Of the total, €675 million ($796 million) will support 32 capability development projects, and €332 million ($391 million) will go to 25 research initiatives. The selected projects involve 634 entities from 26 EU member states plus Norway, with small and medium-sized enterprises making up more than 38% of participants and receiving over 21% of the total funding, according to a summary of the spending plan.

The most striking cluster of projects marks a shift to 21st-century warfare, with at least four separate initiatives − EURODAMM, LUMINA, SKYRAPTOR, and TALON − devoted specifically to loitering munitions and affordable mass drone production.

The concentration reflects an uncomfortable lesson absorbed from the war in Ukraine: cheap, expendable strike drones have reshaped the battlefield, and Europe’s defense industry has been slow to catch up. Lessons learned in Ukraine are referenced repeatedly throughout the EDF’s materials on the funding round and individual projects.

That battlefield knowledge is now being plugged into the fund’s architecture. For the first time, Ukrainian entities are eligible to participate in EDF projects as subcontractors and third-party recipients, marking a significant step toward integrating Ukraine’s defense-technological and industrial base into the European ecosystem. In the coming months, Kyiv and Brussels are expected to complete the required association agreement to allow Ukraine full participation on equal terms with EU member states in the future.

The EU Defence Innovation Office in Kyiv, established under the European Defence Industrial Strategy in 2024, has been the institutional engine behind that push. One flagship project, STRATUS, will develop an AI-powered cyber defense system for drone swarms and includes a Ukrainian subcontractor, a model the Commission explicitly frames as bringing “direct battlefield experience” into EU-funded R&D.

More than 15 of the 57 projects are tied to the Commission’s four European Readiness Flagships, a set of priority capability areas the bloc identified last year as critical to near-term operational readiness. Project AETHER, for instance, will develop propulsion and thermal management systems in support of the Drone Defence Initiative.

To widen the industrial base, several projects focused on mass-producible drone munitions will launch sub-calls specifically for startups as well as small and medium-sized firms, including Ukrainian ones, that can receive up to €60,000 each to integrate innovations into larger consortia. It is a modest sum, but the intent is structural: to lower the barrier to entry for firms without prior defense experience at a moment when the Commission is under pressure to demonstrate that its defense spending is generating real industrial capacity outside of the usual suspects of established prime contractors.

The 2025 funding awards are separate from both the 2026 EDF Work Programme, which carries a €1 billion ($1.18 billion) budget adopted last December, and the European Defence Industry Programme, whose €1.5 billion ($1.77 billion) work program was adopted in March. Taken together, the three tranches reflect an EU defense funding environment that has expanded dramatically in scale and ambition since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and one that is now deliberately building Kyiv into its foundations.

The armed forces are working with partners on a system to provide what Desmeulles called “true distributed working capability” centered on data and using advanced AI, “a sovereign system that will essentially be the equivalent of Maven.”

The system could be available within a few months, and available for exercises in September 2027, the general said, declining to provide specifics.

Project Maven is a Pentagon program that uses AI to process drone and surveillance data to automatically detect and track objects, using technology provided by contractors including Palantir Technologies. Maven has faced controversy amid questions about AI-assisted targeting in Iran, with concerns about speed, accountability, and harm to civilians related to automated kill chains.

“We’ve really positioned data as the center of everything we do,” Desmeulles said in a briefing with three reporters on Saturday at the Montmorillon military camp in western France, describing data as the ammunition of the command post.

“The centrality of data is something that’s well understood by the corps, the Army, and the French forces,” he said. “So, we’re really focused on that.”

The armed forces are on track to develop “a true distributed working capability, based on highly advanced artificial intelligence and centered on data,” Desmeulles said. “We’re following that logic, to remain sovereign, and that’s an area where we are strong.”

Desmeulles said his corps is already seeing “very, very good” results from a data-centric approach, even if there is “still a little way to go before it’s practically perfect in my eyes.”

France has several AI companies that are active in defense, including Comand AI, ChapsVision and Safran’s AI business, and is also home to a major developer of large-language models with Mistral AI. France in 2024 created an agency under the Armed Forces Ministry that works on AI for defense.

The department premiered WarMatrix for its inaugural use at the March 27 GE 26 Benchmark Wargame, marking the system’s move from development into operational capacity, according to a Tuesday Air Force release.

WarMatrix, described by the force as an “active wargaming environment,” is an AI-powered system that integrates existing models, data and workflows while expediting analysis.

The Air Force at the end of 2025 said it was looking for technology capable of producing simulations 10,000 times faster than real time.

WarMatrix is a “human-machine teaming system” meant to keep human judgment integral to planning and decision making, according to the release.

The use of WarMatrix during the event served as the system’s initial operating concept evaluation, signaling a change in how the Air Force conducts operational analysis and wargaming.

“Designed by wargamers for wargamers, WarMatrix provides transparency, auditability and speed, enabling decision-makers to better understand assumptions, outcomes and tradeoffs,” the statement reads.

Air Force leaders portray WarMatrix as an evolution in wargaming rather than a replacement, and the release says that the use of WarMatrix provided a more “connected and traceable wargaming process.”

It also said that the system’s design allowed for faster scenario development, repeat findings and increased collaboration with joint and coalition partners.

The two-weekslong event, hosted at Systems Planning and Analysis in Alexandria, Virginia, was attended by more than 150 people, including technical experts, Air Force leadership and allied planners.

Attendees during the event fulfilled more than six 24-hour “game-time moves” that balanced physics- and simulation-based models to ensure outcomes were realistic.

The defense technology firm introduced the system, known as MAYHEM 10, which expands upon its Switchblade family.

The Army in February announced a $186 million purchase that includes two variants of Switchblade one-way attack, or “kamikaze,” drones: the Switchblade 600 Block 2 variant and the Switchblade 300 Block 20 variant.

The difference is that MAYHEM 10 is multifunctional, meaning it can perform tasks in addition to striking. The new system can carry a 10-pound payload and has a range of over 62 miles, per the release.

The system is capable of 50 minutes of endurance, with a launch assembly that can be done in under five minutes, the statement says. It can also be launched from the air, ground or maritime platforms.

“By integrating advanced autonomy, multi-domain payloads, and rapid adaptability, we empower our forces to sense, disrupt, and strike with precision — even in the most contested environments,” Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment’s chairman, president and chief executive officer, said in the statement.

Last year, U.S. soldiers tested the Switchblade 600 system, which has a range of 27 miles and is designed to engage a target using onboard cameras.

The Switchblade 300 Block 20, unlike the heavier 600 variant, is small enough to be carried in a backpack. For the first time, according to a February AeroVironment announcement, it will come equipped with an Explosively Formed Penetrator, a deadly warhead that is made to penetrate armored vehicles.

The Baltic nation will instead direct the funds toward drones, counter-drone measures and air-defense systems, while squeezing more service life out of the country’s existing fleet of second-hand CV90 vehicles.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur announced the move, which pauses a €500 million ($590 million) acquisition, last week, saying it was based on lessons drawn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Tallinn will “extend the service life of the existing CV90 vehicles by at least 10 years,” Pevkur was quoted in a statement issued by the government.

The move is in contrast with actions by the other two Baltic States, Latvia and Lithuania, which have made decisions to buy new CV90 and Ascod vehicles, respectively.

“We have decided that, at present, it is more rational to modernize the existing infantry fighting vehicles rather than replace them. Modernization will ensure the sustained preservation of capability and the efficient use of resources,” Andri Maimets, spokesman for the Estonian Centre for Defence Investments (ECDI), the country’s military procurement agency, told Defense News.

Under the modernization plan, the vehicles are to be fitted with new electronics, and their weapon and targeting systems will be upgraded, Maimets said.

Estonia secured 44 used CV90s from the Netherlands that were delivered in 2019, and sourced additional 37 hulls of vehicles made by BAE Systems Hägglunds for Norway, subsequently rebuilding them into support vehicles.

Raimond Kaljulaid, an Estonian lawmaker who represents the opposition Social Democratic Party on the parliament’s National Defence Committee, told Defense News the decision should be viewed in the context of Estonia’s rising military expenditure.

“Estonia spends over 5% of its GDP on defense, and this is real spending on our military which is above NATO’s 3.5 percent target to meet the capability targets,” Kaljulaid said. “This means that, if we want to invest more in counter-drone technologies or combat drones, the money must come from the existing budget,” he added. “If our threat assessment and priorities change, we need to adapt our spending accordingly.”

The lawmaker said the National Defence Committee will “keep a close eye on the adapted approach to make sure that everything is done the right away to ensure national security.”

As Tallinn advances plans to select a foreign supplier for the planned domestic ramp-up of 155 mm artillery ammunition production, Kaljulaid also said that projects to attract international defense industry players to Estonia must be accelerated.

“The past five-six years have brought remarkable success to the development of Estonia’s defense industry, with unmanned technologies as one of the prime examples. At the same time, we must make efforts to ensure that Estonia continues to be competitive with regards to other countries in the region,” he said.

