A nearly monthlong investigation identified telltale signs of a Russian hybrid warfare action, German investigators had found.

An explosive-laden drone fell near a Ukrainian cargo airplane used to shuttle munitions to the country at war in early August. It failed to detonate and was instead defused by a police bomb squad. German media later reported that two similar drones were found at or near the airport in the following days and weeks.

The airport at Leipzig/Halle plays a key logistical role in the supply of Ukraine and for NATO airlift operations.

“Taken together, police investigations, patterns of the act, and intelligence findings demonstrate Russian responsibility for the attempted attack at Leipzig Airport,” said German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt. “The Federal Government therefore concludes that Russia is responsible for the hybrid attack in Leipzig on August 4.”

In response, Germany will be closing Russia’s consulate general in Bonn, a 70,000 square meter complex that hosted Soviet intelligence rezidenturas during the Cold War, by Sept. 18. Berlin will also terminate the leases for the Russian House for Science and Culture in Berlin. In addition, German authorities will be implementing heightened scrutiny during immigration of Russian citizens and push for further visa restrictions for Russian people, particularly those tied to hybrid operations.

The German announcement was made jointly by the country’s ministers for interior and foreign affairs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called the decisions a “grave mistake,” and accused the German government of falsifying evidence to distract from domestic political woes and Chancellor Merz’s poor popularity ratings.

Russia’s ambassador to Berlin, who had previously been summoned by the foreign ministry, said the “hastily concocted provocation at Leipzig airport” was the basis of “absurd” allegations.

The Russian foreign ministry has said it would “mirror” Germany’s actions, which is longstanding Russian policy. In the past, Russia has frequently responded to the expulsion of diplomats from a Western country by expelling a similar number of that country’s diplomats from Moscow. This often worked out in Russia’s favor, given Moscow’s numerical advantage in its diplomatic corps.

The European Union and NATO issued separate statements of support for and solidarity with Germany. Both organizations have scheduled high-level talks on the topic for Wednesday.

The goal, as military officials and industry executives often describe it, is to give commanders the information they need to make consequential decisions as quickly as possible.

But no matter how fast or accurate the analysis is, there’s still a gap between identifying what needs to happen and acting on it. Much of that AI processing happens on computers and servers miles from the battlefield, leaving troops to receive the information through radios, tablets or other devices.

That means the next step in military AI may be putting the technology directly on the bodies of those in the field. While some companies are exploring wearable technology like helmets equipped with heads-up displays, Smack Technologies thinks the answer may be much simpler: Instead of putting AI in a helmet, put it on an operator’s wrist.

The California-based defense tech startup recently raised $61 million in Series B funding to develop Alpha, a wrist-worn device designed to connect operators in the field to real-time data collected and processed through Smack’s Omega AI software.

Andy Markoff, Smack’s co-founder and chief executive, told Military Times that his company started with the software because it could train its AI around day-to-day operations.

“Alpha tackles a much harder problem because you have to make the model work in the field with hardware and little to no connectivity, but we’ve always known this is what has to happen to enable decision dominance,” he said.

During an interview, Markoff walked Military Times through the concept of Alpha, from how operators would wear the device to how it’s used.

As a former Marine Raider, Markoff said he and his team of former military personnel believe the wrist is a more convenient place to access intelligence in the field.

“The form factor we’re building replaces what I literally used to wear on my forearm, only here I’m exchanging a whiteboard and grease pencil for a flexible computer screen that has our models’ capabilities on it,” he said.

He likened the concept to a QB sleeve, which allows a quarterback to see plays at a glance.

“Our sensors that are out collecting information about enemy forces and their location are sending that information to a screen on my forearm along with actionable decision options informed by campaign equities and adjacent units,” he said.

Markoff said he recognizes that a heads-up display could be useful for some missions, but he also sees drawbacks, particularly in hot or humid environments.

“If you’ve ever walked in the jungle at night, you know you’d actually rather risk having an eyeball poked out by a tree than wear shooting glasses that fog up and prevent you from seeing anything,” he said.

However, Markoff said that the hardware is the easy part of building an AI-enabled wearable. The more difficult problem is figuring out what information an operator needs in the field.

He explained the fundamental idea behind Alpha is to decentralize command and control in environments where operators cannot communicate directly with commanders.

“To do this, we’re essentially encoding commander’s intent: here’s our goal, here’s what makes the most sense for the theater and the theater’s goals, and here’s context around how everyone at the front lines should be going after that goal, including constraints and contracts with adjacent units,” he said.

He added that the goal isn’t to have AI make decisions, but to give the operator enough information to make better ones, potentially increasing effectiveness while reducing wasted time and resources.

Alpha has been in development for only about four months, but Markoff projects that Smack will have a working prototype within the next year and could secure contracts for the device within two years.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that the operation took place late Tuesday and early Wednesday and used the Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser.

The military did not give the precise location of the strikes nor make clear whether it took place over U.S. or Mexican territory. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said any unilateral U.S. action on Mexican soil would be a grave breach of her country’s sovereignty.

The military said the drones posed “a physical threat” to U.S. military and U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel.

“Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners,” Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, the commander of Joint Task Force–Southern Border, said in a statement.

The announcement comes as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to clamp down on immigration and cartels, seeking to fulfill promises from his 2024 presidential campaign.

Since its establishment in 2025, the border task force has conducted tens of thousands of detection and monitoring patrols and thousands of observation flights, the task force said.

The military did not specify the manufacturer of the laser system.

AeroVironment Inc delivered its first two multi-purpose high-energy lasers to the U.S. Army last summer. The U.S. Army has previously deployed AeroVironment Inc’s LOCUST system. The deployment of that system led to a seven-hour airspace shutdown near Texas’ El Paso International Airport earlier this year.

In February, the military accidentally shot down a U.S. government drone using a laser-based anti-drone system, congressional aides told Reuters at the time.

U.S. security officials have expressed concern about the use of drones by Mexican cartels, which mostly employ crudely adapted versions of off-the-shelf models to drop drug packages or surveil trafficking routes.

In parts of Mexico farther from the U.S. border, cartels have used drones to drop explosives in deadly attacks. U.S. and Mexican authorities are working together to combat the rise of drones in the border region.

The Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Agency selected Terra B1, a rocket-launched interceptor drone, after a demonstration with the Maritime Self-Defense Forces last month.

Terra B1 is developed by domestic industrial giant Terra Drone and serves as the Japan-made counterpart to Terra A1, which had been fielded on Ukraine’s battlefields earlier this year.

ATLA neither disclosed the number of units on order nor the contract price.

In late May, the defense ministry released a tender to rapidly acquire and deploy drones that can intercept one-way attack drones such as the Shahed and anti-radar loitering munitions such as the IAI Harpy.

The latest decision is the fastest to date, industry insiders say, as the tender took only three months compared to previous bids which took one to two years.

The decision also reflects the government’s growing efforts to increase 3D printing capabilities to support defense needs.

Using 3D printers will “simplify and shorten” the design and prototyping stage, CEO Toru Tokushige told Defense News. It will also allow Terra B1 to move into mass production as quickly as possible and meet contract requirements.

