2012: A blizzard in the South

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HELENA, Mont. - Things are relatively quiet here in the east wing of the Montana State Capitol, with Gov. Greg Gianforte overseas on a trade and diplomatic mission to India. The governor has touted it as an emerging market and says strengthening partnerships could benefit the state. However, the mission has been polarizing and has drawn criticism from some, including in the conservative base.

On Tuesday, the Montana Delegation met with technology companies, investors, manufacturers, and business leaders to promote Montana industries and attract new investment to the Treasure State.

“As our conversations continue in India, we are expanding opportunity for our leading industries beyond agriculture and making meaningful connections with successful entrepreneurs and business leaders ready to partner on the innovations of tomorrow,” Gianforte said. “We’re showing investors and businesses in India why the Treasure State should be part of their next big idea.”

The diplomatic mission has seen mixed reactions online, with some conservative voices sharply criticizing the trip and voicing their disapproval. Some say they see the trip as Montana jobs and opportunities being outsourced to foreign entities.

The Montana Freedom Caucus posted on social media: “Our globalist governor Greg Gianforte has shown his true colors by using Montana taxpayer funds to pay for a junket to India.  His excuse? India buys ag products.”

The Governor’s Office responded to the online discourse, with Communications Director Kaitlin Timken stating: “In order to have Montana lead in a changing global economy, the governor is proud to pioneer the delegation of successful entrepreneurs, higher education leaders, and government officials to strengthen ties with the country on track to have the third largest economy in the world in this decade. Gov. Gianforte and the over 30 members of the delegation believe this mission presents a historic opportunity for the Treasure State to secure investment and jobs for Montanans and look forward to recounting the positive impact in the months to come.”

Some on social media have accused the backlash of being isolationist rhetoric.

India ranks 29th among Montana’s largest trade partners. India purchased over $14 million in Montana goods in 2025: mainly peas, lentils, chickpeas, and aircraft parts. That was a sharp drop from 2024, when Indian companies purchased over $64 million.

Gianforte has been making a case for more long-term relationships with India.

Montana is the leading producer of pulse crops in the United States. Education, tech and foreign investments are also a big point of discussion on the trip

On Monday, during a meeting held at the U.S. embassy, the governor and members of the delegation discussed how Montana was an ideal place for business expansion and investment from Indian companies in mining, agriculture, photonics, bioscience, and advanced manufacturing.

After the governor wraps up his trip to India, he’s headed to Shi Lanka. For last five years, the Montana National Guard has partnered with the country for disaster preparedness. The governor will also be exploring future markets for Ag producers.

(The Center Square) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has purchased more California properties for the purpose of using them as detention centers.

The latest transaction involves the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and Desert View Annex. The facilities are in Adelanto, a city in Southern California's San Bernardino County. They were purchased from the private prison corporation GEO Group for $950 million.

Adelanto ICE Processing Center is one name for two properties: the Adelanto West ICE Processing Center (1,280 beds) and the Adelanto East ICE Processing Center (660 beds). Desert View Annex has 704 beds.

GEO Group will continue to manage the daily operations under long-term contracts. That is the same deal that private prison operator CoreCivic got in July when it sold two Southern California immigration detention centers to the federal government for $1.5 billion.

“We are pleased with the completion of these important asset sales to the U.S. federal government, and we look forward to continuing to provide high-quality secure support services under our existing long-term contracts with ICE,” George C. Zoley, Chairman, CEO, and founder of GEO Group, said this week in a press release.

In total, DHS has purchased five properties in California this year.

The purpose of these deals is to free the sites from state oversight laws, said Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs and deputy assistant secretary for media relations. The properties now belong to the federal government and not the state.

In July, Bis told The Center Square that this purchasing was made possible by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allowed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand detention space to fulfill President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

Unlike in states such as Florida and Oklahoma, Bis said ICE cannot rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California.

Meanwhile, special interest groups such as the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights vow to continue speaking out against detention centers.

“The U.S. wants to further cash in on the suffering and plight of hundreds of thousands of immigrants it plans to imprison as part of their inhumane crackdown,” Jorge-Mario Cabrera, CHIRLA’s director of communications, told The Center Square in an email. “These purchases are intended to keep these camps away from the public's scrutiny and oversight. We will not sit idly by while they codify brutality.”

