The plant in Born, Netherlands, is run in conjunction with local company VDL Defentec, which specializes in assembling armored vehicles and their electric propulsion.

The facility has already produced its first THeMIS unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, for the Dutch government, part of a run of more than 100 such robots the Netherlands has pledged to send Ukrainian forces, Milrem said in a statement.

Ukraine to field 25,000 ground robots in push to replace soldiers for frontline logistics

The tracked THeMIS vehicles are configurable for a plethora of battlefield applications, according to the manufacturer’s website. There are weapon-mounted versions for assault missions, sensor-laden variants for spying on enemy movements, and cargo-capable robots for carrying gear or extracting wounded personnel.

Ukrainian forces have used the UGVs since 2022, where soldiers found them to be reliable and effective in combat conditions, according to Milrem.

Near Russian border, NATO grapples with ground robots in combat

“The opening of this production line and the handover of the first THeMIS vehicles manufactured in the Netherlands mark an important milestone in our cooperation with the Dutch government and VDL Defentec,” said Milrem Robotics CEO Kuldar Väärsi.

“It demonstrates that Europe’s defense industry is capable of rapidly increasing production capacity and delivering meaningful capabilities to Ukraine,” he added.

The new assembly line is designed for flexibility and rapid scaling, the company notes, meaning it can spit out more robots faster when required.

Unmanned systems in the air and on land have become a defining feature in Ukraine’s defense against Russian forces. Both sides have used aerial drones and UGVs to such a degree that human soldiers cannot move on the front line without being immediately detected and targeted.

If lawmakers decided to move forward with the development of a U.S. Cyber Force, there would be challenges to its implementation because current responsibilities are shared between the various services and U.S. Cyber Command, per the Wednesday report written by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Many observers contend that the challenge of generating military capability and capacity necessary to deter, compete, fight and win in the cyber domain can be directly attributed to the lack of a single organization responsible and accountable for force generation in cyberspace — or organizing, training and equipping the military forces operating in this domain,” the report states.

Lawmakers have contemplated the necessity of a Cyber Force for over a decade since the 2010 establishment of U.S. Cyber Command, or CYBERCOM, one of the Department of Defense’s 11 unified combatant commands.

Current efforts to create a standalone Cyber Force are spearheaded by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, as an amendment to the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

The report showcases how CYBERCOM is expected to perform the functions of both a combatant command and a military service, but a proposed Cyber Force would take over most of its “service-like” responsibilities, and thus organizing, training and equipping forces for the cyber domain.

The think tanks examined ways Congress and the Defense Department could stand up and implement a Cyber Force as a new military service with a cyber-specific mission that centers around assisting forces in conducting offensive and defense cyberspace operations.

The initial budget for standing up a Cyber Force is an estimated $10 billion to $11 billion, the report says, although that budget is already currently allocated into other services and cyber capabilities.

In the fiscal 2027 defense budget request, the Pentagon distributed $7.7 billion to cyberspace operations, according to budget documents, with $4.1 billion designated to CYBERCOM and the remaining $4.6 billion set aside for other defense organizations, such as the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The budget request also emphasized the need for $20.5 billion for cyberspace activities and $12.1 billion for cybersecurity.

At least 20,000 active-duty personnel, 3,500 to 5,000 National Guard members and a civilian workforce of 6,000 would be needed to staff a Cyber Force if established, the report reads, highlighting that the commission envisions the force as a relatively small military organization.

“By grouping personnel into broad occupational categories within which they can specialize or generalize, the Cyber Force will preserve distinct competencies, support future changes in how cyber missions are conducted and create a professional identity strong enough to anchor training, career development and long-term readiness,” the report says.

Instead of following the precedent of other military branches, the commission recommended that a Cyber Force follows in the footsteps of the U.S. Public Health Service by employing commissioned and warrant officers for uniformed personnel without an “enlisted cadre.”

The think tanks weighed two options for institutional alignment: placing the Cyber Force within the Department of the Army, like the Space Force is attached to the Department of the Air Force, or making the Cyber Force its own military department.

If included in the Army, the force could have increased speed and efficiency since it would belong to an already existing DoD bureaucracy, but it could be then considered a lower priority.

By having its own military department, the Cyber Force could ensure prioritization of cyber issues within the Pentagon, but standing up a new DoD bureaucracy would require substantial time and resources.

Regardless of organizational structure, it would take between 12 to 18 months to reach initial operating capacity, the report states.

The statement by U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s top commander and the head of U.S. forces in Europe, followed a decision by the Trump administration to shrink the pool of U.S. military capabilities available to NATO in a crisis.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO and told its European members they will have to take over primary responsibility for the conventional defense of the continent.

The U.S. told allies last month of its decision to reduce its contribution to a framework known as the NATO Force Model, which includes a pool of forces that could be activated during a crisis. But it did not publicly disclose any details.

Grynkewich’s statement, issued after a meeting of NATO military planners on Wednesday, was the first public indication of what areas the U.S. plans to cut first and where it expects allies to step in.

Manned and unmanned aircraft and naval vessels are two areas where Canada and European allies “can step up now and in the near term - as the United States reduces forces ‘sourced’ to the NATO Force Model in Europe and refocuses them elsewhere,” he said.

“There has been an unhealthy co-dependence in the NATO Force Model on U.S. forces,” Grynkewich said in his written statement. “President (Donald) Trump, (Defense) Secretary (Pete) Hegseth and others have been clear that this needs to change, and it will change. The potential reality of simultaneous conflict in multiple theaters demands it.”

NATO expects no gaps

The NATO alliance is under unprecedented strain, with some European countries concerned that Washington may withdraw outright. A major adjustment to the forces the U.S. would make available during wartime will only intensify those concerns.

A spokesperson for NATO’s military headquarters, U.S. Army Col. Martin O’Donnell, said the areas mentioned by Grynkewich were “where allies already have or soon will have sufficient capabilities, meaning no defence gaps are expected to emerge.”

“Nations just need to assign the capabilities they have to NATO,” he added.

O’Donnell declined to elaborate on when Grynkewich expected allied nations, whose leaders will meet at a NATO summit in Ankara in July, to have replaced the U.S. capabilities.

The number of U.S. fighter jets available to NATO is set to fall by a third, and the U.S. will also make fewer U.S. destroyers and no U.S. submarines available as part of the crisis pool, according to a report last week by German news outlet Spiegel.

Europe will also be forced to provide its own reconnaissance drones, while the U.S. plans to significantly scale back the provision of armed models, the report added.

Announced June 3, the live-fire demonstration paired the radars, Sanctum software and launcher to destroy the target at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, according to the company. Lockheed said it integrated the system and completed live-fire testing in under 45 days.

The Fortem R-40 comes from a counter-drone partnership Lockheed strengthened in April, when it invested $25 million into the Utah-based firm to incorporate its radars and interceptors more tightly into the Sanctum system.

The test builds on GRIZZLY’s first live-fire in March, when Lockheed fired a Hellfire missile from the same container system during a vertical-launch test at Yakima Training Center, Washington, six months after the program began.

The launcher is designed to fire both the Hellfire and JAGM and borrows design elements from Lockheed’s M299 launcher. Where March proved the launcher, the June test added the JAGM and a full detect-track-engage kill chain against a live Group 3 drone target, a class the Defense Department defines as drones weighing up to 1,320 pounds and flying below 18,000 feet at under 250 knots.

“Built on existing prototype architecture, GRIZZLY enables users to employ the ready-to-fire Sanctum C-UAS system without extensive infrastructure and logistical footprints. By integrating advanced sensor, battle management and missile technologies, Lockheed Martin delivers a decisive C-UAS capability that aligns with our customers’ needs for agile and distributed lethality,” the company said.

The GRIZZLY holds up to eight missiles in a 10-foot shipping container, offers toolless reloading and can operate from ground sites or ships. Wireless links among the radars, battle manager and launcher allow for quick setup. Lockheed billed the system as a low-cost way to shield forward bases, key assets and vessels.

The maritime pitch tracks with Navy interest in containerized weapons that can ride on unmanned surface vessels to add firepower at sea, a demand signal Lockheed cited when it first showed the launcher in March.

“The ability to integrate GRIZZLY’s proven launch architecture with Sanctum’s battle manager on an accelerated timeline demonstrates how Lockheed Martin is applying battlefield innovation and cross-program collaboration to rapidly deliver layered defense capabilities to the warfighter,” said Randy Crites, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Advanced Programs.

“This test demonstrates a rapid, low-cost and modular point-defense solution that can be deployed on land or maritime platforms within days,” added Paul Lemmo, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Sensors, Effectors and Mission Systems.

The demonstration comes as the Pentagon and allies push for better layered protection against growing drone threats.

In a new solicitation, SOCOM is asking for a new M4 upper receiver capable of firing “emerging hyper velocity ammunition” modeled after the 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge.

SOCOM said the Hypervelocity Improved Carbine, or HICAR, program will “leverage the performance benefits of current and future experimental hypervelocity rounds” and called it “vital to addressing future capability gaps on the battlefield.”

When fired out of a standard-issued M4, the military cartridge known as M855A1 has “a recognized effective range of approximately 300 meters,” but SOCOM wants the new upper designed to fire hypervelocity ammunition known as M855A1+.

“This weapon system will allow an operator to effectively engage targets at extended distances while maintaining the portability and ergonomics of a lightweight carbine,” the solicitation says, adding the desired effective range is “600 meters and beyond.”

“The goal is to integrate advancements in material science and weapon design to provide operators with a technically superior individual weapon system,” SOCOM adds.

In the solicitation, SOCOM says M855A1+ is loaded to 82,000 pounds per square inch. That measurement refers to the amount of pressure generated to push the bullet out of the casing. While more pressure results in greater velocity, it can also damage a firearm not designed to handle it.

Last month, SOCOM said it will begin fielding the MK24 Medium Range Gas Gun Assault rifle, which is part of a family of squad weapons chambered in 6.5mm Creedmoor and .338 Norma Magnum, before the end of this fiscal year.

Also, both the Army and Marine Corps have been shifting away from the M4 with the adoption of the Next Generation Squad Weapons and M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, respectively.

For the HICAR program, white paper submissions are due June 8 and SOCOM will host pitch meetings Sept. 15 and 16.

During testing, the M4 uppers will fire 600 rounds of primarily M855A1+ and some M855A1.

After an initial intercept by local drone maker Eraser failed and the target returned unharmed, CEO Edgars Gauručs was so stressed in a later demonstration that he missed the details of the successful takedown. Nordic Air Defense’s Kreuger 100 interceptor hit its target on the first try, missed on a second attempt, before succeeding again in a third and final simulated attack.

