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.

The drone arms race is set to enter U.S. schools with Mithril Defense’s Campus Guardian Angel drones in at least nine schools across three states before the year is out. The Washington Post reports that the pilot program will be tested in Florida, Georgia, and Colorado schools with and without resource officers on campus. Securely siloed drones will be situated in key areas around campus, triggered by teachers via app or panic button, then fly to combat gun-toting attackers with a mix of strobes, sirens, pepper spray, and a 60 mph attacker-ramming capability.

If this is a successful initiative, it could go some way to lift the terrible specter of gun violence overshadowing U.S. students. The Washington Post notes that since Columbine in 1999, almost 400,000 students have experienced gun violence at school.

The Campus Guardian Angel drone rollout will be quite expensive. For example, the five schools in Georgia set to adopt drone defense will get $500,000 in backing to run the pilot program. However, politicians and legislators in that state appear to have passed the budget with ease.

This is how the Campus Guardian Angel drone system is designed to work:

• Drones are sited at secure locations around the campus,
• A teacher will trigger the drone deployment using an app or panic button,
• Remote pilots take control and distract, deter, and disable aggressors using a mix of strobes, sirens, pepper gel, and 60‑mph impacts,
• Drone system reaction speed is crucial.

Mithril Defense says that the Campus Guardian Angel drones can react and reach a shooter as quickly as 15 seconds. Justin Marston, Mithril’s founder and CEO, made a few other bold claims regarding his drone system’s reaction speed. For example, Marston said a drone like the Guardian Angel ‘might’ve saved lives in Uvalde.’ That’s a direct reference to the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed in 2022.

The drone defense firm's CEO underlined that “the first 120 seconds are incredibly critical, because that’s when most of the shooting happens.” That implies that he thinks Campus Guardian Angel drones could be successfully deployed within that very narrow time window. But Uvalde was quite unusual, as responding law enforcement seemed paralyzed, waiting over an hour to enter the classroom.

These school-based drone systems are not without their critics. Some say that the funds may be better spent on prevention than cure. Even Mithril’s founder and CEO’s opinion seems to be that if these drones aren’t prompted into action within two minutes, they aren’t living up to their promise.

There is also the concern that drones could misidentify students or protection officers when controllers are under pressure. Others say that military-style drone systems aren’t appropriate for schools, and will cost a lot more than simple measures and routines regarding locked doors.

With the three states proceeding with pilot programs this year, we may see the true value and capabilities of the Campus Guardian Angel drones. If these drone-protected schools don’t suffer any terrible shooting incidents, then it may be claimed that the drones are at least a deterrent.

A Pro-Ukraine group claims it helped facilitate a cyberattack on a Russian BARS drone defense system near Moscow, resulting in the shooting down of an advanced Russian fighter jet. The Su-57 stealth fighter crashed spectacularly “during a routine training mission in the Moscow region on Thursday,” say reports published by Russian state media. The pilot ejected safely, and the jet smashed into an uninhabited area. However, what the Russians are characterizing as an accident due to “a technical malfunction,” some Ukrainian open-source intelligence (OSINT) agencies are claiming as successful sabotage.

Russian accident or Ukrainian scalp?

Above you can see that InformNapalm, a well‑known Ukrainian volunteer intelligence collective, claims that the Su-57 was “shot down” by the Russian ‘BARS Moscow’ air defense system. That would indeed be a kind of technical malfunction, as the Russians admit, but InformNapalm says that Ukrainian cyber specialists turned Moscow’s anti-drone shield against the Russian jet. Specifically, in this instance, the Russian anti-drone system shot down the confirmed crashed Su-57 stealth fighter.

The explosive-if-true claim from Ukrainian OSINT comes with a background story. InformNapalm says that it shared “secret documents from the Russian manufacturer of components for this aircraft's systems” last year. These were acquired and leaked by HUMINT and CYBINT operations backed by Ukrainian intelligence services. Additionally, the Ukrainians mounted a combined cognitive and cyber influence operation that affected the operation of the BARS Moscow air defense unit. The purported result was that the drone defense unit set up around Moscow in June shot down the Su-57.

InformNapalm attempts to add veracity to its claims by sharing some less sensitive but still relevant evidence of espionage. The video embedded in the Tweet (above) is purported to be footage from a training range where Russia's BARS Moscow crews were in training to counter Ukraine’s long-range drones. There’s also an intelligence brief excerpt mentioning Russian hardware, software, combat algorithms, and system vulnerabilities.

Russia is thought to only have a handful of these advanced Su-57 aircraft, which can launch Kh-59 and Kh-69 missiles, so efforts put into sabotaging them are high among Ukrainian military priorities. Ukraine has previously targeted and claimed successful strikes against Su-57s sitting on the ground at Akhtubinsk airfield (2024), and Shagol airfield (May this year).

Lockheed Martin has unveiled a counter-drone system that can “neutralize up to 50 enemy drones in a single mission.” The new Morfius X-Rotor is a ground-launched one-to-many drone-kill system designed to be sent up to neutralize large enemy drone swarms. This reusable and field‑recoverable drone utilizes a high‑power microwave to disable drones without explosives, reducing collateral damage. It boasts a “significantly low cost per kill.”

The video shared on social media looks impressive, with a trio of Morfius X-Rotor drones sent into the skies, the video of the target acquisition HUD, and then several microwave blasts. We don’t know whether the video contains any live-action test footage or is just a rendered animation.

The U.S. defense tech company notes that swarms of hostile drones are fast becoming the biggest threat to allied forces on today's battlefields, and this is why the Morfius X-Rotor was created. It also fits into the U.S. Department of War's 2025-2028 Rapid Response Counter-UAS Roadmap.

Lockheed claims the Morfius X-Rotor is also remarkable for being “the only ground-launched, field-reusable airborne HPM system capable of delivering more than 50 drone kills per flight using any command and control system and no dependence on fire control radars.” So, it doesn’t need dedicated radar or guidance sensors to acquire and take down targets, which could be a winning quality in heavy EW environments.

Another feather in this one-to-many drone-kill system’s cap is that it is built on a proven platform of Morfius variants which have been flying since 2017, with recent field tests taking place across several U.S. states. A Lockheed VP sums up that what we see in the video demo represents “a new benchmark for counter-drone capability - delivering a high kill rate while keeping the cost per kill low.”

We have reported on microwave anti-drone and weaponry systems before. Among the former was the ground vehicle-based Epirus Leonidas system, which "neutralized 61-of-61 drones" during a recent live fire trial in Indiana last year. We've also reported on an incredibly powerful 20-gigawatt microwave weapon designed in China, dubbed the TPG1000C, and described as “Starlink’s worst nightmare.”

Researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois have built a drone that rotates so fast that it is cloaked by motion blur. The new Phantom Twist drone spins at 25 times per second, which, thanks to a quirk of human vision, makes it appear like a faint smudge in the air. The video below shows it off to great effect, but I hope they can do something about the whiny noise.

The first demonstration of the Phantom Twist took place as part of a Robotics: Science and Systems 2026 presentation on Thursday. “Most efforts to hide drones focus on making them look like their surroundings,” said Northwestern’s Michael Rubenstein, who led the work. “Instead, we asked whether we could design the drone itself around the way humans perceive motion. This idea of low visibility through persistent motion is something few people have explored.”

The stationary photo of the Phantom Twist reveals a rather unique drone design, far removed from the now traditional quadcopter. It has just one motor and one propeller, and while the propeller spins in one direction, and the rest of the drone spins in the opposite direction, explains the Northwestern University blog.

AI was used to refine the design

The researchers tasked a computational model to generate roughly 20,000 drone configurations capable of stable flight. Subsequently, they applied AI and other optimization algorithms to repeatedly rearrange the drones’ major components, including a motor, propeller, circuit board, counterweight and batteries.

After narrowing down the candidates to around 500, the engineers superimposed simulated drones in flight over a hundred real-world backgrounds. A perception model then whittled down the designs based on their visibility scores. According to Rubenstein this entire process was automated, and only “when we were confident that a drone met all our criteria, we built it.” The demonstrated Phantom Twist drone is apparently “10 times less visually perceptible than a conventional quadcopter” according to the researcher’s visibility metrics.

Yes, the team knows that the Phantom Twist drone is rather noisy, and the visual impact of its wires and support rods could be reduced. Thus, work is planned to utilize more transparent materials and / or quieter propulsion systems in upcoming revisions.

Ukraine, which is fighting a years-long war of attrition against Russian aggression, has seen a lot of combat innovations, especially in drone warfare. But even as modern technologies like Starlink-powered long-range drones and jam-proof fiber optic drones enter the battlefield, troops on both sides are also relying on their own ingenuity and deploying “field upgrades” on their equipment. Just like during the Second World War, when some American tankers welded thick metal plates to increase the armor on their vehicles to counter the feared German Panzers, the Defence Blog reports that Russians are crudely installing $2 magnetic compasses on some Molniya drones to combat electronic warfare.

The Molniya is a cheap, medium-range drone that relies on the open-source ExpressLRS radio control system, which lets operators control it from a potential maximum range of up to 62 miles (100 kilometers). Some versions also used Starlink connections to combat the jamming efforts of Ukrainian electronic warfare units, but Ukraine’s requirement to register Starlink units in the country before they can be used has supposedly made this strategy unviable.

The drone can also be equipped with a fiber optic cable, which renders it impervious to any sort of electronic interference. Although this limits the potential range of the Molniya to just 18 miles (30 kilometers), it allows the drone to be more effective as it reduces the chances that the operator will lose control of the unit.

GPS jamming is also a common occurrence in Ukrainian airspace. This means that drone operators could potentially get lost on their way to their targets. Because of this, many frontline Russian units have started crudely installing magnetic compasses on their drones. This navigation tool is typically installed just below the FPV camera, allowing the operator to glance down to confirm their bearings. When combined with other telemetry data, the drone pilot could locate their relative location even without GPS.

One leaked image shows that the compass is just attached to the panel near the FPV camera with five Philips screws, suggesting that this isn’t a factory modification. Some people are mocking the development of this “add-on,” saying that it’s a step backward for the supposedly “advanced” Russian arsenal. But no matter how rough and primitive it looks, the fact that it helps the Russians achieve their missions means that it’s still a cheap, effective, and rather deadly modification.

A micro-drone designed to locate and eradicate mosquitoes has passed an important milestone. Tornyol Systems shared a video where the eponymous autonomous drone chalked up its first live air-to-air kill. For some reason (perhaps demonstration visibility), the 40g (1.4 ounce) drone’s first confirmed kill on video features a moth. Tornyol boldly claims that the demo shows a significant stride has been made “towards completely eradicating mosquitoes.”

Tornyol Systems co-founder Alex Toussaint shared the above Tweet, congratulating the engineering team that has worked alongside him on the project. On the company website, there is a mosquito-hostile manifesto laid out, which provides insight into the company’s primary drone development goal.

“Mosquitoes are one of humanity's oldest and worst enemies. They kill more than 700,000 people each year — more than all current wars,” according to the firm’s mission statement. “More than 700 million people contract a mosquito-borne disease each year. They impact many countries, including the West, with thousands of cases of West Nile Virus in the US alone.” It aims to use technology, including this “small, inexpensive, and yet very fast” micro-drone, to “completely eradicate mosquitoes from areas where humans live.”

The underlying motivation of Tornyol Systems first became apparent back at Hackaday Supercon 2024 when Toussaint shared a presentation about How to Detect (and Kill) Mosquitoes With Off-the-Shelf Electronics.

Tornyol's technology

Since those initial presentations, it looks like the tech has been significantly refined and miniaturized. Currently, the platform is dependent on the LeSonar2 phased array sonar base station with 380 smartphone microphones and an Artix-7 FPGA to map the world in 3D.

This feeds the drone enough information to measure 0.1 mm movements and identify mosquitoes through their unique wingbeat signature. The micro-drone is sent commands by a PC, which also leverages “car park assist sensors, and some clever DSP” to seek and kill mozzies up to 8m (~26 feet) away.

We’ve previously reported on ground-based AI-enhanced mosquito zappers, but this is the first time we’ve seen an air-to-air solution. Tornyol says that it is rolling out deployment on embedded hardware “in the next few weeks.” I guess that's removing the need for a PC.

U.S. residents interested in purchasing an autonomous Tornyol drone and base station are being asked to stump up a refundable $100 deposit. Then, there are two payment plans available. Choose a $50-a-month subscription or an “own it forever” $1,100 one-time fee.

Ukrainian FP-1 drones struck the Gazprom Neft oil refinery in Omsk, Siberia, on July 6 after flying roughly 2,500 km over more than 12 hours, halting operations at Russia's largest gasoline producer, according to a report from UK pub The Telegraph. It was the longest-range Ukrainian drone strike of the war, carried out by an aircraft built around a plywood load-bearing structure, foam wings, and a two-cylinder piston engine, at an estimated cost of $55,000 per unit.

