The British defense giant unveiled BlackThorn, a new family of modular warheads built specifically for the current wave of cheap, mass-produced weapons reshaping modern warfare, from autonomous drones and one-way attack munitions to counter-drone interceptors, missiles and unmanned ground vehicles. BAE Systems designed the warhead family to be modular, meaning the same core technology can […]

BAE Systems, Boeing and Saab announced they have signed a formal teaming agreement to jointly pursue the UK’s next generation pilot training program, built around Boeing’s T-7 trainer jet, and the deal commits the companies to building a brand new final assembly and integration facility inside Britain. Advanced fast jet training currently runs through the […]

BAE Systems announced at the Farnborough International Airshow that it has signed a licensing agreement with an unnamed strategic defense partner to support local manufacture of the Light Gun artillery system inside Ukraine, giving Kyiv’s defense industry direct access to the technical know-how behind a weapon British and Commonwealth forces have relied on for half […]

The U.S. Air Force wants to install a network of microphones at one of its most secretive bases in England, built specifically to hear enemy drones coming before anyone ever sees them. A newly published Air Force solicitation reveals that the 352nd Special Operations Wing at RAF Mildenhall is seeking a passive acoustic drone detection […]

Teledyne FLIR Defense announced it will begin assembling its Star SAFIRE line of thermal imaging camera systems at its facility in West Malling, Kent, after more than two years of planning and formal approval to produce the advanced surveillance systems locally for the UK Ministry of Defence. Star SAFIRE is a family of gimbal-mounted camera […]

BAE Systems announced that its FalconWorks advanced projects division has partnered with Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works to develop Blizzard, a modular, uncrewed aircraft built to carry out electronic warfare and attack missions, with the option to launch it from the ground, the air, the sea, or the back of a large military transport plane. […]

Scattered Spider Hackers Sentenced over Mass-Affecting Transit Attack Two well-known members of the notorious hacking group Scattered Spider were sentenced to prison in the UK on July 16, 2026. Owen...

The post UK’s Largest Cybercrime Case Ends in Prison for Spider Hacker appeared first on Cyber Defense Magazine.

Reuters reports: Incoming British prime minister Andy Burnham will scrap the government's troubled plans for a digital ID scheme when he enters office on Monday, a spokesperson for the new Labour Party leader said. Resources devoted to the scheme, deemed a "fiasco" by a cross-party committee of lawmakers, will be redirected to Burnham's priorities, the spokesperson said... "All the time and resource that was going to be spent on a national ID scheme will go instead to where it's most needed, such as helping with the cost of living," Burnham's spokesperson said. In November, the Office for Budget Responsibility watchdog estimated the cost of the digital ID scheme at around £1.8 billion ($2.4 billion) between financial years 2026/27 and 2028/29.

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Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers were prosecuted over a 2024 cyberattack targeting Transport for London (TfL).

The post Two Scattered Spider Hackers Sentenced to Jail in UK appeared first on SecurityWeek.

The UK plans a midnight-to-6 a.m. social media curfew for 16- and 17-year-olds, with autoplay and personalised feeds switched off by default from spring 2027.

The post UK to Introduce Midnight Social Media Curfew for Older Teens appeared first on TechRepublic.

The UK plans a midnight-to-6 a.m. social media curfew for 16- and 17-year-olds, with autoplay and personalised feeds switched off by default from spring 2027.

The post UK to Introduce Midnight Social Media Curfew for Older Teens appeared first on TechRepublic.

The UK government has proposed a midnight curfew that would lock 16 and 17-year-olds out of apps like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, but the restriction can be switched off with just a few taps.