(The Center Square) – Despite global challenges including ongoing wars and trade tensions putting upward pressure on prices, the U.S. economy is expected to remain fairly resilient in the year ahead, according to Harvard University economics professor Karen Dynan.

Dynan spoke Tuesday at the Peterson Institute for International Economics’ semiannual Global Economic Prospects event, alongside scholars who discussed how current trade and immigration policies factor into the U.S. economic outlook. Dynan spent 17 years on the staff of the Federal Reserve Board, currently serves on a task force assembled by Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh to review Fed policy and was the chief economist at the Treasury Department under former President Barack Obama.

“It’s fair to say that we are in a challenging environment right now given the adverse events of the last couple of years, and yet global growth is holding up and I expect that the most likely outcome for next year is that we’re going to see continued forward momentum,” Dynan said.

But Dynan’s projections show that momentum easing some, with global economic growth slowing from 3.5% in 2025 to 3.2% this year and 3.1% in 2027.

For advanced economies like the U.S., Dynan predicted that growth is “likely to remain solid,” which she attributed in part to the pace of the global artificial intelligence buildout. Growth in AI has helped carry both the U.S. and global economies forward despite higher energy prices stemming from the wars in Ukraine and Iran, according to Dynan.

U.S. GDP grew 2.3% in 2025. Dynan projects the economy will maintain that pace this year, with annual growth of 2.3%, before dipping to 2.2% in 2027.

She expects energy prices to generally ease, the Fed to raise rates further and inflation to fall gradually. Dynan also noted that the federal debt would soon require action from Congress but was not forcing lawmakers’ hands just yet.

Dynan didn’t give a detailed explanation of why she anticipated an easing of energy prices beyond simply that the forecast followed futures contracts, which lock in prices today for commodities such as oil and natural gas to be bought or sold at a later date. However, her forecast was in line with the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s October Short-Term Energy Outlook. Also released Tuesday, the report forecast elevated global oil prices in the near term — raising its fourth-quarter estimate for Brent crude to $105 per barrel, up $14 from its September estimate — followed by a decline to an average of $84 per barrel next year.

Warsh has repeatedly pledged to scale back the Fed’s forward guidance, arguing it makes markets too dependent on the central bank, although he has also indicated that inflation is currently a top priority for the Fed. But Dynan was explicit Tuesday in her remarks on upcoming rate decisions.

“The Fed will be data dependent, but the most likely outcome, I think, is three more quarter-point hikes,” Dynan said.

But those hikes likely won’t happen until after the October meeting, according to Dynan.

“It’s too close to the election, and we don’t have the definitive data in hand that would justify that, but I do expect hikes at December, January, February,” she said.

Under former Chair Jerome Powell and now under Warsh, the Fed has mostly held rates steady throughout President Donald Trump’s second term. After months of boisterous public calls from Trump to lower rates, the Fed lowered rates three times at the end of 2025 by a quarter-point each time, to a range of 3.5% to 3.75% but kept rates there until September, when it raised them a quarter point.

Falling energy prices combined with Fed tightening led Dynan to predict a gradual decline in inflation, though she expects core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, to come down more slowly.

The U.S. will soon have to reckon with its growing federal debt of more than $40 trillion and persistent annual deficits, according to Dynan, though she said the current political environment makes immediate action unlikely.

“The risk of fiscal crisis has been boosted by the significant increase in interest rates this year, growing federal debt, the increase in federal deficits from last year’s tax cut, a shift in ownership toward leveraged hedge funds — and a productivity boost from AI will help, but it’s not a panacea,” Dynan said.

But she added that the lack of action from Congress, “though they’ve seen this problem coming,” and political polarization “augurs against near-term results.”

Inu Manak, a senior fellow with the institute, and Johns Hopkins economics professor Michael Clemens, spoke to ongoing trade and immigration challenges.

Trump chose not to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that his administration negotiated in his first term, and instead, entered negotiations with Canada and Mexico that “have to be resolved for the renewal to actually take place,” according to Manak.

Though Trump is reshaping many of America’s trade agreements, Manak argued that the USMCA is the “central plot in U.S. trade policy,” and that more resilient supply chains, greater economic independence from China and enhanced economic competitiveness actually require “closer cooperation” with both U.S. neighbors due to more than three decades of “deep economic integration.”

Clemens addressed some of the macroeconomic impacts of restrictions on the immigration of high-skill immigrants.

