened oversight expectations. Programs receiving supplemental funding face intense scrutiny on execution timelines and demonstrated capability delivery.

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated in March 2024 hearings that "we need to ensure these unmanned programs are based on mature technologies and realistic operational concepts, not aspirational visions that consume resources without delivering capability."

The PAE will face several oversight challenges:

Comparative program visibility: When all unmanned programs report through a single portfolio manager, Congressional staff can easily compare progress, cost, and schedule performance across efforts, making underperforming programs more visible.

Speed versus maturity tension: Secretary Hegseth's emphasis on speed creates potential conflict with Congressional desires for mature, low-risk programs. If the PAE prioritizes rapid fielding over thorough testing, oversight may become more restrictive, particularly if early deployments experience operational problems.

Bifurcated structure questions: Congress will inevitably ask why the Navy's three major UAV programs—representing $15.3 billion over five years—remain outside the portfolio structure supposedly designed to improve unmanned systems coordination. The Navy will need compelling explanations or face pressure to either expand PAE RAS authority or explain why consolidation isn't actually necessary for the largest programs.

Assessment and Outlook

The PAE RAS consolidation represents an ambitious attempt to improve Navy unmanned systems acquisition, but its impact on UAV programs will be fundamentally limited by the exclusion of the service's three major aircraft platforms.

With MQ-25, MQ-4C, and MQ-9A remaining under traditional management—representing 45% of unmanned systems investment—the PAE will function more as a developmental programs office than a true aviation portfolio manager. The $19 billion portfolio appears heavily weighted toward unmanned surface and subsea vehicles rather than aerial systems, with the PAE's first major responsibilities (MASC and DAWG) focused on surface vessel development.

For mature UAV programs, the reorganization creates no direct impact—they continue under existing structures. This provides beneficial continuity for programs in production but foregoes potential benefits of portfolio-level coordination and strategic planning. Any technical standards, control system architectures, or autonomy approaches developed within the PAE portfolio will need to negotiate compatibility with independently developed systems on the excluded major platforms.

For developmental UAV efforts like small destroyer-based aircraft, the PAE provides potential benefits in requirements discipline and technical standardization, but these benefits depend entirely on execution quality during standup and the authority actually granted to portfolio leadership.

The emphasis on speed as the organizing principle creates both opportunity and risk. Speed can accelerate delivery of urgently needed capabilities but can also lead to premature technology transitions, inadequate testing, and expensive retrofits. The PAE's early programs—MASC, DAWG, small destroyer UAVs—all involve immature technologies or unclear requirements, creating inherent schedule risk regardless of organizational structure.

The real test comes in 3-5 years as early programs reach key milestones. Will MASC deliver capable vessels on accelerated timelines? Will DAWG produce effective swarm capabilities? Will small destroyer UAVs prove operationally useful? Will the portfolio structure enable better technical standards coordination? These questions will determine whether PAE RAS represents genuine acquisition reform or merely organizational reshuffling.

For Navy UAV programs broadly, the consolidation probably won't dramatically alter near-term development. MQ-25 continues toward IOC in 2026, MQ-4C continues operational deployment and capability upgrades, and future carrier-based UAV concepts remain in early conceptual phases. The PAE RAS may eventually influence how future programs are structured and managed, but that impact lies years ahead.

Success metrics should focus on operational effectiveness rather than organizational elegance—whether the Navy can field larger numbers of capable, interoperable unmanned systems more rapidly and affordably than under previous structures. With China and Russia advancing their own unmanned capabilities and fleet-wide adoption of autonomous systems becoming operational imperative, the stakes for effective acquisition have never been higher.

The most honest assessment: the PAE RAS consolidation is a rational response to genuine coordination challenges, structured to support acquisition reform, but constrained by limited scope, excluded major programs, high-risk early responsibilities, and inherent standup challenges. Benefits will emerge gradually if at all, and success depends critically on leadership selection, Congressional patience, industry partnership, and disciplined execution during the vulnerable transition period. The exclusion of the Navy's three major UAV programs from portfolio management—representing nearly half of unmanned systems investment—fundamentally undermines the reorganization's potential to improve coordination and standardization across Navy unmanned aviation.

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Sources and Formal Citations

Primary Source:

1. LaGrone, Sam. "New Navy Unmanned Acquisition Office Could Oversee up to 66 Programs, Consolidate 6 PEOs." USNI News, November 19, 2024. https://news.usni.org/2024/11/19/new-navy-unmanned-acquisition-office-could-oversee-up-to-66-programs-consolidate-6-peos

Government Documents and Official Releases:

2. U.S. Department of the Navy. Department of the Navy Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 Budget Estimates. Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, March 2024. Access through Navy Comptroller website at secnav.navy.mil/fmc

3. U.S. Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Navigation Plan for America's Warfighting Navy. Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, 2024. Available at navy.mil

4. U.S. Marine Corps. Force Design 2030. Washington, DC: Headquarters Marine Corps, 2020-2024 updates. Available at marines.mil

5. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. Adaptive Acquisition Framework. Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2024. Available at aaf.dau.edu

6. U.S. Department of Defense. Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs). Washington, DC: Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation. Access through esd.whs.mil/CAPE

7. Hegseth, Pete (Secretary of Defense). "Arsenal of Freedom" speech. Washington, DC: Department of Defense, November 7, 2024. Available through defense.gov

Congressional Sources:

8. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 and 2025. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office. Access at congress.gov or armedservices.house.gov

9. U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services. NDAA Reports and Hearing Transcripts. Washington, DC: U.S. Senate. Access at armed-services.senate.gov

10. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services. Hearing on Department of the Navy Posture: The Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request. March 20, 2024. Access at armedservices.house.gov

11. Congressional Research Service. Reports on Navy unmanned systems by Ronald O'Rourke and Jeremiah Gertler. Access at crsreports.congress.gov or fas.org/sgp/crs

12. Congressional Budget Office. The Cost of the Navy's 2024 Shipbuilding Plan. Washington, DC: CBO, October 2024. Access at cbo.gov

Government Accountability Office Reports:

13. U.S. Government Accountability Office. Navy Unmanned Systems: Comprehensive Strategy Needed for Developing Control Systems (GAO-23-105869). Washington, DC: GAO, March 2023. Access at gao.gov

14. U.S. Government Accountability Office. Weapon Systems Annual Assessment (GAO-24-106458). Washington, DC: GAO, June 2024. Access at gao.gov

15. U.S. Government Accountability Office. Defense Acquisitions: Application of Lessons Learned and Best Practices in the MQ-25 Program (GAO-22-104533). Washington, DC: GAO, April 2022. Access at gao.gov

Defense Advisory Board Reports:

16. Defense Science Board. Task Force on Autonomy, Final Report. Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, June 2023. Unclassified summary available at dsb.cto.mil

17. Defense Innovation Board. Software Acquisition and Practices (SWAP) Study. Washington, DC: Defense Innovation Board, May 2022. Available at innovation.defense.gov

Academic and Research Institution Sources:

18. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Autonomous Vehicles Supporting Fleet Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2023. Available at nap.edu

19. Naval Postgraduate School, Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research. Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Autonomous Systems Symposium. Monterey, CA: NPS, March 2024. Available at nps.edu

20. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Regaining the High Ground at Sea, by Bryan Clark, Timothy A. Walton, and Seth Cropsey. Washington, DC: CSBA, May 2022. Available at csbaonline.org

21. Center for Strategic and International Studies. Navy Force Structure: Fewer Ships, More Drones?, by Mark F. Cancian. Washington, DC: CSIS, October 2023. Available at csis.org

22. Hudson Institute. Advancing Autonomous Systems in the U.S. Navy, by Bryan Clark, Timothy A. Walton, and Adam Lemon. Washington, DC: Hudson Institute, December 2023. Available at hudson.org

23. Center for a New American Security. The Future of Carrier Aviation, by Jerry Hendrix and Robert O. Work. Washington, DC: CNAS, 2020. Available at cnas.org

Industry and Trade Publications:

24. Eckstein, Megan. "Navy's MQ-25 Stingray Completes First Flight with Refueling Store." USNI News, June 4, 2021. Available at news.usni.org

25. Eckstein, Megan. "Navy Awards Triton Full-Rate Production Milestone C Decision." USNI News, December 21, 2021. Available at news.usni.org

26. Various articles on Navy unmanned systems. Breaking Defense. Available at breakingdefense.com

27. Various articles on defense acquisition. Defense News. Available at defensenews.com

28. Various articles on aerospace technology. Aviation Week & Space Technology. Available at aviationweek.com

Contractor and Industry Sources:

29. Boeing Defense, Space & Security. MQ-25 Program Information. Available at boeing.com/defense

30. Northrop Grumman Corporation. MQ-4C Triton Information. Available at northropgrumman.com

31. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. UAS Portfolio Information. Available at ga-asi.com

Professional Journals:

32. Naval Engineers Journal. American Society of Naval Engineers. Available at navalengineers.org

33. IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine. Available at ieeexplore.ieee.org

Reference Works:

34. Jane's Fighting Ships 2024-2025. London: IHS Markit/Janes. Available at janes.com

35. Friedman, Norman. U.S. Naval Weapons. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, various editions.

Official Navy Program Offices:

36. Program Executive Office Unmanned and Small Combatants. Available at navsea.navy.mil

37. Naval Air Systems Command - PEO Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons. Available at navair.navy.mil

38. Office of Naval Research. Available at onr.navy.mil

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Research Methodology Note:

This analysis is based on the USNI News article by Sam LaGrone reporting on the draft PAE RAS consolidation plan, supplemented by publicly available information on Navy unmanned systems programs, Department of Defense acquisition reform initiatives, Congressional oversight activities, and historical acquisition reorganization patterns. Budget figures are derived from published FY2025 Department of Defense and Department of the Navy budget documents and Congressional appropriations materials.