Despite its lightweight structure, the drone managed to cause some pretty severe damage, setting fire to the CDU-10 crude distillation unit per Reuters, which handles 24,580 metric tons of crude per day and accounts for around 38% of the plant's processing capacity. A second unit, CDU-11, responsible for a further 37%, was shut down after network links vital to its operation were damaged. The refinery, which processed 22 million metric tons of crude (about 440,000 barrels per day) in 2024, stopped selling gasoline and diesel on the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange the following day.

The FP-1, built by Kyiv-based Fire Point, is engineered not for sophistication or as cutting-edge drone tech, but for mass production. The airframe uses plywood structural elements and foam wings skinned in fiberglass or carbon fiber, with a twin-boom layout, a roughly five-meter wingspan, and no landing gear. A solid rocket booster launches it from a fixed platform or a truck, and a two-cylinder engine driving a propeller carries it the rest of the way.

The drone's original design range was 1,600 km with a warhead of up to 60 kg. At the Eurosatory defense exhibition in Paris last month, Fire Point showed an upgraded FP-1 with an additional fuel tank integrated into the wing, extending its range to 2,700 km. That variant put Omsk, and most of Russia's refining capacity, within reach. The Telegraph reported that the drones used in the strike were lightened, with lengthened wingspans and enlarged fuel tanks, and that Fire Point co-founder Denys Shtilerman said Ukrainian planners spent more than a week plotting a route around Russian air defenses. Navigation relies on a purpose-built algorithm designed to resist GPS spoofing, with inertial and satellite guidance layered together.

Fire Point produces around 100 FP-1s per day, and the aircraft now accounts for roughly 60% of Ukraine's deep strikes inside Russia, according to company CEO Iryna Terekh. Each drone costs less than a single interceptor missile fired by the multimillion-dollar S-400 and Pantsir batteries tasked with stopping it, and Russia simply can't field enough of those systems to cover a country spanning 11 time zones.

This design takes advantage of Russia's air defense network, which was designed to detect fast, high-flying jets and ballistic missiles, not slow, low-altitude aircraft with small radar signatures. Moscow scrambled Su-57 stealth fighters against the Omsk raid, but several drones still got through. Kyle Glen, an open-source investigator, told The Telegraph that Russia appears to concentrate its defenses around Moscow and St. Petersburg, leaving "almost nothing behind it to stop them" once drones penetrate the outer layer.

Ukraine's General Staff recorded 172 deep strikes last month, up from 85 in February, and Omsk was the sixth major Russian refinery forced to fully or partially shut down since the start of June. Last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a new Fire Point drone can reach targets at 3,000 km, and the company's FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, carrying a 1,150 kg warhead over the same distance, has begun striking Russian weapons facilities as air defenses thin out.

Quantum Systems Group reckons it has broken the flight speed record for an electric drone. During internal testing last month, the Munich-based firm recorded its Apex Recordhunter drone hitting a top speed of 699 km/h (434 mph) in straight and level flight. That incredible result convincingly outpaces the current world record holder with a recorded top speed of 657.59 km/h (409 mph). However, a Guinness World Record entry is pending, with a formal attempt to crack that achievement expected to take place in the coming weeks, reports ComputerBase (machine translation).

According to the official press release, the Apex Recordhunter drone was developed over the last year and serves as a technology demonstrator for next-gen electrically powered drones. Tellingly, Ukrainian engineers are also working on this project under the auspices of WIY Drones, a branch of Quantum Systems. It will also be attempting record-breaking speed challenges in Ukraine, as the Apex Recordhunter is being assessed for future interceptor drone programs.

Specifically, the WIY Drones plans include record attempts to break speed records for an FPV interceptor drone carrying a 0.5 kg payload, and for an anti-aircraft class FPV interceptor drone. These could well become the Ukrainian answer to the increasingly fast and maneuverable aerial threats that the Russians are sending over the border.

So, we might have a flurry of new drone speed records on the way, and it wouldn’t be a great surprise if the Apex Recordhunter drone pushes past the 700 km/h (435 mph) milestone.

Kiwi speed challengers

The Europeans aren’t the only ‘Recordhunters.’ In May, we reported on another unofficial drone world speed record. Drone builders Aidan and Ben from New Zealand recorded maximum speeds of up to 453 mph (730 km/h) in tests of their Blackbird drone, which leverages exotic sawtooth carbon fiber propeller blades.

Like with the Apex Recordhunter drone, the Blackbird speed record remains unofficial, as they haven’t had a verification that requires a certified independent observer, verified measurement equipment, documentation including a submission, followed by a controlled two-way run.

Batteries that can last decades between recharges or renewals are the stuff of tech enthusiast dreams. However, DARPA’s ‘Rads to Watts’ program could bring forth unrivaled portable power, lasting decades, via the development of a new class of radiovoltaic devices. Morgan State University recently won a $3.37M DARPA contract to advance this tech, and a report by Defense One suggests upcoming nuclear waste-powered batteries could last as long as 30 years and power next-gen drones.

Morgan State now has a considerable sum to keep its researchers employed on a project dubbed SYMPHONEE (Strontium-Yttrium Multi-junction PIN-based High-Density Output Nano-system for Extreme Environments). Radioisotope power sources have been used for quite some time in low-power draw applications such as smoke detectors and space systems for decades. However, the new initiative, led by Morgan State and with team members such as Northrop Grumman, PNNL, Project Omega, ARA, and Widetronix, aims to take the tech into the next generation. More specifically, under the auspices of (and with funds from) the 'Rads to Watts' program, they are aiming to build next‑generation radiovoltaic micro‑power systems for extreme environments.

The proposed next-gen power cells make use of radioisotopes extracted from nuclear waste, especially Strontium‑90. Research partner Project Omega has already made some devices and will build the DARPA prototype. We noticed that it has published a promotional video that highlights sea drones with a 10-year battery life, for example. Coordinated by Morgan State researchers, PNNL labs will handle nuclear materials/testing, Northrop Grumman and ARA will provide AI-driven modeling, with Widetronix designing nuclear micro‑generator radiovoltaic converter architectures.

“Our team is pushing the boundaries of radiovoltaic technology, developing high-power, long-life systems that were not previously achievable,” said Professor Michael Spencer, the technical lead for the project. “By integrating advanced materials, device engineering, and nuclear science, we are laying the foundation for a new generation of persistent power systems for extreme environments.”

With this research, development, and fabrication powerhouse assembled, it is hoped a step change will be achieved to boost radiovoltaic micro‑power system power density. The goal is to be able to power persistent autonomous operations in remote or difficult-to-access environments like space, underwater, and contested regions – for decades. A Northrop Grumman rep emphasized the potential of a ‘persistent power source’ becoming available for “next-generation defense systems.” Project Omega is also interested in developing “persistent underwater security systems” – sea drones.

It is also somewhat positive to imagine that substances long considered to be highly undesirable waste products could end up being strategic assets.

A Lithuanian startup developed an Android app that lets verified users monitor the general area for the acoustic signature of Shahed-type drones used by Russia to strike targets and report their approximate location. According to state broadcaster Lithuanian National Radio and Television, the app uses an embedded algorithm to isolate and analyze targets from environmental noise. It reports a possible detection on a public map. With the app running on enough devices, the system could determine the potential location and direction of these drones and warn both civilians and the military of an impending strike.

Shahed-type drones have been widely employed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is quite effective for its relatively low price compared to other, more advanced missile systems. Ukraine has been taking steps to counter this threat, including requiring users inside the country to register their Starlink units to avoid getting blocked because Russia has been using the service to guide its drones as late as last year. Other nations are experimenting with cost-effective countermeasures, too, including microwave drone swarm killers and man-portable anti-drone laser systems.

What makes these drones deadly is their price — because they’re so cheap, it’s easy for an enemy to launch them en masse and overwhelm defenses. However, if you can catch them far from their targets, they’re quite vulnerable (at least for the older propeller-driven models); even gunners armed with a shotgun or assault rifle seated inside a 50-year-old single-propeller trainer aircraft can reliably shoot them down.

The biggest issue for air defense systems is that these drones are quite small and made of lightweight materials, which gives them a relatively low radar cross-section (RCS). A Shahed-type drone usually measures around eight to 12 feet in length and has a wingspan of around eight feet. Although they could be detected by standard radar systems, their speed and size mean that the radar receiver would also pick up a lot of other clutter, such as birds, making it hard to distinguish relevant targets from background noise. These characteristics, combined with their low flight cruising altitude, mean that ground-based radars have trouble picking them up unless they’re flying relatively close.

However, their low flight path also means that they could easily be heard by observers on the ground. So, if enough people can detect their aural signature and report it to a central database, defense forces could mobilize and engage these threats while they’re still distant from their targets and away from population centers. This is similar to the acoustic mirrors and acoustic locators that militaries used in World War I before the advent of radar, wherein they built massive concrete dishes aimed upward, or used smaller, more portable metal horn arrays, crewed by trained personnel listening in to detect the low-frequency sound coming from aircraft piston engines from far away.

We expect this to be far more accurate, though, because it uses advanced algorithms and thousands of detectors operated by verified users. While using this system alone is probably not enough to accurately detect these drones, pairing it with modern radar systems could make the radar operators’ job far easier, as they would have another data source to confirm whether they’re actually seeing drones on their screens or just a flock of birds.

Chinese defense supplier Harbin Xinguang Optic-Electronics Technology demo’d two man-portable anti-drone lasers at a Beijing arms expo this week, putting backpack-scale directed-energy hardware alongside the mounted platforms that have so far dominated the space. The Lijian II and Lijian III, shown at the Defence Information Equipment & Technology Exhibition 2026 that opened Tuesday, weigh 30kg (66 pounds) and 25kg (55 pounds), draw around 2 kW, and cost about 2 million yuan (US$295,000) each, according to the South China Morning Post. It also uses AI for targeting.

Each portable unit splits into a laser emitter, an air cooler, and a handheld control terminal, light enough for one or two soldiers to carry. The emitter accounts for about 15kg, and the cooling system for roughly 10kg. Both models have a pitch angle above 90 degrees and reach about 500 meters (1,640 feet). The Lijian III burns through a drone in 4 seconds and needs under 5 seconds to cool before firing again, the company said.

The same line includes a fixed-position model, the Lijian-10G, that draws around 10 kW and reaches 1,200 meters (3,900 feet), but requires a large liquid-cooled box rather than a backpack. Harbin Xinguang said the portable units are "easier to operate and can be quickly deployed and recovered," in comments from a product promoter as reported by SCMP.

Those weight savings, of course, come out of the overall power budget of the laser. At roughly 2 kW, the portable Lijian models sit below the 3 kW-class NI-L3K counter-drone lasers that China showed at DSA 21026 in Malaysia, and far below the heavier directed-energy systems built elsewhere. The U.S. Army is currently testing a vehicle-mounted 20kW LOCUST system on the Oshkosh JLTV platform, and Israel's 100kW Iron Beam became the first high-power laser to enter service late last year. Obviously, those trade portability for the wattage needed to engage longer-range targets.

A 2 kW suits small, low, and slow targets at close range, with a much more favorable cost per shot. Burning down a quadcopter or FPV drone using a laser consumes energy rather than shoulder-fired munitions, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars per round. Zhao said the core technology reached maturity in 2023, as the war in Ukraine reshaped thinking around drone warfare.

Rather troubling is the fact that the Lijian series uses AI to identify targets and engage drones that enter its range, cued by external sensors such as radar. Harbin Xinguang said the weapons have already been placed at some Chinese facilities, including military airfields, and that it’s seeking further orders through the exhibition.

All the specifications come from the manufacturer's exhibition materials and a company representative and haven’t been independently tested.

A watershed moment occurred on the battlefields of Ukraine in 2024 that we are only just hearing about today: the use of fully autonomous drones to kill humans. Ten fully autonomous quadcopter drones were sent to the front line by Ukraine with their AI-controlled ‘Terminator Mode’ engaged. “We just launch it and we know everything will be dead,” a drone maker, Alexander Kokhanovskyy, told New Scientist at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. Human-piloted drones were later sent to recce the target area, and the machine-slain victims were concluded to include “a couple of soldiers, one truck.”

The New Scientist interview provides the most compelling evidence yet that humans have been killed at the sole discretion of an AI. This wasn’t an accident of any kind, or an AI gone rogue; the 10 drones were sent to the front line purposely switched to an autonomous mode to search for and intercept targets. Significantly, “There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing… Everything it sees will be killed,” explained Kokhanovskyy.

So, human decision-making and judgment were removed for what is being characterized in the source report as a one-off test mission. That we are only hearing about it two years after the fact perhaps reflects on the gravity of engaging the Terminator Mode of the drones for (perhaps) the first time in an actual battle.

A Rubicon moment for modern warfare?

As the source notes, there is no official ban on using autonomous weapons that can kill without human intervention. However, last year the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, called for this red line to be drawn. The argument is that removing human judgment from warfare risks human rights. Moreover, at this stage of the development of this technology, AI-driven systems are frequently in the news for the mistakes they make.

Interestingly, Ukraine actually has a ban on fully autonomous final-stage targeting of humans by its drones. Other officials at the press conference where Kokhanovskyy spoke indicated that government decision-makers were in talks with defense companies about flexing the rules. However, it is likely not the first/only country to have crossed the Rubicon and allowed AI drones to inflict casualties on enemy soldiers.