The U.S. military is paving the way for the regular deployment of high-energy laser weapons on American soil for air defense amid the expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Defense Department have reached a “landmark safety agreement” regarding the use of laser weapons to counter unauthorized drones at the US-Mexico border following a safety assessment that concluded such countermeasures “do not pose undue risk to passenger aircraft,” the FAA announced Friday.

The assessment and resulting agreement were the direct result of two laser incidents along the southern border of Texas in February, which prompted the FAA to abruptly close nearby airspace amid concerns over the potential impact on civilian air traffic. The incidents involved the U.S. Army’s 20 kilowatt Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL), a vehicle-mounted version of defense contractor AV’s LOCUST Laser Weapon System.

In the first incident, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel used an AMP-HEL on loan from the Pentagon to engage an unidentified target near Fort Bliss, triggering an airspace shutdown above El Paso on Feb. 11. In the second, U.S. military personnel used an AMP-HEL near Fort Hancock to neutralize a “seemingly threatening” drone that turned out to belong to CBP, spurring another shutdown on Feb. 27.

“Following a thorough, data-informed Safety Risk Assessment, we determined that these systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public,” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said in a statement. “We will continue working with our interagency partners to ensure the National Airspace System remains safe while addressing emerging drone threats.”

The “first of its kind” safety assessment, conducted in early March by the FAA and the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) counter-drone organization at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, reportedly yielded two significant conclusions: 1) the LOCUST’s automatic shutoff mechanism will consistently prohibit the system from firing under unsafe circumstances, a point that AV executives have emphasized in recent weeks, and 2) in the event of a system failure, the laser beam itself cannot inflict catastrophic damage even on aircraft flying at its maximum effective range, let alone those at cruising altitudes.

Here’s how Aaron Westman, AV senior director for business development, described the LOCUST’s safety protocols in a company blog post on March 23:

Every time an operator presses the “fire” button, the system runs through a series of automated checks. Some examples include:

• Is the laser pointing away from protected “keep-out” zones?
• Are all internal subsystems operating within safe parameters?
• Is the system properly locked onto a target?
• Are safety interlock switches engaged?
• Are all software safety checks satisfied?

Each of these checks acts as a safety “vote.”

If any subsystem registers a “no vote,” the laser simply will not fire. An operator can press the trigger — and nothing happens. The system refuses to engage until all conditions are verified as safe.

These automated safeguards are built into both the hardware and the software of the system.

Here’s how DefenseScoop described the LOCUST’s potential effects on passing airframes based on an account from Army Col. Scott McLellan, JIATF-401 deputy director, of the testing at White Sands:

McLellan said the evaluation involved “localized” firing of the AMP-HEL from various distances at the fuselage of a Boeing 767 airliner that testers lugged on to White Sands to assess the system’s damaging effects, “or lack thereof” on aircraft material. He said it aimed to “disprove some myths” about the capability, noting “that energy clearly dissipates over time and space and doesn’t have the effect everyone thinks it does as far as lasers are concerned.”

A JIATF 401 spokesperson said the laser was fired at its “maximum effective range for up to 8 seconds” at the grounded fuselage, “demonstrating that even at full intensity, the laser caused no structural damage to the aircraft.”

As drone warfare spreads beyond distant conflicts, laser weapons are an increasingly attractive domestic countermeasure. While kinetic interceptors and electronic warfare may be considered suitable for chaotic battlefields, their potential for collateral effects makes them far too risky for consistent domestic applications. And even if collateral damage wasn’t a concern, expending expensive missiles on the 1,000 cartel-operated drones that cross the border with Mexico monthly is economically unsustainable, especially for a Pentagon that’s already rapidly burning through munitions as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. On paper, the argument seems obvious: Why not save those critical interceptors for high-end threats overseas and let domestic laser emplacements, with their deep magazines and minimal cost-per-shot, pull counter-drone duty at home?

Using laser weapons for domestic air defense wouldn’t be unprecedented. France deployed two 2 kw High Energy Laser for Multiple Applications – Power (HELMA-P) systems to secure the airspace over the country’s Île-de-France region during the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics. This past September, China’s People’s Liberation Army deployed several laser weapons across Beijing during a major military parade marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II. As of January, the U.K. Ministry of Defense was reportedly drawing up plans to build a domestic laser screen, albeit composed of lower-power laser dazzlers, to protect military installations and other critical infrastructure. The Pentagon has even already considered laser weapons to reinforce the airspace above Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s residences at Fort McNair in Washington following a series of unauthorized drone incursions there.

Indeed, there’s a distinct possibility that laser weapons could see increasing domestic applications amid the U.S. military’s growing appetite for novel drone defenses. On April 2, JIATF-401 announced that it had funneled $20 million in counter-drone systems like the Dronebuster EW handset and Smart Shooter computerized riflescope to the U.S.-Mexico border in just four months.

Days later, the task force announced $100 million to enhance counter-drone capabilities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup starting in June “to protect stadiums and fan zones in 11 cities across nine states,” part of larger $600 million surge in counter-drone systems that also allocated $158 million to “defend the nation’s highest-priority defense critical infrastructure.”

With the Pentagon asking for $580 million in R&D funding just for JIATF-401 in its fiscal year 2027 budget request (and potentially $800 million in procurement cash), the task force appears poised to explore any and all possible solutions to the drone problem — and operationally, the FAA-Pentagon safety agreement helps establish laser weapons as a viable option.

That said, the safety agreement on its own is unlikely to open the floodgates for a sudden spate of laser weapon deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border, let alone for major events like the World Cup or critical infrastructure just yet. First, the agreement doesn’t appear to clarify who has final say in authorizing a laser engagement when U.S. military, CBP and FAA jurisdictions overlap — the precise ambiguity that yielded February’s airspace closures and, until resolved, will complicate future engagements during a fast-moving crisis. Second, the U.S. military’s arsenal of operational laser weapons is currently limited despite a stated goal of rapidly fielding new systems at scale within three years. Even with clear plans to surge directed energy research and development for homeland defense under President Donald Trump’s “Golden Dome for America” missile shield, the age of sleek beam directors quietly standing watch along the US-Mexico border remains a long way off.

The FAA agreement may end up laying the foundation for a true domestic laser air defense architecture — a “Laser Dome” in all but name. Whether the U.S. military actually builds it, however, will depend not just the Pentagon’s promise to deploy laser weapons at scale, but whether Washington can finally sort out who’s in charge when a beam crosses into civilian airspace.

The Army Data Operations Center’s April 3 debut is part of an enormous push to further integrate data and machine learning into military operations, according to a Pentagon release.

The armed forces have used data from military, intelligence and business sources for the past several years.

Historically, that has been a somewhat cumbersome process, as different datasets are often separated from one another, necessitating different security clearances, or housed on different systems. The ADOC is meant to mitigate those issues, functioning as a kind of information hub.

“We don’t have a data problem. We have a data management problem, and data becomes the ammunition that we need to provide to our senior leaders in order for them to make quick and informed decisions and gain decision dominance,” Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, deputy chief of staff for the Army G-6, said in the release.

The office will be housed under Army Cyber Command, the release states. It is scheduled to run as a pilot for six months, with the Pentagon potentially adopting it as a model, DefenseScoop reported.

OTHER INITIATIVES

The establishment of the ADOC, meanwhile, is just one step in a series of separate initiatives undertaken by the service in recent years to embrace AI’s role in the battlefields of tomorrow.

Experts say broadening the technology’s application is long overdue.

“Most of the AI development had all been toward enemy-centric targeting, looking for and refining that enemy target and helping us basically build out target sets and hit more faster, essentially target more faster in one way or another,” Wes Bryant, a former U.S. Air Force joint terminal attack controller and Pentagon whistleblower, told Military Times.

“But you didn’t really have much of anything related to the civilian environment,” Bryant continued. “That was one thing we were working on at the [Pentagon’s Civilian Protection] Center of Excellence — looking at ideas for AI integration in civilian environment mapping, in updating no strike lists in given areas.”

Jon Lindsay, associate professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that AI is best suited to more mundane organizational tasks, such as “planning, intelligence, logistics administration.”

The Department of Defense has also put out contracting opportunities for commercial data centers on four U.S. military bases.

Two bases, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, and Fort Bliss, Texas, have entered into agreements already, according to a March 2026 release.

Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are also listed as potential sites for the data centers, which provide the computing power and hardware for AI models and cloud services.

Under the agreements, the data centers would be operated by civilian firms but would provide computing power for the military’s use, according to Task & Purpose.

Those data centers are part of a government-wide effort to pursue “a golden age for American manufacturing and technological dominance,” per a July 2025 executive order.

The effort to achieve artificial general intelligence is a “race that has a very short-term horizon,” Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation, told Military Times.

Housing the data centers on Army bases could provide an extra level of security for the centers, which are vulnerable to cyber and kinetic attacks.

But they also present potential downsides to the communities where they are built, like tremendous energy consumption.

That, combined with an aging power grid, is likely to drive up energy costs in the surrounding areas.

The contract, which follows a framework agreement announced in January, will allow Lockheed to “deliver record numbers of combat-proven interceptors for American and allied forces this year,” the company announced Friday.

