Defense One - Science & Tech

How Ukraine won the first great robot war

Patrick Tucker — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:02:31 -0400

In the spring and summer of 2026, the story about Russia's war in Ukraine changed. The defenders are combining air and ground drones, autonomy, and swarming to re-capture territory with robots while risking fewer humans—increasing casualties for Russia while decreasing them for their own forces. Some four and a half years after confidently launching his invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dwindling military options.

In this short documentary, analysts, entrepreneurs, European experts, and NATO military officials describe how Ukraine defied expectations and changed the future direction of military technology—and of war itself.

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Lightweight cells powered by nuclear waste could drive tomorrow's drones

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:00:00 -0400

How many missions could a drone or satellite fly with a battery pack that can last decades? And what if that battery could be fueled by nuclear waste?

That’s the future scientists are working toward in DARPA’s “Rads to Watts” program, which aims to create lightweight batteries with a high energy density. And a recent $3.37 million contract award aims to fund a viable proof-of-concept device that can produce more than 10 watts per kilogram with a yearslong shelf life.

“Solar cells directly convert sunlight into electricity…Ours directly convert radiation into electricity,” said Stafford Sheehan, CEO and founder of Project Omega, which describes their radioisotope power sources as mini-generators that replace traditional batteries.

“We already have some of these small devices running; the ones that are specifically designed to meet the DARPA figure of merit are going to come out early next year.”

Several organizations are participating in the program, with Morgan State University serving as the prime contractor and handling basic research and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory handling nuclear materials and testing. Northrop Grumman and ARA will bring computational modeling to make sure the prototype meets performance standards.

Project Omega will build the nuclear power generator based on a radioisotope found in nuclear waste, and Widetronix is designing the semiconductor power converter. The goal is to produce a working prototype by early 2027 at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The power cells could be used in “any application where a battery dying is a pain point,” Sheehan said. “One example is on satellites: if you lose power on a satellite, you lose the satellite, it's gone…if your batteries die and you don't have any sort of backup power.”

These power sources use isotopes separated from nuclear waste and convert radiation directly into electricity.

“At a high level, we take nuclear waste, we recycle it into two products: one is fuel for reactors…the other are power isotopes, so isotopes you can use to power things,” Sheehan said.

Radioisotope power sources have been used in everything from smoke detectors to space systems. But Project Omega hopes to do it on a larger scale.

“There are over 100,000 metric tons of nuclear waste sitting in the 52 reactor sites around the country; so there's plenty of nuclear waste currently. The federal government gets sued for billions of dollars every year just because they haven't dealt with the nuclear waste,” Sheehan said. “It's very valuable to have a battery that lasts.”

Omega’s power cells consist of a solid state, or “chunk,” of isotope that will be layered with the semiconductor to generate power. They also work in extreme temperatures—something that would benefit military operations using unmanned systems in harsh environments.

“We have been using these radioisotope power systems in space for decades,” Sheehan said. “We're just taking the systems that we use for space and we're using a different isotope,” Strontinum-90, which is less hazardous than the Plutonium-238 isotopes used in similar systems.

The award comes as the Pentagon grapples with increased demand and use of drone systems

that have to be charged and the persistent need for more power generation on the battlefield.

“Over the next 18 months, the program will focus on reducing technical risk, testing system performance under realistic conditions, and generating the data needed to inform future development and transition pathways,” a PNNL official wrote in a statement to Defense One. “Key challenges include improving energy conversion efficiency, validating long-term reliability, managing radiation effects, and ensuring safe, secure handling and deployment.”

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GenAI.mil records almost 1.7M users, plans new model additions

Alexandra Kelley — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 09:00:00 -0400

The Department of Defense plans to bring new models onto its internal, department-wide artificial intelligence marketplace and deploy them at higher classification levels, part of its updated procurement policy that aims for “commercial-first” in its deliverables.

Cameron Stanley, the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at DOD told attendees at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday that as GenAI.mil reached a record 1.7 million users—along with the creation of over 100,000 custom agents—even more models will soon be made available on the platform.

“We're looking forward to advancing, getting new models on to GenAI.mil, we're looking at GenAI.mil going to higher classification levels,” Stanley said. “It's just a really exciting time for generative AI in the department.”

GenAI.mil already hosts capabilities from SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, Oracle, and Amazon Web Services that are available at Impact Level 6 and 7, as the Pentagon announced in May.

OpenAI confirmed in mid-June that its flagship chatbot, ChatGPT, will be eligible for controlled, unclassified information through GenAI.mil in July.

One major use of AI for the DOD has been to aggregate data for warfighters, resulting in faster decision-making. While Stanley said that “well-trained” soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardians and marines traditionally make these critical military decisions, AI is helpful in parsing through large volumes of data quickly

“Human cognition is just not going to be able to keep up in a lot of battlefields,” he said. “So what we've done—very successfully—is identify ways where we can accelerate certain identification of the right pieces of data or information in order to make that better decision.”

Stanley clarified that the addition of agentic tools to support analytics is deliberate, and features “very tight guardrails” to accelerate the analyses that he estimates would take two to three human analysts operating in disparate systems to identify.

“So we go from—instead of having six or seven systems we have to go across in order to make that decision—we're now doing it instantaneously, or nearly instantaneously, with humans appropriately managing the entire workload process and actioning it from the same system that we identified the decision from,” he said.

The goal of Stanley’s office, he said, is to be a “commercial-first organization.”

“We're trying to put the vendor next to the warfighter and have the vendor have one goal, one job, that's it, and that is to deliver exactly what the warfighter’s needs are,” Stanley said. “What we do is we create the environment with the right tools and the right environments with the right security in place with the right contracts in place.”

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Pentagon recruiting new tech talent for AI implementation

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:04:38 -0400

The Pentagon on Tuesday announced a new campaign to recruit hundreds of young programmers for AI and engineering challenges, according to an advance notice seen by Defense One.

“War Force is a call to action for patriotic forward-deployed engineers who want to serve their country and the warfighter,” Defense Department CTO Emil Michael said in a statement viewed by Defense One.

Successful applicants, referred to in this OPM job listing for a “forward deployed engineer(s),” will work for two-year stints to implement the department’s AI Acceleration Strategy as well as other critical IT needs. Most of the positions will be based in Washington, D.C., and candidates should be able to hold a top-secret clearance.

The “War Force” is a part of a broader push between the White House and participating tech companies to bring early-stage software talent into the federal government, an effort dubbed “Tech Force.”

Those selected to participate will work with a variety of teams on implementing frontier AI, machine learning, automation, scaling new software tools and solving other critical IT needs across the military and the Department.

War Force recruits will “join a cohort of individuals that receive leadership training, get exposure to America's top technology CEOs and gain unparalleled exposure to policymaking and national-scale impact,” according to the listing. “This may include CEO fireside chats, networking events, coding training/certificates, and other opportunities.”

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Pentagon launches ‘War Force’ initiative to onboard tech talent

Edward Graham — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 09:45:00 -0400

The Office of Personnel Management and the Pentagon jointly announced the launch of a new initiative on Tuesday to bring top software engineering talent into the Department of Defense, part of a broader governmentwide push to hire more skilled technologists.

The recruitment effort, called War Force, operates under OPM’s larger Tech Force program. That initiative launched in December 2025 to onboard tech and cybersecurity professionals across federal agencies, although it notably followed Trump administration moves to let go of thousands of tech-focused workers and shutter several innovation-focused units.

OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that War Force “builds on the momentum of Tech Force by connecting outstanding engineers with opportunities to solve complex challenges alongside the War Department.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last September that authorized DOD to use the “secondary title” of War Department — framing that is also reflected in the initiative's name.

OPM said the War Force recruitment effort “will launch with a targeted hiring campaign,” with a focus on bringing in applicants who have experience “deploying and integrating advanced technologies — including frontier AI, machine learning, automation, and data systems — and designing, building, and maintaining reliable software solutions that directly support operational needs on behalf of the American warfighter.” Job applications will be accepted through July 10.

Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael said in a statement that the War Force will help with “executing the key tenets of the War Department’s AI Acceleration Strategy.” That guidance was released in January and outlines the department’s plans for rapidly integrating AI capabilities into its operations.

The War Force recruitment effort also comes after DOD announced in April that it was launching a cyber apprenticeship program this summer to bring more skilled personnel into the agency.

During public remarks at the SAP NOW summit in Washington, D.C., last week, Pentagon Chief Information Officer Kirsten Davies said the apprenticeship program “has already generated more than 70,000 inquiries,” despite the effort not officially launching until July.