A 17-meter robotic ship built to patrol the ocean alone for nearly two months at a stretch has just rolled off a British production line, and its arrival says as much about where naval technology is headed as it does about the vessel itself. ZeroUSV, a Plymouth-based maker of uncrewed surface vessels, confirmed that its […]

Britain’s military just handed itself a $536 million-a-year budget and a five-point checklist for turning laboratory ideas into battlefield equipment faster than its notoriously slow defense bureaucracy has managed in decades. UK Defence Innovation, the Ministry of Defence’s newly consolidated innovation arm known as UKDI, announced Wednesday the five core themes that will guide how […]

The British military’s newest helicopter fleet finally has an engine, closing a question that even reporters covering the program in real time couldn’t get UK officials to answer for months. GE Aerospace announced July 14 that Leonardo selected its CT7-2E1 engine to power all 23 AW149 helicopters being built for the UK Ministry of Defence’s […]

Babcock International has finished building the last of 123 Jackal 3 high-mobility vehicles for the British Army, with the final vehicle, a six-wheeled Extenda variant, rolling off the production line at the company’s Devonport facility in Plymouth and now heading into testing before it joins the Army’s operational fleet. The Jackal has been a fixture […]

German defense giant Rheinmetall has secured a contract worth just under €1 billion (roughly $1.1 billion) for its role in overhauling how the British Army trains its soldiers, part of a broader £2 billion (approximately $2.7 billion) government program that will replace traditional live exercises with a blended system of virtual, synthetic and data-driven training […]

Facial recognition technology in U.K. shops "will soon alert police in real time to the presence of serious offenders," reports The Guardian, "with civil liberties groups warning of a 'dangerous escalation' towards surveillance and criminalisation in the retail sector." Facewatch, a facial recognition system used by more than 100 businesses including Sainsbury's, B&M and Spar to monitor thieves, said it was launching a UK-first feature to "alert police instantly when the most serious offenders trigger a live facial recognition match". Facewatch's chief executive, Nick Fisher, said the "unique technical development" would be launched in autumn and would warn police in an average of four seconds when the "worst offenders" were flagged on its network... Charlie Whelton, the policy and campaigns officer at [civil liberties nonprofit] Liberty, said it was concerned about this "untested, opaque development" and the way facial recognition technology had been allowed to "proliferate without anything to govern it". "It's not against the law to walk into a shop even if you've committed crimes in the past," he said. "The idea of calling the police on somebody who hasn't committed a crime, but there's a concern they might, is really upending the way we do things. And of course, it's not infallible. These systems do make mistakes, and it's very hard to argue with that when it happens to you." A number of people have been forced to leave shops after being falsely identified by Facewatch technology as a shoplifter, with some describing it as "Orwellian" and saying they felt as though they were "guilty until proven innocent"... The use of the Facewatch technology looks set to quickly expand, with Sainsbury's recently announcing plans to increase its use from 55 stores to more than 200 by the end of the year. Facewatch said it alerted retailers almost 300,000 times that a "known repeat offender" had entered a store during the first six months of 2026, and that its system allowed staff to intervene "before theft, abuse or violence could occur or escalate"... [E]xperts argue the use of facial recognition technology in shops to catch shoplifters is disproportionate. Nuala Polo, the UK public policy lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute, which studies the impact of AI on society, said: "There are other, much less intrusive means that you can use to catch shoplifters where you don't need to be scanning millions of faces every day, virtually without consent...." The campaign group Big Brother Watch has criticised police for "inserting themselves into this cowboy operation" and said people would be matched against "a secret blacklist compiled by unaccountable businesses and private security guards".

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OpenWorks Engineering, a counter-drone specialist based in Northumberland, England, announced this week that it recently attended an industry-focused counter-unmanned aircraft systems, or C-UAS, event at the British Army’s Larkhill Garrison, where the company demonstrated its Vision Pace targeting system to defense and security partners. Larkhill sits on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire and has served as […]

Two announcements on July 7, 2026, demonstrate the government’s determination to improve the level of cybersecurity within the UK.

The post UK Government Rolls Out Agentic AI Defense Plan Alongside Industry Pledge appeared first on SecurityWeek.