“Our investments in our facilities, workforce and supply chain ensure we can deliver at scale and with speed,” Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in a release. “With the right tools, proven processes and skilled employees in place, we are positioned to deliver a record number of munitions in support of the warfighter and our allies.”

The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement works by identifying and tracking a range of threats — using Boeing-made PAC-3 seekers — from ballistic missiles and hypersonics to hostile air platforms.

Once the seeker identifies the target, the highly maneuverable all-up interceptor round, which uses a two-pulse solid rocket motor, engages and eliminates threats via direct body-to-body contact.

Boeing earlier this month announced it had reached a framework agreement with the Defense Department to triple production of its PAC-3 seekers.

Lockheed’s framework agreement announced in January included a target of increasing annual PAC-3 interceptor production from approximately 600 to 2,000 over a span of seven years.

Recent contract announcements come as the U.S. military’s reliance on costly interceptors against cheap munitions, particularly those deployed by Iran during Operation Epic Fury, has come under increased scrutiny.

Contrast the $35,000 average cost of an Iranian Shahed drone with an estimated $4 million price tag of a PAC-3, and the cost exchange, if successfully engaged, is 114-1 in favor of Iran.

Despite the lopsided cost exchange, the Pentagon in March also announced a deal with BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin to quadruple production of infrared seekers for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptor.

That deal aligns with a contract agreement in January between the Pentagon and Lockheed to quadruple the company’s annual production of THAAD interceptors from 96 to 400.

French defense firms have been slow to set up joint companies with Ukrainian partners, with just one joint venture created so far, compared to 11 for Germany and five for Spain, said Ihor Fedirko, the chief executive officer of the Ukrainian Council of Defence Industry. He was speaking at a press briefing late Wednesday after a day of meetings organized with French land defense industry group GICAT.

Ukraine has developed unmatched expertise in Europe in drone warfare after four years of fighting Russia’s invasion, coming up with new use cases and doctrine as well as scaling up drone production to millions of units per year. Meanwhile, France is home to some of Europe’s biggest defense firms and is the world’s second-biggest arms exporter.

“We have to establish a win-win strategy with the defense industry of France, to find our best partners,” Fedirko said. “We want to know as well how you produce your products, your production culture, your standards. That’s what you can bring to our industry.”

Ukraine was present with 27 companies, most of them drone makers, while nearly 60 French firms showed up for the day of match making, according to Fedirko. He said some Ukrainian companies would follow up with visits to French manufacturers on Thursday.

Co-producing Ukrainian defense products with strategic partners, on their territory, means an additional flow of equipment to send to the front, said Oleksandr Kamyshin, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former minister of strategic industries. He said allied governments buying co-produced kit to donate to Ukraine “is the fastest and the best way how we can support our front line.”

Kamyshin said Ukraine’s industry has historically been integrated “into the East” and now needs to become part of the European defense framework, while Europe’s defense industry will become stronger by integrating capabilities learned and developed in Ukraine.

“We come with our lessons learned,” Kamyshin said. “We offer a model which is definitely beneficial for your country, for your industry, for your economy. And we want to do more together.”

Fedirko said no other European country has a defense industry like that of France, active in deep tech and completely independent, with the French industry strong in aerospace and “classic weaponry.” With France able produce everything from missiles and radars to night-vision equipment, what Ukraine can bring is knowledge, technologies and innovations in the field of drones, he said.

“When we will combine our experience and expertise and your deep technologies, your standards, your production culture, we can establish something pretty new,” Fedirko said.

French companies may announce at least one or two drone joint ventures with Ukrainian partners in the coming weeks, said Clément Requier, GICAT’s director of export and European partnerships. He noted France’s defense industry already works with Ukraine’s industry in formats other than joint ventures.

Ukraine is offering a level of industrial collaboration that wouldn’t have been available five years ago, and is open to sharing what it learned to produce, in the interest of integrating with European industry, according to Kamyshin. The Ukrainian official said in turn he sees strong interest in cooperation from the French side.

Wednesday’s meeting was the fourth between the French and Ukrainian defense industries since July 2023, and the first in France, according to Requier. France often frames cooperation with other countries in terms of delivering stand-alone solutions, and should think more about also being a provider of critical components and equipment, he said.

Ukraine has the expertise it needs, with more than 1,000 companies active in defense, most of them producing unmanned systems, said Kamyshin. He said Ukrainian drones have sunk Russian ships and submarines, saying it “looks like Lego drones work well,” an oblique reference to reported comments by Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger widely seen as dismissive of Ukraine’s drone innovation.

France has deep knowledge and expertise in artificial intelligence, and “we would be happy do to more in that domain,” according to Kamyshin. Ukraine sees France as a strategic partner, and the focus is on promoting collaboration and co-production in France, rather than sales, the special adviser said.

Ukraine in March raised the possibility of sharing battlefield data with partners to train AI models, and Kamyshin said Ukraine would be happy to share datasets with countries with which it starts co-production, and “not only in Ukraine,” with an announcement on partnerships expected on April 13.

With regards to what France can bring to the table, Ukraine could benefit from more sharing of strong standard setting in Europe, said Éloi Delort, public affairs director at Alta Ares, a French defense AI firm. He said France’s Directorate General for Armament puts “a lot of stress” on French companies to secure systems and ensure technology is not getting stolen.

One of Wednesday’s participants, Ukraine’s MOWA Defense, which provides training and advisory services for defense, sees France as a key market, co-founder Fedir Serdiuk said. Operating in France would require a local partner, which the executive says he hopes to have found, with a possible final agreement or at least a letter of intent in coming months.

Ukrainian drone maker eDrone came to Paris looking for new partnerships, chief commercial officer Pavlo Valenchuk said. He cited the example of a French company with radars, a good drone-tracking system and software, “everything to develop a really good system” to protect strategic objects in France, but lacking interceptor drones. “This type of partnership we’re looking for.”

French company SBG Systems, which makes low-cost inertial navigation systems in France that are used by Ukraine in strike drones, is looking to qualify partnerships to relocate some production to Ukraine, CEO Thibault Bonnevie said. Some manufacturing may be difficult to move because it relies on machine tools from Switzerland, with export restrictions for countries in conflict, he said.

SBG is working to enhance feedback on its products from the front line, a key issue in Ukraine because of the fast-evolving battlefield and Russian electronic-warfare, Bonnevie said. The company’s customers are manufacturers rather than the armed forces directly, which means relying on the drone makers for user feedback, something that was “discussed a lot” on Wednesday, the CEO said.

Meeting with Ukrainian companies in Paris was a way to meet potential new partners rather than sign contracts, according to Bonnevie.

“The next step is usually to go visit those companies directly in Ukraine, because there is nothing really happening in Ukraine for European companies without stronger links,” Bonnevie said. Even if discussions center around drones and robots, “there is still a story of humans working together and trust that needs to be built between the companies,” he said.

In the weeks since the Department of Defense’s troubled relationship with Anthropic burst into public view and led to the company being kicked out of the U.S. military, new defense-focused AI companies like Smack Technologies and EdgeRunner AI say they have experienced a shift in interest that would have been unimaginable just months ago. They have received a surge of overtures about possible contracts and meeting requests and been approached by investors who previously showed no interest.

The Pentagon’s growing animosity toward its top AI provider, Anthropic, has opened up opportunities for smaller rivals, who have long sought a foot in the door to the most lucrative government contractor in the world. A defense contract can lead to more business with other branches of the U.S. government, and is a useful signal of trust and safety for potential commercial clients.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in demand from customers and the government to get AI solutions fielded since Anthropic was declared a supply-chain risk,” said Tyler Sweatt, CEO of Second Front, a company that helps technology firms meet the requirements needed to operate on secure Pentagon networks. “Our customers are turning to us as the Pentagon turns to them to deploy quickly in the wake of the Anthropic blowup.”

Since the Pentagon deemed Anthropic’s products a “supply-chain risk” in March and the two sides became embroiled in a lawsuit, the military has expressed increasing interest in AI startups like Smack Technologies, saying, “We want more, we want demos, let’s talk about how we can move faster,” said Andrew Markoff, co-founder and chief executive of the 19-person startup based in El Segundo, California. In late March, a judge temporarily blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic.

Tyler Saltsman, co-founder and chief executive of EdgeRunner AI, described a similar experience. His company had been waiting more than a year for a Space Force contract to clear the Pentagon’s procurement machinery. It was signed within weeks of the Anthropic situation breaking into the open. “I can’t prove that the Anthropic drama sped this up,” Saltsman said, “but I have a sneaky suspicion it did.”

“The Pentagon will continue to rapidly deploy frontier AI capabilities to the warfighter through strong industry partnerships across all classification levels,” a Pentagon official said.

One Pentagon technologist has previously told Reuters that the falling-out with Anthropic, and the realization that the Defense Department was heavily dependent on one AI provider, forced the department to diversify AI providers.

Smack’s Marine Corps contract speeds up

For Smack, the clearest example of the post-Anthropic acceleration involves the Marine Corps. The company won a contract with the Marine Corps in March 2025 and delivered a successful prototype by October — software that compresses what is normally a months-long operational planning process into roughly 15 minutes.