Aside from lowering costs and accelerating production, 3D printing will allow the company ample time to modify the interceptors to adapt to evolving threats and the fast-changing drone tech landscape without delaying the deployment schedule.

Terra Drone also plans to spread out production across multiple locations, and later expand to local printing farms, as a precautionary measure to ensure manufacturing can continue even if one facility comes under attack.

“Even if one production site were attacked by a system such as a Shahed-type drone, this distributed model could significantly reduce the risk of the entire supply chain being disrupted,” Tokushige said.

3D printing has been changing military and defense logistics since the U.S. Army and Navy deployed printers in the field in 2012. In Ukraine, printing farms have become a frontline

necessity: They produce drone parts and a range of tools to support brigades in the ongoing war.

The defense ministry’s decision to adopt the technology signals a massive shift in the defense industry, which experts warn may be unable to keep pace with the current administration’s export drive and increasing global demands.

“We believe 3D printing is not simply about reducing manufacturing costs. It has the potential to transform Japan’s defense manufacturing into a faster, more flexible and more resilient production model,” Tokushige said.

Destinus will develop a kinetic counter-UAS capability for the Navy based on its Hornet B2 interceptor, the company said in an emailed statement late Monday. The program will include delivery of the interceptors, integration with several warships and support towards a possible initial operating capability, with the program slated for completion in the second quarter of 2027.

“The threat of drones at medium range is increasing,” the Dutch Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Monday. “That’s clear from both operational analyses as well as the current threat picture during maritime operations. Sailing units therefore need additional means to effectively defend themselves in fleets.”

Ukraine has been using low-cost interceptor drones to defeat one-way attack UAVs, offering a potential solution for Western navies that have found themselves firing expensive missiles at relatively cheap Houthi drones in the Red Sea. The U.S. Navy has already installed launchers for Raytheon’s Coyote interceptor on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

The new system will be an addition to existing armaments, the Dutch MoD said. The system will consist of a base station and a launch platform that can fire a drone interceptor, and the C-UAS solution will continue to be developed through testing, the ministry said.

“The program addresses the growing requirement for scalable naval protection against low-cost, high-volume aerial threats,” Destinus said.

The company said an earlier version of the interceptor, the Hornet B1, is already in serial production. The system consists of an interceptor launched from a sealed canister by a rocket booster, before deploying its wings and transitioning to electric-powered cruise flight.

The interceptor is designed to intercept one-way attack systems using electro-optical and infrared sensing and AI-based processing for the terminal phase, at a cost per engagement “far below that of traditional interceptor missiles,” according to Destinus.

“Low-cost aerial threats have inverted the economics of naval air defense: no navy can sustainably trade multimillion-euro missiles against low-cost threats arriving at volume,” Destinus CEO Mikhail Kokorich said in a statement. “Hornet B2 answers this with a different architecture.”

The Dutch Navy will contribute direct operational expertise throughout the development and evaluation process, shaping capability requirements and system specifications, Destinus said. That will reduce the need for adaptation after system development, according to the company.

The companies signed a letter of intent on Sunday to combine General Cherry’s expertise in small drones and Patria’s unmanned-technology expertise and defense-industry experience, which will allow them to jointly develop unmanned vehicles for Western European defense needs, they said in a statement on Sunday.

The announcement is part of a broader wave of European defense-industrial cooperation with Ukrainian drone makers. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in December announced plans to produce various Ukrainian drones in Germany, while Ukrainian UAV makers including Skyeton and Ukrspecsystems are partnering or investing in the United Kingdom to produce drones there.

“Unmanned defense systems are central to the future of defenses,” said Mikko Leino, Patria’s executive vice president for defense and weapon systems, in the statement. “The partnership with General Cherry further reinforces Patria’s expertise in unmanned defence systems and drone development.”

As part of the collaboration, Patria plans to start drone production in Finland, which would help build up Europe’s defense capabilities and support the Finnish firm’s aim to be an innovative product developer, the company said in a statement on Sunday.

“Our unique battlefield experience, combined with Patria’s technological capabilities, can help drive a fundamental transformation of the European and global security architecture,” said Stanislav Hryshyn, co-founder of General Cherry, in the statement.

Patria didn’t immediately respond to phone calls and emailed questions about the cooperation plans, including whether the Finnish company will produce existing General Cherry drone models or when Finnish production could start.

General Cherry produces a range of drones, including one-way FPV strike drones and interceptor drones, and the company says its products are in use with more than 200 military units across the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

In November 2025, U.S. Army Europe and Africa, in collaboration with the Department of the Army and U.S. European Command, charged the unit with learning from dedicated drone forces, including those fielded by Ukraine, and feeding those lessons back to the Army to support the Pentagon’s push for U.S. drone dominance.

The official, who spoke on background, said in a statement that after the massive, multinational Exercise Saber Junction in August and September, the battalion will return to its airborne infantry mission.

The statement did not include the unit’s name or the number of soldiers.

The move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes as Acting Chief of Staff of the Army, Gen. Christopher LaNeve, issued the Army’s strategic roadmap titled “The Army Azimuth.”

In the public statement, LaNeve said the Army needed to “counter enemies who employ stand-off weapons, including unmanned systems and WMD.” For American troops, he emphasized, “the fundamentals of Soldiering, ensuring a strong grounding in warrior ethos, individual Soldier readiness, and small unit tactical skills.”

The Pentagon has focused heavily on expanding its drone arsenal following a June 2025 executive order directing the U.S. military to enhance its unmanned aerial systems capabilities. Following that order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a July 2025 memorandum in which he said that “U.S. units are not outfitted with the lethal small drones the modern battlefield requires,” and pledged to revamp the military’s drone acquisition and fielding efforts.

U.S. Central Command this month announced the creation of a multinational task force that will use one-way attack drones in the air, on the water and underwater alongside regional partners. CENTCOM’s task force follows its 2025 establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike, which is based in the Middle East and outfitted with one-way attack drones.

The company said the shared architecture allows Strigo hardware to be reconfigured for different missions, including air defense, missile defense and air-to-surface strike.

Lockheed calls the Strigo Product Center a storefront for “ready-now and near-ready” hardware that it said can be adapted to customer needs. The company said the modular approach also lowers life cycle costs, though it stopped short of citing dollar figures. Lockheed said it has made a $250 million internal investment in the product center to date.

The center was established less than two years ago and has already carried several concepts from initial design through testing, according to the release. The company said the center can move a concept from sketch to tested solution in months rather than years, allowing it to have parts on the shelf before the military even asks for them, in some cases.

Stacy Kubicek, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Sensors and Global Sustainment, said in the release that the product center’s emphasis on early research allows the company to “test and deploy new solutions at unprecedented speed,” adding, “That’s how we turn ‘what if’ into ‘what’s next’ faster than ever before.”

Lockheed said technologies developed through the Strigo family played a role in developing the Increment 2 seeker package for the U.S. Army’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), which is replacing the Army Tactical Missile System. The seeker package adds a sensor in a missile’s nose that locates and tracks its target in the final phase of flight.