As the Trump administration has worked to curtail illegal immigration, it has also significantly restricted legal immigration, including pathways for high-skilled workers, which Clemens argued could come at an economic cost.

High-skilled immigrants in science, technology, engineering and math fields account for only 1.6% of total U.S. employment but disproportionately large shares of innovation and entrepreneurship in those fields, according to Clemens.

(The Center Square) – The Trump administration’s final rule on “Transparency in Coverage” that intends to help fulfil the promise of healthcare affordability has been met favorably by advocacy groups as something that will bring accountability to healthcare and lower costs for Americans.

Founder and chairman of PatientRightsAdvocate.org Cynthia A. Fisher told The Center Square that the Trump administration “took a transformative step to lower health care costs, stop overcharges, and hold insurers and hospitals accountable,” by its Transparency in Coverage (TiC) final rule.

The final rule’s “added requirement of executive attestation that published prices and other information are true, accurate, and complete as of the date in the machine-readable file is a breakthrough for compliance,” Fisher said.

“Real price transparency means patients can shop for better care at lower prices and employers can demand a better deal,” Fisher said.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Trump’s final rule on Monday, explaining that a more transparent healthcare marketplace will be accomplished by the final rule via “reducing duplicative and unnecessary information,” “providing more context about in-network prices,” “increasing available out-of-network pricing information,” and “strengthening accountability for the completeness and accuracy of published data.” 

Additionally, the rule will require “group health plans and health insurance issuers to provide consumers with personalized cost-sharing information by phone, in addition to existing online tools.”

When reached for comment, the HHS referred The Center Square to its press release.

Former director of the Domestic Policy Council Andrew Bremberg told The Center Square how “requiring insurance executives to attest that their machine-readable files are true, accurate, and complete will unleash actual transparency and accountability.”

Transparency and accountability are “essential to transform the [healthcare] system.”

“These commonsense reforms are a testament to President Trump's commitment to 'maximum transparency' and shifting the power from the big business of healthcare to the American people,” Bremberg said.

CEO of State Financial Officers Foundation OJ Oleka also applauded Trump’s final rule, stating that the move toward “real dollar prices, standardized reporting, and greater accountability is meaningful progress for employers, patients, and taxpayers trying to understand what healthcare actually costs.” 

"Accountability and transparency go hand in hand, but transparency only works if the data is actually usable,” Oleka said.

GOP campaign strategist David Kochel pointed out the political wisdom of the final rule, explaining that “the Trump Administration is taking action on healthcare price transparency ahead of the midterm elections, showing Republicans are willing to lean forward on an issue that hits Americans’ wallets every day.”

“Real prices give patients the freedom to choose lower-cost, high-quality care and give employers the power to audit spending, negotiate better deals, and hold insurers accountable,” Kochel said. “The administration's work on price transparency puts power in the hands of patients and employers to stop overcharges, demand a better deal, and keep more of their hard-earned money."

Executive director of Save Our States Trent England noted that "healthcare price transparency is one of the most obvious policies in American politics.”

“That it has taken this long to guarantee patients and employers actual prices is absurd,” England said.

“Fortunately, President Trump is standing strong for common-sense and putting the American people ahead of hospital and insurance executives and other insiders,” England said. 

“With real price transparency, patients can plan ahead, find the best care at the best price, fight overcharging, and avoid price gouging and surprise bills,” England said. “Employers can finally see the receipts and use real pricing data to negotiate better deals, lowering healthcare costs for employees and freeing up resources for higher wages, more jobs, and better returns for investors, including pensioners and retirees.”

“All this is long overdue,” England said.

(The Center Square) – With the arrest of a seventh suspect in the alleged plot to attack a U.K. base hosting U.S. bombers to riots in France, the Trump administration appears weary of Western Europe as it considers shifting American troops.

President Donald Trump confirmed that American bombers were relocated to another base following an alleged foiled attack on Fairford Royal Air Force Base over a week ago. The president has questioned the decision by British authorities to release the suspects on bail.

Trump took to social media Tuesday afternoon to comment on the ongoing riots in France, attributing the uprising to mass migration.

“What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration. This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great country,” the president posted on Truth Social.

The president’s comments come as the U.S. looks to reevaluate its relationship with many NATO countries, putting more pressure on allied nations to step up defense spending and scale back reliance on U.S. support.

Trump and the Department of War have already said they are reviewing possible troop reductions in parts of Europe, specifically Germany, with the possibility of Italy and Spain.