Finding cost-effective drone counters has become urgent for NATO, as countries on its eastern flank have found themselves unable to fend off multiple drone incursions in recent months. Meanwhile, Russia uses thousands of drones in Ukraine every day, and Iranian drone attacks caused the United States to burn through years of interceptor production valued at billions of dollars in just weeks.

“We face serious problems, not only in Latvia,” said Maj. Modris Kairišs, head of Latvia’s Autonomous Systems Competence Center, at the testing range on May 26. Drone technology is “a couple of steps ahead” of C-UAS, he said, with interceptors having to be successful every time while only one attack drone needs to get through for damaging effect.

The threat felt particularly acute in Latvia last month after the country was unable to challenge repeated incursions by Ukrainian drones believed to have been diverted by Russian jamming. In response, the country is sending mobile teams equipped with interceptor drones from Latvia’s Origin Robotics and Eraser to its eastern border with Russia.

The war in the Middle East exposed a cost-exchange problem for C-UAS, with Shahed-class threats costing $15,000 to $50,000 being shot down with interceptors costing anywhere from $1 million to $12 million, PitchBook senior research analyst Ali Javaheri wrote in a May 26 report. He said investors should look for solutions that cost less than $30,000 per engagement against such threats.

The demonstrations at Sēlija, which hosts NATO’s new uncrewed systems testing range, featured a range of approaches by European startups to the drone problem, from autonomous interceptors to a mothership drone and jet-powered systems to engage faster threats. Much of it inspired by the war in Ukraine, and in some cases battle-tested there.

Origin Robotics showed off the Blaze interceptor that will equip Latvia’s mobile teams and which the company hopes to deliver to Ukraine “soon.” The four-rotor drone is fully autonomous, with radar for initial target detection and computer-vision software to close in on and follow the target, with an operator deciding whether or not to trigger the interceptor’s fragmentation warhead.

Light rain complicated visibility across the testing range, a 2 by 2 kilometers square of cleared terrain of grass and sand hemmed in by pine forest, with military brass and officials following the action on a several meter-high video screen set up for the occasion.

“There was the big kaboom and the target is down,” said Maris Kuda, head of government relations at Origin Robotics, after the drone identified, approached and hit a target drone from Temeso, another Latvian company. “Hopefully soon those will be some Shaheds on the eastern border.”

Ukraine remains the reference for combat drone operations, and several companies at the Sēlija range noted their systems had already been tested there. While the concept of interceptor drones predates Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukraine has turned them into a mass weapon, with production of 100,000 units in 2025, according to the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.

“Ukraine has demonstrated with absolute clarity that drones, counter-drone systems, electronic warfare, autonomy and rapid innovation cycles are now central to the military efficiency,” said Maj. Gen. Andis Dilāns, undersecretary of state for logistics in Latvia’s Ministry of Defence.

Latvia aims to develop the Sēlija training area into a place where NATO allies and industry can test technologies, validate concepts and speed up development, which is especially important in counter-UAS due to constantly evolving threats, according to Dilāns.

The country signed a letter of intent with the Netherlands last week to let the Dutch armed forces use the range for drone and counter-drone exercises and testing.

NATO is setting up five innovation ranges as part of its Rapid Adoption Action Plan, including the one in Sēlija focused on unmanned aerial systems and their countermeasures. The goal is to make it easier for companies to test new systems and show they work, and make it less risky for countries to buy those systems because the capabilities are proven.

Sweden’s Nordic Air Defense demonstrated its first C-UAS product, a portable carbon-fiber drone called Kreuger 100, which it launched from a winged mothership that can additionally function as a communications relay or be equipped with a sensor gimbal to cue the interceptor.

The drone performed three simulated strikes on the target, with a first head-on hit counting as a kill as the Kreuger got within the 3-meter distance where its fragmentation head is effective. The interceptor, chasing the threat in intercept mode without manual control, didn’t get close enough in a second pass from a cornering angle, before success on a third attempt.

The company says it aims to reach a price point at which the interceptor can be used as a disposable air-defense tool.

With Russia adapting to Ukraine’s drone interceptors by switching to jet-powered attack UAVs, two German companies demonstrated high-speed drones for use against high-flying or faster targets, though neither demo included an interception.

Munich-based RDC Systems showcased a 3D-printed rotor-powered interceptor drone called Raven, with rocket-assisted launch to save battery life while climbing to operating height. The company says the drone was measured by NATO radars at the Sēlija range in March doing 450 kilometers per hour.

JetDrones, a startup from the same German city and only registered since February, demonstrated a jet-powered interceptor aimed at Shaheds flying at an altitude of four to eight kilometers, a range which the company said would typically require expensive interceptor missiles such as IRIS-T. The firm says its drone can operate fully autonomously or monitored by a human operator.

The company was flying the drone in FPV mode, and a company representative said adding a radar would double the price tag, when JetDrones has been told by Ukrainian operators that the cost needs to below that of a Shahed.

Eraser wrapped up the demonstrations at Sēlija with a successful takedown of the Temeso target using a faster version of its modular drone, after the earlier attempt with a slower version and a smaller target proved inconclusive.

“There is the target,” Gauručs said, tracking the interception on-screen, after just describing how cloudy skies and sun can complicate visual detection. “We think we… oh, no, we got it, the target is going down in the corner.”

The executive said he wasn’t sure whether the Eraser drone took down the target autonomously or in manual mode.

“To be fair, I was so stressed that I didn’t see the result.”

The U.S. military is pushing to demonstrate high-energy laser weapons engineered for fielding at scale in the next two years, according to the U.S. Defense Department’s top science and technology official.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee on May 19, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E)) Emil Michael told lawmakers that the science of laser weapons “is largely done.”

The Pentagon, he added, is now focused on addressing the engineering challenges that come with transforming exquisite prototypes into mass-producible capabilities — the “scaled” element of the department’s “scaled directed energy” critical technology area.

“We now have a suite of directed energy products that go from low-end to high-end, and now we have to scale production of those,” Michael said.

When questioned by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) about the three-year timeline for fielding laser weapons at scale that defense officials previously publicized in March, Michael stated that President Donald Trump’s planned "Golden Dome for America" domestic missile shield would accelerate those research and development efforts due to the initiative’s “big reliance” on directed energy, adding that “our experience in Iran has also doubled our interest in these systems.”

“A lot of the money allocated to Golden Dome is going to go to the fundamental engineering of these systems so that we can make them cheaper, smaller and more proliferated,” Michael said. “And because the commitment was made to the president that we’re going to have a demonstration that includes directed energy in our Golden Dome architecture, there’s a lot of energy going into that.”

The directed energy demonstration is expected to occur during the summer of 2028, Michael said, part of a series of planned Golden Dome-related events.

“There’s never been more effort in the department on this particular capability,” Michael said. “There [are] several companies that are emerging that have developed it, and several companies that are taking what they’ve already built and making it cheaper and better.”

Michael comments effectively tie the future of U.S. military laser weapons to a presidential priority with serious money and a hard deadline behind it.

The Pentagon’s fiscal year 2027 budget request contains $452 million in proposed R&D spending for the “development, integration, and assessment” of directed energy weapons in support of Golden Dome alone, more than triple the $142 million enacted under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reconciliation package Trump signed into law in July 2025.

In addition, the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy together have laid out plans to spend $675.93 million over the next five years on a containerized 150-300 kW Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) as part of the military’s broader Golden Dome architecture.

Michael’s mention of Iran as having “doubled” the Pentagon’s interest in directed energy, meanwhile, adds an operational urgency that budget numbers alone don’t capture.

But there’s a problem with Michael’s declaration that the science of laser weapons is “largely done” and the engineering is what remains: engineering is exactly what has sunk U.S. military programs in the past.

Building effective laser weapons means ensuring they can be operated and maintained across a range of tactical environments by soldiers who aren’t laser specialists.

Consider the Army’s 50 kW Stryker-mounted Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD), which the service determined was “not mature enough” to become a program of record after rocky operational testing in the Middle East in 2024 exposed issues with the system’s heat dissipation and reliability in its vehicle-mounted configuration.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch summed up the problem with real-world directed energy weapon deployments in August 2025.

“We can’t get by with the thought of having clean rooms out in combat,” he said.

The Pentagon has been burning drones out of the sky with lasers since 1973, but it has yet to consistently translate demonstrators into battle-ready weapons that American service members can actually rely on outside of a controlled environment.

Indeed, the last decade has proven a graveyard of promising laser weapon programs.

Beyond DE M-SHORAD, the Army has also abandoned its 300 kW Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) project after downshifting from an eventual program of record to a single testbed that will inform future JLWS efforts.

The Navy’s 60 kW High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, which only recently began testing at full power and successfully engaged drone targets aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Preble after years of delays, has effectively disappeared from the service’s fiscal year 2027 budget request outside a handful of sustainment dollars.

The Marine Corps returned its five much-hyped Compact Laser Weapon System (CLaWS) units to Boeing without a replacement program in sight.

The Air Force spent years testing Raytheon’s High-Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS) before abandoning it without a program of record.

These failures share a common pattern diagnosed in a detailed 2023 Government Accountability Office report: promising laser weapons advanced through prototyping without ever securing formal transition partners or drafting agreements that would bind developers and the acquisition community to shared requirements, timelines and funding responsibilities, dooming them to obsolescence simply because the bureaucratic will to fight for them across budget cycles and shifting service priorities didn’t exist.

In his posture statement to the House Armed Services Committee in April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it “institutional inertia.”

While Michael pointed to the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF) counter-drone group as a demand signal aggregator alongside and Golden Dome as a political forcing function, neither of those things solves the transition problem on its own.

Two efforts — likely Michael’s “suite of directed energy products that go from low-end to high-end” — will serve as the clearest early indicators as to whether the Pentagon’s current engineering confidence is warranted.

The first is the Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL), the Army’s modular 30 kW system explicitly envisioned as the service’s first directed energy program of record — and it appears to be moving faster than almost any laser effort before it.

Based on Army documents, E-HEL’s design philosophy looks like a direct response to DE M-SHORAD’s shortcomings, with the system decoupled from a specific vehicle platform and built for soldier-performable sustainment using line-replaceable units.

The service plans to “produce and rapidly field” 24 E-HEL systems over a five-year period, with the first prototype expected no later than the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 and initial procurement units slated for delivery by the end of fiscal year 2027.

If this timeline holds, E-HEL would mark the first time the U.S. military service has successfully transitioned a laser weapon to a genuine program of record.

The second is the aforementioned JLWS. The Navy plans on awarding $31.7 million in contracts for the development of a Joint Beam Control System (JBCS) — a critical component “capable of supporting” a 300-500 kW laser weapon system, according to the Navy’s fiscal year 2027 budget request — as soon as the fourth quarter of 2026, with another $30 million in contracts for the procurement and testing of containerized hardware expected by March 2027.

