State procurement agency Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency has released notices for a demonstration schedule next month with the goal of fast-tracking acquisitions and expediting mass production and deployment.

The interceptor drone systems are expected to be installed by 2027 near radar sites, bases, vessels and other critical locations, the agency stated.

This follows an earlier notice released by the Ministry of Defense late last month for autonomous unmanned systems that could detect and counter swarms of “multiple long-range suicide UAVs … such as the Shahed-136.”

The envisioned craft should already be in use by other armed forces and have successfully shot down Shahed-like drones, according to the notice. In addition, they must be able to connect with existing radars and command-and-control systems, require two or fewer personnel for stand-off launch and flight management, and need minimal and simple maintenance.

The interceptor drones are recent additions to Japan’s massive UAV fleet plan. The ministry had been in talks with drone firm Terra Drone since the company fielded two types of interceptor drones in Ukraine through Kyiv-based startups.

In March, Terra Drone divulged investments in Amazing Drones to field Terra 1, a rocket-type interceptor, and two months later launched fixed-wing variant Terra 2 through Ukrainian defense tech firm WinnyLab.

The feedback is “very much positive,” company CEO Toru Tokushige told Defense News. He said there had been great interest in the interceptors, especially within the Japanese defense ministry.

Drone technology is quickly evolving in Ukraine, affirming the importance of interceptor drones as low-cost alternatives to interceptor missiles, Tokushige said.

Meanwhile, the conflict in the Middle East has shown the lethality of Shahed-like drones, which have been used more extensively than missiles.

The extended reach of the Shahed drones has also raised the stakes in East Asia. The aircraft flew as far as 1,100 miles from Tehran to Tel Aviv, and while battlefield circumstances and geography vary, the distance means such weapons launched in Northeast Asia could reach Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.

“Originally my image of the defense industry is that it’s very much traditional, very much bureaucratic, very slow. But after visiting Ukraine, and also because of the war in the Middle East, everybody understands the value of drones and the value of investing in drones,” Tokushige said.

The Japanese government’s urgent call for proposals comes after reports that the U.S. military’s 38-day Iran campaign under Operation Epic Fury has strained missile stockpiles.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank warned of a “near-term risk” munitions shortage after the Iran campaign, which has already delayed U.S. supply contracts with European allies, raising worries that it could also push back Tomahawk deliveries for Japan.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi both denied the Tomahawk conundrum, but Koizumi said the ministry plans to develop more domestic missile systems. This comes on top of a recent production agreement under Operation Supercharge, which will see the U.S. and Japan jointly manufacture interceptor missiles such as the SM-6 and SM-3.

Japan’s defensive umbrella, set to be completed in 2027 after five years, includes fielding standoff capabilities, missile defense networks, and unmanned systems such as drones, ground vehicles, and submarines.

Budget allocated for unmanned defense capabilities alone leaped this year to 277 billion yen ($1.72 billion) from 111 billion yen ($690 million) in 2025.

And the government’s move to increase defense spending up to 3.5% of GDP will likely see more investments in unmanned systems. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party on June 9 approved a proposal to produce some 80,000 drones annually by 2030, though allocations have not been finalized.

“Their intention is to also cooperate with Poland, and to produce in Poland, for the X-BAT program, the first autonomous combat aircraft in the world,” Tusk said at a June 16 press conference in Warsaw. “It’s top-tier technology, a chance for air domination in case of an armed conflict, and an incredibly ambitious project with regard to technology and innovativeness.”

Shield AI unveiled the X-BAT in October 2025, promoting its artificial intelligence-driven unmanned fighter capable of vertical takeoffs and landings as a platform suitable for expeditionary and maritime operations in contested environments.

“At the core of X-BAT is Shield AI’s Hivemind, AI-enabled autonomy software designed to fly platforms in communications-denied, degraded, and limited environments,” the company said in a statement. “Hivemind enables X-BAT to autonomously penetrate contested battlespace, dynamically team with manned aircraft, and execute collaborative tactics without constant communications. This autonomy allows X-BAT to function as a drone wingman or as a standalone asset.”

The latest announcement comes as the Polish government is mulling plans to acquire up to 32 new fighter jets, with some of the evaluated options including: Lockheed Martin’s F-35; the Eurofighter Typhoon, a jet produced by a consortium of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo; and Boeing’s F-15EX.

At the same time, Warsaw is also considering to join the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) and involve the country’s defense sector in the project to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet. The Polish government is evaluating whether engaging its state-dominated defense industry in the tri-nation initiative, which is spearheaded by Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, could boost the sector’s capacities and innovativeness, according to Polish Deputy State Assets Minister Konrad Gołota.

Set up in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense tech company. In addition to X-BAT and Hivemind, its other products include the V-BAT drone.

Renault will build Thales’ Toutatis remotely operated loitering munitions at one of its factories, with production of 1,000 units a month starting as early as next year, and targeting mainly overseas markets.

The agreement, announced at the Eurosatory defense fair outside Paris, is the second partnership in defense between the two groups, which are also working together on a military vehicle.

The companies said the deal would significantly ramp up France’s industrial capacity in a strategic area. Loitering munitions — drones that hover over a target area before striking — have played a central role in the war in Ukraine.

“We started with the military need,” said Thales CEO Patrice Caine. “We closely examined what’s happening in a number of theaters of operation, particularly in the East, but not exclusively.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a shift in U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump have driven European countries to boost defense spending, prompting arms makers to tap spare capacity in the auto sector to increase output.

SCALING UP DRONE PRODUCTION

Renault said in February it had been asked by France’s armed forces ministry to help strengthen the country’s defense sector.