Academics speaking to the New Scientist offered some interesting angles on the news of Terminator Mode-engaged drones being let loose on the battlefield. One described the news as horrendous and a theft of human dignity. Another concluded that the 2024 AI-drone attack near the cities of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar must have demonstrated that it is better to keep humans in the loop for military effectiveness.

We are halfway through 2026, and while we aren’t flying across gleaming neon cityscapes in jet-powered cars, birds have been discovered feathering their nests with optical fiber. It definitely isn’t the tech utopia we dreamed about, but the birds might have been colder without this detritus of war. Moreover, our feathered friends are tidying up the miles of fiber waste precipitated by drone warfare, at least a little bit, while making use of what is likely an excellent thermal insulator.

Click 'See more' to see the nests.

Example photos of these optical fiber nests were shared on Twitter/X by a Ukrainian civil society leader and anti-corruption advocate, Olena Tregub. She called the carefully woven avian construction an “apocalyptic bird's nest” and credited Oleg Malchenko as the photographer. We can’t say how widespread such nests are, they are the first we’ve seen, but birds can be quite enterprising when nest building and choosing the best materials.

Some background to the finding was given by Tregrub. “A Russian glide bomb knocks down a tree in Donbas,” said the former Ukrainian government official. “From the shattered branches rolls out a tiny bird’s nest. Made of drone fiber-optic cable.”

Imagery showing acres of fields strewn with wisps of optical fiber are one of the sad signatures of the current Russia-Ukraine war. To make no-fuss jam-proof drones both sides have been using optical fiber tethered drones to target their foes.

In October last year we reported on a Ukrainian invention utilizing rotating barbed wire barriers to snag, rip, and disable any fibers left in the wake of drones flying over them. Another example of ingenuity in this David vs. Goliath conflict.

In December, we reported on the tethered drone range of Russian FPVs being significantly boosted by a grey-zone Chinese partnership. This tech collaboration between communist nations resulted in the production of fiber optic spools delivering as much as 65km (~40.4 miles) of tethered range. That was an advance of previously seen Ukrainian tethered drones reaching 42km (~26 miles).

A trilateral security agreement between Australia, the UK, and the U.S. is leading towards the development of undersea drones to help protect their critical undersea cables from Russian sabotage. According to The Telegraph, UK Secretary of State for Defense John Healey says the three nations would work together to build this new technology, which is designed to protect the underwater infrastructure that connects several NATO members to each other.

This move, according to Mr. Healey, would “rapidly give our forces the very most advanced battlefield technology as together we produce a range of cutting-edge sensors and weapons systems for undersea drones.” He also added, “This will give us the ability to detect, to deter, and deal with the threats, including our underwater cables and pipelines on which so much of our daily life depends.”

There have been multiple incidents of undersea cables getting severed by cargo ships, which many authorities suspect have been done on purpose. Some examples of this include a couple of cables connecting Finland to Germany and Sweden to Lithuania, multiple undersea cables in the Red Sea that connected Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as one cable that linked Taiwan and the U.S. Furthermore, Russian naval assets have been tracked close to undersea cables, and they’re suspected of mapping out this crucial infrastructure in international waters.

Because of these, many nations are now taking steps to develop weapons and technologies to protect their infrastructure. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which is widely credited as the progenitor of the modern internet, has announced a call for proposals to build an autonomous underwater drone, while the U.S. Navy has signed a deal with an AI firm to develop tech that would allow undersea minesweepers to learn about new and novel threats in days. The UK is also testing a 40-foot drone for seabed warfare and other missions, while startups are working on various prototypes to help protect undersea cables.

Governments are increasingly relying on uncrewed autonomous drones for missions like this. That’s because keeping a navy vessel on station to protect undersea cables that travel for miles can be a costly endeavor. So, undersea drones are a cost-effective alternative for monitoring critical underwater infrastructure, allowing navies to keep their assets free to respond to threats as needed.

A startup just revealed an AI-powered uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV) designed to operate at depths of up to 1,640 feet (500 meters) and come with a 22-pound (10-kilogram) payload. According to Marine Technology News, this undersea drone is capable of subsea infrastructure protection, inspections, and intervention. It can operate independently for up to four hours, but can extend indefinitely if tethered to a power source from the surface.

This drone, called the SU10 and built by SYOS, can launch directly from shore, through a crewed mothership, or via a larger uncrewed surface ship built by the same company, with a launch-and-recovery system that’s connected to the company’s autonomous software. This UUV has a rather short battery life of just four hours, which seems like it isn’t enough for patrolling undersea cables. However, the option to operate it connected to a larger vessel on the surface should allow it to extend its mission for as long as necessary. AutoNotion says that the tether doesn’t just carry power — it also has an ultra-slim fiber-optic line that transfers data and a live feed, allowing an operator to control it manually as needed.

While the SU10’s various mission packages and control schemes offer governments and navies multiple capabilities as a standalone unit, it’s actually the company’s proprietary autonomous AAIM software stack and hardware ecosystem that gives it an advantage over other drones. SYOS has already been building uncrewed drones for the air, land, and surface of sea, and AAIM combines the capabilities of all these platforms into a single coordinated unit. This allows for complicated operations and a more dynamic response to whatever situation that an operator may encounter. This is similar to the drone wolf pack that China developed for the PLA, but with capabilities that go beyond the land or the sea.

The SU10 could potentially excel at monitoring and protecting undersea cables. The UUV could potentially loiter underwater while tethered to a surface ship through a long cable. If it detects a disruption, it could immediately alert the operator, who can then take over to verify that information. From there, they could deploy additional resources as necessary (and even do it automatically if they have other SYOS drones on hand). An operation like this is said to be more affordable compared to a similar one that uses crewed vessels, allowing governments, even those with limited budgets, to protect crucial infrastructure.

A drone-loving duo just unofficially broke the drone speed world record when they achieved a maximum speed of 453 mph (730 kph or 394 kts) in a single run — for context, most jetliners cruise at around 550 mph (885 kph or 478 kts). The two drone builders, Aidan and Ben, had previously set a record of 388 mph (626 kph or 338 kts) in December 2025, but were soon defeated by the Bell father-and-son team with the 408 mph Peregreen V4. So, to reclaim their crown, they ordered new propellers for the 'Blackbird' and shared their test run on the Drone Pro Hub YouTube channel.

The team’s secret sauce is their custom carbon fiber propeller blades that were specially handmade for this purpose. These featured high-pitch blades (whose pitch angle is a secret for now) that are angled more towards the direction of flight compared to the blades used in previous attempts. This made them more efficient at high speeds as the props are more parallel to the airflow compared to other propellers with a lower pitch angle. One downside to this, though, is that it delivers less power at low speeds — like when taking off or hovering — so the motors must use more battery power during this (rather short) stage of flight.

Another finesse of the design is evident in the sawtooth leading edges found on the custom blades. These generate vortices on the surface of the blade, helping prevent the air from sliding sideways along the blade instead of flowing straight back off its trailing edge to push the drone forward. They also stabilize the boundary layer, or the thin layer of air that acts like a “lubricant” and reduces drag on the propeller itself. This is crucial as it allows the propellers to have a steeper angle without stalling (if the angle is too steep it acts more like a blender than a propeller).

These changes seemed to have pushed the team’s drone further, as it achieved 393 mph (633 kph or 341 kts) in its first test run. Unfortunately, physics got the better of them, as antenna geometry, the Doppler effect, and signal overload caused the drone to lose connection from the controller at such a high speed. The two did not bother attempting to recover it, as they knew that it was lost for good at these speeds. Furthermore, even if the drone lost connection right in front of the controller, it would have traveled miles at its current speed before it would have crashed.

Thankfully, they still had another drone available for testing and another set of their updated propellers. So, they set out again the following day and continued their tests. It seemed that they only had enough batteries for two test runs, and adverse weather was quickly approaching, so they had to set up quickly and get to flying. It was also a windy day, so they made one downwind flight and one upwind flight, and they just averaged the speeds between the two to get a rather fair result.

It was on the downwind test flight that they achieved their record 453 mph, which is above the 441-mph record that they initially hoped for. However, when they accounted for the 34-mph tailwind, this meant that the drone only had an actual airspeed of 419 mph (674 kph or 364 kts). For their final test run, the duo achieved 397 mph (640 kph or 345 kts) against the wind. They averaged the two runs, getting a figure of 425 mph (685 kph or 369 kts) — this might be a bit short of the more than 434 mph (700 kph or 377 kts) they hoped to achieve, but it still beats the current world record.

Official record next?

Their final drone was damaged a bit when it landed hard after the last test run, as the batteries ran completely flat just a few feet off the ground. Nevertheless, this is still repairable, and the two should hopefully be able to get their drone running again for an official record attempt this time. As for the first drone that crashed, the owner of the land where they were conducting the testing found it completely mangled, but that’s already expected.

If you want to make your own attempt at achieving the drone world speed record, you can actually get guidance through their Drone Pro Hub website. And while they use custom propeller blades made by a professional, you can actually 3D print the body and other components at home with one of the best 3D printers you can buy.

A Turkish researcher just shared details of a sprayable radar absorbent material (RAM) designed to be applied to drones and other small uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to the Defense Blog, Yunus İnce and their small defense research firm have been working on the material, called Kürşat 3.0, for more than seven years. İnce shared test footage of the product with the publication, showing the claimed 43dB signal attenuation. This is a greater reduction compared to broadband coatings tested by academic researchers in standardized test conditions. However, the company’s claims must still be validated by a third-party expert to prove that it actually works and makes it harder to detect UAVs.

Drone warfare has exploded in recent years, with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started in 2022, showing how these cheap and tiny gadgets could effectively stop the advance of a multi-million-dollar tank column. Both sides of the conflict have wholeheartedly adopted UAVs as part of their military tactics, and militaries around the globe are devising cost-effective ways of taking down this new threat, like using lasers, microwaves, or good ol’ kinetic energy. Drone operators and manufacturers are not taking these threats lightly, with companies working to make them harder to detect via radar.

Traditional low-observability technologies use a combination of deflection and absorption to reduce their radar signature. This is why the F-117 Nighthawk, the first true operational stealth aircraft, had multiple angular surfaces instead of the usual smooth flowing skin found on fighter jets. Computing advancements allowed engineers to combine aerodynamics and radar deflection, which is why modern stealth aircraft like the B-21 Raider and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter are much more contoured compared to the F-117. This signal deflection accounts for the majority of an aircraft’s stealth capabilities, with RAM turning the radar waves that cannot deflect away from the receiver into heat. İnce says that the RAM their team developed uses volcanic basalt and pumice structures. These materials could plausibly work as their microscopic porosity could be engineered to trap electromagnetic signals to avoid detection.

A UAV’s advantage is its small size and low cost, making it cost-inefficient to produce specialized radar-deflecting designs. However, the Kürşat 3.0 could be a game-changer if other scientists can confirm that it really works. Many UAVs are so small that it’s difficult to detect them at longer distances — covering them with this “spray-on” RAM would only make it harder for defenders to detect and lock on to them using traditional radar sets.

This coating is not the be-all and end-all of drone stealth, though. That’s because most drones are built for efficiency and speed, not stealth, so they lack the required geometry to deflect radar signals. This is especially true for quadcopters, where the four exposed blades would easily reflect signals back to the radar transceiver. But because they’re often already tiny, covering them in Kürşat 3.0 spray would increase their survivability and make it harder for defenders to target them on their radar scopes.

With record reports of bear attacks on humans, Japan has been increasingly turning to high-tech solutions, as you might expect. However, reports suggest that Ohta Seiki, a firm making the animatronic robot Monster Wolf to repel bears from human-habituated areas, can’t keep up with demand. “We cannot make them fast enough,” company president Yuji Ohta told AFP.

This year’s order book for Monster Wolf has already hit 50 units. Hokkaido-based Ohta Seiki usually doesn’t even manufacture that many robot wolves in a whole year. According to the latest figures, bears killed 13 people in Japan last year. That’s more than double the fatality rate from the previous year. Sightings are up, too, with 50,000 reports of bears nationwide. That figure is more than double the previous sightings record.

Of course, fatalities are a statistic at the extreme end of the situation. There are also numerous non-fatal incidents where bears have seriously injured or scarred humans, entered homes, roamed around schools, scared guests at hot spring resorts, and even rampaged through supermarkets in Japan.

Above: A video from 2024 showing a Monster Wolf in action.

With the record upswing in bear attacks and sightings, it isn’t a big surprise that business is booming for Ohta Seiki. Its Monster Wolf product looks ferocious. The official product pages say that the robot wolf imitates its real wild world namesake, but it turns up the fear levels by “emitting intense LED lights and loud voices.” Ohta Seiki is currently asking customers to “wait two to three months” for their orders to be fulfilled.

The $4,000+ Monster Wolf has an infrared sensor to detect and target wild animals with its 50 types of loud noises, glowing red eyes, blue under-lighting, and neck swinging from side to side. The robot’s traversal of the terrain (wheels are an optional upgrade), animated movements, sounds, and lighting are powered by a combination of a 12V car battery and an (optional) solar charging panel.