That timeline makes a Golden Dome demonstration in the summer of 2028 plausible, but it also means whatever system appears will likely be an early-stage weapon rather than a mature one. The current JLWS R&D roadmap runs through fiscal year 2031, and while a successful demonstration in two years would be a genuine milestone, it would still represent the early stages of a fielding process.

Whether the U.S. defense industrial base is ready to answer either program’s call remains an open question.

Manufacturing expansions from defense contractors like Huntington Ingalls Industries, AV, IPG Photonics and nLight are encouraging signs, but the industrial building blocks for laser weapons — from specialized optics with 12- to 18-month lead times to critical materials and rare earth elements sourced from Chinese-dominated supply chains — do not yet appear in place to enable the production systems at the scale Michael is describing.

The development of laser weapons has been defined for decades by a seemingly inescapable cycle of enthusiasm and disappointment.

Retired Air Force Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, former program manager for the service’s legendary YAL-1 Airborne Laser effort, perfectly captured the longstanding Pentagon consensus around directed energy in an interview for the 2018 book Lasers, Death Rays, and the Long, Strange Quest for the Ultimate Weapon.

“I’m tough on laser people these days,” Pawlikowski said. “It’s because they have a reputation of overpromising and underdelivering.”

With institutional support at a historic high, the Golden Dome-driven demonstration planned for summer 2028 may end up proving a moment of truth for the engineering challenges that have imperiled laser weapon programs past — or, at worst, yet another setback for the U.S. military’s long pursuit of directed energy.

Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna’s Instagram was compromised as the hackers posted multiple artworks and stories depicting anti-American messaging.

By 1 a.m. EST on Monday, the stories and posts were removed, according to Task & Purpose, which first reported on the hack.

A Space Force spokesperson confirmed to Military Times on Tuesday that Bentivegna’s account was compromised but denied to comment about how long the hackers had access to the account or who was responsible. All unauthorized content was removed with assistance from Meta, the owner of Instagram, the spokesperson said.

“This incident serves as a good reminder that online threats are constantly evolving, and users must remain alert to suspicious activity while exercising strong cybersecurity practices,” the spokesperson concluded.

Before they were taken down, the images and stories posted to Bentivegna’s account circulated unofficial U.S. military social media accounts, including the Reddit page r/AirForce and the Facebook page Air Force amn/nco/snco.

One post depicted a figure known as Imam Ali holding the Sword of Zulfiqar, which was given to Ali by the Prophet Muhammad and is a symbol of justice and knowledge in Islamic tradition. The hackers also posted a depiction of Husayn ibn Ali, a political and religious figure in Islam.

A story posted by the hackers included audio of Trịnh Thị Ngọ, also known as “Hanoi Hannah,” a Vietnamese radio personality known for releasing English-language broadcasts during the Vietnam War. Ngọ delivered three broadcasts a day during the war, written by the North Vietnamese Defense Ministry’s propaganda department and aimed at American troops to demoralize and frighten them.

The audio was posted with a caption in Arabic that roughly translates to “This is your fate if you get close to the Middle East.”

Another story, which appeared to be directly after the “Hanoi Hannah” audio, was an edit of Ali Larijani, a prominent Iranian national security official, with a caption in Arabic that roughly translates to “I set foot in America.” Larijani died in mid-March 2026 in an Israeli military airstrike during the Iran war.

As well as the other two stories, the hackers posted a photo of Game of Thrones character Jon Snow during an episode titled Battle of the Bastards, with a graphic that included Arabic text reading “Abu Al-Ahmar Army,” or “Army of the Red One,” and text underneath that roughly translates to “ban the accounts of the haters.”

Bentivegna did not address the hack on Instagram but did post on his Facebook on Sunday around 8:30 p.m. EST, saying that “appropriate teams” were working to regain access to the account and resolve the issue.

“If you receive any direct messages, requests, links or unusual posts from that account, please do not engage with them,” Bentivegna wrote in the Facebook post.

“Experiences like this are a good reminder that cybersecurity isn’t just an issue for organizations, it’s something we all deal with in our daily lives,” Bentivegna added.

The hackers also targeted former President Barack Obama’s White House Instagram account, posting the same image of Imam Ali holding the Zulfiqar sword, as well as stories, with one being a photo of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian military officer killed in January 2020 in a U.S. drone strike, with a caption in Arabic that roughly translates to “The White House is under Shiites’ control.”

The hacks follow the recent reports received by military officials of service members’ commercial location data being used by adversaries to target personnel deployed to war zones. U.S. lawmakers said in a letter to the Pentagon that the location data can be used to identify where troops are congregated and their patterns, which then can be used to target the troops for various attacks.

Both abroad and domestically, U.S. service members have also been receiving threats through email, social media and text messages that appear to have originated from individuals connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The U.S. Navy announced Friday that it selected seven companies to compete for the service’s Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel contract.

At-sea testing of the vessels is slated to begin next month, with companies whose MUSVs successfully complete the trials set to receive $15 million and be eligible for “follow-on production,” according to the Navy.

Testing is set to wrap up by October of this year.

The companies chosen to for the trials include Sea Machines, Leidos, Saronic Technologies, Galliano Marine Services, PacMar Technologies, Birdon and Huntington Ingalls Industries.

This announcement comes as the Navy seeks to expand its unmanned service vessels fleet, with officials hoping to swell its numbers sevenfold, from four to 30 vessels by 2030 in the Indo-Pacific.

The four USVs that were deployed in the Indo-Pacific for five months in 2024 were the Sea Hunter, Sea Hawk, Mariner and Ranger vessels, and all four are still being used to further develop the Navy’s USV program, according to previous Military Times reporting.

The Navy is utilizing the MUSV marketplace to solicit bids from “smaller, non-traditional shipyards” in the hopes of creating new opportunities to build out the Navy’s unmanned fleet. The initiative, according to the release, “represents a strategic shift in naval acquisition, designed to rapidly field unmanned technologies by leveraging mature, existing commercial solutions.”

In March, the MUSV marketplace — which received roughly $2.1 billion in funding from President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” — replaced the Modular Attack Surface Craft program, causing some consternation among companies that had spent time developing unmanned vessels for the MASC marketplace.

The latest solicitation, published on March 26, calls for MUSVs that are capable of traveling 2,500 nautical miles at 25 knots while carrying a 25-ton load on the payload deck in moderate conditions. The MUSV must be fully autonomous day and night, capable of operating through different weather conditions in moderate to rough seas and “survivable through sea state 7.” In addition, the vessel must be able to restrict “all Radio Frequency (RF) emissions when commanded while continuing to autonomously operate” and having a “passive mode with no RF emissions.”

The MUSV should also be able to monitor its health and status while “autonomously report[ing] conditions to the offboard C2 station, providing situational awareness of the condition of the vessel to the operator,” according to the solicitation.

After the sea trials, the contractor should be prepared to field five to 10 operation MUSVs in fiscal year 2027 to help rapidly usher in the unmanned era in the U.S. Navy.

Russia’s interference reached Lithuania’s capital on May 20, when a drone forced Vilnius into shelters, shut its airport and cleared parliament, the first such alert in the city since 2022.

The jamming has been escalating for nearly three years, since Russia began disrupting signals around the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, and now spikes whenever Ukrainian drones fly toward Russian targets.

“This is the new reality of what the Baltic states face,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said last week.

Romanian F-16s scrambled in response, President Nicușor Dan said.

Unlike the attacks that struck homes in Romania on Friday, most of the drones that have crossed into Baltic airspace over the last few months have not been launched by Russia, but instead have been operated by Ukraine and thrown off course by Russia.

Both strike drones launched at refineries and ports inside Russia and interceptor drones meant to take out incoming attacks have been steered off course and into NATO airspace by Russian spoofing several times over the last few years.

They have already done damage on allied soil: one struck a Latvian oil depot on May 7, exploding on impact. On May 19, a Romanian F-16 on NATO patrol shot another down over Estonia, the first time an allied jet had downed a drone believed to be Ukrainian.

From Kaliningrad, Russian transmitters broadcast counterfeit satellite signals strong enough to seize a drone’s navigation in flight, feed it false coordinates and send it off course.

Lithuania counted 36 of those spoofing transmitters this week, up from three at the start of 2025, reaching 450 kilometers (280 miles) across the region, according to Reuters.

NATO has condemned each strike and scrambled jets to meet them, but has not threatened any retaliation.

Romania’s foreign minister said the Galați strike could justify emergency consultations under NATO’s Article 4, the treaty’s mechanism for talks when a member’s security is threatened.

After speaking with Dan on Friday, Secretary-General Mark Rutte said the alliance stands ready to defend “every inch” of allied territory.

No member, though, has invoked Article 5, the clause that treats an attack on one ally as an attack on all.

Spoofing, meanwhile, is a form of electronic warfare that works by deception rather than brute force.

While jamming overwhelms a drone’s receiver with noise until it can no longer fix its position, spoofing instead sends a stronger, counterfeit signal that the receiver treats as genuine.

“The idea behind spoofing is to create deception,” Thomas Withington, an electronic-warfare specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, told PBS.

When a drone is fed a false fix, it can fly on a completely different path than its operator intended.

The drones most exposed are Ukraine’s long-range models, which fly north toward Russian oil-export terminals on the Gulf of Finland, including Ust-Luga and Primorsk near St. Petersburg.

Their routes hug the Baltic coast, where Russian electronic warfare is densest, and a drone that loses its true fix drifts into allied airspace, according to the Atlantic Council.

Drones crossed into Latvia “as a result of Russian electronic warfare systems,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said this month.

Ukraine’s own investigations, he said, “proved that this was the result of Russian electronic warfare deliberately diverting Ukrainian drones from their targets in Russia.”

Outside researchers have started to locate the transmitters.

A team from Gdynia Maritime University and the University of Colorado traced Baltic interference over the last year to two coastal sites in Kaliningrad, near the town of Okunevo and the naval base at Baltiysk, each beside known Russian electronic-warfare units.

“Interfering with GNSS signals is, unfortunately, very easy,” Ralf Ziebold of the German Aerospace Center told Defense News.

The network has only grown more entrenched.

“Now they have built up the infrastructure and the interference has become systemic, permanent,” Darius Kuliešius, deputy head of Lithuania’s communications regulator, told Reuters this week.

Ukraine has spent weeks insisting the strays are not its fault. Kyiv says it never routes attacks through allied airspace and has apologized to the Baltic states for drones it argues Russian jamming pushed off course.

Heorhii Tykhyi, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said as much after the Estonia shootdown on May 19.

“Moscow does this on purpose,” he said, apologizing to “Estonia and all our Baltic friends” and noting Ukraine’s only targets lie inside Russia.