Lockheed said it flew Increment 2 for the first time in March, travelling 350-kilometers, or more than 217 miles, in a flight that gathered performance data. The company did not report an intercept.

Strigo is the latest in a string of announcements this year in which Lockheed has pitched itself as building weapons faster and cheaper. In March, the company opened a Rapid Fielding Center that builds prototypes and early production runs under one roof, part of a larger plan to build or upgrade factories.

In July, it introduced the PAC-3 ACE, a Patriot interceptor it says will cost less than half as much as a PAC-3 MSE. These latest moves are pitched as supporting the Arsenal of Freedom, the Pentagon’s term for the munitions industrial base buildup.

Lockheed’s release was short on details regarding the size, structure or location of the Strigo Product Center. It did not name any contracts, customers or delivery timelines beyond the PrSM reference.

The previously unreported findings offer a rare glimpse into how military and security-linked institutions in China are leveraging cutting-edge U.S. AI models as a shortcut to developing specialised systems of their own, despite Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s access to advanced chips and other strategic technologies.

The documents show widespread use of a technique known as “model distillation,” in which outputs from a powerful AI system are used to train smaller, specialised models that can be deployed locally without the enormous computing requirements needed to build frontier AI systems from scratch.

Reuters’ review, which included research compiled by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation and shared exclusively with the news agency, showed distillation is widely used by researchers linked to the People’s Liberation Army and other military institutions.

The papers suggest Chinese defense institutions see leading U.S. AI models as both a source of technical insight and a way to close the gap with American rivals.

The dispute centres on unauthorised extraction, not distillation itself, a widely used industry practice.

The issue has emerged as a major flashpoint ahead of U.S.-China talks on AI governance and safety. U.S. officials have accused some Chinese entities of using distillation to extract capabilities from American AI models, potentially undermining export controls and infringing intellectual property rights.

China has rejected the accusations, saying Washington is pursuing AI “hegemonism” while arguing that U.S. firms have engaged in similar practices.

Chinese developers have also disputed claims that their AI advances rely on foreign models. AI startup Moonshot last week denied allegations by the Trump administration that its Kimi K3 model was built using distillation, saying it was driven by proprietary innovations.

Sunny Cheung, a Jamestown fellow who analysed over 60 of the papers, said Chinese military scientists are systematically capturing the reasoning steps of Western models to adapt them for surveillance, cyber warfare and tactical decision-making.

“Teaching a model the right answer is one thing but teaching it the reasoning behind the answer is much harder,” said Cheung.

“These papers show Chinese military-linked researchers are trying to transfer that expensive, proprietary reasoning from Western models into smaller systems they can control and deploy locally.”

Reuters verified the academic literature and identified an additional two dozen military-linked case studies.

One paper published last year by researchers in PLA Unit 96941, a military intelligence and cyber-warfare unit in Beijing, described using OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 to process sensitive military source code.

The researchers said third-party models were unsuitable for handling classified information. To overcome that limitation, they used GPT-3.5 to summarize software code and trained a domestic model on those summaries to run entirely within Chinese military networks.

The White House, Pentagon, China’s foreign ministry, the PLA and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

WIDE USE, FROM MONITORING TO MILITARY

Chinese researchers have used distillation for purposes ranging from content monitoring to military deployment, Reuters’ and Jamestown’s review of the papers showed.

At the North University of China, which has close links to the country’s weapons industry, researchers used Anthropic’s Claude 3 Haiku to generate synthetic training data for a text classification model for social media monitoring and content moderation.

Anthropic said it does not provide commercial access to Claude in China or to Beijing-controlled firms and uses monitoring systems to detect policy violations.

The company added that distilled models may lose the original systems’ safety safeguards, potentially allowing sensitive capabilities to be transferred to models beyond its control.

A 2024 paper from the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology described using distillation to shrink an image-processing model for deployment on unmanned aerial vehicles, allowing drones to analyse live video and support navigation and targeting decisions in real time even when communications are cut.

Similarly, researchers at China’s Academy of Military Sciences used distillation to run a target-recognition model on tactical hardware during simulated maritime operations involving drones, ships and unmanned submarines, a study published earlier this year showed.

BENEFITS AND LIMITS

China has embraced distillation as it seeks to compete with the U.S. in frontier AI while facing constraints on advanced computing resources due to Washington’s export controls on high-end chips.

Central and local governments have promoted “model lightweighting” and edge computing, directing subsidies and research funding toward technologies that enable AI models to run on drones, satellites and other devices with limited processing power.

Experts caution, however, that distillation has significant limitations.

As Chinese AI models close the gap with their U.S. counterparts, military researchers are also examining distillation as a potential security risk.

In January, researchers at the Army Engineering University published a paper on the threat of “data-free distillation,” a method of reverse-engineering a model’s capabilities without direct access to its core parameters.

To counter that vulnerability, they proposed defense mechanisms designed to mask the hidden logical information exposed in a model’s public outputs.

Distilled models also inherit only selected capabilities and cannot fully replicate the broad intelligence of frontier systems.

Trevor Koverko, co-founder of AI data company Sapien, said distilled models remain less capable than their teacher models.

“It is best understood as transferring selected capabilities into a cheaper, locally controlled system, not achieving independence from frontier AI.”

But instead of a service member resting a finger on the trigger well in preparation for the next shot, in video footage of the Bullfrog weapons system, a hulking, metal machine tilts the weapon just slightly, refocusing itself.

As the U.S. contends with steep expenses to counter cheap drones, Allen Control Systems, or ACS, announced Monday that the Marine Corps has chosen the Bullfrog autonomous weapon system to integrate into its airborne defenses.

The futuristic apparatus is an AI-enabled weapon system that detects, tracks and then automatically aims firearms against aerial threats like drones. That Marine Corps selected the system under its Ground Based Air Defense, or GBAD, program, which develops and fields capabilities to protect forces from airborne attacks.

The service plans to incorporate the Bullfrog into its Light Marine Air Defense Integrated System (L-MADIS), a counter-unmanned aircraft system mounted on two vehicles that relies heavily on electronic warfare.

The system is already in use in the Army and Navy and has been approved by Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Pentagon’s unit established to streamline the acquisition of counter-drone technology.

The Defense Department’s focus on countering drones comes as conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have underscored the increasingly important role of cheap drones on the modern battlefield. The Pentagon has placed a growing emphasis on developing and fielding counter-drone technology that is more scalable and less pricey.

Their prevalence has exposed the economic imbalance of U.S. air defense, as small, relatively inexpensive drones have forced the country to expend expensive interceptor missiles that can cost millions of dollars to make.

The challenge has become especially pronounced during the U.S. war with Iran, where American forces have relied heavily on costly defenses to counter Iran’s Shahed drones, which can cost around $35,000 compared to around $4 million for some interceptors. Experts have warned that the cost of a prolonged war may drastically deplete U.S. interceptor stores.

An ACS press release on the Marine Corps deal linked to the Bullfrog M240, which is compatible with the U.S. military’s belt-fed, fully automatic M240 machine gun. According to the company, the M240 system has a maximum effective range of nearly half a mile and can attack medium and large drones weighing up to 1,320 pounds. Without ammunition, the system weighs 300 pounds.