Renault’s industrial expertise will help scale up drone production more quickly and at lower cost, CEO Francois Provost said.

Thales currently produces around 100 units of the Toutatis drone per year. The partnership with Renault will increase output by switching from 3D printing to larger-scale plastic injection molding, with the drone’s design being adapted to allow for the higher production volume. A 40% reduction in the number of parts and fasteners will also help lower costs, said Provost.

Asked about the cost of the new munition compared to others on the market such as the Damocles from KNDS and Delair, or the Akeron RCX 50 from MBDA, Caine said that it was “super competitive.”

There are currently no firm plans for France to purchase significant volumes of the drones, added the companies, with higher needs in other markets.

The short-range drone project adds to Renault’s Chorus program with drone maker Turgis Gaillard to develop a long-range model. A first demonstrator is expected by the end of this year, followed by monthly output of 600 drones at Renault’s Le Mans plant.

Renault has said making cars remains its core business, though it is also working with Belgian group John Cockerill on a ground drone. John Cockerill Defense bought French military vehicle maker Arquus from Swedish truck manufacturer Volvo in 2024.

As the war in Ukraine in particular has underscored the growing importance of drones and electronic warfare, European and U.S. defense forces are rapidly developing their own AI-powered drones to complement their fighter jets and carry extra sensors, jammers and weapons.

In Berlin, four companies — Airbus, Boeing, Helsing and General Atomics — were looking to tout their latest designs of the technology to Germany’s military and beyond.

Wingman drones, known as collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), range in size from small interceptors to as large as planes. They fly in what is known as a “loyal wingman” system as they flank manned aircraft.

Investment in the technology comes as Europe faces a debate over the value of building its own sovereign defense industry and reducing reliance on the United States.

“The AI agent, of course, the brain of these systems, needs to be controlled in a sovereign fashion,” Stephanie Lingemann, head of air domain at German defense startup Helsing, told Reuters at the airshow.

Germany and France this month shelved plans for a joint fighter jet but are now looking to salvage parts of the Future Combat Air System program by developing a related drone system and data network.

NOT YET OPERATIONAL

The war in Ukraine has shown how disrupting sensors and communications can be as critical as kinetic attacks.

Helsing says its electronic attack drone is designed to operate alongside strike drones in autonomous swarms.

Boeing Australia’s Managing Director Amy List insisted its MQ-28 Ghost Bat wingman was not a drone, but an unmanned jet designed “to enhance the capabilities, be a force multiplier for crewed platforms.”

The company is collaborating with German firm Rheinmetall to build what it says is its tried and tested technology.

“It can go out ahead of crewed platforms, provide situational awareness, analyze data, it can fuse that data and provide decision-making quality information back to a human,” List told Reuters.

As it stands, wingman drones or aircraft have not yet arrived on the battlefield. Boeing says its model can be in service for the German Luftwaffe by 2029, while Airbus’ model, the U760b Ravenstorm, won’t be available until the 2030s, the company says.

General Atomics’ YFQ-42A is in testing and was selected in 2024 by the U.S. Air Force among other technologies to receive funding and other support for prototype development.

Lockheed Martin and U.S. defense technology startup Anduril are expected to display similar technologies at upcoming airshows, including Britain’s Farnborough airshow starting on July 20.

Lithuania’s Aktyvus Photonics has announced it is tripling the production of its ultra-compact UAV laser-designation systems this year, using its 2025 profits to expand operations. As Ukraine’s front lines rely on small drones, and the laser systems that guide the Ukrainian military’s missiles are predominantly heavy and expensive, the company has developed a system that fits in a hand and weighs 200 grams, according to company representatives.

“Our laser components are supplied to defense integrators and contractors across NATO-allied Europe. As we are a Lithuanian company on NATO’s eastern flank, the Baltic region is a natural focus for us — both geographically and strategically, given the security environment here,” Laurynas Šatas, the CEO of Aktyvus Photonics, told Defense News. “Our technology is also present in Ukraine, where real battlefield conditions have tested and validated what we build.”

Estonian company Threod Systems continues to expand its range of drone launchers and UAVs that are also employed in Ukraine’s combat against the Russian invasion. At this year’s Eurosatory, the producer is unveiling its Eos D ISTAR, a new-generation smallvertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone.

The solution combines a lightweight aircraft with a high-capability sensor system “to bring laser designation and reconnaissance capability into a lightweight unmanned aircraft system,” the Estonian company said in a statement.

“Laser designation itself is not a new capability, but a precision-support function should not be limited to larger systems or unmanned platforms,” said Arno Vaik, the CEO of Threod Systems. “Our focus has been to bring that capability into a smaller VTOL UAS that tactical units can deploy and operate significantly more easily.”

Threod Systems has used feedback from operators in Ukraine, where the company runs a training center, to enhance the software algorithms and operating procedures for its craft. The gear’s combat experience has facilitated exports to 27 countries, including 14 NATO member states, according to data from Threod Systems.

That’s according to Lt. James Hockler, the Coast Guard’s counter-unmanned aerial systems, or C-UAS, program manager. The smallest of all the military services, except the Space Force, and the only one that falls under the Department of Homeland Security instead of the Pentagon, the Coast Guard is nonetheless playing an outsized role in drone defense for major domestic events requiring unprecedented counter-drone response, including the World Cup and the Sail 250 maritime celebration.

In the yearlong leadup to these events, Hockler said in an interview Monday with Military Times, the Coast Guard spent a $150 million allocation to buy a variety of C-UAS systems for a “layered defense,” emphasizing electronic warfare measures to disrupt radio frequencies and opened a new counter-drone training and logistics center in Moyock, North Carolina, that will continue to conduct instruction and drills after this summer’s events have concluded.