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Army using AI, robot boats for Pacific logistics

Jennifer Hlad — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:22:25 -0400

The Army’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command is using artificial intelligence “to help us make better-informed decisions” for supply chain management in the Pacific, the unit’s commander said Friday.

“For logistics, a lot of what we do is very similar to what the commercial world does, and so I have leveraged, and we are leveraging commercial partners with, you know, how do they do warehouse management regionally, and then how do they look at, how do you time delivery of supplies to the location it’s needed, and kind of, what are those time-distance factors,” Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner told reporters. “ I’m looking at partners, and I’m talking to partners that do that on a global scale, because the distances between the continental United States to the forward positions that we train or live at, like the Republic of Korea or Japan, we’re constantly looking for smarter ways to do that.”

“When resources are not unlimited, how do you best look at demand analysis over time and space, and stock forward the right things versus stocking everything? Because we just can’t afford to do that,” he said. “And so we’re using AI right now to help us see that.”

The command is also already using “very capable” autonomous watercraft in the Pacific and is working with industry to develop and test larger and faster vessels, Gardner said.

“We have industry partners that are creating vessels right now in the water that are over 100 feet long that would move anywhere between four and eight 20-foot equivalent units… think the containers you see moving up and down most of your ports today,” he said. “That capability is already in play, and it’s going through experimentation now, and the 8th TSC, along with the rest of the United States Army, is looking to partner, test, and innovate those autonomous watercraft first out in our region, because if you can work in the Pacific, you can work anywhere in the world.”

But the rules will need to evolve to keep up. Current U.S. maritime laws require a minimum crew size for vessels, limiting autonomous operations to testing or pilot programs for commercial use.

“We need to get the laws of the sea that our Coast Guard currently use to mandate watercraft operations that currently have to be manned when it enters into a port, that we’re comfortable having unmanned systems enter into ports, so that we can rapidly receive and download autonomous watercraft like we do manned watercraft today,” Gardner added.

Gardner said he’d also eventually like to see “anywhere between 30 and 100” medium-sized autonomous vessels in the U.S. Indo-Pacific theater, “berthed up everywhere from Korea to Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Singapore, Thailand,” to help meet the “constant demand for Army watercraft time now to deliver equipment and supplies in the theater.”

The unit has one Maneuver Support Vessel (Light), a manned landing craft that will eventually replace the Vietnam-era Landing Craft Mechanized-8, and has been testing it for about nine months to get data to shape the future design of the vessel. The vessel is nearly four times faster than the older watercraft, and much smaller—but also “much more capable” of operating in shallower water, Gardner said.

“So I’m actually going to different sets of beaches, and so you can put up to two HIMARS onto an MSV-Light, approach a beach very rapidly, bring it into position, download it, and then those platforms can get off and do their fire missions,” he said. “We’ve rehearsed this quite a bit with both the 25th Infantry Division and the 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force,” and have also put multiple Marine NMESIS anti-ship systems onto the vessel for “rapid insertions.”

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Agentic-AI tools aim to give US commanders new target options ‘within seconds’

Patrick Tucker — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0400

A new agentic-AI tool set will continuously scan intelligence feeds and operational networks to provide U.S. military commanders with targeting options “within seconds,” the Pentagon announced Thursday.

Dubbed Agent Network, the new tools will employ “agents”—artificial-intelligence entities that perform tasks on behalf of a user, such as running a scheduled search or executing an email campaign—to “continuously scan defense intelligence and operational systems, translating findings into clearly presented options,” said a press release, which added: “Agent Network does not autonomously select or strike targets; it ensures commanders remain in charge of every decision.”

The network is one of seven “pace-setting” projects originally unveiled in January along with a new Pentagon AI strategy. Key contractors in the Agent Network effort include Lumbra and Palantir, which already handles much targeting analysis through its Maven Smart Systems contract.

But expectations for what agents can currently do may be running ahead of reality. “Tasks that AI agents are instructed to perform can clearly have computational complexity beyond” what current large language model architectures can handle, Vishal Sikka—a former CEO of SAP—wrote last July.

Citing the seminal Time-Hierarchy Theorem, Sikka noted that transformer models approach difficult tasks and simple ones using the same mechanical formula. These models can only perform so many operations per “token,” which is the way large language models understand word concepts. Even dealing with seemingly simple concepts can require a large number of tokens. Because of this limitation, there is no way to get a transformer-based model to not hallucinate when the task that you give it is more complex than it has tokens to bring to that task.

“Despite their obvious power and applicability in various domains, extreme care must be used before applying LLMs to problems or use cases that require accuracy, or solving problems of non-trivial complexity,” Sikka concluded.

But Illia Pashkov, founder of SINT Labs and editor of The Agent Times, cautioned against underestimating agents’ potential.

“Agentic AI quietly stopped being a demo this year,” Pashkov said. “It's drafting code, clearing support queues, grinding through back-office work in finance and healthcare, and now it's reading intelligence. The speed is not hype. I've watched these systems compress weeks of analyst work into an afternoon.”

But their capabilities also bring risks—more than people accustomed to working with common AI chatbots might realize. Private-sector companies that have rushed to put AI agents to work are already seeing problems, Pashkov said, pointing to a company whose agent wiped a live production database. Unless carefully implemented, agents can’t tell when they’re going wrong.

“The danger was never a dumb agent; it's a confident one running without a leash, a logbook, or a human who owns the call,” he said.

A host of Defense Department offices and teams are beginning to deploy agent systems, said one DOD intelligence security official who is not directly affiliated with the Agent Network program. The official described an atmosphere of enthusiasm.

“There are so many opportunities to leverage the DOD Enterprise capabilities and allow people to build their own agents,” they said.

But the official allowed that keeping track of how every agent is performing is a major challenge. Governing all of them will be nearly impossible.

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Could the Army’s light squad vehicle power battlefield drones?

Lauren C. Williams — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:59:14 -0400

The Army’s proliferating drone use is exacerbating the modern problem of keeping everything charged. One combat team is testing ways to use its light Infantry Squad Vehicles as mobile charging stations.

“As we field technology, power generation becomes increasingly problematic. The [Integrated Tactical Network], all the soldier-borne equipment, all require batteries that have to be recharged. [Enhanced Night Vision Goggles] require batteries, particularly to use thermals,” said Col. Ryan Bell, commander of the 3rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team in the 101st Airborne Division, of lessons from an April training rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

Finding ways to boost battery power on the battlefield—and learning how long new tech lasts in different conditions—is a persistent problem for the military.

“As we add drones…the [Short Range Reconnaissance], the [Medium-Range Reconnaissance], they all have to be charged,” Bell told reporters Thursday.

So the unit equipped its ISVs with inverters, similar to the kind of thing any car owner might plug into the outlet formerly known as a cigarette lighter to get standard 120V power.

“Every squad functionally had their own generator without having to tow a trailer, or a generator, behind it,” Bell said.

But more power is needed, he said, like hybrid generators that could deliver up to 10 kilowatts, depending on a unit’s needs.

Bell suggested sizing the generators so they can be mounted on the five-seater ISV-Utility variant the Army plans to field. They could also be towed, but that’s not a great solution for rough terrain.

The Senate’s version of the 2027 defense policy bill would greenlight multiyear procurement of the ISVs if adopted in the final version.

“As future ISVs are fielded, we need to ensure they are utilized as power generation platforms, particularly for our squads. Our use of the vehicle as a sustainment platform by adding commercial off-the-shelf racks on the back was very helpful,” Bell said.

“We are also excited to get the ISV-U, which will give us more utility lift capacity. Having a single, common platform across the formation will simplify our logistics chain. The utility variant will be extremely helpful for mission command and power generation for our command posts.”

Bell also said troops also need batteries that carry more charge and last longer, which would “reduce the number of batteries you have to charge and have to carry, because solder load is a real thing.”

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RIMPAC kicks off in Hawaii with a focus on experimentation

Jennifer Hlad — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 04:07:20 -0400

JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii—The 30th iteration of RIMPAC will feature 30 to 35 experiments that involve unmanned systems, the Pacific Fleet’s second-in-command said Wednesday.

The experiments are “a major part” of this year’s edition of the biennial Exercise Rim of the Pacific, Vice Adm. Jeffrey Jablon told reporters at a press conference. He declined to provide specifics.

Along with the drones, RIMPAC also includes 30 countries, 31 surface ships, five submarines, and nearly 200 aircraft, Jablon said. While the theme is “partners: integrated and prepared,” he said his top priorities for each of the 30,000 participants are “safety, environmental stewardship, and professionalism.”

Though deterring China while getting ready to defend against a potential attack is a major focus for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Jablon said RIMPAC “is not about any one particular country or a deterrent for any one particular country.”

