AM General, the South Bend, Indiana manufacturer that has built the Humvee since the 1980s, was awarded a $98.7 million contract modification, according to a Department of War contract announcement, adding to an existing agreement for various models of the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, commonly known as the Humvee. The modification pushes the total […]

TCOM LP, based in Columbia, Maryland, was awarded a $447 million contract by U.S. Army Contracting Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, to handle production, fielding, sustainment and lifecycle support for the Persistent Surveillance Systems-Tethered family of systems, an aerostat-based surveillance program the Army has relied on for more than a decade. The contract itself […]

The Pentagon’s Space Systems Command awarded Rocket Lab USA a $266 million contract for suborbital launch services, according to a Department of War contract announcement, covering 12 confirmed launches with an option for six more, all to be conducted from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska, through the end of 2028. The contract […]

NODA AI announced Wednesday it has secured a $10 million contract from the Department of War, the current name for the Department of Defense, to develop software that lets American military drones and autonomous vehicles keep executing a commander’s orders even after enemy jamming or cyberattacks cut off their communications links. The contract funds an […]

Footage of Stryker armored vehicles rolling off a cargo ship at a Thai port has been circulating on TikTok this week, and an open-source account tracking the videos says it points to a fresh shipment of American military hardware arriving in Thailand. The account, run by a user posting as Hem on X under the […]

Raytheon, the RTX-owned defense manufacturer based in Andover, Massachusetts, announced that the U.S. Navy awarded it a $1.8 billion contract extension for hardware production and sustainment of the SPY-6 family of radars, building on an initial contract the company received in March 2022. The extension carries options that, if the Navy exercises all of them, […]

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 […]

Somewhere in a Chinese factory right now, a machine is stamping out a rare earth magnet that could end up inside a U.S. missile, and until this week, the Pentagon had no reliable way to force American weapons makers to stop that from happening. President Trump signed an executive order on July 20, 2026 aimed […]

A Ukrainian F-16 pilot did something no American-made fighter jet had confirmed doing before in this war: shoot down a Russian warplane in air-to-air combat. General Dan Caine, the four-star Air Force officer who serves as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and holds the highest military rank in the United States, told the […]

A Ukrainian drone maker that helped push the Russian Navy out of much of the Black Sea is bringing its combat-tested kamikaze boats to American shipyards. UFORCE, the London-registered parent of Ukraine’s MAGURA unmanned surface vessel program, signed a memorandum of understanding this week with RECONCRAFT, the Alaska-founded builder of Special Operations combatant craft, to […]

Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, won a contract worth $199 million to provide research and development engineering support for the Sentinel program, the effort to replace the nation’s aging fleet of Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, with work continuing through July 2029. Sentinel, formally designated the LGM-35A, represents the Air Force’s […]

The U.S. Air Force has handed a Georgia drone maker a contract worth up to $90 million to build small, expendable aircraft designed to deny enemies the ability to fly. Tandem Defense, based in Richmond Hill, Georgia, won a new contract, meaning the U.S. Air Force can order any quantity of equipment up to the […]

The U.S. Marine Corps’ Program Manager Light Armored Vehicles held what the service calls a Marine Touchpoint event last month for the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle, letting Light Armored Reconnaissance Marines get hands-on time with the new vehicle, including a test drive, months before the program reaches its next major design review. The Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle, […]

A helicopter maker and an electric aircraft startup just proved they can bolt cutting-edge autonomy software onto a brand-new aircraft in under two weeks, a pace that would have sounded absurd for military aviation programs just a few years ago. Sikorsky, the helicopter manufacturer owned by Lockheed Martin, announced at the Farnborough International Airshow that […]

Lockheed Martin unveiled MORFIUS X-Rotor at the Farnborough International Airshow, an airborne counter-drone system built around a high-power microwave weapon that the company says can neutralize an entire swarm of hostile drones in a single mission, then land, get recovered, and fly again. A high-power microwave weapon, commonly shortened to HPM, works by blasting a […]

A draft New Orleans Police Department drone manual briefly published online would have allowed police drones to carry weapons with written approval from the superintendent, according to 404 Media. NOPD says the document was only an early draft and that its current policy (PDF) bans drones from carrying weapons or hazardous materials. 404 Media reports: The current version, live as of July 1, has different language: "The sUAS shall not be equipped with weapons or hazardous materials of any kind," referring to small Unmanned Aerial Systems, or drones. According to the NOPD, the operations manual it published to the internet with the rules for weaponized drones was an early draft. "The manual published on July 1 is the current published version of the policy. Earlier versions were draft versions that were presented for review before adoption of the current policy," NOPD told 404 media. "NOPD has made it clear we are not and will not be equipping drones with weapons or other hazardous materials." NOPD didn't answer follow-up questions about how or why the draft version of the manual was published. But the publication of a police drone manual that opens the door for weaponized quadcopters is important, and comes as drone companies and police flirt with the idea of putting weapons on their drones. New Orleans has long been a pioneer of camera and drone driven policing and the cops have used controversial tactics to get around public scrutiny and regulations. It shows that what the police are circulating amongst themselves and thinking about privately, what they perhaps want to happen, does not match public policy.

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Chris Fall has resigned as director of the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovation just three months after being appointed to lead the Commerce Department's federal AI testing institute. Arvind Raman, who oversees the Commerce office responsible for the institute, will serve temporarily in the role. "The Commerce Department did not provide a reason for Fall's departure," reports Reuters. From the report: Fall's exit marks the latest change in direction for Trump's approach to AI. The president upon returning to office in 2025 said the federal government should take a hands-off approach to the tech sector. He has since taken a more active role in monitoring the technology, though his public statements and policies appear to change week by week. The institute is responsible for working with leading AI labs such as Anthropic, Google's DeepMind and OpenAI to test their unreleased models for vulnerabilities. The group is staffed by scientists and engineers, who are focused on calculating the "demonstrable risks" posed by advanced AI models, according to the institute's website. They want to limit opportunities for U.S. adversaries to use AI to develop chemical or biological weapons, or corrupt the data used to train American AI models.

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Anduril just unveiled a helicopter-killer’s replacement: a pilotless attack aircraft built specifically because attack helicopters have become too dangerous to fly. The defense technology company announced Thunder, an autonomous attack rotorcraft designed to fly alongside crewed helicopters like the Apache, absorbing the risk that increasingly cheap drones, loitering munitions, and persistent surveillance systems have turned […]

X-Bow Systems unveiled Buckler, a flight-tested interceptor built to shoot down Group 3 drones at supersonic speeds, with the company pricing the weapon below $100,000 per unit, a fraction of what traditional air defense missiles cost to defeat the exact same kind of threat. Group 3 drones sit in the middle of the military’s five-tier […]

Lockheed Martin unveiled a new, cheaper version of its Patriot air defense interceptor at the Farnborough International Airshow, announcing that the PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector, known as PAC-3 ACE, will cost less than half as much per unit as the missile it’s designed to complement, the PAC-3 MSE, which runs roughly $4 million per round […]