Ohta Seiki has plans to expand its product range with a handheld version of Monster Wolf for hikers, anglers, and schoolchildren, reports AFP. It is also looking at leveraging AI cameras to improve its anti-bear tech.

Earlier in the year, we reported on bear-repelling drones being deployed around Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture to address concerns about a “bear infestation.”

The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) has chosen four British firms to partner for the next milestone in Project NYX. This high-tech project seeks to develop autonomous “loyal wingmen” for British Army Apache helicopter crews. Anduril Industries (UK) Ltd, BAE Systems Operations Ltd, Tekever Ltd, and Thales UK Ltd have been shortlisted to drive the project forward and deliver on concepts for drones that will “increase lethality and survivability of the Apaches, while reducing risk to personnel.”

If you thought Apache helicopters were already a force to be reckoned with, imagine the sight of one or more of these war birds on the horizon, accompanied by a swarm of autonomous drones.

At this milestone stage, the MoD has invested £10 million (US$13,325,000) in the quartet of shortlisted companies, which have been whittled down from seven listed back in January. The remaining four aren’t working together on a collaborative Apache wingman drone design. Rather, according to the official press release, “all four designs to be assessed before a final partner is chosen later this year.” Actually, the MoD might choose two companies to move forward, depending on the designs from this phase of Project NYX, which are expected to be presented and judged in the fall this year.

The autonomous nature of the Project NYX drones means that Apache crews don’t face any further burdens on their skills. The drones can serve various purposes, says the MoD. Specifically, roles such as “reconnaissance, precision strike, target acquisition, and electronic warfare in contested environments” are mentioned.

The drones won't use or trigger weapons directly

At this stage, the government department says that the drones will not use or trigger weapons directly. Such decisions “will continue to be made by a human,” it asserts. We’d guess that under the pressure of a serious conflict, such safeguards could slip, though.

The MoD already has some idea of the range of solutions that are being worked upon by the shortlisted quartet of military tech makers. Images shared include a sampling of diverse UAS designs. Each design offers its own “innovative autonomy, payloads, and sensors,” says the press release.

After the winning prototype(s) are selected in fall 2026, the MoD aims to have operational Apache drone ‘wingmen’ ready for use in 2030.

Ukraine has developed an AI-powered anti-drone laser that is nearing battlefield readiness. A video shared on social media by the country's Celebra Tech shows the 'Tryzub' trailer-mounted system burning a hole through some armor in three to four seconds. The demo goes on to show an incoming drone in the AI-assisted sights of Tryzub being zapped and then crashing to the ground a few seconds later.

One news source, Euromaidan Press, says that the above demonstrated system has been in development by Ukrainian firm Celebra Tech since at least 2024. Now in its final stages of testing, Celebra Tech says that Tryzub can “burn holes in Shaheds from 5km away.” That's a 3.1-mile range.

Shaheds are one of the larger, more slow-moving drone types that Ukraine has to counter to protect its people. Smaller and faster-moving drones have to be nearer to be targeted. Specifically, it is claimed that reconnaissance drones within 1,500 meters and FPV drones at around 800–900 meters range can also be combated (1 meter is roughly 1.1 yards, or even more roughly, they are the same).

In addition to the powerful laser, AI target acquisition and tracking play a large part in the touted success of Tryzub. Radar is integrated into the mobile system, too. It isn’t said explicitly, but we guess the longer range of the radar can help position this mobile laser ready to intercept targets.

Ukraine’s Tryzub laser hasn’t just been demonstrated physically destroying airborne and/or ground-based targets; it can also interfere with FPV drone cameras.

The news report indicates that this laser can also be deployed for demining operations. That’s something it could be busier with if this terrible conflict eventually ends. After success in active duty, there’s also going to be a healthy export market for Tryzub in countries currently in conflict and bordering potential flashpoint areas. Thus, we see many companies/countries racing forward with their own drones and anti-drone tech.

Testing of the Tryzub continues. None of our sources offers a firm date for when it will become an active service weapon, but Celebra says the design is mass production-ready once trials are passed.

The Federal Communications Commission announced on Friday, May 8, through its Office of Engineering and Technology (OET), that it was extending temporary waivers allowing certain foreign-produced drones, drone components, and consumer routers to continue receiving software and firmware updates in the United States.

In late 2025 and early 2026, the FCC added these categories of equipment to its “Covered List,” which effectively blocked already-authorized devices from receiving post-approval software and firmware modifications. The agency subsequently issued waivers permitting critical security and functionality updates to continue through January 1, 2027, for drones and drone components, and through March 1, 2027, for consumer routers.

Under the updated waiver, manufacturers of affected devices will now be allowed to continue issuing software and firmware updates until at least January 1, 2029, provided the devices had already been authorized for use in the U.S. before being added to the FCC’s “Covered List.” The extension also broadens the waiver to include certain Class II permissive changes involving software and firmware updates intended to mitigate consumer harm.

The decision follows growing concern that a strict enforcement of the restrictions could unintentionally leave millions of existing devices vulnerable to cybersecurity threats, compatibility issues, and operational failures. In practical terms, without the waiver, manufacturers of affected products could have been blocked from deploying even basic security patches and bug fixes once the devices were designated as covered equipment.

The FCC first added foreign-produced unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), UAS critical components, and certain communications equipment to the Covered List in late 2025 as part of broader national security efforts to reduce reliance on potentially risky foreign technology infrastructure. Routers produced in foreign countries were later added to the list in March 2026, except for models that had received conditional approval from the Department of War or the Department of Homeland Security.

The restrictions stem from revisions to FCC equipment authorization rules adopted in October 2025. Those revisions effectively prohibited “permissive changes” to covered equipment — a category that includes software and firmware modifications made after a device has already received certification. While the rules were designed to tighten oversight on high-risk equipment, they also created a difficult dilemma: preventing updates could inadvertently make already-deployed devices less secure over time.

In its notice, the FCC acknowledged that continued software support remains necessary to protect U.S. consumers. The waiver specifically allows updates that maintain device functionality, patch vulnerabilities, and preserve compatibility with changing operating systems and network environments.

The agency argued that the public interest would be better served by allowing these limited updates rather than freezing software support entirely. According to the FCC, the waiver provides regulators time to consider a more permanent framework while avoiding immediate cybersecurity risks to users currently operating affected devices.

Importantly, the waiver does not reverse the broader restrictions or remove the devices from the Covered List. Instead, it applies only to already-authorized products and to software- and firmware-related changes intended to maintain safe and secure operation. Manufacturers must still comply with other FCC requirements governing permissive changes and equipment certification.

The move highlights the increasingly complex balancing act regulators worldwide face as governments seek to secure communications infrastructure without inadvertently creating new cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Japan’s Minister of Defense, Shinjirō Koizumi, said in a post on X on Monday that the country had begun using expendable cardboard drones developed by Japanese drone manufacturer AirKamuy. Speaking during a meeting with the startup, the minister confirmed that the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was already utilizing the company’s low-cost drones as aerial targets as Japan expands its use of unmanned systems across its military.

The drone, known as the AirKamuy 150, is a lightweight fixed-wing platform built primarily from corrugated cardboard with a water-resistant coating. Unlike conventional military drones that rely on expensive composite materials and specialized aerospace manufacturing, the AirKamuy 150 is designed around extreme affordability and mass production.

Perhaps, the drone’s most important feature is its cost. The AirKamuy 150 reportedly costs around $2,000 to $2,500 per unit. By military standards, that is extremely low. Conventional military reconnaissance and loitering drones can cost anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of dollars, depending on their role and sophistication. Even Iran’s Shahed drones, which became heavily associated with the rise of low-cost attritional drone warfare during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, are estimated to cost roughly $20,000 to $50,000 each — potentially more than ten times the cost of the AirKamuy drone.

AirKamuy appears to have achieved part of its extreme cost reduction by radically simplifying the drone’s construction. The company’s use of corrugated cardboard rather than relying heavily on expensive aerospace composites or carbon-fiber airframes is a major factor. According to the company, the approach could allow the drones to be manufactured using ordinary cardboard production infrastructure rather than specialized aerospace facilities, potentially enabling rapid mass production during conflict.

The drone can reportedly travel roughly 50 miles or remain airborne for around 80 minutes using an electric propulsion system while carrying payloads weighing up to three pounds. The company also says the drones, which are prefab and can be assembled in five to ten minutes, are shipped flat-packed, allowing roughly 500 units to fit inside a standard shipping container.

Speaking to the Royal Aeronautical Society at the Singapore Airshow earlier this year, AirKamuy Chief Engineer Naoki Morita said the platform was primarily envisioned as a counter-drone system capable of operating in large numbers. Beyond functioning as aerial targets, the lightweight drones could potentially be deployed in swarms to overwhelm air-defense systems, force enemy radar activation, absorb defensive fire ahead of more valuable assets, or carry small reconnaissance payloads, electronic warfare equipment, or limited munitions for one-way attack missions.

“There is strong demand for low-cost drones that can operate in large numbers and over long distances,” said AirKamuy CEO Yamaguchi Takumi in an interview with NHK World-Japan. “This model can be manufactured at any cardboard plant, ensuring high mass production capability and a robust supply chain.”

The cardboard construction may also provide another advantage. Because cardboard has lower radar reflectivity than many conventional aerospace materials, the drones could present a smaller radar signature under certain conditions. While that would not make them invisible to radar systems, reduced detectability could make tracking more difficult, particularly for small, low-flying drones operating in large numbers.

The broader concept behind the AirKamuy 150 reflects a growing shift in military thinking toward low-cost expendable autonomous systems designed to operate in large numbers. Rather than protecting a small number of extremely expensive platforms, militaries are increasingly experimenting with cheap drones that can be sacrificed during reconnaissance, decoy, interception, or attack missions.

Recent conflicts are reflecting that shift. In Ukraine, both Russian and Ukrainian forces have used large numbers of low-cost drones for reconnaissance and direct attacks. Similar tactics involving inexpensive unmanned systems have also appeared across conflicts in the Middle East.

The AirKamuy 150 may ultimately represent more than an unusual cardboard aircraft. It may instead offer a glimpse into the future of industrial-scale drone warfare — one increasingly defined not by a handful of expensive machines, but by vast numbers of cheap, rapidly replaceable autonomous systems.

The U.S. Navy just signed a $99.7 million deal with Domino Data Lab, a San Francisco-based startup, to develop AI tech that would allow its undersea minesweepers to learn about new and unseen mines in days instead of months. Reuters reports that this new technology is intended for use in the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint in global sea lanes that Iran has mined to limit the movement of oil and cargo ships since the start of the U.S.-Iran war earlier this year.

The software will use multiple sensor suites, such as side-scan sonar and visual imaging systems, to monitor various other AI detection models operating in the field. This should allow operators to identify failures and push corrections as it operates, rather than sending information back to a lab and waiting for AI developers to train a new model to handle novel threats.

"Mine-hunting used to be a job for ships. It's becoming a job for AI. The Navy is paying for the platform ​that lets it train, govern, and field that AI at a speed required for contested waters ​that block global trade and imperil sailors,” Domino CEO Thomas Robinson told the news outlet. "If there were UUVs (unmanned underwater vehicles) in the Baltic Sea trained on Russian ⁠mines, ​and then they needed to be deployed to the Strait ​of Hormuz to detect Iranian mines, with Domino's technology, the Navy could be ready in a week rather than a year."

The Pentagon has increasingly been turning towards AI to bolster its capabilities, with the Department of War announcing deals with seven AI tech companies — namely SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services — to deploy LLMs across its classified networks. These tools are designed to sift through large volumes of data and identify patterns that are simply impossible for people to process in such a short time, thereby speeding up data analysis and decision-making. DARPA, its independent research arm, has also called for proposals to develop the next-generation deep-sea underwater drone that can be built quickly.

The U.S. and Iran have had an on-again, off-again ceasefire in place for several weeks now. This makes mine-clearing operations in the Strait of Hormuz high-risk, especially since strikes could occur at any moment and without warning. Deploying AI technology on undersea drones will reduce this risk, especially by making mine detection and removal much faster.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Department of War’s independent research and development agency, just issued a call for proposals to build an autonomous underwater drone. The program, which DARPA calls Deep Thoughts, is looking for the next generation of small autonomous undersea vehicles (AUVs) that can be built using readily available parts that allow for flexibility in the design. It also demands something that can be quickly produced, tested, and iterated on, with a development timeline of months or even weeks. More importantly, the AUV should be easily deployable from various platforms, so that users can launch it from submarines, ships, and even planes or helicopters.

Military drone development has been advancing at breakneck speed, with uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) taking the stage during the ongoing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian troops have taken advantage of this relatively new technology to blunt Russian armor and halt its advance, while Iran has taken to using its Shahed drones to strike targets in the Middle East when the U.S. started its bombing campaign of the country earlier this year. Chinese military scientists and engineers have also been developing drone swarms, giving individual soldiers the capacity to control up to 200 units.

The U.S. is also working on its own innovations in the UAV space —the U.S. Marine Corp introducing a 3D-printed drone called HANX, allowing units to manufacture and repair drones in-house, while a defense startup is marketing its CobraJet counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) to defeat enemy drone swarms at a much more cost-effective way. However, it seems that the Pentagon wants to expand its drone capabilities beyond the sky and into the deep sea.