Russia has denied steering the drones, casting the incursions instead as proof that the Baltics are abetting Ukrainian attacks.

To beat the spoofing, Ukraine is building drones that can fly without satellites at all.

Newer long-range models carry controlled-reception-pattern antennas that filter out spoofing signals, plus cameras and inertial backups that hold a course when the satellite link drops. Kyiv unveiled one, the Sichen, built to fly “under conditions of active electronic warfare,” in April, according to Militarnyi.

Countering wired drones that emit no signal at all is another challenge.

“Fiber-optic drones have shown us that drones insensitive to electronic warfare are a serious threat to logistics and personnel,” Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said last month.

Kyiv is racing to field more of them, even building a shared ground station to fly them at scale, he said, though the skyrocketing cost of fiber-optic cable limits how far they reach.

Officials from Kyiv and the Baltic states said they hope that increasing air defense coordination between countries in the region will help counter the threat, according to ERR.

Sybiha has offered to send Ukrainian experts to strengthen Baltic air defenses, and Kyiv and Vilnius agreed this week to build drones together and station Ukrainian specialists in Lithuania, according to Militarnyi.

The decision to fire on an intruding drone rests with national governments, not the alliance: NATO’s Baltic air-policing mission, run from a combined air operations center in Uedem, Germany, intercepts only on a member’s behalf, and each country sets its own rules of engagement.

Romania changed its law in 2024 to let its military shoot down intruding drones as a last resort, and its pilots were cleared to fire over Galați had they been able to do so without endangering civilians.

For the alliance’s frontline states, the working assumption is that the drones will keep coming.

“We need to adapt,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said, “because the possibility of repeated similar scenarios is very high.”

The U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command is looking to change that with its new Intrepid Battlefield EXoskeleton, or IBEX, system, a shoulder-to-foot brace that can be worn to allow injured troops to stand, walk and shoot when evacuation is impossible or delayed.

The device was designed to make an injured soldier more self-sufficient, so they can move themselves to safety instead of relying on the two-to-four additional troops it takes to carry a victim on a litter. The goal, the Army said in a release Wednesday, is to keep more soldiers firing until help arrives.

“In combat, troops suffer tibia fractures, torn knee ligaments, high-grade ankle sprains, and foot fractures; these are the most common but survivable battlefield injuries,” said Dr. Lee Childers, a senior scientist at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

“The IBEX enables more walking wounded, which means more warfighters putting bullets downrange while providing a smaller target for enemy drones to attack,” he said.

Drone warfare has dramatically changed the nature of combat and thus changed the way the military medical community must prepare to treat battlefield injuries.

In Ukraine, drones are routinely inflicting devastating limb injuries and drone swarms can cause high numbers of casualties in a short amount of time, overwhelming traditional field medicine tactics.

Weighing just seven pounds, the IBEX can fold into the size of a one liter bottle and be carried quickly to an injured soldier. It relieves the pressure on soft tissue, nerves and blood vessels, and is able to bear body weight.

Lower-leg injuries are often from gunshots or bomb blasts, the Army said, and soldiers suffered many such injuries during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They can also be injured operating in rough terrain or bad weather.

Troops deployed to combat zones sustained over 22,000 non-amputated lower leg injuries between 2001 and 2018, according to the National Library of Medicine, which also reported that 68% of extremity injuries were fractures or open wounds.

The project was initiated in 2020 and has been tested by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. It is now on its third round of funding and has been licensed by a commercial partner.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Dr. Lee Childers is a senior scientist at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

Romania’s defense ministry said a woman and a child suffered minor injuries in Galati near the border with Ukraine overnight after radar tracked a Russian drone entering Romanian airspace.

Photos from the scene showed charred and damaged brickwork on the roof of the 10-story apartment block which Romanian authorities said was hit by a drone that exploded on impact, tearing through a top-floor flat.

Russia’s TASS news agency cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying President Vladimir Putin had been informed about the incident.

Separately, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s powerful Security Council, warned European leaders that drones would continue to stray into their countries and prevent their populations from sleeping peacefully.

It was the first time a densely populated area in a NATO country had been hit causing injuries during Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the incident is likely to increase tensions on the alliance’s eastern flank as member states worry about the war spilling over their borders.

“Russia’s reckless behavior is a danger to us all,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on X after speaking by phone to Romanian President Nicusor Dan, whose country is in both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

“I affirmed that NATO stands ready to defend every inch of Allied territory,” he said, without making any mention of triggering NATO’s mutual defense clause. “We will continue to enhance our readiness to deter and defend against any threat, including from drones.”

Dan said the Russian consulate in the southeastern city of Constanta would be closed and the consul expelled.

TASS quoted Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying Moscow would respond swiftly to Bucharest’s decision to close the consulate.

‘NATO needs to to something’

Romania, which shares a 650-km (400-mile) land border with Ukraine, said Russian drones had breached its airspace 28 times since Moscow began attacking Ukrainian ports across the Danube River following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Stephen Evelyn, a 44-year-old American citizen who lives in Galati, called it “another provocation by the Russians.”

“I don’t believe this was an accident, this has happened too many times for the Russians to be doing this by accident,” he said. “Either that or they’re highly incompetent at waging war, but NATO needs to do something about this.”

There have been multiple airspace incursions into NATO airspace since Moscow invaded Ukraine, most notably when more than 20 Russian drones entered Poland’s airspace on the night of Sept. 9-10, 2025.

In recent weeks Ukrainian drones have strayed into Baltic countries’ airspace, sowing confusion and raising tensions with Russia.

Romania has asked NATO allies to deploy additional anti-drone capabilities to Romania, with official sources saying Bucharest needs low-altitude radars and interceptor drones. A NATO spokesperson said on Friday “potential additional defensive measures are considered.”

Romania scrambled F-16 jets

Local authorities in southern Ukraine said Izmail port in the Odesa region, across the border from Galati, had come under attack from drones early on Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv was ready to support Romania “in whatever way is necessary.”

The Romanian defense ministry said two F-16 fighter jets had been scrambled and a military helicopter was sent to monitor the attack, with the pilots authorized to shoot down any drones without endangering inhabited areas. The residents of border counties Braila, Galati and Tulcea were warned to take cover.

The drone was in Romania’s airspace for four minutes and flew at a low altitude for 10 km (6.2 miles), making it difficult for radar to detect, Romanian Brigadier General Gheorghe Maxim said.

He told a press conference that although the U.S. anti-drone system Merops is operational in Romania it is not yet fully integrated with national air defenses and it would have been too risky to use in a city.

In addition to the woman and her child who were taken to hospital with minor injuries, two people were treated on the scene for panic attacks and 70 were evacuated from the apartment block, local authorities said.

Deputy Interior Minister Raed Arafat, who is in charge of the emergency response agency, told private broadcaster Digi24 that the drone affected two building stairwells, an elevator shaft and damaged five cars.

A drone also damaged an electricity pole and a household annex in Galati in April.

In a separate incident, a drone without an explosive charge was found in northwestern Romania, state TVR broadcaster said late on Thursday, citing local authorities.

Apart from their combat fatigues, the drone pilots with first-person view goggles and joystick controllers could have been hobbyist racers, maneuvering quadcopter drones through bright yellow gates and an abandoned building. But simulated strike missions added a distinctly military edge to the two-day competition, with bonus points for hitting targets including a moving Ford pickup truck.

“Even with the British Army we do racing events, because obviously that’s where FPV has always been,” Guardsman Mark, a drone pilot in the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, told Defense News. “It’s good to see that the events here are like almost a homage to FPV racing. It’s kind of, thank you, we will take over from here into the tactical side.”

As FPV drones have become an inescapable part of infantry operations on the frontline in Ukraine, NATO countries have started to apply the lessons, at their own pace. Some teams in the two-day competition, including from the United Kingdom and Denmark, had been using FPV drones in their units for only several months, while some from France had been flying them for more than a year.

For drone pilots from eight NATO members, the competition at the Chaumont-Semoutiers airbase was a chance to see allies at work, share tactics and technical tips, and study each other’s equipment. For instructors, the event provided ideas on how they might improve training to use FPV drones in combat.

“We saw some really interesting things because, and I won’t go into details, but each team had its own small innovations in how they managed their equipment,” said Sgt. Edgar, an FPV drone pilot in the French Army’s 61st Artillery Regiment, which hosted the event at its base on the former airfield near Chaumont.

Cheap consumer racing drones flown via FPV goggles and low-latency video links were turned into weapons of war by soldiers in Ukraine, who combined them with explosive charges such as rocket-propelled grenade warheads. FPV drones now inflict 60% of the losses on the Russian army, the National Security and Defense Council for Ukraine said in January.

For Gen. Pierre Schill, the commander of the French Army, the challenge was an occasion to take stock of where his forces stand compared to allies. He said drones have become an “unavoidable reality,” and also a way to push the land forces towards innovating in the lowest ranks.

“You can build, for not much money, your own drone,” Schill said. “It’s a way to unleash innovation.”

Nearly 50 teams, each comprising a pilot and a spotter, took part in the International Drone Challenge on May 19 and 20, scoring points over four courses testing speed, drone control and successful strikes. Teams brought their own drones, some custom-made, others issued by their units, with the rules limiting entries to FPV drones in the 5-inch rotor class.

While many teams used similar systems and components, some pilots on allied teams used “quite different” ways to approach targets, “so it’s really interesting to be able to talk with them,” said Chief Cpl. Jean-Baptiste of the French 82nd Infantry Regiment.

Allied teams came from Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., Italy, the U.K. and Poland, with Luxembourg joining as an observer.

Chief Sgt. Aymeric of the 7th Battalion of Chasseurs Alpins — “Alpine Hunters” — kept a hand on the shoulder of pilot Chief Cpl. Clément during one of the exercises, pointing his masked teammate in the direction of the drone for the best signal.

“When I put on the mask, I no longer exist in this reality,” Chief Cpl. Clément said after completing the course. “That’s actually why it’s important to have a partner. They’re not only there to help me with my mission, but also to keep me grounded in reality.”

Buddy interaction was an area where teams used different methods, with some spotters guiding their pilots with verbal instructions rather than remaining in physical contact.

“We see different things again from Ukraine, we still learn from how they do it,” said Lance Cpl. Martin, a drone pilot from the Danish Royal Life Guards. “But definitely I’m not a one-man operation when flying. Especially if I have goggles on, I’m going to need a guy or two to keep me covered.”

Ukraine will have the capacity to produce more than 8 million FPV drones in 2026, with more than 160 companies producing the systems in Ukraine, the NDSC said in January.

Skill levels ranged widely, with French sergeant Edgar noting strong teams from the U.K. and Belgium. “This raises everyone’s game, because at the end of a lap where someone posts an exceptional time, we saw several teams approach them to ask for advice or to take a look at the equipment they had.”