The work is all illustrative of an emerging and deepening domestic security threat that will continue to tax federal and local agencies and increase costs and manpower requirements.

“This is actually the first time ever that the Coast Guard was able to execute simultaneous domestic deployment for counter-UAS capabilities,” Hockler said. “This really has been an all-hands-on-deck evolution.”

The Coast Guard established its Robotics and Autonomous Systems Program Executive Office last August “to accelerate the development, acquisition, fielding and sustainment” of unmanned platforms. It’s preparing to roll out a new job rating, Robotics Mission Specialist, and officials have said the 140 personnel trained to staff the World Cup and America’s 250th anniversary activities will be the first to transfer into the rating.

In addition to Boston and San Francisco, which will host a total of 13 World Cup matches, the Coast Guard is providing counter-drone support to Sail 250 cities, such as New Orleans, Norfolk, New York City and Baltimore, Hockler said.

Other U.S. cities hosting World Cup games are getting protection from federal agencies, including the FBI and DHS components from the Federal Air Marshal Service and the U.S. Secret Service to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The FBI, Hockler said, used its own training center in Alabama to train local law enforcement agencies for each of the cities on drone threat detection and mitigation measures.

The Pentagon is also in on the action. Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Army-run group that stood up last year to spearhead military counter-drone work, recently showcased a visit it had made to Kansas City, Missouri, to review preparations ahead of the events.

As the World Cup kicks off, Hockler said the Coast Guard is confident in its ability to pick up a drone signature anywhere in a no-fly zone by using Electro-Optical/Infra-Red cameras, or EO/IR, to detect activity in the dark. The cameras identify, track and monitor the threa and “mitigate” the system as needed.

“Our technology interrupts the radio frequencies between the controller and the drone itself, and we can essentially … take that drone and force it to land at a particular location, or we could force that drone right back to the pilot or the person on the controller,” he said. “We have a couple of different avenues of what we’re going to do for mitigation.”

The first 36 Coast Guard personnel trained in Moyock were designated “watch captains” and tasked with helping to train additional operators coming through the course. Those watch captains are now at the front lines in cities designated for C-UAS defense.

“Operators may have to go out to troubleshoot something or reposition an antenna; they may also be part of a mobile team that just patrols around and can pick up any weak spots during the game,” Hockler said.

“Because when you get a lot of that [radio frequency] noise when everyone’s cell phones going off and media presence and everybody’s got a lot of RF noise in the area, we may have to kind of tweak a few things, so sending people out to different sensor locations and and then having some of our watch captains and operators right there on the consoles, ensuring that they’re watching the watching all the screens is essential,” he continued.

After-action reports will capture what’s learned from protecting the events. But Hockler said the service has already assessed that it needs more of everything when it comes to counter-drone protection.

“We’re learning that the need is there for additional counter-UAS equipment,” he said. “The need is therefore to get additional people trained … in our long term, having this rating stood up, we’ll be able to expand upon this mission, and not have it as just a collateral duty, it can be a full-time job for our service men and women.”

When the games and sailing events are wrapped, Hockler said, the equipment and protective systems will all return to Moyock, ready to support the next major domestic event.

The French Army technical section built a prototype of the metal cage, which is now being manufactured by KNDS France and in the process of being delivered to the tank units, said Gen. Olivier Coquet, head of the section known as STAT, in a briefing with reporters at the Eurosatory defense show near Paris on Sunday.

Roof-mounted armor variants have been adopted by both Russian and Ukrainian forces as drone threats proliferate.

The Leclerc is being upgraded as part of France’s Scorpion armored-vehicle modernization program, which includes equipping the French heaviest armored unit with new computers, additional armor and a remotely operated turret to operate in urban areas, according to Coquet. The Leclerc has a 120 mm cannon and an autoloader, with a crew of three.

France’s main battle tank will be reaching the end of its service life by 2035, and the Army plans to acquire an interim capability to bridge the gap between the end of the Leclerc and the arrival of the Main Ground Combat System, Coquet said. The joint MGCS project is more likely to arrive towards 2045, according to the head of the STAT.

“We already have some ideas, we know full well that it won’t be an exact copy of the Leclerc tank. There will be drones operating alongside it, and we know there will be a robotic element,” said Gen. Philippe de Montenon, the commander of the French land forces and operations, in the same briefing.

The planned MGCS will “clearly” not be just a tank but a networked system of systems with artificial intelligence, and the interim capability will be a “first building block of the MGCS,” according to Coquet. “So that’s what we’re looking for.”

Ukraine, in the fifth year of fighting a full-scale Russian invasion, is already using AI for a plethora of battlefield functions, from flying drones at targets to helping plan combat operations and crunching data on Russian missile attacks.

“AI will form a new paradigm of warfare. It’s already actively doing so,” Danylo Tsvok, the head of the defense ministry’s AI center, told Reuters.

He predicted AI systems would eventually be unified into a single network overseeing the battlefield, leading to a “war of operating systems” with Russia in the next three to five years, if the conflict continues.

“The system that possesses more data and better understands that data, proposes solutions — that system will gain the advantage over the other," he said.

The center was founded in March as Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov seeks to put AI and data-driven decision-making at the heart of Ukraine’s defenses.

Drones, still mostly flown by pilots, have already upended the way the war is being fought.

Ukrainian and Russian troops launch thousands of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) a day at each other. Kyiv is also trying to solve its frontline troop shortage with ground robots.

