Researchers at U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory (ARL) recently successfully flew the VICTOR hybrid electric drone with a heavy-fuel rotary engine, rapidly developed thanks to metal 3D printing — allowing the drone to extract more performance out of the denser but less volatile military fuel source.

The heavy fuel (JP8) used in the drone is a denser kerosene-based fuel source compared to regular jet fuel, making it desirable to reduce total fuel load or increase mileage. The JP8 fuel is part of the military’s initiative to power as much of its gas equipment on a single fuel source. However, JP8 is less volatile and harder to atomize, making it a challenge to achieve peak efficiency. Furthermore, the fuel’s flash point is 140℉, compared to gasoline’s -40℉, requiring the engine to have a much higher compression to ignite it, making pressure leaks a common issue.

JP-8 fuel on aircraft and drones is not uncommon; however, the ARL researchers wanted to further optimize the heavy-fuel rotary engine to extract more performance and improve its design. The researchers used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a clean-sheet design (designing from scratch, essentially), allowing the engineers to come up with more innovative solutions to get more out of the engine with less.

"The use of advanced manufacturing, including 3D metal printing, allowed us to rapidly redesign engine components based on lessons learned through experimentation,” Dr. Kweon, one of the ARL researchers, said to Army.mil. Dr. Kweon further explained that 3D printing allowed them to design an air-cooled engine and ditch a bulky liquid cooling system, reducing the size of the propulsion system. The rapid iteration eventually allowed the researchers to improve fuel atomization and decrease compression leaks.

The heavy-fuel rotary engine doesn’t actually drive the drone’s propellers directly; it uses the engine to spin a 400-volt motor-generator to generate electricity to drive the propeller motors, allowing the engine to spin independently at its most optimal RPM — similar to some hybrid EVs on the road today, except that the engine doesn’t have a mechanical link to the propellers. This system may include a battery for the drone to fly without the engine running; however, the US military has not disclosed much about the VICTOR drone’s battery configuration.

The VICTOR drone is a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aircraft, able to fly without a runway. The US Army has shared a video of its first flight, and the drone is able to land and take off in terrain that would otherwise be impossible for other non-VTOL two-winged aircraft. With a battery system, the drone could cover large distances on a single fuel-up, and air-cooling gives it another layer of robustness, avoiding maintenance on a liquid cooling system.

The military is looking at leveraging commercial 5G communications to enhance battlefield sensing. We have two examples of the reuse of existing communications infrastructure for drone detection. In Latvia, NATO recently tested an AI-agent-assisted counter-drone engagement system that made use of existing 5G masts. Meanwhile, in the U.S., AT&T and Ericsson demoed “drone detection using advanced network sensing over a 5G network” near a large sporting venue.

Drones and drone-defense capabilities are clearly vital in current armed conflicts and are beginning to be taken very seriously worldwide. We’ve seen rapid developments in this theater, particularly in Russia, Ukraine, and also in the Middle East this year. If the military could leverage the extensive cellular networks across most nations for drone sensing, it sounds like a clear win. However, we’d worry about 5G masts becoming an even more attractive target.

In Latvia, NATO ran a Digital Backbone Experimentation exercise, known as DiBaX 2026. Between October 19 and 30, the organization investigated whether 5G towers could passively detect and track flying objects, specifically drones. If the trials were successful, it could mean existing large-scale telecommunications networks would gain another purpose – enhancing national security. Moreover, it would help NATO gain resilience to disruption, thanks to multiple networks, satellites, etc.

The NATO-tested solution is said to have been designed by AI agents. “We have connected systems that were never designed to communicate with each other, using artificial intelligence to overcome interoperability barriers,” said Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. “It’s the first time that we have, for example, a Maven system that is speaking to a national system, and that has been fixed in hours with Agentic AI.”

Three methods of utilizing commercial 5G were tested in the Baltic country, which conducted the exercises alongside the United States, Canada, Germany, Finland, Lithuania, and other allies. Some tests admittedly failed, but when things don’t work as expected, you can learn some important lessons.

In the U.S., AT&T and Ericsson demonstrated drone detection over 5G outside of AT&T Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. Apparently, this is an early taster of 6G technology, which officially includes both comms and sensing. According to the official PR, this system was capable of detecting and locating multiple drones, then tracking their movement. The drones flew at altitudes between 300 and 400 feet within the coverage area.

It seems like the sporting venue was chosen for the demo, as such places can be targeted by terrorists and the like. A potential advantage of this sensing tech is that it can “support new levels of low altitude threat detection and tracking around major venues, public spaces and other complex environments.”

With the above two experiments delivering promising results, 5G (and 6G) drone sensing networks piggybacking on commercial masts looks like something that will be genuinely useful for defense, with little extra investment required.

The San Bernardino County Fire Protection District has just acquired a fleet of five autonomous drones that will allow it to battle wildfires before they become worse. According to a press release (via PR Newswire), the drones will be provided by Seneca Systems, which will deploy the drones and a mobile operations base. These units also come with autonomy software, allowing a single pilot to supervise the entire team, which is capable of delivering over 500 gallons of firefighting foam to a target area.

San Bernardino is the largest county in California and the United States by land area. Given the fact that the state is prone to wildfires, especially during spring, summer, and early fall, autonomous firefighting drones would help its firefighters cover more area and address localized fires before they become larger threats. “Our goal is to stop 90% of fires before they grow larger than 10 square feet,” San Bernardino County Fire Protection District chief Dan Munsey said.

"Seneca's aircraft give us a capability that has never before been possible: autonomous rapid initial attack. We've been working closely with Seneca for over a year to develop a system that meets our needs. This product will help us to get more quickly to parts of the County that are at the highest risk and help make those communities safer. It force-multiplies what our firefighters can do, and it keeps them safer while they do it."

The five-drone strike could be launched from anywhere, and they’re capable of reaching starting fires in under 10 minutes of detection. More importantly, the drones’ onboard sensor suite allows firefighters to operate them 24/7, allowing them to get to hard-to-reach areas even at night. This should help Munsey achieve his target of putting out wildfires before they become larger, difficult to control, and a threat to the county’s two million residents. More importantly, giving one firefighter the ability to direct five units could potentially free up other firefighting crews to respond to other incidents.

Civilian first-responder agencies have been using drones to augment their operations for years, but this is one of the first instances that an AI-powered Seneca drone will be deployed to support their operations. Nevertheless, Drones-as-First-Responder (DFR) systems have increasingly become more popular in the U.S., with both startups, like BRINC, and established companies, such as Flock, offering units to cut 911 response times. We’ve even seen some states deploy “Campus Guardian Angel” drones to help neutralize school shooters.

A new 'Reaper' jet-powered drone project just unofficially broke the previous drone speed world record of 465 mph by hitting 491 mph. Tomas Salvo is an aerospace engineering student at Georgia Tech, and his project was assembled in his dorm room. The drone is comprised of a custom-molded carbon fiber shell, laser-cut internal structure, and a 250N jet engine with a titanium 3D-printed nozzle, costing $13,000 to build. Tomas Salvo aims to win the $800,000 Boom Prize posted by Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl.

Tomas Salvo’s Reaper project, which aimed to beat Niels Herbrich’s world record for the fastest jet-powered RC aircraft, went viral and caught the attention of Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl, who sponsors the $800,000 Boom Prize ($750,000 cash, $50,000 Boom stock). The prize’s conditions are: First, pass Mach 1 for at least 5 seconds while climbing or level, not descending. Second, it must be an air-breathing aircraft with no on-board oxidizers or rockets for propulsion. Third, it must land intact, and lastly, the same aircraft (wings, fuselage, engine, and flight computer) must fly twice in one day. The participants must be individuals or teams, not corporations or people backed by venture capitalists or government funding; they want garage hobbyists.

We recently covered Mach Initiative’s Kingchaser, a 3D-printed jet-powered RC aircraft also aimed at beating Herbrich’s world record. They were beaten by Tomas Salvo, but Tomas’ run was not officially recorded by Guinness. The Kingchaser project was inspired by the Boom Prize; however, since they are not US citizens, they are not eligible to win it, but are still aiming to have an officially recorded Guinness World Record. The Reaper has a smaller engine than the Kingchaser at only 250N, compared to the Kingchaser’s 300N, but achieved a flight speed of 491 mph, beating the Kingchaser’s test flight of only 273 mph, as the latter did not have enough space to accelerate. However, Mach Initiative estimates a top speed of 550 mph if they had the space.

While the Reaper isn’t made out of PETG like the Kingchaser, it still utilizes some 3D printing, albeit in a much more expensive fashion — it has a titanium 3D-printed nozzle for its engine that replaces the stock nozzle, allowing the engine to sit further forward, improving the center of gravity without adding ballast on the front, weighing in at a total of 11 pounds. It’s made out of custom-molded carbon fiber on the outside with a laser-cut internal structure, all designed by Tomas Salvo and assembled in his dorm.

The Reaper was able to achieve its 491 mph speed while carrying a 1.2kg payload, with Tomas’ post further explaining that it could hold the speed for four minutes on a full tank, climb to 6,500 feet in under 20 seconds, and fly for a distance of 31 miles at full speed.

Before the Boom Prize, Tomas was able to land a few sponsorships that got him a JetCat 250N engine; however, we’re not sure how this fits with the Boom Prize’s rules barring corporate sponsorship. Since the Boom Prize's announcement, however, Tomas has resorted to crowdfunding, asking for $50,000 in August after raising $20,000, the source of which he did not disclose.

Both the Kingchaser and the Reaper are aiming at Herbrich’s world record, but they are still far from the 1,234.8 km/h or 767.3 mph Mach 1 speed that they need to surpass in order to win the Boom Prize. Mach Initiative responded to Blake Scholl’s X post about the Boom Prize, saying “challenge accepted,” but the rules may make them ineligible for the prize, making the Reaper a real contender for the $800,000, as it currently sits unrivaled by any other US project.

Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council is working on an autonomous system that would allow drone fleets to coordinate and execute missions without human intervention in response to "grey-zone" activities carried out by China. According to the South China Morning Post, the council is working with the National Cheng Kung University, which has already completed simultaneous flight simulations of two drone fleets, with each fleet comprising 10 units. This is already the second step of the process, which has shifted from individual aircraft control to the coordination of two drone detachments.

This project is designed to help Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration (CGA) to counter Beijing’s grey-zone tactics in the waters surrounding the island nation. There have already been instances of civilian Chinese ships damaging undersea cables that Taipei relies on, with the CGA increasing its defensive patrols around 24 undersea cables and closely monitoring nearly a hundred China-linked boats. Despite that, Chinese “research vessels” continue to loiter over Taiwan-U.S. undersea cables, mimicking the activities of Russian trawlers in the Atlantic.

“The next stage will involve hardware-in-the-loop testing, prototype integration and flight trials over actual maritime areas to assess reliability under different sea and weather conditions,” the council said. The researchers programmed the drones to have a minimum separation of 100 feet in 3D space, and they’re also incorporating leader-follower formation flying and dynamic obstacle avoidance. This should allow them to respond to quickly changing conditions out in the open sea and even deal with unexpected hazards.

More than that, the autonomous system Taipei is working on would let different types of drones coordinate their movements, divide tasks, and plan routes, primarily for maritime surveillance. This is especially important as it would allow them to use different types of drones to accomplish various missions, much like how different air forces use different aircraft types.

The project is currently focusing on three Western-made drones — the Jump 20, V-BAT, and Flexrotor. In fact, the Ocean Affairs Council just received the V-BAT, a VTOL drone built by U.S. defense firm Shield AI. This unit can take off vertically from the relatively constrained deck space of non-aircraft carrier ships and offers an endurance of over 12 hours for extended missions, making it ideal for the CGA, as it would not need to make major renovations to its ships to accommodate these drones while extending their reach.

Russia has lost another data center in its ongoing conflict with Ukraine after drones hit a government data center in the suburbs of Gorodets, some 230 miles east of the Kremlin and over 600 miles away from the frontlines. According to Data Center Dynamics (DCD), the freshly drone damaged data center is operated by the Russian Ministry of Finance and was said to hold several state registries, including the Federal Taxation Service’s tax database.

“The facility is one of two key data processing centers of the Federal Tax Service of Russia operating in a geo-distributed mode,” DCD reported, citing a Russian media outlet. “The damage to this facility could potentially affect the operation of state information systems of the Russian Federation.” Ukraine has targeted Russian data centers multiple times since the start of October, which it started doing after Moscow escalated the conflict by striking Ukrainian data centers. While the Russian finance ministry reportedly operates two other data centers — one at the Federal Data Processing Center in Dubna, Moscow Region, and another in Yerzovka, Volgograd Region — losing a third of its data centers could have a major impact on government services that it provides.

A modern society’s reliance on digital services means that data centers are now critical infrastructure and have become major targets in conflict. Russia’s Yandex bot traffic collapsed after the Ukrainian drone strikes, but its disinformation bot network simply migrated to unaffected data centers to continue operating as normal. Another recent instance of a civilian data center getting caught in a conflict was in the Middle East, after Iranian forces hit AWS sites in the UAE and Bahrain in response to the United States’ bombing campaign that began in February. This has led to disruptions to many digital services in the area, which is why Amazon has advised many of its clients to move to other regions to avoid further disruptions.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started in 2014 when it forcibly occupied the Crimean Peninsula, but the current situation started when Moscow escalated the situation and attempted to take Kyiv in 2022. But what makes this 12-year conflict especially deadly is the new technologies and strategies that are being implemented in the front lines, including the widespread and innovative use of drones.

Ukraine's military intelligence agency GUR released details of a new 3D-printed Russian cruise missile that was first deployed around September and October of this year. The missile is faster than traditional weapons, hitting speeds of 500mph, and has a range of over 700 miles. According to Business Insider, these cruise missiles, called “Filin,” are more affordable than the traditional Kh-101 cruise missile that costs more than $2,000,000 per launch. This is why some fear that these weapons would be used by the Russian military in “missile spam” tactics against Kyiv to overwhelm its air defenses.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was originally planned to last just a few weeks, has turned into a multi-year war of attrition. This has made the frontlines a costly effort for both man and machine, which is why both sides are looking for more cost-efficient ways to conduct warfare. While drones have seen widespread use in this conflict, they’re relatively slow and are easier to shoot down. The Geran-5, which has been known to disintegrate in flight, could only hit a maximum speed of 270 mph, while the Filin can reportedly hit speeds of 500 mph and has a range of 745 miles. While this still isn’t as fast as modern fighter jets like the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the increased top speed could make it that much harder for Ukrainian air defenses to deal with the threat.

The GUR said that the Filin has a carbon and fiberglass fuselage, while also featuring some 3D-printed parts. It also said that Moscow was able to keep costs on the cruise missile low by relying on commercially available parts from both domestic and foreign companies. It used Russian-made engines instead of the Chinese turbojets found in many Shahed drones, while many electronic components, such as the flight controller, inertial navigation systems, equipment controllers, and counter-jamming hardware, are said to come from Western nations and their allies. The Ukrainian intelligence agency listed the following sources: 35 components come from the U.S., 22 from China, and 13 from Japan, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the Netherlands.