Two French teams took the top spots, with the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment of the French special forces the winner and the 61st Artillery Regiment that hosted the competition finishing second. One of the British teams took third place.

Sgt. Luke Crossley of the U.K.’s 3 Royal School of Military Engineering Regiment, reportedly the country’s fastest military drone pilot, said that what he found most impressive was how well some of the French teams were doing with only two to five months of flying FPV systems, compared to the Belgium team and U.K. teams with up to two years of experience.

“Clearly other armies, other nations, France, Belgium, they’re getting after all this FPV drone stuff,” Crossley said. “As united nations, we are going be stronger on that battle front. Which is reassuring.”

The 1st Battalion Scots Guards has two qualified pilots with FPV drone experience who are still exploring how to use their gear, according to Guardsman Mark. He said the competition allowed him to tap into experience and knowledge from allies, including on setting up drones and programming the Betaflight control software.

NATO militaries are still figuring out procurement for FPV drones, a newer category than larger intelligence and targeting drone systems with established suppliers and procurement processes. Guardsman Mark said that while his unit receives fully assembled bigger drones, he built the smaller model used in the competition from parts.

Seeing how other forces deal with procurement was instructive, according to Staff Sgt. Shay Burnett of the U.S. Marine Corps, who teaches an attack-drone operator course at the service’s School of Infantry.

The Marines are tied to a contract for a single model of FPV drone, the Neros Archer, according to Burnett. With FPV drones so interchangeable “we shouldn’t have to be stuck to one system,” and being able to build them in-house and branch out to other models would reduce costs and make the force more effective overall, he said.

The biggest takeaway was learning where allies stand on FPV drones “and seeing how we can make ourselves better overall,” according to Burnett, who said the Marines started using the systems about 15 months ago. “It’s so new across the board. Everyone’s relatively in the same boat.”

Burnett also took home lessons from how organizers set up the trials. “We’re never going to try to get to the racing side, but we do think that the way that they had some of the things, with obstacles to get to the main target, is something we can bring back and actually start implementing.”

An officer of the Danish armed forces was keen to observe how the French organized the competition. While Denmark has previously held military competitions for snipers, infantry-fighting vehicles and battle tanks, the country wouldn’t be able to set up an event like the one near Chaumont just yet, said Lt. Col. Nicolai, head of the training department for the Danish forces.

Drone pilots also discussed training, with most agreeing that pilots need to fly regularly to keep their skills sharp. The French require potential drone pilots to train at least 20 hours in a simulator before they start flying small drones and then work their way up, said Sgt. Edgar.

Younger pilots, especially those with experience flying model aircraft or in video games, tend to take more naturally to FPV drones, though some personnel in their forties are “very quick” learners, according to the French sergeant. But the main variable remains training time, he said.

Training time for the competing teams varied greatly, said Danish Lance Cpl. Martin, who said he is one of the first in his unit to train with FPV drones, and had been flying them for only about one-and-a-half months. He said after discussing training regimes, one lesson he’s bringing home is to train intensely at the start, then allow pilots to build flying experience at a more casual pace.

“It’s been fun talking to the others to see how they’ve been doing,” Lance Cpl. Martin said. “Most of them have had FPVs for a longer time, so they had more training compared to myself. I’m bringing home how we can train, all the success and all the failures. No need to reinvent the wheel.”

In a letter shared with Reuters by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, U.S. Central Command said it had “received multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil U.S. personnel in theater.”

The message, sent on April 14, offered no further specifics, but CENTCOM’s area of responsibility includes the Gulf, where U.S. forces are facing off against the Iranian military over the Strait of Hormuz.

The disclosure was the first official confirmation that U.S. forces had been targeted in an active war zone, Wyden and a bipartisan group of legislators said in a letter sent on Thursday to the Pentagon.

“Commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs, as well as for counterintelligence purposes,” the letter warned.

Wyden said in a statement that it was time to “start treating the adtech industry as a national security threat.”

The Pentagon did not return messages seeking comment. The lawmakers said in their letter that their efforts to obtain more information from military officials about the reported targeting had been unsuccessful.

LOCATION DATA TRADE FUELS PRIVACY CONCERNS

Location data is widely used in digital advertising, which is a key source of revenue for many tech companies. Such data is typically collected from smartphones or other devices by apps or service providers before being sold to data brokers who collate and resell the data, sometimes via complex networks of intermediaries.

Although the threat to privacy inherent in selling the details of people’s day-to-day movements on the open market has long been a matter of public discussion, its potential as a national security risk has recently drawn concern as well.

As far back as 2016, one U.S. defense contractor was able to leverage commercially available location data to track special operations forces from their bases in the United States to a sensitive staging post in Syria, according to an account first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal.

More recently, journalists at Wired and two German news outlets drew on billions of coordinates collected by a data broker to expose the granular comings and goings of people stationed at or around 11 U.S. military and intelligence sites in Germany.

Two groups that represent digital advertisers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers, did not return emails seeking comment.

The letter from U.S. lawmakers to the Pentagon said that, given what military officials know about the trade in location data, they should have acted faster to protect their personnel, for example by disabling the unique advertising ID attached to military-issued devices, automatically turning off location sharing on smartphones in the field and steering staff away from Google’s Chrome web browser toward more privacy-focused alternatives.

One of the letter’s cosigners was U.S. Representative Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican who was formerly a U.S. Army Special Forces officer.

Harrigan said that browsers like Chrome “are built from the ground up to collect and share user data” and that every day they remain on government-issued devices “is another day we are handing our adversaries a weapon against our own troops.”

In a statement, Alphabet’s Google said that Chrome had “industry leading security.” The company added that it had “long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers.”

The Latvian armed forces will deploy teams up to four soldiers in 4x4 vehicles, equipped with interceptor drones from Latvian manufacturers Origin Robotics and Eraser, to the eastern border with Russia, said Maj. Modris Kairišs, head of the center, in a briefing with reporters here on May 26. The goal is to have the units operational by early next month, he said.

Low-altitude drone defense has become one of the most critical security gaps for Latvia and neighboring Lithuania and Estonia amid a growing number of drone incursions from the direction of Russia. Independent Russian media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe counted at least 24 drone incidents in the three Baltic countries since early 2025.

“The force teams we plan to deploy to the border in the coming days will be equipped with local interceptor drones,” Kairišs said, adding that the number of teams to be deployed is confidential.

Latvia’s government collapsed this month in the wake of a renewed incursion of Ukrainian drones into the country’s airspace, with two drones crashing in Latvian territory on May 7, including one that hit an empty fuel depot, and a third drone entering the country’s airspace before leaving again. Kairišs said Russia is using “very powerful” jamming to disrupt navigation of Ukrainian drones.

“At least if we will send these initial teams, it will solve the society requirements, politicians’ requirements, and we are moving forward,” Kairišs told Defense News. “Let’s say it is initial capability. We need a lot of teams to fully cover the border.”

Ukraine has been using mobile fire teams to defeat Russian drone threats since 2022, though the country has increasingly shifted to interceptor drones.

Interceptor teams are not a long-term answer, according to Kairišs, who instead envisages a future solution of fully automatic interceptor drones stationed along the border in launch canisters, “where you can, from the command and control center, just give the command to intercept.” He said Latvia is testing what he called “launch-box technologies.”

“This is where Western countries need to move, because our human resource is very expensive,” Kairišs said.

With Latvia’s eastern border with Russia and Belarus nearly 400 kilometers long, achieving Ukrainian-style levels of drone protection would require “a huge number” of personnel and put significant stress on the armed forces, Kairišs said in the briefing. He said Latvia needs to “find a balance between peacetime and war.”

The country is counting on assistance from Ukrainian experts for tactical advice and practical operator experience on intercepting drones, according to Kairišs. He said Latvia is seeking Ukrainian expertise rather than hardware, for example, on tactical procedures related to the kill chain and sensors.

One of the biggest challenges NATO faces in dealing with drone threats is what Kairišs called “a legacy way of thinking” around command and control, in which all sensor data is fused and information classified. Delivering that classified information to a mobile group operating near the border then stumbles over procedures that disrupt effective C2 at the tactical level, the Latvian major said.

Kairišs said countries need a cross-border solution for drone interception that allows for command and control at a “very low classification level.” With multiple NATO countries working on their own C2 systems for drone defense, there will need to be an effort to let them work together, he said.

Shahed-type drones, once detected, are “not a hard target” due to their relatively low speeds, according to Kairišs, who compared them to World War I-era biplanes. However, detection is the hardest part, with the drones flying at low altitudes and usually built from cheap composite materials that are radar-transparent, the major said.

Latvia has deployed a network of acoustic sensors for several months already, which when combined with radar and optical sensors is “quite effective,” Kairišs said. With drones flying at altitudes of 50-100 meters, detecting them requires tactical radars every 10 to 20 kilometers, with associated infrastructure, he said.

Latvia hosts the NATO innovation range for counter-unmanned aerial systems at the Sēlija training area in the center of the country, and is taking a leading role in the alliance’s C-UAS efforts. European countries and more broadly NATO lack the opportunity to test systems against real front-line drones, which is something the Sēlija range allows, Kairišs said.

Testing of drones, counter-UAS and electronic warfare is “almost impossible” in some European countries due to bureaucracy, population density and air-traffic density, “and here in Latvia we have this opportunity, and we want to share it,” the Latvian major said.

He said that due to the urgency of the security situation, the government has exempted the Sēlija range from some restrictions regarding use of electronic warfare and high-altitude flights, and Latvian forces are “more or less” capable of simulating current battlefield conditions as they exist on parts of the front line in Ukraine.

In addition to interceptor drones, Latvia is field-testing an automated .50 caliber turret that Kairišs said may be demonstrated within several weeks, as well as working on electronic warfare and cheap missile systems. The Autonomous Systems Competence Center has special governmental permission to fast-track procurement, Kairišs said.

Within weeks of the United States launching its bombing campaign, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued the military had been paying about $5,000 for connection per terminal while effectively using a higher tier of service worth closer to $25,000, according to two sources familiar with the matter and Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters.

The disagreement over Starlink’s use on LUCAS suicide drones — a cheap U.S. model comparable to Iran’s Shahed that can circle over a target area before diving to detonate on impact — is part of increasing tensions between SpaceX and the Pentagon over Starlink pricing in recent months, according to interviews with five people familiar with the matter and the documents.

The Pentagon, which is seeking to help Iranian citizens bypass government-imposed communications blackouts, has also been at odds with SpaceX over pricing for a plan to provide the populace direct-to-cell connections with Starlink akin to 5G service, two of the sources said.

The ongoing disputes, which have not previously been reported, underscore how the Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX is handing Musk greater leverage over a critical layer of U.S. national security – at a time when SpaceX is seeking to boost revenue ahead of an IPO next month that could be among the biggest in history.