According to the company, which also has variants that support the M2 machine gun and M320 chain gun, the M240 system has “a cost-per-kill as low as $10.”

Other defense firms are also working to procure more affordable counter-UAS defenses. This week, Lockheed Martin announced a cheaper Patriot interceptor missile that they say will have a price tag of less than half of what other multimillion-dollar interceptors cost.

The New Mexico-based firm this week pulled the curtain back on Buckler, an interceptor designed to kill Group 3 drones — UAS weighing up to 1,320 pounds and flying below 18,000 feet at under 250 knots — for a cost of under $100,000 per unit.

Buckler is designed to knock out UAS at supersonic speeds, according to a company release, and is assembled with an airframe and propulsion system manufactured entirely at X-Bow factories, thus eliminating a production bottleneck that has plagued myriad high-priced systems reliant on multi-company components. Axios first reported about the X-Bow Buckler.

The unveiling at London’s 2026 Farnborough Airshow this week is the latest push by U.S. industry to solve an interceptor enigma that has become increasingly glaring as the nation’s war with Iran drags on.

U.S. troops in the military’s Central Command area of operations have continued to face the onerous task of leaning on exorbitantly priced interceptors to contend with Iran’s vastly cheaper, mass-produced Shahed attack drones.

The use of a single PAC-3 interceptor to knock one Shahed-136 out of the sky comes with a $4 million to $35,000 tradeoff, or a 114-1 cost-per-kill ratio.

“You can’t win a war of attrition trading million-dollar interceptors against thousand-dollar threats,” X-Bow founder and chief executive officer Jason Hundley said in a release. “Buckler has flown, it comes in under $100,000, and we build its airframe and propulsion ourselves — the part of the industrial base that is so stressed by today’s munitions demands. This is our answer to the call from the U.S. and its allies: affordable capability, at scale.”

X-Bow’s announcement comes after the firm’s recent test of the Buckler munition — one that derives its name, as TWZ noted, from a Medieval era shield — that demonstrated its propulsion and flight performance, the company announced.

Following a similar theme at Farnborough, Lockheed Martin on Monday introduced what it hopes will be another low cost per kill solution to the ever-evolving unmanned threat.

The defense giant this week introduced the Morfius X-Rotor, a ground-launched “one-to-many” airborne high power microwave counter-UAS system the company says can “neutralize more than 50 enemy drones in a single flight.”

Morfius is built, most notably, to be recovered and reused.

Lockheed also introduced a cheaper Patriot interceptor.

The business, which operates a plant in Singapore, is discussing cooperation with local partners elsewhere to extend its production footprint in the coming two years, an executive said.

Ira Hughes, a senior director of sales at Doodle Labs, told Defense News the company specializes in long-range, wireless mesh networking solutions that power drones and robotics. In Ukraine, the business works with local suppliers of unmanned systems and the Ukrainian military to adapt its radio solutions to the evolving threats on the battlefield.

“One of our customers makes two different types of drones. They make an inexpensive drone … with a cheap radio and camera system in it, and then they make a drone with our radio in it, and they use that for higher-value targets,” Hughes said. “They’ll go back to us and say: For vehicles with jammers, tanks with jammers, we go with your radios first, and this lets us change channels very quickly if we come under a jam.”

“We also have a very wide range of frequencies we can upgrade to in a single radio,” Hughes added. “So if we can move from the channels that they’re trying to jam to an unjammed channel, we continue to operate, and we can continue to get to the target.”

Amid rising demand for its radio systems, Doodle Labs is holding talks with manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe to launch local production. In particular, the company keeps an eye on a specific stateside policy provision.

“We are working on the ability to do U.S. manufacturing when needed. We’ll manufacture with a third party … and as the NDAA requirements change in the United States and the Made in America incentives come, we’ll be prepared and able to manufacture in the United States,” Hughes said, referring to the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual legislative vehicle for enacting defense-acquisition policies.

As drone production continues to increase in Western countries, allied nations will also need to ramp up their radio production as the existing supply chains lag behind the demand for unmanned systems, according to Hughes.

“A lot of those systems need advanced radios to be able to operate at the ranges and in the difficult conditions that they operate in,” he said. “We can make tens of thousands of radios a month, millions of radios a year if we need to.”

Such has been the case at London’s 2026 Farnborough Airshow, where Lockheed Martin on Monday introduced what it hopes will be a low cost per kill solution to the ever-evolving unmanned threat.

The Morfius X-Rotor is a ground-launched “one-to-many” airborne high power microwave, or HPM, counter-UAS system the company says can “neutralize more than 50 enemy drones in a single flight.”

Built, notably, to be recovered and reused, the Morfius is capable of using any command and control system and does not rely on any unique sensor or fire control radars, the company announced.

Morfius “sets a new benchmark for counter-drone capability — delivering a high kill rate while keeping the cost per kill low,” Randy Crites, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Advanced Programs, said in a release. “By leveraging a lightweight, field reusable high-power microwave architecture, we provide the most effective, low-cost solution on the market today.”

The company announced it is accelerating prototype production of both the drone and its HPM payload in the interest of getting it into the hands of frontline troops.

The system was recently flight-tested in Arizona, California and Oklahoma, the company stated, where it also demonstrated interception and lethal capabilities. Additional tests are slated in the months ahead.

Monday’s announcement comes as the U.S. looks to reduce dependence on cost-prohibitive interceptors to defend against cheaper munitions, a juxtaposition that has come under increased scrutiny as U.S. forces have quickly expended interceptor stockpiles to combat Iranian missiles and Shahed drones.

Lockheed Martin on Monday also introduced a cheaper Patriot interceptor as a potential off ramp to the reliance on exorbitantly priced interceptors.

The system, called Hypnosis, consists of an array of mobile “stations” around a defended area, working in unison to disrupt the command-and-control signals of incoming threats, according to the manufacturer.

The company said the technology is the product of IAI’s experience in navigation warfare, of NAVWAR.

The soft-kill weapon is meant as a method for taking out large numbers of drones at once, in situations where hard-kill — or kinetic — intercepts would be tricky to execute because of the number of airborne objects.

The unveiling comes amid a resurgence of military confrontation between the United States and Iran and heightened tension across the Middle East as a result of it, as well as an intensifying exchange of missile and drone strikes between Russia and Ukraine.

Defense companies around the world have been working on technology enabling swarms of drones to attack targets with an inherent logic of their own.

Similarly, companies are also chasing defensive offerings for such scenarios.

Swarms are difficult to defend against because they can saturate and overwhelm traditional air defense networks, increasing the chances of at least one warhead making it through.

Frank Kendall, the Air Force’s 26th secretary who served under former President Joe Biden, said in a Thursday roundtable hosted by Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies that gathering experience in the field and through simulations help operators establish trust with autonomous systems, like the Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

“You have to accumulate a basis for trust over time, and so I think we just need to think carefully about how we structure things in order to make that opportunity,” Kendall said during the roundtable.

Earlier this week, the Air Force announced that it conducted the first-ever live-fire test of an inert AIM-120 from an Anduril-made YFQ-44A. The CCA recently completed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target, the service announced, but did not specify when the exercise occurred.

