Practitioner analysis on unmanned systems, counter-UxS, and defense autonomy, written by the firm and first published on LinkedIn. The positions here are the same ones we bring to client work.
When Iran began striking Naval Support Activity Bahrain on February 28, 5th Fleet headquarters evacuated personnel into Manama hotels that were struck as well. Fleet logistics displaced involuntarily to Diego Garcia. Navy Secretary Hung Cao described the result in September without softening…
At the Space and Missile Defense Symposium on August 13, Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard, deputy commander of NORTHCOM, gave a one-word answer to whether he could defend against a drone swarm launched from inside the United States: "no". He did not cite…
The FBI has seized more than 600 drones flying in restricted airspace around World Cup venues since the tournament opened June 11, with confiscations in all 11 US host cities and the total doubling in under two weeks. Miami leads at 99,…
In May, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll sat in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee and said Ukraine's battlefield integration has surpassed ours. He singled out Kyiv's Delta system for its ability to pull every drone, every sensor, and every shooting platform…
Watch any counter-drone demonstration and it ends the same way. A drone drops out of the sky, the system that killed it takes the credit, and the footage makes the problem look solved. Microwaves frying swarms, lasers burning wings off, interceptors running…
In late May 2026, Reuters reported that SpaceX had renegotiated the price the Pentagon is paying for getting Starlink connectivity on LUCAS one-way attack drones during the Iran campaign. Connectivity that had been costing about $5,000 per terminal at the land/mobility tier…
The Department of War is buying drones at a pace and scale without precedent. The Secretary of War directed that uncrewed systems be fielded in every Army Division by the end of 2026. The Marine Corps plans to procure 10,000 drones this…
Counter-UAS investment for 2026 is being driven by what is currently working against Russian Shaheds in Ukraine and against Iranian drones in the current Middle East conflict. Counter-UAS, or C-UAS, refers to the systems and architectures that detect, track, and defeat hostile…
The Department of War's FY27 budget proposes $54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG). DAWG in its current form is a coordinating organization rather than a unified command. It consolidated programs that previously sat under Replicator and adjacent efforts and…
The Department of War's FY27 budget proposes $54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG). DAWG in its current form is an organizational construct rather than a unified command. It has consolidated programs that previously sat under Replicator and adjacent efforts,…
The United States Department of War just proposed giving the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group a $54.6 billion budget for fiscal year 2027. That is nearly the size of the entire United States Marine Corps budget, which stands at $57.2 billion in FY26.…
A Ukrainian unmanned underwater vehicle struck a Russian submarine moored in port last week, and the recent video footage of the engagement is worth working through carefully. The strike is not the first use of an unmanned maritime system against a moored…
Much of the current conversation around unmanned systems focuses on individual platforms. Very little of it examines the part that matters most when conflict begins: how are emerging UxS TTPs going to shape the logistics networks that move, load, and sustain combat…
Any future conflict in the Indo-Pacific will be shaped by logistics decisions made long before the first shot is fired and defined by the logistics that survive the opening phase. The ability of any nation state to fight beyond its initial loads…
For those working in the UAS and C-UAS fields, we are overdue for the establishment of a U.S. Drone Policy Coordinator, an entity proposed to be an empowered office responsible for unifying unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and counter-UAS (C-UAS) policy across government…
The war in Ukraine continues to evolve in ways that are transforming conventional battlefield assumptions. What was once the domain of artillery, armor, and close-quarters engagements has shifted toward an increasingly drone-dominated battlespace. At the heart of this transformation is the near-complete…
The U.S. Department of Defense is watching Ukraine fight for its survival with a kind of agile, distributed, and improvisational use of drones that makes even the most advanced Western drone development programs feel sluggish. The recently launched "Project GI" by the…
By Fictional News Network Staff, Updated Continuously
The June 1 drone assault orchestrated by Ukraine, codenamed Operation Spiderweb, will be remembered as a strategic and psychological rupture in the history of modern warfare. The raid, carried out with small drones launched from within Russia itself, not only dismantled a…