Unlike consumer Starlink terminals available at stores including Walmart, SpaceX sells a military-specific version called Starshield to the Pentagon under a 2023 agreement. Starshield terminals can connect to both commercial Starlink satellites and a separate, more secure constellation, also called Starshield, according to a person familiar with the matter.

SpaceX argued the LUCAS drones were operating under conditions that aligned more closely with its aviation tier subscription rather than a lower priced land or mobility service. Pentagon officials argued that the $25,000 price tag — a monthly fee — was designed for aircraft, not kamikaze drones that used Starlink connection for a matter of minutes or hours, according to one of the sources.

The Pentagon, which was ramping up strikes on Iran, ultimately agreed to pay SpaceX’s proposed price increase, almost doubling the cost of each LUCAS drone. The Pentagon was initially paying about $30,000 per unit.

SpaceX didn’t respond to a comment request.

The Pentagon declined to comment on Reuters reporting that SpaceX increased its pricing, its decision to pay, or the plan to provide Iranian citizens with Starlink cell service. In a statement, a Pentagon official said the office responsible for acquiring the terminals, the Commercial Satellite Communications Office, is working to find other competitors.

“The Department of War is committed to fostering a competitive environment for commercial satellite communications,” an official said.

After the Reuters story was published, Elon Musk called it “false” without elaborating in a post on X. He added that the civilian Starlink system had been improperly used “for military purposes.” In a separate post, he said “the company” was at fault, not the Pentagon.

A spokesperson for Spektreworks, which makes the LUCAS drone, directed all questions to the Pentagon.

In a post on X, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Reuters reporting was “wrong” without providing further information. SpaceX “remains a strong and valued partner to the Department of War,” he wrote.

But no other company provides a comparable alternative to Starlink, which has become an increasingly critical tool in modern warfare since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The satellite network provides global coverage, enabling battlefield communications and precision targeting even in remote areas. SpaceX’s constellation of roughly 10,000 satellites accounts for more than 60% of those in orbit — dwarfing the constellations being built by other companies, including OneWeb and Amazon Leo.

The risks of reliance on Starlink were first thrown into sharp focus during the Ukraine war, when Musk ordered Starlink service switched off in parts of the country in 2022 as Ukrainian forces advanced on Russian positions, disrupting a key counteroffensive, Reuters previously reported. More recently, U.S. Navy tests were disrupted last summer when a global Starlink outage cut off connection to unmanned military boats, leaving them bobbing in the ocean.

SPACEX HAS U.S. GOVERNMENT ‘OVER A BARREL’

Unlike traditional defense contractors, SpaceX holds greater leverage over the Pentagon because it also has a large commercial market for Starlink, alongside its rocket launch and artificial intelligence businesses, said Clayton Swope, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security-focused think tank. SpaceX generates about 20% of its total revenue from the U.S. government, according to an SEC filing.

SpaceX “certainly has the U.S. government over the barrel,” Swope said.

At the outset of the Iran war, Starlink was already a core part of U.S. military operations. In testing and early deployments, it supported a range of systems, from aerial attack drones such as the LUCAS to unmanned surface vessels used for maritime surveillance and strike missions. When the U.S. launched its bombing campaign, Starshield terminals were being used across more than a dozen drone systems, according to a source familiar with the matter.

But tensions between the Pentagon and SpaceX emerged quickly after the U.S. launched its February 28 assault on Iran. On March 1, SpaceX chief Elon Musk responded on X to a user’s post featuring an image of the LUCAS drone that said it “appears to have an integrated Starlink” terminal.

“It is a violation of commercial Starlink terms of service to use the terminal for weapon systems. This applies to all users and is shut down when discovered,” Musk posted. “There is a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government.”

The Pentagon official, in a statement to Reuters, denied any violation of its agreement with SpaceX.

In the days that followed, SpaceX executives met Pentagon officials and argued the military was underpaying for the service, two sources familiar with the matter said.

Although the Pentagon initially agreed to the higher fee for satellite Wi-Fi connections used by attack drones, senior officials including Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg remained uneasy about the arrangement, one of the sources said. Pentagon officials, during an April ceasefire, met to revisit the pricing with Terrence O’Shaughnessy, a retired four-star Air Force general who now leads SpaceX’s defense business.

Still, the Pentagon is currently considering an additional purchase of more than 3,500 Starshield terminal subscriptions, including 100 with the higher-priced aviation tier, according to Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters. The deal could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue for SpaceX, though Reuters could not determine whether an agreement has been finalized, or what price is being discussed.

SPACEX PRICES IRK PENTAGON

Starlink has also proved crucial to other operations. After Iran cracked down on protests in January, killing thousands of people, the Trump administration smuggled in more than 6,000 Starlink terminals to provide internet access to citizens, the Wall Street Journal previously reported.

As the war intensified, however, Iranian authorities confiscated the terminals and deployed jamming devices across major cities to disrupt connections, according to a source familiar with the matter. Within a week of the conflict beginning, Pentagon officials began discussions with SpaceX about deploying direct-to-cell service that could bypass those disruptions, two people familiar with the matter said. The capability, similar to a 5G connection, would allow users to connect without terminals on the ground.

SpaceX, which generated $11.4 billion in revenue from Starlink in 2025, proposed charging as much as $500 million to launch the capability, along with a $100 million monthly fee to operate it, according to one of the people and Pentagon documents - prompting alarm from defense officials over the price.

Reuters could not determine whether an agreement has been reached.

For many years the country’s drones were used primarily for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, but as their role in modern warfare increases exponentially, India is moving to enhance the combat capabilities of its unmanned platforms.

The government called the precision guided missile, which was developed through a collaboration of government and private companies, a major boost to India’s domestic defense capabilities.

A Defense Ministry statement said that it “successfully completed the final deliverable configuration development trials of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Launched Precision Guided Missile (ULPGM)-V3 in Air-to-Ground and Air-to-Air modes at a test range near Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh.”

It said the Ground Control System used to control the weapon system features “state-of-the-art technologies to automate readiness and launch operations.”

An image posted by the Defense Ministry showed the missile being launched by a multi rotor drone and destroying another drone in mid-air.

Analysts say the new miniaturized precision guided missile represents a significant advancement in India’s domestic drone-launched missile capability. It will allow UAVs to potentially destroy ground targets such as armored vehicles and bunkers, intercept drones, and hit low altitude air targets such as helicopters.

“This capability provides a kind of mobility to your air defense capability and also reduces the cost of air defense against drones,” R.K. Narang, a senior fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis in New Delhi told Defense News. “It is an important milestone. This is the beginning of developing miniaturized weapons for our drone segment.”

The country’s premier research and development agency, the Defense and Research Development Organisation, partnered with state-run firm Bharat Dynamics Limited and private-sector firm Adani Defence Systems and Technologies Limited for the development and production of the drone-launched precision missile.

“The missile has been produced entirely through the Indian defense ecosystem involving a large number of MSMEs (small and medium companies) and other industries. The trials confirmed fully mature domestic supply chain, equipped for immediate serial mass production,” according to a Defense Ministry statement.

Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh called the successful development trials a “strategic milestone” toward self-reliance in defense.

Development of armed drone capabilities is expected to be one of India’s focus areas as such systems reshape battlefields and as the world’s second largest arms importer pushes to expand domestic production of military hardware.

Analyst Narang says India will need to do more work in the area.

“This new precision guided missile is just the start of developing multiple such capabilities in the times to come because the threat is rising rapidly with the proliferation of military drones,” he said.

New Delhi and Islamabad used unmanned aerial vehicles during a four day conflict they fought last year in May. Five months on, India conducted its biggest drone and counter-drone war drill involving the army, navy and air force in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh states.

“There are no more eyes in the sky; there are claws in the sky now,” India’s Air Force Chief, A.P. Singh, said at a seminar earlier this month, underlining the threat from drones.

During the test, Marines launched a Neros Archer first-person-view, or FPV, drone from the ground before transferring control to operators aboard a helicopter orbiting miles away, the Corps announced in a statement last week, saying that the move was a step towards integrating inexpensive drones into aviation operations.

The goal, according to the release, was to see if aircraft like the UH-1Y Venom and AH-1Z Viper could extend the reach of FPV drones, which let operators watch a live feed of unmanned aircraft system from a screen or goggles.

“The primary objective was to test the feasibility of a non-kinetic drop and deployment of a first-person view drone from a moving helicopter, which we were able to do today,” said Capt. Quinton Thornbury, a UH-1Y Venom pilot with Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 169, Marine Air Group 39, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. “From there, validate that we can control the maneuver of that drone from the back of the aircraft.”

The service said it used the Neros Archer system because it has already been widely used and tested by Marine infantry units, which makes it easier to integrate into aircraft operations.

Low cost drones have become one of the defining weapons of today’s warfare, with widespread use in conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East, forcing the military to wrestle with new doctrine and cost calculations as it seeks to modernize its forces.

Recently, the service announced that it had quickly expanded its FPV attack drone inventory, fielding more than 3,500 after officials greenlit integration of the new tech.

Garrett Smith, Reveal’s chief executive officer, explained that the “milestone represents years of partnership” needed to develop the technology.

“Identifi ensures that biometric identification and verification remain accessible, secure and mission-ready across the spectrum of operations,” he said.

The Identifi tool is an application programmed on a mobile device that allows operators to check and review fingerprints, analyze faces and voices, and scan irises in the field. They can upload or cross reference the information with a Defense Department database known as the Automated Biometric Identification System, or ABIS, to identify individuals or enemy combatants.

In an email to Military Times, McKenna Miller, the company’s communication director, explained that Identifi was originally developed by the company DFL Technology. DFL won a contract from Special Operations Forces Works, or SOFWERX, a non-profit that partners with SOCOM to bridge the gap between the public and private sectors for technological solutions.

Using input from SOCOM subject matter experts, the company built a prototype for Identifi. In 2023, they entered it into SOCOM’s Tactical Biometric Event, which was an open competition for industry with a technical and operational evaluation, and won. A year later, Reveal acquired DFL, and they have been working on the project together ever since.

Although using biometric data for identification is nothing new, the way in which the information is digitally collected and stored is.

Smith told Axios that when he deployed to Afghanistan with the Marine Corps, they used decades-old technology, so the hope is the Marines and Army will also adopt Reveal’s biometric tool. He called SOCOM the “trendsetter” for the U.S. military and intelligence communities.

Miller declined to disclose the value of SOCOM’s Identifi contract. But, according to a search of USA Spending, since 2019 Reveal has been awarded some 15 contracts totaling more than $13 million from the DoD, General Services Administration and Small Business Administration.