While 3D-printing isn’t necessarily cheaper than traditional manufacturing methods, it’s sometimes more cost-efficient for producing items that require unique geometries, such as solid rocket fuel or jet-engine turbine blades. It has even allowed a tech hobbyist to build a DIY MANPADS for under $100. While the Filin will likely cost way more than a home-made 3D-printed missile, the fact that it’s significantly more affordable than traditional cruise missiles could allow Russia to launch more of them, spelling trouble for the Ukrainian defenders.

The Ukrainian military is claiming a world’s first after using an unmanned drone to rescue an injured soldier on the eastern Kharkiv front. Ukraine’s United24 news shared a video of the historic first. It also explained that the wounded infantryman was stuck in a heavily mined area, guarded by Russian kamikaze drones.

The above video starts with the Ukrainian drone locating the soldier, callsign ‘Kostya,’ in enemy territory. Various media reports suggest he was 11 miles (18km) behind enemy lines, at the mercy of Russian kamikaze drones, and perilously located in a minefield. Traditional land-based rescue was therefore not possible, but Kostya bravely agreed to be part of the first-ever human drone-lift rescue plan.

After being located, the injured infantryman clipped himself into a harness. He said, “That’s it, we can take off,” when he was fully buckled into the rudimentary-looking harness. UAV operator, callsign ‘Black’ from the 20th Mechanized Battalion, 30th Infantry Brigade, then appeared in the video and explained: “We were constantly in touch with him."

Ukrainian drone rescue key facts:

• Drone used: Gurzuf Defense hexacopter
• Drone capable of carrying 130kg (~287 pounds)
• Drone’s known range: it has previously transported 90kg (~198 pounds) loads up to 25km (16 miles)
• Infantryman weight: 80kg (~176 pounds)
• Rescue distance: 8km (11 miles)
• Hazards: enemy kamikaze drones, mines, gravity, many more

Being in constant touch with the operations HQ would have been reassuring. However, the surrounding presence of a fleet of Ukrainian support drones, both kamikaze devices and UAVs with anti-drone nets, was probably most comforting.

Eventually dropping back into safe(r) territory, after what must have been an arduous, nerve-wracking journey, control said, “Congratulations, you’re on the ground,” to Kostya, as he touched down in a field. Then the control room erupted into applause. They got their man back safely, and he is now being treated and is in recovery.

UAV operator ‘Black’ was delighted with the concerted efforts that brought back this wounded soldier. “A lot of people were involved, and everything worked out for us,” he said. Importantly, this may be the start of a whole new system of personnel evacuations for wounded and/or stranded soldiers using drone technology, indicated brigade leader ‘Napalm’ toward the end of the video.

A software engineer who’s also into drones and 3D printing has shared a single-motor drone that they built inside their home and tested on their bed. Joshua Bird shared a video of how they created it on YouTube, highlighting the unique technique they used to maintain controllability and stability. The design used a combination of a hinged propeller, rapid changes to the motor’s rotation speed, and a custom flight controller and motor controller firmware that allowed the motor to react to necessary changes in under 0.2 milliseconds.

Most rotary wing aircraft require a mechanism to counteract the torque generated by the motor or engine and to change its flight direction, typically with the use of a swash plate to change rotor disk attitude and a secondary propeller. While this method has been effective for decades, it has made rotary-wing aircraft heavier and more complex. This single-motor drone cut the need for a secondary mechanism by constantly adjusting the speed of the motor — speeding it up produces more reaction torque while slowing it down applies opposite reaction torque. This essentially turns into a balancing act between these two forces to reduce the torque on the drone body to a more manageable level.

The hinged rotor also relies on the same mechanism for directional control instead of relying on a swashplate. Each rotor blade sits on a 45-degree hinge that makes it pivot when the motor accelerates. As this happens, one blade pitches up to produce more lift, while the other blade pitches down, reducing lift. By accelerating and decelerating the motor as needed, Bird would be able to change the drone’s roll and pitch movement. It also combines this with the main rotor torque, motor adjustments, and the 3D-printed stabilizing fins to produce effective yaw control as well.

This was the theoretical part — the majority of the build video focused on fixing issues, including the part where Bird built a high-speed camera using a Sony camera and a flash unit controlled by a microcontroller that gets its signals from the prototype drone’s motor controller and camera shutter. This home-made high-speed camera revealed that the drone’s propellers were too soft and had to be replaced with a 3D-printed version that used sturdier filament.

The creator had to launch several test flights from their bed, many of which resulted in a crashed drone and some wall damage as they fine-tuned the drone’s programming. Bird was eventually able to make the 3D-printed drone fly, although it was limited to the bedroom because of its fixed-base IR beacon navigation method. They said that they eventually want to add a linear camera to the build so that it could take off in other environments in the future.

While other researchers and engineers have built smaller, quieter drones, with China even revealing a mosquito-sized unit, Joshua Bird’s single-motor project is still a unique take on drones. But what made the YouTube video much more interesting is the problem-solving process and the solutions that came afterward. You can check out the complete video below and even start your own similar project by looking at the Single Propeller Drone GitHub repository.

The U.S. Air Force has just successfully conducted an airborne test where an F-22 Raptor pilot directed an Anduril YFQ-44A Fury drone during simulated combat. According to The Defense Watch, the fighter pilot gave tactical commands to the autonomous wingman, which then interpreted them into a series of tasks and flight maneuvers to achieve the desired outcome.

The successful test is part of the USAF’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), which seeks to integrate drones into fighter squadrons. These uncrewed aircraft must be able to respond to the fighter pilot’s tactical commands and then operate autonomously, though. That’s because fighter pilots already have a heavy workload — flying their own aircraft, managing sensor data, threat assessment, and weapons release decisions — so requiring them to manually fly a drone is next to impossible. Command integration means that the F-22 Raptor pilot could assign the Fury drone a specific tactical task, like monitoring for and engaging enemy air defenses, while they focus on the primary mission, such as taking out enemy fighters.

This does not mean that the USAF can start deploying drones alongside fighter jets in frontline squadrons, though. Successful command integration is just the first of several hurdles that the program must go through before it can achieve operational status. The program needs to determine the limits of the drone’s tactical autonomy, safe flight control, and weapons authorization, all of which are separate functions that must be tested accordingly. The Air Force also needs to see how the drone performs with electronic interference, and how it could continuously operate if it cannot receive instructions due to interrupted communications. Aside from figuring out the drone’s capabilities and incorporating it into fighter doctrine, it must also be integrated into the USAF’s logistics and supply chain. This includes drone maintenance and service, weapons handling, deployment procedures, and forward airbase operations with limited infrastructure.

Even though the latest test is seemingly successful, the CCA still needs to go a long way before it can start operational deployment. Nevertheless, the USAF is intent on pushing the project forward, as it sees autonomous drones as a force multiplier for crewed aircraft, allowing a single pilot to command multiple jets to achieve missions at a lower cost compared to using all-crewed aircraft. Other nations, like Sweden and China, are also experimenting with a similar concept of having a single operator take command of multiple drones, but the most significant difference of the CCA is that it focuses on air power instead of ground-based operations.

DJI has delivered a battery-swapping drone dock, the Dock 4, with an automated 25-second swap this week, according to a company press release. The dock bypasses the normal recharging process, which would take about 30 minutes, and DJI promises a turnaround of under 45 seconds from landing to takeoff. The drone-in-a-box solution is the first of its type by the company, although not in the industry, and is aimed at applications like emergency response but is not FCC-authorized or for sale in the U.S.

The company emphasizes the safety angle, pitching the Dock 4 as a “dock-as-a-first-responder (DFR)” solution. Its product page calls it “Always There, Always Ready.” Swapping the battery takes less than half a minute, and the drone is back in the air within 45 seconds of landing. The dock also charges two 925 g battery packs, rated at 260 Wh for 400 cycles, at once, estimated to take 27 minutes to get each from 15% to 95%.

The packs also double as backup power, rated at about 4.5 hours each, in sequence. Additionally, with at least two packs loaded, the dock is able to continue swapping even when grid power is lost, although backup power doesn’t charge the packs. This configuration should enable a drone to handle back-to-back calls even in less-than-ideal circumstances. The new dock, 66 kg bare, also has the same 400 x 400 mm mounting holes as the Dock 3, but it only works with the Matrice 5TD drone and requires the DJI O4 Ground Station.

The Matrice 5TD drone is rated for almost an hour of forward flight, measured from 100% to 0% at 15 m/s and with no payload, with a few minutes less of hover time. It can move at up to 21 m/s, or 47 mph, but only in “FlyTo” tasks. It carries three 50 MP cameras: wide, 70 mm equivalent medium telephoto, and telephoto at 252 mm equivalent, which DJI calls 11x. It also has 1280 x 1024 native thermal and 2560 x 2048 in DJI’s UHR infrared mode, color night vision without a spotlight, and a laser rangefinder up to 3,000 m.

For sensors, it has rotating LiDAR, mmWave radar facing forward, up and down, and six-direction vision, and DJI says it is capable of detecting power lines at night. On-board AI allows for the detection of 17 object types, “such as cars, boats, or animals,” and DJI FlightHub 2 can search the feed by text or image and send alerts. The dock and drone are rated for temperatures from minus 40 degrees to 50 degrees Celsius (minus 40 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit) with IP56 and IP55 ratings, respectively. The drone is rated for winds up to 12 m/s, or about 27 mph.

For payload, the drone carries up to 450 g across three mounts for a speaker, spotlight, and parachute. The previous model, the Dock 3’s Matrice 4TD, has a lower-resolution 640 x 512 thermal camera, a 168 mm telephoto, a shorter 1,800 m laser range, and is only good down to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit). The drone upgrades are nice, but the new dock capabilities are the real selling point, especially for the intended applications. Currently, DJI partners in China are taking orders for a kit with the Dock 4, Matrice 5TD, and O4 Ground Station at 167,999 yuan, or about $25,000, for the hardware alone.

The new dock and drone sound great for other markets, but DJI’s own spec sheet has no FCC figures. This is likely because the FCC added all foreign-made drones and their critical components to its Covered List in December of last year. New models can’t get FCC authorization or be sold in the U.S. unless the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security determines they don’t pose a security risk. DJI sued the commission earlier this year.

A separate FCC proposal published in August could pull previously authorized foreign drones that carry LiDAR or thermal sensors from sale, along with previously authorized docking stations. The FCC’s docket shows no final order on it as of Oct. 17, and the proposal would give sellers 180 days after Federal Register publication to stop importing and marketing covered gear.

Over the past week, Ukraine attacked some of Yandex's biggest data centers, disrupting the operations of various Russian national applications and metropolitan digital services. Russia, which has itself targeted Ukrainian data centers in recent weeks.

Worse yet for Russia, its online disinformation activities appear disrupted by these attacks. Although not as catastrophic as some initial reports claimed, a new report from Cloudflare claims that the bot traffic merely migrated to other hosts.

A new target

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the war has moved through several phases. From the pushback of Russian forces in 2022, to the rapid deployment of FPV drones in 2023, to the mid-range drone strike campaigns both sides have focused on since 2025. Over that time, the targets have changed. Ukrainian supporters published "bingo cards," with various refineries and warehouses listed, often superimposing fire graphics to showcase when they'd been damaged or destroyed.

There are tens of major targets across different industries and networks; there are only a handful of Yandex data centers. Although there is a more expansive list of data centers from other providers that support the Yandex cloud network, most are small, only offering a few megawatts of compute capacity.

Considering that targeting just three of Yandex's facilities brought several key digital services such as shopping and taxi apps to their knees in major Russian cities, it may not take much for Ukraine to severely hamper the modern digital elements of Russia's economy and society at large.

While Ukraine isn't immune to similar attempts at disruption, its already-hardened networks and expansive list of allies make it far more resilient.

Friends in the right places

While overreliance on digital services from American companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon has its own drawbacks, in Ukraine's case, it's been a far more resilient strategy than Russia's. Russian attacks on Ukrainian data centers have caused some disruption, but much of Ukraine's digital infrastructure runs on Amazon's AWS cloud platform. That includes distributed hosting, resilient service structure, and AI integration.

That means that when Russia hits Ukrainian data centers, the services can be quickly migrated to another data center, perhaps located in another country entirely. Amazon has the world to fall back on if necessary. Ukraine also has allies in many other technologically advanced nations that can provide digital infrastructure and expertise, including access to the latest AI cybersecurity models.

In contrast, Russian internet and services are far more inward-facing. It has attempted to cut its population off from the outside world by banning Western services like WhatsApp and Telegram, pushing its citizens towards government-run applications like Max.

As the Russian-version of Google, too, Yandex has its fingers in a similar number of digital pies. It runs online search, mapping, online shopping, cloud storage, ridesharing, food ordering, and more. When its systems are disrupted, services that people have come to rely on in a modern digital economy break down, and there are far fewer alternative options.

Russian allies like North Korea, Belarus, and Iran can't offer much in the way of digital infrastructure support. Even China, which has been aiding Russia throughout the conflict, can't help much here. While it is making strides in building out its compute network for AI infrastructure, it runs a relatively walled-garden form of the internet. Integrating Russian applications with that would be complex and time-consuming.

All of this suggests that if Ukraine continues to hit Russian data centers, there's a real potential that Russian citizens and its military could lose access to digital services that have become ubiquitous in 21st-century life.

The effect that would have on Russian society and its war-fighting goals remains unclear, but it would have an impact.

Russia's AI capacity

Losing its most capable data centers alongside sanctions that prevent it from taking advantage of the AI boom that's buoying many other global economies could severely hamper Russian efforts to modernize its economy.

While the U.S., EU, and China are building out hundreds of billions of dollars worth of data centers to power the next generation of artificial intelligence models, Russia is struggling to hold on to what it's got. With major data centers now in Ukraine's sights, including those scheduled for expansion, Russia could see its digital future wiped away in a matter of months.

With even medium-tier data centers often taking years to build, even with ready access to the hardware to power them, Russia could be on the cusp of falling decades behind its contemporaries.

Bots are Down, But Not That Much

One highly publicized impact of these strikes on Yandex data centers has been a reduction in automated online activity from Russia. While that does appear to have reduced bot traffic slightly, particularly around support for far-right parties, it may not be as impactful as some initial reports claim, as Cloudflare has published a report stating that many of the bots have merely migrated to other hosts, reducing, but not eliminating, the bots themselves.

Journalist Ilya Lozovsky posted a lengthy explanation on Twitter/X about why Russian bots haven't been as disrupted as some have claimed, highlighting that bot activity hasn't fallen off as much as legitimate web crawlers and search functions at Yandex.

But while Russian bots haven't gone dark, there are several reports of reduced online activity among far-right groups, particularly those supporting prominent far-right politicians.

Posts supporting the AFD in Germany don't appear as impacted as initial claims suggested — the chart doing the rounds has clear errors in it, and German tech outlet Rohtext claims online discourse in general went down, rather than specific parties being impacted.

What these strikes have done, though, is highlight a clear and present weakness in Russia's modern society, military, and economy. If Ukraine can continue its strikes against Russian data centers, it may well bring key public services to their knees, as well as cripple Russia's ability to compete in modern digital services beyond the end of this war, further inhibiting the Russian economy in the future.