Despite the successful prototype, momentum stalled. Full production had been budgeted for fiscal year 2027 — meaning October 2027 at the earliest. Through the 2025 holiday period and into early 2026, there was no clear direction.

Hegseth wants Pentagon to dump Claude, but military users say it’s not so easy

Then the Anthropic uproar occurred. Within weeks, Smack was invited to multiple meetings with the Marine Corps focused on a single question: how fast can this move into production this year? Markoff said there was “very specific guidance and movement and energy” toward getting the prototype ready for combat operations in 2026 — an acceleration of more than a year.

The shift extended beyond the Marines. Smack holds contracts with the Navy and Air Force, and Markoff said interest came in nearly immediately from U.S. Special Operations Command, and others.

EdgeRunner, which is deploying with the Army Special Forces groups and has received a contract with the Space Force, said the Navy has also dramatically sped up engagement. Meetings that had been biweekly or monthly are now happening multiple times a week.

Both EdgeRunner and Smack are now racing to get their systems operating at higher security classification levels — the gateway to the most operationally significant use cases and the largest military contracts.

EdgeRunner said the military has told the company it can get to IL-6, a security designation enabling access to secret and top-secret data, within three months — a timeline Saltsman described as remarkable, given that the process normally takes 18 months or longer. The acceleration, he said, is being driven partly by pressure from Pentagon leadership to cut through procurement bureaucracy, and partly by the urgency the Anthropic situation has injected into the department’s AI strategy.

The website cited a state-run media report and experts calling the vessel a “major leap in integrated combat capability” that “positions the vessel among the most advanced frigates in service today”.

A slew of announcements such as that one from March 30 shows AI expanding across a military that aims to “intelligentize” as it prepares for potential conflicts in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. But analysts say China is picking its AI battles carefully rather than expecting quick domination of the technology or short-term parity with the United States.

China is taking a “cautious official posture” toward AI in the armed forces, said Sophie Wushuang Yi, postdoctoral teaching fellow with Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University.

“China’s concept of intelligentized warfare has been embedded in official defense white papers since 2019,” Yi said. “But the open-source academic literature is frank that China cannot currently close the overall gap with the United States in military AI capability.”

Still, AI is becoming a force within the forces.

An institution under the People’s Liberation Army in January used AI to test drone swarms and, according to a test run shown on Chinese state television, one soldier supervised some 200 of the autonomous vehicles at the same time.

AI is taking on a greater role as well in the military’s use of space and cyberspace, said Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst for defense strategy and national security with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. In space, he said, it can manage “complex orbital operations,” while in cyberspace it can plan and conduct operations against critical information infrastructure.

The military’s ability to use AI at machine speed would potentially let it exploit a faster “observe-orient-decide-act” loop compared to purely human-controlled systems, Davis said.

“That’s something that’s being demonstrated by the U.S. and Israel now in operational planning in the Iran war, where AI is playing a key role in identifying targets and planning mission packages,” the Canberra-based analyst said. “There’s no reason that the PLA won’t learn from that and utilize a similar capability.”

A testament to AI’s reach throughout the military, a March 26 PLA Daily report notes its use in battlefield perception, intelligent decision support and autonomous control systems.

PLA leaders particularly value AI decision-making because most of their people lack battlefield experience, unlike American counterparts, said Sam Bresnick, a research fellow with the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

He said its priorities include layering AI on top of computer networks, gathering volumes of data and the autonomy of unmanned systems such as uncrewed underwater vehicles.

Chinese officials want to surpass the U.S. in military AI use, Bresnick noted, but the government today fears information that AI could use or generate. “The data could go against Xi Jinping and Communist Party ideals,” he said. “They don’t want to lose control over it.”

The U.S. armed forces now have a “commanding” AI lead over China, the Modern War Institute at West Point said in a March 17 study.

It says the United States has more than 4,000 data centers versus some 400 in China. Four-year-old U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors shipped to China limit Beijing’s access to AI-related hardware, the study adds.

“China’s publicly stated position is considerably more cautious and more hedged than is commonly assumed in Western coverage,” Yi said.

“The PLA lacks the volume of real operational data that the U.S. military has accumulated over decades of expeditionary warfare, and there are unresolved doctrinal tensions between the decentralized decision-making that effective AI-enabled operations require and the PLA’s deeply embedded centralized command culture,” said Yi of the Schwarzman College.

China may have surpassed the United States in AI for drone swarms, however, said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor in the Diplomacy and International Relations Department at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

“With the addition of drone carriers already in service, the PLA has taken the lead over the U.S. military in this category of AI military applications,” he said.

The Qinzhou frigate was commissioned last year and did a combat drill in the South China Sea, where Beijing disputes maritime sovereignty with five other governments.

The deal includes dozens of launchers and rockets with ranges of 25 to 186 miles (40-300 kilometers) and is the first sale of the Israeli PULS system to Greece. The PULS system is capable of launching unguided rockets, precision-guided munitions and missiles at various ranges, and is fully compatible with existing wheeled and tracked platforms.

The deal has been underway for the past two and a half years, but its closing had been delayed, in part due to the ongoing war in the Middle East. It was launched after its approval by the Greek parliament in December 2025 as a government-to-government deal, in which Israel and Greece themselves guarantee its implementation, with the Israeli Ministry of Defense emphasizing that it “reflects the growing defense cooperation between Israel and Greece.”

Israel’s Elbit looks to cash in on European artillery appetites

The PULS is expected to be delivered over the next four years, along with a decade of support and maintenance services by the Israeli system’s manufacturer, Elbit Systems, which will also serves as the prime contractor for the Greek project.

In a supplementary announcement issued by the Israeli company, it was stated that “Elbit will collaborate with local Greek industries for the production of the system, including technology transfer and sharing of know-how.”

Elbit established a joint venture with the German KNDS to market a PULS system in Europe called “EuroPULS” GmbH. It is divided equally between the founding companies, and its headquarters is to be established in Kassel, Germany. The company also stated that within the framework of the government-to-government agreement between the Netherlands and Israel, Germany — as a partner — ordered five EuroPULS launchers in an initial operational capability configuration, with delivery and training planned for 2027.

The latest PULS sale to Greece is one of several defense deals with Israel approved by the Greek Parliament as part of its “Achilles Shield” project. Under the project, approved in mid-March, Greece will purchase Barak MX missile batteries from Israel Aerospace Industries, as well as David and Spider mobile launcher systems from Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

The air-defense interception rate has been steadily rising in recent months, according to data from Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, climbing to 89.9% in March from 85.6% in February and 80.2% in December. At the same time, Russian attacks increased to 6,600 last month from 5,345 in February, the ministry said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week visited Middle Eastern countries facing Iranian drone attacks, offering to share the interception expertise Ukraine has built up over four years of Russian air war. With air-defense missiles in short supply and costly, Ukraine has turned to solutions ranging from AI-assisted machine guns on pickup trucks to electronic warfare and interceptor drones.

“The frequency of attacks is increasing but air defense performance is improving,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said.

Russia is promoting its own air-defense successes, with TASS reporting on Tuesday that a so-called Donbass Dome is making Ukraine’s high-speed Skat drone ineffective, citing claims by the Russian Federal Security Service Directorate. The air-defense system is able to repel “virtually any drone of this type,” the state-owned news agency said.

Ukraine is building a multi-layered air defense system and stepping up production of interceptors in order to protect civilians and critical infrastructure, according to a war plan presented by Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov in February. The goal is real-time detection of all aerial threats, and intercepting at least 95% of them.

The country could produce 2,000 drone interceptors a day, provided it has sufficient funding, Zelenskyy told Reuters in an interview in March. In the Kyiv region in February, more than 70% of Russian Shahed-type drones were destroyed by interceptor drones, according to Ukraine’s commander in chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Recent Ukrainian interceptor-drone models include the JEDI Shahed Hunter, a multi-rotor drone that can hit speeds of more 350 kilometers per hour, and the winged Shvidun with a speed of more than 250 kilometers per hour and an operational range of more than 70 kilometers.

Beyond equipment innovation, Ukraine is also experimenting by allowing private companies to develop their own air-defense capabilities to protect infrastructure, while being part of the broader command-and-control system. One company already shot down several drones in Kharkiv Oblast, with another 13 firms authorized to set up air-defense groups, the Ministry of Defense said on Monday.

The U.S. Navy spent at least six months resurrecting a high-energy laser weapon that previously graced the bow of a warship for a new military exercise last year, the service recently revealed.

The Navy’s Directed Energy Systems Integration Laboratory, or DESIL, a Naval Base Ventura County, California, facility that evaluates laser weapons in a maritime environment, “ramped up efforts to restore critical functions” to the service’s “one-of-a-kind” 150 kW Solid State Laser Technology Maturation (SSL-TM) demonstrator starting in early March 2025, according to recently published ‘year in review’ bulletin from Naval Sea Systems Command.

Initiated in 2012 and officially known as the Laser Weapon System Demonstrator Mk 2 Mod 0, the SSL-TM demonstrator was originally installed aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS Portland in 2019.