Since launching in 2018, Reveal said it has increased its revenue tenfold year over year. Last July, it announced that it had raised some $30 million in funding and with that investment, it has doubled its workforce to include more than a hundred employees.

According to Reveal’s announcement, SOCOM has already begun fielding the Identifi tool and it’s planning for broader deployment throughout the fiscal year.

Operation Epic Fury may have strengthened the case for directed energy weapons, but the U.S. Navy’s dream of putting “a laser on every ship” may take significantly longer than expected to realize.

In a posture statement delivered to the House Armed Services Committee on May 14, Chief of Naval Operations (and noted directed energy champion) Adm. Daryl Caudle delivered a forceful argument for why high-energy laser weapons are a necessity for the sea service — namely, to take over missile defense from kinetic interceptors and free up space for offensive weapons across the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, which he proclaimed “the workhorse of the surface Fleet, as illustrated clearly by Operation Epic Fury.”

“Directed energy is a critical component of future naval warfare, particularly for ballistic missile and terminal defense,” Caudle stated. “The current paradigm, which forces a trade-off between defensive interceptors and offensive strike weapons within the limited space of the Vertical Launching System (VLS), is unsustainable. Every VLS cell used for a defensive missile is a lost opportunity for a long-range offensive strike.”

But Caudle’s testimony also contained an admission that the dream of a laser fleet remains a dream deferred — at least, until the Navy can actually build it.

The vision of a laser fleet Caudle laid out in his posture statement is anchored in the Navy’s proposed nuclear-powered battleship and future surface combatants, platforms that must be “designed with the power and cooling capacity necessary to scale these systems to very high energy levels, thereby providing lethality against exquisite threats.”

To translate those designs into real-world capabilities, the service “must prioritize and fund R&D for compact, high-density energy storage and thermal management systems capable of handling the demands of [directed energy weapons],” he said, as well invest in “digital engineering and land-based test facilities to de-risk the complex integration of DEW systems with legacy combat and ship control systems.”

The structural reason for Caudle’s emphasis on future warships is one Laser Wars readers will recognize immediately: the Navy’s current surface fleet — including its most modern warships, the Flight III Burke-class destroyers — simply cannot support the power demands of laser weapons at scale.

As the service’s then-surface warfare boss Rear Adm. Ron Boxall bluntly put it back in 2019, the Flight III Burkes are already “out of Schlitz with regard to power,” their generators fully committed to feeding the new AN/SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar system.

Caudle isn’t pretending a viable laser weapon for missile defense can be engineered around existing hulls; they must be built into the next generation of warships from the keel up.

The implication is stark: the first vessel in America’s true laser fleet won’t set sail until the first battleship or next-generation frigate steams out of a shipyard. Battleship procurement isn’t planned until 2028, with delivery to the fleet projected for the 2030s, if at all.

The Navy may see directed energy as a critical capability, but don’t expect it to show up on any active warships outside of its existing Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN)-equipped fleet anytime soon.

None of this makes Caudle’s urgency any less real. Indeed, Epic Fury offers the most vivid illustration yet of exactly why he feels it so acutely.

Consider the Presidential Unit Citation recently awarded to the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group. According to the citation, nine surface combatants — eight as part of Destroyer Squadron 2, plus the USS Winston S. Churchill — fired 207 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles at Iranian targets between February 28 and May 1.

Assuming all of these combatants were Arleigh Burke destroyers with 96 VLS cells apiece, that’s a potential combined ceiling of roughly 864 cells, with those 207 Tomahawks representing roughly one offensive strike weapon for every four cells.

The citation makes clear where the rest of the magazine went: the strike group “protected vital sea lines of communication while under persistent threat from enemy missiles and one-way attack drones,” meaning the remaining cells were loaded with (and presumably expending) the defensive interceptors required to keep the formation in the fight.

This is Caudle’s unsustainable paradigm in action: the destroyers that prosecuted one of the most significant U.S. naval combat operations since World War II potentially went into the fight with roughly three-quarters of their magazine committed to self-defense.

And once those interceptors are spent, they are not easily replaced. Unlike fuel or food, vertical launch weapons cannot be reliably transferred at sea under operational conditions. The Navy has been pursuing an underway VLS reloading capability through its Transferrable Reload At-Sea Method (TRAM) program, but the system is not yet operationally fielded.

The directed energy solution to this problem is, in theory, elegant: a laser weapon defending a warship at $10 per shot leaves every VLS cell free for Tomahawks for offensive strikes and SM-6s for remaining high-end threats, converting the destroyer from a platform split between offense and defense into one optimized for offensive power projection.

“Every VLS cell used for a defensive missile is a lost opportunity,” Caudle told lawmakers — and directed energy, as he envisions, eliminates the choice. The problem is that the ships capable of hosting those laser weapons at the power levels required haven’t been built yet.

Caudle’s posture statement does offer something of a bridge between the Navy’s current surface combatants and the laser fleet of the future: the Containerized Capability Campaign (C³), an initiative he describes as enabling “missiles, unmanned systems, sensors, electronic warfare packages, and directed energy” to be deployed across “a wide range of platforms and shore sites” without major structural redesigns.

Caudle explicitly frames containerization as a workaround for the power and integration constraints that make bolting high-energy laser weapons onto existing warships so difficult.

It “decouples payloads from platforms,” as he puts it, allowing the Navy to “adapt capability faster than traditional acquisition timelines” and deliver combat power “at the speed of relevance — not the speed of platform-centric acquisition.”

Caudle had previously made the vision concrete at the McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia in March: “From towed array sensors to drone swarms to electronic attack systems to high-powered lasers, I want to containerize everything.”

There is evidence to support this approach. In October 2025, the Navy conducted a successful live-fire test of the palletized 30 kW LOCUST Laser Weapon System from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, demonstrating that a containerized laser could draw cleanly from a carrier’s nuclear reactors without the issue that plagues the Burke fleet.

Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, is developing a containerized version of the service’s lone 60 kW High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system currently installed aboard the destroyer USS Preble specifically so the system can be seamlessly transferred across vessels in maintenance rather than sitting idle pierside.

The Navy’s fiscal year 2027 budget request also supports the “development, integration and marinization” of the U.S. Army’s Enduring High Energy Laser (E-HEL) systems for potential shipboard applications.

The most significant containerized effort reaches considerably higher up the power curve. The Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS) — the collaboration between the Army and Navy whose existence Laser Wars first reported in June 2025 — is designed from the outset as a containerized system, initially aiming for 150 kW with potential to scale to at least 300 kWs specifically for cruise missile defense, according to the Navy’s fiscal year 2027 budget request. The system will also include a Joint Beam Control System capable of supporting a 300-500 kW weapon.

Together, the Army and Navy have outlined a vision of $675.93 million in combined R&D spending through fiscal year 2031, with the Navy planning to award the first JBCS development contracts as soon as the fourth quarter of 2026. If JLWS delivers on its promise, it would represent a containerized laser weapon powerful enough to engage the missile threats that sit at the heart of Caudle’s VLS argument without requiring a keel-up redesign.

What Caudle’s testimony describes, then, are two directed energy tracks running in parallel — with a third, more tentative one emerging between them.

One narrative is near-term and modest: containerized, lower-power systems like LOCUST and even HELIOS, deployable across the surface fleet now and effective against the ever-expanding drone threat.

The second is transformational and distant: megawatt-class systems embedded in the hull of a battleship that won’t reach the fleet for close to a decade.

The JLWS represents an attempt to thread the needle between them with a containerized missile defense capability that could arrive before the battleship does.

For Caudle and his fellow Navy leaders, Epic Fury may have crystallized a need for a laser fleet that matches their ambition for one.

Time will tell if they can actually build it.

The decision to procure the systems was made during the February meeting of the Defense Industry Executive Committee, the highest decision-making body in Turkey’s defense procurement and industrial policy.

The Secretariat of Defense Industries (SSB) is overseeing the procurement project. The 100 expendable unmanned surface systems will be produced by three different companies.

One of the three providers is Aselsan, which has teamed up with Ares Shipyard. They unveiled their joint product, Tufan, during SAHA Expo 2026 in Istanbul.

The second provider is STM, which is cooperating with Yonca Shipyard. Their expendable USV, Yaktu, was also unveiled during the trade show.

The third producer is Havelsan, which is working with Sefine Shipyard.

The 100 units are divided as 40 for Aselsan, 32 for STM, and 32 for Havelsan, meaning the overall authorized amount will need to be adjusted slightly to accommodate an operational doctrine that envisions four-drone swarms.

Aselsan’s Tufan unmanned surface vehicle is designed to conduct strike missions against maritime and coastal targets. The vessel is 8 meters long and 1.8 meters wide and carries a high-explosive payload equivalent to one Mk 82 bomb.

STM’s Yaktu USV was developed to meet asymmetric maritime operational requirements, ranging from port protection to open-sea strike missions. It has an overall length of 5.8 meters and a displacement of 1.7 tons.

Both Tufan and Yaktu are configured as expendable, precision-strike unmanned surface platforms designed for engagements against surface targets. They feature compact, low-profile hulls to reduce radar and visual detectability. Both systems support line-of-sight (LOS) and satellite communications, enabling integration into network-centric operations.

Their swarm architecture allows multiple units to operate cooperatively, share data in real time, and autonomously allocate tasks during missions.

Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense minister, announced at a press conference in Berlin that Germany is developing a European Space Component Command alongside a Weltraumakademie − a multilateral space training academy − and insisted that partner nations will be “embedded in the design phase” rather than presented with finished structures.

The meeting, billed as the first “DACH+L” format, expanding the traditional German-Austrian-Swiss defense dialogue to include Luxembourg, served as a platform for Pistorius to demonstrate traction on Germany’s €35 billion ($40.7 billion) military space investment pledged last fall. That program spans encrypted low-earth-orbit satellite constellations, military-grade launch capacity, and an expanded Space Command within the Bundeswehr.

Austria’s Defense Minister Claudia Tanner reaffirmed that Austria plans to put three operationally designated military satellites plus a test object into orbit next year, developed partly with Austrian startups. The program centers on two projects: LEO2VLEO, a joint initiative with the Netherlands covering imaging and navigation in very low Earth orbit, and BEACONSAT, an Austrian navigation satellite built for under €1 million ($1.16 million). Tanner said the satellites would be made available to partners and framed the push as essential for communications independence in a crisis.

Austria is neutral by constitution, though some have questioned how its deepening defense ties with European neighbors can be squared with this tradition and legal requirement.

Luxembourg’s Defense Minister Yuriko Backes, attending a DACH meeting for the first time, pointed to her country’s niche: established SATcom and Earth observation expertise that Luxembourg is “very willing to make available to allies and partners.” She and Tanner both referenced a forthcoming cooperation deal between the two countries on satellite use in July, without elaborating.

