Earlier this spring, the test unit launched a handful of unmanned vessels from Aqaba, Jordan, into the Red Sea with a broad-edged surveillance mission: to observe the “pattern of life” in the region and increase maritime domain awareness.

These particular drone boats, however, were equipped with technology — the details of which the Navy is not disclosing — to allow them to navigate independently of GPS in the case of hostile efforts to disrupt or block signals from satellites.

The boats, which fit in the category of Small Unmanned Surface Vessel, or SUSV, meaning they’re less than 14 feet long, are stress-testing tech that may someday be used by the Navy wherever there is a threat of malicious disruption.

“There’s certain waterways here in Fifth Fleet that are GPS-contested — you can’t just transit there [with] a regular GPS, because the GPS will show you elsewhere, so your position is not accurate,” Lt. Luis Echeverria, commanding officer of the Navy’s Bahrain-based Task Group 59.1, told Military Times in an interview. “So, there is a payload embedded onto this small USV that allows for the USV to understand its actual position while it’s being jammed.”

Task Group 59.1, nicknamed “The Pioneers,” activated in January 2024 under Echeverria’s command. While the Navy’s Task Force 59, also located in Manama, Bahrain, has a broader mission focused on integrating unmanned systems and AI into surface operations, the task group zooms in on manned-unmanned teaming, and tests a variety of drone boat technologies for possible further development or employment.

That many of these technologies are commercial innovations and prototypes that the Navy hasn’t yet invested in means unit officials must be delicate about the details they disclose to avoid the appearance of endorsement.

The vessels deployed in the Red Sea, for example, are most likely variants of the Saildrone Voyager USV, a platform that has participated in Navy testing for several years.

“Saildrone’s innovative solution leverages multiple forms of localization, ensuring seamless operation without relying exclusively on satellite systems, and allowing operations to continue in contested environments,” company officials said in a March release highlighting the platform’s new GPS-denied technology.

Following the systems’ test deployment, Echeverria’s unit will develop an after-action report with insights into successes and failures and recommendations for the fleet. As the Navy continues to experiment toward the end of finding a meaningful and permanent place for unmanned vessels alongside and in concert with its manned ships, this task group aims to keep the service from investing in tech that’s not ready or can’t meet the mission.

When the unit first stood up it was tasked with deploying Seasats’ autonomous surface vessel Lightfish into the Red Sea with some untested deception capabilities, Echeverria told an audience earlier this year at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium.

“We failed. But that was fine, because there are good failures, and this was a good failure. We failed quickly,” Echeverria said. “We adapted, we iterated and we overcame.”

Later that year, with improvements and better established operating protocols, the vessel was able to sail for 17 days, covering 600 nautical miles and integrating its operations with manned ships in the region, he said.

Already, the task group, he said, has sent unmanned vessels it’s tested to the U.S. Fourth Fleet — the waters around central and South America — to be used in operations.

At the beginning of the year, Fourth Fleet announced the launch of “Operation Southern Spear,” which will deploy “long-dwell robotic surface vessels, small robotic interceptor boats and vertical take-off and landing robotic air vessels” to the region for maritime domain awareness and counternarcotics ops.

Experimenting in the Red Sea and other waters in the 5th Fleet area of operations does have its challenges. Echeverria cited the extreme heat as another stressor for test vessels. And in January, he acknowledged that, following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Navy had seen increased efforts by hostile actors to steal unmanned vessels launched by the service.

“We have been able to retain all of them,” he said.

In a March interview, Echeverria declined to say whether efforts to capture USVs in the Red Sea still continued.

An upcoming experiment in planning by Task Group 59.1 may soon make it easier and more practical for Navy commanders to employ unmanned vessels in concert with manned assets. The experiment, which involves flying drones, will employ them using JP-5, the Navy’s standard kerosene-based jet fuel, instead of other fuel variants including JP-4 and JP-8. This change eliminates the need for a waiver and reduces drag, Echeverria said.

“You can quickly deploy the asset where, in the past … you had to take precautionary measures on how you refuel the vessel or the system, so it just makes the process a little bit quicker,” he said.

Later this year, the task group will receive an advisor from the Navy’s newest rating: Robotics Warfare Specialist, a job created last year in concert with the Navy’s work to fast-track unmanned and robotic technology into the fleet.

Echeverria said the specialist will help the unit understand how to best employ the technology in its purview and match it to requirements coming from the Navy.

“I have a very skilled group of enlisted sailors that are eager to learn every single day and are eager to get these systems out there, because they understand that this is the future,” he said. “I’m really excited for what my team has been able to accomplish in such a small time frame … to the point where we’re seeing similar assets being utilized in other waterways, just based off of what we’ve learned out here.”

Tim Dill, performing the duties of deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, told reporters in a press briefing Tuesday that the military would soon send “letters of apology” to the more than 8,700 service members who were involuntarily separated, as well as instructions for how to reenlist through emails, calls, website information and social media posts.

Service members who voluntarily separated as a result of the 2021 vaccine mandate for all military personnel would also be receiving correspondence from the military encouraging them to return.

“The department is eager to welcome back those who were impacted by that vaccine mandate,” Hill said. “They never should’ve had to leave military service and the department is committed to assisting them in their return.”

The new guidelines follow President Donald Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order ordering the reinstatement of service members who separated from the military after forgoing the COVID-19 vaccine.

“In spite of the scientific evidence, the Biden Administration discharged healthy service members—many of whom had natural immunity and dedicated their entire lives to serving our country—for refusing the COVID vaccine,” a fact sheet released with the executive order said. “Government redress of these wrongful dismissals is overdue.”

The Pentagon last week formally increased the new minimum service commitment from two to four years for those discharged for refusing a lawful order to take the vaccine, The Associated Press reported.

According to AP, a Feb. 7 memo sent to the secretaries of the military services said troops would be required to sign up for two years. But a memo signed April 1 by Jules Hurst III, who is doing the job of defense undersecretary for personnel, said “reinstatement will not be afforded to those who are unwilling or unable to return to active service or active status, as applicable, for four years.”

The offer for reenlistment would be good for a year and extend until April 1, 2026, Hill said, and the administrative process for returning individuals would likely span several months.

Trump promises to bring back troops booted for refusing COVID vaccine

Though the DOD rescinded the COVID-19 vaccination mandate in 2023, Hill said the new guidelines were different in several ways.

Service members who involuntarily separated would be granted the opportunity to receive back pay for the time they otherwise would’ve been in the military, Hill said. It would include base pay, allowance for housing and subsistence and potentially medical benefits. The back pay calculation would also factor in other forms of compensation a service member received while out of service, including salary and health care.

These benefits would only apply to service members who seek to return under the new Trump administration guidelines and would not retroactively apply to those who had returned after the 2023 rescission, a number Hill estimated at under 80 service members.

“It’s also something we can seek to address but there is not currently a mechanism,” he said.

An exact calculation of back pay cost for the Defense Department was not available yet, said Hill.

“How can the department make them whole so that they would stand financially in the same position they would’ve stood in had they never been discharged?” he said.

Trump and Hegseth signed documents encouraging service members to return in a way that employed a different “tenor” than the guidance previously provided by the Biden administration to service members after the 2023 rescission of the vaccination mandate, Hill said.

Returning service members would also be assessed for medical retention standards — a test to determine whether someone who’s already been serving in the military is fit to continue — rather than traditional accession standards, which encompass a much higher level of scrutiny used to determine whether an individual prior to military experience is fit to join the military.

The Army said it has reenlisted three active duty soldiers who were discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, the AP reported. None of the other services had completed reenlistments yet, but all are reaching out to former troops.

According to Army spokesman Christopher Surridge, about 400 soldiers have inquired so far about the reenlistment program, the AP reported. Of those, about 100 are in the application process. The Army did not have estimates on how much it has given the soldiers in total back pay.

As of Friday, 472 Marines have had indicated interest in learning more about returning. The Navy said about a half dozen sailors had so far expressed interest or sought more information, and the Air Force said it had not yet gotten any feedback from service members, according to AP.

The Associated Press’ Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct, based on numbers provided by the Army, how many soldiers have rejoined the service.Three active duty soldiers have reenlisted but no reservists. The Army had said more than 20 reservists reenlisted.

The commanding general of training command, Maj. Gen. Anthony M. Henderson, along with the commanding general of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Brig. Gen. Simon M. Doran, established the Marine Corps Attack Drone Team, or MCADT, on Jan. 3.