Ukrainian officials have accused SpaceX of limiting its satellite internet services in the country, disrupting ongoing military and combat drone missions that rely on the technology, according to a Reuters report today, October 14. Presidential adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov said SpaceX has implemented a speed limit on its military-grade Starshield satellite terminals in Ukraine, hindering their operations at speeds above 100 miles per hour (160 km/h).

In a Telegram post on Wednesday, Beskrestnov said Elon Musk's company provided no prior warning before implementing the restriction. “Our defense forces did not receive a warning about this limitation, and this led to the disruption of several missions,” he wrote. The restriction specifically impacts the Starshield terminals in motion. The terminals, which are physically mounted onto mobile platforms such as drones and other military vehicles to provide high-speed, real-time communications during transit, have been crucial in guiding Ukraine's drone strikes that have decimated Russian logistics across occupied southern and eastern Ukraine.

Following the limitation, Ukraine's 7th Rapid Reaction Corps, deployed on the southeastern frontline, confirmed they had to cancel multiple missions. “According to our observations, during flights, the connection could drop for 10–20 seconds at speeds of just 110–120 km/h (68–75 mph). The drones kept moving, but these interruptions made them harder to control,” it told Reuters. Volunteer Serhiy Sternenko, citing military reports, said that the restrictions are tightening further, with connection drops occurring at speeds of just 60–70 km/h (37–43 mph). Sources in the country's defense ministry also stated that the limitation complicates logistics and drone operations.

While SpaceX has not provided a reason for the throttling, Ukrainian officials, including Beskrestnov, believe that the move is intentional, as it coincides with mounting pressure from Washington for Kyiv to halt its long-range drone strikes on Russian oil refineries after U.S. President Donald Trump called for an “energy ceasefire.” Musk posted on X on Saturday that “Zelensky has gone too far.” Ukraine is also striking data centers across Russia. The U.S. has been one of Ukraine's major allies since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, providing billions of dollars worth of direct military assistance. Likewise, Starlink has been indispensable for Ukrainian battlefield communications; shutting it down would devastate the country’s frontline defenses.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian defense tech company Stetman is developing an independent domestic satellite communications system called UASAT-NANO to reduce heavy reliance on SpaceX for military operations.

Russian bot traffic has dropped dramatically in the past few days after Ukraine knocked out Yandex’s biggest data centers, with a third attack happening last night. Cloudflare reports that bot traffic from the Yandex network has dropped to just 0.4% of the maximum number of HTTP requests recorded in the past two weeks. It initially dropped to around 57% on Oct. 8, which happened when Ukraine hit a Yandex data center housing two supercomputers in Sasovo, Russia, located around 195 miles to the southeast of the Kremlin. A second, bigger Yandex campus in Kaluga, about 220 miles to the west of Sasovo, was knocked offline yesterday.

These attacks are apparently Ukraine’s response to Moscow’s strikes on its own data centers, some of which resulted in the outage of some of the most popular piracy websites.

Yandex is Russia’s equivalent to Google, and its Yandex Cloud service status reports that at least 84 services are currently offline. Global internet monitoring firm NetBlocks said that Yandex’s network traffic has dropped to just 30% for Yandex Cloud and 63% for Yandex LLC, most likely resulting in slower internet services or complete disruption for the average Russian. Unfortunately, the ordinary Russian wouldn’t be able to use high-speed satellite internet as a backup, as Starlink does not work in Russia, while the competing Rassvet constellation has had a good number of its existing satellites fall back to the surface after launch.

These incidents are a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which escalated dramatically in 2022 after Russia’s failed attempt to capture Kyiv. However, many observers say that the war actually started in 2014 when Russian forces seized Crimea and occupied parts of eastern Ukraine after the fall of the pro-Russian government that year.

The hostilities, which have dragged on for years, saw the introduction of new technologies and strategies, specifically in drone warfare. It began with the wide deployment of commercially available drones on the front lines, typically for reconnaissance, dropping explosives, and kamikaze-style attacks. However, it has since evolved into long-range warfare, with specially built drones able to reach distances of over 1,500 miles and destroy Tu-95 strategic bombers situated well behind the front lines.

The drone strikes on data centers are relatively new developments. While data centers on bases are often considered valid targets, Russia’s justification for the attacks on civilian data centers was that Ukrainian military intelligence used them. This isn’t the first time that civilian data centers have also been hit by drones and missiles. AWS sites in Bahrain and the UAE have been hit multiple times since Washington started its bombing campaign against Iran, with the company telling its clients to move their data to sites outside the region, as it doesn’t have a recovery timeline.

Hot on the heels of a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian Yandex data center in Sasovo that caused a major outage, a Yandex facility in Kaluga has been struck in a similar fashion. The huge data center was so badly damaged that Russian state media admitted that multiple modules had been removed from service completely.

United24 Media reports that the facility is located in Grabtsevo industrial park and was designed to be the largest Yandex data center in all of Russia. It only entered service in the second half of 2023, lasting three years before this incident.

The Kaluga data center is a sprawling complex that covers around 1.4 million square feet (130,000 square meters). It's so vast that its 63-megawatt power capacity is around 50% higher than some other data centers owned by Yandex. With more than 3,800 server racks, it's perhaps easy to see why it became a target for Ukraine's drone operators. If, of course, the facility was the intended target for the attack — something yet to be confirmed.

As for what all those server racks actually do, it's reported that Yandex's internal services are housed at the facility. It was ultimately built to allow Yandex to expand its cloud offering.

It's as yet unclear how this drone strike is affecting everyday Russians, but the previous Sasovo strike also impacted Yandex Cloud. At the time, users reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market despite Yandex claiming that key services remained up and running.

Russian state media TASS confirmed the severity of the attack, saying that “Several modules of the Yandex data center in Kaluga have been completely taken out of operation as a result of a UAV attack, [Yandex] reports.”

This incident is just the latest in a run of attacks on digital infrastructure both in Russia and Ukraine. Russian missiles struck a Ukrainian facility earlier this month, taking the world's second-largest torrent tracker offline in the process.

Ukrainian drones hit a major Yandex data center in Sasovo, Russia, causing a massive fire and forcing the company to shut down the facility, according to Reuters and Meduza. Many services using Yandex Cloud are down following the attack. The site reportedly houses two of Yandex's three supercomputers used for artificial intelligence development, though it remains unclear whether the systems sustained any damage, as for now their fate is unclear. Russian missiles struck Ukrainian digital infrastructure earlier this month.

The Sasovo facility, one of Yandex's five major data centers, accommodates tens of thousands of servers, including two Nvidia A100-based supercomputers named Chervonenkis and Lyapunov. Chervonenkis, the company's most powerful system, was once ranked as the world's 19^th most powerful supercomputer in the Top 500 list in 2021, but by today's standards its 21.53 FP64 PFLOPS is enough only for the 101^st place in the list. Due to Western sanctions, Yandex can no longer upgrade the system. Both machines have been used to train AI models, including YandexGPT, Russia's leading large language model. Yandex's third supercomputer, Galushkin, is located in Vladimir.

So far, the company has not disclosed whether its supercomputers were affected by the strike, though judging by the massive fire caused by the drone incident, the systems' chances of survival are low. The potential damage to Nvidia-powered computing infrastructure could be extremely painful for Russia's AI industry, which is already constrained by restrictions on exports of advanced AI accelerators and servers to Russia. If the machines are indeed destroyed or damaged, many of its elements may be lost forever, and Yandex will be forced to use Chinese infrastructure for future model training.

The attack also disrupted Yandex Cloud infrastructure, so the company is recommending customers use alternative zones. Although Yandex claims that its key consumer services remained operational, users reported problems with Yandex Mail, Disk, Documents, Pay, and Market. Other affected services reportedly included Cian, Litmarket, Russian Railways, Spartak Moscow, cryptocurrency exchange Rapira, Astral, and the 1C business solutions. Corporate systems operated by T-Bank, Ozon, and Wildberries also experienced disruptions, according to Meduza. A Moscow-region bus operator suspended online ticket sales, while Detector404 registered 58,268 complaints over 24 hours. Many Russian media outlets, including state propaganda RIA Novosti, Vesti, and Interfax, were also down following the attack on 'infrastructure partner,' reports RBC.

It is noteworthy that the Yandex data center occupies former premises of the Sasta machine-tool factory, where Yandex established operations in 2014. Sasta manufactures industrial equipment supplied to various Russian manufacturers, including defense-related enterprises, and is therefore under Western sanctions. Regional authorities reported a fire at an industrial facility following the attack, but it remains unknown whether the intended target was the factory or Yandex's computing infrastructure. Still, no matter the target, Ukraine's sanctions against Russia's economy and military complex seem to be generally more efficient than those imposed by the West.

The incident follows Russian strikes against Ukrainian telecommunications and computing facilities. Since September 23, attacks have damaged or destroyed data centers that belong to at least eight Ukrainian companies, including Virtual Systems, MiroHost, CosmoNova, DataGroup, and CityHost. Among other websites, popular torrent trackers 1337x and NordicQuality temporarily went offline after servers that hosted them were damaged.

Ukraine is consequently moving some digital infrastructure underground, while Russian businesses are discussing deployments in countries considered friendly by Moscow, which is probably limited to just a few states, including China.

Russia’s new Shturm uncrewed tank failed during its debut display at Tsentr-2026, a Russia-led strategic military exercise held from September 28 to October 3, 2026, losing its command-and-control (C2) link and eventually getting stuck in the mud. According to an October 3 Defense Blog post, the tank repeatedly lost its C2 radio link with its separate command vehicle, forcing organizers to abandon remote operations and switch to a human driver-mechanic for a demonstration in front of President Vladimir Putin.

Despite manual human control, the vehicle eventually got stuck in a muddy ditch beside a dirt track, with its tracks and front hull buried in the soil. The Shturm is a Russian heavy robotic, uncrewed assault tank system designed by Uralvagonzavod, a Russian machine-building company and the world’s largest tank manufacturer by output, primarily for urban combat

It is built on modified Soviet-era T-72 and T-90 tank chassis and features a shortened 125mm D-414 main gun, or alternative configurations such as twin 30mm 2A42 automatic cannons and thermobaric rocket launchers. Its defining feature — and the primary source of failure during its debut demonstration — is its control system, which allows the tank to be remotely operated from a separate crewed command vehicle within a radio link range of roughly 3 kilometers. It also has provision for a manual, on-board human driver.

According to Defense Blog, the Russian Defense Ministry initially said on Oct. 2 that Putin had been shown the new uncrewed combat vehicles, and that they provided fire support to assault units during the main stage of the drills. Reports of the failure emerged afterward. The vehicle has “several technical flaws, including an engine compartment and turret roof that are almost unprotected, areas drones most often target when attacking armored vehicles in Ukraine,” according to a Russian armor expert cited by Defense Blog. “The idea of this vehicle seems unsuccessful to me: dependence on a command post that has to be 3 to 4 kilometers away and in direct line of sight. Without proper communications like Starlink, or something similar, there is no point in such a vehicle,” he added. Starlink had earlier blocked russian drones from using its services in the country's ongoing four-year war with Ukraine.

The U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment (2CR), based in Bavaria, Germany, has successfully launched an attack drone it claims is the first the unit has built and flown. According to Stars and Stripes, the soldiers of 2CR, also called Dragoons, used an Orqa MRM2-10 drone that they assembled and fitted with an electronic safety and arming device attached to a 3D-printed casing called “Dragoon bombs.” The explosives in the bomb could also be modified, such as adding ball bearings to target enemy personnel or using a shaped charge to defeat light armor. You can see the drone in action in the video embedded below.

“This is a conventional Army first, potentially an Army-wide first as far as a live, kinetic drone strike conducted without any contractor support (or) any external unit support,” company commander Capt. Michael Bapp said to the publication.

Regiment commander Col. Timothy Price also added, “Today’s success live strike using systems made by our Dragoons, armed by our Dragoons, and executed by our Dragoons, displays that we are adapting what we have on-hand now to meet the threat with a capable and credible force.”

While large UAVs have been used in combat by the U.S. military for decades, the use of small commercial drones for war gained widespread attention after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The cost efficiency and relative availability of these devices helped Ukraine offset Russia’s numerical advantage. Both sides now use drones for tactical and strategic missions, and the military deployment of these systems has even spread to other conflicts and war zones, including those in the Middle East.

All the drone action that played out on the front lines of Ukraine caught the attention of the U.S. military, which is why its various branches have been experimenting with them. The U.S. Army has started a three-week boot camp that trains soldiers in 3D printing and drone piloting, called the Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course, and is building in-house capabilities to build and repair them. Meanwhile, the U.S. Marine Corps has created its own 3D-printed drone with zero China-sourced parts, while the U.S. Navy is bringing containerized drone fabrication aboard aircraft carriers.

It seems that Microsoft has refined the balance between ergonomics and sophisticated control systems with the Xbox controller, as the U.S. Navy has started using Xbox-style controllers for its anti-drone laser systems. According to Interesting Engineering, Xbox-style controllers deliver targeting precision and rapid user inputs, making them ideal for operating the weapons platform. Aside from that, many sailors are already quite familiar with the basic layout of these handheld controllers, making it easier for them to get used to the control method during training.

We don’t have further details about the system, like whether the operators use a wired or wireless controller and whether the Navy uses an off-the-shelf commercial system or has one specially made by a contractor. Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen a controller being used for such a critical system. In fact, the ill-fated Titan submersible used a cheap Logitech F710 game controller as its sole control interface (although the main suspected reason for the tragedy is the design and construction of the vessel).

This weapon that uses an Xbox-style controller isn’t just an experimental system, too. The U.S. Navy has now started deploying them on warships and has reportedly used them against drones and other threats in the Strait of Hormuz. Lasers have previously been used to neutralize drones from land-based systems — for example, the U.S. military used them to disable Mexican cartel drones in late August, while Ukraine has been experimenting with the AI-guided lasers to destroy Shahed suicide drones in mid-2026. Still, this appears to be one of the first instances that an anti-drone laser has been deployed in an active conflict area months after a similar system has been tested on the USS George H.W. Bush supercarrier. The Royal Navy is also installing a similar system on its destroyers, with the UK expecting them to be operational by next year.

Lasers are ideal for counter-drone operations as they are cheaper to operate compared to traditional missiles and close-in weapons systems (CIWS). It’s estimated that a single laser engagement costs around $13 in electricity, compared to the price tag of a typical anti-aircraft missile that could cost anywhere between thousands and millions of dollars. They can also be more cost-effective compared to machine guns and cannons since they don’t rely on conventional ammunition — as long as a vessel has enough electrical power, whether from the massive turbine engines aboard destroyers or the nuclear reactors on U.S. supercarriers, and the system remains serviceable, laser weapons can keep on defending the ship from drones long after it has run out of missiles and ammo.

Several towns and cities in the U.S. are experimenting with Flock’s Drones-as-First-Responder (DFR) system, which employs remotely operated drones that automatically launch from rooftop docks. According to Military.com, these units are integrated into emergency services systems, which can send drones in response to a 911 call, license-plate reader notification, or gunshot-detection alert. Once in the air, these units stream live footage to dispatchers and officers in the field.

Flock initially gained this capability when it purchased drone firm Aerodome, which sells drones with high-definition video, thermal imaging, and other onboard capabilities. It’s also not the only company advertising similar services, with one startup advertising a Starlink-connected first responder drone that lets it operate outside the range of its base station.