Swiss Federal Councilor Martin Pfister noted that there is no domain where Europe faces a greater dependency on non-European technology providers than in the space domain. “It is not possible for one country to solve this alone,” he said, though he called out Swiss state-owned company Beyond Gravity as a potential industrial contributor to a European solution.

Switzerland, too, has bent the limits of its longstanding neutrality to deepen its integration into European defense projects since the war in Ukraine. The joint accession of both Austria and Switzerland to the German-led European Sky Shield Initiative in 2023 was a prime example of this new thinking.

The latest moves signal a further deepening of these Central European defense ties. The conference alone was a remarkable signal, expanding the more established German-Austrian-Swsiss DACH format to Luxembourg as a fourth member.

What Monday’s meeting produced in concrete terms was modest: a reaffirmation of existing cooperation threads, a cyber exercise result − Luxembourg, together with the three other German-speaking countries, placed second at NATO’s Locked Shields event under German leadership in April − and political momentum behind space initiatives that remain largely conceptual. But the message was still clear: German-speaking Europe is serious about wanting to become a player in space, and the push for independence from the U.S. has gained additional momentum.

Latvian troops tried out unmanned ground vehicles during the Crystal Arrow exercise as part of operational testing to integrate new technology into NATO’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, inspired by lessons from Ukraine, said Brig. Gen. Chris Gent, deputy chief of staff transformation and integration at NATO Allied Land Command.

“There’s no secrets here, it’s how warfare develops,” Gent told Defense News in an interview at the Sēlija training area in Latvia last week. “There is now a zone in front of you where you’re not going to put humans in harm’s way, and it’s all about machines taking the risk and absorbing that risk for you, and attrition.”

With European intelligence agencies warning Russia could threaten NATO territory within a few years after fighting ends in Ukraine, the alliance’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative aims to help build up a more credible border defense. Several countries on NATO’s eastern flank, including Latvia and Poland, have faced drone incursions from the direction of Russia over the past year.

The initiative, shorthanded as EFDI, “has really picked up momentum very quickly,” United States Army Europe and Africa commander Gen. Chris Donahue told officers and officials in a briefing at the Sēlija range, describing it as NATO’s war-fighting concept.

Donahue first discussed the concept at a conference in Germany last July. He said that beyond showing PowerPoint slides, it’s now about fielding capabilities and countries exercising with them to prove they work, and “make sure we have deterrence every day.”

The concept includes a unified network of connected sensors, unmanned systems and both offensive and defensive effectors, according to Gent. The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative envisions “an autonomous zone, well documented already” where only unmanned systems can operate effectively before either side starts taking casualties, Gent said.

“This is here right now,” Gent said, citing press reports of Ukraine capturing a position in April using only unmanned systems. “We’re not talking about science fiction, we’re not talking about the future. We’re not talking about 2040. We are talking about the requirement today.”

The challenge then becomes how many autonomous systems one side has, how effective they are, and how effective the counters are, according to Gent, who said the only way to understand that is through exercises such as Crystal Arrow. One hurdle remains different levels of permissions between NATO nations about allowing autonomous sensors to fire effectors, he said.

“More and more nations are being challenged or are having that argument developed for them in real time, when, for example, you might see a drone incursion in peacetime,” Gent said. “Do we shoot that drone down, where might it land, for example. It’s become very real here in Latvia.”

NATO has been testing new technologies in support of the EFDI since September within the Task Force X framework. During the first pilot in Lithuania in September, German forces integrated unmanned ground vehicles and counter-UAS in their operations, while testing in Finland in December focused on connectivity, according to Gent.

The alliance is developing a “data backbone” across the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, with a network tying together thousands of sensors and effectors, including acoustic and electro-optical sensors as well as counter-UAS and UGVs, Gent said. The idea is for sensors across the eastern flank to talk to each other and “trigger each other’s effectors across international boundaries,” he said.

Trying out new capabilities during exercises is key to helping troops integrate them, Gent said, noting how Latvia’s Mechanized Infantry Brigade used UGVs during Crystal Arrow. NATO covered the cost of travel and accommodation for media attending the exercise, including for Defense News.

The alliance is also asking companies to talk about how they’ll connect unmanned ground systems into NATO operating systems, with Gent saying there are lessons to be learned from Task Force X Baltic.

Work is ongoing within NATO’s operational experimentation to establish the effective size of the autonomous zone, which varies depending on the terrain, according to Gent.

In Ukraine, the term “kill zone” is used informally to describe an area near the front where movement is rapidly detected and targeted by drones, artillery or loitering munitions, and which can range to 15 kilometers or more from the line of contact in some areas.

Latvian troops are training every day to secure this “kill zone” with only unmanned systems, said Maj. Eduards Šinkūns, chief of the operational, planning and training department of the Mechanized Infantry Brigade, in a briefing with reporters during Crystal Arrow. He described a multilayered system of drones supported by infantry and artillery.

“What we see in Ukraine, no vehicle movements are in the gray zone at all,” Šinkūns said. “Any movement is destroyed.”

Šinkūns declined to detail how Latvia would defend against a Russian invasion, saying “we Latvians, especially the mechanized brigade, we have a plan, and we know how to execute it. That’s all I can say about it.”

The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative is one part in a multilayered approach to dissuade a Russian attack, said Brig. Gen. Jamie Murray, the deputy commander of the Estonian Division, in an interview with Defense News at the Sēlija training area.

While the deterrence initiative creates a “day zero problem” by being able to detect and strike an attacker immediately, the next layer is the ability of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania to hit targets in the deep if Russia does invade. He noted Estonia’s purchase of additional Chunmoo rocket artillery systems from Hanwha Aerospace with a range of 290 kilometers.

He said the most demanding challenge for the alliance would be “a gambling Putin, throwing some forces, gambling that NATO doesn’t react, nibbling a bit of any of our countries,” Murray said.

“If deterrence has failed, we reserve that right to then strike back at military targets,” Murray said. “The thing about the kill zone, it’s not going to be symmetrical. The Estonians, for example, have a very clear ‘no Russian boots on our territory.’ So the kill zone could be conceivably on their side of the border.”

Shaping the terrain with physical barriers in combination with the deterrence initiative can allow NATO forces to compensate for the force-ratio imbalance with Russia, Murray said. He cited the Baltic Defense Line of anti-tank ditches and physical obstacles, and the difficulty Soviet troops faced in 1944 to remove German troops due to the forest cover.

“The first act is to deter them, the second is to stop them, and the third is to get them into a position where ultimately they’ve culminated, we’re forcing them to do an echelon change, and as they do that, they’re really vulnerable,” Murray said.

He said NATO’s logic has moved from the tripwire force to “deterrence by punishment and denial.”

“The end state is clear, and we’re all working towards it,” Murray said. “Prove to Russia that they shouldn’t invade.”

The single-engine, prop-driven OA-1K, a militarized version of the Air Tractor AT-802 crop duster, is built to give isolated special operations teams eyes overhead and firepower on call from rough dirt strips with little support.

“It is essentially a Swiss Army Knife of airborne capability,” Lt. Col. Robert Wilson, AFSOC’s armed overwatch requirements branch chief, told reporters.

“Rapid disassembly and reassembly means, in a matter of hours, the aircraft can be loaded into mobility aircraft like a C-5 or C-17 for worldwide deployment,” Wilson said in an AFSOC release. “With the OA-1K, ‘any place, any time, anywhere’ is not just a motto, but an actual capability.”

Lt. Gen. Mike Conley, AFSOC commander, added in the release that the OA-1K “offers a unique and modular solution for a wide range of operations, including armed overwatch, at a fraction of a cost of other platforms.”

The cost case rests on platform consolidation. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report noted SOCOM refers to the mix of close air support, strike and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft flown over a single special operations mission as “the stack.” AFSOC has pitched the modular Skyraider II as a cheaper airframe that can do the work of many.

The Air Force now flies 18 Skyraider IIs and expects “a handful more” by October, Wilson said.

The aircraft, named for the Vietnam-era A-1 Skyraider, currently operates out of Will Rogers Air National Guard Base, Oklahoma, and will eventually operate from Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.

The program of record is 75 aircraft, but the Pentagon has cut the funded total to 53. The same GAO report found that SOCOM had not justified the 75-aircraft fleet and urged a slowdown.

The cuts align with a broader Pentagon shift toward a potential high-end fight with China, where a slow, low-flying turboprop with no ejection seat is a hard sell.

“The 75 quantity figure is the program record,” Wilson said. “I would say, as the capability sponsor, less than 75 is not desirable. We would like to see it at the program record of 75, but ... just being pragmatic, obviously, with resource constraints that could potentially limit the program less than that.”

According to Monday’s press release, the decision to award the contract was made by the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, or JIATF-401, a Defense Department organization charged with researching, testing, and procuring counter-drone technology.

Perennial will deliver a range of AI-enabled counter-unmanned aerial systems currently used by U.S. forces. These include Merops interceptors, Bumblebee quadcopters and Hornet midrange strike drones.

In a statement, the company said the contract “validates the operational reliability of that technology in the world’s most actively contested environments,” and “deepens the existing strategic partnership” between it and the Defense Department.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of JIATF-401, in the statement called drones “the defining threat of our time,” and reiterated the need to maintain partnerships with companies like Perennial.

“We must be proactive with creating a layered defense that deploy and scale low-cost, attritable air-to-air drone interceptors at all our facilities at home and abroad,” he added.

In December, the Pentagon launched the billion-dollar Drone Dominance initiative to equip troops with cheap, disposable drones and prepare them for technological changes on the battlefield, many of which were demonstrated in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Another part of the initiative included investing heavily in the domestic drone industry, so within the next few years, equipment could be produced at scale for significantly less money.

But the Iran war further accelerated the U.S. military’s demand for the types of drones combatants have been using to attack or harass troops, destroy equipment or infrastructure and conduct surveillance, among other things.

During last month’s budget hearings, Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll told lawmakers that Perennial began rapidly scaling production of its Merops drones.

Perennial, originally launched by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as Project Eagle, developed the Merops interceptor for Ukrainian forces to counter Russia’s one-way attack drones known as Shaheds.

The U.S. military is using the interceptors the same way against Iran’s Sheheds.

When answering questions about the investment, Driscoll described a war of attrition, saying the Merops currently costs about $15,000 per unit, whereas a Shahed costs somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000.

Additionally, JIATF-401 awarded Perennial a separate $5.2 million contract in January for the Bumblebee V2 counter-drone system, and the Army reportedly tested the Hornet midrange strike drones in March.

The company has also opened manufacturing operations in Europe through a partnership aimed at expanding production of its Merops drones.

Perennial’s contract will end in three years or whenever the Pentagon pays out the full $500 million, whichever comes first.