The team will focus on integrating first-person view drones — aerial vehicles that transmit a live feed of their bird’s-eye view to remote displays — into the Fleet Marine Force.

“Today’s battlefield is changing rapidly, and we must adapt just as quickly. The Marine Corps Attack Drone Team will ensure that our warfighters remain at the forefront of precision drone employment, providing a critical advantage in future conflicts,” said Maj. Alejandro Tavizon, the Weapons Training Battalion Headquarters Company commander and officer in charge of MCADT.

The team, based at Weapons Training Battalion at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, is set to “develop and refine” armed first-person view drone training, speed up the timeline for the technology’s fielding and provide instruction through live training events.

MCADT will soon make its competition debut at the U.S. National Drone Association’s Military Drone Crucible Championship, which will take place from June 30 to July 3 in Florida. The team will compete against the 75th Ranger Regiment, among other units, by completing tactical missions that simulate combat.

Ukraine claims to have fielded a drone-killing laser weapon

The Marine Corps is particularly focused on the financial implications of drones. In a statement, the service noted the technology offered a range of up to 20 kilometers for under $5,000, a metric it says is more cost-effective than other costly weapons systems.

“Right now, our focus is on rapidly building proficiency by sending Marines to a variety of training courses and increasing hands-on familiarization,” Tavizon said. “Our goal is to ensure they can not only operate these systems effectively but also integrate them seamlessly into a team. This means mastering primary platforms, having redundancy with backup systems, and getting the necessary repetitions to employ payloads with precision under real-world conditions.”

Ukraine and Russia have employed the use of drones in their years-long war. Most recently, Russia launched 109 drones in a recent attack, according to The Kyiv Independent.

Yemen Houthi rebels — a militant group the U.S. has ramped up attacks against recently — have also relied on drone warfare to wreak havoc against vessels in the Red Sea.

The companies’ tie-up follows sea trials, funded by the United States Office of Naval Research, during which Saildrone’s Surveyor USV, equipped with Thales’ BlueSentry sensor package, operated almost uninterrupted for 26 days.

Conducted off the coast of California, the tests demonstrated that the systems detected and classified underwater and surface threats, with an uptime averaging more than 96%, according to Saildrone.

In the context of underwater drones, the notion of “uptime” generally refers to the percentage of time the system is available and able to perform its intended missions continuously.

“The trials showed that, under wind propulsion, the Surveyor provided a near-zero self-noise environment, significantly improving the detection capabilities of the BlueSentry sonar system,” a Saildrone press release stated.

A fleet of USVs, integrated with these sonar arrays, is intended to be able to operate for extended periods of time, autonomously patrolling large ocean areas and reduce the costs of coverage, per the Thales website.

The companies said that the team-up could pave the way for greater “naval interoperability” between the trilateral AUKUS partners – Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States – and deliver on the security partnership’s technology-focused Pillar 2 scope. That line of work is intended to harness the joint industrial and innovation bases of the three countries to ensure that their respective militaries are equipped with advanced and interoperable capabilities.

While during the trials the systems relied on Starlink and Iridium satellite communications, Saildrone recently announced a GPS-denied option not reliant on satellites.

“Copperhead enables a comprehensive, intelligent maritime capability that allows operators to quickly respond to threats in the undersea battlespace, at a fraction of the cost of legacy options,” the company said in a statement Monday.

The product line includes two variants, each offered in two different sizes. The baseline Copperhead is designed for rapid-response missions, the firm said, including environmental monitoring, search and rescue and infrastructure inspection.

The vehicle, which can reach speeds greater than 30 knots, can carry a range of payloads, including active and passive sensors and magnetometers, which can detect changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

The Copperhead-M variant is a munition that can be deployed from a larger system, specifically Anduril’s Dive-LD and Dive-XL vessels. It offers “torpedo-like” capabilities and is designed for mass production, Anduril said.

A Dive-XL can carry dozens of the smaller Copperhead-M and “multiple” of the larger size missile.

“This makes it possible for a fleet of Dive-XLs to control ocean areas with an unprecedented level of autonomous seapower,” Anduril said.

The Gulf nation has requested to buy eight MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft and related equipment for an estimated cost of nearly $2 billion, a March 26 notice from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency stated.

The country’s military wish list also included 200 Joint Direct Attack Munitions, 300 500-lb general-purpose bombs, 110 Hellfire II missiles, Seaspray 7500 maritime radars and SAGE Electronic Support Measure systems from Leonardo.

The U.S. government approval comes five years after Qatar made an initial request to buy MQ-9Bs, nicknamed SeaGuardian. The order faced a significant holdup, which eventually led Qatari officials to grow irritated with the U.S. administration, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

While Qatar is in the habit of being secretive about its military purchases, glimpses of its equipment over the years have shown that it also operates six of the Turkish-made TB2 drones. It was among the first customers of these systems, seen for the first time in a Qatari military exercise in 2020.

These drones are regularly tracked by open-source intelligence sources as flying out from the Dukhan/Tamim Air Base, built in 2018 for the Qatar Emiri Air Force.

Task Force 99, a U.S. Air Force innovation unit, is also based at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where they focus on experimenting with unmanned systems.

In an interview with Defense News last month, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, David Alexander, said he was optimistic that the Trump government would accelerate previously delayed defense deals with Middle East governments.

The company executive added that he expected a sale of the SeaGuardians to the United Arab Emirates to resume under Trump and that they have offered a package deal to Saudi Arabia to acquire a number of these drones as well.

With LOAD — short for Low-Cost Air Defence — the European aerospace giant seeks to address one of the main challenges in modern air defense: the massive cost of intercepting cheap threats.

Executives announced the drone design at an unmanned systems trade show in Bonn, Germany, on March 26. It will be based on a platform from the early 2000s, the Do-DT25, an unmanned aerial system used for target practice. Because of that use case, it was designed to be both cheap and disposable, according to the manufacturer.

The modified UAV will be able to carry three guided missiles. According to Airbus, its operational range will be 100 kilometers or about 160 miles, and it will be launched via catapult. After a successful mission, the drone is designed to return to base and land by parachute, ready to be reused. A prototype with two missiles will fly by the end of the year, the company said, with the final product ready two years from now, by 2027.

While no details have been provided for LOAD specifically, the Do-DT25 on which it is built is 3.1 meters long and has a 2.5-meter wingspan. Its top speed is 300 knots, and it can stay airborne for about an hour.

From Airbus’ promotional materials, it appears that LOAD will somewhat straddle the line between a loitering munition and air combat drone. The UAV will be “supervised from a ground control station,” the company’s press statement reads. It “coordinates the drones on the basis of radar data or air situation images and can therefore autonomously search for, detect and – following the approval of their engagement – combat enemy kamikaze drones.”

For years, experts have raised concerns over growing autonomy in defense and questioned whether provisions to keep a human in the loop when making kill decisions — as Airbus promised in this case — will hold up when push comes to shove.

The autonomous capability promised for LOAD likely builds on Airbus’s previous work with the Do-DT25 platform. In March 2023, the company demonstrated the autonomous guidance and control of several DT-25 drones from an A310 MRTT tanker aircraft, showcasing advances in precise relative navigation, in-flight communication and cooperative control algorithms.

As a further step, Airbus plans to integrate LOAD with other unmanned airborne platforms, such as the company’s Eurodrone project. According to the company, this would allow LOAD to operate in regions “not yet fully covered by ground-based air defense radars.”

In line with Europe’s push to decouple from a dependency on the United States, the new drone contains no U.S. technology, Airbus boasted in its press release. This means it will be ITAR-free, referring to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations imposed by Washington, leaving future export decisions solely to European user nations.

A team of officers bearing the Norwegian flag on their uniform climb from one moving vessel onto another, a larger Norwegian Coast Guard offshore patrol ship, using a single pole with a hook and flimsy ladder to haul themselves up.

They are part of the Norwegian Coastal Rangers, a marine commando unit trained to operate in littoral combat environments. In the context of the NATO exercise Joint Viking 2025, organized earlier this month, they trained for the task of boarding a suspicious vessel.

The ship-boarding scenario has turned front and center in the alliance’s recent defense planning. Western officials fear that NATO adversaries employ ships under the guise of research missions or civilian cargo runs to damage undersea cables and energy infrastructure in the waters around Europe.

The small Norwegian unit, composed of roughly 150 individuals, is highly versatile, tasked with missions spanning from coastal raids and maritime patrol to intelligence-gathering. With sabotage risks on NATO’s mind, formations like this are rising to new prominence in national force structures.