The system, described as the successor to the 30 kW AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System — also known as the XN-1 LaWS — that was mounted on the Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Ponce in 2014, was designed to “provide a new capability to the Fleet to address known capability gaps against asymmetric threats,” such as now-ubiquitous aerial drones and small boats laden with explosives, as well as “inform future acquisition strategies, system designs integration architectures and fielding plans for laser weapon systems,” according to Navy budget documents.

The SSL-TM demonstrator appears to have performed as advertised. The system successfully destroyed a drone target during at-sea testing in the Gulf of Aden in May 2020 — an engagement that yielded one of the most vivid representations of a real-world laser weapon in action to date — and neutralized a small surface target during additional testing in December 2021.

But while prime contractor Northrop Grumman had specifically designed the SSL-TM demonstrator for installation “with minimal modification or additional costs” aboard the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, the service initiated the system’s deinstallation from the Portland in fiscal year 2023 after spending nearly $50 million on the effort, the budget documents say. The Defense Department’s final report on the initiative has not yet been made public.

Following the deinstallation, the SSL-TM demonstrator was presumably mothballed until the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering requested the laser weapon “play a role” in the Pentagon’s new Crimson Dragon military exercise the following September, the NAVSEA bulletin says.

Described as a weeklong, multi-unit DESIL test event, Crimson Dragon convened 20 defense contractors “in a simulated combat environment” to test the effectiveness of their drones, counter-drone systems and sensors “in scenarios that simulated military base defense, long-range fires and integrated [ballistic missile defense],” according to the bulletin.

The SSL-TM demonstrator successfully shot down four drone targets during the exercise, the bulletin says.

While it’s unclear which scenarios the SSL-TM demonstrator participated in during Crimson Dragon, an annual assessment of U.S. military weapon systems from the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation released on March 16 states that part of the exercise “focused on the sea point of departure defense venues against all-domain maritime air-and-sea threats,” which suggests the system may have provided air defense for a simulated port or staging area where troops and equipment embark onto ships.

But beyond these brief mentions in recent U.S. military publications, no additional information is available regarding the current status of the SSL-TM demonstrator, its performance during Crimson Dragon and the Navy’s future plans for the system. NAVSEA, OUSD(R&E) and the Office of Naval Research did not respond to requests for more details from Laser Wars.

Without more context, it’s difficult to infer where the return of the SSL-TM demonstrator fits into the U.S. military’s expanding directed energy ambitions.

The Pentagon has not indicated whether OUSD(R&E)’s request was driven by the urgency of real-world threats — the demonstrator was first tested in the very waters where Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen had spent more than a year targeting U.S. warships and commercial shipping — or simply an opportunistic use of a capable system sitting in storage.

But the system’s restoration for Crimson Dragon potentially points to a broader challenge: despite years of testing and high-profile demonstrations, relatively few high-energy laser weapons are actually available for the kind of realistic, large-scale exercises needed to refine tactics and validate how these weapons are used in combat.

Indeed, it’s not like the Pentagon has bunch of spare laser weapons floating around to play with.

The U.S. Army’s four 50 kW Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) systems have been completely demilitarized, while the service’s Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) systems are preoccupied downing drones on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Marine Corps returned its five Compact Laser Weapon System (CLaWS) to Boeing. The Navy’s AN/SEQ-4 Optical Dazzling Interdictor, Navy (ODIN) laser weapons are all installed aboard active warships at sea; meanwhile, the service’s 60 kW High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical Dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system has had a challenging year on its own.

As a result, it appears that previously retired prototypes that might otherwise remain museum pieces are being called back into service to keep the U.S. military’s counter-drone experimentation moving forward.

The Pentagon may be racing to field laser weapons at scale, but for now it’s still relying on yesterday’s prototypes to figure out how they’ll actually fight tomorrow’s wars.

In the announcement, Brian Hoffman, chief engineer of NSWC Crane’s Man-Portable Weapons, explained that the ammo works much like a shotshell in that it disperses a cluster of projectiles, but it’s designed to be fired from a service rifle or machine gun instead of a shotgun.

“The intent with our ammunition was to simply give operators a better chance of killing drones with cost-effective products that can be used in existing weapons,” Hoffman said in the release. “If you aren’t the world’s best shot or don’t have a lot of experience engaging aerial targets, your odds go up immediately with DKC.”

The cartridge’s design, coupled with the range and velocity of typical centerfire rifle ammo, increases the probability of “hit and kill” against drones, Hoffman said.

In a recent demonstration at Indiana’s Camp Atterbury, DKC achieved a 92% success rate.

Hoffman explained that the DKC product line is “already mature” and applicable for not just killing drones but also “home defense, personal protection and hunting.”

And if it sounds like he’s pitching the product line, that’s because he is. The other part of NSWC Crane’s announcement is that it’s looking for partners to manufacture DKC ammo.

The tech link

Hoffman explained that the Navy typically relies on the Army for small-caliber ammunition under the Single Manager for Conventional Ammunition directive. However, it procures ammo through government contracts with industry partners if not supported by the SMCA.

For that reason, NSWC Crane’s announcement was also featured on TechLink, a Defense Department-funded organization run by Montana State University that helps businesses license technology from federal laboratories.

Using the website, manufacturers can license and commercialize products, like DKC ammo, which have been fully developed and patented by the federal government. The intent behind the project is to help veterans, the military and small businesses.

As small drones are now seen as a common weapon on the battlefield, military and other agency leaders project needing millions of DKC rounds, Hoffman said.

“Ongoing conflicts abroad and operational requirements along the U.S. southern border highlight the immediate utility of DKC and its enhanced yet cost-effective capabilities,” he said in the release.

Exactly who is going to manufacture the ammo has not yet been announced. However, Hoffman added that NSWC Crane recently hosted a DKC-licensing event attended by several U.S. ammo makers, and they received even more interest because of the announcement.

Still, Hoffman said DKC ammo production will evolve in the not-too-distant future.

“Given projected requirements, meeting total DKC quantities will likely involve a combination of (Government‑Owned, Contractor‑Operated) production and licensed industry partners operating in parallel,” he said.

The most serious incident occurred at 3:43 a.m. on March 25, when a drone crossing Estonian airspace from Russia struck the chimney of the Auvere power station in the eastern Ida-Viru County − located less than 50 kilometers from the Russian port of Ust-Luga, which Ukraine was striking overnight. No one was injured and the plant’s power output was not affected, Estonian energy company Enefit Power said. But the incident was enough to trigger an emergency government session in Tallinn and a nationwide alarm alert that caused confusion when it failed to specify the affected region.

The Director General of the Estonian Internal Security Service, Margo Palloson, confirmed it was “indeed a drone of Ukrainian” origin, and Estonia’s foreign minister stressed it “was not directed at Estonia.”

Estonian Defense Forces Commander Lt. Gen. Andrus Merilo said investigators were working to determine what type of drone hit the plant, but he was unambiguous about its payload. “We can say with fairly high confidence that it was not a reconnaissance drone, but rather an explosive-laden device — either an attack drone or a decoy drone,” he told reporters.

Earlier the same night, a drone entered Latvian airspace from Russia and detonated in the Krāslava region in southeastern Latvia at around 2:30 a.m., according to Latvian military authorities. Latvian Deputy Chief of Joint Staff Egils Leščinskis said the object was detected by radar roughly ten minutes before impact. “The aircraft most likely veered off course or was affected by electromagnetic warfare measures,” he said.

On Monday night, a Ukrainian drone had already come down in the Varena district of southeastern Lithuania, near the Belarusian border, following a separate attack on Primorsk − Russia’s other major Baltic oil port, which had been burning for over two days by Wednesday. Lithuanian authorities confirmed the drone had flown over Belarus before crashing.

Researchers home in on origins of Russia’s Baltic GPS jamming

It’s not clear why these Ukrainian drones are now repeatedly falling on Western territory rather than reaching their intended Russian targets, but Russian GPS jamming and spoofing have been singled out as a likely cause by officials and analysts. Russian transmitters are known to block and falsify Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, such as those from the GPS and European Galileo satellite constellations. This can cause drones to lose track of their location or even veer off course when the systems on board are fed falsified location information.

“It’s electronic warfare with the aim of preventing being hit by things that use satellite navigation – drones,” Ralf Ziebold of the German Aerospace Center DLR previously told Defense News for an investigation that geolocated the origin of these signals.

It’s unclear whether Russia is actively redirecting drones to NATO countries or whether the incursions are simply a byproduct of EW defenses protecting key infrastructure and assets on Russian soil. Western officials so far have described the incidents as accidents.

In addition to electronic warfare, the distances at play are huge: Some of the targets Ukrainian drones were intending to strike were up to 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian territory, making these some of the longest-distance strikes Ukraine has conducted. These long flights can magnify minor navigational errors.

Russian media, heavily controlled by the Kremlin, have reported that the Baltic States have opened their air spaces for the overflight of Ukrainian drones on their way to strike targets in the Leningrad oblast. The claim, which was picked up by Russian state-owned TV channel Rossiya 1, appears to have originated from Mash, one of the most widely read Russian-language Telegram channels.