DARPA’s project specifically targeted deep ocean exploration, saying that “gaining responsive and scalable access to this environment offers a significant strategic advantage.” While traditional defense contractors, like General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries, the makers of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered subs, are certainly capable of building these projects for the U.S. government, the War Department is looking for novel ways to build these systems. That’s because these firms are often associated with time-consuming projects with billions of dollars in cost overruns — just look at the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier as an example.

At a time when the United States’ rivals are rapidly iterating on cheap drones, the Pentagon needs a program that can quickly adapt to changing technologies and take advantage of the latest systems without costing millions of dollars per unit. This is why both the U.S. and its Gulf allies have been purchasing 3D-printed interceptor drones that only cost $1,000 apiece, instead of deploying $4,000,000 Patriot missiles to take down a single Shahed drone that only costs $20,000 to $50,000 per unit.

One of the two supercarriers of the U.S. Navy has been testing advanced anti-drone laser weaponry. In a blog post this week, AeroVironment (AV) says that its LOCUST Laser Weapon System (LWS) was put aboard the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) in October 2025. It was successfully demonstrated in a live-fire event where it “tracked, engaged, and neutralized multiple target drones.”

We aren’t sure if the LOCUST is still on board the USS George H.W. Bush, but it might be a useful extra layer of protection, as it was announced today that it is one of the three aircraft carriers operating in the Middle East right now – for the first time in decades.

AV’s VP of Directed Energy Systems, John Garrity, was effervescent about this latest collaborative venture. “LOCUST delivers effective, all-domain protection against emerging drone threats at the speed of light—on any platform, in any domain, for any mission,” said Garrity. “Rolling LOCUST onto a ship and quickly initiating operations facilitates the expanded use of high-energy lasers across the Fleet without the need for costly, time-consuming ship modifications,” he explained. Moreover, Garrity went as far as describing this successful demo as “a game-changer for the Navy and for our national security.”

We’ve covered LOCUST before. In January, we noted that it had been upgraded with “a larger aperture beam director, improving lethality performance.” That may have happened after the demo on the USS George H.W. Bush, as AV reveals the supercarrier hosted the LOCUST back in October 2025.

According to AV, shipboard deployments of LOCUST are a great fit for the tech as the LWS can roll on and off as needed, and run fully off a ship’s power. That gives the vessel “an unlimited DE magazine with an essentially unlimited power source.”

Drones everywhere

Drones are already well established in modern warfare, with thousands of them deployed by both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. It wasn’t a surprise that Iran also unleashed its Shahed air terror tech against what it saw as U.S. Gulf state allies, plus the infrastructure of U.S. and Israeli businesses, following the strikes on its government, military, and supporting systems.

We also don’t see why a US-made mobile drone swarm killer like the Leonidas AGV with its high-power microwave platform can’t be easily positioned on large Navy vessels.

Video footage captured by Ukrainian Sting interceptor drones shows that Russia’s ceaseless drone assault is now powered by what some commentators have described as ‘flying garbage.’ Personnel from the Wild Hornets shared the video below earlier this week, which we’ve embedded below so you can see for yourself the state of these Russian-made Shahed drones immediately before they are obliterated (expand the tweet to view).

Wild Hornets credits the footage to Ukraine’s 23rd NGU Brigade and solemnly notes that “Every successful interception in the sky means one less explosion among civilians.”

The analysts at Defense-Blog provide some further context for what we can see in the video. This source paints a picture of Russian-made Shahed drones “literally disintegrating in the air before reaching their targets.” Indeed, pausing the video shows the seconds-before-their-doom drones have all sorts of build defects. Various body panels seem to be missing, stray wiring is visible, wingtips are deformed, and one of the drones featured already has “a completely detached nose fairing,” says the independent defense news outlet.

A utilitarian might say that these are mere cosmetic issues, but the source reckons they are surface symptoms of personnel, manufacturing, and supply problems facing the Russians. Specifically, it says that the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia’s Tatarstan region, where most of these drones are made, has a factory that runs around the clock with minimally trained operatives. It goes on to indicate that many of these imported workers are very young and have been lured/trapped into positions at these factories.

The poor working conditions are exacerbated by demands to churn out Shaheds to volume targets, using whatever “inferior” Chinese parts they can get hold of. Meanwhile, Ukraine is actively targeting known drone production and storage in Russia with its own long-range weaponry.

Finally, Defense-Blog indicates that the worsening of quality from the Russian drone production facilities is a factor in the declining Shahed-type UAV hit rate in Ukraine. It says that there’s been “a sustained decline in strike effectiveness beginning in October 2025,” which continues to the most recent observations. It concludes that quality control has collapsed, and the Shahed drones are now seen as “a tool of attrition rather than precision.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has decided to give carte blanche approval of the military’s use of laser weaponry to shoot down suspected errant drones in U.S. airspace, reports the New York Times. This decision comes after a controversial move by the FAA, back in February, when it closed airspace in response to the military firing high-energy lasers at suspected drug cartel drones. Those drones over Texas turned out to be “party balloons.” That incident, causing delays to civil aviation with flight paths over the area, likely made relations between the FAA, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Pentagon quite icy.

Now you may be wondering what’s changed to result in the two-month standoff between the FAA and the Pentagon being over. There may have been some political pressure on one side or another – that’s open for debate. However, what we do know is that the FAA has completed its safety assessments.

According to the source, the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, shared a report that concluded, “These systems do not present an increased risk to the flying public.” Furthermore, even if the anti-drone laser beams came into contact with civil aircraft, the risk would be minimal, an anonymous FAA insider told the NYT.

The FAA isn’t just going to wash its hands of lasers piercing civil air corridors, though. It is expected to issue advisories to pilots who fly routes over U.S. southern border areas to make them aware of increased anti-drone laser use in these zones. Also, remember that stray drones can be a physical danger to aircraft.

From now on, we assume that the Pentagon will be able to shoot high-energy lasers liberally along the southern border, ostensibly to destroy cartel drug mule drones and the like. It would still probably be wise if they could coordinate with the FAA somehow, despite not needing to ask for permission.

We covered the news of an advanced LOCUST laser weapon system being used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to shoot down “party balloons” back in mid-February this year. It served as a reminder that those controlling the government’s machinery designed to protect us are far from infallible.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) just revealed its intelligent canine robots that can work together in a swarm for urban combat. These “wolf packs” were shown off on a TV documentary named Unmanned Competition for the state channel CCTV, according to the South China Morning Post. What made these new drone models different was that they could coordinate directly with each other, allowing a group of robot dogs to be controlled by a single soldier without micromanagement.

These land drones also come with specialized tasks — there’s the Shadow variant, which is designed for reconnaissance and situational awareness, while the Polar one is tasked with logistical support. At the sharp end of the group is the Bloody variant; this model can be equipped with various weapons, including small missiles, grenade launchers, and automatic weapons. Each drone reportedly has a top speed of 9 mph (about 14.5 kmph) with a payload capacity of 55 pounds (25 kg). More importantly, the four-legged construction of these devices lets them traverse extreme environments, including rough terrain, allowing them to move independently of roads.

There are various ways of controlling the entire drone task force, including through voice commands, via a tactical glove, or by a control stick that can be directly mounted on rifles. While these machines can operate independently and are capable of autonomous identification and targeting, it’s said that they still require human confirmation to conduct a strike.

Combined drone arms

The robot wolves aren’t limited to land operations. While they cannot take flight, they can coordinate their actions with other drones to combine air-ground operations. One such example is the Atlas uncrewed aerial vehicle, which works together as a single swarm with up to 96 individual drones with specific tasks, including reconnaissance, jamming, and strikes. This is aside from the 200-strong AI drone swarm that the PLA revealed earlier this year, which was also controlled by a single operator.

Modern battlefields have shown that airborne drones pose a major threat in combat operations, so the Chinese military also showed off two anti-drone laser weapons. The Guangjian 11-E uses a more energy-efficient low-power laser designed to take down smaller drones, like the ones that are typically sold commercially, while the more powerful 21-A version is built for “hard destruction,” likely meaning it’s powerful enough to destroy an airborne target.

Finally, police in Zhuhai, Guangdong, located outside of Macau and across the bay to the west of Hong Kong, showcased their L30 uncrewed surface vessels. These autonomous boats can hit 35 knots (around 65 kph or 40 mph) and have a range of 300 nautical miles (about 556 km or 345 miles). Just like the other drones, the L30 fleet can work together and use AI for targeting and response. It can also perform blockades and ram other vessels to disable them, as necessary.

One more technology that Chinese researchers are working on for these drones is “satellite-denied navigation,” which would allow these weapons to operate and coordinate, even in areas where there is jamming and active signal denial. Their goal is to achieve “large-scale full autonomy,” allowing the Chinese military to deploy combined arms drone task forces to achieve military objectives without needing human intervention.

BRINC, a startup that specializes in building Drone as First Responder (DFR) aircraft, has just announced its latest product, called Guardian, which is equipped with an onboard Starlink receiver. This removes the signal limitation that the average drone has, which is required to be within signal distance of its base station or within range of cellular or other terrestrial signals. The company says that this gives the Guardian a much longer range — eight miles, instead of the usual three — from its base station, and is only limited by its battery power, not by its connection to its operator.

The company did not just stop at giving the Guardian a near-unlimited communication range through Starlink — it also received several upgrades that made it so much more flexible. One of these is the automatic battery swap capability, allowing the drone to quickly get back into action when it’s low on power instead of waiting 25 minutes on the ground to completely recharge. It can also carry various payloads, including defibrillators, Narcan, floatation devices, and other emergency equipment, depending on the situation, and deliver them to both civilians and first responders as needed.

The Guardian features an integrated camera with 4K video and 640 times zoom, making it easier to survey the surroundings and find people from over a thousand feet away. It can also carry a 1,000-lumen SkyBeam spotlight to help light up the skies during night rescue and recovery operations.

Aside from serving in medical and other emergencies, BRINC also built the drone for use with law enforcement. It comes with dual HD thermal zoom cameras, making it easier to spot individuals in low-light conditions, and has a built-in laser rangefinder for accurately determining distances without requiring officers to see the target. It also gets a speaker and a siren that’s reportedly three times louder than what you’d find on police cars, basically turning it into a tiny airborne police cruiser.

These technologies aren’t essentially new, especially as you’d likely find them on military drones. In fact, Russia is allegedly still using Starlink-connected drones in Ukraine, resulting in the company issuing an emergency fix to block the use of its service in bombing Ukraine. But by putting all these features together in a small package that can be operated by civilian agencies, BRINC is giving first responders so much more capability which were previously exclusive to expensive helicopters.

A trio of U.S. industry leaders in defense, autonomy, and directed energy have collaborated on a new solution to neutralize drone swarms. Today, the Leonidas Autonomous Ground Vehicle (AGV) was announced as an autonomous mobile answer to the growing asymmetric threat from the skies. Specifically, it combines the Epirus Leonidas high-power microwave platform, the Kodiak Driver autonomous system, and General Dynamics Land Systems’ system integration expertise.

Advances in drone warfare are reshaping how nations think about offense and defense. We’ve recently reported on how Ukraine’s experience has been helping Gulf nations address this new kind of threat. As impressive as embattled Ukraine’s ingenuity is, countering ‘cheap’ drones effectively with ‘cheap’ anti-drone measures – an effective high-tech answer would be welcome. Perhaps the Leonidas AGV is it.

In a press release received by Tom’s Hardware, the collaborators behind the project highlighted that the AGV can be teleoperated to safely extend the lines of drone defenses and operated without human intervention. The rapidly deployable mobile unit can then dish out its deadly(to drones) directed microwave energy.

According to the AGV makers, it is effective against individual, swarm, or fiber-optic-controlled drone attacks. Previously, the Epirus Leonidas high-power microwave platform has enjoyed success in the field. We reported on it being demonstrated, downing 49 drones in one shot, last year. Thus, there is little reason to doubt its extended effectiveness as part of this autonomous mobile platform. It is basically driven to exactly where it will work best by Kodiak Driver from Kodiak AI. In case you haven’t heard of Kodiak AI, in 2024, it delivered the tech behind the first customer-owned and -operated driverless trucks in commercial service.

“Saturation drone attacks demand a fundamentally different approach to defense,” said Andy Lowery, CEO of Epirus. “Leonidas AGV combines autonomous mobility with high-power microwave effects to deliver a counter-UAS capability that rapidly maneuvers to defeat drone swarms without more boots on the ground. Together with GDLS and Kodiak, we’re enabling a new layer of autonomous drone defense for critical assets and infrastructure.”

General Dynamics Land Systems is a specialist unit of General Dynamics which provided the design, engineering, production, and combat vehicle support ‘glue’ to transition the AGV from a concept into a demonstrable prototype.

A full-scale Leonidas AGV prototype will be on display at Booth 801 this week, at the AUSA Global Force Symposium & Exhibition. The symposium begins today, at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Chinese eTail giant Alibaba has removed listings and suspended the accounts of sellers that were found to be advertising “cruise missiles” and “suicide attack drones.” Australia’s ABC News uncovered the concerning sales of several one-way attack drone models, some of which looked strikingly similar to the Iranian Shahed design, others with a cruise missile profile.