And the war with Iran “had no impact” on RIMPAC, Jablon said. “The United States is contributing the same number of forces that we normally contribute.”

Jablon is serving as the commander of the combined task force for RIMPAC. Underscoring the partnership aspect of the exercise, the deputy commander is a Chilean navy officer, the vice commander is a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force officer, the maritime component commander is a Korean navy officer, and the air component commander is a Royal Canadian Navy officer.

The exercise will end with the sinking of two decommissioned U.S. Navy ships.

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Executive orders seek to hasten quantum computing—and guard against its use

Alexandra Kelley — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 18:06:00 -0400

Two two executive orders on Monday aim to hasten the arrival of useful quantum computers while protecting U.S. systems from them.

“Innovation and security have to be balanced,” National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said during the White House signing ceremony on Monday.

As expected, the orders address different aspects of the burgeoning quantum information sciences and technology landscape.

One, “Ushering In The Next Frontier Of Quantum Innovation,” launches “a national effort” to create a quantum computer that can perform basic operations and improve quantum sensors. It directs the creation of a "Quantum Computer for Application Development and Discovery Science Effort" at in a Department of Energy facility, while other provisions support quantum computing supply chains, foster workforce development, and explore private sector and international partnerships. The order also expands the Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team to study threats to domestic quantum-computing efforts.

The other order, Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks,” pushes the government to move to cryptographic standards that can withstand quantum computers. It puts several agencies in charge of the effort, including the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, and the National Security Agency. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has helmed the effort to identify and test new encryption algorithms.

The order sets a deadline of 2030 to update key elements of critical infrastructure, and of 2031 for "high-impact environments."

Garfield Jones, the executive vice president of Strategy and Research at QuSecure, said the executive order on post-quantum cryptography is an "unambiguous signal" of the need.

"The 2030 deadline for key establishment is a tangible compliance deadline, and the gap between where most organizations are today and where they need to be is significant,” Jones said in a statement. “Agencies and contractors that haven't started a cryptographic inventory are already behind. The organizations that move now will have options. The ones that wait will find themselves managing a crisis.”

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who was present at the signing ceremony, said his company “applauds” the Trump administration for both orders.

“Sound policy, sustained investment and public-private partnership are vital to sustaining U.S. quantum leadership and technological resilience,” Krishna said in a statement. “Today's Executive Orders bring that same spirit of policy and investment working in lockstep to the national stage.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said quantum computing will join artificial intelligence and advanced semiconductors as the three-part foundation of future computing technology.

“This is tricky. We're not there yet. We're close, but with this executive order and this coordinated effort, we will have scientifically relevant — meaning error-corrected — quantum computing during this administration. The impacts of it will be tremendous,” Wright said during the ceremony.

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CISA now has full Mythos Preview access, people familiar say

David DiMolfetta — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:21:00 -0400

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency now has full access to Anthropic’s flagship Mythos Preview model, according to a U.S. official and a second person familiar with the matter.

The cyberdefense agency received access around a week ago, the official said. Both sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The White House Office of the National Cyber Director has not yet set clear parameters for how the agency should use the model, the official added.

The lack of parameters echoes earlier Nextgov/FCW reporting showing federal tech leaders have privately complained that ONCD has not adequately briefed them on implementing or using the model for vulnerability scanning.

CISA did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the last few months, Anthropic surgically rolled out Mythos Preview to select organizations and recently expanded this effort — dubbed Project Glasswing — to partners in industry and other nations. The model has been distributed through a non-public process on grounds that, in the wrong hands, it can significantly boost adversaries’ hacking capabilities.

CISA was not included in an initial Mythos rollout, Axios reported in April. Last week, Nextgov/FCW reported that agency access to the model was imminent.

Mythos Preview is different from Anthropic’s similar-sounding Mythos 5 successor model, which the U.S. effectively banned over the weekend via an export control mechanism alongside the AI company’s Fable 5 model. The move has caused uproar across the cyber and AI community.

Both Mythos 5 and Mythos Preview have only been made available to vetted providers via Project Glasswing.

The Trump administration’s approach to AI has shifted in recent months as officials confront an emerging class of models that can rapidly identify vulnerabilities across computer networks, becoming a major driver of discussions over how AI systems could reshape the future of cybersecurity.

Models like Mythos can help federal agencies identify vulnerabilities faster by analyzing large amounts of software and system data, then surfacing weaknesses and possible attack paths for human defenders to review. Conversely, cyber operators in the intelligence community and Defense Department can also use such models to accelerate their offensive hacking operations.

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AI is taking some parts of background checks from 'months to hours,' clearance agency says

David DiMolfetta — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:56:00 -0400

The nation’s largest counterintelligence unit aims to use artificial intelligence tools to speed security clearance reviews for people and companies seeking to do sensitive work on behalf of the government.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency can use AI to reduce parts of the vetting process from “months to hours,” said Mark Nehmer, an agency analytics and innovation chief who spoke Tuesday on a panel at the Defense One Tech Summit in Virginia.

DCSA is the Defense Department’s main agency for conducting background investigations and vetting personnel for access to classified information, and serves as a key determinant for whether companies are eligible to work with military and intelligence agencies.

A recent congressionally-approved acquisition overhaul, which encourages defense officials to prioritize goods and services from the commercial market, means that the counterintelligence agency will have to process some 43,000 clearance requests per year, he estimated.

“We’re trying to use AI exquisitely, use AI to make these little tiny decisions, and then bring that up to a human, so they can actually have a package of evidence to say, ‘I asked, and this is exactly the conclusion I will come to as a senior analyst that has to make those decisions day-in and day-out,’” Nehmer said.

He did not specify what AI systems would be used for the efforts.

The remarks highlight how the government is applying AI to a key national security function that determines who has access to clearances, and they add another case to a long list of examples showing how the federal enterprise is using AI to speed operations.

DCSA has led the government’s background check process since 2019, when the Office of Personnel Management handed off its National Background Investigations Bureau to the Pentagon.

DCSA’s use of AI builds on a years-long effort to automate and overhaul the federal background-check system. The agency has enrolled millions of clearance holders in continuous vetting under an initiative known as Trusted Workforce 2.0, though the broader modernization effort has faced repeated delays, cost overruns and congressional scrutiny.

Over the weekend, the U.S. invoked an export-control mechanism to essentially ban two major Anthropic frontier models, escalating debates over how Washington could exert itself over AI usage in the government. The decision has been widely criticized.

GovExec Editor-in-Chief Frank Konkel contributed to this report.

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Shaped charges from coffee grounds? Pentagon science chief describes future of war

Bradley Peniston — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 11:21:19 -0400

When the Pentagon’s science and technology chief looks at Ukraine, he sees a war fought with weapons invented, produced, and fielded since the conflict erupted.

“The fact that you can bring relevant capability to the fight, as the Ukrainians and allies have done in the conflict with Russia, that essentially didn't exist at the beginning of the fight,” Joseph Jewell, assistant defense secretary for science and technology, said Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia. “That's the new thing here.”

It’s a thing the United States must learn to do, Jewell said.

Ukraine’s homegrown drone industry “to a large extent, sprung up almost overnight because of urgency. I think with our industrial resources, we certainly could do things at that scale and even in a more sophisticated way. And we need to do it,” he said.

Jewell noted that Ukraine has taken the Russian Navy out of the fight without much of a navy of its own.

“The way they were able to do that, well, there are several things. First of all, their weapon systems were small, relatively undetectable. Second of all, they had a lot of them,” he said.

There is still a need for expensive, highly capable weapons, Jewell said, “But the exquisite effect may be helped along by leveraging a hundred or a thousand drones controlled by AI. And I think that's what we're starting to see modern warfare evolve into. Now, of course, the model is a lot of people in Ukraine who are actually manually controlling these first-person drones. I think the natural evolution of that is AI-controlled or AI-enabled.”

Patent holiday

One way the Pentagon is trying to speed up innovation is by making it easier for defense companies to use government-held technological patents.

The Defense Department holds tens of thousands of patents, but only takes in about $20 million a year from them. In January, Jewell’s boss, Defense Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, announced a “patent holiday” under which private companies can license some of those patents—about 500, Jewell said—free of charge.

He said the first no-fee patent license was granted last month. As of mid-June, 14 patents have been “signed out” for commercial use, one has been licensed for a fee by a company that wanted exclusivity, 36 more are pending, and 145 more applications have come in, he said.

Biotech

Jewell lauded the promise of biotech combined with AI. He cited a new bioengineered thermal coating that may help drones obscure their heat signatures, developed through BioMADE, a DOD-sponsored Manufacturing Innovation Institute.