In its annual national threat assessment report, the Norwegian Police Security Services noted that in the last year, Russia has shown “its resolve and ability to carry out sabotage operations on European soil” and that it is “likely” that it may affect Norway in 2025.

The NATO member shares a 198-kilometer (123-mile) land border with Russia in the Arctic and a maritime frontier in the Barents Sea.

While the Coastal Rangers have not noticed an uptick in the number of illegal or sanctioned vessels sailing along the Norwegian coast, officers did note that there has been an increase in the level of electromagnetic jamming over the last few years.

Norwegian defense authorities recently approved a series of upgrades to modernize and expand the capabilities of the ranger unit. Among these is the acquisition of new unmanned technologies, including long-range maritime surveillance drones, according to Frode Nakken, commanding officer of the Coastal Rangers.

“We’ve been operating with drones for a few years, primarily fixed-wing models, but they have proven vulnerable to the Arctic climate – the larger and longer-range drones we will get will have more endurance and power to resist these conditions,” he told Defense News during the Joint Viking exercise.

Winter temperatures in Northern Norway can easily drop to -10 degrees Celsius, where the cold quickly drains the drones’ battery life and the abundant precipitation makes it tricky for operators to fly them.

The 2025-2036 Norwegian Defense Pledge stated that the ambition is to have the unmanned aerial systems stationed at Andøya Air Station, some 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.

The Norwegian Ministry of Defense has contacted U.S. manufacturers, including Northrop Grumman and General Atomics regarding this request for information, as reported by Janes.

A General Atomics spokesman told Defense News that the company has already responded to the solicitation, pitching its MQ-9B SeaGuardian.

“It will provide Norway with 360-degree maritime radar coverage and full SIGINT capabilities – the MQ-9B is the only remotely piloted aircraft able to perform anti-submarine warfare missions, allowing it to enhance the country’s existing fleet of P-8 patrol aircraft,” said spokesman C. Mark Brinkley.

The accident occurred on March 17, when an IAI Heron-1 drone belonging to Korea’s army veered off a runway upon landing at Yangju, subsequently colliding with a parked Surion helicopter. Both aircraft were written off, meaning the army has now lost all three of its Herons in accidents.

Nonetheless, the country is under the gun to accelerate its drone plans – and for reasons outside immediate military-equipment considerations.

Kim Jae Yeop, senior researcher at the Sungkyun Institute for Global Strategy in Seoul, told Defense News South Korea’s low birth rate, amongst the lowest in the world, is looming large.

“The number of regular troops in the armed forces, which is now roughly 500,000, will highly likely decrease to fewer than 400,000 in the next decade,” he said.

“As a result,” Kim explained, “Seoul is taking active measures to expand the role of military unmanned systems to offset the reduction in troops. They can be acquired at significant scale at a lower cost and without risk to life in missions.”

One important program saw Korean Air roll out a new loyal wingman technology demonstrator – called the Low Observable Unmanned Wingman System, or LOWUS – on Feb. 25.

The stealthy turbofan-powered LOWUS, funded by the Agency for Defense Development since 2021, was unveiled at the Korean Air Tech Center in Pusan. Its maiden flight is expected later this year, ahead of manned-unmanned teaming flight tests in 2027.

Possessing an internal weapons bay and looking similar to the American XQ-58A Valkyrie, Korean Air lists a length of 10.4m and wingspan of 9.4m for the aicraft.

As with similar loyal wingman concepts by other major powers, the idea for the drone sidekicks is fly missions ranging from strike to surveillance, jamming and escort.

The LOWUS will likely have a domestic engine and active electronically scanned array radar. Korean Air gained experience with requisite stealth technologies when developing the blended-wing KUS-FC, or Kaori-X, drone that first flew in 2015.

In the future, Korea’s air force is expected to introduce composite squadrons of manned fighters and loyal wingmen.

“Considering the fact that only a small number of countries like the U.S., Australia and Russia have been producing and testing similar kinds of systems, the LOWUS highlights Seoul’s technological achievements,” said Kim.

Another program currently underway comprises a search for loitering munitions for Korean special forces units. A platform is due to be selected later this year, and Seoul is allocating around $22 million to this acquisition.

Foreign types like the Switchblade 600 and Hero 120 are under consideration, with the aim being to give special forces strike drones they can use independently against North Korean invaders without the need for calling in external fire support.

The secretive device has reportedly been employed on the battlefield against low-flying targets, likely unmanned aerial vehicles like the Iranian-made Shahed drones. It was first revealed in an interview with a Ukrainian news outlet by Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi, the commander of the unmanned systems forces within the Ukrainian military.

The device is known as “Tryzub,” or trident in English, referencing the Ukrainian national symbol, which is superimposed in yellow on a blue background in the country’s now world-famous coat of arms.

Information on the new system is scarce and jealously guarded. It was first publicly mentioned by Sukharevskyi in mid-December when he revealed the weapon’s existence and some key parameters at a defense industry conference in Kyiv, as reported by the Ukrainian Interfax news agency. Asked about it again by Radio Free Europe in February of this year, he confirmed that the weapon was operationally deployed.

Speaking in the context of battlefield innovations to counter the threat of Shahed and similar drones and loitering munitions, he said that: “I repeat – laser technologies are already striking objects at a certain height.”

No pictures of the Tryzub have been released yet and it was not possible to independently verify the Ukrainian military’s claims. Nor have there been any indications as to where it was deployed or exactly what or how many targets it has engaged.

A spokesperson for Brave1, the Ukrainian government’s “united coordinational platform for defense tech,” said that it was “unable to provide any comments regarding the Tryzub weapons system or its development” in response to an inquiry.

It is unclear to what extent the Ukrainian laser weapon may still be in an experimental phase. Although the military has claimed that it succeeded in shooting down enemy “aircraft,” it is entirely possible that there may be just a single system and its mobility may be limited.

Laser weapons can be rather bulky due to their need for power generation and cooling infrastructure. This is a big part of why many of the systems developed around the world are ship-based. However, experts said that a laser weapon system with the specifications that Ukraine reportedly has may be made to fit onto a truck bed.

Comparable weapons, such as the South Korean Skylight, which entered regular production last year and has a similar range of two to three kilometers, is housed in a container with a volume of 81 cubic meters and generates approximately 700°C heat during ten- to twenty-second impulses. It entered service in December 2024.

Despite the technological challenges, many major players have toyed with the idea of developing similar weapons, and some have dabbled in research and design. The promised advantages primarily focus on the ability to defending against large numbers of low-cost attack aircraft, including drone swarms, at low cost.

In fielding such a system, Ukraine would join an elite club of significant military-industrial powers that have developed laser weapons and an even smaller group that has deployed them. It comes as part of broader Ukrainian efforts to reshape the battlefield through innovation.

The Unmanned Systems Forces, which appear to be involved in the operation and possibly the development of Tryzub, considering its commander’s role in announcing the system’s existence, was only established in 2024. It has also been involved in Ukrainian innovations of drone-swarming technologies that reportedly enhanced their ability to strike deep within enemy territory.

Lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine may have hastened the development of laser weapons in other parts of the world. A month before South Korea’s laser weapon entered service, Japan revealed its own truck-based 10-kilowatt laser, which had been in development for more than four years.

Ukraine’s opponent, Russia, has also invested in laser technologies. In 2019, its Peresvet system was officially announced as having been deployed with five strategic missile divisions around the country. This weapon, however, is primarily meant to blind satellites in space rather than destroy drones much closer to Earth. Russia’s deputy prime minister in 2022 claimed that a new laser weapon, named Zadira, was deployed in Ukraine capable of destroying targets up to five kilometers away within five seconds, much more akin to the Tryzub that Ukraine now claims to have developed.

The U.S. and Ukraine at the time said there was no indication such a system was actually in use by Russian forces.

Germany, Israel and the United States all also have near-operational, land-based laser weapons systems, while other countries like Turkey and Australia are also indigenously working on them.

There has been some speculation whether the Ukrainian laser might be a derivative of the British DragonFire system. Significant amounts of the British “lethal aid” for Ukraine remain classified “for both operational and commercial reasons,” as the defense ministry has stated.

The U.K. government had teased its intention of sending its laser system to Ukraine in April 2024, before backtracking a month later and stating that it would not be included in the government’s 2024 aid package, UK Defence Journal reported. Leo Docherty, the British armed forces minister at the time, noted that the system was not yet ready, with the expected date for completion being 2027, a deadline that had been moved forward from 2033. Docherty’s statement left the door open for potentially sending the weapon to Ukraine once the development phase was complete.