The Alibaba “commercial” listings touted the drones as “pesticide sprayers,” or for “aerial mapping”. However, ABC dug into the product catalogs to confirm the Shahed-a-likes were “suicide attack drones” capable of carrying 2kg (4.41 pound) warheads for distances up to 100km. Moreover, with their thermal imaging and AI guidance, these devices could "achieve autonomous locking of targets (people, building, vehicles, ships, etc.)”

These kamikaze drones would not be casual impulse buys. ABC reports that the listing prices of the cruise missile style drones were approaching $50,000. If that sum was reported in Australian dollars, it equates to approximately USD $35,000.

ABC continued to look closely through the various supplier catalogs it found from the Alibaba suppliers. One of the China-based suppliers offered five kinds of "suicide attack drones" with two having near identical dimensions and specs to the Iranian-made Shahed 136, says the news report.

Dual use conundrum

Drones inhabit a twilight dual-use segment of the commercial landscape. Many can quickly and easily be adapted for peaceful purposes or war duties. An Alibaba statement received by ABC News, was clear, though. The online retailer stated that it “strictly prohibits the sale of military weapons.” It also acted quickly to remove what it characterized as non-compliant third-party listings.

Talking to a handful of the suppliers, the Australian news organization saw that the sellers generally didn’t care what the drones they sold were used for. For example, one of the retailers contacted shrugged “After the customer makes a purchase, what they use it for has nothing to do with us.”

Is the delivery what you expected?

Importantly, just because these kamikaze drone adverts exist, it doesn’t mean that the advertisers would actually ship these exact products.

We reported on overclocking expert De8auer falling victim to fake metal exporters on Alibaba recently. That transaction meant €40,000 down the drain, and orders delayed. Who knows what you would have got if you ordered a Shahed-a-like before the listing was removed? We’d imagine it would be difficult to complain and get any recompense from a Shahed lost in the post, or after receiving a tiny replica, or another scam item.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) have developed a drone capture and crash-inducing device. The FlyTrap attack uses special patterns to exploit deficiencies in Autonomous Target Tracking (ATT), often referred to as Active Track, Motion Track, or Dynamic Track. FlyTrap patterns can be easily carried around and deployed by anyone, as the researchers printed them on “adversarial umbrellas.” In essence, this seems like a deliciously lo-fi counter to a hi-tech hazard. Umbrellas are also useful if it rains, or for portable shade.

The FlyTrap attack was demonstrated in the field, literally, by one of the researchers in the video above. A specially formulated AI-generated pattern is displayed by opening an umbrella after a drone locks on to track the person in the field. Specifically, the visual pattern performs a next-gen physical distance pulling (PDP) attack that works across multiple angles, even in motion, and in the real-world. This demo works on three commercial drones that were tested, the DJI Mini 4 Pro, the DJI Neo and the HoverAir X1.

The umbrella-printed visual physically draws victim drones closer as its neural network tracking systems interpret the pattern to be the subject moving further away. As the drone approaches the umbrella, the pattern causes the targeting bounding box to continue shrinking - so the drone moves to get closer. Autonomous drones lured by the pattern can then easily be ensnared using a net gun, or further induced to crash to Earth.

The research shows that FlyTrap is significantly more effective than prior adversarial‑ML techniques like older PDP tech and Targeted Gradient Transfer (TGT).

“Autonomous target tracking represents both tremendous potential and significant risk,” said paper co-author Alfred Chen, UC Irvine assistant professor of computer science. Chen reminds us that autonomous drones are used in areas like border patrol and public safety, but also by malicious actors.

Lead author, Shaoyuan Xie, a UC Irvine graduate student researcher in computer science added that “Our findings highlight urgent needs for security improvements in [autonomous target-tracking] systems before wider deployment in critical infrastructure."

It would be fascinating to see or hear about FlyTrap being used in the real-world. However, both DJI and HoverAir have been responsibly notified about the neural processing vulnerabilities in their autonomous tracking systems.

Ukraine has sent drone interceptors and training crews to the U.S. and its Gulf State allies as the Iran War rumbles on. Specifically, Ukrainian-designed Sting, Bullet, P1-Sun, Octopus 100, and ODIN Win_Hit interceptors could soon be deployed across the Middle East. The lowest-cost model, the Skyfall P1-SUN, costs around $1,000 apiece and is built on a 3D-printed airframe. Al Jazeera reports that the first Ukrainian interceptor devices and military personnel arrived in Jordan as early as last Friday, March 6.

Even as Ukraine struggles against Russia, the democratic Eastern European nation has readily responded to U.S. requests for “specific support in protection against ‘shaheds’ in the Middle East region,” according to a recent X post by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The embattled president followed up with a post on Thursday, March 12, explaining that he was still waiting for the “approval from the White House” to “sign a big drone production deal.”

Why do the US and its Gulf State allies need Ukrainian armaments?

There’s been a lot of talk about asymmetric warfare since Russia invaded Ukraine four years ago. To persevere so successfully in this David vs Goliath match-up, Ukraine has been highly innovative in fending off and repulsing the larger military using a wide range of typically smaller, cheaper, sometimes lo-tech (and sometimes surprisingly high-tech) responses. Its development of drones and drone defenses is probably among its most notable achievements.

Mainstream news sources note that Gulf States are rapidly eating through their air defense supplies. Contrasts are made between the costs of dispatching Ukrainian drone interceptors ($1,000 to $2,000) vs a Patriot missile (~$4 million). It isn’t all about the cost, though. Supplies of Patriot missiles are also more constrained. Some commentators note that more Patriot missiles have been fired during the Iran war than Ukraine has been supplied during the last four years.

Another thing in the Ukrainian interceptor drone’s favor is that it can be launched and controlled by one person. Patriot missiles need a launcher system and three soldiers for a one-off launch, but around 90 personnel for full sustained operation and maintenance.

Reports suggest that Iran has thousands of its cheap, domestically produced Shahed drones in stock. The same drones that it has been supplying to Russia over recent years. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy says that “We are ready to help.” But the quid pro quo is that Ukraine should also get access to more advanced U.S. defense systems.

A probable unintended consequence of the Iran invasion, that U.S. strategists might not have foreseen, is the recently judged necessity to ease Russian oil sanctions. Ironically, this will probably allow more funds to pour into fuelling Putin’s war machine, and extend the Russia-Ukraine war. In effect, this could prolong Ukraine’s own struggle against these same Shahed drones, and surely even more terrible weapons, as the war grinds on.

Amazon’s data center business in the Middle East has been adversely impacted amid the 2026 Iran Conflict. The AWS Health Dashboard notes there are ongoing issues with multiple services at its data centers in the region. Specifically, the status page reports that service disruptions/impacts are ongoing at AWS Middle East (UAE) Region (ME-CENTRAL-1), and the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region (ME-SOUTH-1) data centers.

“In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure,” explains the AWS Health Dashboard. And these incidents have precipitated dozens of ‘disrupted,’ ‘degraded,’ and ‘impacted’ services.

As per the quote above, the UAE data center was impacted most severely by the drones. From broader reporting of the conflict, we assume these drone strikes are part of Iran’s response to U.S. Operation Epic Fury and Israeli Operation Roaring Lion strikes on Iranian targets over the weekend. Both the UAE and Bahrain data centers were hit by drones in the early hours of March 1. Whether Iran purposely targeted AWS facilities, we cannot say for certain.

ME-CENTRAL-1 in the UAE

This morning’s update regarding AWS Middle East (UAE) Region (ME-CENTRAL-1) assures customers that “teams continue to make progress on recovery efforts across multiple workstreams.”

While engineers are working to safely restore the full gamut of AWS services, the firm says that it “strongly recommend[s] that customers with workloads running in the Middle East take action now to migrate those workloads to alternate AWS Regions.” It would be wise to enact disaster recovery plans, recover from remote backups stored in other Regions, and update applications to direct traffic away from the UAE, for now, too.

ME-SOUTH-1 in Bahrain

In Bahrain, the most recent update says that engineers “continue to work toward restoring power in the affected Availability Zone (mes1-az2) in the ME-SOUTH-1 Region.” The facility still has no firm time/date for when it expects to restore power and full connectivity, with significant work still required, says AWS.

As with ME-CENTRAL-1, above, AWS is recommending users migrate or replicate their ME-SOUTH-1 Region data to another AWS Region.

These are some of the first ‘tech’ impacts we have seen precipitated by the 2026 Iran Conflict. They surely won’t be the last, with shipping, the costs of raw materials, and energy resources already rapidly inflating due to emerging geopolitical risks and pressures.

Congress officials just reported that the U.S. military accidentally shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone flying around the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the Associated Press, the incident happened in Fort Hancock, some 50 miles southeast of El Paso International Airport, which was shut down two weeks ago due to the firing of another laser weapon, after it was mistaken for a Mexican cartel drone.

The United States military is required to formally inform the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) whenever it conducts a counter-drone action within U.S. airspace. So, because of this latest occurrence, the agency shut down the airspace over the area, though it’s unknown whether flight schedules were disrupted.

The report, however, reached the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, with ranking committee members Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), Rep. André Carson (D-IN), and Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) releasing a statement calling out the Trump administration.

“Our heads are exploding over the news that DoD reportedly shot down a Customs and Border Protection drone using a high-risk counter-unmanned aircraft system,” the trio said in a joint statement. “We said MONTHS ago that the White House’s decision to sidestep a bipartisan tri-committee bill to appropriate train C-UAS operators and address the lack of coordination between the Pentagon, DHS, and the FAA was a short-sighted idea. Now, we’re seeing the result of its incompetence.”

Drone threats have steadily been increasing, especially as the world saw their widespread use during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. China, one of the U.S.’s biggest geopolitical rivals at the moment, even developed an AI drone swarm that allowed one soldier to control 200 units. Because of this, many countries have started developing weapons to counter them, including 100,000-watt lasers, vehicle-mounted and sea-borne laser systems, high-powered microwaves, and even AI-powered counter-drones.

While these weapons are highly effective against UAVs, the agencies implementing them need to develop a proper threat-detection system to avoid friendly fire, such as in this situation. Furthermore, they could damage airliners and other legitimate aircraft operating in the area and even incapacitate their crews.

This aviation-related incident has highlighted the lack of coordination between the U.S. military and civilian agencies. It follows the tragic collision of a U.S. Army helicopter and a passenger airliner on final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport just last year. What is more concerning is that these aviation-related incidents happen despite the strict training that both military and civilian pilots undergo. Adding drones and counter-drone systems into the mix without proper coordination and training will only increase the overall risk to the flying public.

A frighteningly farcical series of events involving laser weaponry, the FAA, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the Pentagon has been retold by a trio of insiders talking to the Wall Street Journal. The punch-line, reportedly, is that the advanced LOCUST laser weapon system was used to shoot down party balloons over the U.S-Mexico border.

It is difficult to condense this self-satirizing chain of events, but as briefly as we can; agents from the CBP used an advanced Pentagon laser weapon to target ‘Cartel drones’ over the U.S.-Mexico border. However, insiders assert that the FAA had warned the CBP not to go ahead, had to suddenly close airspace over the target area, and diverted and delayed numerous flights for safety. The cherry on the silly cake is that the CBP actually shot down aerial objects that “turned out to likely be party balloons,” says the WSJ, which has sources who have had eyes-on debris analysis reports.

After he became aware of the CBP plans going ahead against his advice, Bryan Bedford, the Federal Aviation Administration chief, closed an 11-miles radius of airspace adjacent to El Paso International Airport. This abrupt closure caused chaos, according to the source report, and also came as a surprise to officials at the White House, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the CBP.

However, the 10-day closure per the official FAA notification was cut short, after the trigger-happy CBP had finished zapping party balloons. The FAA was probably assured by the aforementioned agencies that ‘operation party balloon pooper’ had been a success and the CBP had stood down.

The WSJ frames the farcical incident as evidence of a long-standing spat between the various governmental, safety, and security agencies and the problematic communications between them. FAA, DOD, DHS and White House spokespersons haven’t responded to the WSJ’s requests for comment, as yet.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.) urged the FAA and the Pentagon to coordinate better, reports the WSJ. “We could do something legislatively, but I’d rather that they just started talking to each other,” said Duckworth, who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Republicans, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Roger Wicker, hadn’t reportedly been briefed on the laser weapon farce, at the time of writing.

Authorities may yet release more solid investigatory information to clarify the timeline and series of events, and reveal any drone wreckage that was recovered. However, embarrassments tend to get swept under the rug, so if no traces of drone wreckage are found expect the authorities to remain quiet.

SpaceX and Ukraine have worked together to disable unauthorized Starlink terminals operating inside the country. This is an important update after news came last month that Russia continues to use the service to control its long-range drones that attack targets well within Ukraine’s borders.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s newly appointed Defense Secretary, went on Telegram [machine translated] on January 29 to thank SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and owner Elon Musk for their quick response on the issue after the latest Starlink-equipped drone attack on various Ukrainian cities, adding that the quick arrival of Starlink terminals into the country at the start of Russia’s invasion in 2022 “became critical to the resilience of our state.”