He also described an experiment in which Marines in the Pacific used 3D printers and other tools to field-produce shaped charges with local materials: plastic water bottles, crushed volcanic rock, coconut husks, and coffee grounds.

“They all detonated, actually; the volcanic rocks were most effective,” he said. “The thing that's amazing to me is this was 3D-printed. You effectively have 99% reduced the time to point-of-use, because you could make it in the field from materials that are endemic in the Indo-Pacific.”

What’s more, the Marines’ shaped charge “had 25% better focusing characteristics than conventionally manufactured high explosives,” he said. “So we envision a future where you have a containerized production facility for potentially the ingredients for that, potentially including the 3D printer to pump out the shaped charges. And then you can drop, say, a CONEX box in the field where you need, so it can produce biodiesel, it can produce jet fuel.”

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Desert e-bike race ‘the perfect’ place to test military-vehicle AI

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 01:29:59 -0400

Pilot Racing, a team in the upcoming Baja 1000 dirt-bike race will bring a special advantage: AI that prescribes when a rider should pit, long before the need becomes obvious.

The thousand-mile trek through California and Mexico is “the perfect” environment to test GDIT’s logistics-and-maintenance AI before it heads off to rough and disconnected battlefields, a company representative said.

GDIT is teaming with AWS on Project Celerity, an AI-enabled platform for managing energy. The Army’s Advanced Research Lab has been heavily investing in how to deploy small, tactical “microgrids”—essentially energy generation and storage systems for environments where power and connectivity are absent. Those microgrids aren’t intended to simply provide power for soldiers on base but also power batteries for a growing fleet of eclectic and robotic vehicles and weapons. So predicting when and how drones or ground robots might require new batteries is a part of the challenge.

Shannon Judd, the director of global defense partners at AWS, said in an email that the military applications for the project are many. These include helping “teams conducting patrols or surveillance in remote areas, special operations forces who need to make decisions quickly without guaranteed access to full communications, and disaster or humanitarian missions,” on top of managing power or other pieces of infrastructure.

Brandon Bean, GDIT’s vice president for artificial intelligence and machine learning, said, “This is a proxy for contested logistics… The Baja Desert provides us with adverse terrain topography and weather; it also provides us a dynamic [operational tempo] so we can't pre-predict or plan anything.”

It shows an evolution of GDIT’s Defense Operations Grid-Mesh Accelerator, or DOGMA, a tool that fuses sensor data and sends it back to an operator under difficult conditions, such as enemy jamming, broken communications links, etc.

Since introducing DOGMA last August in the Pentagon’s T-REX drone warfare experiment, the company has developed three versions of it: one for fusing data, one for running autonomy, and one called WorldView, which Bean described as a “cognitive layer that provides a common operating picture.”

The race team will use electrically powered bikes, similar to the ones that special operations forces use in some missions. They’re quieter than motorbikes and their large batteries can also power sensors and communications gear.

“All the telemetry that's coming from the rider and from the motorcycle” will go to AWS servers, Bean said. “Then we're going to provide predictive analytics on when and where the rider needs to pit and where we need to replace the batteries.”

Other telemetry tools may eventually be added, like a rider-health tool designed for no-communication environments where standard fitness trackers don’t work. The company unveiled it along with DOGMA WorldView at the recent SOF Week event in Tampa, Florida.

“What we did was we built a round-loop workflow where we collected all this telemetry data off of these devices, [and] we're able to work and pull this data into our DOGMA WorldView and be able to do pattern of life on these individuals," Bean said. "So we could tell, based on the telemetry data on the phone, whether they've [encountered] elevated terrain or whether they stopped for periods of time. The next step of that is to actually tap into the microphone and the camera on the phone, so that we can identify if there's hostile control [of the] device.”

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Thanks largely to robots, Ukraine is now talking about winning, not just surviving

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:20:56 -0400

PRAGUE, Czech Republic–A small but growing number of European officials and analysts are saying what four years ago was unthinkable: Ukraine isn’t just surviving its grueling war with Russia, it is in some ways thriving and may even be on a path to victory.

This isn’t yet captured in headlines—for example, about last weekend’s barrage of Russian drones and missiles around Ukraine—but in the details, like how some 90 percent were intercepted.

Several long-term trends have shifted in Ukraine’s favor, and the core reason is its fierce focus on AI and robotics.

In the crucible of war, Ukraine has developed drones and ground robots that can hold territory—even take it back. Some are fully controlled by humans, like supply robots and medical-evacuation vehicles. But an increasing number are controlled in at least some aspects by dozens of AI products, from guidance packages on aerial drones to decision aids at the highest levels. Take the TFL-1 module, which can enable a one-way drone to function autonomously after a human has selected its target, reducing its susceptibility to jamming and other defenses. Its manufacturer, a Ukrainian company called The Fourth Law, says TFL-1 makes a drone four times more likely to hit its target.

Just as important as the tech are the new tactics. Given unusual latitude to experiment, Ukrainian fighters began to develop robot-forward infantry concepts, like combined-arms attacks by airborne and ground systems, “more than a year ago. Right now, we're massively starting to implement this,” said Davyd Aloian, deputy secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, the coordinating body on domestic and international security, in an interview.

Ukraine and its partners are also steaming ahead on new concepts for highly autonomous defenses against Russian drones, combining ISR sensors and AI to detect and identify enemy drones in less time and with more certainty.

“All of the systems are being linked with each other and with people” to create a distributed network with interceptor drones at various locations to be activated when needed, Aloian said. “One day we will have only like 10 guys who are just going to be responsible for approving interception. And it will automatically go direct to the target.”

The human operators will be dispersed as well. “Everything can be controlled from Kyiv, Lviv, from cities in other countries,” he said.

Ukraine’s advantages go beyond weapons and tactics. It is more willing than Russia—or even Kyiv’s Western backers—to rebuild its doctrine, acquisition, and resupply systems around autonomous warfare.

Countries that fail to follow suit risk disaster, one of Ukraine’s top dronemakers warned attendees at the GLOBSEC conference here.

“It's not what happened to Ukraine”—meaning Russia’s barrage of Shahed drones—that “should scare us in Europe,” said Swarmer CEO Serhii Kupriienko.

Instead, Kupriienko said, people should be scared by how quickly a middling military—in this case, Ukraine’s—developed the ability to inflict precise, devastating, and long-range damage.

“We are behind by literally 10 years or 20 years” in some defense-technology areas, such as satellite imagery, Kupriienko said, and yet his country has climbed a capability curve that just two years ago seemed insurmountable. So could others, he said.

“The answer is always AI solutions and integrating the AI into even the daily routine work within the bureaucracy,” he said.

Ukraine has also developed a defense industry that can keep up with the Russian threat. Its success is reflected not only on the battlefield, but in the growing number of foreign investors who see potential in defense products developed in and with Ukraine.

“We have evolved since 2022, the industry has and our defense has as well. Right now we are able to provide not only [large quantities of drone] assets but everything what is needed to build out the ecosystem,” including parts and production, training, modification, etc. Aloian said.

Strike drones FTW

Ukraine’s strike drones, more than any other factor, have helped counter a key Russian advantage: a large population of economically desperate young men and a comparative willingness to discount the cost of their deaths. Vladimir Putin has drawn hundreds of thousands into service with upfront bonuses and insurance benefits, which has provided numerical superiority on Ukrainian battlefields along with “considerable stimulus for the ailing Russian economy,” writes expatriate economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, who calls the system “deathonomics.”

But human waves are ineffective if drones kill soldiers faster than they can be replaced at the front—and that has become the case, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War wrote this week.

“Ukraine's successful mid-range and frontline drone strike campaigns are limiting Russia's ability to transport personnel to the frontline and to supply and sustain frontline positions,” they wrote.

Putin must now “convince an increasingly tired Russian populace not only to support a fifth year of war but also to accept involuntary mobilization for a war that has already cost Russia well over a million casualties.”

Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities have changed the game in other ways as well. Oil infrastructure deep in Russian territory is no longer safe, giving Kyiv leverage over Moscow’s export revenues no matter what the White House does with sanctions relief. Even more humiliating, the drone threat forced Putin to hold his annual Victory Day parade this month without Soviet-esque ranks of tanks and missiles.

“Believe us. We were in the occupation of the Soviet Union for 50 years, and we know how important” the Victory Day parade is,” Estonian foreign minister Margus Tsahkna told the GLOBSEC audience. “For the first time, Putin was not able to wage this parade. This is the facade actually collapsing. And Putin is losing face among the Russian people, not only among us.”