Over the weekend, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told The Center Square that he expects more American troops to be moved back to the Western Hemisphere from Europe, possibly relocating them to parts of Central and South America.

The secretary added that as relationships with Central and South American countries progress, the U.S. wants “more burden sharing in Europe,” while focusing more on the U.S. and its own backyard.

“As we do that, a lot of those capabilities are going to move elsewhere, either back home to the big, beautiful base that we’re going to build…or to a different posture in the Western Hemisphere as we can get after these designated terrorist organizations. We are at war with the drug cartels, with DTOs,” Hegseth told The Center Square. "The president’s been clear about that, so we’re going to posture and base as necessary to ensure that we have our foot on the pedal and are taking the fight to those ISIS and Al Qaeda in our hemisphere.”

The potential shift comes as the Trump administration has sought to dominate power in the Western Hemisphere, being called the Donroe Doctrine, a play on the Monroe Doctrine.

The Trump administration has pointed to its dissatisfaction with key NATO allies, either reluctant or refusing any support for the U.S. on its strikes against Iran.

The Pentagon is expected to finalize a six-month review of the U.S. military presence in Europe by the end of the year, seeking to shift more defense responsibility to NATO countries.

While Western Europe could continue to see troop drawdowns, Trump recently announced a more permanent base is in the works in Poland, and the U.S. has committed to building two bases in Greenland.

(The Center Square) – Paramount Skydance has officially closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing two of America’s oldest movie studios together under one company now known as Skydance.

The deal, finalized on Tuesday, marks one of the largest media and entertainment transactions ever. While the equity value of the deal stands at $81 billion, the total acquisition cost reaches $111 billion when factoring in billions of dollars in debt. The deal puts Paramount Pictures in Hollywood in the same company with one of its longtime rivals - Warner Bros. in nearby Burbank, Calif.

Paramount Skydance won a federal judge’s approval Sept. 30 to proceed with the deal. U.S. District Judge Martínez-Olguín in Oakland approved Paramount Skydance’s settlement with Democratic attorneys general from 12 states, who sued in July to stop the merger.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta led the coalition and argued the deal was illegal, likely to lessen competition, and threatened viewers with higher prices and reduced content variety. At a July press conference in Southern California with the famous Hollywood sign behind him, Bonta said movies and television programs are not run-of-the-mill commodities.

“The film and entertainment industry doesn't exist just to buy and to sell them,” Bonta continued. “It exists to tell stories, to spark ideas and spark curiosity, to inspire and sometimes to inform, to open our eyes to new perspectives we may have never considered before, to expose us to the things we don’t know we need to be exposed to.”

The resulting settlement, which resolved the antitrust lawsuit originally scheduled to go to court in 2027, includes strict court-enforceable guardrails. For example, Paramount Skydance agreed to an annual film release commitment spanning a five-year term, releasing 30 films a year (including 20 wide releases) in the first two years and 32 films a year (with 21 wide releases) in years three, four,and five.

This 30-films promise was made before the legal dispute and settlement, but was written off as an “old, stale promise” by the coalition of state attorneys general.

The company also commits to releasing at least four independent films annually, with any failure to meet these output requirements triggering a $30 million penalty per missed film — directed toward union health and retirement trust funds — and a mandatory divestiture of Miramax Studios.

Additionally, Paramount will boost domestic production by spending at least an additional $1.5 billion over five years above 2025 U.S. spending levels, with production requirements scaling higher if federal and state film tax credits are passed in California or New York.

Further supporting the industry, a total $25 million independent film fund ($5 million annually for five years) will be operated for purchasing independent films. For labor, a $47.5 million Workforce Fund will support training and career development for displaced workers, alongside commitments to honor collective bargaining agreements.

Finally, the agreement introduces key cable and editorial guardrails requiring Paramount to negotiate basic cable channels independently for five years to keep consumer prices competitive, maintain a free streaming service like Pluto TV, and establish a News Editorial Independence Board to safeguard CNN and CBS, which are now both owned by Skydance.

“We believe this settlement, which resolves our antitrust concerns in every market alleged in our case, protects competition and consumer choice, and puts workers' needs, concerns, and futures first, is the best course of action,” said Bonta in a Sept. 21 press release.

Labor leaders widely praised the agreement's focus on domestic stability and employment.