None of the three drones was intercepted by the Baltic states’ or allied air defense systems. The EDF commander acknowledged that engaging drones near the Russian border is legally and tactically constrained. “Our goal is to avoid any unintended escalation, so we certainly cannot engage drones where there is even the slightest risk that our actions could carry over into Russian territory,” Merilo said.

The incidents follow a growing number of drone incursions along the eastern flank. In July 2025, Lithuania recorded two incursions by Russian-origin Gerbera drones crossing from Belarus − the second of which was found at the Gaižiūnai military training ground carrying approximately two kilograms of explosives, some 100 kilometers inside NATO territory. In August, Ukrainian drone fragments were found near Elva in south-central Estonia after a night of Ukrainian strikes on Russian inland targets. The following month, Latvia recovered Gerbera fragments on a western beach.

That accumulation of incidents has sharpened allied frustration. “These are the effects of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression. We can assume that we will see more such incidents,” said Margo Palloson, director general of Estonia’s Internal Security Service.

Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina drew a connection with Western capitals’ preoccupation with the war against Iran: the attacks on Ukraine and their spillover were intensifying “at a time when the attention of the West has been diverted by events in the Middle East,” she said.

Latvian Defense Minister Andris Sprūds cut short a visit to Kyiv, where he had been delivering drones to Ukrainian forces, to return home. Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said Vilnius had opened talks with Kyiv. None of the governments signaled any intent to invoke Article 4 or 5, and all three publicly attributed the drone incidents to the spillover of Russia’s war.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi addressed the incidents at a press conference, stating that Kyiv is in close contact with its partners to clarify all details and that such incidents “have been occurring regularly” in the Baltic states.

The incursions show that the Baltic states’ air defenses may still be unprepared to tackle modern drone threats and raise questions about whether Russia is deliberately redirecting Ukrainian drones to Western states, or whether the incidents can be chalked up as collateral. With Ukraine striking deep into Russia and targeting the Leningrad Oblast along corridors that pass directly over or near the Baltics in particular, more incidents of the Baltic states inadvertently ending up in the crossfire of the war in Ukraine seem likely.

It is an early glimpse of a broader problem that many organizations would prefer not to acknowledge: As AI is rushed into critical systems, it is introducing new failure modes faster than they can understand or control them.

For defense organizations increasingly integrating AI into mission-critical systems, the implications are far more consequential.

When organizations pause to consider these risks at all, they often reach for a familiar reassurance: there will be a “human in the loop.” The idea is that even if the system is complex or unreliable, a person will catch mistakes before they matter.

German army eyes AI tools to expedite wartime decision-making

This reassurance is dangerously misleading. A “human in the loop” whose sole function is to approve a machine’s actions is not a safeguard but a design failure. Attention wanes because nobody can concentrate on a job that is mostly doing nothing, and over time the operator’s skills atrophy to the point that they cannot meaningfully supervise the system. What remains is the appearance of oversight rather than the reality.

In military contexts, this kind of degraded human involvement is not just inefficient but operationally dangerous.

This pattern is not new. Engineers have seen it before, most famously in the Therac-25, a radiation therapy machine introduced in 1982. It combined the functions of two predecessor systems in a smaller, more convenient package, and its improved automation made it faster and easier to operate. Safety was “guaranteed” by the presence of a human operator who had to confirm actions – in effect, a “human in the loop.”

The system failed anyway. Patients began developing severe radiation burns. Hospitals dismissed the possibility of machine error, and the manufacturer insisted overdoses were impossible. Only after sustained investigation was it discovered that the machine contained multiple safety-critical software flaws. By then, six overdose accidents had occurred, three of them fatal.

The deeper problem was not just faulty code but faulty design. The machine frequently halted with poorly explained error messages, requiring operators to “press P to proceed” to continue treatment. Because these errors were common and rarely meaningful, operators became habituated to restarting the system dozens or hundreds of times a day. When real malfunctions occurred, the act of “operator confirmation” had already lost its meaning. In one case, an operator restarted the machine multiple times, unknowingly delivering repeated overdoses. The presence of a human operator did not prevent the failure; it normalized it.

Today, we are repeating this mistake. Computer scientists are rushing to incorporate poorly understood AI systems into safety-critical environments, and when concerns are raised they are often waved away with the same phrase: there will be a human in the loop. This assumption is now appearing in discussions of defense systems, from decision support to autonomous operations.

People will argue that AI is fundamentally different, and in one sense they are right. We have never before deployed systems whose behavior is explicitly probabilistic and nondeterministic in high-stakes environments. In defense contexts, where uncertainty compounds quickly and errors can cascade across systems, this is especially concerning. But AI is also not different in the ways that matter most. It is still software, embedded in larger systems composed of people, processes, and machines. It cannot act in the real world without that surrounding system, and those systems fail in ways that are already well understood. Engineers and operators have spent decades studying how complex, tightly coupled systems behave under pressure.

What we are seeing now is not a new class of failure but a familiar one, accelerated. The software industry is once again demonstrating an inability to learn from its own history. That would be unfortunate if we were only talking about Spotify recommendation algorithms. It becomes dangerous when these same patterns are introduced into the systems that organizations — and nations — depend on.

Recent Pentagon leaks suggest that AI systems may already be influencing where bombs land. In such environments, the illusion of human oversight is worse than no oversight at all. It creates confidence without control.

If we spend the next decade hiding unsafe systems behind the fig leaf of the “human in the loop,” the consequences will not be theoretical.

Mikey Dickerson was the founding administrator of the U.S. Digital Service and is a crisis engineer at Layer Aleph. He is a co-author of the forthcoming book Crisis Engineering.

Lt. Gen. Christian Freuding, who became army chief last October after years of overseeing Germany’s arms supplies to Kyiv, shared his insights from visits to Ukrainian command posts where drones and modern sensors have drastically increased the volume of battlefield data.

“The Ukrainians exploit data which they have collected over four years of war. Based on this data, the AI can deduce how the enemy has acted in similar situations in the past - and recommend countermeasures,” he said.

He noted that tasks now requiring hundreds of personnel and days to complete could be sped up significantly through AI, adding that conventional methods alone would never be enough to “break the adversary’s decision-making cycle.”

Freuding suggested utilizing data from Ukraine and from German military exercises when training analytical tools, ensuring alignment with Germany’s operational principles.

Addressing ethical concerns, he emphasized that AI would serve only as an advisory tool to facilitate human decision-making.

“The task of taking analytical and balanced decisions will always remain with the human, with the soldier,” he said, adding that while a specific AI product is yet to be selected, the technology’s deployment is a priority.

Freuding underscored the importance of aligning Germany’s AI systems with NATO’s evolving standards. He did not rule out a European-developed system, but said American solutions might offer practical advantages due to their advanced deployment.

“Personally, I think it’s important that we get something up and running quickly. Of course, issues like data sovereignty and security need to be taken into account,” he added.

The U.S. Army is fielding the AI tool Maven, made by the Silicon Valley company Palantir, to process battlefield data, including imagery and video, to improve situational awareness and speed up decision-making.

The two nations are seeking a comprehensive suite of commercial systems that can detect and destroy a variety of undersea robots, including unmanned underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and semisubmersibles.

“Current solutions are fragmented, expensive, and limited in number,” warned the solicitation. The primary focus of the Robotic Exclusion and Engagement Framework, or REEF, project is to protect “ports and harbors from underwater threats of varying size and sophistication, while the broader goal is to protect all U.S. critical waterways.”

DIU envisions using off-the-shelf sensors, edge processing, active and passive sensors, sensor fusion, decoys and other technologies to create a stand-alone solution that can be quickly deployed as needed. This can include fixed systems such as moored buoys and buried cables, or mobile systems such as USVs, UUVs, UAVs and drifting buoys.

Sensors should be able to utilize artificial intelligence to discriminate between hostile undersea drones, versus nonthreats such as marine life, cargo ships and fishing vessels.

“The system must provide sufficient detection-to-response time for human in-the-loop decision-making such that underwater threats can be safely interdicted or neutralized,” the solicitation noted.

The system will employ kinetic and nonkinetic approaches to stop drones. Nonkinetic methods can include rapidly deployable nets, bubble curtains and synthetic barriers. Kinetic defenses can include kinetic payloads, acoustic directed energy and physical coupling devices.

Preference will be given to nonkinetic solutions, the solicitation said.

REEF will emphasize decoys to protect waterways and critical infrastructure. “Capabilities to confuse adversarial underwater craft are of high interest. These can be low-cost attritable systems or more technologically advanced systems that use signals to act as a decoy to prevent the successful completion of the adversary’s mission,” according to the solicitation.

REEF should require little training to operate, and use AI to provide users with suggestions. It must be compatible with existing U.S. command-and-control systems and common operating pictures.

Cooperation with the U.K. will be eased by a 2024 Department of Commerce interim final rule that allows some controlled items to be shared with Britain. British companies are eligible for export control relief under General Export Authorization No. 001.

The U.S. Army hasn’t even officially taken delivery of its most powerful high-energy laser weapon yet, but the service is already walking away from it in pursuit of a newer model.

In a new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published on March 9, Army officials revealed that the service no longer plans on transitioning its 300 kilowatt Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser system, or IFPC-HEL, dubbed “Valkyrie,” to a program of record after years in development.