However, this is a temporary solution that has affected both unauthorized Starlink terminals, and legitimate terminals within the country, for now.

“Many users of the Starlink satellite communication system in Ukraine are already observing the first countermeasures that SpaceX took at the request of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine,” Defense advisor Sehiy Beskrestnov posted on Telegram [machine translated]. He later said, “I want to emphasize that the current solutions are TEMPORARY (or in other words, EMERGENCY) and will be replaced by a global, thoughtful solution that will take time for us,” and also added, “I once again apologize to those who were temporarily affected by the measures take, but for the security of the country, there are now very important and necessary actions.”

This move means that enemy forces can no longer use Starlink to remotely control drones and accurately hit targets in Ukraine. Unconfirmed reports say that this would limit the top speed of some drones from 180 to 270 kph (112 to 168 mph) to just 75 kph (47 mph), making them much easier to shoot down. While Starlink can be replaced with either fiber optic cables or radio communications, these would either limit their range or are prone to jamming.

It’s unclear what steps SpaceX and Ukraine took to block Russian drones from using Starlink terminals, but it’s apparent that the company is only allowing registered users to access its network.

“Ukraine, together with Starlink, has already taken the first steps that have yielded quick results in the fight against Russian drones. The next step is to introduce a system that will allow only authorize terminals to operate on the territory of Ukraine,” Fedorov said on Telegram [machine translated]. “In the coming days, we will publish instructions for Ukrainian users on how to register Starlink for verification. Unverified terminals will be disabled.”

Starlink served as the lifeline for Ukraine during the initial weeks of the attack, as Russian state actors attacked its network infrastructure and crippled internet and communications right before Russian troops poured into its borders from the north, south, and east. Musk's satellite internet service is extremely challenging to counter, helping Ukrainian forces stay online despite electronic warfare along the frontlines.

However, it also meant that the other side can possibly use it to attack Ukrainian targets, too, especially if they’re launched from within Ukraine’s borders (as Starlink is blocked in Russia). Because of this, China is reportedly studying the use of drone jammer swarms to interfere with Starlink, especially as it creates plans to invade the island of Taiwan.

The first NDAA-compliant drone has been developed by the U.S. Marine Corps’ 2nd Maintenance Battalion. Dubbed HANX, the drone is highly adaptable for a broad range of tasks, ranging from reconnaissance to one-way attack duties. HANX also makes use of 3D printed parts, highlights an official U.S. Marines Corps blog post, so they can be quickly manufactured and repaired by Marines in-house.

The introduction and approval of HANX is a significant step by the Marine Corps in creating a secure, rapidly deployable, and customizable drone, with 3D printing replacing the usual slow, contractor-driven procurement cycle.

The source blog highlights U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Henry David Volpe’s key role in the development of HANX. Volpe was an enthusiastic 3D printing and Lego robotics hobbyist from seventh grade and studied automotive maintenance at college. After graduating from boot camp and his military occupational specialty schoolhouse in 2022, Volpe naturally gravitated towards work at the II Marine Expeditionary Force Innovation Campus, which trains Marines in robotics, 3D printing, and advanced manufacturing.

In brief, Volpe saw the drones the Marine Corps was making, and knew he could “make something far cheaper without sacrificing too many features.” The young recruit would also seek to eliminate contracting out to third and fourth parties, so everything to do with drone production could be done in-house.

Alongside knowledgeable and skilled collaborators, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Matthew Pine, Cpl. Liam Smyth, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Borjesson, Cpl. Isauro Vazquezgarcia, and Cpl. Corven Lacy, it only took Volpe 90 days to design, prototype, refine, and create the low-cost, easily reproducible HANX.

A couple of hurdles remain in front of the wider rollout of HANX. Firstly, it is noted that its production relies on specialized infrastructure and equipment at the campus. That means not all parts can currently be fixed or produced in the field.

Secondly, this adaptable modular drone requires skilled assembly, maintenance, and calibration. So, potential field operators are going to need specialized training to be effective HANX users.

NDAA compliance breakthrough

One of the most important aspects of HANX is its U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compliance. Basically, this means that HANX requires no components from adversary countries restricted under the NDAA.

For drones, that means avoiding lots of readily available parts from China. This is important to the military electronics supply chain components as it reduces the possibility of backdoors and other security compromises in hardware/firmware/software.

More and more 3D printing in the U.S. military

HANX is not the first U.S. Military project to make extensive use of additive manufacturing. The Hawkeye Platoon recently deployed 3D printers to fabricate, assemble, and maintain quadcopter reconnaissance drones during a military exercise.

We also previously reported that the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence hosts a training course for troops to produce, operate, and maintain FPV drones, backed by 3D printing equipment.

A new cutting-edge Drone Engineering Degree course will welcome its first intake of students in September this year. The UK government has provided nearly a quarter of a million pounds (actually £240,000, or ~ $331,000) to back this new undergraduate degree course at the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) in Hereford, England. The British Army will deliver the course, sharing “battlefield-proven technology” based on “lessons learned from Ukraine” with the goal of making the British military ten times more lethal.

10X more lethal and using know-how from Ukraine

According to the press release, the creation of this Drone Engineering Degree course was prompted by a defense review, which highlighted the need to create improved drone technology, as well as “deter, detect and defeat drone incursions” from hostiles.

This initiative is part of a wider drive to “make the British Army ten times more lethal through AI, drones and autonomous systems.”

It is particularly interesting to read that know-how from observations, developments, and experiences in Ukraine will be passed on to students in rural England.

“In Ukraine, drones are causing more casualties than artillery - that’s the reality of modern warfare,” said the UK’s Minister for the Armed Forces Al Carns MP. “This degree gives young engineers a fast track to careers at the cutting edge, protecting Britain and powering growth in places like Hereford.”

Those interested in the new Drone Engineering Degree course can now register for updates with NMITE. Current plans are to enroll 15 civilian students and five soldiers in this course each year.

Drone Engineering courses in the U.S., Poland, and Austria

It isn’t only the British government that has noticed the importance of drones in modern conflicts. Our research reveals there are drone engineering courses already operating, or planned, at establishments in the U.S., Poland, and Austria. However, we know only of the UK-based course, which has direct military involvement.

The FCC banned all new foreign-made drones from being registered in the U.S. in late 2025, dealing a major blow to Chinese manufacturers like DJI. The company would still be able to sell already existing models, especially as the Department of Commerce didn’t push through with its planned crackdown on Chinese drone imports. However, these companies have essentially no future in the U.S. because they cannot register new drone models. But just a few weeks after the FCC announcement, the South China Morning Post has already seen several drone and camera models from 'American companies' that look awfully close to DJI’s designs.

Xtra mostly offers action cameras, and its About Us page says that it is “a dynamic and independent start-up company registered in Delaware (DE), United States.” According to SCMP, the company was registered in March 2025, so it’s been operating for less than a year. It’s currently offering four different drone models — the SPHRA360, Muse, Edge Pro, and Edge. Aside from looking identical to the Osmo 360, Osmo Pocket 3, Osmo Action 5 Pro, and Osmo Action 4, respectively, they also have almost the same specifications.

We also checked out the Skyrover S1 and X1, which offer the same profile as the Mini 2 SE and the Mini 4 Pro. Unfortunately, Skyrover does not publish the specifications of its drones, so we cannot compare specs with DJI’s entry-level offerings. Nevertheless, Skyrover lists its business address as Hong Kong, so it’s still covered by the FCC ban and won’t be able to introduce new models like DJI, unless it builds them in the U.S.

Neither DJI nor the two other companies have released a statement regarding the similarity of their product lines at the time of writing, so we cannot confirm how they are related. Still, it makes sense for DJI to diversify its business now that Washington has effectively limited the brand’s future drone business in the U.S., but its only confirmed move so far is its purchase of 3D printer manufacturer Elegoo. It should also be noted that the FCC ban only affects the certification of new drones, so DJI can continue importing, selling, and introducing new Osmo action camera models.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) just demonstrated its latest drone swarm tech on state TV, showing a single soldier controlling 200 units. According to the South China Morning Post, the drones are launched from the Swarm I land vehicle, A.K.A the High Mobility Swarm Weapon System, which can simultaneously launch 48 fixed-wing drones that work together. Each unit can then autonomously communicate with each other, allowing the entire swarm to fly in precise formation and divide tasks among themselves, like conducting multi-target reconnaissance and strike operations, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said in the report.

“Each drone is equipped with an intelligent algorithm,” National University of Defence Technology’s School of Intelligent Science research fellow Xiang Xiaojia said to CCTV. “Through interconnection and autonomous negotiation, they can form a powerful, collaborative intelligent swarm.” Aside from that, the drones combat electromagnetic interference using an autonomous anti-jamming algorithm, allowing them to continue operating even without contact from an operator. “Even a single person can control a swarm of more than 200 fixed-wing drones launched simultaneously from multiple vehicles,” the state broadcaster said.

The PLA first showed off its drone swarm capability at the 2021 Zhuhai air show with the Swarm I, which is reportedly capable of wide-area reconnaissance and can saturate multiple targets simultaneously. A second, more improved version was released at the same event in 2024, with the Swarm II getting a higher top speed of 100 kph (62 mph) and an endurance of more than an hour. It also gained the ability to carry multiple payloads, including reconnaissance pods, munitions, and relay communication devices. Aside from this, China’s first “drone carrier” amphibious assault ship has begun sea trials in late 2025, which could give it additional capabilities to launch drone strikes well away from its borders and hit relatively distant targets.

China isn’t the only country developing its own drone system — both Russia and Ukraine have extensively used drones in the conflict that began in 2022, while the U.S. Army is using 3D printing to build and repair drones on-site. As with any new weapon system, nations are also developing countermeasures against them. Some defense startups in the United States are working on an AI drone killer jet to intercept them in the air, while the U.S. military is testing microwave and laser systems that will take down multiple drones in a single shot. The Royal Navy is also equipping a destroyer with the experimental DragonFire laser system, designed to shoot down enemy drones at just $13 per shot.

A Japanese city is rolling out an anti-bear drone system in response to “record levels of bear casualties and sightings.” Terra Drone has announced (machine translation) that its bear-repelling drones will be deployed around Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture to address concerns regarding a “bear infestation.”

Terra Drone quotes Japanese Ministry of the Environment figures as part of the explanation as to the current wave of ursine issues in the land of the rising sun. Its press release states that the number of human-bear encounters “has increased by 163% since 2021, with 20,792 cases nationwide, 100 injuries since April, and more than 12 deaths.” These are the worst official stats ever, says the firm.

A number of factors are thought to have resulted in the current situation. For example, Japan has seen the number of people with hunting licenses decline from over half a million in 1975 to around 220,000 in 2020. Moreover, 60% of holders are now over 60 years old. Meanwhile, city developers increasingly move nearer to bear habitats, closing the circle on their free roaming areas. It is also claimed that the police and similar agencies face constraints on lethal training to address wild animals.

Terra Drone to the rescue

Last year, Terra Drone adapted its devices to respond quickly to bear sightings and carry bear repellent sprays. The resulting drone system can “combine speed, safety, and immediate effectiveness.”

In action, the drones are operated from up to a kilometer (~1,100 yards) away, ensuring operator safety. A drone can deliver its capsaicin spray on target at distances between 5 and 10 meters (up to ~11 yards) from the bear. This has a temporary, non-lethal impact on the bear(s), and makes sure they can’t sense humans in their vicinity.

Terra Drone has previously demonstrated a similar pesticide packing drone for farms. It is claimed to be accurate enough to spray areas with an accuracy of within a 10cm radius.

Ishinomaki City is far from the only area in Japan affected by bears.

Last year, we reported on Japanese tech giant NTT’s design for a laser drone system designed to protect chickens. It is good to hear and see advanced drone systems being used outside the theater of war.

A fully 3D-printed quadcopter has gained the title of the world’s fastest drone by reaching a top speed of 659 kilometers per hour (408 mph) with tailwind. Built and piloted by engineer and YouTuber Luke Maximo Bell along with his father, the Peregreen V4 officially recorded a two-run average of 657 kmph under Guinness verification. The drone additionally managed to reach an upwind speed of 599 kmph, which is said to be an improvement of 14 kmph over its predecessor.

With this achievement, the father-son duo once again claimed the speed title after their previous attempt was overtaken by Australian aerospace engineer Ben Biggs, who set a 626 kmph (389 mph) record with his Blackbird drone.

The project took over two years to engineer and involved computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling, rapid prototyping, and iterative flight testing to refine aerodynamics. The entire body of the Peregreen V4 was made using the Bambu Lab H2D 3D printer with multiple materials including PETG, PA6-CF, and TPU. “The new printer’s larger build volume and dual-nozzle system made it possible to print the body as one continuous piece. That gave us smoother aerodynamics and a much higher surface finish quality than before” said Luke in his YouTube video. The use of 3D printing also allowed the team to fine-tune mechanical flexibility, heat resistance, and aerodynamic integrity without relying on any external fabrication.