IATSE International President Matthew D. Loeb, Directors Guild of America National Executive Director Russell Hollander, Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien, and SAG-AFTRA leadership all voiced appreciation in Bonta’s press release for the enforceable framework protecting jobs.

Still, free-market critics raised concerns over regulatory overreach.

Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at Pasadena, Calif.-based Pacific Research Institute, said state attorneys general could have saved time and money by not filing the lawsuit.

"The state AGs could have not only saved time and money by not challenging this, but they also could have avoided a troubling precedent," Winegarden told The Center Square Tuesday. "State AGs should not duplicate the anti-trust efforts of the federal government. Hopefully, their actions will not encourage more regulations through litigation."

Alongside California, the state attorneys general involved in the antitrust lawsuit were from Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington.

President Donald Trump praised the merger when asked about it outside the White House. "I"m happy. That's great. They're terrific people, and it's going to be a great company."

In addition to Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros, the merger means Skydance owns CBS, CNN, TNT, TBS, Nickelodeon, Food Network, Comedy Central, HGTV, New Line Cinema, DC Studios, DC Comics and streaming services such as HBO Max, Paramount+, Pluto TV and Discovery+. 

(The Center Square) – With early voting having already started for the upcoming midterm elections, congressional Republicans are touting the tax policies in their so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that became law last year.

In a field hearing Tuesday, Republican lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee pushed back against mounting criticism from Democrats who accuse them of failing to address the high cost of living.

Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., highlighted the OBBBA’s $3.3 trillion worth of tax cuts impacting families and small businesses. Unlike Democrats’ claims to the contrary, he argued, Republicans have addressed affordability concerns on multiple fronts.

“The One, Big, Beautiful Bill gave families and job creators greater certainty and much needed relief at a time when folks are still facing some tough financial decisions,” Smith told the group.

He added that a Republican majority would “continue working to deliver tax relief for working families and small businesses” via additional tax policies.

Among dozens of other measures, the OBBBA made permanent the expiring 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s across-the-board reduced tax rates, the $15,000 standard deduction, and the $2,000 Child Tax Credit.

Key business tax credits were also made permanent – full reimbursement for new capital investments like machinery and equipment, an expanded deduction for corporations’ interest on debt, immediate deductions for companies’ research costs, and the 20% QBI deduction for small businesses.

Additionally, the bill made income from tips, overtime work and Social Security tax deductible for eligible Americans over the next four years.

Taken together, the Tax Foundation estimates that the OBBBA’s tax provisions will lower individuals’ taxes in every state and add up to 828,000 full-time equivalent jobs nationwide by 2025.

American voters, however, appear more frustrated with the Trump administration’s foreign policies that have increased costs than appreciative of the Trump-endorsed tax cuts.

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli joint strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, costs of jet fuel, crude oil, and fertilizer have skyrocketed, resulting in more expensive plane tickets, higher distribution costs for consumer goods, U.S. gas prices hitting a four-year high.

“Remember – this was a war of choice. Every extra dollar at the pump, on groceries, and on everything else you buy was a policy choice that didn’t have to happen,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., posted on social media Tuesday.

The Center Square’s Voters’ Voice Poll revealed that as of late August, 47% of the 2,533 registered voters surveyed would vote for a Democratic candidate in the midterm elections, while 42% would vote for a Republican.

(The Center Square) – Congress gave the Pentagon six months to pick and buy laser and microwave weapons to shoot down drones over American military bases. The Department of War announced its selections Monday, more than three months past that deadline, and has not said what the systems cost.

No award for the pilot itself appears on the department's daily contracts list for the day of the announcement, the week before it, or the day after.

The department named four systems for a counter-drone pilot program run by Joint Interagency Task Force 401: AeroVironment's palletized high-energy laser, the Epirus Leonidas high-powered microwave system, the Kord Firefly laser and Boeing's compact laser weapon. The announcement says the pilot will evaluate the systems' "requirements, costs, and best practices."

Congress ordered the program in Section 1089 of the fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which became law Dec. 18, 2025. The law gave the department 180 days, until June 16, to select and procure systems for at least four military installations, and one year, until Dec. 18, to have them deployed. The department has not said whether the deadline was extended.

Lawmakers specified the technology, defining a covered system as one that destroys or disables a small drone by high-powered microwave, laser "or other similar technology."

The deployment deadline is 73 days away. The department said it will hold a directed-energy demonstration at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah in December to evaluate additional laser and microwave systems, and that it will keep assessing other directed-energy technologies.