Some of the cities that are considering, have run a pilot project, or have signed a contract with Flock for its DFR system include Fort Worth, Texas; Castle Rock, Colorado; Dunwoody, Georgia; Fulton County, Georgia; and Middletown, Connecticut. Fort Worth said that during the two-month pilot program, the drone was deployed to 162 emergency 911 calls, with an average response time of 112 seconds. It was also the first unit to arrive in 76 of these calls and even allowed the authorities to clear 11 of them without needing to send officers to the scene. Furthermore, the city said that these units only respond to calls and do not patrol the skies over Fort Worth, and that the cameras on board their drones are pointed at the horizon until they reach the scene.

The company has recently been surrounded by controversy, especially when it comes to the misuse of its system and the apparent lack of security, despite the company maintaining that it has never suffered a data breach. Despite that, Middletown Police Chief Erik Costa was quoted telling CT Insider, “The drone’s purpose is not surveillance; it’s first response.” He also added that drone footage from the city “would not be shared…outside the building unless there is a search warrant” and that unused video recordings “would be erased within 30 days.”

Other cities have considered and turned down offers to run Flock’s DFR service within their jurisdictions. Berkeley, California, said no to a $2-million proposal that would have expanded its existing license-plate cameras to include drones, more cameras, and software, while Bridgeport, Connecticut, rejected a $500,000 lease for two DFR drones. Even the mayor of Middletown declined to sign the contract despite the city having approved a trial earlier this year. The most common reasons cited for these refusals include privacy concerns and fears that the data gathered in their areas of responsibility could be shared with or accessed by federal authorities without a warrant, even as Flock claims that it does not work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

While emergency responders find DFR and other similar services useful, the primary reason people oppose Flock’s service isn’t the drone units themselves, but the lack of trust in the company and the institutions that use them. So, unless the authorities address the underlying concerns, it’s likely that any type of surveillance — whether strapped to a pole or flying overhead — will always face some kind of resistance from the public.

The U.S. Navy and the British Royal Navy have jointly launched an exercise U.S. Mk 48 heavyweight torpedo from the Royal Navy’s uncrewed drone submarine, XV Excalibur, marking a historic milestone in autonomous warfare. According to an official press release, the proof-of-concept launch took place on September 13 at the British Underwater Test & Evaluation Center (BUTEC) in Scotland.

“This successful test marks a historic first for allied undersea warfare,” said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle. “Proving that we can seamlessly launch a U.S. heavyweight torpedo from a Royal Navy autonomous underwater vehicle validates our shared vision for true interchangeability. By integrating weapons, payloads, and mission architectures across allied platforms, we are increasing the flexibility, scale, and combat power of our combined forces and ensuring they are ready to meet the strategic demands of tomorrow.”

The launch was conducted under AUKUS Pillar 2, a military partnership between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia aimed at developing and accelerating the deployment of cutting-edge, advanced defense technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and autonomous underwater systems, to maintain a strategic technological edge in the Indo-Pacific region. According to the U.S. Navy, the trial validated the mechanical, electrical, and software integration of an American kinetic payload onto a British autonomous platform, proving weapon interchangeability between allied forces.

The project — designated Project Broadsword — received approval in February 2026 from the Department of the Navy Rapid Capabilities Office (DONRCO) and was executed in collaboration with OPNAV N97, the Royal Navy, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Keyport, and several industry partners. From approval to trials took just seven months. In a similar project, the U.S. Navy launched missiles from its first drone sailboat in August.

The Mk 48 is a heavyweight anti-submarine and anti-surface torpedo used by the U.S. Navy and several allied submarine forces. Typically launched from fully manned submarines with crews of 100 to 140 actively involved sailors, the 3,700-pound (1,680 kg) weapon is designed to sink deep-diving submarines and high-performance surface ships. Project Broadsword marks the first time the torpedo has been successfully launched from an uncrewed, autonomous robotic submarine.

The launch machine, XV Excalibur, is the British Royal Navy’s Extra-Large Uncrewed Underwater Vessel (XLUUV), designed to operate autonomously or via remote control without any crew on board. The Royal Navy successfully demonstrated the drone's capability in 2025 by controlling Excalibur in UK waters from a command center 10,000 miles away in Australia. Before the torpedo test, the vessel served as a mobile underwater laboratory for testing cutting-edge technology and future payloads. Because Excalibur lacks traditional internal torpedo tubes, engineers attached the 2-ton torpedo externally using a specialized cradle beneath its hull.

The U.S. Navy confirmed that following the success of Project Broadsword, it will “continue aggressive follow-on acceleration with Project CUTLASS,” in collaboration with its partners. “Utilizing the Anduril Dive-XL platform, the next phase will tackle advanced payload integration data, command and control architectures, and tactical employment scenarios to further mature uncrewed undersea capabilities,” the press release read.

The launch is the latest development in fast-rising autonomous warfare, where militaries deploy systems that can capture and process data and execute tasks — including the use of lethal force — with little to no human intervention. These systems include unmanned aerial, ground, and sea vehicles; weapons; robots; and AI-driven command-and-control systems. Earlier this month, an autonomous NATO strike drone used Nvidia Jetson Orin Nano to independently pick and bomb targets.

The Russian military has started striking data centers within Ukraine in its latest escalation against the country. According to the BBC, a Russian drone hit the data center, which was situated in a central business district in Kyiv, damaging it and killing four people in the area. Multiple reports also suggest that other data centers and network infrastructure have been hit across the country as well, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying that Moscow wants to maximize disruption for the common people.

“All this affects people’s ability to stay connected, study, work,” Zelensky said. He also wrote in a social media post, “The Russians are constantly expanding their escalation operation: American and other businesses, data centers, internet providers — for Russia, all ordinary life is simply a target. It is important that the world responds to all of this and that Russia feels the response to its terror.” Russia, on the other hand, confirmed that it attacked the Datagroup site, claiming that Ukrainian military intelligence used it, and that it’s also targeting other data and telecommunications centers owned by New-Telco, United DC, Kyivstar, and Parkovyi.

These attacks have left about 100,000 households in Ukraine without internet connectivity, and some companies have begun migrating their data across the border to avoid disruption. Nevertheless, one government official said that Ukraine’s internet network is highly decentralized, but people should still expect some local disruptions. However, Ukraine Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Russia’s targeting of data centers would affect the flow of “life-saving information.” “Rapid alerts about missile and drone threats are essential — they save lives. This is crucial civilian infrastructure… It is not a military target,” Sybiha said. “It is essential to keeping everyday life functioning.”

Data centers are considered critical infrastructure as modern society increasingly relies on online services. Because of this, they’re now considered strategic targets in a conflict. While government-owned data processing sites have historically been one of the first targets in military operations, Iran’s response to the U.S.’s bombing campaign in March marked one of the first instances where commercial civilian data center infrastructure was deliberately targeted. This included drone and missile attacks on AWS Middle East regional data centers in Dubai and Bahrain. It also directly threatened the offices of Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and 14 other American tech companies in the region, as well as OpenAI’s Stargate AI data center in Abu Dhabi.+

A team of researchers from The Netherlands’ Delft University of Technology built a lightweight whisker-based tactile sensor that allowed drones to navigate purely by touch. According to TechXplore, the system is designed for tiny autonomous robots weighing under 3.5 ounces or 100 grams, which face challenges in carrying heavy sensors, processors, and power sources, while sensors such as cameras, rangefinders, and LiDAR often have trouble navigating in poor conditions, such as dark environments or dust- and smoke-filled areas.

“Here, we aim to equip drones with rich tactile sensing — not for manipulation in the air, but for a novel concept of tactile navigation: using touch to explore and fly through the unknown,” Associate Professor of Aerial Physical Interaction and Embodied Intelligence Dr. Salua Hamaza told the publication. “But this comes with a challenge: for tactile sensing to work on drones, it needs to be lightweight, low-latency, and low-power. Inspired by nature, we found the answer in whiskers.”

Rodents and other small mammals use vibrissae, more commonly known as whiskers, to navigate in tight and dark spaces with low visibility. So, the team emulated this capability by attaching two whiskers to the front of the drone pointed upwards at an angle, with each one connected to three miniature pressure sensors at the base. As the whisker contacts a surface, the changes in each of the pressure sensors allow the drone to estimate its relative depth and location. The drone can then estimate the surrounding surfaces to avoid obstacles, follow the surface, and even map the area based on what it can feel.

Another challenge with equipping drones with whiskers is that airflow could potentially disrupt the system. So, the researchers built a lightweight, real-time processing pipeline that accounts for these minute changes and gives the whiskers millimetric precision. What’s more interesting is that this program, which can separate turbulence from surface detection, only uses 34 kilobytes of memory. “We wanted to show that touch does not have to come at the cost of size or computational power,” researcher Chaoxiang Ye told TechXplore. “Our entire tactile perception pipeline runs onboard using just 34 kilobytes of memory, allowing a tiny drone to sense and respond to its environment in real time.”

While this lightweight system won’t be useful for the world’s fastest drone, it’s still a great option for tiny drones designed for search-and-rescue operations. Rescue units equipped with these tiny drones could deploy them onsite to explore collapsed structures without endangering people or animals and would even pair well with this 3D-printed cyborg cockroach designed for rescue operations.

Update 10/1/2026 3:00am PT: Scaleout Systems sent a statement to Tom's Hardware to clarify that the demo simulated an airburst and did not drop explosives. The article has been updated accordingly. The company also added, "The team is very clear on the importance of keeping a human in the loop and not deploying systems that remove that oversight. In the demonstration, the drone used onboard AI to search for, detect and prioritise potential targets. A human operator then verified the target and authorised the drone to continue. Once authorised, the drone autonomously navigated to the target’s last known position and carried out its final approach."

Updated article:

Drones built with small, non-frontier computer-vision models autonomously identified and attacked targets in a recent demo, Ars Technica reports. Scaleout Systems, a Swedish AI startup, used a low-cost loitering munition from BAE Systems Bofors to strike a target as part of the Affordable Loitering Modular Ammunition (ALMA) program. BAE’s Winter Demo 2026 had the drone detecting and geolocating targets before ranking an armored engineering vehicle highest, and after a human operator verified the target, flying to it and positioning itself to simulate deploying an airburst munition.

Scaleout’s demo video, “Technical Demo: Onboard Edge Intelligence for Autonomous UAV Missions,” shows the company’s drone spotting potential threats with AI, with all processing handled onboard. Beyond a button press to start the system, manual input is optional; the designated pilot remained a failsafe controller but is optimally used to verify the target. The mission flew under human-set parameters to simulate engaging an armored engineering vehicle and required about 200 seconds of recon, with the full mission completed in under 320 seconds.

The report referred to the munition as a “kamikaze drone,” but the program’s own term, “loitering munition,” is more descriptive. Most of the mission is spent searching, ranking targets, and waiting to strike. The company combines Scaleout Edge and “federated learning” in a “Tactical Computer Vision Network (TCVN).” Devices train AI locally and share model updates for rapid adaptation. Scaleout’s project, FEDAIR, is part of NATO’s DIANA accelerator, receiving 100,000 euros of development funding, training, and test access.

In a February post, Scaleout described a separate “arctic strike demonstration” at BTC Karlskoga, Sweden. The mission was flown at -18 degrees Celsius, about 0 degrees Fahrenheit, in the snow. There, an Airolit S1 airframe ran the YOLOv8 Nano object-detection model on Nvidia’s Jetson Orin Nano. Scaleout claimed a framerate of 30 fps at around 20 m/s, with a target latency of 30 ms or less and about 30 ms sustained in the field. Ranging without a depth sensor is possible using a pinhole camera model combined with known object size.

Scaleout’s follow-up June 30 post, “Resilient Edge AI for ISR: Inside Our Swedish Air Force Demonstration,” spoke of another test with Scaleout Edge “already deployed under an active licence.” The network used two ground nodes under a cloud-hosted Scaleout Edge control plane. The first was ALPHA, a forward-deployed node at the air base with a stable link, and the second BRAVO, a lab node in Uppsala whose connection was first degraded, then cut entirely. BRAVO kept inference and active learning at full frame rate while offline, logging detections locally, then backfilled on reconnect in priority order for heartbeat, critical alerts, drift, model updates, and telemetry. This test mimics the impact of external interference.

The demonstrations, license, and funding come before any official NATO procurement order or actual combat deployment. Concerns about lethal autonomous weapons are being addressed by a UN expert group. Its recent report concluded that human judgment and control are required to comply with the laws of war; its recommendations will be reviewed in Geneva in November. Still, Scaleout’s demonstrations show autonomous target selection running on the airframe, and in the February test it ran on a board hobbyists can buy. Whether BAE Systems Bofors moves ALMA from demonstration to procurement remains to be seen.

While China and Russia rush to build a SpaceX competitor, the UK is taking another route by developing an alternative to satellite internet that relies mostly on aircraft. Its Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is funding 18 projects aimed at building aircraft that will deliver wireless communications to areas in the UK and the rest of the world that are not served by terrestrial networks. According to The Register, the program, called Enduring Atmospheric Platforms, aims to have a unit with a 300-watt communications payload aloft and holding station for a week.

These units are called high-altitude pseudo-satellites (HAPS), with ARIA allocating $94 million over three and a half years for these projects. There are three technical areas in focus at the moment: TA1, which aims to develop the underlying technologies; TA2, which looks into the integration and testing of the developed systems; and TA3, which will concentrate on actual deployment.

Two startups have proposed multiple drone systems that will cover the entire United Kingdom — Carousel, by Menapia, wants to build a constellation that can hover at altitudes of up to 12 miles, while Enduring Drone Networks, by VFP Aerospace, proposes a relay of units that automatically fly back to their ground station for charging and servicing, with a cost of about $67,000 per drone.

Two other proposals suggest wireless power — one is Scalable Laser Ltd, which is working on a laser-based technology that pairs high-power laser diodes on the ground with advanced photovoltaic receivers in the air. On the other hand, Space Solar Engineering Ltd wants to use radio frequencies, like microwave, to deliver power to airborne units. There’s also a more novel approach from the University of Bath, which plans to use atmospheric gravity waves — using the upward movement of air caused by weather fronts and geographical features and the subsequent pull of gravity that brings it back down — to extend the range and endurance of HAPS aircraft.

"This research expands the UK's leadership in high-altitude platforms to become the place where this industry is designed, built, and scaled," says ARIA program director Rico Chandra. "Getting there means backing bold ideas, from fixed-wing solar aircraft to designs nobody predicted, including aircraft that fly on spinning wings instead of propellers."

Following a tip-off from robotaxi firm Waymo, San Francisco police conducted a “high-risk vehicle stop” and arrested two juveniles last week. The crime? The Waymo had seen its two passengers handling a loaded AR-style assault rifle. Police who intercepted the car also found “suspected marijuana and mace spray,” reports SFGate.

Fully autonomous taxi cabs like the Waymo in this story are an increasingly common form of transport seen on the world’s roads. With no human driver, these electric vehicles are packed with sensors, cameras, and more, all tied into the software presence that is called the Waymo Driver. To ensure the utmost safety, the sensors also continually monitor passengers. This might typically check if passengers are following the rules regarding minor transgressions like smoking or not wearing a seatbelt. In this case, the cameras recognized something more serious.