Defense News reached out to the companies cooperating on the DragonFire system. MBDA, which leads the project, declined to comment, while Leonardo said that “there is no connection between Tryzub and the Dragonfire system.” Qinetiq did not respond to the request.

It is entirely possible that Tryzub is indeed an indigenous Ukrainian development. The country has a significant military-industrial base rooted in its significance to the Soviet military complex, important parts of which were based in the now-independent country. Combined with what is commercially available in the laser realm, crafty local engineers might have been able to build a Tryzub-like weapon, industry experts said, adding that the few publicly released parameters seem plausible.

“Laser directed-energy systems, in a military context, are predominantly at the proof of concept stage,” an industry insider, who asked to remain unnamed to discuss sensitive technologies, said. “These could, in theory, be fielded as an initial operating capability.”

The country has radically restructured its defense R&D and acquisition procedures, which has dramatically boosted innovation and responsiveness, a January report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank showed. In the first nine months of 2024 alone, over 600 domestically developed new weapon systems were approved by the Ukrainian government.

And Ukraine’s February defense expo showcasing domestic military developments, Defense Tech 2025, promised a special focus on lasers and anti-Shahed weapons in its promotional materials – descriptions that fit the Tryzub – alongside other cutting-edge technologies like swarming drones, lethal autonomous weapons and sea drones.

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces did not respond to a request for comment on this topic.

Officials staged the evaluation as part of NATO exercise Joint Viking 2025, held in Northern Norway earlier this month. The idea was to test intelligence and surveillance tactics involving the deployment of different types of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Among them were first-person-view drones, or FPVs, used by Ukrainian and Russian forces to attack enemy positions or equipment. Skilled operators have been able to steer the remote-controlled drones into the open hatches of tanks and armored vehicles, blowing up their deadly charge inside.

In the context of the exercise, the drones carried tennis balls to simulate munitions hitting Norwegian armored vehicles, according to Maj. Tor Sellevold, who works for Combat Lab, the Norwegian Army’s land warfare centre testing unmanned technologies.

“To simulate attacks on participating forces, tennis balls were dropped and FPVs were flown in dive attack patterns to simulate modern-day drone threats — the purpose was to provide insights to the participants of their own aerial signature, experience the threat from top-attack drones, and evaluate their standard operating procedures,” he told Defense News in an email.

Over 30 tennis balls were dropped during the ten sorties the FPVs carried out, he added. This represented the first time that the Norwegian Army conducted such testing with attack drones at that scale.

In Ukraine, cheap drones have proven increasingly capable of striking larger Russian platforms, such as combat helicopters, as a result of their fast-paced development, which now allows them to fly faster and further than at the start of the conflict.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense recently announced the creation of the Drone Line project, which seeks to establish a 15 kilometer unmanned “kill zone” along the front lines. The plan entails the deployment of a mix of surveillance and strike drones.

The Norwegian military has been paying close attention to all the developments ongoing in Ukraine regarding drone warfare.

As part of its operations, the Army’s military intelligence battalion plans to operate drones from further back from the battle space, an officer within the unit, who wished not to be named, told Defense News.

“Our unit [Norwegian Army’s military intelligence battalion] will not be operating them close to the frontlines, we will do so from a larger distance back with longer-ranges ones,” the officer said in an interview during Joint Viking.

Norway plans to acquire new drones that will be more suitable to operate in Arctic conditions, with “very long-range” cameras, the officer added.

During the exercise, another drone that the unit deployed to conduct surveillance missions was the U.S.-made Puma, manufactured by AeroVironment.

The vendors include two U.S. based companies, Dragoon and AeroVironment, and two Ukrainian firms, unnamed due to safety concerns. The Ukrainian firms are each partnered with a U.S. software company, one with Swan and the other with Auterion. All four firms will test demonstrate their capabilities in April and May, and DIU will make its selections soon after.

The program, called Artemis, was initiated last year by Congress following demand from operators in U.S. European Command and Indo-Pacific Command for low-cost, expendable drones as well as counter-drone capabilities. As part of a supplemental spending package for Ukraine, lawmakers allotted the U.S Defense Department around $35 million and directed it to identify and test low-cost uncrewed systems that can navigate and communicate through jamming and spoofing attempts.

The intent was to move fast and prove that these systems could be ready to field much faster than a traditional, yearslong defense acquisition program. The Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment office delegated the expendable-drone requirement to DIU last August, according to Trent Emeneker, the organization’s lead for the effort.

In just three months, DIU solicited proposals, selected 16 promising concepts and staged an initial demonstration last December. Nine of the proposed systems were flight-ready and, from those, officials chose four to advance to the prototyping phase.

Emeneker told Defense News that DIU picked proposals that took different tacks at addressing the need. While there was a requirement for a flight range of at least 50km, two of the drones have a range of about 100km and the other two can fly more than 1,000km. In its solicitation, DIU said the vehicles should be hard to detect and track, have several pathways for two-way communications and be equipped with mission planning software. It also called for modular systems that can integrate new hardware or software in a matter of hours.

The smaller systems DIU is considering cost under $20,000 each, Emeneker said, while the price for the larger drones is closer to $70,000, depending on the cost of things like cameras and other subsystems as well as the number of systems DOD ends up buying.

The goal, according to DIU, is “mass deployment,” though it’s not clear how many drones the department will buy. As part of its evaluation, DIU will consider each vendor’s production capacity and how quickly it can deliver in large quantities. Emeneker noted that one of the Ukrainian firms is already producing nearly 200 systems each month to support operations against Russian invading forces.

Unlike most other projects DIU takes on, Artemis didn’t originate with an acquisition office, but was a congressional interest item, so the organization doesn’t have a natural transition partner to buy and field the drones it selects.

Emeneker said DIU has pitched the project to a number of program offices that are working on programs with similar requirements, but it’s been a challenge to get the services to buy in — and disrupt their current work — before the prototypes have flown.

“We have to prove we can do it, and if we can’t do it, then I don’t blame people for not signing up,” he said. “But when we prove we can do it — I’m confident we will — we have to get that message out of, ‘Hey, this solution works today. It’s at the right price point, it is ready, it’s combat proven.’”

Using Baykar platforms and Leonardo electronics and radars, a planned 50-50 joint venture envisages drone assembly in Turkey but also at Leonardo facilities in Italy, which would ease certification for selling in a European market worth $100 billion in the next ten years, the firms said.

“Europe has a gap in unmanned technologies and in a complicated time like this, drones are fundamental to guarantee security,” said Leonardo CEO Roberto Cingolani, adding the joint venture was the result of “five very intense months of work.”

The first prototype produced by the Italy-based firm will be a version of Baykar’s Akinci drone which will be ready in a year, said Cingolani.

“It has 1.5 tonnes of payload, which means it can carry any munition a fighter can,” said Baykar chairman Selçuk Bayraktar at a press conference held with Cingolani in Rome to announced the deal.

Leonardo, which produces the Gabbiano electronically scanned radar for drones, has already placed its systems on Baykar drones, but Bayraktar said the JV would represent a “deep dive” into further collaboration.

He said his firm’s Kizilelma unmanned fighter could yet be a candidate to fulfill the ‘Loyal Wingman’ role for the Anglo-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme fighter being built by Leonardo, BAE and Japan’s JAIEC.

“That was an idea that came up in discussions,” said Bayraktar.

The sixth-generation fighter is expected to control drones flying alongside it.

Leonardo CEO Roberto Cingolani said the team-up with Baykar was an “opportunity” to study the potential of making a Turkish drone the GCAP fighter’s backup.

So far, the GCAP partners have yet to focus on drone development.

But Cingolani warned it was early days to be pitching a Baykar platform.

“You need to know the requirement. We still have no idea if the drones will be under the wings or taking off from a carrier or an airport. It’s a bit too early,” he said.

Should the joint venture expand assembly of Baykar drones to Italy it could use Leonardo facilities as well as Piaggio Aerospace, the Italian aerospace company that Baykar purchased in December.

“One option is Piaggio,” said Bayraktar, adding that his firm would also keep up the civil, manned aircraft work at Piaggio.

Thursday’s press conference marked the signing of a memorandum of understanding ahead of the completion of the JV in about six months, officials said.

“If you start discussions with lawyers you don’t get anywhere, but if you start discussions with people who really want to do things together and they have a technical vision, then things happen and happen very quickly,” said Cingolani.

