Weapons & Technologies

Range crews are not often surprised by conditions in Interior Alaska. They are used to below-freezing temperatures at sunrise rapidly changing to muggy noon haze and gusts off the Yukon River that will lay steel antennas sideways. What no one anticipated during the period 25-28 June Project Artemis was how fast two prototype loitering munitions would fold up when all navigation aids go silent.

Project Revolver has moved from lab study to fleet priority in less than three years. Senior officers at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) now describe the program as “an essential magazine-depth booster for fast-attack boats operating west of Guam.” Defense officials confirm that the latest engineering assessment, completed on July 6, cleared Revolver’s Multi-Vehicle Torpedo Tube Defense System (MVTTDS) for first-of-class sea trials with a Virginia-class submarine before the end of this quarter.

European armies just wrapped up three weeks of hands-on trials that pushed small drones and ground robots through the same last-mile supply missions now common on Ukrainian front lines. Engineers and soldiers moved ammunition, water, and medical kits without a single crewed truck entering the danger zone, then logged every fault, delay, and workaround for a rapid-fire lessons-learned cycle that ends later this month at Nettuno.

The Army is moving fast to fold a new hypersonic strike option into its tactical fires family. Budget lines for fiscal year 2026 outline Project HX3, a pathway that funnels $25 million toward Castelion’s Blackbeard Ground Launch missile and an autonomous launcher called Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher. Defense officials confirm the objective: prove a mature design in the first calendar quarter of 2026 and push ten flight-test rounds through a HIMARS rail before the fiscal year ends.