The ability of drones to constantly surveil the battlefield and hit targets with precision has accelerated the “kill chain” – the process of planning and executing a strike on the enemy. AI decision-making would speed this up even more, Tsvok said.

Technological arms race

Ukraine, whose military numbers around a million personnel, is already using AI tools in its command systems.

But Tsvok said the goal was to create a single operating system to recommend battlefield decisions all the way up from individual frontline units to strategic command.

This would significantly speed up the analysis of data from the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front line to allow recommendations to human commanders, he said.

The aim, Tsvok said, is to unite weapons and data systems into “one single living organism that can operate in a coordinated manner.”

The technological arms race launched by Europe’s largest war since World War Two, which lasted from 1939 to 1945, has attracted interest from foreign AI companies hungry for combat data to train their models and the opportunity to test their systems.

Some, such as U.S. company Palantir, have provided Ukraine with their systems. Kyiv has created Brave1 Dataroom, a project to share battlefield data with allied countries for training their software.

“This is the place where you can understand whether your system works,” said Tsvok, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.

Moscow is also developing its artificial intelligence capabilities. A senior Ukrainian air defense commander told Reuters in April he was concerned by Russia’s increasing use of AI in planning drone and missile attacks on cities, which could significantly reduce the planning time for each strike.

“The question is,” Tsvok said, “how quickly we build our solutions and how practically we apply them and achieve the primary impact on the battlefield from our side.”

He added that the defense ministry was developing an AI-driven recruitment and HR system as part of Fedorov’s push for data-driven reform of the vast government department.

Ukraine operates on the principle of having a human in the loop on combat decisions, but Tsvok said AI systems could eventually outrun humans, whose presence would then slow decisions down.

“Then the question arises: how do we keep up with making decisions that autonomous systems propose?” he said.

The Cyber Mastery Incentive Pay, or C-MIP, initiative is meant to modernize how the department encourages the Cyberspace Operations Forces, the military and civilian units responsible for cyberspace operations, according to a June 10 release.

“To incentivize our cyber forces and meet both Department of War and Defense Industrial Base needs, we need to shed legacy incentive models and invest directly in our people serving on the digital front lines. C-MIP does this,” Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Anthony Tata said in the release.

The C-MIP program drops the previous incentive models to a more flexible system that aligns pay with skillset mastery and performance of demanding tasks, the announcement says. The program was developed in 60 days by the CYBERCOM 2.0 unit.

The program will feature two layers: skill incentive pay and special duty pay.

Skill incentive pay, or SIP, is considered the foundational layer that rewards an individual for skill level, whether it’s basic, senior or master.

Special duty assignment pay, or SDAP, is a monthly incentive for members who perform duties CYBERCOM deems “exceptionally demanding” and scale their skills by serving in roles such as trainers or more advanced cyber positions.

“By breaking down the bureaucratic norms of government incentives, this framework enables increased lethality by driving the skills, roles and duties most vital to mission success,” Katie Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy, who will lead the execution of the program, said in the statement.

The pay incentive program is slated to begin Oct. 1, per the release. The announcement did not specify the pay incentive amount for either program level.

This initiative follows a recent push from some lawmakers to advance the creation of an independent Cyber Force military service.

A report from two D.C. think tanks examined how a proposed Cyber Force could take over the “service-like” responsibilities that CYBERCOM is currently expected to perform.

However, it would take at least one year and $10 billion to stand up the new force.

Now Taiwan, an all-purpose manufacturing hub since the 1980s with an emphasis on high-tech hardware, is positioning to sell homegrown drones to the U.S. military so it can avoid the dominant Chinese supply chain, analysts and recent transactions indicate.

“Foreign governments value Taiwanese drones mainly because of Taiwan’s strong information and communication technologies foundation and its role as a trusted supply chain partner,” said Lee Yi-ching, an analyst with the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute in Taipei.

“From a supply-chain perspective, Western countries have increasingly prioritized reducing their reliance on Chinese drones and Chinese-made components,” Lee said. “Amid concerns over information security, wartime supply chain resilience and national security, the trustworthiness of component sources has become an important factor for Western governments when evaluating drone suppliers.”

China-headquartered DJI makes at least 70% of the world’s commercial and civilian-use drones, including for American consumers.

On June 4, the de-facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan said the Virginia-based Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International and the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan were working together on drone technology.

A day earlier, domestic media had reported that Taiwan’s Metal Industries Research & Development Center signed a memorandum to team up with American defense technology company Anduril.

“We recognize that Taiwan’s strengths in advanced manufacturing, electronics, and agile production make it a natural and indispensable partner,” the de-facto embassy’s director, Raymond Greene, said in a June 4 statement.

And last year, Taiwanese manufacturer Thunder Tiger’s Overkill-brand kamikaze drone set a precedent for Asia by meeting the Pentagon’s certification requirements.

The Taiwanese drone industry was worth NT$12.9 billion (US$410 million) last year after growing 2.5 times over 2024, and drone exports racked up NT$2.95 billion, the island’s premier, Cho Jung-tai, said in a statement on April 30. Taiwan has worked on drones of some type since the 1990s.

In the first quarter this year, the United States was the No. 3 importer, with shipments worth $2.58 million, after Poland and the Czech Republic.

Taiwan aims to make NT$40 billion worth of drones by 2030, Cho added, noting that the island has a “complete supply chain.”

The U.S. military is paying special attention to drones in light of their use in the Russia-Ukraine war, analysts said, and U.S. legislators proposed in 2025 expanding domestic drone production to 1 million units per year.