The Air Force is scheduled to continue live-fire testing with General Atomics’ YFQ-42A this fall.

Kendall said that using the aircraft in Red Flag, the service’s leading large-force aerial combat training simulation held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, will be “fascinating,” but he worries about the force using initial setbacks as an excuse to “retreat” instead of pushing ahead.

The former secretary was optimistic that institutional support will be enough to overcome those setbacks, saying that enthusiastic operators want to see the aircraft’s full potential realized.

Kendall recalled when he once asked an Air Combat Command crew who were developing CCA tactics why there wasn’t more resistance.

“[A young fighter pilot’s] answer was, ‘Sir, these things are going to save our lives.’” Kendall recalled.

The simulations define the exercises, he added, saying that it showcases how the aircraft protects crew fighters effectively right now even as the force needs to develop more sophisticated tactics.

“The guys with the CCAs are beating the crap out of the guys without them, and not losing any manned fighters,” he said.

AI-controlled fighter jet takes Air Force secretary on historic ride

Kendall said that computerized, man-in-the-loop simulations are the best tool to assist operators in learning how to use the aircraft effectively since more trials can be completed. Integrated simulations have been used by the Air Force for roughly 30 years.

“In simulators with cockpits their sensors are showing them simulated threats as well as their friends, and then they basically fight a battle together,” he explained.

Kendall referred to a time when he took a flight in an F-16 modified by artificial intelligence. In flight, the aircraft’s testers would collect data points, he said, and run a million simulations to adjust the software overnight to complete the flight again the following day.

The first increment CCA aircraft in the program are “all the same” as weapons carriers, but in Increment II, Kendall stipulates that the force can begin equipping them with sensors and possibly distributed electronic warfare capabilities.

China is working on this autonomous system capability as well, he added, stating that air battles could soon be CCA versus CCA. Intelligence is going to play a significant role in how well the U.S. understands their systems, tactics and vulnerabilities, he said, noting that it’s a “hard game” to play.

In Increment I, the Air Force showed interest in obtaining 100 to 150 aircraft, the first phase of a longer-term goal of eventually fielding 1,000 CCAs.

Each platform would carry between nine and 12 Hermes 650 Spark aircraft along with the deck infrastructure, control systems and mission support needed to operate them. Elbit described the approach as an alternative to acquiring a traditional aircraft carrier, aimed at giving naval forces extended maritime reach without the associated cost and complexity.

The Hermes 650 Spark is built around a front-mounted engine that provides a wider speed envelope and additional power margin, supporting short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability, heavier payloads and longer missions. The aircraft carries two payload bays, satellite communications and diagnostic systems, the Israeli company notes.

Elbit says the aircraft is built for compatibility with the ground control infrastructure of its larger Hermes 900 drone, meaning the smaller 650 Spark would be managed as part of a combined array with the Hermes 900 from a land-based control system. In such a setup, ships would serve as remote launch and recovery sites. According to the company, the arrangement is intended to reduce manpower requirements and the number of control stations needed, the company said.

The Israeli defense company cited Japan’s expansive maritime geography, Denmark’s responsibilities around Greenland, and Germany’s security environment in the Baltic Sea as examples of the kind of large, distant maritime areas the concept is meant to address. For Israel, a maritime UAS-carrier concept holds appeal given Israel’s encompassing offshore gas platforms that sit dozens of kilometers from shore and require monitoring against both conventional threats and drone and missile attacks from Iran and its proxies.

A converted vessel carrying multiple long-endurance UAS could extend early-warning coverage over these installations and fit Israel’s broader doctrinal preference for cost-effective, unmanned-heavy solutions over large manned platforms.

The company did not specify a timeline for when the system would become operational, nor did it name any customers or governments that have expressed interest in the idea.

Elbit’s announcement seeks to position the company as a player in this segment mainly against Turkey’s Baykar and South Korea’s Hanwha and can be interpreted as an attempt to export an existing system, the Hermes 650, in new operational packaging.

The sea service “is exploring the industrial base’s capacity to deliver highly capable, autonomous platforms optimized for operations from Ford-class and Nimitz-class Nuclear Aircraft Carriers,” according to the RFI. The response deadline has been set for Aug. 13.

The drones the service is targeting, part of the Air Wing of the Future Family of Systems, can be designed as “a single-role platform, a multi-role platform, or a modular FoS [family of systems],” according to the service.

But whatever the solution, the Navy wants the platforms to be capable of performing eight different missions: strikes against surface ships, strikes against land targets, anti-submarine warfare, air-to-air combat against enemy aircraft and missiles, electronic warfare, ISR, aerial refueling, and resupply flights for a naval task force.

The service is soliciting “industry expertise to identify a mix of platforms that can provide affordable mass, risk-tolerant platforms that can perform the above missions to counter current and emerging threats,” the request states.

The RFI lists a few specific requirements, including a minimum 1,000-nautical mile range for strike missions.

Drones must also possess “flight autonomy (e.g., carrier pattern, taxiing) and mission autonomy (e.g., dynamic tasking/retasking, threat evasion, automated aerial refueling) maturity.”

Additionally, they must be compatible with existing Unmanned Carrier Aircraft control systems, according to the RFI.

Significantly, while the RFI mostly focuses on carrier-based drones, the Navy also wants vertical-takeoff UAVs that can operate from other types of vessels, such as destroyers and mobile sea bases.

“The Navy is interested in novel concepts that can operate from any air capable platform in addition to the CVN (e.g., DDG, ESB) using Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL),” the RFI said.

The RFI is indicative of the Navy’s desire to eventually move on from fourth-generation carrier air wings to an air wing composed of fifth- and sixth-generation manned and unmanned aircraft.

The new drones “must demonstrate increased combat effectiveness over current fourth generation platforms at a given spot factor.”

The Air Wing of the Future, as designed, appears to be modeled for an old-fashioned battle of attrition, in which combat is waged by affordable — and expendable — drones rather than a handful of expensive platforms.

Contractors responding to the RFI are asked to “detail how your production approach supports rapid scaling and elasticity in a surge scenario,” and what techniques they will use to “keep unit recurring flyaway (URF) and sustainment costs within sustainable limits.”

Companies should also explain how their proposed designs will minimize maintenance requirements and fit into existing naval supply chains, according to the RFI. Potential manufacturers should also submit “planned capital investments (CAPX) or Internal Research and Development (IRAD) commitments to mature the solution.”

The Air Wing of the Future Family of Systems is part of the Trump administration’s Golden Fleet expansion plan for the Navy.

Existing family-of-system drone projects include the MQ-25A Stingray tanker and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA.

The system is called the Arctic Over-The-Horizon Radar (A-OTHR), and the deal is worth some US$1.75 billion to Australia.

Gordon Frazer – Founder and CEO of the Australia-based HF radar technical services company FrazerLab – told Defense News Canada’s decision would fill an urgent need.

“I used to say to people, you could fly a jumbo jet from Beijing to Canberra if it had its transponders off and no one would know,” he said, arguing the same is likely true for Canada.