Section 1089 also required the department to report to the congressional defense committees by Aug. 15 on delays caused by interagency coordination, "particularly delays related to site surveys by other agencies." The law requires a briefing to those committees every 60 days until each requirement is complete.

The Congressional Budget Office priced a comprehensive defense in July and left directed energy out of it. The agency estimated about $74 million to equip a representative installation, a five-mile-by-five-mile area covering a base's critical areas, with a layered defense, plus $5 million a year to operate it.

That layered defense is built from radar, radio frequency detection and defeat systems, kinetic interceptors and handheld devices, the systems CBO said the department "is currently buying." It does not include lasers or high-powered microwave weapons. Those, the agency wrote, "are still in development in the United States" and "are expected to be expensive to acquire and to need a lot of electrical power."

Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, who directs the task force, made a similar point about the industry pitch for directed energy.

"People will say, if you go with this really exquisite system, maybe it's a directed energy system, the cost is 8 cents per shot," he said at an Aug. 21 media roundtable, according to an Army transcript. "I say, OK, then let me understand the fully burdened cost of that. Because if I procure that system and it costs me $6 million and I take one shot a year, you can't tell me that that shot only costs 8 cents."

"I also want to understand the fully burdened cost of operating those systems," Ross said.

The pilot will run a year with service members operating and maintaining the weapons, he said: "I want to know what their power requirements are over a 365-day period. How many days are they operationally capable versus how many days do they require repair?"

The Pentagon announcement says the pilot program will evaluate the systems' costs. Whether adding them raises or lowers CBO's $74 million figure is not addressed; the agency noted in its report that comparing the cost of a drone with the cost of the weapon used to destroy it was beyond the scope of its analysis.

CBO counted 824 military installations in a Defense Department dataset published by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and said more than 90% are small enough to be covered by its benchmark. Costs scale linearly, the agency said, estimating that protecting 100 sites would cost about $7.4 billion. It did not price protection for all 824.

The Trump administration has asked Congress for $14.4 billion in fiscal 2027 for counter-drone defenses at more than 250 sites, according to Pentagon budget documents.

The Pentagon created JIATF-401 in August 2025 to consolidate a counter-drone effort spread across the services, after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth found that the growing number of counter-drone organizations "often are unconnected to each other" and that the department "needs a single focal point." The task force replaced an earlier counter-drone office set up in 2020.

Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., who chairs the House subcommittee that requested the CBO report, pointed to drone incursions at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia in December 2023.

"For 17 days, drones flew unencumbered over our sensitive military installations and the Pentagon was unable to respond at the speed and scale necessary to mitigate the threat," he said at a May 1, 2025, hearing on counter-drone capability gaps.

The Joint Force, he said, "does not have sufficient ability to find, fix, track, and ultimately engage these enemy drones at home and abroad."

Monday's release named no contract and no dollar figure, a departure from how the task force has announced other counter-drone buys.

On Sept. 29, the Army said JIATF-401 had awarded 10 indefinite-delivery contracts with $4.15 billion in combined base ceilings for sensors, optical sights and gun-based systems, listing each company and amount.

In May, the department announced a $500 million ceiling contract to Perennial Autonomy for drone interceptors.

At least one of the four systems is already in production under a separate contract. The Army announced Sept. 2 that it had awarded AeroVironment an other-transaction agreement for the Enduring-High Energy Laser program, the Army's first production contract for a high-energy laser weapon.

AeroVironment said the award is worth $464.8 million and covers its LOCUST X3, with options for palletized configurations. The Pentagon's release does not say whether the pilot's AeroVironment palletized laser comes from that buy. 

The task force is running the pilot with the Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Northern Command and the services. The department said the FAA took part in a safety risk assessment during a live-fire laser demonstration at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico earlier this year and determined the laser tested posed minimal risk to the national airspace, establishing a framework for continued coordination.

The Department of War did not respond Tuesday to questions about what the pilot will cost, which appropriation funds it, why the selections came more than three months after the statutory deadline, or whether the report to Congress has been filed.

The House and Senate Armed Services committees and the House Appropriations defense subcommittee did not respond. The Senate Appropriations Committee referred questions about the provision to the Armed Services Committee and said it has not released fiscal 2027 funding text. Wittman's office did not respond.

AeroVironment, Epirus, Kord and Boeing did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday afternoon.