But that ambition would “take some time for the U.S. industry to expand that scale, particularly as they don’t have a strong commercial UAV industry already in place,” said Jeremiah Gertler, senior advisor with the U.S.-based aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory.

“It would not be surprising in that case for the U.S. to ask allies to provide production capacity and or finished products to act as a bridge while the U.S. got its production in place,” Gertler said.

Taiwan could offer the United States an “at-scale” solution for situations where swarms of UAVs are needed for air and sea combat and China will watch how well they perform, predicted Doug Barry, an international trade consultant and adjunct professor at George Washington University.

Taiwanese manufacturers can make drones in small or large batches, a possible advantage over other suppliers, said Sean Su, an independent tech analyst in Taiwan.

But its “biggest appeal” is the lack of China in the supply chain, he said. U.S. officials fret over data security, possible espionage and supply chain risks posed by any military gear sourced from China.

“Drones in general are very low cost, so it doesn’t matter if China is much cheaper,” Su said. Taiwan’s drones “are in a range that is already dozens of times cheaper than many other platforms with arguably even more capability,” he added.

His famous Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — or OODA — Loop described the mental cycle by which combatants, from fighter pilots to generals, assess and react to a constantly changing situation.

Those with a faster OODA Loop could exploit opportunities while their befuddled opponents struggled to understand what was going on.

Germany crushed France in 1940 largely because of a sluggish French command system that was always one OODA step behind the swift panzer divisions. More recently, OODA might explain why tactically rigid Russian tank columns were decimated by outnumbered but agile Ukrainian troops in 2022.

Had the Soviets invaded Western Europe during the Cold War, NATO would have relied on OODA — plus airpower and more advanced weapons technology — to stop the Soviet steamroller.

To the troops watching waves of Soviet tanks roll into the Fulda Gap or the North German Plain, OODA would have been just a buzzword. But NATO needed every advantage it could get to compensate for superior Soviet numbers and firepower.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, published by Matrix Games, is a computer wargame that depicts a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1989.

But it is more than just another World War III wargame. Flashpoint Campaigns is the OODA Loop gamified. In fact, the game comes in two versions: the regular game for armchair generals, and a professional edition for real soldiers.

Flashpoint Campaigns is a 2-D map game, with NATO platoons and Warsaw Pact companies waging battalion- to division-sized battles. Set in the twilight of the Cold War, much of the hardware — such as Abrams and T-72 tanks, and Bradley and BMP infantry fighting vehicles — are still around today.

Players issue orders to their troops, such as movement, direct fire, calling in artillery and airstrikes, combat engineering operations and resupply. For example, a tank platoon can be ordered to head to a crossroads via a series of designated waypoints along the route.

Units can be given standard operating procedures, or SOPs, such as determining at what range to open fire, when to change firing position and when to retreat. Enemy units are usually invisible until spotted. With Late Cold War weapons so devastating, combat is deadly and proper concealment and reconnaissance a must.

After a player finishes issuing commands, they can hit the start button. A game clock then appears and a certain number of minutes elapse, during which units try to fulfill orders.

It all sounds like a straightforward process — until OODA intervenes.

Unlike many wargames, players in Flashpoint Campaigns can’t give orders to their troops at will. Instead, only at certain intervals does the game clock pause and allow commanders to issue fresh orders. This reflects the time it takes for the command system to collect information, analyze it, reach a decision and pass a new order to subordinates.

Like an object in motion in Newtonian physics, units will try to execute their last set of orders until new instructions arrive. That tank platoon heading down the road toward a village will keep going toward that village until told otherwise, even if the tactical situation has changed.

This is where NATO’s OODA advantage kicks in. The NATO player might have to wait, say, for 14 minutes of game time to elapse before issuing fresh orders. For the Soviets, the delay might be 23 minutes, or about 50% longer.

This means that NATO will have more opportunities to give new orders than the Soviets do. In turn, this means NATO troops can more quickly react to new threats such as enemy forces on their flank, or exploit discovery of a gap in the enemy’s lines.

It also means that NATO can be more flexible in its planning, rather than having to anticipate the tactical situation far in advance.

“We all know what happens when plans make contact with the enemy,” Robert Crandall, president of On Target Simulations, which designed Flashpoint Campaigns, told Military Times. “NATO spent considerable efforts to train for what happens after that contact and to respond faster than their counterparts. This could let them operate inside the Warsaw Pact command loop and outmaneuver them.”

But even NATO has OODA problems in the game. The presence of electronic warfare, in which the Soviets invested heavily, lengthens the interval before a player can give orders. Units engaged in combat will require 50% more time to react to new orders.

And commanders who send too many orders to their troops will receive an unpleasant surprise: too much radio traffic reveals the location as a headquarters, marking it for an artillery or airstrike.

Indeed, some U.S. Army experts today worry American command posts are so chatty that they will be targeted in wartime.

As battles progress in Flashpoints Campaigns, and units takes losses and headquarters are disrupted, command delays will inevitably lengthen for both sides.

Clausewitz’s “friction of war” will become an impediment, though a bit less so for NATO. Commanders on both sides will have to grit their teeth and accept that they can’t control their troops as they would like to.

Would NATO’s tighter OODA Loop have been enough to defeat the Soviets?

“One of the nicest compliments the game received came from a former Warsaw Pact officer who said he played the game using strict Warsaw Pact doctrine and won,” Crandall recalled.

“If the Warsaw Pact player has figured things out correctly, his initial plan will not have needed much, if any, adjustment and just rolls along at maximum speed. His opponent will be wrong-footed and at the mercy of the OODA Loop to react in time. With the fast-moving, hyper-lethal forces of 1989, good luck with that.”