From our understanding of the Waymo in-cabin camera monitoring procedure, humans may review footage when something is flagged by the in-car sensors. That may be how the source report can say that the AR was loaded, or that was a later discovery from the police stop that somehow got attributed to the Waymo phoning home.

According to the source report, this incident took place in the 800 block of 40th Avenue, in the Outer Richmond neighborhood, just before 4am on Thursday, September 3. Alongside a loaded ‘ghost gun,’ the police officers found suspected marijuana and mace. The individuals arrested, a male and a female, can’t be identified in the media due to their age. Reports say the specific charges they face are related to illegally possessing a firearm.

This isn’t the first case of a Waymo telling on its passengers. SFGate previously reported on San Mateo police being called after a pair of 15-year-olds were allegedly drinking alcohol and shooting toy ‘gel blaster’ guns in the taxi cabin.

Waymo robotaxis are now well established in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and some other major cities. Earlier in September, the service branched out into San Diego, Denver, and Tampa, Fla. More and more areas in the U.S. and abroad are giving the autonomous service permission to operate.

Ukraine’s Navy has claimed that it has won “the first-ever battle of unmanned naval boats” (machine translation). Its Sargan 3000 sea drone is shown destroying a Russian MBeK in the Black Sea in a video shared today on the official UA Navy Telegram channel.

In the video, you can see the Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicle (USV) target what is claimed to be a Russian MBek and fire several rounds with its 12.7mm ‘Protector RWS’ automatic turret. The official Telegram bulletin states that the Russian USV was “detected by the GUR units.” We understand GUR is an acronym for the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine's Ministry of Defense.

After taking fire, there is at least one explosion, and then smoke begins to surround the Russian USV. Ukraine must also have had some flying drones in the vicinity, as we have some aerial footage of this historic unmanned naval duel.

Eventually, and we are uncertain how long the battle went on, the video shows the MBeK slipping down to its watery grave. The Russian vessel sank with a characteristic nose dive to the sea floor, perforated like a tea bag.

The Sargan 3000 entered service for the Ukrainian Navy in April 2026. Ahead of this latest headlining feat, the same type of USV hit the headlines for sinking a Russian FSB border patrol ship ‘Izumrud,’ off the coast of the Russian resort town Gelendzhik in mid-July.

Ukraine's unmanned sea drone is a multi-purpose platform, and its multi-payload flexibility appears to have been confirmed by imagery and operator statements. The automatic turret model in today’s video might be somewhat different from how the Izumrud wrecker was equipped, for example. Photos have also shown variants of this USV kitted out with an FPV drone carrier, plus two transport and launch containers, and a remote weapon station.

The Sargan 3000 is thought to be nearly 23 feet (6.9m) in length, has a combat radius of almost 1,000 miles (1,600 km), can carry a payload of up to 990 pounds (450kg), and has a top speed of around 50 knots. Ukraine can produce around 25 Sargan 3000 USVs a month, it is estimated.

The U.S. and UK are also busy developing sea drones. Some are already being tasked with protecting undersea cables and pipelines.

Iran is likely to study and attempt to reverse-engineer a U.S. Navy underwater drone captured by Iranian forces near the Strait of Hormuz, potentially handing Tehran useful technology while delivering a setback for the Pentagon. According to a Reuters report published September 9, the 19-foot Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicle malfunctioned while surveying regional waters before Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps recovered it.

Both the U.S. military and the drone’s manufacturer Anduril quickly moved to downplay the significance of the loss. Analysts cited by Reuters also said the captured drone was unlikely to provide Iran with a decisive military advantage. At the very least, however, the vehicle gives Tehran a propaganda victory and an opportunity to examine American undersea technology as the U.S.-Iran war enters its seventh month.

Tehran already appears to be having a field day with the situation, with Iranian embassies around the world mocking the U.S. for losing the drone. In an X post, Iran’s embassy in Ghana compared its recovery to pulling a plastic bottle from a fishing net, adding that it was “still blinking like an idiot.” Iran's embassy in Hyderabad was even more direct about what might happen next, posting: “Unboxing ceremony by our reverse engineers, tomorrow morning!”

A noticeable gap has emerged between how Anduril markets the Dive-LD and how the U.S. military is now describing the captured vehicle. Anduril promotes the Dive-LD as a highly reliable and adaptable large autonomous underwater vehicle capable of operating for up to 10 days in demanding environments, previously calling the platform the most reliable and flexible autonomous underwater vehicle on the market. The Navy, meanwhile, described the lost vehicle as an older, defective model that “neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment.”

Despite attempts to downplay the incident, Washington has historically taken similar incidents seriously. After Iran recovered an RQ-170 Sentinel stealth reconnaissance drone in 2011, then-President Barack Obama publicly requested its return. Tehran subsequently claimed that it had reverse-engineered the aircraft and unveiled domestic drones apparently influenced by its design. In 2022, the U.S. Navy dispatched a patrol ship and an MH-60S Seahawk helicopter after an Iranian naval vessel attempted to tow away an American Saildrone surface vehicle in the Gulf.

Iran's comical commentary is backed by a genuine ability to extract useful information from captured hardware. Bryan Clark, director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, told Reuters that Iranian engineers “could definitely reverse-engineer the mechanical systems.” However, he was more skeptical about Tehran’s ability to penetrate the software, which reportedly includes defenses intended to frustrate exploitation attempts.

Regardless of any reverse engineering limitations, analysts say Iran will continue to present the incident as evidence of Iranian control around the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. vulnerability there. “This is something that Iran has proven very adept at exploiting for its own benefit in terms of seeking to frame the narrative as one of U.S., in this case, ineptitude and their ability to sort of retain control over the Strait of Hormuz,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The United States and Iran have been at war since Washington launched Operation Epic Fury in late February, with the conflict repeatedly spilling into the technology industry and its supply chains. In April 2026, an Iranian strike halted production at Saudi Arabia’s Jubail petrochemical complex, disrupting supplies of a critical resin used in PCB laminates. Iranian cruise missiles also reportedly struck an Amazon data center in Bahrain in July.

The Trump administration has imposed tariffs of up to 100% on imported drones and their components. This is its latest move in a long-running campaign to reduce reliance on foreign drones and other electronics — especially Chinese — citing national security while bolstering the domestic supply chain. The tariffs came into effect on Thursday, September 3, 21 days after President Donald Trump signed the measure on August 13. Consequently, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published guidance detailing exact filing procedures and tariff rates for the affected drones.

The proclamation categorizes drones by capability, with the 100% rate applying to unmanned aircraft with a maximum takeoff weight above 55 pounds (25kg); any drone with thermal imaging and docking stations; and a defined list of critical components, including static converters, airframe components, and electronic control boards. The White House calls this category “particularly sensitive for natural security purposes.”

A 25% rate applies to smaller drones that lack those capabilities, as well as other components. This system of classification splits many brands into both categories. DJI’s thermal-equipped, public-safety Matrice series, for example, falls into the 100% bracket regardless of its weight, while consumer models such as the Mini and Air series are at 25%. Both rates apply to imports regardless of country of origin, except for specific allied countries. However, they overwhelmingly land squarely on China — home to DJI, which holds more than two-thirds of the global market and supplies the bulk of the drones on US shelves.

Drones and components from the European Union, Japan, Liechtenstein, South Korea, Switzerland, and Taiwan are set at 15%, while those from the United Kingdom are set at 10%, provided that substantially all of the hardware, software, and technology originates in those countries or the United States. The proclamation also phases in the tariff across two component groups. A 25% to 100% rate on finished aircraft, docking stations, and the most sensitive components — power converters, flight-control boards, and the airframe parts used in drones over 25 kilograms — took effect on Sept. 3. For a second, lower-priority group of components — largely the same categories of parts, but produced for smaller consumer and commercial drones — the rate, which is set at 25%, does not take effect until Feb. 9, 2027. The administration framed the 180-day runway as time for importers to shift sourcing.

The tariffs are the latest development in a widening federal effort to push Chinese drones out of the US market on grounds of national security. In December 2025, the Federal Communications Commission added all foreign-made drones and their critical components to its Covered List, blocking new models from the authorization they need to be sold domestically. Last month, the agency moved to retroactively ban previously cleared models it deems "military-grade," including those with LiDAR. That proposal's public-comment window closed September 2, one day before the tariffs took effect. If passed, many of the items affected by the tariffs would be automatically banned. Conversely, if the proposal fails, the tariffs would still apply significant pressure.

The proclamation pairs the duties with incentives meant to rebuild a domestic supply chain, with U.S. makers such as Skydio attracting major investment since the original ban. The onshoring push has also drawn scrutiny for its proximity to the president's family. Donald Trump Jr. has sat on the advisory board of Florida drone-parts maker Unusual Machines since November 2024 and holds a sizable stake. The company's shares climbed sharply after the tariff announcement. Government-ethics groups have flagged the arrangement as at least the appearance of a conflict.

Japan’s military has decided to mass-procure Terra B1 interceptor drones. These drones are fabricated using 3D printers and are based on the tried and tested A1 model from Terra Drone, which began to be deployed by Ukraine earlier this year. A demo of the Terra B1 impressed Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Forces enough to swing the mass-procurement agreement. These interceptors are expected to capably counter notorious drone threats like the Shahed designs and anti-radar loitering munitions such as the IAI Harpy, notes 3D Printing Industry news.

The Japanese Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Agency (ATLA) is the body that rubberstamped the deal with Terra Drone. According to a press release from the latter, the Terra B1 is being mass-produced in Japan after successfully passing trials. It was just one of a range of designs put forward by 38 separate companies. To be chosen by ALTA, the B1 had to satisfy a number of criteria such as “effective range, flight duration, flight distance, maximum and cruising speed, guidance method, number of aircraft that can be controlled simultaneously, launch and recovery methods, integration with other systems, safety measures, [and] operational track record,” says Terra Drone. The first Terra B1 interceptors are expected off the domestic production lines sometime this month.

We witnessed the clamor for cheap and effective anti-drone solutions when the conflict between the U.S. and Iran erupted earlier this year. Gulf states seen as U.S. allies or sympathizers were repeatedly targeted by airborne Iranian threats, but their anti-air missiles weren’t designed to counter such attacks. Patriot missiles, for example, are too expensive and in too short supply to match drone threats 1-to-1. It wasn’t sustainable. It didn’t take long, therefore, for battle-proven Ukrainian anti-drone tech to be bought in.

Now we see Japan proactively following the cheap-yet-effective drone interceptor route. 3D printing is another emerging tech that will be applied here to enable Japan’s Self-Defense Forces “to acquire more effective drone countermeasure equipment with greater speed.” After a successful initial deployment by the Maritime Self-Defense Force, Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force and Ground Self-Defense Force may also look at customizing Terra B1 interceptors for their needs.

This isn't the first example of important synergies between drone and 3D printing technologies. We also recently reported on drones, drone parts, and other maintenance and repair essentials being 3D printed aboard the USS Essex. This was all done inside a compact containerized factory as the ship sailed to take part in RIMPAC 2026 around Hawaii.

The U.S. military shot down three drones that were suspected of operating for Mexican cartels earlier this week. According to CBS News, the uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) were destroyed by an “Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser System” operated by U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning.

"Cartel networks are increasingly employing unmanned aircraft systems to facilitate illicit human-smuggling and actively spy on our personnel and law enforcement partners," Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor, commander of the southern border's Joint Task Force, said in a statement. "By integrating layered countermeasures alongside advanced directed-energy capabilities like this laser system, we have made it clear that we will not tolerate hostile surveillance." It’s unclear if the drones were shot down over American or Mexican airspace, but a military spokesperson told the outlet that they “were taken in coordination with all partners operating along the border.”

This isn’t the first time that a laser weapon has been used to defend American airspace. Back in February, the Pentagon used a similar system after it detected and shot down unknown aerial targets. This resulted in the emergency closure of a major airport, resulting in massive disruptions, and it also turned out that the targets were later reported to be just party balloons. Another incident involving the use of laser weapons happened a couple of weeks later, and it resulted in the shooting down of an actual drone this time. Unfortunately, the targeted drone turned out to be from the Customs and Border Protection unit, not a hostile one operated by the Mexican cartels. The military refused to release further details about the recent drone shoot-downs, citing operational security and ongoing operations, but they’ve hopefully hit the correct targets this time.

The U.S. isn’t alone in deploying drones for protecting its assets and territories. The UK has recently revealed that it’s deploying its DragonFire laser weapon on Royal Navy destroyers by 2027, while China has developed a backpack-sized man-portable anti-drone laser system that can hit targets up to 1,600 feet away. While these systems are expensive to acquire, they’re much cheaper to operate compared to traditional man-portable air defense systems or MANPADS, with each shot costing as little as $13 (versus the thousands to millions of dollars for missiles). This makes them more economically feasible for defending against drones, whose effective use in the battlefield has been made prominent by Ukrainians as they defended against the much larger Russian military. But even if you’re a civilian, you can get your own laser air defense system for around $1,000 and protect your home from flying bugs.

San Francisco defense startup Mara has secured $7 million in a pre-seed round to produce what it calls Spike, a portable counter-drone system housed inside a backpack. The complete system costs $30,000 to $100,000, depending on the number of Seekers included, but its 250g (~8.8 ounces) autonomous interceptors are designed to cost no more than the few-hundred-dollar FPV quadcopters they destroy. Those quadcopters, which carry munitions capable of destroying armored vehicles worth millions, are now reported to be the leading cause of Ukrainian combat casualties.

A single Spike launcher holds up to 48 of the Seeker interceptors and reloads in less than a minute, with each Seeker capable of engaging targets out to roughly one mile, per Mara's published specs. In an exclusive interview, CEO Daniel Kofman told the outlet Tectonic Defense how FPV crews operate on the frontline. "They launch from anywhere at anything, and they never attack one at a time. They always attack four to six at a time in waves, doing pincer strikes in rapid succession or simultaneously."

The system's Spotter targeting unit fuses electro-optical and acoustic sensors with an optional low-emission W-band radar, and Mara says it detects and tracks fiber-optic and fully autonomous drones in all weather, day or night. Radio-frequency jammers and RF-based detectors can't touch either drone type, since neither emits a control signal to find or break.

Kofman says that the Seekers are built to trade at a "one-to-one" or a "worst case, two-to-one" cost ratio against the drones they intercept, with Mara claiming that the interceptor costs 20 times less than the next-cheapest alternative. Fully autonomous, Mara claims the Seekers respond much faster than a human can react to a 100 mph quadcopter, though a human stays in the loop at all times to set rules of engagement and abort launches.

Mara’s system is substantially cheaper than systems like Lockheed Martin's reusable Morfius X-Rotor, which downs swarms with high-power microwaves, but close to the $1,000 3D-printed interceptors Ukraine builds against Shahed-type drones, though those target larger, slower threats than FPV quadcopters.

Mara joined NATO's DIANA accelerator 2026 cohort and holds cooperative research agreements with three unnamed U.S. defense organizations. The company is also running a civilian pilot at a South Korean commercial port. Ukrainian forces have operated Spotter near the front line, where the company says it tracked multiple FPV drones from 40km (~25 miles) back, and Mara has its first paid order from a European NATO partner for an undisclosed exercise.