“Putin thought that Ukraine was a question of five days. And, let's be frank, we, too, we said, ‘Five days, and then it's finished,’” said Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg's deputy prime minister. “In fact, the resilience of the Ukrainians was a big surprise for all of us.”

Changing fortunes

To understand how dramatically Ukraine’s prospects have changed, consider that in March, then-ODNI director Tulsi Gabbard, testified that the U.S. intelligence community believed that Russia had the “upper hand” in the conflict.

Now Ukrainian officials and other observers have begun to worry about a premature sense of victory among Ukraine’s foreign backers. Kyiv still depends on aid and imported weapons. Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the government continues to be “very persistent” in its efforts to secure advanced Patriot missiles from the United States. “I believe [the U.S.] must act quicker,” he told reporters during a visit to Sweden.

Some European governments, however, are ever more eager to forge deeper ties with their continent’s new defense leader—not just for Ukraine’s sake but for their own.

“It means enlargement processes for the European Union, for NATO in the future,” Estonia’s Tsahkna said. It means security guarantees not only to Ukraine and for Ukraine, but the other way around, because actually Ukraine is the largest military power in Europe at the moment, and increasing as well its industrial base.”

As for the Ukrainian government, declaring victory will require more than the cessation of hostilities. The invading country must be left “much weaker,” so that it can’t re-arm as it did after its 2014 invasion of Crimea, Aloian said.

“If there's going to be a ceasefire, there will be very harsh conditions and difficult negotiations for the taking off of the sanctions, and when it will be,” he said. Otherwise, Russia will “renew all of those processes [of military buildup] before the full-scale invasion.”

“Right now, they're aiming like about 30 percent of their economy for the defense industry,” which is too much, he said.

Even the downfall of Putin, who has led Russia since the end of the 20th century, would be insufficient.

“The change of the regime shouldn’t just be only external. It should be also internal,” he said.

If it happens, much of the credit will go to the makers and operators of Ukraine’s drones.

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The Navy wants next-generation munitions, so it’s spending millions on innovation hubs

Lauren C. Williams — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 16:41:19 -0400

Updated: June 2.

Replenishing munitions stockpiles doesn’t end with simply producing more of them. There are persistent challenges with mixing, manufacturing, integrating and discovering new energetic materials—the chemical compounds that make up explosives, propellants, and munitions. On Thursday, the Navy broke ground on a new facility to help.

The Maryland Energetics Innovation Hub is meant to furnish lab space where companies can test new tech, such as high-performance computers to run simulations. It is under construction an hour or so from the Pentagon by the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Indian Head, Md., and the American Center for Manufacturing & Innovation, or ACMI.

“This initiative ensures that NSWC Indian Head Division remains at the forefront of energetics innovation, scale-up, and production,” Capt. Stephen Duba, the warfare center’s commanding officer, said in a statement. “By bringing together government and industry partners in a collaborative environment, we can accelerate the development and fielding of critical capabilities that strengthen the Navy’s arsenal and the larger munitions industrial base.”

The Navy awarded ACMI $50 million to bring companies working in munitions and energetics closer to the service’s technical expertise. The group aims to raise another $200 million for the project.

The MEIH will focus on eight technical areas: developing new energetics materials, high-performance computing; non-destructive test and evaluation; integration with drones or unmanned systems; automating energetic processing and assembly; creating new manufacturing processes for propulsion systems and warheads; analyzing energetics obsolescence, and producing high-precision, high-throughput non-energetic components.

The plan is to finish the first two buildings of the larger facility within nine months, John Burer, ACMI’s founder, told Defense One.

The White House and Pentagon have made production of munitions—both exquisite and expendable—a clear priority for the near future. Earlier this year, the Pentagon stood up the Congressionally-mandated Joint Energetics Transition Office, which is charged with developing strategies for investment in and implementation of new and legacy materials needed for weapons and propulsion systems.

Defense tech hubs have already sprouted around the country, in Austin, Texas; Rhode Island’s Unity Park and Quonset Point; and the Louisiana coastline. MxD, a Pentagon manufacturing partner, has a 22,000-square-foot hub in Chicago.

The Maryland hub is the second facility the Navy and ACMI have embarked on. The first was the National Security Industrial Hub near NSWC’s installation in Crane, Indiana, which is focused on munitions and energetics. The Pentagon is spending $75 million to help erect the Indiana campus, which broke ground earlier this year.

The Maryland and Indiana facilities both are using private capital for “industrial facility build outs,” Burer said.

“The objective of the Maryland Energetics Innovation Hub is around process development and technology development around energetics, which would be developed there, but then scale and be relevant in many other places across the United States—qualifying new second sources of supply, which is a special thing that they have the ability to do at the nation's only government-owned, government-operated arsenal for the Navy, at Indian Head,” he said.

That munitions campus in Indiana is around 1,100 acres, while the Maryland hub would be a fraction of that.

“What makes this campus special is the ability to facilitate private-public partnerships between the tenants and Indian Head to make use of specialist capabilities that they have behind the fence,” such as mixing energetic materials, Burer said. “To build a solid rocket motor campus, for example, which is one of the specialties behind the gate at Indian Head, you need many, many hundreds of acres…That's what scaled production needs. But refining the processes at a pilot scale. It's smart to do that in a smaller footprint campus, in a collaborative way, which is what they're aiming to do here.”

The southern Maryland-based hub builds on an ecosystem of energetics companies working in the region, but could foster new growth and partnerships for companies designing military technology, said William Durant, CEO and president of the not-for-profit Energetics Technology Center, which will have space at the MEIH and help connect companies looking to work with the Navy.

“We want to see and help enable the companies that are coming in—that are best suited to meet any of those eight technical capability areas—[be] successful,” Durant said.

Over the next year, they plan to have a set of companies and a roadmap to execute solutions in those research and development areas.

“We want to see, in 16 to 18 months, who are the performers, what that's going to look like to meet the needs of the Navy…and then there are specific products and things that they're going to want that are needed today in the warfighter,” Durant said.

While there’s no fixed number, the aim is to have about ten companies join the hub, whether they take up long-term residence or cycle in and out, he said.

“Whatever is most important in supporting warfighter success. If that means a company comes in for six months, great! If that means that a company now needs to take up residency for five years, great! And now, does that mean we need to build another facility?”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect the new funding goal ACMI officials set after they spoke with Defense One.

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Q&A with SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Frank Donovan

Patrick Tucker — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:07:55 -0400

Until recently, Gen. Frank Donovan ran the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, the white-hot center of the Pentagon’s drive for affordable mass and battlefield robots. Now he’s in charge of U.S. Southern Command, which is working hard to put the DAWG’s products to use. Defense One sat down with Donovan during SOF Week in Tampa. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You’re an expert in autonomous warfare, as a former leader of the DAWG—for which a nearly unimaginable $50 billion has been requested in the next fiscal year. How do you want to develop and use it at SOUTHCOM?

A: It's embarrassing to think that I'm an expert on autonomous warfare, because there are folks here that know so much more about the tech and the science and how it all works. I don't know all those things. I've learned a lot about it, but I've really focused on how you actually synchronize those things and bring it to bear, because I think my concern is right now, what I'm sensing—and you know, three years as vice commander of SOCOM, I got to be in the building watching three [program objective memorandum] cycles build. I come up here as a Marine infantry officer, reconnaissance, special operations, but I'm going to talk about what matters. It's budget and resource, and applying those resources to what we actually really need.

And so, what I started seeing is that even though Ukraine is going on, we're learning some lessons—and that's a whole side topic, which lessons we're learning from Ukraine—but we're seeing things in the South Red Sea, we're seeing things in the operational SOF environment, things I've faced, and I'm like, there's something different here, but how does it compete in the [Pentagon] with the services that hold most of the strengths? They hold the relationship with the defense industrial base, they hold a relationship with Congress. That's just how our government works, and it's healthy, and it's good, but are we going to be able to embrace autonomy? And they then embrace autonomy, not autonomy platforms, because I think we get caught in this a little bit, you know. I don't really care about platforms, I care about autonomous warfare, and are we really willing to take a step forward and embrace autonomous warfare. I think there's definitions, and so three years as vice commander at SOCOM, I saw this tension between what the joint force needs out front— and I'm going to say the joint force, not what our Army, Navy, Air Force components need out front, it's what the joint force needs to fight—and how those autonomous needs actually enter back into the Pentagon, and then get built into a service to actually come out and end up back with the war fighters. That's a misconnect.

