No longer ‘experimental’: Navy to deploy drone boats this year, official says
A Navy official said he expects by 2045 for nearly half of all naval surface vessels to be unmanned.
DIU offers $100M in prizes for voice-controlled AI-enabled drone swarm ‘orchestrator’
Instead of needing a specially trained human to remote pilot each drone or robot-boat, the Pentagon wants any servicemember to be able to give orders in plain English.
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Meeting Zero Trust goals while maintaining information dominance
Balancing security and access to data are critical to providing users with trustworthy, reliable data for real-time decisions.
Driscoll eyes more drone intel-sharing deals with allies after US-UK agreement
The Army secretary said the “end state” of such arrangements would make the US and its allies "stronger" in a future conflict where they would have to fight together.
Northrop, Kratos team picked for Marine Corps drone wingmen
Northrop Grumman will serve as the prime contractor and integrate mission systems on Kratos’s XQ-58 Valkyrie for the Marine Corps’s MUX TACAIR Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.
The drone wingman race kicks into high(er) gear: 2026 preview
Sometime in 2026, the Air Force will make a decision about what designs to produce for the first round of its drone wingmen program. The service is also expected to home in on what it wants next.
Artificial intelligence is everywhere: 2025 review
From the skies over Ukraine, to Chinese cyber attacks, to bureaucratic battlefields inside the Pentagon, artificial intelligence has grown from an experiment or niche product to an increasingly routine tool of military organizations.
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Turning R&D into reality to meet the challenges of the modern battlefield
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
Five stories that made waves for the sea services: 2025 review
A new big boss? A new big ship? 2025 held a lot of change for the sea services with even more foreshadowed coming in 2026 and beyond.
UAE’s EDGE Group plans next steps of expansion beyond Middle East
CEO Hamad Al Marar mused that EDGE could make an appearance at a future Association of the US Army exposition.
CCA Round 2: Air Force picks 9 vendors for next batch of drone wingmen
The designs selected for the next group of Collaborative Combat Aircraft represent a “broad spectrum” of concepts, which will be narrowed down at a later date for prototyping, an Air Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
10 Breaking Defense op-eds that defined 2025
It's been a whirlwind of a year — and the defense establishment has plenty of thoughts on how it's unfolded and what might come next.
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How TAK gives the US military an advantage at the Edge
“Tactical operating system” for warfighters has evolved to provide more situational awareness of the battlefield.
Army launches ‘challenge’ to find division-level Gray Eagle replacement
Service leaders are looking to find industry solutions for short/vertical takeoff and landing (S/VOTL) drones, ones that don’t require a runway, in the Group 4 or above category.
US must lead in building a Pacific drone industrial base to balance China’s economic might and hegemony
Indo-Pacific allies see unmanned systems, shared production, and interoperability as essential to offset China’s scale.
NDAA gives new counter-drone office veto over service programs, official says
“My interpretation of that law is that we won't let a service procure something that doesn't perform and if they want to, JIATF-401 gets to say no,” said Col. Jonathan Beha, chief of requirements for the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force.
The AI aircraft debate rages, but both sides are wrong
In the debate of AI versus human pilots, ULA's Tory Bruno considers a compromise where AI supports warfighters rather than replace them.