Cingolani said Baykar’s facility in Turkey was “the most striking high tech industry I have seen in my life, not only for its impressive drone capabiliity but also the campus with kindergarten, sports centre and flats for workers.”

Providing sensors and software would be key to Leonardo’s input, as well as getting drones certified, he said.

He cited three examples of where synergies would pay off: Creating swarms of UAVs that can fly by navigating thanks to ground features – without GPS; allowing drones like the Baykar Akinci to lead swarms of smaller drones; and building drones that can fly alongside sixth-generation fighters.

Bayraktar said of Leonardo,”They have an immense AI backbone.”

Cingolani claimed the tie-up would not clash with the Eurodrone program to build a European medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV in which Leonardo is a partner.

But he cautioned: “Eurodrone will not be able to guarantee the drone competitiveness of the continent.” Europe, he added, “has lost quite a lot of time.”

He said he “hoped” the Italian military would be a customer, while Baykar CEO Haluk Bayraktar told Defense News that possible Italian purchases included the Baykar Akinci and TB3 drones as well as loitering munitions and deep strike drones.

Asked whether European export restrictions might curtail the number of countries that jointly produced drones could be sold to, Cingolani said the company would adhere to any such rules.

“If I build a 25 million euro aircraft and cannot export it because of a 10,000 euro component from a country in the supply chain that stops me selling, we follow the rules, even if it is expensive. And that will apply to the new joint venture,” he said.

Italy has been a loyal purchaser of U.S. Predator and Reaper drones, so a purchase of Baykar platforms would mark a change in direction for Rome and reflect a possible, pending shift in Europe away from relying on U.S. armaments as President Trump aligns with Russia and imposes tariffs on the European Union.

If buying U.S. arms has been part of a deal to help maintain U.S. security guarantees in the past, there is less incentive to do so if the security guarantee is no longer a given.

Additionally, sovereignty over defense systems may become a priority in Europe amid concerns the U.S. could prevent American-made kit being used in operations opposed by Trump.

At the Rome press conference, Cingolani said Trump’s verbal “attacks” on Europe were fueling “an unprecedented sense of urgency” to beef up defense spending in Europe.

Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo in Milan contributed to this report.

The trials took place in waters near Denmark from Feb. 17 to 20 and involved integrating manned and unmanned assets in live-firing events and tactical maneuvers.

Participating drone boats were fielded through the Task Force X initiative established earlier this month by the alliance’s top transformation branch as part of patrolling activities in Baltic waters.

“It provides a framework for all nations to contribute by enabling the deployment of their autonomous capabilities. … This collaborative effort will fill gaps in surveillance, particularly in areas not covered by existing systems like the Automatic Identification System,” Adm. Pierre Vandier, commander of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, said in a press release.

Additional ships from NATO’s Standing NATO Maritime Group 1, the Royal Danish and German Navies took part in the demonstration.

In a recent interview with Defense News, as Vandier detailed plans for the alliance’s first fleet of naval surveillance drones, he hinted that it was likely to be equipped with proven platforms that would lean on experiments by the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 59.

TF59 is a unit dedicated to integrating unmanned systems and artificial intelligence in the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet area of operations that operates out of Bahrain.

However, according to an Allied Maritime Command press release, Task Force X will also leverage successful campaigns such as the U.S. Navy’s TF66, which experiments with uncrewed systems in the Europe-Africa area of responsibility.

Established in 2023, the group is made up of civilian and military personnel that put a variety of unmanned maritime systems to the test in bodies of water faced with different challenges than in the Gulf region.

Last year, it launched a pilot program centered on boosting maritime domain awareness, during which it tested the autonomous underwater and surface vessels of the Ocean Aero Triton platform, as reported by USNI News.

The emphasis on uncrewed maritime systems serves to plug manpower shortages and capability gaps, as the Gulf country’s naval branch is its smallest force at roughly 3,000 active personnel.

Abu Dhabi has adopted a mixed approach to this end, boosting indigenous capabilities and partnering with international companies. The IDEX and NAVDEX defense fairs here saw the debuts of several unmanned surface vessels.

Among them was the WAM-V manufactured by U.S.-based company Ocean Power Technologies, which markets the platform as the pickup truck of the USV world. The commercially available vehicle, previously deployed for the U.S. Navy in Bahrain as part of Task Force 59, was shown in a 22-feet configuration.

“Its success is due to its high utility and versatility – you can deploy anything, from an underwater sonar for anti-submarine warfare or mine detection to communication nodes to an underwater or aerial drone, such as those provided by our [U.S.] partner Redcat,” Philipp Stratmann, chief executive officer of OPT, said.

The company announced last year that it was expanding its footprint in the Gulf state by partnering with local distributor Remah International Group for defense systems.

In discussing the decision to increase the company’s activities here, Stratmann pointed to the significant market interest by the UAE.

“Given also the amount of coastal water, the large number of offshore oil and gas installations, and the tense security situation, this is a great region for us to expand into –we have one vehicle actively demonstrating our capabilities, one buoy en route for a security customer, a signing of an agency agreement for Kuwait, and ongoing discussions with the UAE Forces,” Stratmann said.

Another platform showcased for the first time at the event was the UAE-made DV10 optionally-manned interceptor. The 10.2-meter vessel was jointly developed by Abu Dhabi Ship Building, Steer AI, the Technology Innovation Institute, and Edge. It can be equipped with a remote weapon station of different calibers, including 5.56mm, 7.62, or 12.7mm, and it possesses swarming capabilities.

Additional partnerships announced during the show included an agreement signed between Abu Dhabi-based Al Seer Marine and ST Engineering to foster closer cooperation on USVs.

Emirati companies have also turned to their regional allies to secure contracts. In January, Al Seer Marine announced that it signed a deal with Saudi Arabia’s Advanced Electronics Company to supply USVs for the Kingdom.

The company plans to use the facility to grow its fleet of medium- and large-class autonomous surface vessels amid demand from the Pentagon for more drones of all kinds, including ships.

“It is going to be the most advanced shipyard in the world,” CEO Dino Mavrookas told reporters. “We’re going to build it right here in America. We’re going to build it from the ground up.”

Saronic hasn’t yet picked a site for Port Alpha, but the company is working with state governments throughout the U.S. to find the right fit. Texas and the Gulf Coast are among the regions the firm is closely exploring, according to Mavrookas.

The company declined to offer specifics on how much the project would cost, saying only that it planned to funnel “billions and billions of dollars” toward the effort over its lifecycle.

Mavrookas would not commit to a timeline for when the facility would open its doors, but said he expects it to be operating “well within five years.”

“This is not something that we’re just thinking about,” he said. “Our goal is to get it open as fast as possible with shipbuilding production lines, rolling things out and into the water.”

Founded in 2022, Saronic has raised more than $850 million and is valued at $4 billion. In just three years, the firm has developed three uncrewed vessels: Spyglass, Cutlass and Corsair — a 24-foot-long boat that it unveiled last October.

The company sees its systems as a solution to the U.S. Defense Department’s push for more uncrewed systems and Port Alpha as a means for boosting the Navy’s shipbuilding capacity. The service’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan calls for 381 battle force ships — an increase from its current fleet of 295 — and an additional 134 unmanned surface vessels over that time period, including 40 large-sized vessels.

The service is also pushing toward a fully operational unmanned fleet by the mid-to-late 2030s.

At the same time, the Navy’s shipbuilders are struggling to maintain cost and schedule requirements, many of them years behind on delivering due to a number of factors, including a shrinking workforce and a lagging supply chain.

Asked whether he expects Port Alpha to put additional strain on that base, Rob Lehman, Saronic’s chief commercial officer, said the autonomous vessels the company is building won’t rely on the same manufacturing techniques, hardware and workforce that traditional shipbuilders developing manned platforms.

“We’re looking at a new class of vessels with a new way of building them, unburdened by some of the constraints that the current shipbuilding industrial base is hindered by,” he said. “We plan on approaching the Navy with ideas, concepts and capabilities rather than just waiting and being told what to do.”

DIU in November staged a three-day flight demonstration at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms in California. Following the event, the department selected 23 systems as well as 14 unique drone components, which are now in the midst of a months-long cybersecurity verification process.

Once completed, the approved drones will be added to DIU’s Blue Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or UAS, List and the components to its Blue UAS Framework, making them available for the military services to buy.

“Advocacy for many of these new and enabling technologies continues to be critical for getting capabilities to the warfighter,” DIU said in a statement. “With the cycle for development of new capabilities in this space approaching three months, and current DOD timelines and processes for drone delivery lagging warfighter needs by multiple years, providing warfighters access to capabilities they need now through the Blue List and Framework is even more important.”