This move effectively ends its current effort to build a laser weapon powerful enough to defend U.S. troops against cruise missiles as well as drones and munitions.

As recently as this past January, the Army planned to transition the truck-mounted IFPC-HEL — developed as a successor to the 100 kW High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator (HEL-TVD) and earlier 10 kW High Energy Laser Mobile Test Truck (HELMTT) — to a program of record in fiscal year 2025 following successful testing.

The service previously awarded Lockheed Martin an Other Transaction Authority agreement worth up to $220.8 million in July 2023 to develop four IFPC-HEL prototypes following the September 2022 delivery of a 300 kW demonstrator under the U.S. Defense Department’s High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative (HELSI).

According to the new CRS report, however, Army officials said the IFPC-HEL contract has since been reduced to a single prototype, which is currently undergoing “final lab testing” at a Lockheed facility in New Jersey ahead of subsequent developmental testing at the service’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah this summer.

According to officials, that prototype won’t end up in the service’s hands until at least September, after which it will “be divested as a fielding candidate and used to inform the Joint Laser Warfighting System,” according to the CRS report.

In this context, the “Joint Laser Warfighting System” likely means the Pentagon’s Joint Laser Weapon System (JLWS), a new collaboration between the Army and U.S. Navy initiated “in support of DoD’s overarching Golden Dome for America strategy” to develop a laser weapon to “provide an Air Defense capability against cruise missile threats,” according to the Army’s fiscal year 2026 budget request.

The JLWS “represents the next step in the evolution of counter-cruise missile laser weapons,” the budget documents say.

The Army did not respond to a request for comment from Laser Wars.

While the Pentagon is accelerating the development and fielding of laser weapons at scale across the U.S. military primarily in response to the ever-expanding threat of low-cost weaponized drones, fast and maneuverable land-attack cruise missiles remain one of the most persistent and dangerous threats facing U.S. and allied forces abroad, from Russian strikes on critical infrastructure in Ukraine to Iranian-supplied weapons used across the Middle East.

This danger looms over the homeland as well; the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency stated in 2025 that cruise missiles launched from Russian aircraft or Chinese naval assets represent a significant gap in America’s current domestic missile defenses.

Laser weapons like those envisioned for IFPC-HEL may struggle in a counter-cruise missile role. Unlike most drones, cruise missiles are designed to survive significant atmospheric friction as they speed towards their targets, often with hardened nose cones and reinforced casings that require sustained energy to defeat.

Because cruise missiles move at hundreds of miles an hour, maintaining a stable beam on a single vulnerable point over an extended range for several seconds in order to inflict catastrophic damage is significant challenge.

Even small disruptions in target tracking or beam quality can break the engagement, limiting the effectiveness of even the most powerful existing systems.One possible solution to this problem lies in pulsed laser technology, which delivers energy in high-intensity femtosecond-long bursts rather than a sustained beam like the popular continuous wave systems.

By concentrating energy into these ultra-short pulses, these systems can achieve higher peak power and potentially damage or disrupt targets without requiring prolonged dwell time on a single point.

IFPC-HEL wasn’t the U.S. military’s only counter-cruise missile efforts in the works. The Navy is still pursuing its 300 kW High Energy Laser Counter-ASCM Program (HELCAP), while the Office of Naval Research is exploring an even more powerful 400 kW system through its SONGBOW project.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s HELSI initiative is targeting megawatt-class lasers capable of engaging not just cruise missiles, but ballistic and hypersonic threats, with the department awarding nLight a contract in 2023 to develop a suitable system over three years.

According to a recent report in Aviation Week, nLight is “on track” to demonstrate that system for defense officials this year, with a successful outcome likely solidifying potential plans to incorporate laser weapons into the Golden Dome’s layered defense architecture.

It’s unclear from the CRS report why the Army chose to abandon IFPC-HEL. However, the decision mirrors its earlier move to drop the Stryker-mounted 50 kW Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) laser weapon in favor of the upcoming Enduring High Energy Laser system, which may become the service’s first official directed energy program of record.

In that case, hands-on soldier assessments conducted in the Middle East in 2024 revealed that “results from the lab environment and test ranges were very different from the tactical environment,” according to a separate CRS update published March 10.

If a 50 kW system designed for drones like DE M-SHOARD struggles to perform outside of controlled conditions, scaling that technology up to 300 kW cruise missile defense may prove even more challenging.

The need for laser weapons capable of countering cruise missiles is clear, and the political and institutional will to develop them appears strong. But if the Army’s decision to move on from IFPC-HEL is any indication, the technology may not yet be ready for one of the most demanding missions in modern air defense.

The Dutch armed forces already incorporate drones in their operations, and will expand that capability “significantly” by deploying 1,000 to 1,200 personnel specifically for drone and counter-drone operations, Eichelsheim said in the WNL Op Zondag podcast on Sunday.

Drones have become ubiquitous on the battlefield in recent years, with much of the development driven by the war in Ukraine, where the government says unmanned aerial systems now account for more than 80% of enemy targets destroyed. Meanwhile, Iran’s one-way Shahed drones have been causing destruction across the Middle East since the United States and Israel started striking the country.

“The lessons identified and learned from the war in Ukraine were in any case that unmanned systems were going to play a much greater role,” Eichelsheim said. “We’re seeing that now in the Middle East, and the same goes for the conflict with Iran.”

Eichelsheim said drone warfare requires a “completely different approach” to collaborating with industry on the front lines, as systems require continuous modernization and adaptation. That includes radars that have to be adjusted to respond to threats, or unmanned systems that become either more or less effective over time, the defense chief said.

“So you have to continuously adapt,” Eichelsheim said. “That too requires a change in how we operate.”

Armed forces across Europe have been trying to figure out how to adapt to an era of mass drone warfare, with Russia and Ukraine each using millions of drones a year in their war that has entered its fifth year. The Netherlands in December ordered Skyranger anti-drone cannons from Rheinmetall to protect maneuvering troops as well as static sites.

Regarding the conflict in the Middle East, the Dutch chief of defense said that while Iran’s defensive capabilities have been destroyed, the country retains a large portion of its offensive capabilities.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the U.S. was “getting very close to its objectives” in Iran, with the fight militarily won.

“Iran is still perfectly capable of launching ballistic missiles and maintain mobility regarding its launch sites,” Eichelsheim said. “So it is not quite as Mr. Trump says that Iran has been completely taken out. That is absolutely not the case.”

While the United States and Israel have air superiority, Iran has been clever about hiding launchers, and making them mobile, according to the Dutch general. He said Iran is “nowhere near halfway” through its missile stock, which makes it hard to say how long the conflict will continue.

The Netherlands and its allies are drawing up an inventory of the capabilities that could contribute to securing the Strait of Hormuz, to be able to brief policy makers on what the military options are, according to Eichelsheim. “We’re really still right at the very beginning of the planning process.”

The vessel, identified as an AEGIR-W variant, came aground on a beach in the Yüceler neighborhood of Ünye district in Ordu province. Locals discovered the craft and informed the authorities.

According to a statement issued by the Ordu Governorate, Turkish Navy explosive ordnance disposal specialists conducted a technical inspection of the vesselon March 21.

The examination determined that the craft remained operationally active and was carrying a warhead. Given the assessed risk, authorities made the decision to tow the vessel approximately four kilometers from the shoreline and destroy it in a controlled detonation.

Görseller üzerinden yapılan incelemelerde, bahsi geçen İDA'nın, AEGIR ailesinin AEGIR-W adlı üyesi olduğu görülüyor.

Yaklaşık 10 metre uzunluğundaki AEGIR-W, azami 900 kilometre menzile sahip ve 25+ knot sürate ulaşabiliyor. Otonom olarak görev icra edebilen İDA'nın faydalı yük… https://t.co/Uqdb24Z73G pic.twitter.com/jZ3DjBbdx0

— SavunmaSanayiST.com (@SavunmaSanayiST) March 21, 2026

The AEGIR-W is a long-endurance unmanned surface vessel designed for operations in high-threat maritime environments. The platform measures under ten meters in length, is constructed from high-density polyethylene, and is powered by a diesel combustion engine.

It is capable of reaching speeds in excess of 25 knots and carries a maximum payload of 300 kilograms across a range of 500 nautical miles at cruise speed. The vessel can operate either fully autonomously or under direct human operator control, depending on mission requirements.

According to Sierra Nevada Corporation’s product documentation, the AEGIR family — which also includes the AEGIR-F stealth variant and the longer-range AEGIR-H — is designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, offensive operations, and autonomous resupply tasks.

The Black Sea has become an increasingly active theater for unmanned maritime systems since the start of Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion in February 2022.

This is the fifth time an out-of-control naval surface drone has been found on Turkish shores since September 2025. In previous cases the vessels were Ukrainian Magura-family craft. This is the first time that a foreign-made system has been confirmed present in the region.

“In the early hours of Operation Epic Fury last month, a deployed [Fly-Away Kit] successfully detected and defeated sUAS operating over a strategic U.S. installation,” Guillot said in his written statement ahead of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday.