As for the motors, Luke went ahead with three options – the AOS Supernova, AMX 2826, and T-Motor 3120. These motors were first tested to gather live thrust readings using strain gauges along with an amplifier and Arduino board. After some rigorous flight testing, the team went with the T-Motor 3120 as it offered better reliability in terms of temperatures along with zero scrapping. The team also ended increasing the motor windings from 800 KV to 900 KV for higher RPM and a faster top speed.

To improve aerodynamics, the team ran extensive airflow simulations using the AirShaper platform which eventually helped in creating a larger but smoother outer shell to cut through air more easily and reduce drag. Finally, the drone body was sanded and polished for a cleaner finish, while the propellers were tested and shortened from 7×5 inches to about 6 inches to improve efficiency at high speeds.

Beyond the world record itself, the Peregreen V4 is a testament to how far the DIY community has come. What once required aerospace-grade equipment and facilities can now be achieved with just a desktop 3D printer, simulation software, endless testing, and lots of patience. More importantly, the record is not expected to stand for long as Luke is already looking toward other tinkerers to go beyond the existing speed record very soon.

The U.S. Department of Commerce has stated that it is withdrawing its proposal to the White House to ban the import of Chinese drones into the country. According to Reuters, this move comes amid the thawing of relations between the United States and China, ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April of this year. This might sound like good news for the beleaguered drone maker, but it seems that the FCC ban on brand new foreign-made drones still stands.

The Commerce Department has previously recommended restricting the import of Chinese-made drones, submitting the plan to do so to the White House in October. While the agency has already retracted its proposal, the company is still not in the clear when it comes to its future. That’s because while it may seem that the Department of Commerce and FCC bans are one and the same, they are actually different restrictions. The Commerce ban focuses on the import of these drones, while the FCC is preventing the company from receiving equipment authorization. Even though the latter does not necessarily control the import of these devices, FCC certification is still a requirement before they can enter the United States.

Aside from moves by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Commerce, other agencies and government branches are also taking action against DJI. The Department of Defense has labeled it as a “Chinese Military Company,” with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia siding with the U.S. agency, despite the court saying that it “affirmatively rejected most of DoD’s allegations” and that there is “no basis” for the claim “that DJI is owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.” Congress has also taken steps to ban the company in 2024, although it was able to get a one-year extension to prove that it does not pose a national security risk.

All the recent moves will not affect current and existing drones, so DJI owners don’t need to worry that their drones will stop working. However, it will prevent the company from bringing in and selling new products in the U.S., including components, meaning users won’t be able to maintain and replace their drones.

The U.S. Army is now testing the second gen vehicle-mounted LOCUST laser weapon system from AeroVironment (AV) Inc. It is hoped the new LOCUST Laser Weapon System (LWS) will be able to be rapidly deployed where required to protect soldiers and assets in a wide range of missions and environments where drones swarm in the skies. AV says that this updated LWS builds upon a system that has already seen over three years of operational use outside the U.S.

Laser weapons have a reputation for being bulky and heavy, thus hard to reposition where they are required. Earlier in 2025, AV worked with the U.S. Army to integrate its new mobile C-UAS Laser Weapon Systems (LWS) with the General Motors Defense Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) platform. However, at the end of the year, it announced that LOCUST would be added to the Oshkosh Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) platform. As a reminder, the Oshkosh is the U.S. Military’s modern replacement for the Humvee.

LOCUST features

Of course, AV doesn’t spill the full specs of its LOCUST, but there are some interesting features shared on its product pages. In essence, this is a 20kW-class laser weapon, but it has been improved with “a larger aperture beam director, improving lethality performance” in this iteration.

The system is also highly adaptable and can be directed using a mix of automated and manual controls. On the automated side, it has multi-target IR search and track modes, advanced gimbaled electro-optical tracking, and an architecture open to a wide variety of sensors. Alternatively, it can be guided by an operator using “a common game controller.” We guess the operator would be assisted by some of the smart features like “fine tracking system (FTS), powerful telescope, laser rangefinder, acquisition tracking system (ATS), and targeting laser.”

Operationally deployed?

Earlier this week, we wrote about the 100kW Iron Beam laser, which Israel’s MoD claimed to be the first drone defense zapper to be operationally deployed. However, AV’s press release strongly suggests that earlier versions of the LOCUST have been battle-tested for the last three years.

John Garrity, Vice President of AV’s Directed Energy business unit, described the firm’s laser systems as “a proven force protection capability.” Moreover, he boasted that “Since deployed, LOCUST-equipped P-HEL systems have actively protected warfighters, allies, and critical infrastructure against aerial threats.”

Thus, these laser weapons and supporting technologies have been tuned from lessons learned in real-world combat. Having them available and mounted on JLTVs for increased mobility and rapid deployment, with the latest LOCUST refinements, will hopefully make them more useful than ever across a wide range of missions and environments.

The first Iron Beam laser defense system was deployed by Israel on Sunday. This 100kW laser weapon thus became the world’s first high-power drone defense zapper to be operationally deployed. Iron Beam lasers will fortify Israel’s multi-layered defense, complementing the existing Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow system architecture.

The Iron Beam is a short-range line-of-sight laser interceptor that is extremely cheap to run and, therefore, perfectly suited for intercepting low-cost, high-volume threats. According to the official Israeli announcement, Iron Beam systems have “successfully intercepted rockets, mortars, and UAVs.”

A complex mix of government, military, scientific, and commercial interests were responsible for the research and development of the Iron Beam laser system. Central to the Iron Beam are “an advanced laser source and a unique electro-optical targeting system, enabling the interception of a wide range of targets at an enhanced operational range, with maximum precision and superior efficiency,” boasted the press release by Israel’s MoD. Moreover, it works “at a negligible marginal cost, which constitutes the laser system’s primary advantage.”

We don’t get much more by way of technical details, perhaps understandably. However, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems execs heralded the system’s “unique adaptive optics technology,” in what it calls “the world’s most advanced laser-based system for intercepting aerial threats.” Its operational debut “marks the beginning of the era of high-energy laser defense,” they claimed.

We have seen low-energy laser defense systems deployed earlier this year, with Japan’s NTT using relatively puny lasers to scare birds away from poultry farms and prevent the spread of avian flu. But the Iron Beam is in a different league.

We also previously reported on several other UK laser weapons under development to counter UAVs on land and at sea. But as far as we know, these are yet to become operational. With the brutal war between Ukraine and Russia ongoing, where drones have grown to be a pivotal feature of the conflict, forces have gone as far as creating rotating barbed wire barriers to deter them. So, laser-drone defenses similar to the Iron Beam are going to be in strong demand.

The U.S. FCC announced a blanket ban on all new drones and critical components made abroad on Monday, while also targeting communications and video-surveillance equipment from DJI and Autel Robotics. According to the Federal Communications Commission (PDF), the White House made a National Security Determination that uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) and their critical components made in foreign countries pose a threat to the United States.

DJI is the world's largest drone manufacturer, accounting for around 85% of drones sold in the U.S. This latest announcement will effectively kill its business, however, as the company can no longer introduce new drones in the United States. Existing models aren’t affected by the ban, so far, although the FCC retains the capability to restrict their operations in the future, too.

The U.S. government has been trying to prohibit DJI from selling its drones locally for several years now, with both Congress and the Executive branch stepping up efforts to block the company in 2024. DJI narrowly avoided a complete ban late last year, with the Chinese drone maker given a year to prove it does not pose a national security risk. And while The Wall Street Journal reports that independent reviews from both the government and the private sector indicate that DJI products are secure and do not pose a threat to the U.S., it seems that Washington went ahead with the ban anyway.

“UAS and UAS critical components must be produced in the United States. This will reduce the risk of direct UAS attacks and disruptions, unauthorized surveillance, sensitive data exfiltration, and other UAS threats to the homeland. Furthermore, it will ensure our domestic UAS and UAS critical component manufacturing is resilient and independent, a critical national security imperative,” the FCC said in its announcement.

“UAS are inherently dual-use: they are both commercial platforms and potentially military or paramilitary sensors and weapons. UAS and UAS critical components, including data transmission devices, communications systems, flight controllers, ground control stations, controllers, navigation systems, batteries, smart batteries, and motors produced in a foreign country could enable persistent surveillance, data exfiltration, and destructive operations over U.S. territory, including over World Cup and Olympic venues and other mass gathering events.”

Many drone operators are up in arms with this announcement, as pilots say that there is no viable alternative to DJI drones. The Drone Service Providers Alliance surveyed its members, and nearly two-thirds said that they would go out of business without DJI. Greg Reverdiau, the founder of online drone training school Pilot Institute, told the Journal that “people are not buying the [DJI] drone because it’s a Chinese drone — they are buying the drone because it is available, it’s highly affordable, and it’s capable."

The U.S. is likely concerned about a Chinese law that requires all China-based companies to cooperate with its intelligence services. And even though DJI’s drones may be secure at the moment, it’s hard not to think about how an over-the-air update could reverse this without its operators knowledge. There’s also the concern about supply chain attacks, which were recently used by Israeli intelligence agencies to cripple Hezbollah. This was also attempted against Russian front-line FPV operators in Ukraine, although the attempt was discovered before making any real damage.

For its part, DJI accused the U.S. government of anti-competitive measures, especially given its market standing in the U.S. “As the industry leader, DJI has advocated for an open, competitive market that benefits all U.S. consumers and commercial users, and will continue to do so,” the company said in a statement. “DJI products are among the safest and most secure on the market, supported by years of reviews conducted by U.S. government agencies and independent third parties. Concerns about DJI’s data security have not been grounded in evidence and instead reflect protectionism, contrary to the principles of an open market.”

Videos and images purportedly showing spools carrying as much as 65km (~40.4 miles) of optical fiber have been shared on Russian social media channels. Previously, we reported on Ukraine-based prototypes being tested at up to 50km (~31 miles). Tethered FPV drones are hardened against electronic warfare and allow for deep, precise strikes into enemy territory. Obviously, having a longer reach (without other compromises) is an advantage.

The images and videos embedded above were shared by a widely followed Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) account on X. GrandpaRoy2’s tweet is followed up by his Telegram source links (an app widely used in Russia). One of the videos appears to have originally been shared by the official PGI Technology account on that social media platform.

PGI Technology?

Based on our searches and review of prior reports, PGI Technology is a joint Chinese-Russian technology venture specializing in the development and manufacture of reinforced optical fiber spools for the military.

Some of the shared imagery shows that PGI makes a wide range of spools with “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60km Internal and External Unwinding.” The factory seems to have a lot of stock prepared to supply Russia’s drone assault strategy.

Refinements such as Kevlar, improved windings, new adhesives, and more are touted by PGI Technology in its posts.

Wired > wireless

Optical fiber-tethered drones have become one of the prominent threats in the Russia-Ukraine war. In civilian life, wireless connectivity is often preferred or deemed necessary. But in war, with advanced electronic warfare (EW) effectively blocking the skies to swarms of deadly drones, simple, reliable tethering wins.

With the emergence of optical fiber-tethered drones as the asymmetric remote weapon of choice, range has always been an issue. Optical fiber enables fiber-optic-guided drones using FPV (first-person view) controls for precise, smart targeting. However, designers have to ask how long a spool of fiber a drone can carry without reducing a drone’s deadly payload too much, and without the risk of tangling.

We previously reported on Ukraine’s unique approach to defending against physically tethered threats from the sky with its equally physical rotating barbed-wire tangling-and-snapping system.

Ukraine’s Defence Express news has highlighted the continuing issue of Russian drones with access to Starlink satellite internet guidance. Despite assurances from U.S. Pentagon officials from over a year ago, drones from the Russian aggressors are still flying into Ukrainian airspace to strike their targets – with Starlink hardware clearly strapped to them, claims the source (machine translation).

The new report, on what seems to be an ongoing issue, has been sparked by one of the first sightings of a crashed/disabled ‘Molniya’ (Lightning) strike drone. This is shown in pictures originally shared by Serhiy ‘Flash’ Beskrestnov, a Ukrainian electronic warfare and communications expert, who is active on Telegram social media.

In the images, a Starlink Mini is clearly perched atop the grounded drone. ‘Flash’ doesn’t insist this drone actually came from Russia, but the overall design and internal components (like the battery) suggest it was very likely a Russian device.

Perhaps even more serious than this latest spotting is the Ukraine Defense Express assertion that Starlink usage by Russian drones hasn’t been totally stopped since it was first documented in 2024.

Later that same year, the US Defense Department’s assistant secretary for space policy, John Plumb, told Bloomberg that the Russian military’s unauthorized use of SpaceX’s Starlink internet had been blunted. An IMI report says that Plumb wasn’t specific about the measures put in place to deny Russian access, but that it was a “good solution” for Starlink and Ukraine.

Russian Shahed-136 drones have previously been seen kitted out with Starlink gear. The Ukraine Defense Express says that Russia’s recently unveiled RD-8 mother drone is Starlink controllable, too. Evidence of this wasn’t reproduced within the source story.

If the Ukraine Defense Express is correct, though, it is unsettling to know that the incessant Russian drone onslaught hitting Ukraine’s military, civilians, and key infrastructure could be weakened with just a little more political will.