Small commercial drones have featured heavily in recent military conflicts, including those in Ukraine and the Middle East. As the market for these capabilities has grown, particularly in China, the U.S. government has been increasingly concerned about the security of the technology and the possibility that data collected by these systems could be shared with adversaries.

That concern led to a series of congressional mandates blocking the Pentagon from buying or using certain drone components made by Chinese companies. Units wanting access to commercial drones had to go through an intensive exemption process to get a waiver that lasted only six months before needing to be resubmitted.

DIU established Blue UAS in 2020 to create another avenue for validation. Since then, the organization has on-ramped 15 systems. It also created an inventory of approved components and software through its Blue UAS Framework.

Although the Blue effort has essentially become the government standard for commercial drone procurement, DIU has heard from companies and DOD users that the process was not meeting their needs. Military units said the list wasn’t providing the types of systems the military most urgently needs. Meanwhile, drone firms said there were too many financial and procedural hoops to jump through to get on it.

To address those concerns, DIU opted to refresh the Blue UAS List and build out the Blue UAS Framework effort. In response, firms from the U.S. and 18 partner countries applied to participate in last fall’s demonstrations.

The drones selected through that event are: Hoverfly Spectre, Neros Archer, ModalAI Stalker, Zone 5 Paladin, Teledyne FLIR Black Hornet, Parrot Anafi UKR, Skyfront Perimeter 8, Mountain Horse Solutions Rotron DT-300, Vantage Robotics Trace, Easy Aerial Sparrow, Shield AI V-BAT, Edge Autonomy VXE-30 Stalker, Skyfall Vampire, Quantum Systems Vector, AeroVironment Dragon, Zepher Flight Z1, Kraus Hamdani Aerospace K1000, Teal Black Widow, Freefly Systems Astro, Skydio X10D, Flightwave Edge 130, PDW C100 and Anduril Ghost/GhostX.

Notably, the list features drones from Ukrainian companies, including Skyfall’s Vampire and Parrot’s Anafi drone. It also has several first-person-view drones, which can wirelessly transmit video feeds to displays like goggles or headsets. The addition of FPV systems and tethered platforms came in direct response to feedback from military users, DIU said.

The software is designed with an open architecture to be platform-agnostic and scalable. To date, the company has demonstrated the ability to connect multiple systems, but it envisions Amorphous eventually managing thousands of payloads — a key requirement for the U.S. Defense Department as it looks to better integrate uncrewed systems into operations.

Jon Rambeau, president of integrated mission systems at L3Harris, told reporters in a briefing last week the company’s vision is for Amorphous to serve as an orchestra conductor, helping operators command and control autonomous systems.

“One of the big problems that has yet to be solved is, how do you think about the control of, not 10, not 100, not even 1,000, but thousands of assets simultaneously,” Rambeau said. “That’s really not something that’s possible to do with human control only.”

While some concepts for autonomous command-and-control rely on a “mothership,” a single platform serving as the brains of a fleet of uncrewed systems, L3Harris envisions Amorphous coordinating a “leaderless swarm,” according to Toby Magsig, vice president and general manager of enterprise autonomous systems.

Under this approach, rather than rely on a single platform to communicate an operator’s command, the entire fleet of systems would share the message and deconflict on which platform would perform which parts of the mission. This alleviates some of the mission risk should the mothership lose its communication link or be shot down, Magsig said in the same briefing.

Amorphous has already made its debut in prototypes the company is developing for various Pentagon programs, including Replicator, and has its roots in work the L3Harris has done for the Navy’s Project Overmatch and Army Research Laboratory experimentation.

For Replicator — the Pentagon’s high-profile effort to field thousands of uncrewed systems by next August — L3Harris was selected in November alongside Anduril Industries and Swarm Aero to demonstrate the ability to coordinate hundreds or thousands of platforms through an effort called Autonomous Collaborative Teaming.

Managed by the Defense Innovation Unit, the program is looking for software that can be upgraded iteratively and can run on any hardware system.

Rambeau said the company recognizes the need for open architecture and has demonstrated Amorphous can integrate with a variety of platforms. He also noted that L3Harris worked with several smaller firms to support the software’s user interface and autonomy algorithms.

“A truly open architecture with published interfaces that anybody can plug into is going to be a really critical element of success,” he said. “That’s one of the things that we put into this design.”

Magsig declined to offer much detail on the Replicator demonstrations that Amorphous has supported, but said the software has been involved in a few events and “there’s many more to go.”

The goal is for the first contracts to be signed in the first half of 2025, which should allow for deliveries to start in 2028 and be wrapped up the following year, State Secretary for Defence Gijs Tuinman wrote in a letter to parliament on Wednesday. The budget covers the acquisition price as well as ammunition, operating costs over the weapons’ lifetime and a risk reserve.

The Dutch armed forces currently lack a mobile system that can adequately protect their medium and heavy infantry brigades against small and cheap drones, with longer-range systems neither efficient nor effective against the small drone threat, Tuinman said.

“We need to be better able to combat enemy drones, helicopters and other aerial threats,” Tuinman said in a post on X. “That’s why we are purchasing 22 mobile anti-drone gun systems. In this way we protect our own troops, strengthen combat power and contribute to NATO requirements.”

The Skyranger 30 systems can counter unmanned aircraft systems as well as low-flying helicopters and aircraft up to a distance of 5 kilometers, or roughly 3 miles, using a 30 millimeter rapid-fire cannon coupled with surface-to-air missiles for longer-range targets, the Dutch Ministry of Defence said.

The guns will be mounted on the Armoured Combat Support Vehicle from Germany’s Flensburger Fahrzeugbau, a 26-metric ton tracked vehicle designed to be air-transportable. The ministry is buying off-the-shelf equipment, which is advantageous in terms of price and delivery time, it said.

Unmanned aircraft systems have become a dominant feature of the battlefield in Ukraine, taking out everything from tanks to individual soldiers, and Western militaries are trying to figure out how to protect maneuvering troops in those conditions. The Netherlands said last month it would equip its soldiers with personal protection gear against drones, including targeting lasers and sensors.

The Skyranger’s Oerlikon 30 mm revolver cannon has a firing rate of around 1,200 rounds per minute, and can fire programmable airburst munitions. The turret has its own 360 degree active radar using fixed plate antennas, as well as an infrared thermal-imaging camera for passive tracking. Rheinmetall says the gun has an effective range of 3 kilometers.

NATO is also asking the Netherlands to invest in heavier land-combat capabilities such as ground-based air and missile defense and land-maneuver formations, the minister said. The Netherlands said in September it would again stand up a tank battalion, after having sold its last Leopard 2 tanks in 2011 due to budget cuts.

The Netherlands plans to set up five mobile air-defense units to protect the maneuver battalions of its medium and heavy infantry brigades, with each units receiving four Skyranger 30 combat C-UAS systems in addition to short-range air defense systems.

“Due to geopolitical developments and in case of further growth of the armed forces, it cannot be ruled out that a greater need will arise in the future than has been quantified so far,” Tuinman wrote. “The contracts will therefore include optionality for additional systems wherever possible.”

The vehicles for the Skyranger turret will be purchased in connection with a program announced last year to buy Kongsberg’s National Manoeuvre Air Defence System, a short-range system that also uses the ACSV tracked vehicle.

As part of the Kongsberg purchase, the Netherlands will receive five fire-control units and 18 NOMADS weapon platforms equipped with Sidewinder missiles, with deliveries set to start in 2028. A single short-range air-defense platoon, targeting threats up to 15 kilometers, consists of a mobile fire-control unit and three launchers, according to the Dutch MoD.

With Denmark, Germany and Austria also buying the Skyranger system, that will be positive for cooperation, according to Tuinman. The Netherlands is seeking “a high degree of interoperability” with European allies including Germany, the state secretary said.

Germany in February 2024 agreed to buy 19 Skyranger 30 systems mounted on a Boxer wheeled armored fighting vehicle for €595 million, including one prototype, and with an option to buy another 30 systems. In addition to the gun, the German systems will be armed with Raytheon’s Stinger air-defense missile.

That same month Austria announced an order for 36 Skyranger 30 systems, to be mounted on Pandur wheeled armored vehicles from General Dynamics European Land Systems, with delivery starting in 2026. The turrets for Austria’s systems will combine the 30 mm gun with Mistral guided missiles from MBDA.