Ground-mounted Spike units are due to be in customers' hands by the end of 2026, with vehicle-mounted and man-portable variants and scaled production planned for 2027.

The U.S. Navy successfully tested a sail-powered drone in live-fire exercises in the Pacific: the Saildrone Surveyor SD-3001 Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV), which was co-developed with Lockheed Martin to carry lethal combat technology. During the recent Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2026 exercises, the Saildrone launched two combat-proven Joint-Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM) in coordination with the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) Carrier Strike Group. The Saildrone’s use in passive electronic warfare (EW) tasks was also verified during the exercises.

At RIMPAC, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) Carrier Strike Group had access to the Saildrone as a combat asset for the first time. Under the control of ARES, the sea drone successfully launched two lethal JAGM missiles. These missiles feature two independent guidance modes: a semi-active laser and millimeter-wave radar. Combining both, the JAGM can be effective in all weather, including low-visibility maritime environments.

The development of the Saildrone Surveyor SD-3001 USV with JAGM has been remarkably rapid. Work began on the collaborative project back in October 2025, with the partners hoping to “combine Saildrone unmanned surface vehicles with Lockheed Martin’s combat-proven effectors.” Both parts of the equation were operationally proven, yet getting everything working as intended within six months, and then taking part in a successful live-fire demo remains quite an achievement. The goal also required the integration of the USV into the Navy fleet environment so it would work with the Navy’s Adjunct Remote Engagement System (ARES). That’s what was demonstrated at RIMPAC this year.

Another useful function of the long-term, long-range autonomous Saildrone demonstrated at RIMPAC was its EW capability. The sail-sporting drone coordinated its sensors with an MH-60S helicopter to successfully detect, classify, and identify a surrogate threat during the exercises.

Lockheed Martin, Saildrone, and the U.S. Navy have more tests and trials planned for this seafaring USV. Saildrone notes that the “SD-3001 is now well on its way to its next mission.” Meanwhile, work alongside Lockheed Martin continues, with this demonstration claimed to have de-risked larger payload integrations planned for the larger Saildrone Spectre. The Spectre is expected to carry “significantly larger containerized capabilities including the Lockheed Martin Mk 70 launcher and SURTASS Towed Array.”

A Russian Molniya drone carrying an Nvidia Jetson Orin module crashed and killed three civilians at a gas station in Zaporizhzhia last month after choosing its final target without a human pilot, according to a New York Times investigation that cites Ukrainian air defense commanders, drone experts, and the forensic team that examined the wreckage.

Kateryna Bondar, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the paper it's the first documented case of civilian deaths caused by a Russian drone using fully autonomous targeting. The dead were Tetiana Bubynets, a 19-year-old accounting student, and two men aged 41 and 48.

Human operators launched the drone toward the gas station, per the report, but the final aim point was selected onboard by software trained to recognize objects such as propane tanks. The aircraft failed to clear an apartment building on its approach, struck a wall, and detonated near people sheltering below, rather than striking its chosen target.

The strike drone flew in a group of roughly half a dozen aircraft, none of which emitted radio traffic, Ukrainian air defense officials said. Modules recovered from this attack and from intact test drones carried no encryption, so investigators could examine both the terrain imagery loaded for visual navigation and the code specifying which object classes the drone had been trained to attack. "Machines are making decisions to strike," Col. Serhiy Minaiev, Zaporizhzhia's air defense commander, told the NYT. Russia is understood to have begun AI-guided test flights of the mass-produced, fixed-wing Molniya in May, after months of self-targeting trials with the V2U.

Nvidia confirmed to the New York Times that modules photographed in the recovered drones were Jetson Orin minicomputers, hardware that sells for a few hundred dollars. "Our Jetson Orin modules are consumer-grade products sold to students, developers, and startups for a wide range of beneficial applications," an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "They are not available in Russia and are not designed for military purposes. Pre-owned Jetsons are available through many reseller channels. Although we cannot track products after they are sold, if we determine that any customer is violating U.S. export controls, we will take appropriate action."

Ukrainian investigators have now linked the Jetson Orin to four Russian weapon families. A teardown by Ukraine's GUR intelligence agency last June found one seated on a Chinese Leetop A603 carrier board inside the V2U loitering munition, in combat use since February 2025. Weeks later, a Ukrainian general said the module powered object recognition in the upgraded Shahed MS001, and earlier this month Ukraine reported the same silicon in the S-71M Monochrome cruise missile. Data-center AI accelerators fall under U.S. export controls; edge modules like the Jetson Orin, with variants starting at $249, don't.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's recently ousted defense minister, told the NYT that Kyiv tested its own fully autonomous system against fuel storage and military equipment in occupied Crimea in recent months, and Ukrainian quadcopters killed Russian soldiers in autonomous mode as far back as 2024. In Zaporizhzhia, defenses now include roughly 240 miles of anti-drone netting and plastic sheeting propped at odd angles around propane tanks to throw off image recognition.

The U.S. Army tested an autonomous breaching vehicle with an onboard counter-UAS (C-UAS) turret during a live-fire exercise at Fort Bragg on August 18. As part of Project Sandhills 2.0, self-driving Ford F-250 trucks were put through their paces, some armed with computer-controlled drone-killing shotgun turrets.

Sandhills 2.0 builds on the original Sandhills project which spawned the Lancer UGV, built on the Polaris Ranger 1500 utility vehicle, which ended up being gifted to Ukraine. However, this new breaching solution adds C-UAS abilities to bolster their abilities to clear the way for human soldiers to advance. Breaching operations can be seriously compromised by a determined enemy using increasingly common FPV drone technology and this fact inspired the changes delivered in Sandhills 2.0.

The vehicle chosen for Sandhills 2.0 was a self‑driving Ford F‑250 truck, equipped with Forterra’s AutoDrive system. Ford’s readily available spares should make the F-250-based system easier to maintain and repair, reckons Forterra’s VP of defense. That is another important factor the designers weighed, for this latest iteration of a viable U.S. Army autonomous breaching vehicle.

Meanwhile, the Edda counter-unmanned aircraft system turret (built by Austin-based 9 Mothers) takes care of fast-moving drone threats of 7-inch diameter or larger, at ranges between 10 to 100m (33 to 328 feet). The source report notes that the turret weighs around 23kg (50 pounds).

Interestingly, the turret first detects incoming drones acoustically before an onboard visual tracking system locks on. This methodology prevents the F-250-based system from being easily detectable by advanced enemy drone sensors, suggests the source report. Finally the shotgun-armed Edda engages the enemy drone. According to 9 Mothers published data the Edda turret is an “ultra-fast, ultra-light, ultra-accurate motion platform — 5° in under 15 ms at 1.5 arcminute precision.” We would welcome some test data, though – like what percent of drones get destroyed in one shot, the maximum speed of drones that Edda can engage, or how many drones it can handle per minute.

HoverAir has pulled the Flight Kit for its Versa camera drone from U.S. buyers on its Indiegogo campaign three days after it opened on August 19, telling backers that "due to a few remaining logistics updates with the Flight Kit, we're currently only shipping our PocketOnly and PocketCombo combos to the US." In a statement to DroneXL, however, the FCC says the authorization "was granted erroneously," the device is "a prohibited UAS critical component produced in a foreign country," and the company was "apparently willfully violating" the law.

The Versa, a 230g pocket gimbal camera that snaps into a separate propeller chassis to fly, raised more than $230,000 in its debut, thanks to a U.S. certification that HoverAir said let it dodge the ban that's kept DJI's newest models out of the country. The device's FCC ID has since disappeared from the commission's equipment database, according to The Verge, which said HoverAir declined to comment.

The FCC granted ID 2AIDW-ZZ-H-1-006 to Shenzhen Zero Zero Infinity Technology, the HoverAir parent's grantee entity, earlier this month for the Versa as a camera rather than a drone. The Flight Kit carries the motors and props but no radio, drawing power and telemetry from the camera through pogo pins, meaning it never needed its own FCC ID.

HoverAir announced the certification on August 18 and priced the camera at $449 early bird, with Flight Kit bundles starting around $630 and shipping slated for October. By August 21, U.S. visitors to the Indiegogo page couldn't see the Flight Kit tiers while Canadian visitors still could, and backers received an email attributing the change to "a few remaining logistics updates with the Flight Kit."

The December 2025 Covered List order that barred new authorizations for foreign-made drones also covers "UAS critical components," which the FCC's public notice DA 25-1086 defines to include flight controllers, navigation systems, batteries, motors, and "sensors and cameras," with the list marked as not exhaustive. A camera built to bolt onto a propeller frame satisfies that definition regardless of which product category it's certified under, and the FCC said it's now "sending guidance to all Telecommunications Certification Bodies to strengthen their due diligence of applications." The commission outsources equipment authorization to those private labs, which is likely how the Versa grant slipped through the cracks.

The only exemptions issued so far were approved back in January and cover Blue UAS-listed aircraft and components that qualify as domestic end products. Neither applies to a Chinese consumer camera; DJI is challenging the underlying order in court.

HoverAir's previous crowdfunder, the waterproof Aqua, raised more than $2 million from over 1,800 Indiegogo backers in August last year but missed the December deadline after the October government shutdown slowed FCC processing. It launched in more than 50 countries in May without the U.S., with American backers offered refunds.

The Versa is still listed with the Flight Kit in other markets, and U.S. backers can still take the camera-only tiers, though the FCC's statement that even the camera is a prohibited component casts doubt on that option. HoverAir is due to show the Versa at IFA in Berlin on September 3, with retail availability planned for fall.

Meteoric, a startup by two engineers from the University of Cambridge and backed by Y Combinator, plans to build drones that will autonomously fly inside low- and mid-altitude clouds near solar farms to dissipate them and help keep power production in optimum conditions. According to Mete Karslioglu, Meteoric’s CEO, these drones will mechanically alter the water droplets inside clouds that cover solar farms, reducing their reflectivity and increasing the amount of sunlight that hits the panels below.

“Low and mid-level overcast clouds cut incoming sunlight by 73–82% while they’re overhead. We recover that without building new infrastructure,” Karslioglu wrote in their Y Combinator post. “Fleets of 10s-100s of autonomous drones that fly into low and mid-altitude clouds (1–5 km) over a solar farm and alter the water droplets that form them without using any chemicals. This reduces their reflectivity and brings back measurable amounts of sunlight to the panels below. Our cloud-loss model shows that this process can increase annual generation from existing assets by 10-30% across major U.S. grid regions, worth ~$5,000-28,000/MW, without building any new infrastructure.” They also added, “Our ultimate goal is to reduce the intensity of severe storms and hurricanes.”

It’s unclear what method the startup will use to help dissipate clouds, but it claims to have a working prototype that dissipated an artificial cloud by 13% in cloud-chamber tests. Techniques to dissipate fog and low clouds already exist, like dispersing solid or liquid carbon dioxide inside them to make the floating water droplets grow bigger and encourage them to fall from the sky, or through mechanical mixing, such as flying a helicopter through saturated air in order to mix them with drier air and make it easier for the water vapor to evaporate. However, Meteoric said that these methods are expensive, with aircraft operations costing $2,000 per hour or more. On the other hand, its electric drones would only cost $30 to $60 an hour, making its operations significantly cheaper.

This is a unique approach to one of the biggest problems of solar power, where changing weather patterns and the day/night cycle greatly reduce their output. Other institutions, both startups and tech giants, are also looking for ways to solve this. For example, Reflect Orbital proposes launching an orbital mirror to reflect sunlight in various areas to extend daylight, while Meta plans to put solar collecting satellites in geosynchronous orbit and then beam the sunlight to collectors on the ground below.

Now, the startup’s premise looks promising for localized applications, like solar plant deployments. However, its dream of scaling up to impact storms and hurricanes raises some questions. The World Meteorological Organization says that the amounts of energy involved in weather systems are so massive that it’s impossible to alter or eliminate severe weather phenomena. “Weather modification technologies that claim to achieve such large-scale or dramatic effects do not have a sound scientific basis and should be treated with suspicion,” the group said. There’s also the concern that modifying weather conditions, even locally, might have unintended consequences on the local ecosystem. Nevertheless, Meteoric’s plan to increase solar output by cutting cloud cover might be interesting for solar operators looking to maximize the production of their plants.

On the same week that Amazon announced plans to expand its Prime Air Delivery service to 500 more cities and towns across the U.S., a video filmed by a Texas woman has surfaced, documenting the moment one of the company's delivery drones unceremoniously dumped a package straight into her swimming pool. The viral video was filmed after Lindsey Austen heard her drone buzzing loudly and ran outside to record it.

As you can see from the footage below, shared by ABC 7 News, the Texas Amazon customer was excited to receive her first drone-delivered order. "After hearing the loud buzzing of the drone arriving, she ran outside to record the delivery," the caption states. The painfully amusing footage shows the drone, humming loudly as it hovers over the woman's pool. The woman repeats "Oh my God" in anticipation, before yelling "Oh ****," as the autonomous robot opens its door and drops the package into the pool.

As mentioned, on Wednesday, Amazon announced it would expand Prime Air to nearly 500 cities and towns in the United States by the end of 2026, a 6x increase that will reportedly benefit tens of millions of customers. According to Amazon, its drone delivery selection includes millions of groceries, electronics, cosmetics, medications, and household products, which can be delivered in as little as 30 minutes.

Amazon already serves seven states with Prime Air, including the aforementioned Texas, where the unfortunate pool party took place. According to Amazon, Prime Air "is built to operate responsibly, and the safety of the employees, customers, and communities Amazon serves is the top priority." Its delivery service holds Federal Aviation Administration Part 135 certification, and "multiple independent systems" keep the drones "operating safely and predictably" while in flight, even in unexpected situations, Amazon claims. "Prime Air’s industry-leading Detect-and-Avoid system continuously monitors the airspace and environment around the drone. It’s similar to a trained pilot who scans the surrounding airspace, and it allows the drones to independently see and make real-time decisions while in flight," the company continues.

Adding to the irony, Amazon says that Prime Air drones use onboard cameras and sensors to navigate, check for obstacles, and deliver packages safely. Certainly, nothing unsafe happened in the video; the package fell harmlessly into the water, with no bystanders around to be struck. Likewise, in the video, the drone doesn't collide with any obstacles, but clearly, some malfunction in the final moments of delivery convinced the drone that simply dropping the package in the swimming pool was a good idea.

A drone that destroyed a Tupolev Tu-95MS strategic bomber at Russia's Engels-2 air base last month turns out to be a MICH 2000, a reverse-engineered copy of a Chinese aircraft Beijing refused to sell to Ukraine, according to a factory report from defense outlet Oboronka. Built by an unnamed manufacturer exclusively for the SBU's 'Alpha' special operations center, the flying-wing drone carries up to a 60 kg warhead as far as 2,000 km and costs $48,000 in its base configuration, $2,000 less than the Chinese ZTK-150 it was copied from. It’s understood that Ukrainian developers covertly photographed the Chinese production line while attending pilot training there in late 2023.