In some ways, Flashpoint Campaigns is a memorial to another era.

The year 1989 was the twilight of 20th Century mechanized warfare. With the threat of drones paralyzing battlefield maneuver in the Ukraine War, discussing OODA’s influence on tactics seem almost quaint.

And yet, there is a reason why there is a global arms race today to develop smarter AI, quicker kill chains between sensors and weapons, and tightly networked forces that can act faster than the enemy.

Every year, the OODA Loop seems to tighten, with less margin to fall behind. As OODA reminds us, time is too precious a commodity to squander.

The Defense Innovation Unit announced in a LinkedIn post last month that the winners — Bravo Ordnance, Kela Technologies, Kraken Kinetics, Mountain Horse Solutions and Northrop Grumman — developed “cost-effective, mass-producible, and easily integrated lethal payloads for small drones.”

According to the program’s Industry Day presentation, military officials reviewed submissions from 17 vendors. Evaluators examined both the payloads themselves and how they interfaced with various Electronic Safe and Arm Devices, or ESADs, as well as their compatibility with drones being considered in the program’s broader competition.

Although the cash prize was just $10,000 — a modest sum compared to the scale of the Pentagon’s investment — the selected designs will be presented to companies participating in the program as “preferred munitions” for one-way attack drones.

Northrop Grumman’s winning design, dubbed the Common UAS Payload, was built to require “no redesigns” and is “ready to integrate and deploy immediately,” according to a statement from Tanya Santers, the company’s director of fuzes and warheads.

The company added that it has invested more than $2 billion over the past several years in technologies and manufacturing facilities to meet the program’s requirements and accelerate delivery timelines.

Unlike Northrop Grumman, which enters the competition with an established defense-industrial base and decades of experience producing munitions for the Pentagon, most of the other winners are relatively young companies hoping to capitalize on the military’s growing demand for drone warfare technology.

The Texas-based Bravo Ordnance launched in 2025 with $3.5 million in venture capital. The company bills itself as capable of creating custom warheads in “two weeks or less.”

Founder Devan Plantamura, a Navy and Army veteran, told GQ magazine that his experience working at military technology startups convinced him the industry focused too heavily on drone platforms and not enough on the weapons they carry.

Without a warhead, he said, an attack drone is “just a flying object.”

The Israeli defense startup Kela Technologies was founded in July 2024 following the Oct. 7 attack as a software company focused on helping Western militaries rapidly integrate commercial technology into existing military systems.

The company quickly attracted backing from Silicon Valley investors as well as IQT, the CIA’s investment arm.

In just two years, Kela has raised roughly $100 million, secured an additional $200 million in financing and earned a reported valuation of $1.2 billion.

Although software integration remains its primary business, Kela was also named a winner of the Lethality Prize. The company reportedly partnered with fellow Israeli defense firm Autonomous Guard, which specializes in border security technology, including drones.

The North Carolina-based Kraken Kinetics was founded in 2023 to manufacture warheads for drone combat. Since then, the company has heavily promoted its Terminus payload, a warhead designed for first-person-view attack drones.

Kraken has demonstrated the system with Army Rangers, Marines and other military units, emphasizing its ability to be quickly attached to commercial drone platforms through its ESAD.

The Colorado-based Mountain Horse Solutions is one of the older companies in the group. Founded in 2014, about a year after its parent company, Global Ordnance, the firm initially focused on personal protective equipment before expanding into military drones in 2025.

That year, Mountain Horse and its partner Rotron Aerospace secured a spot on the Defense Department’s Blue UAS list of approved drone systems.

For the Lethality Prize, Mountain Horse partnered with several other companies to develop a payload system designed to work with “any drone on the market.”

In a statement, Bill Allen, Mountain Horse’s president, called the challenge “exactly the kind of problem set we are built for — delivering adaptable, scalable lethal solutions that keep pace with the lightning-fast evolution of drone warfare.”

The Defense Department launched the Drone Dominance program in July 2025 and in December of that year, revealed a three-phase effort to acquire roughly 300,000 drones by 2028.

For the first phase, the Pentagon invited 26 companies to demonstrate their systems. In the second and current phase, military officials are evaluating 79 drones from 49 companies for both long-range and close-quarters missions.

Over the remaining phases, the Pentagon plans to narrow the field to a select group of vendors. According to Pentagon officials, the goal is to reduce the average cost of a military drone from roughly $5,000 to $2,300.

The third phase of the Drone Dominance program is set to begin around November 2026, with final testing six months after that.

Kuwait requested the c-UAS platforms, built by Anduril, in an effort to improve the country’s ability to counter current and future threats, according to a Friday release. The request followed attacks last week carried out by Iran on Kuwait infrastructure.

“This proposed sale will support the foreign policy and national security objectives of the United States by improving the security of a major non-NATO ally that has been an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East,” a statement from the State Department reads.

The approval comes days after Iran launched a drone and missile attack on June 3 that damaged the Kuwait International Airport, killing one and injuring more than 60 people.

Three days later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said it targeted U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to U.S. strikes. There were no casualties, but the Saturday attack did cause some material damage, according to Kuwait’s army.

Gulf nations have been the target of strikes throughout the ceasefire and during negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, showcasing the frustration among the countries and a need for more defense capabilities, like this deal.

“The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region,” the announcement says.

The estimated $1.98 billion sale will include “non-major defense equipment,” such as lattice command and control, personnel training and software development, and it will supply Kuwait with electronic and kinetic “defeat capabilities” against unmanned aerial systems.