I call it the two Olympic rings. Those two Olympic rings don't touch. When we had it as a very short window, nine months with the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, I worked for Gen. [Bryan] Fenton [and] Adm. [Frank] Bradley was my boss for SOCOM, but I was working for [Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen] Feinberg. He held the resources. And that's what gets everyone's attention in the Pentagon: who holds the resources? So we could take the needs that came out of Replicator tranche one and two, and then quickly turn and say, ‘What can we bring to bear quickly with what's out there?’

And so we started to see if you match the actual true joint autonomous requirements, your actual needs, with service acquisition, there's something there, there's another ring in the Olympic rings that could be added there, and so what we saw in the DAWG formulating, we then said, well, if we come into SOUTHCOM, how do we actually create the SOUTHCOM Autonomous Warfare Command to address that gap, to address that need, and drive those requirements back up into the DAWG? So that's where we're planning on, and that's the journey we're on with SOCOM.

Q: You’ve talked about how battlefield networks will enable autonomous-warfare concepts like distributed swarming. And when I talk to Ukrainians, they wish they had such networks. But, of course, Russian electronic-warfare forces work hard to prevent that. How are you approaching this problem?

A: I think the operational data enterprise—operational data environment, whatever term we want to use—that we have to kind of encapsulate, and that's—the Marine colonel we're bringing in for the SOUTHCOM Autonomous Warfare Command, we talk about this. We don't talk about robots, we talk about the data environment with the different data layers that we need at the very forward edge, so our SOF and our conventional force teammates with an ATAK or a cell phone, that they can actually plug into that data network, and whatever robot shows up with the capability, they can leverage it instantaneously. It doesn't come with a priority stack or a company that we vendor-locked on. It is truly a fully capable system that we can use in selecting the needs, whether it's kinetic, when it's non-kinetic.

I think for us in SOUTHCOM, most of the systems we're looking at primarily are domain awareness systems. And for us it just magnifies—because if our partners, who have the access and placement where they live, where they operate, the environments that they have to work in, in the rough terrain, the jungle, over the horizon, thousands of miles at sea— we're working with our partners, going after these [Designated Terrorist Organizations], we have to enhance their domain awareness, but they have to also be able to plug into this environment in a cheap, easy, and very fluid way. And I think if we think about the data layers, the data environment, that's the first thing that we are focused on right now, is setting the environment. Because we can match the robots to the environment, I mean, whether it swims, it flies, it has feet, whatever it does, we have to make it do what we want it to do when we want it to do it without someone telling us, ‘Yeah, it's great only if you use it this way, only if you use my service stack, and only if you connect it to that.’ Unacceptable across the board.

Q: Are vendors still bringing proprietary systems, or has the open-architecture push actually taken hold?

A: I think we're starting to see improvements in that. And I would say two years ago, not at all. Everything was solely focused. And the concern is that you get a vendor with well-meaning folks, and a lot of them are retired folks, they got out, they moved on, they want to pitch a piece of kit to a commander, and they get all excited about it. And the problem is: it's great for a specific event or an exercise, but it doesn't have a path forward.

The more we, as military leaders, demand open architecture, we have to make sure our demand is clean: “Hey, this is what I need this thing to do for me.” And that's not always clear either, because I think part of it is: folks my age, we're not sure how to embrace autonomy and what this means, and to really give freedom down to the lower edge, that tactical edge, all the way up to lethal effects, without, you know, always a human in, on, next to the loop, but we'll always have that, because there's nothing truly autonomous, there's always someone involved. But we have to think about delegation and empowering ways that autonomy makes people nervous. I mean, if you have a one-way attack, lethal one-way attack system, it's not that we're going to—that's why I'm little concerned that we get over infatuated with FPV.

Actually, I'd like to move away from FPV entirely, but every time we do, we have someone saying, “Well, what about collateral damage, what about the final go, no-go?” We’ve got to start thinking very differently. The approval to launch the system, or even put it in place, is lethal.

What happens often is that we don't come with a clear signal to our tech industry and our vendor partners with what we really want. We just compound it and ask for different things, and all of a sudden, “explosive boat” turns into an ISR platform turns into something else, and we kind of lost track of what we asked industry to do for us. So, I think it's, we both have to learn here for open architecture, but a very clean demand also.

Q: Commanders don’t like to delegate lethal authority to a robot they can’t court-martial. How do you build trust in autonomous systems?

A: I think that starts at my level. We have to create environments to develop that trust, and there's some habits we have to break from the last 25, almost 30 years now.

Because we had such clarity and the never-blinking eye, and we had ISR everywhere. We could hang over the target without any threat at all, we could just dominate the environment. We could control every factor, minus weather. If the weather is bad, we just wait and go tomorrow. That's a whole different environment. So, we as leaders cannot set conditions in our training and our mindset and our educational process to set that up again, as that's how it's going to be.

I think what we owe is to really understand how to delegate and maximize autonomy. How do you empower those digital natives at the lowest levels in set conditions? We don't have training ranges right now that allow us to use these systems to any level of their capability. I think of a certain base, I know that there's a civilian road in between, and anytime we want to fly like a drone across the civilian road to the other training area, that’s like, shut traffic down. We’ve got to get special approval. We're just struggling with that, especially when we want to train in that comms-denied environment, electronic attack. We want to do all those things. So I think part of this is changing the mindset that leaders who grew up at my level, and kind of probably down to the one-star and O-6 level that grew up in a time where we could control all the features and factors, and I didn't have to delegate, because I could see. I could be in the ear of the lead squad and say, ‘What are you doing, move faster, you know, get back on the road.’

Now think about a comms-denied environment where we're not going to be able to talk to them. So are we training the leaders the right way to think? And I come back to being a U.S. Marine, heart and soul of what I've done for 38 years, the delegation down to that NCO level, that non-commissioned officer level at the forward edge, and really let them run in training, make mistakes, and then when it's time, delegate it and just let it go, and that's it, that's something that is different.

Q: How can the Pentagon help small, innovative companies increase production to useful levels?

A: It's a great question, and I think my time with Deputy Secretary of Defense Feinberg, and watching him bring a bit of a business-model approach to this process connected to the DAWG, and the scaling is what we talk about all the time. “Great product, looks great. Can you scale?” But it's not a fair question to ask, because the company is like, “Well, I can, but what's the order?” And we're like, “Well, we're not sure yet, you know, it depends if you scale.”

One of the best practices we had [at the DAWG] is we took over the Replicator portfolio. The downselects we did, where we went out and visited the operators, the forward commanders. What do you need? Tell us what you need. Brought that knowledge back, brought the companies in, brought the acquisition executives in, and slimmed down the list almost by a third—these folks can't scale, or they can't be open architecture. But once we kind of found the big bets, then we went out to that company, some were small companies. “OK, we're going to help you scale, because we believe your product’s what we're looking for.” It's our job to match and really accelerate you to scale, to meet us on the X with these numbers, and that is what the DepSecWar is pushing us to kind of think through. So I think your DAWG mechanism, and right now there's a discussion, which direction it's going to go, what it'll become, but that's what we want to plug into. So a best of breed. I want to get less away from a piece of tech or a vendor, go to the DAWG and say I'm looking for this capability, let them work in speed. We had sprint development centers where we had operators right next to vendors, right next to tech dev, and right next to the acquisition experts spinning fast, knocking people off the pedestal, putting new people on, and then once we found the bet, we're ready to come with the cash to help them scale.

So it has to be a very collaborative way forward, I think, if we want to get some of these incredible companies coming up now to really be able to accelerate to scale. But the question of scale is, “We're going to buy X number and then we're moving on.” This is where, I don't think everyone's fully grasping, I think while the defense industrial base kind of struggles with this. I think they struggle with one-way attack systems, because my favorite words are “one way; it ain't coming back.” OK, so if it's not coming back, guess what: it's not coming back to the airfield. You get 20 more years of contract services on this and make lots of money. So, I think that's not good for our current defense industrial base model. We want to use two or three years. If that platform's still viable, upgrade its brains and continue to dev, or get rid of it and go new, and I think that's a scaling discussion that's different than we're used to in the past.

Q: Are defense companies getting the message that they have to play more like a startup?

A: Well, it's so complex, because to build a nuclear submarine that shoots a nuclear missile...that is a certain amount of talent and capability, industrial baseline that cannot—we have to increase that, right? I think that some of the smaller things we're seeing, the smaller classes of one-way attack system or drones, they're still paving the way for heavy conventional systems to break through and get the target, so I think there's room for both.

Q: Yeah, but you still have a lot of big programs of record that it sounds like we can get rid of.