Denmark in September followed with an order for 16 Skyranger 30 turrets to be mounted on the eight-wheeled Piranha armored personnel carrier in use with the Danish armed forces. Four units are scheduled for delivery in late 2026, with the remaining serial-produced turrets delivered over the following two years. At the time of the order, Denmark hadn’t picked the air-defense missile yet.

France’s armaments directorate in December asked KNDS France to develop similar mobile air-defense and anti-drone equipment, with an order for 30 Serval armored vehicles mounted with MBDA’s Atlas RC turret and Mistral missiles, and 24 Serval units equipped with a 30 mm cannon to target drones.

Leonardo CEO Roberto Cingolani visited Baykar’s Turkish facility this week to meet management and check out the firm’s line of drones including the Bayraktar TB2, which has influenced conflicts in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine.

“There was a great interest in seeking synergies,” a Leonardo source told Defense News.

While Baykar has established a huge presence in the drone market, Leonardo has also sold over 50 of its Falco drone variants and is also a partner on the evolving Eurodrone program with Spain, France and Germany.

The firm also specializes in airborne electronics and sensors like the Gabbiano electronically scanned radar, which will be mounted on the Eurodrone, suggesting Leonardo could put its systems on Baykar drones.

“Cingolani’s logic is that there must be the possibility for synergy in terms of technology, and on the basis of that commercial synergy can be looked at, as was the case with Leonardo’s cooperation with Rheinmetall,” the source said.

In October, Leonardo and Rheinmetall teamed to build new fighting vehicles and tanks for the Italian army which will feature Leonardo electronics and turrets combined with Rheinmetall platforms.

Last month, Baykar purchased Italy’s Piaggio Aerospace, bringing the firm out of six years of receivership.

The ministry already provided 2.1 billion hryvia directly to combat units in December for buying drones, and decided to scale up the initiative based on that experience, officials said in a Jan. 22 statement. Allowing troops to buy unmanned aerial vehicles directly allowed for rapid fulfillment of service members’ needs while increasing diversification, the ministry said.

“Commanders of the units will have the flexibility to use these funds to acquire the drones that are the most effective for carrying out mission requirements at the front,” Minister of Defence Rustem Umerov said in the statement. “This marks another step towards building a highly flexible system to ensure the military has everything necessary for Ukraine’s defense.”

In Ukraine, long guns become desperate defenses against small drones

Ukraine has been a crucible for drone innovation as it fights off Russia’s invasion, with troops using unmanned systems for everything from intelligence gathering to strike operations, as decoys or for laying mines. Western militaries are closely studying the new ways UAVs are being used on the Ukrainian battlefield – including air-to-air drone combat, use of artificial intelligence, fiber-optic controls, bomber drones and more – to see what lessons to apply to their own forces.

The funds to buy drones will be distributed among the brigades of the armed forces after Ukraine’s Cabinet of ministers backed the proposal by the ministry, the MoD said.

Drones can be made more profitably in Ukraine than anywhere else in Europe, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier in January. The country raised its drone manufacturing capacity to 4 million units a year, the president said at a defense industry forum in October, compared with production of about 300,000 drones in 2023.

Domestic production accounted for more than 96% of the drones used by the armed forces, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said last month. The Ministry of Defence, together with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, had contracted 1.6 million UAVs of various types in the first 10 months of 2024, with 1.3 million drones delivered, it said in October.

India joins Japan as observer on the project launched by Italy, France, Germany and Spain and run by Europe-based contracting agency OCCAR to build a MALE drone that will give Europe greater autonomy in the drone sector.

Developed by Airbus, France’s Dassault Aviation and Italy’s Leonardo, the Eurodrone, with a wing span of 26 meters, will specialize in long-endurance Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) missions.

During an October visit to Leonardo facilities in Italy, Eurodrone program officials inspected the mission computer and Gabbiano electronically scanned radar due to be installed on the platform.

Prime contractor Airbus has stated the Eurodrone will be able to fly in non-segregated airspace, carry weapons, offer naval anti-submarine warfare as well as electronic-warfare capabilities, featuring a 2.3 ton payload, 40 hours of autonomy and 45,000 feet maximum altitude.

Twin turboprops are positioned behind the wing in a pusher configuration.

The development follows years in which EU states dragged their heels on joint drone development. Launched in 2015, the Eurodrone program originally aimed for a first delivery in 2025, although entry into service is now planned for 2029.

The project was announced by Swedish Minister for Defense Pal Jonson during a Jan. 15 press conference.

In a demonstration video shared with Defense News, a formation of 10 quadcopters is seen taking off and relaying footage of their flight trajectory above snowy forests to ground operators.

A Swedish voice-over explains that the drones’ high-resolution imagery and artificial intelligence-driven analyses enable commanders to have immediate and actionable insights for faster decision-making – military lingo describing the advantage of having flying eyes and ears for securing a perimeter.

The initiative has involved the participation of the Swedish aerospace company Saab in cooperation with the Swedish military, the Swedish Defense Material Administration and the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

While Saab does not provide the drones themselves, for now, it worked alongside the other agencies to design a software for their command and control.

“The individual UAVs in the swarm are equipped with different capabilities, such as varying sensors, payload, and communication capacities – the swarms are controlled by a single operator who can assign … tasks to one or more swarms, for instance via a mobile phone,” a Saab spokesperson told Defense News in an email statement.

The Saab representative added that the drone swarm technology was developed in “a very short period,” and that additional NATO countries have already expressed interest in it.

The Scandinavian country borders the Baltic Sea, where NATO recently launched a maritime patrol mission, following a series of sabotage incidents against underwater infrastructure.

The interest in drone swarms is not new, as militaries around the world have examined both the opportunities and threats they present. In a recent publication for the U.S.-based Atlantic Council think-tank, the head of the Ukrainian defense-technology hub Brave1 listed drone swarms as a top priority for Kyiv in 2025.

“Ukrainian drone units are already moving beyond the initial concept of one drone, one operator and looking to transition towards drone swarms this year,” she wrote.

A key challenge swarms have presented is that they are typically composed of relatively small, short-range drones, which implies that their flight time is highly limited to around 30 minutes.

The Cosa Mesa, California-based defense technology company plans to begin construction of what it’s calling “Arsenal 1” as soon as state and local approvals are secured. The 5 million-square-foot facility will be located on a 500-acre site near Rickenbacker International Airport in rural Pickaway County, about 16 miles southeast of Columbus.

Anduril lands $250 million Pentagon contract for drone defense system

Production of military drones and autonomous air vehicles would begin in July 2026 under the plan, said Christian Brose, Anduril's chief strategy officer.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said it is the largest single job creation and payroll project that Ohio has announced. The governor said winning Anduril’s manufacturing plant marks a continuation of Ohio’s history of advanced aviation, which began with the Ohio-born Wright brothers and continues to grow surrounding the Dayton-area Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

“We are an aerospace state,” DeWine said. He called Ohio “the brains of the Air Force.”

DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and JobsOhio CEO J.P. Nauseef said that, through targeted economic development efforts, the state boasts a strong and diverse aerospace workforce. They said it also has a network of job training centers, colleges and universities prepared to educate new advanced manufacturing workers. Those helped attract the nationally competitive deal, they said.

“Ohio has literally built a strategy around this kind of project, and so we are perfect for them," Husted said.

The aerospace sector in Ohio includes the global headquarters of GE Aerospace and a new Joby Aviation manufacturing facility near Dayton that’s preparing to manufacture electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft beginning this year.

Anduril casts the Ohio facility as integral to its goal to “Rebuild the Arsenal” of U.S. military weapons and platforms by “hyperscaling” manufacturing with advanced software and production technologies.

The latest development adds to what is becoming known as a “silicon corridor” based in Ohio. It includes Intel, which is building a $20 billion chip factory just east of Columbus, and Honda and LG Energy Solution of South Korea, which are building a $3.5 billion battery plant in nearby Fayette County that the automaker envisions as its North American electric vehicle hub. Ohio State University also announced plans in 2023 to build a $110 million software innovation center to dovetail with those efforts.

At separate upcoming state meetings, the Anduril project will pursue a job creation tax credit from the Ohio Department of Development and a $70 million infusion from the All Ohio Future Fund, which the DeWine administration and lawmakers established to help local governments prepare sites for economic development projects. JobsOhio also plans to provide the project a sizeable grant, whose exact amount will be announced once agreements are signed, as well as talent acquisition services.