“Russia could fly a Tu-95 from one of their bases, Engels Air Base or something like that, to Canada and possibly no one would know.”

He added, “That’s why NORAD is so concerned, and why they’ve been pushing so hard to get this sort of technology done.”

Frazer was formerly an engineer involved in Australia’s OTHR program known as the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN).

Expanded surveillance coverage

While NORAD maintains the North Warning System, a line of microwave radars in Canada’s frozen north, Frazer said it would be “almost a trivial problem to defeat it” by flying at low altitude between these known and stationary radar sites.

Instead, because OTHR bounces high-frequency signals off the ionosphere, it can look down on airborne targets — and sometimes even surface vessels — with ease, including aircraft and missiles.

An over-the-horizon radar results in radar coverage stretching far beyond what traditional line-of-sight radars can achieve due to the curvature of the Earth.

With its particular A-OTHR contract, BAE Systems Australia will transfer technology and expertise for Canada to build its own OTHR radar sites to monitor its periphery. Officially, Canberra says JORN can detect targets 3,000 kilometers (1,700 miles) away, but its capability almost certainly reaches far beyond that.

Ottawa stated in a press release: “The signing formalizes Canada’s partnership with Australia and enables the delivery of Australia’s proven OTHR technology in support of Canada’s A-OTHR program. It marks a major milestone in the program, transitioning A-OTHR from the planning phase into delivery phase.”

Natural challenges

Canada has already been researching the application of OTHRs in its north, where environmental and solar conditions are far different than they are in Australia.

Furthermore, significant differences exist between operating OTHRs in equatorial, mid-latitude, high-latitude and polar areas. Frazer pointed out that Canada, despite the “Arctic” in the A-OTHR nomenclature, is actually buying a high-latitude system.

Polar regions present even more complicated challenges for OTHRs due to the Earth’s magnetic field, which creates serious background clutter. In fact, some 40% of Canadian territory lies above the Arctic Circle.

Although it may sound counterintuitive, Frazer said Canada’s A-OTHR radar facilities would be built as far south as possible. This is in order to bounce radar signals off the ionosphere ahead of the zone where the worst distortion occurs.

However, Canada will also have the future opportunity to expand its OTHR network with trans-polar coverage, which would allow it to see deep into Russia.

Positioned thus, the technology could enable NORAD to see Russian strategic bombers taking off or ballistic missiles being launched, for example.

If Canada does seek transpolar radar coverage, it would likely want to place those radar installations as far north as possible, Frazer explained.

Australia has three JORN radar sites, but it is unclear how many sites Canada will establish. In North America, Frazer expects the Pacific west coast will be covered by an American system, the Atlantic east coast will be covered by Canada, and then an additional system can cover the north. If NORAD wants 360-degree coverage, Frazer suggested five or six radar installations would be needed.

Australian expertise

Craig Lockhart, CEO of BAE Systems Australia, said: “Canada’s acquisition of a cutting-edge Australian OTHR system supports the strategic interests of both nations through enhanced detection and tracking of threats to North America, strengthening Five Eyes situational awareness.”

Frazer said Australia developed world-leading OTHR talent “because of multi-generational consistency” in its investment in the technology.

The New Zealand-born engineer pointed out that around 15% of the cost of OTHR technology sits in equipment to inform human operators how to set the radar’s parameters to account for constantly changing atmospheric conditions.

Frazer highlighted that OTHRs are bespoke, national systems built only once per generation. However, he hopes the Canadian deal will benefit both countries.

“I think you’re starting to get the critical mass of being able to keep the technology pipeline from design to sustainment to upgrade to far-reaching tech.”

Because over-the-horizon radar coverage can vary drastically due to solar conditions, other methods help plug surveillance gaps.

Airborne early-warning aircraft, for example, are complementary to OTHR. In May, Canada selected Saab’s GlobalEye as its future airborne early-warning platform.

Canada expects its A-OTHR to reach an initial operational capability by December 2029.

The equipment office of the German armed forces signed a contract with MBDA Deutschland and Rheinmetall Waffe Munition in June to develop the full system, from reconnaissance to target tracking and engagement, the companies said in statements on Thursday. The contract value is in the “mid three-digit” million-euro range, Rheinmetall said.

Several European navies are working on laser weapons, with the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy planning to fit the DragonFire directed-energy weapon on a destroyer by 2027, in work led by MBDA in partnership with Leonardo and QinetiQ. Naval vessels are particularly suited to deploy powerful lasers, as they can provide the physical space, electrical power, sensors and cooling required.

“The laser weapon system will provide our personnel deployed on naval vessels with a significantly higher level of protection, particularly when it comes to countering drones,” Roman Koehne, head of Rheinmetall’s weapons and ammunition division, said in a statement.

The laser weapon system from MBDA and Rheinmetall has a “very high level” of technological maturity, the companies said. The demonstrator has been deployed on the German frigate Sachsen, covering 28,000 nautical miles from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, and firing over 1,000 shots at air, sea and land targets in more than a year of testing, according to MBDA and Rheinmetall.

The containerized laser effector will also be a cost-effective weapon for port security, MBDA Deutschland Managing Director Thomas Gottschild said. The system can focus power on an area measuring just a few centimeters, and has proven to be effective even in adverse weather conditions, according to Rheinmetall and MBDA.

The MBDA-Rheinmetall joint venture will place “particular emphasis” on German supply chains and local systems expertise to secure national sovereignty in the technology, the companies said. Serial production will “largely” take part in Germany, according to Koehne.

In other weapon-development news, the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis said it tested its electromagnetic railgun outdoors for the first time in June, moving the system out of laboratory conditions. The institute will now work on higher energy levels and longer distances as a path towards a possible future deployable system, it said in a statement on Thursday.

Railguns use electromagnetic acceleration rather than chemical propellants to fire a projectile, and could provide a possible counter to hypersonic threats.

Meanwhile, Belgium said it will buy 20 of Rheinmetall’s Skyranger 30 anti-drone cannons as well as 14 Thales GM200 radars, in addition to a previously announced plan to buy 10 NASAMS air-defense systems from Kongsberg. The country is investing €3.1 billion ($3.5 billion) to build up a layered air defense system, after two decades of going without, Defense Minister Theo Francken said.

The company is in talks with a French producer to launch manufacturing of its solutions abroad and is also looking for partners in other European countries, according to a senior company representative.

Oleksii Konik, the co-founder of Trinity Robotics, told Defense News that the company initially planned to make around 1,100 UGVs this year, but, with the Ukrainian military increasing its orders, the business is ramping up throughput at its facilities in Ukraine.

“We work with the [Ukrainian] military procurement agency and more than 20 military units directly,” Konik said. “The most important mission that we have now is the robotization of the battlefield, because only this will allow our country to win the war.”

The company’s flagship UGV, Konyk One, is suitable for performing logistics and medical evacuation tasks. At the same time, Trinity Robotics is working on a new variant that will be fitted with a turret. This will enable users to deploy the UGV for combat operations, according to the co-founder.

While some Ukrainian officials expect the country’s ban on exporting weapons could be lifted this year, local defense companies are currently prohibited from exporting their wares. Meanwhile, Trinity Robotics is discussing cooperation with partners from allied countries to produce its unmanned vehicles abroad.