A: I think you could. I mean, if you think high-wing ISR: do we want to keep making MQ-9-type approaches, or do we want really proliferated, and then you get up into space, P-LEO stuff, but then right below it. How can we do ISR differently? There is a lot of growth there, I think, great opportunity, too. And I think we should really be pushing to set the conditions to have those engagements. That's why I go back to why I think the DAWG is important. It can operate at that DepSecWar level, work with the service acquisition authority, set conditions for those kind of competitions and drawdowns that accelerate once we find the folks that fit in this time window and be able to move on quickly.

Q: What is your biggest concern?

A: I'll give you an answer you probably aren't expecting. What keeps me up at night is attracting quality young Americans to come join the military, because we have to have these young folks replenished in our ranks. Less than 1% serve. We know that. That's good. That's how democracy should be. But are you attracting the right folks for the right reasons? Because they're the ones that are coming in with a lot of those digital-native skills that we need. And then that grit we need also, because in any conflict we're ever going to come into, that is truly the American advantage. It’s the young Americans that have solved so many hard problems on the battlefield in the past, and that's how our nation will survive.

Q: Are there policies we could change to boost recruiting and retention?

A: I would look at our pay scale for our E-7s to E-8s and E-9s and quadruple it right now.

For those folks that stick around or a senior list of leaders, we put so much weight on their shoulders, and you’ve got to think of the sergeant major of the Marine Corps with almost 30 years’ experience, gets paid as much as a senior major or lieutenant colonel. I think that's the talent we cannot afford to bleed off at the apex of their career paths.

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How the Pentagon plans to spend $50 billion on drone warfare

Patrick Tucker — Thu, 28 May 2026 04:44:09 -0400

CAMP ATTERBURY, Indiana—A countdown began as a gaggle of defense officials, soldiers, drone makers, and reporters watched screens in a windowless operations center. Suddenly, a LUCAS drone appeared, moving at rocket speed and showing off a new low-level capability before it crashed through a cement structure on the test range. It was a vivid demonstration of just how quickly the FLM-136 drone is evolving—and of how swiftly Pentagon leaders want to spend the $50 billion they have requested this year for drone development and production.

The path to spend that money quickly and well is paved with steps that Pentagon leaders have already taken. They have expanded the list of drones that unit commanders can easily buy, Emil Michael, defense undersecretary for research and engineering, said at the SOF Week event in Tampa last week.

“What was happening is we had this highly distributed drone sort of purchasing that all happened in small blocks, all in about the department, which has some goodness to that, because units can experiment on their own. But they had to buy from this small Blue List that never grew. Very hard for a vendor to get on that blue list,” he said.

That will enable larger purchases of existing drones, Michael’s deputy James Mazol told reporters at Camp Atterbury as he described the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group’s plans to spend the $50 billion—more than 200 times its 2026 budget and more than the GDP of many nations.

“Some of it is actually buying platforms en masse. Now there's a lot of actual platforms that can be part of that, that exist and just need to be scaled up”—meaning produced in larger quantities, Mazol said.

But the money will also go to bring in new companies, help them develop their systems, and bulk up their production.

Autonomous surface vessel maker Saronic is a “good example of that,” said Mazol. “They have an unmanned surface vessel that has gone through…all this experimentation. They've built this body of evidence. And, you know, they're helping the Navy procure that in large quantities.”

Meanwhile, defense officials are looking to Ukraine to foster new technology.

In March, when the Pentagon held “Gauntlet 1” of its Drone Dominance trials, the top performers included Ukrainian Defense Drones and a partnership of Ukraine’s SkyFall and a UK company—both examples of the sort of defense startup that can move quickly from launching to actually filling Pentagon orders.

The technology readiness experiment, or T-REX, was one of a series of rapid joint-service prototyping events begun in 2023. It also debuted a number of small startups like SplashOne Robotics, who are looking to partner with Ukraine. SplashOne showed off a fixed-wing drone that shoots at other unmanned aerial vehicles using autonomous targeting software called SMAEGOL (SMall AEronautical Gun, Optics, and LASER) that can detect and aim at threats faster than a human can see them. Founder Jeff Wright said they “have game” against a variety of Russian one-way-attackers–the SuperCam 350, Orlan10, Molynia and even hard-to-hit Geran-2 drones.

And more Pentagon commands are building up their ability to experiment with and procure drones. U.S. Southern Command has established an autonomous-warfare unit whose initial focus is building a data network to enable more effective use of drones.

“We don't talk about robots at SAWC,” or SOUTHCOM Autonomous Warfare Command, said Gen. Frank Donovan, who leads SOUTHCOM. “We talk about the data environment, the different data layers that we need at the very forward edge so our [special operations forces] and our conventional force teammates…can actually plug into that data network. Whatever robot shows up with the capability, they can leverage it instantaneously.”

Donovan emphasized that he isn’t looking to a single company to create that environment, but instead wants open architectures that can connect many companies’ tools and products.

“We can match the robots to the environment. Whether it swims, it flies, it has feet, whatever it does, we have to make it do what we want it to do when we want to do it,” he said at the SOF Week.

Donovan’s message to vendors was blunt: it doesn’t matter how impressive your drone or counter-drone capability is if you put too many restrictions on how it connects, or the data it gives away.

“If it’s great only if you use it this way, only if you use my service stack, and only if you connect it to this or that, it’s unacceptable across the board.”

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Smaller, easier, smarter: what special operators want from AI

Patrick Tucker — Sun, 24 May 2026 04:37:39 -0400

TAMPA, Florida—U.S. special operators want AI tools that offer the power of giant data centers out on the disconnected front lines.

SOF units already use generative AI “heavily” for things like resource allocation and force deployment, and are “delving” into its use for tactical operations, said Rob McClintock, the program manager for intelligence for the program executive office for digital applications.

But today’s tools typically run in the cloud, connected to massive data centers. Operators need them to work in remote locations beyond reach of networks. Physical proximity to the “tactical edge” enables faster use of mission-critical data and faster decision-making, officials at the Global SOF Foundation’s SOF Week event here said this week.

So Special Operations Command is looking for frameworks that extend the power of cloud computing much closer to where data is collected and used—a concept sometimes called “fog computing.”

They’re also looking for versions of large language models that require less computing power while still understanding human intent with less instruction.

“In that conversation about managing the cognitive load on operators, voice command is a logical step,” said Col. Robert “Ramsey” Oliver, PEO of SOCOM’s SOF Warrior.

Today’s biggest consumer-facing tech and AI companies don’t build products for niche tactical needs. Melissa Johnson, SOCOM’s acquisition executive, said the solution will likely emerge from smaller startups.

“From an acquisition perspective, we're not just limited to the bigger companies with their own mindset, because AI is very dynamic,” Johnson said. “Sometimes the smaller organizations, smaller businesses bring those solution sets.”

The most desirable feature of any AI tool for SOCOM is simply making it easier for operators to do what they already do. For example, getting different types of drones to work together, or planning and carrying out missions with just a few spoken or even gestured commands, said Lt. Col. Aaron Davidson, the program manager for the unmanned systems autonomy and Interoperability portfolio.

McClintock said they’re also looking into AI “agents” that can plan, revise and execute strategies.

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A Ukrainian ground robot defended a position from Russian assault for six weeks

Patrick Tucker — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:42:42 -0400

A single remote-controlled Ukrainian ground combat vehicle defended a “key intersection under constant adversary attack” for 45 days last summer, according to a 3rd Army Corps spokesperson who called it “Ukraine’s first fully robotic defensive operation of a position.” It likely won’t be the last.

The robot—a Droid TW 12.7 armed with a machine gun—and its operator, some 10 kilometers away, “disrupted every attempted breakthrough and prevented enemy infiltration,” with no loss of Ukrainian life, the spokesperson said in a recent interview.

As the United States and other militaries work to catch up, Ukraine is putting remote-controlled air and ground systems to uses the world has never seen.

“Drones in the air provided continuous surveillance” for the operation, the officials said. “They detected enemy movement and transmitted information in real time. Once a threat was confirmed, the operator received the signal and engaged the target with the machine gun.”

Olena Kryzhanivska, a defense analyst who was first to report on the operation, writes that Ukrainian ground robots now perform 80 percent of logistics tasks on the front lines— from carrying explosives into enemy positions to evacuating the wounded. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense hopes to bring that up to 100 percent.

Kryzhanivska writes that unmanned ground vehicles, which can cost $10,000 to $30,000, will soon take a much larger role in combat.

“There is an expectation that we might see the first encounter between Ukrainian ground drones and Russian ground drones.”

But practical challenges stand in the way of the fully roboticized front line, the Ukrainian army spokesperson said.

“Battery charge is a major factor. There is never enough of it. The main solutions are either installing higher-capacity batteries on the systems or equipping each platform with two to four batteries. The same applies to ammunition load. There is never enough,” one said.