China restricted exports of civilian drones in the summer of 2023 after Ukrainian units converted airframes like the Mugin-5 PRO into deep-strike munitions. A Ukrainian development team traveled to a Chinese factory late that year, found ZTK-150s in production, and negotiated to buy the manufacturing technology, but the factory's management blocked the sale.

Intermediaries offered pilot training instead, and the team accepted. "In parallel with the training, we photographed everything that was there," one team member, whom Oboronka didn't name, said in the report, which was cleared in advance by the manufacturer and the SBU. The team flew home with eight drones.

The first Ukrainian-built prototype crashed 1 km into its maiden flight in the summer of 2024, and Russian electronic warfare downed the third test aircraft. In the type's first combat sortie that October, one of three drones was shot down and the other two fell roughly 10 meters short. Yet, Alpha ordered production anyway.

Almost nothing of the ZTK-150 remains in the current MICH 2000 beyond its outline, the manufacturer told Oboronka. Two years of work localized engines, warheads, fuselages, and rocket boosters across dozens of Ukrainian suppliers, putting domestic content at 85% of the drone's value. Fitting a jam-resistant CRPA navigation antenna, however, cuts that to 55%, because the antennas cost $20,000 to $25,000 depending on module count and only a handful of companies worldwide make them. Ukraine has been chasing jam-resistant navigation across its strike drone fleet since at least 2025.

The company builds around 6,000 drones a year across eight versions, with buyers choosing analog, digital, or Starlink communications, and reinvests roughly $1 million a month in R&D while scaling toward 10,000 units annually. Fire Point, maker of the FP-1 that flew 2,500 km to hit Russia's largest refinery, targets 100,000 drones a year, though the FP-1 serves many units and the MICH 2000 has one customer.

Alpha has launched thousands of MICH 2000s at hundreds of targets, per the manufacturer, including a Wildberries logistics hub in Ryazan oblast, an anti-Starlink electronic warfare system near Gelendzhik, and the port of Ust-Luga, where one raid put more than 20 drones over the target. The SBU said the Engels-2 strike tore the tail section off the Tu-95MS, and satellite imagery later confirmed the bomber's destruction. A successor called MICH+ drops the type's forward canards and pairs a 70 kg warhead with a 600 km range at a target price near $40,000.

A research team from Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Microbiorobotic Systems Laboratory (MICROBS) has developed a “sound-powered engine” that uses the resonant frequency of a specially shaped 3D-printed cavity to “energize” the air inside it and use it for thrust. The researchers then 3D-printed two small drones that were propelled by sound.

Sound waves at specific frequencies made the air molecules in these objects oscillate much more strongly and are then pushed out a specially designed nozzle as a concentrated jet.

“Instead of pushing devices around with sound waves, we have created acoustic resonators that are tuned to harness sound at specific frequencies to generate directional thrust and controlled motion,” MICROBS head Selman Sakar told the publication. “Our work shows the feasibility of transforming a simple, cleverly designed mechanical piece into robot matter.”

The team has created three practical applications of the “engine.” One is a boat that used three resonators — one placed at the rear of the boat and tuned to 540 Hz for propulsion and two on either side for navigation — while the other two are microfliers or tiny flying machines powered by ultrasonic frequencies.

The first microflier has three cavities, all facing downward, allowing it to lift off the ground like a rocket. The second flier has three blades connected at a central point, like the rotor of a helicopter, with the base of each blade equipped with a resonator pointing backward. When the resonators are hit with the exact frequency that drives them, they deliver thrust that allows them to rotate at over 12,000 rpm and cause the entire thing to hover. Note that ultrasonic frequencies are inaudible to humans, meaning these devices can hover practically noiselessly.

While not exactly the same as xMEMS’ fan-on-a-chip cooling solution, it follows the same principle of using vibrating air molecules to cause airflow. The biggest difference here is that the fan-on-a-chip uses an ultrasonic piezoelectric membrane to excite the air and cause it to move to a desired direction, while the “sound-powered engine” uses a specific cavity shape and resonant frequencies to achieve the same effect.

Even though the team has successfully used it for experiments, the microfliers’ maximum altitude is less than 5mm while the boat weighed next to nothing. Nevertheless, now that they’ve proven that the concept works, the next step is to scale it up to carry payload. If they can make it work, it could potentially be used as propulsion for a micro-drone, like this mosquito-sized unit from China.

The 3rd Brigade Combat Team (3rd BCT) of the 1st Cavalry Division took part in the semi-annual Combined Resolve exercise in Germany, where it faced off with a dedicated U.S. Army OPFOR (opposing force) unit augmented by the 412th Unmanned Systems Brigade, better known as 412 Nemesis, an elite multidomain Ukrainian unit primarily operating drones. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 3,500-strong unit, which was tasked to attack the OPFOR, had many of its tanks and other armored vehicles eliminated during the simulated engagements.

The 3rd BCT is quite a powerful unit, and has been traditionally equipped with M1 Abrams tanks, M2 and M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, M109 Paladin Howitzers, and more. It also had standard electronic warfare and counter-drone operators to protect its vehicles against new threats. But despite the impressive armor and firepower of its equipment and the additional protection of its own specialized anti-drone troops, the 3rd BCT still didn’t stand a chance against the small and nimble drones of 412 Nemesis. It turned out that the biggest assets of the 3rd BCT are its biggest weakness. As the heavy vehicles maneuvered around the battlefield, they threw up plumes of dust that made them easy to spot by Ukrainian recon drones. From there, the UAV operators of 412 Nemesis turned these metal predators into sitting ducks as they either dropped bombs or explosives from loitering attack drones or used first-person-view (FPV) drones to smash directly into their targets.

Since this is an exercise, there were no actual losses — instead, damaged or destroyed tanks are marked by an attack drone hovering above them. Once an observer has awarded an official “kill,” the vehicle is sent back to the rear to “respawn” and continue the war game.

The WSJ noted that the U.S. pioneered the use of UAVs on the battlefield and often used them for reconnaissance and even long-range strikes. Even today, the U.S. Navy is developing an aerial refueling drone to release more important assets like the F/A-18 Super Hornet from mundane (but important) duties like air-to-air refueling. However, the Ukrainians have mastered the use of short-range drone warfare as they defended their country from the 2022 Russian invasion. The war has been going on for over four years now, and Ukraine’s successful use of drones has helped them hold off the Russians from pushing further into the country. Aside from using drones tactically on the front lines, Ukraine has also started deploying them strategically, conducting strikes deep into Russian territory and targeting gasoline infrastructure in Siberia, more than 1,500 miles (2,500km) from its launch site.

The experience of most units in American and NATO armed forces have been against poorly armed (but still dangerous) insurgents, so exercises like these are crucial for them to keep their edge. Even though the 3rd BCT was “decimated” in its initial engagements against the OPFOR and the 412 Nemesis, its performance gradually improved, and its troopers have become more proficient in dispersing their units to make them harder to target, as well as cover and concealment, making it harder for reconnaissance drones to spot them from afar.

While a few argue that drone warfare has made tanks obsolete, some officers in the U.S. military argue that this is only true if the situation has devolved into a stalemate, like the current situation on the Ukrainian front lines. If a gap in the lines appears and either side wants to exploit it, mobile warfare would still require the combined effort of tanks, armored vehicles, mobile artillery, helicopter support, and infantry. However, Ukrainian commanders disagree, saying that, in their experience, drones have made maneuver warfare unfeasible, at least for now.

Nations across the world recognize the threat that drones have to their forces, too. So, even as they build their own drone units, they’re also trying to develop effective counters to them, like this microwave system from Lockheed Martin or China’s man-portable anti-drone laser. If these devices make it to the front line and prove to be effective against drone attacks, they could potentially change the equilibrium and give one side an advantage over the other.

During a two-week transit to RIMPAC 2026 in Hawaii, a containerized factory aboard the USS Essex 3D printed a dozen flight-ready drones, as well as over 1,000 parts including vital spares for Apache helicopters. 3D Printing Industry reports that this was the first maritime run of the xCell expeditionary manufacturing platform from Firestorm Labs. Furthermore, production wasn’t halted by the rough seas and up to 12 ft waves endured during the journey.

In Firestorm’s words, this additive manufacturing milestone using the xCell platform “just proved expeditionary manufacturing works in real conditions.” The 3D printers on board produced a plethora of useful things during the journey, on demand.

xCell’s containerized production line takes up just two expandable 20-foot ISO containers, or a single 40-foot equivalent. Inside are industrial HP Multi Jet Fusion polymer printers alongside semi-automated assembly stations.

Our headlining pick from the range of products that were manufactured at sea was the twelve quadcopter drones. These were Squall FPV drones, one of Firestorm Labs’ key products. The NDAA-compliant Squall is designed for U.S. forces to “Print. Build. Fly. Dominate.”

Squall has a range of up to 20 miles, a flight time of up to 42 minutes, a top speed of 80 mph, and can carry a 5.5-pound payload. These same drones were flown as adversary aircraft in a counter-UAS exercise when the USS Essex arrived at RIMPAC.

Drones might be the most newsworthy output from xCell, but other essentials that the crew printed en route to Hawaii included printed Apache helicopter rotor droop‑stops, designed to prevent $500,000 rotor damage during at‑sea operations. Another spare part highlighted by the source that was needed during the exercises was a 3D-printed custom vacuum‑hose coupling for life preserver testing.

Making up the 1,000+ 3D-printed parts and spares were crew-requested gadgets and gizmos like covers for electrical fittings, a bracket for mounting Starlink, gauges for checking deck tie-downs, and lots more. “Every part xCell printed on deck is one that doesn't need to be flown or shipped across contested waters — cutting the fuel, aircraft hours, and personnel it takes to keep a ship operational,” boasted Firestorm on social media. “Repairs that once meant days or weeks waiting on a resupply run can now happen in hours, on station.”

U.S. aerospace, defense and security giant Northrop Grumman thinks it has a solution that will provide short-range, layered air defense against the increasingly complex aerial threats we see in modern war. The new Raid Hunter uses the firm’s Chain Gun technology to defend targets from cruise missiles, drone swarms and other evolving threats. It thus addresses an area identified as a “critical short-range air defense gap.” Furthermore, the modular Raid Hunter can be rapidly deployed on the C-130 and other vehicles, with networking enabling sensor fusion and coordinated engagements.

We have seen in Ukraine, and more recently in the Middle East, that modern air defense systems are struggling with high-volume drone swarms and low-flying cruise missiles. The sheer amount of aerial threats is overwhelming defense systems that have traditionally been designed to knock out warplanes and cruise missiles. Moreover, expensive anti-air missiles such as the Patriot system seem inappropriate and imbalanced for stopping far cheaper and more numerous drones.

“War has evolved. Air Defenders need the ability to defend against large, complex raids designed to overwhelm traditional defense solutions,” said Kenn Todorov, VP and GM, command and control & weapons integration, at Northrop Grumman. This is the perceived gap Northrop Grumman hopes the Raid Hunter will fill.

Now that we have spelled out clearly what it is for, let’s look more closely at the Raid Hunter. Central to its proposed task is what Northrop Grumman calls its “proven Chain Gun technology, [and] precision‑guided 50mm ammunition.” This large-caliber and high-rate-of-fire gun is cost-effective, can be equipped with deep magazines, with fast reloads. It addresses “the economic challenge of massed swarming threats,” asserts the defense firm.

Raid Hunter is also easy to get into position, or move out of harm’s way, as a palletized modular design that can be vehicle-mounted or containerized.

This new counter-UAS solution’s abilities scale well, too. Northrop Grumman indicates that multiple Raid Hunter deployments can work as an integrated system in a networked, interoperable way. It also integrates with layered defense architectures – including other air and missile defense systems - to protect critical assets across a range of operations.

Tests of the Raid Hunter are going to continue this year to validate its counter-UAS and air defense capabilities. It is hoped that the tests will support accelerated fielding of these air defense systems.

The Trump administration has announced new tariffs on foreign-made drones and their components, according to the Financial Times. The move is said to secure domestic supply chains and curb reliance on foreign technology, particularly from China. The new duties target both commercial and unmanned aerial systems, signaling a major push in the tech trade war. The administration justified the newly introduced tariffs on the grounds of national security under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that import penetration is “substantial" and the US is "too reliant" on foreign drone producers.

According to the report, the White House will slap a 100% tariff on sensitive foreign drones, specifically those weighing over 25 kilograms or equipped with thermal imaging capabilities. Smaller, non-sensitive drones having a maximum take-off weight of 25kg will face a 25% import duty. To ease the transition, Washington is offering lower tariff rates for close allies. Drones from the European Union, Japan, Switzerland, and Taiwan will face a 15% tariff, while the United Kingdom is subject to a 10% rate, provided the hardware and technology originate in those locations or the US.

The regulation comes as the White House separately accused more than 40 countries of actively helping Beijing circumvent US tariffs by rerouting products through third-party nations. According to Craig Singleton, a US-China technology competition expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “It still primarily targets China, but it’s designed to stop supply-chain laundering." This allowed US companies to import and assemble millions of Chinese drone components like motors, rotors, and frames.

The tariffs are expected to force US commercial and government agencies into an immediate, capital-intensive pivot towards domestic or allied suppliers. Notably, US drone manufacturers, including AeroVironment Inc., Aevex Corp., and Unusual Machines Inc., saw their stock prices surge in post-market trading following the announcement.

Back in December 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had announced a sweeping ban on new drones and critical components produced in foreign countries. This included products from Chinese manufacturers such as DJI and Autel Robotics. The decision followed a White House national security determination that foreign-made unmanned aircraft systems could pose risks related to surveillance, data exfiltration, and potential disruptions.

Reducing (or completely eliminating) the charge time for drones has been a continual area of research, with some advancements, such as quantum batteries showcased earlier this year, showing a lot of promise. Researchers at the Civil Aviation University of China have made a major breakthrough in laser-based OTA (Over The Air) charging that can convert energy at 38.94% efficiency.

According to a study published in Matter & Light, scientists from the Civil Aviation University of China are testing a lightweight receiver that can harvest energy from a laser beam sent from the ground. The system uses a perovskite laser cell-thermoelectric (PLC-TE) tandem device, which combines two methods of generating electricity. The perovskite layer converts laser energy into electricity, while the thermoelectric layer recovers some of the resulting heat and turns it into additional power. Its output increases as the temperature difference between the laser-facing side and the cooler side grows.

The major challenge with this setup is that intense laser beams heat up the receivers to a blistering 80 to 90 degrees Celsius, degrading efficiency and causing damage to the aircraft itself. “That was much higher than we expected and made us realize that heat buildup was a far more serious problem than we had imagined,” explained Jianhua Han, the study's senior author.

To overcome this challenge, Han's team added special nanocrystals to the receiver. As the nanocrystals are poor heat conductors, it allows them to act as a thermal barrier and protect the perovskite and thermoelectric layers. The team also added air channels to the drone's wings. As the propellers spin, airflow passes through these channels and carries excess heat away, helping to keep the system cool. The combination of nanomaterials and aerodynamic cooling resulted in a respectable 38.49% energy conversion efficiency during testing, which is one of the highest reported for this class of technology.

While the system is yet to undergo outdoor flight tests, this breakthrough alone is a significant step toward practical continuous flight for drones. As Han noted, going from 1 to 100 will require solving complex tracking and safety challenges, but this research establishes an important starting point for the future of drones and UAVs.