“We are looking for partners, manufacturers from Europe that manufacture trucks, vehicles, military parts,” Konik said. “We have an opportunity to create a joint enterprise in Europe … to produce our UGVs.”

“This will allow us to give additional volumes of our UGVs to our end users who are interested in that,” he said.

Under Kyiv’s Build with Ukraine program, joint manufacturing isprimarily intended to cover the needs of the country’s armed forces, but surplus output can be exported to other countries.

The company’s co-founder said that Trinity Robotics is currently negotiating with an unnamed French producer to launch a joint venture and produce its UGVs abroad. The Ukrainian manufacturer is also working to secure funds for its expansion, with recent investors including Sweden’s Front Ventures and Hede Capital Partners.

In its standard version, Konyk One weighs 460 kg (1,014 lb) and has a load capacity of up to 300 kg, according to data from the producer.

The search comes after dozens of MQ-9s were swatted out of the sky during the Iran war, according to a May 13 Congressional Research Service report.

With the Air Force currently possessing about 135 Reapers — which cost approximately $30 million apiece — such a loss rate is not sustainable, especially against a force like Iran, whose air defenses are less sophisticated than those of China or Russia.

“The Joint Force’s reliance on low-density, high-value ‘exquisite’ (>$30 million) manned and unmanned aircraft is unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost antiaircraft capabilities,” warned the Defense Innovation Unit solicitation for a new drone, which the Pentagon wants to “execute missions that the MQ-9A performs today.”

Rather than build a better Reaper, DIU is opting for an expendable replacement. The Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA, project aims to develop a UAV designed to operate in such large numbers that it can absorb heavy losses and still overwhelm enemy defenses.

Particularly of interest is the size of the MMA. Drone swarms may be the next big thing in unmanned warfare, but generally those hordes are made up of small, inexpensive UAVs with limited range and payload.

But the DIU solicitation envisions a drone that has long range and a heavy payload — and is still inexpensive enough for mass production. The solicitation calls for a payload of at least 2,800 pounds, a bit less than the MQ-9’s 3,800-pound capacity.

The MMA should also have an unrefueled combat range of at least 2,300 nautical miles, according to the solicitation, and a one-way transfer range of at least 8,000 nautical miles. Additionally, the drone should reach speeds of at least 200 miles per hour and have the ability to operate from a 6,000-foot runway or improvised airstrips.

The DIU solicitation states that the drone should have “sufficient available size, weight, power (25kW), and cooling (5kW) to host a variety of internal and/or external payloads,” with a level of autonomous operations that would allow one operator to control several drones.

The solicitation does not specify the MMA’s dimensions, though the specifications suggest a drone comparable in size to the MQ-9. It also did not list a desired price point, though presumably it would be less than the $30 million price tag of an MQ-9.

The timeline for the MMA project, meanwhile, is ambitious. DIU is calling for “full-scale prototype flight testing within 21 months of award, with a targeted Initial Operating Capability (IOC) in FY2031. IOC for MMA is envisioned as 20 mission-ready aircraft delivered to an operational unit, able to be deployed.”

Pentagon solicitations continue to reflect a mindfulness of lessons from the Ukraine War, as well as the experiences during the Iran War. In both conflicts, the defender exhausted interceptors before the attacker ran out of drones.

“Keeping a constant airborne MMA presence to launch weapons, gather intelligence, perform electronic warfare missions, or relay communications will force an adversary to stay on the defensive,” DIU said. “This relentless pressure will exhaust the adversary, forcing them to burn through expensive anti-aircraft missiles and resources faster than they can be replaced.”

We have soldiers for land, sailors for sea, airmen for air, and guardians for space. But in cyberspace, a borderless domain where American forces are engaged with adversaries every day, we still do not have a military service whose central purpose is to build a quality, expert force, equipped with the most cutting-edge capabilities, for war-fighting in the cyber domain.

For more than a decade, Washington has tried to patch this problem instead of fixing it. Congress has granted U.S. Cyber Command new authorities. The Pentagon has adjusted organizations, budgets and training pipelines. Senior leaders have made the current structure work better than it should. But those reforms have not changed the basic fact that there is no military service that sees organizing, training and equipping forces for the cyber domain as its first and primary priority.

Cyber Command’s job is to employ cyber capabilities in military operations. But it still depends on the existing services to recruit, train, retain, and develop the people who carry out those missions and equip them with the capabilities to do so. In the rest of the military, that division of labor is clear: services build forces, and combatant commands employ them.

Cyber remains the exception. The Navy must build fleets, the Army must build land power, the Air Force must attain air superiority, and so on. Each service has cyber responsibilities, but each also has core missions that naturally, and appropriately, come first. Cyber matters to all of the services, but it is not the central organizing mission of any of them.

The result is a weaker cyber force than the country needs. The military’s cyber enterprise still struggles with inconsistent recruiting and retention problems. A young American who can write code, spot weaknesses in software or understand how digital systems break may be exactly who the country needs, even if that person does not fit the standard mold the existing services were built to recruit, promote and retain.

Cyber talent does not grow by accident. It must be recruited deliberately, trained continuously and retained through a career model that rewards technical mastery, instead of forcing top operators to move into command or management roles just to advance. The country needs people who can spend years becoming experts in offensive and defensive cyberspace operations, not personnel forced through systems that were never built for the mission.

The threat is evolving too quickly to justify continuing marginal fixes to the current system. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and criminal actors are targeting U.S. networks, critical infrastructure and military systems. Artificial intelligence will only increase the speed and scale of cyber operations. The United States cannot keep relying on a cyber force stitched together across multiple services, each with different priorities, incentives and personnel rules.

A new report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows how to build a Cyber Force with a clearly defined mission, not a sprawling bureaucracy. Its job should be to organize, train and equip forces for offensive and defensive cyberspace operations. It should not take over every military information technology network or absorb every technology function inside the Department of Defense. The existing services should continue to operate and secure the networks and systems tied to their own missions.

A Cyber Force would also strengthen Cyber Command. Too much of this debate treats a new service as a judgment on Cyber Command’s performance. It is not. Cyber Command houses some of our nation’s most talented cyber warriors. What they need is a better force-generation system behind them.

The U.S. military has adapted before when new domains became central to warfare. The Air Force was created because airpower became too important to remain secondary to another service’s priorities. The Space Force was created because space needed its own culture and focus. Cyberspace has reached the same point: American forces are already in daily contact with adversaries online, cyberattacks can disrupt military operations and civilian infrastructure alike, and artificial intelligence is making the domain faster and more dangerous.

For too long, cyber has been treated as everyone’s responsibility, and therefore no one’s first priority. Our adversaries are not waiting for us to get organized. They are building capabilities, probing our defenses, and preparing for the next conflict. The United States should not enter that fight with cyber forces generated as a side mission by services built for other domains.

If cyberspace is truly a domain of warfare, it deserves its own service built to fight in it.

Dr. Erica Lonergan is an assistant professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and previously held several positions at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy and is now the senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

They both served on the CSIS-FDD Commission on U.S. Cyber Force Generation.