U.S. industry became complacent and got “ambushed by the future,” said Christian Brose, who was on hand last week at the Washington Post’s inaugural Building America Summit to discuss defense industry developments.

“There was just no way of thinking that this formidable capability institution could be disrupted, and I think that there was a failure of imagination,” Brose said.

Brose added that the nation has been “systematically failing” at making necessary changes to project a stronger footing in the U.S.-China competition. He pointed to lessons from the Ukraine war and Operation Epic Fury, adding that Tehran has been evolving technologically and ramping up asymmetric capabilities.

“We’re struggling right now with a regional power of Iran that isn’t even close to what China would present to us,” Brose said. “And we’re struggling to some extent because we haven’t necessarily learned our own lessons of Ukraine and other recent events.”

Anduril recently opened a new 5-million-square-foot facility in Columbus, Ohio, where the company produces a range of munitions destined for the U.S. military.

Brose pointed to the new facility as evidence of Anduril meeting the military’s demands — under one roof — for mass produced, quickly built weapons that cost a fraction of a munition like a PAC-3 interceptor or Tomahawk missile.

“The point is not that the government should stop buying the exquisite weapons and instead just buy ours,” Brose said. “It’s that if all you have in a fight is a Tomahawk, that’s all you’re going to use, which is why in the first opening weeks of Epic Fury, we shot eight to 10 years of Tomahawk production in a few weeks.”

Brose added that once the military puts significant dents in stockpiles of munitions that are “artisanally built and incredibly expensive,” it can take years to replenish that production capacity.

He said that Anduril is instead building systems that can be completed by workers with minimal training and simple tools, much like how the country built weapons during World War II.

“It was Rosie the Riveter, not like Martha, the master welder, who took 14 years to become proficient at every craft,” Brose said, noting that to quickly build at scale, the nation has to take advantage of the country’s industrial workforce.

“It’s a whole different approach to the manufacturing philosophy, and it enables you to scale 10x [or] 20x to get to that order of magnitude ... that I think we’re going to need to be able to be relevant in these protracted conflicts,” Brose said.

America, Brose added, has been too concerned with creating perfect technology, making the process long and failures unacceptable.

He highlighted the belief of how certain older systems, like the Tomahawk and Patriot, have given the country military advantage for a generation, but the nation needs to be constantly producing, testing and learning from mistakes.

With the Ukraine war, Brose said that there’s no piece of technology that jumps out at him. Instead, it is the cycle of innovation and rebuilding at scale.

“When you look at the opening days of Epic Fury, obviously the United States and Israel have inflicted an enormous amount of damage on Iranian leadership, government, military, industrial base, but Iran’s still in the fight,” Brose said.

“They’re still in the fight because they’re using a lot of these asymmetric capabilities, low-cost drones, different types of systems.”

The technology aims to find small, low-altitude drones, including those connected to operators via long command wires, a setup that makes them immune to defensive electronic warfare.

Maks Dzherikhov, the co-founder of Molfar Defence, told Defense News the company is working on solutions to complement the existing air-defense infrastructure, which is increasingly struggling to identify smaller and slower-moving airborne threats.

“We see how quickly drone production is scaling up globally, and how fast autonomous radio protocols and capabilities are growing. Also, we see that large and expensive radar systems can be destroyed, and the recent situation in the Gulf region shows that high-value radar infrastructure can be targeted and damaged very easily. When this happens, you create blind spots,” Dzherikhov said. “At Molfar, our main focus is on the detection of low-flying UAVs, especially multi-rotor drones in difficult conditions.”

Incursions by Russian drones into NATO airspace, paired with Russia’s tactic of using GPS spoofing to steer Ukrainian strike drones off course and drive them into allied territory, are pushing eastern flank states to intensify investments into counter-drone measures.

At recent tests held in Latvia’s Sēlija, which hosts NATO’s new unmanned systems testing range, European startups were able to successfully take down numerous drones. However, every failed attempt served as a reminder of the challenges that companies face in adapting their solutions to evolving battlefield threats.

Molfar’s radars use advanced signal processing and multidimensional structural target representation to distinguish drones from other airborne objects, and are capable of operating in complex environments and adverse weather conditions, according to the company’s co-founder.

“Fiber-optic drones, and in general drones using transmission, are developing very fast. Such drones are difficult to detect because they fly very low, close to the ground. They’re very small, and for many radars detecting them is a huge challenge,” he said. “In the past, radar systems were developed to detect really big and very fast-moving targets.”

To finance its development work, the Polish-Ukrainian company recently secured a new investor, Sweden’s Front Ventures, which led a €2 million ($2.3 million) funding round with its €1.5 million investment.

The company’s head office is in Poland’s capital Warsaw, and Molfar Defence is currently opening a Ukrainian branch that will cooperate with Ukraine’s military to adapt its radar systems to combat conditions. Under the plan, mass production is scheduled to begin in late 2027, according to Dzherikhov.

The French have been developing the system with local companies including Mistral AI, Safran.AI, Thales and Airbus, Justel said in a media briefing on Thursday. The French Army has already tested the system, dubbed Arcadia, in exercises including Dacian Fall in Romania and Orion 26 in France.

NATO military personnel started training with Palantir’s Maven Smart System in August 2025, the alliance’s first use of AI-enabled command and control software. The platform is derived from the Pentagon’s Project Maven and ties together massive amounts of battlefield data and AI analysis to help commanders identify targets and make decisions more quickly.

Arcadia “is our response to Maven,” said Justel. He said NATO’s use of Maven raises issues of digital sovereignty, “so the question arises whether should we adopt Maven blindly, or should we look for other solutions.”