Although he did not give details about the installation threatened, Guillot revealed that the threat was defeated by USNORTHCOM’s counter-drone Fly-Away Kit.

The FAK is produced by Anduril and was “designed specifically to detect, track, identify and mitigate drone incursions at military installations within the United States,” USNORTHCOM previously said. The kit is manned by a team of 11 soldiers who became operational as a rapid counter-drone response force last November.

The Defense Department’s lead counter-drone task force, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, did not provide specific details about the location or nature of the incident but told Military Times that the unit will continue to monitor the situation.

“We are aware of the action reported by U.S. Northern Command, and we continue to work closely with them on how best to array our c-UAS capability to defend the homeland,” a spokesperson for the JIATF-401 told Military Times.

“We also work with our law enforcement and interagency partners to monitor and investigate illicit drone use around military installations and other defense critical infrastructure. Our top priority is the safety of our service members and civilian personnel that work and live on the base.”

The FAK features an enhanced array of sensors to detect rogue drones, including Anduril’s Wisp, an AI-infrared system with 360-degree motion sensor; a Heimdal mobile sensor trailer that uses thermal optics and radar; and Pulsar, an AI-enhanced electromagnetic warfare platform.

It uses a self-guided drone interceptor called Anvil to home in on and ram drones out of the sky.

USNORTHCOM expects to receive more of the kits in late spring, according to Guillot’s written testimony.

During the committee hearing Thursday, in response to questions from Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Guillot also revealed that the U.S. has seen a spike in drone intrusions over military installations over the the last year.

“Some of that might be due to the fact that we have more detection capability now than we did in the past, and then our ability to defeat them has improved,” Guillot said. “Whereas a year ago, almost every one that was detected was not defeated. Now about a quarter of the ones that we detect we’re able to defeat.”

Guillot stated that he works closely with U.S. Strategic Command to ensure that submarine silos, aircraft bases and other key locations have adequate protection from potential threats posed by small unmanned aircraft systems.

Meanwhile, as a deterrent to drone intrusions, the Defense Department, along with the Federal Aviation Administration and other federal agencies, announced a zero-tolerance policy toward unauthorized drone flights in restricted airspace, with penalties including fines of over $100,000, criminal charges and imprisonment.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said teams had been sent to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan, states that have come under fire during the Iran war.

He said that local air defense units were dealing with ballistic missiles, while Ukrainian specialists were focused on the waves of Iran’s Shahed drones.

“I believe no one has experience comparable to ours,” Zelenskyy told journalists in audio messages on a WhatsApp chat, adding that 228 Ukrainian specialists were now in the region.

“We are working with the Middle East — with leaders, at the technical level, and with ministries of defense. In general, we are preparing serious arrangements and agreements,” he said.

Ukraine opens battlefield AI data to allies in world-first move

His security council secretary Rustem Umerov has visited all five of those countries this week, and said earlier on Friday that further steps for “long-term security cooperation” had been outlined with each, without giving details.

Kyiv has said nearly a dozen countries have sought its help and advice in defending against cheap kamikaze drones, which Iran is using against its Gulf neighbors. Russia has launched similar drones at Ukraine since its 2022 invasion, and Kyiv has developed its own advanced interceptor drone capabilities.

Although Gulf states operate sophisticated U.S.-made air defense systems, the missiles they use are in short supply and they cost much more than Iran’s Shahed drones.

Moscow has bombarded Ukraine with nearly 60,000 Shaheds and similar systems. It initially bought thousands of them from Iran, before establishing its own production facilities to make them under license. Ukraine has also launched drone attacks at Russia, although on a smaller scale.

Umerov said on Friday that drone interception units were initially protecting civilian and critical infrastructure, and work was under way to expand their coverage areas.

The teams were using Ukrainian technology to counter drone attacks and partners were consulting with them, he said.

Ukraine wants money and technology in return

Zelenskyy has said Kyiv wanted money and technology in return for its help in the Middle East, adding that the United States was among nations that sought Kyiv’s help, and that Ukrainian specialists had been sent to a U.S. military base in Jordan.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has a rocky relationship with Zelenskyy, has denied Washington needs Kyiv’s help in downing drones.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that teams from Kyiv and Washington would hold talks in the U.S. on the weekend, where they would discuss a wide-ranging drone deal and work on bilateral documents.

He did not specify which documents would be discussed, but Kyiv wants post-war security guarantees from Washington, and to agree a “prosperity plan” for economic revival after fighting ends.

Ukraine has spent a year trying to finalize a drone-cooperation package with Washington worth up to $50 billion. The proposal would see Ukraine share the innovative drone technologies it developed during the war in exchange for U.S. investment

“First and foremost, it includes naval drones and our long-range drones that have already been proven in the war,” Zelenskyy said.

He said that Ukraine was already jointly producing drones with Germany, Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands, and that it was starting to do so with Norway.

“It is important that Ukraine’s global significance in ensuring security and the quality of Ukrainian security expertise in safeguarding lives are recognised by all partners,” he wrote on Telegram.

The testing, which involved the variant of the future advanced reconnaissance vehicle, or ARV, equipped with a 30mm autocannon, took place in January and February at Camp Pendleton, California, according to a recent Marine Corps news release.

Prototypes by two designers, Textron Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems, underwent the water entry, swim and firing drills ahead of an upcoming competition period set to end with a down-select to one company around 2030.

In an exclusive interview with Military Times this month, Phil Skuta, GDLS’s director of Strategy and Business Development for the Marine Corps and Navy, described some of the challenges the new vehicle must overcome, including high-speed water entry and firing the autocannon on the water, both of which can involve weathering large and unpredictable waves.

He also described a new feature GDLS is asking the Marine Corps to evaluate: an “autotrim function” that would allow the ARV’s crew to outsource some of the work of driving the vessel in the water.

“You can set the course, the azimuth that you want to follow, and the vehicle will automatically stay on that course,” Skuta said. “So, we’re starting to build in a level of automation so that, while they’re doing, say, a long water-borne movement, that’s just one less thing the crew has to think about.

“They can think about the other activities involved in not only operating the vehicle but most importantly focusing on the enemy, so they don’t have to focus so much on, ‘Am I going in the correct direction? And is the vehicle being stable in the water?’”

Skuta said the function was somewhat similar to an aircraft autopilot function, but also like cruise control and automated lane-keeping in a ground vehicle.

“If you’re out of the lane, you might get a little buzz, so to speak,” he said. That’s more what this is right now — the first step.”

That’s particularly useful, from GDLS’ perspective, because the ARV’s swim system, separately from the ground automotive system, is piloted via a “small joystick” by a driver looking at internal screens, underscoring what a chore it is to do manual course corrections. The feature could also help the vehicle adapt to the increasingly automated future, Skuta said.

“We’re demonstrating by [incorporating] the automated trim course and azimuth function that we can eventually, in anticipation of future requirements, put more automation into the system, as well as robotic controls,” he said.

The ARV is expected to come in three variants: in addition to the ARV-30 autocannon platform there will be a Command, Control, Communications and Computers/Unmanned Aircraft Systems model, or C4/UAS, which has previously undergone testing; and a logistics variant, which will be featured in upcoming swim tests, Skuta said.

Textron and GDLS are both set to contract with the Marine Corps as soon as this fiscal quarter for 16 additional prototypes that will enable testing in coming years ahead of the final down-select.

Textron’s vehicle, which it calls the Cottonmouth, has six wheels compared to GDLS’ eight.

During the recent evolution, Skuta said, shoreside testing included a bilge pump demonstration, in which the ARV-30 was flooded with water, triggering safety sensors that automatically pump it out “like a water fountain.”

Water safety has been an increased focus since a July 2020 assault amphibious vehicle sinking off the coast of Pendleton, resulting in the deaths of nine service members. A malfunctioning bilge pump was found to have contributed to the tragedy.

Once in the water, the new vehicle was put through its paces on a five-kilometer swim course to test its maneuverability and stopping distance in calm conditions.

“You’re just kind of pivoting in the water to show the characteristics of how you can do very tight maneuvering in water spaces,” Skuta said. “And you know, that’s pretty important, because the Marines will find themselves crossing rivers and water obstacles while they’re in combat zones. And they need to have a good appreciation for how tight a turning radius the vehicle has in the water.”

Crews also practiced moving the turret around as if preparing for live fire on the water, which affects the vehicle’s center of gravity, he said.

“In a river-crossing scenario, [if the] enemy presents themselves on the far shoreline the Marines would fire from the vehicle in the water,” Skuta said. “So, that gives a good indication of how the turret and the fire control system will stabilize on a target while they’re in that water environment.”

Another tested skill, high-speed water entry, made for one of the “more fun” events to observe, he said.

The ARV-30 entered the water at progressively higher speeds, topping out at 25 miles per hour and sending a massive water plume into the air.

Notably, for all the testing with GDLS and Textron, Marines from the amphibious vehicles community were able to observe and monitor testing, Skuta said.

While the Marine Corps has not released any specific feedback from the demos, he said the onsite response from the Marines was encouraging.

“A lot of smiles, a lot of thumbs up from what they saw,” Skuta said.