An interceptor that works costs more than the thing it destroys, and there are fewer of them than anyone would like. That exchange ratio has become the organizing problem of modern weapons development. A one-way attack drone assembled for a few tens of thousands of dollars can force the launch of a missile costing several million, and no magazine survives that trade for long.
This section covers the effectors and the software around them. Missiles and munitions, unmanned systems, air and missile defense, electronic warfare, cyber, lasers and high-power microwave, autonomy, propulsion, and the mission software that decides how quickly any of it can be changed.
Demonstrations are treated as demonstrations. A laser that shot down a drone on a range in good weather is not a fielded capability, and coverage says which one it is.
Production rate matters as much as performance. A weapon nobody can build at scale is a briefing slide.
Army planners want a launcher they can move and hide faster than Typhon, the Mid-Range Capability battery that fires SM-6 and Tomahawk. Lt. Gen. Joel "JB" Vowell calls the current rig "rather large, long" because it must stand upright before launch, slowing
Applied Research Associates secured a 24-month award from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Eglin Munitions Directorate to act as System Design Agent for an air-to-ground Next Generation Penetrator. The company will build and test sub-scale and full-scale articles under the
The U.S. Navy will expand the number of Tomahawk cruise missiles configured for anti-ship missions with a new tranche of Block V upgrades to field the Maritime Strike Tomahawk seeker. Defense officials confirm the requirement covers from 35 to 96 missiles and
The U.S. Navy and Raytheon, an RTX business, have completed the first live maritime test of the AN/SPY-6(V)4 radar at the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Hawaii. The event produced real world data on air and surface target tracks and confirmed
The Pentagon is tightening its battery playbook as drones spread across the force. Officials confirm a department-wide battery strategy will be published in early 2026. It builds on the 2023 framework and new direction from Congress. The plan ties standards, safety, supply
The UK has officially moved its Loyal Wingman program from talk to action. A new notice for Autonomous Collaborative Platforms, Tranche 2, spells out what the Ministry of Defence wants, how much it's planning to spend, and when contracts are expected. It
The Air Force spent the last week making zero trust a permanent part of its operations. A memo issued on July 22 created a dedicated office to oversee it - the Zero Trust Portfolio Management Office (PfMO) - and named its first
A new study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies suggests that using a network of ground-based sensors could make U.S. and allied air and missile defenses much more effective. Defense officials call it the most detailed public report on passive
NATO's supreme allied commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, has orders to push Patriot air- and missile-defense batteries to Ukraine at a pace faster than any previous transfer in the two-year campaign to reinforce Kyiv's skies. He told Army officers and
A Chinese state-sponsored intrusion set off alarms in Washington this week after investigators confirmed that the hacking unit known as Salt Typhoon burrowed into a U.S. Army National Guard network for nine months and quietly siphoned off the keys to many other
Missiles / Drones / Directed Energy carries the effectors: cruise and ballistic weapons, loitering munitions, unmanned systems, and the lasers and high-power microwave now being fielded against them. What all of it is aimed at, and what shoots it down, is in Air & Missile Defense Systems.