France’s army, general staff and Defense Digital Commission “have been working on what other solutions might look like,” Justel said. France will deploy Arcadia during NATO’s Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise, or CWIX, a live exercise held in Poland June 8-26.

Justel said several NATO countries including France have raised questions around interoperability with the Palantir system. The Army deputy chief of staff said Arcadia is designed to comply with NATO’s Federated Mission Networking standards, or FMN, and contrasted that with Maven, which he said hasn’t integrated FMN requirements.

Palantir said Maven Smart System is “compliant with the principles of FMN” and that it is working with NATO toward official certification, in an emailed response to a request for comment. The company added that the platform has proven compliance with two NATO data-security standards that are “key building blocks” of FMN.

“NATO Maven Smart System is compatible, and does allow interoperability, but of course nations are free to choose what systems they use,” said Martin O’Donnell, a spokesperson for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, in an emailed reply to questions.

The Palantir system is already integrated with more than 10 NATO systems, according to U.S. Army Col. Arnel David, the director of Task Force Maven at SHAPE, who said his team is “focused on securing final certification across all FMN milestones,” with the declaration of full operational capability imminent.

France plans to propose Arcadia to its European partners, with a number of countries expressing interest, and has organized demonstrations for NATO, which is also interested, the general said. “When we talk to our European partners, we get the same reaction of, `well, we’ve kind of gone with Maven because there’s no choice, but if countries in Europe are able to build an alternative, we’ll go for it.’”

Palantir said it “welcomes the opportunity to integrate with Arcadia, or any other national system.”

Arcadia builds on previous work by the Armed Forces Ministry as part of the Artemis project started in 2022, which uses AI to process massive amounts of defense data. The French Army has been developing use cases for Arcadia internally as well as in cooperation with the industry partners, according to Justel.

The United Kingdom is working on a similar AI-enabled command and control system, and is also in discussions on how to interface with Maven, according to Justel.

Based on discussions with the British, “their concept is well-established, but they don’t yet have all the technological building blocks,” said Col. Frédéric Vola, head of the planning and capacity development office in the Army general staff, in the briefing.

While Palantir is behind the version of Maven used by NATO, the system is not the same as that used by the U.S., with different databases and functionality and “certainly not the same performance,” according to Justel.

The French system is conceived to be a more resilient alternative to Maven because it will be “highly decentralized” rather than a centralized system, with all command posts connected to field-deployed servers in a mesh-network architecture rather than a distant central cloud. The French Army already has a network of data hubs and is acquiring more, Justel said.

“First, it distributes the data, and in the event of destruction or loss of connection, it allows us to maintain the autonomy of what remains, and second, it’s easier to implement,” Justel said.

The system has an open architecture, with the French armed forces inviting “all the major players in artificial intelligence” and being open to working with others, according to Justel. “We don’t want to enter into the logic that we’ve known for years, where we give a manufacturer the system and then everything goes via them, everything is closed, they own all the data,” Justel said. “We want an open system where any manufacturer can plug in, and all data can be shared by everyone, without any notion of exclusive ownership.”

As part of its work on AI for command and control, the French Army has developed its own large-language model for staff officers, called Berthier, named after Napoleon’s chief of staff, and which Justel said is used to synthesize information, retrieve operational data, and support drafting of proposed courses of action, while leaving decisions to commanders.

On the heels of President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on AI innovation, Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said that he’s concerned about the category of “cyber weapons” that companies are releasing, such as Anthropic’s Mythos.

“These companies have a responsibility to ensure that their weapons, what they call weaponization potential of these models, to be careful and thoughtful about what they’re doing,” Michael said Thursday at The Washington Post’s inaugural Building America Summit.

Lawmakers have increasingly warned against the weaponization of AI models by U.S. adversaries against citizens, businesses and government agencies, calling for their crafting to include resilient security measures to safeguard against hacks.

On Tuesday, the White House released an executive order that establishes an “AI cybersecurity clearinghouse,” through which AI industry partners can volunteer to have the Defense Department scan their systems for software vulnerabilities before their release.

Michael said that companies that have models with a “weaponization capability” could allow the federal government to spend 30 days examining their systems. The government could potentially identify vulnerabilities across the country in systems with IP that could be susceptible to hacks, such as electricity grids or public hospitals.

“I think they’ve all agreed and think it’s a good idea to do that. That’s been a good constructive process,” Michael said. “I give all the companies, Open AI, even Anthropic, and Google credit for sort of agreeing that was a smart thing to do.”

Anthropic has been left out of deals with the Pentagon after the firm refused to allow unrestricted access to its Claude models for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.

The company sued the Trump administration over the federal government labeling the firm as a supply chain risk over its decision to restrict the military’s use of its technology.

Mythos, Anthropic’s new model, has drawn criticism as skeptics of the program point out that it could pose a danger with its hacking and cybersecurity capabilities. Anthropic previewed the model and announced that it was capable of finding ways to exploit vulnerabilities in software.

Meanwhile, the DoD has integrated AI throughout the department.

When posed a question at the summit about the government’s usage of AI, Michael said that six months ago, only about 80,000 federal employees were AI users each month. But now, there are 1.5 million, he stated, saying that the government has “raced” to ramp up usage among workers for efficiency, intelligence and warfighting.

“I think by the end of this year, I’d be shocked if three quarters of the department isn’t using AI in some way,” Michael said. “We’ve integrated all the biggest AI companies over the last few months, so, we’re, in one year, going to make progress more than the five years before it.”

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

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

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

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

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

Near Russian border, NATO grapples with ground robots in combat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NATO expects no gaps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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