That’s according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, which found that three versions of the augmented-reality “all-weather fighting goggle” developed between 2018 and 2025 were deemed not ready for fielding and will stay in a warehouse rather than ever reaching soldiers.

The news, tucked within the GAO’s annual weapons systems assessment, was first reported this month by Task and Purpose. The watchdog agency did note that the vision of IVAS is not completely dead; the prototype will be transitioned to a separate effort with similar goals related to improving soldier awareness, and development will begin again. But that leaves almost 10,000 pricey headsets that appear bound for shelf real estate next to the Ark of the Covenant.

“An Army evaluation reported that soldiers found the headsets difficult to wear and noted that they did not perform better than existing equipment,” the GAO report said. “As a result, the nearly 10,000 units that were produced are obsolete and will remain in storage.”

Those 10,000 units include versions 1.0 and 1.1 of IVAS. Version 1.2, which “was expected to address reliability and wearability issues identified in the previous versions such as comfort and low-light performance,” according to the report, will be used instead to inform the new rapid prototyping effort, known as Soldier Borne Mission Command.

Some 400 of the version 1.2 goggles will inform the design of SBMC, in a contract now held by Anduril, who received funding from IVAS in April after the Army reprogrammed the money. Microsoft had previously held the contract.

Anduril announced it had gotten the $159 million contract award for initial prototyping last September, saying the award represented “the largest effort of its kind to equip every soldier with superhuman perception and decision-making capabilities—fusing the best of night vision, augmented reality, and AI into a single system.”

Like IVAS, SBMC aims to overcome the challenges built into legacy night-vision goggles, including lack of a common networked picture and battlefield data integration, resulting in siloed information.

Anduril’s solution, which it touted as developed with the benefit of 260,000 hours of soldier input from the IVAS program, purports to give troops “superhero-like abilities” with an augmented-reality battlefield picture overlaid onto advanced night vision capabilities.

Yet despite the billions invested in IVAS over seven years, the end result was worse than the legacy headsets it purported to replace, investigators found.

“While IVAS used limited elements of leading practices in its prior efforts, the program’s minimal implementation of these contributed to IVAS concluding with no fielded capability. Problems that users reported with the 1.0 and 1.1 versions were not adequately addressed in 1.2,” the report found. “These included poor performance in low-light conditions and the added weight on users’ helmets. The program’s failure to adequately incorporate user feedback into design updates resulted in a product that users report is less useful than legacy equipment.”

Investigators faulted the program for moving into production with “limited evidence from testing in an operational environment” to show that the goggles actually did what the soldiers needed them to do. After a wave of negative feedback on the 1.0 version of IVAS, the program did not even conduct operational testing on the 1.1 version, the report said.

“This runs counter to our prior work, which found that systems-integrated testing in an operational environment helps ensure product designs meet user needs before significant funding is spent on production,” the report stated.

Moving forward, according to the report, the new contractor, Anduril, will conduct continuous operational assessments on the latest version of the goggles, getting user feedback from brigades via the Army.

“The program expects to use these assessments to collect feedback and inform the first phase of SBMC, which aligns with leading practices to make improvements in subsequent iterations,” GAO investigators said.

But berthed in port — or sailing on the surface while transiting to and from port — these powerful yet fragile boats can be sitting ducks for drones, mines and even anti-tank rockets.

What once seemed the plot of thriller novels has become reality. Ukraine claims it successfully used an underwater drone to damage a Russian submarine in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk last year. Guerrillas and terrorists lurking along a waterway could use anti-tank guided missiles or handheld anti-tank rockets to ambush an unwary sub.

To face the new threat, the U.S. Navy is looking to develop better methods of protecting its missile subs, as well as the shore installations that support them.

These defenses include “prototype technologies to detect, track, identify, deny, and defeat unmanned systems across all domains,” according to a Sources Sought announcement. “This area seeks scalable solutions for shore-based installations and afloat operations in Port, Harbor, Littoral, and Waterways (PHLW) and open ocean environments.”

The Navy is also searching for ways to escort and protect its missile subs as they transit to and from port.

The goal is to “ensure the zero-failure secure movement of strategic maritime assets,” the announcement said. “This area seeks advanced maritime situational awareness, physical security enhancements for escorting SSBNs [nuclear missile subs], and the detection, avoidance, and mitigation of maritime mines, and the defeat of direct-fire kinetic threats (e.g., shore-launched ATGMs/RPGs) during transit through PHLW to and from dive points.”

The threat of anti-tank weapons even extends to the truck convoys hauling ICBMs to sub bases. The Navy is interested in active protection systems — sensors and shotgun-like launchers mounted on armored vehicles to destroy incoming anti-tank rockets — “for ground transport and convoy operations of strategic weapons and equipment.”

US Air Force wants more armored transporters for ICBM warheads

Other security items in the Sources Sought announcement, which lists 22 “focus areas” that the Navy’s Strategic Systems Program wants to address, include sensors to protect harbors. The Navy is also interested in security robots, including “Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) for waterside patrol, Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) for perimeter screening, and robotic inspection platforms that seamlessly integrate with existing response forces.”

Artificial intelligence has also emerged as a threat in the form of drone swarms or cyberwarfare.

The Navy is searching for countermeasures that “focus on defeating autonomous swarms, disrupting AI-enabled Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) directed at nuclear facilities, and hardening strategic security networks against AI-driven cyber-physical attacks or spoofing.”

The best defense for submarines is simply not to be detect in the first place. To that point, the Navy is seeking “prototype technologies that may mitigate the generation, radiation, propagation, and scatter of a variety of signal types (acoustic, chemical, optical, electromagnetic, radiological, hydrodynamic, and cyber) associated with submarine and unmanned system operations, to include both peacetime and wartime operations.”

“I’m really pleased to announce that eight allies are launching a project to explore the development of a mega-constellation called HALO, opening a new chapter in allied space operations,” said Radmila Šekerinska, the NATO deputy secretary-general.

HALO — Hybrid Alliance Layered Operations in Space — will focus on improving connectivity and integration of sovereign, nationally owned and controlled military satellites into a networked constellation.

Denmark, Canada, Finland, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Turkey are part of the effort. It aims to improve alliance resilience and military advantage in space, enabling high-speed communications, intelligence and missile tracking.

Individual satellite constellations run independently by member countries are vulnerable to cyberattacks, jamming or physical destruction, while also being too slow to relay large amounts of data, Šekerinska said.

“So this new model will be particularly helpful for high-speed communications, intelligence and missile tracking, overcoming the cost, the time and coverage limitations of single-nation satellite fleets,” she added.

Meanwhile, at the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum, several nations declared their contributions to the space domain. Canada became the 15th member of NATO’s STARLIFT multinational initiative, which explores ways to develop a network of launch capabilities that will help allies launch assets on short notice from spaceports across the alliance.

Spain became the 19th country to join NATO’s Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space initiative. Madrid will contribute by increasing coastal surveillance through imagery from its “Atlantic Constellation” satellites.

Turkey announced plans for the development of two additional high-resolution satellites to complement space capabilities in the region.