“When we launched Replicator, a common refrain I heard was: ‘Can it work?’ These days I’m more likely to hear: ‘Will it stick?’” said Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense.

That second question soon won’t be hers to answer.

Since she first unveiled Replicator a year and a half ago, it’s nearly become a trademark. Hicks has sat in all of the Pentagon’s major meetings on it. She’s read every story published about the program, prepared in files from her staff. And she’s called its success a referendum on her leadership.

Senior Pentagon officials interviewed for this story said the program is on schedule largely through her effort. Now, as Hicks leaves office, the question is whether it can survive without her.

Republicans and Democrats have applauded the idea behind Replicator. To compete with China, they argue, the Pentagon needs cutting-edge weapons much faster. Hence, aides in Congress and executives at drone firms said they expect it to endure — albeit with changes.

And after 16 months, many officials working on the program outside the Pentagon say the biggest change it needs is size. Hicks made the bet to start Replicator, no small feat in a risk-averse bureaucracy, they acknowledged. But without more funding and more weapons on order, it won’t reach its true promise: a military nimble enough for the future of war.

“I would like to think that years from now, we would look back and say, ‘Yes, this began with the Biden administration,” said Chris Brose, an executive at the drone and software firm Anduril. “However, the real scale that this got to was delivered by his successors.”

‘Magnitude’

By early 2023, the problem was clear.

The year before, Russia had started a war with Ukraine dominated by trench warfare, artillery and increasingly drones. Both sides were building them in huge numbers to target, spy and attack at once, known in the military as “swarms.”

But these weren’t American drones. Instead, Ukraine’s soldiers were mostly buying and then tweaking their weapons from DJI, a Chinese company controlling 90% of the consumer market. U.S. firms weren’t only behind on building the weapons; their equipment wasn’t even needed.

“We know we have a problem on the production side: that DJI has just taken off with the international market. We needed to build out — we still do need to build out — that American industry,” Hicks said in an interview.

The deputy is close to the ultimate Pentagon insider. She took her first job in the building at the age of 23. And her habits reflect its culture of productivity. Hicks regularly schedules her day in 15-minute slots, she reads books on better managing her time and she returns hundreds of pages of reading to her staff each week marked with detailed notes.

So as the problem emerged, Hicks thought about how the Pentagon, internally, could solve it. American companies were indeed making high-tech drones. But the supply was small — in large part because the Pentagon was a picky customer. The period between signing a contract and actually getting equipment to troops often lasts more than 10 years.

The issue wasn’t just for Ukraine.

Hicks had entered office saying her top challenge was China, a country so large it could outpace America’s ability to build almost anything.

“It was the magnitude of all of the things,” said Mike Horowitz, a former top Pentagon policy official involved in Replicator, who listed out China’s ability to build a range of weapons: ships, submarines, drones, missiles. “They’re doing all of them simultaneously.”

Over the course of 2023, Hicks had been visiting Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees U.S. forces across the region, to watch troops experiment and exercise with new technology. She saw the need for more weapons that could punch above their weight. And she decided that if the Pentagon wasn’t buying enough of these already, she would make it.

In August that year, she took to the stage at a conference in downtown Washington and pledged two things. The Pentagon would field thousands of affordable drones within two years. And it would learn how to buy such weapons faster along the way.

Hicks called the two-part program Replicator, named after a tool from Star Trek that can form matter from thin air.

‘WD-40′

At first, other people in the Pentagon and Congress — largely unaware that the program was coming — had different names for it. Some called it confusing. Others worried it was a flash in the pan. Overall, the consensus at first was that Replicator was a good idea but that people couldn’t tell whether it was more than that.

“We had a candid conversation” before the announcement, said a senior defense official involved in the effort with Hicks, granted anonymity to talk freely. “I said we’re probably gonna get our asses kicked for eight to nine months in the press. Are you ready?”

Part of the skepticism came from how little Hicks’ team shared about the program after launching it. Because she didn’t want the idea choked by bureaucratic thorns, the deputy announced it without a full plan to discuss it publicly. Even more, her staff wasn’t entirely sure how it would work.

“My Italian family uses WD-40 for literally everything. — it’s like you have a cut [use] WD-40. So when we zoomed out, there were all these great innovation gears [inside the Pentagon] but some of them were a little squeaky,” the official said.

Replicator was meant to make these all click into place.

Atop the effort was the Defense Innovation Unit, tasked with bringing high-tech weapons into the military. Along with Hicks’ staff, it surveyed the different parts of the Pentagon from the Army to the Air Force, asking what drones would matter most for a fight with China and what they could buy the fastest.

At the same time, the team was working with military leaders in the Pacific and Congress, which later agreed to free up half a billion dollars for the effort (the same number made it into the next defense budget, which Congress has yet to pass).

In the year since, the Pentagon has announced several systems selected for the program: mostly underwater vehicles, small flying drones and loitering munitions meant to explode on impact. This last group will make up the bulk of the program, a congressional aide said. Of the 2,500 to 3,000 systems the Pentagon plans to deliver, over half will be the Switchblade 600, a kamikaze drone.

Hicks argued these results helped change the narrative.

“Replicator really depended on having that reputational advantage internally to make it happen. Now the Hill and the press — that reputational advantage probably needed to prove out another year. I think we’ve done that by just putting our heads down,” she said.

‘Dress rehearsal’

In a meeting last fall, another Pentagon official working on the program remembers getting goosebumps. Military leaders in the room were planning a Replicator “dress rehearsal” for early 2025 — a drill meant to prove how the weapons could all work together.

“There was this moment where we all realized how real this is,” said the official. It had gone from an idea to a table of the nation’s top officers.

Since Hicks announced the program, it’s earned real staying power. Officials across Washington cite it as an example of how to jolt America’s slow bureaucracy. And military leaders in the Pacific have been happy to have someone advocating for their priorities.

Last fall, the Pentagon announced a second version of the program, this time focused on protecting American bases from incoming drones — a problem on display across the Middle East since Israel’s war began in Gaza.

But the drill this year is also a sign of the issues Replicator has yet to address. For one, the military is still deciding where to station the drones, which so far have been relatively short-range and would struggle to enter a fight. The answer is likely to put them on ships, said Adm. Sam Papapro, the head of Indo-Pacific Command, at an event last November.

Military leaders are trying to make sure the drones can resist jamming — a huge problem in Ukraine — and how to make the weapons operate in synchrony. They’re also trying to decide how to sustain the weapons, since these drones are meant to be “attritable,” the Pentagon’s version of a plastic fork and knife compared to silverware.

“We’re now going from just buying the system to actually using it in an operationally relevant environment and assessing changes we need to make,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer and analyst at the Hudson Institute, where he follows the program closely.

‘A solvable problem’

These tests won’t address the largest critique often leveled at Replicator: that it didn’t wasn’t big enough. China has huge stores of weapons, beyond what Horowitz listed earlier, and they’re growing. Thousands of relatively small drones won’t tip the military scales.

“The PRC has got 2,100 fighters, they’ve got three aircraft carriers, they have a battle force of 200 destroyers. Well, Roger, we’ve got a couple of drones,” Paparo said in November, using the common abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China.

Hicks staffers bristle at this critique. Replicator, they argue, was never meant to be the Pentagon’s only insurance program for a war with China. It was meant to teach the Pentagon a new way of doing business. Even more, it wasn’t like there were billions of extra dollars lying around for the program. Starting Replicator at its current scale was hard enough given how much the Pentagon bureaucracy can resist change.

“What Replicator did was juice the system and show that this is a solvable problem,” Horowitz said.

Indeed, Hicks and other top Pentagon officials say this effort is only one part in a much larger engine designed to get the military more advanced weapons.

In an interview last month, the head of Pentagon research and engineering explained the point by pulling out a complicated flow chart, illustrating how the Defense Department brings a new weapon on board.

“There’s the entire ecosystem. This is how we fit together. It isn’t [that] only one piece of the puzzle is important and the rest is irrelevant,” said Heidi Shyu, tracing the Replicator section of the chart with her finger.

Even critics accepted this argument: They couldn’t blame Replicator for not being something it was never meant to be. But Brose, the executive at Anduril, also said that the program’s scope should factor into its legacy. If the U.S. needed a true crash program to help defend Taiwan, or other parts of the Pacific, then Replicator may have missed the moment, even if it’s on track to meet its goals.

Still, that doesn’t mean they don’t want it to stick around. The Pentagon, at least, expects it to.

“Initiatives change names all the time,” the first official said.

Courtney Albon contributed to this story.