Jason Pak and Carl Poppe, the senior director and director of business development for land systems at Hanwha Defense USA who are both West Point graduates and retired US Army artillerymen, join Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian to discuss the recent conclusion of the US Army’s trails as the service seeks a new, more mobile self-propelled howitzer; nature of the test conducted by the five entrants; how the Ukraine war has changed now land forces will use artillery; role of unmanned air systems to better direct and coordinate fires as well as technologies that will increasingly automate future howitzers and resupply systems; attributes of the the K9 Thunder howitzer and its K10 resupply vehicle; ways to increase artillery round production; integrating new munitions like long-range projectiles and better ballistics computers into future systems; the merits of wheeled and tracked self-propelled howitzers and Hanwha’s drive to develop a wheeled offering; and whether tariffs, retirements and personnel cuts have impacted program execution to date.

Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute joins Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian to discuss the new budgeting tool developed by AEI and the Center for Strategic and International Studies to illustrate tradeoffs needed to achieve Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s demand that the military services redirect 8 percent of their annual spending to new priorities over the coming five years; partners on the initiative; whether defense spending will increase or whether the military services will have to make difficult tradeoffs; Hegseth’s demand that combatant commands and military services headquarters be streamlined; some ideas for Space Force headquarters consolidation that could be applied elsewhere; how to make thoughtful decisions in a zero sum budget environment; whether future efforts at reform will be harder to achieve if this administration’s drive for change fail; more thoughtful potential approaches to driving major change; and costs that might be imposed on the system by wholesale personnel cuts, retirements and other changes.

On today’s program, sponsored by HII, Byron Callan of the independent Washington research firm Capital Alpha Partners and Chris Servello, the co-host of our Cavas Ships podcast joins Defense & Aerospace Report Editor Vago Muradian to budget and fiscal prospects as the Congressional Budget Office warns America will run out of money by September if not far sooner — depending on tax receipts; how the Trump administration’s intelligence assessment that puts transnational criminal organizations and terrorist at the top of the threat list could shape defense spending; impact of tariffs and calls for tariff relief from farmers that are leading exporters as well as other businesses hurt by crackdown on immigration; whether higher US tariffs will spark the American economic and jobs renaissance that the administration hopes; how allies and partners perceive this Trump administration from the last one; takeaways from last week’s shipbuilding hearing and whether Boeing or Northrop Grumman will win the US Navy’s FA-XX next generation fighter; Signalgate aftermath; and a look at the week ahead.