HoverAir, makers of self-flying selfie drones, have just unveiled the HoverAir Versa, combining their existing aerial expertise with the convenience of a pocket camera. At its core, the Versa is a high-end stabilized pocket gimbal camera, like the DJI Osmo, but it can magnetically snap onto a drone body and transform into a cinematic selfie drone. It's designed to tackle two different product categories simultaneously, but with the same goal of making it as easy as possible to film yourself (or others).

The Versa is actually HoverAir's first-ever pocket camera. It features a three-axis gimbal, which means it can adjust for tilt, yawn, and pitch to make sure your footage turns out stable. Compared to other options on the market, no pocket camera offers more than two-axis stabilization. It has a rotating screen and the accompanying controls for the camera, along with RGB accent lighting that also works as a status indicator. Overall, it looks like a pretty run-of-the-mill, well-made pocket camera.

But the magic happens when you bring out the wings. A small, foldable drone body can magnetically attach to the camera unit via pogo pins located at the back of the device. Once connected, you just unfold the wings, gently tap the top, and it takes off right from your palm. There is no external controller needed because the device uses AI to track and follow you automatically. It has 10+ intelligent modes that can film you from any direction with AI-assisted framing, along with a neat 360° feature as well.

In this mode, called 3D Worlds, the drone flies around to snap pictures of the scene from different angles and composites them into a single 360° scene that can be explored and shared later. Technically, this would be the third audience the Versa is trying to cater to — the Insta360 crowd, though that's real-time 360° video recording that you can also generously manipulate in post, so not exactly comparable. Still, it's a neat trick, and we'll have to see how well HoverAir implements it.

We don't have a price or release date; just a bunch of teasers so far that say it's coming soon. As such, specs are also up in the air, but the company is touting class-leading performance with the best dynamic range in the category. From the promotional material, we can infer that it has a large lens, and the drone body looks very compact. If HoverAir's previous selfie drones are anything to go by, the Versa could have support for up to 8K video in 10-bit Log or HLG, along with rapid flying speeds of up to 45 km/h.

The test footage on HoverAir's website and the video we attached above look really impressive. The ingenuity of the concept warrants both excitement and skepticism, but it's undeniable that the Versa kind of feels magical. Nothing like it exists in the market today, and if the company can already ship excellent selfie drones like the X1 series, and pocket cameras aren't exactly rocket science, it stands to reason that harmonizing the two together is the only challenge for the Versa.

K3 Scout surveillance drones used by the UK’s Royal Navy contain components that have been secretly transmitting data to China, according to reports. The Telegraph’s revelations suggest that the sea drones include a camera component that would send the data to China. However, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) says that it has removed all internet connectivity from the cameras after discovering the breach. The transmitted data was also limited in scope, insists the MoD, which characterized the transmissions as “heartbeat communications” to simply verify the device is online and working normally.

Western governments have been seeking to minimize the ingress of Chinese technology into sensitive and critical infrastructure for some years now. The pushback started with investigations into rising telecom brands like Huawei and ZTE, which became very successful with their cheap and efficient equipment in the West.

More recently, we have seen pushback affecting Chinese drone companies, as the utility and value of drones have become incredibly clear in the Russia – Ukraine war. Western allies obviously don’t want drones with potential Chinese backdoors, killswitches, or so on inside them. However, even manufacturers in China’s fiercest foe, Taiwan, recently admitted that its drone-making operations were still dependent on Chinese components.

Returning to the topic of drones, specifically, the sea drones in the Telegraph story were reportedly acquired by a major British defense contractor, Kraken Technology Group. The same company “sourced the cameras from a third party who had given assurances about their security,” says the newspaper. But an unnamed Telegraph source told the paper that this security lapse was a “major failure,” meaning that confidence in the platform has been lost. It even goes on to say that there are concerns that these drones could have snooped on highly sensitive special military forces meetings, even when switched off.

An MoD spokesperson told The Telegraph that the issues with the Chinese cameras were identified during a routine cyber vulnerability assessment. That seems like evidence of good practice, showing proactive testing and assurance procedures are in place. Moreover, the investigation “found no evidence of MoD data or systems being accessed, compromised or transmitted externally.” That didn’t stop The Telegraph or shadow (opposition party) ministers from being “furious” about the revelations, though.

The K3 Scout drone can carry a 600kg payload at sea for 30 days continuously. The Royal Marines have been using a £12 million fleet of these drones since March and offered to deploy them to secure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. Special Operations Command also has K3 Scout drones, and these drones have been used by allies in NATO trials in the Baltic Sea.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is moving to ban drones with LiDAR obstacle-avoidance features, a move that would remove a number of popular consumer drones from US shelves. In a public notice published in the Federal Register on August 3 (DA 26-758), the agency proposed retroactively banning the import and sale of any foreign-made drone on its Covered List that “contains or integrates” a LiDAR sensor, categorizing the technology under a broad “military-grade” umbrella.

The proposal builds on a ban the FCC set in motion late last year. On December 22, 2025, the agency added all foreign-made drones and their critical components to its Covered List — a roster of communications equipment that a U.S. national-security authority has determined poses an unacceptable risk. The listing blocked any new foreign drone model from receiving the FCC authorization it needed to be sold in the U.S., effectively banning sales of new models.

However, models that had already cleared authorization before the listing could continue to be imported and sold. The new DA 26-758 proposal seeks to retroactively strip sales clearance from previously approved drone models that ”escaped” the initial ban, starting with those it deems military-grade. The proposal is open for public comment until September 2, 2026, and if adopted as written, the ban on imports and sales would take effect roughly 180 days after publication.

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a remote sensing technology that uses laser pulses to measure exact distances and build precise 3D maps of objects and environments. Drones, delivery bots, and self-driving cars all rely on it for obstacle avoidance. A ban would mean that popular consumer models such as DJI's Air 3S and Mini 5 Pro — both of which use LiDAR for obstacle detection — would no longer be available for sale in the US. The proposal would not affect existing owners, who could keep flying the drones they already have, but as DJI has warned, those owners could find official spare parts increasingly hard, or eventually impossible, to source over time.

Under the FCC's broad ”military-grade” classification, the ban would also reach drones that carry thermal imaging sensors, can dispense agricultural sprays (”economic poison” in the notice's language), weigh 55 pounds or more, include docking stations, integrate a defense article, or operate in coordinated swarms — a category the FCC defines widely enough to include synchronized drone light shows. U.S.-made drones and other drones not on the Covered List are not touched by the ban, regardless of whether they carry any of these features.

The FCC frames the move purely as a national security issue, leaning on an executive-branch determination that foreign-made drones pose an “unacceptable risk.” It tentatively concludes that the economic hit would be minor, as military-grade models are a small minority in a market dominated by recreational fliers. Conversely, the notice also details the billions that domestic drone makers like Skydio, which has committed $3.5 billion to US manufacturing, have raised since the original ban.

DJI, one of the manufacturers affected by the ban, has argued that the “military-grade” label is a category error, sweeping in civilian tools that first responders, farmers, and hobbyists rely on. Its core objection lands on the LiDAR clause, specifically arguing that the technology is a safety feature, not a weapon. DJI had earlier sued the FCC to overturn the December ban, claiming the agency exceeded its statutory authority.

A medevac flight from Roswell Air Center (ROW), New Mexico, to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport (SRR) crossed into an area where there were “GPS jamming activities” by the U.S. military — minutes later, it crashed into a mountain as it was on final approach to its destination. According to the NTSB’s Preliminary Report [PDF], the crew, alongside several other aircraft, experienced issues with their navigation system consistent with the effects of GPS jamming, as reported by Wired.

While the GPS interference seemingly did not directly cause the crash, it’s apparent that it was the first domino in a chain of events that led to the fatal accident. This raises urgent questions about GPS jamming as reported incidents of GPS interference mount across the world.

An uneventful departure

The preliminary report said that it was a dark, moonless night, meaning it would be difficult for anyone to fly visually. That’s because the dark sky and ground would make it difficult to locate the horizon and could quickly lead to spatial disorientation. The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air propeller plane took off from its base at Roswell Air Center (ROW), New Mexico, at around 11:52 pm. As it was climbing to altitude at 11:54 pm, the pilots requested and received an instrument flight rules (IFR) clearance from Albuquerque Center, the air route traffic control center in charge of the area.

This switch meant that the pilots would now primarily fly the plane using instruments in the cockpit instead of looking outside the windows. This is a normal procedure and is what most passenger airliners use during operations. Furthermore, it seems that the pilots have filed for clearance before they took off, as evidenced by their “as filed” clearance to SRR.

First sign of trouble

At around 12 midnight, Albuquerque Center told the flight crew that they were 1,000 feet above their assigned altitude. The pilots then said they were correcting their altitude, but they also mentioned that they’ve lost GPS capability. From there, they asked for a heading, and they were told to proceed to heading 275 towards SRR. About a minute after this, air traffic control (ATC) told them to proceed to heading 350 to set them up for a landing on runway 24 at SRR.

Around five minutes after this radio communication, ATC called the military and asked them to stop their GPS jamming activities in the meantime. At 12:07 am, the NTSB said that the Beechcraft’s GPS instruments resumed regular recording. The pilots then called Albuquerque Center a minute after this, saying that they had “a visual on Ruidoso,” the town nearest to SRR, and that they were transitioning to visual flight rules (VFR). This meant that they were moving away from the direct control of the ATC and would navigate and fly using visual cues.

A mountain hiding under a moonless night

As the pilots turned towards their final destination, they had a recorded altitude of 9,820 feet on their instruments. But what the pilots couldn’t see was that the Capitan Mountains, which rise to more than 10,000 feet, stood between them and SRR.

The conditions meant that there was no available illumination to light the ground. It is still unknown what happened next or what the pilots saw (or didn’t see), but the preliminary report says the last recorded information saw the plane climbing from 9,400 feet to 9,823 feet at a ground speed of 150 knots (172 mph). It impacted terrain at about 9,950 feet — some 230 feet below the Capitan Mountains Summit Radio Facility.

Visual illusion compounded by a high-stress situation

Although the weather was clear at the time of the accident, the fact that it was a dark night meant that the pilots were more susceptible to visual illusions. As the aircraft descended, they were likely using the lights of Ruidoso to guide them toward SRR.

Because they could not see that the Capitan Mountains were still between them and their destination, they likely started their descent too early. As soon as the aircraft went below the peak, they would’ve lost visual with the town, and it seemed that the pilots attempted to climb when they realized that there was a massive obstacle in front of them. Unfortunately, it seems that their efforts were too late, especially at their speeds, resulting in a controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident.

This was compounded by a high workload and high-stress situation. Landings and take-offs, in normal situations, are already quite hectic in the cockpit, which is why pilots practice the sterile cockpit rule, which avoids extraneous communications, at times like these. The loss of GPS signals also added to their stress, as they initially planned for an RNAV approach towards SRR. While this generally uses a combination of radio signals, it seems that their system primarily relied on GPS, which was inoperative at that time.

Aside from this, ATC also had a higher workload than usual, as they were assisting three other aircraft in the area that have been affected by the military operations. Although the military had temporarily ceased their activities, it seems that the pilots were not aware of this and elected to proceed visually instead of relying on either RNAV or the alternative instrument landing system (ILS).

We still don’t have the NTSB’s final report, so we cannot definitely say what the ultimate cause of the crash. But it seems that if the military wasn’t running a GPS jamming exercise at that time, the flight would have used RNAV from departure all the way to SRR, instead of relying on radar vectors and, ultimately, VFR.

Military activities affecting civilian flights

This isn’t the first time that military activities have been linked to a crash in the U.S in recent history. Just last year, a tragedy unfolded at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when a regional jet carrying 64 passengers and crew collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on an exercise, resulting in 67 casualties. GPS jamming is also a frequent occurrence in several hotspots in the world, like Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and even the South China Sea, which has affected airliners.

But aside from civilian airliners, many drones, especially those used for long-range attacks, also use GPS. While militaries have been developing new technologies like microwaves and lasers to shoot down these drones, one of the most cost-effective technologies that is readily available today is GPS jamming. It’s probably because of this that Russia has started putting magnetic compasses on some of their drones to help with navigation.

Even though GPS jamming might sound alarming, pilots have been flying around the world for decades, even before it came into widespread use. These include VOR (VHF Omnidirectional Range) beacons that send out signals unaffected by GPS jamming to help pilots determine where they are, ILS, which safely guides pilots towards a runway up to a certain distance, and more.

However, it seems that the sudden loss of GPS caught the pilots of the Beechcraft unaware. This, combined with the lack of visual references, a sudden change of plans from RNAV to ILS approach, and the decision to fly visually, probably led to the crash. The military’s GPS jamming exercise didn’t directly cause the crash, but it was likely the first event in the “Swiss cheese” model that ultimately caused the accident.

Drone flyovers of Elon Musk’s new Advanced Technology Chip Fab (ATCF) in Texas have been shared on social media. The videos and photos come courtesy of flight instructor and drone videographer Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer), who regularly documents the progress of Giga Texas and Starbase projects. Considering that the fab was only announced on March 21 this year, groundwork has been brisk, and in a follow-up post, Tegtmeyer states progress has “hit another gear.”

In the above post, the all-things-space enthusiast notes that the ATCF already appears to be very well defined. “GeoPiers are at work on the part of the foundation that has had gravel mix placed on the top soil and more work grading on the south end,” he explains.

A few days later, there was an update with progress clearly accelerating, according to Tegtmeyer. As well as commenting on the shape of the facility becoming ever clearer and construction materials continuing to be stockpiled, there are other important signs of progress. Specifically, “4 new permits were filed in the past few days for the large trailer complex that houses the general contractors and the temporary Tesla offices for the new facility,” noted the enthusiast. “[It is] a great sign that things are progressing rapidly behind the scenes to fit out the facility when construction progresses far enough to allow for equipment installation.”

Importantly, Tegtmeyer reminds his followers that the ATCF is not the Terafab that will be built ~ 100 miles or so to the East in Grimes County, Texas. Rather, the ATCF is the equally vital but “smaller development facility that is the first part of the overall AI Chip development program.”

The ATCF is a joint Tesla–SpaceX facility, and is a keystone for the Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI accelerator chips to come. It is expected that chips from the ATCF will combine logic, memory, and advanced packaging under one roof. Projects spawned from here are destined to support Tesla cars and Robotaxis, Optimus robots, and upcoming Earth-orbiting AI data centers.

That’s distinct from the much larger, multi-phase, vertically integrated, 1TW/year Terafab megaproject, which will see collabs between Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and Intel. It has massive AI computer production ambitions to feed terrestrial and space-based AI systems. We are still awaiting evidence that the Terafab has moved beyond the pre-construction phase.

If there were any doubt about the seriousness of Musk's semiconductor design and fabrication ambitions in these and other progress reports, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet recently confirmed talks with Musk had taken place about building one of the largest chip manufacturing operations ever attempted. SpaceX has also already filed for a $55 billion facility in Grimes County, Texas, with potential expansion costs reaching $119 billion, and phase one potentially beginning before the end of the year. Meanwhile, it is good to see the rapid progress of the smaller ATCF.