Another hurdle is the amount of training it takes to produce a ground-robot operator.

“Planning and executing an operation with an [unmanned ground vehicle or UGV] is significantly more difficult than, for example, operating a UAV, because the number of obstacles is substantially higher,” an official said, adding that it requires a deeper understanding of terrain, navigation, and other nuances that also bedevil self-driving cars. “It is a misconception to think that any UAV pilot can simply sit down and successfully carry out an operation with a UGV.” .

As autonomy improves, a single soldier might be able to control multiple robots on different missions. But Ukraine limits what its lethal robots can do.

“Ukrainian forces are still operating in the territories that are populated by civilians. There are children. They are elderly. So just giving ground robots that ability to make decisions, to engage, to strike and kill, that would be a very dangerous development, and Ukrainians are against that,” Kryzhanivska said.

The Ukrainian officials emphasized that humans will remain part of the decision-making process.

“Everything that happens in war must be controlled and coordinated by a soldier. The missions performed by our systems carry a high level of responsibility,” one said.

Still, new concepts of “predictive intelligence” could enable ground drones to make more decisions as part of a network of sensors and intelligence nodes. They might, for example, predict where or how enemy forces might move in order to get into position.

It’s a concept that Lt. Col. Eric Sturzinger, who leads research and engagements at the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Integration Center, is exploring via the Tactical Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture, or JEPA—a framework to enable drones to predict how adversaries might plan an attack, potentially making ground robot operations even more effective.

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Advanced AI models bring government to ‘reflection point,’ CIA official says

Frank Konkel — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:00:00 -0400

Advanced AI models with unique hacking capabilities like Anthropic’s Mythos should bring federal agencies that handle some of the government’s most sensitive information to a “reflection point,” according to one of the CIA’s top tech officials.

“I think it is a reflection point and I think people need to view it in that fashion,” said Dan Richard, Associate Deputy Director of the CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate. Richard spoke on a panel Friday at the Qualys ROCon Public Sector 2026 conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

A previous version of the Mythos software was released to a limited group of tech companies in April with much fanfare, due to its ability to detect countless software bugs and defects.

Security researchers and experts reacted with a mix of excitement and caution, with some warning the software could usher in a new era for hackers and lower the barrier to entry for would-be attackers. Mythos and competing models like OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 have forced executive agencies to grapple with their capabilities and prompted emergency briefings for lawmakers.

Richard said he feels “bullish in terms of the opportunities that are out there,” largely because these AI models can help agencies like the CIA deal with the deluge of data they generate and automate responses to potential threats. He likened the current Mythos-driven moment to Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion in 2022.

“[Ukraine] had gone through a decade of the Russians infiltrating their networks and having to deal with that implication, but when the Russians attacked in 2022 the Ukrainians were prepared because they understood they couldn’t do it themselves,” he said. “Shoulder-to-shoulder with them were the private sector vendors to support what they were doing and to help what they’re doing.”

Richard said the U.S. government is in the “same position” now, and public-private partnerships will be key to ensuring the nation gets it right.

“80% of our nation’s critical infrastructure is in private sector hands, so there is no solution that does not include private sector partners,” Richard said. “We talk about partnership all the time, but this is really different. This isn’t transactional. This is us, as a country, figuring out with the academic community, with the private sector community and with our public sector partners working together to be able to defeat and take advantage of what I see as an optimal opportunity for the agency, but for the country.”

Joe Kelly, division director of the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland, said advanced AI models are going to lower the barrier to entry for would-be hackers.

“The real danger when we look at something like Mythos — whether you believe the hype or not — is it certainly creates what we already see with Claude Code, the ability for script kiddies to cause real damage even without knowing what they’re doing,” Kelly said. “It’s going to lift all those. I do worry about the complexity that we’re entering in this era.”

‘It’s moving so fast, it’s scary’

IonQ Chief Information Officer Katie Arrington, who spent most of 2025 serving as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, said the influx of advanced AI tools — and the speed at which they’re emerging — will test government to the extreme. Existing governance requires IT security vulnerabilities be patched within 30 days, and 15 days for vulnerabilities designated “critical.”

“You don’t have time like that anymore,” Arrington said during a panel at the Qualys event. “We’re talking about a tool that can find every vulnerability in seconds on a platform.”

Arrington said these kinds of advanced AI models weren’t a discussion item even 12 months ago. At that time, the Pentagon was just trying to improve the speed that it could bring general AI tools into its networks.

“It’s moving so fast, it’s scary,” Arrington said. “It scares me and it excites me how fast Mythos came alive.”

Qualys CEO Sumedh Thakar said federal agencies may need to take a more proactive — rather than reactive — approach to risk management to deal with the growing range of threats from advanced AI tools. His company is using its AI-powered cybersecurity tools, including TotalCloud, which recently received authorization to operate in the government’s FedRAMP High environments, to allow customers to automate vulnerability patching, reducing some of the manual processes and “dashboard tourism” cyber professionals otherwise deal with.

Thakar said autonomous remediation allows savvy customers to “battle AI with the speed of AI.”

“Now with attackers leveraging AI, as soon as a patch comes out, they can reverse engineer the patch and they can start to figure out the exploit. Your 30 days has become 30 hours, or three hours,” Thakar said. “What we really focus on is to get over the fear of autonomous remediation. It’s not an option.”

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Even as drones usher in an era of ‘cheap kill,’ Army leaders look to what’s next

Jennifer Hlad — Sat, 16 May 2026 02:30:57 -0400

WAIKIKI, Hawaii—Drones are everywhere U.S. Army Pacific forces go these days. Last week, the 25th Infantry Division used uncrewed vehicles, vessels, and aircraft to fight a simulated battle on a Philippine beach. This week, two more buzzed about the USARPAC commander’s head as he delivered the keynote speech at AUSA’s Land Forces Pacific symposium.

“For us, innovation is not something we simply talk about, it’s what we put into action every day,” Gen. Ron Clark said.

“This drone, the Kestrel, was produced by our soldiers at The Forge,” he said, indicating a first-person-view quadcopter that can be adapted to drop munitions or for one-way attack. The other was a Skydio X10, which is used for short-range reconnaissance and surveillance.

“In today’s fight, we should never send a soldier when we can send an unmanned system,” Clark said.

Protecting against enemy drones is also a high priority, I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Matthew McFarlane told a small group of reporters here.

“As we’re seeing the absolute proliferation of drones, the importance of passive defense measures can’t be overstated,” McFarlane said.

That includes things like putting command posts underground, or covering them so they are not easily detectable from the air, he said. “We’re very conscious of making sure we’re protecting ourselves from the real air threat that we’re seeing around the world.

Indo-Pacific Command leader Adm. Samuel Paparo highlighted the proliferation of drones in his keynote speech, describing one of three “meta-trends” he believes are reshaping warfare as “the commoditization—and by commoditization, I mean everybody has it—of small, cheap unmanned systems.

“It's expanded access to core capabilities once reserved for great powers,” he said. “Proliferated unmanned systems have made cheap kill, at scale more possible, more probable. Has made a traditional assault—ground assault, air assault, airborne assault, amphibious assault—much more costly than is in our formal doctrine,

In Ukraine, the Russians lose “approximately 100 human beings per square kilometer of ground that they take and that then they subsequently lose,” Paparo said, calling the Ukraine war “a wide laboratory of the commoditization of cheap kill.”

But while the U.S. Army, and the defense industry, have wasted no time applying lessons from Ukraine about unmanned systems, they must not stop there, Gen. Xavier Brunson warned.

“People will tell you that the lesson from the fight in Ukraine is drones, drones, drones, drones. I beg to differ,” said Brunson, the commander of United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea.

“That's surface, and that's easy. Don't Occam's razor strategic things. Don't just say the simplest solution is going to be the solution. That's not it.”

Brunson urged attendees to think about “the next thing,” which he believes will be commercial space.

“Oftentimes we learn the wrong lessons and we get stuck with them because it’s easy,” he said. “Listen, I am not against…the development of drones. I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is we can’t be stuck there. We have to keep going forward. Warfare, if nothing, is about offset, and what I continue to think about when I’m awake at night in the bed is, what is the next offset? Because if we don’t think about that, if we don’t give ourselves to the thought of the next offset, we’ll be doing drones 10 years from now, and thinking that’s still the way.”

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West Pointers can be trained to better evaluate, appreciate AI, study finds

Patrick Tucker — Wed, 13 May 2026 12:47:36 -0400

Although Americans generally trust AI less than, say, Chinese people, they are often willing to accept a chatbot’s wrong answers. As Pentagon leaders push broader use of such tools, a new paper offers some reassuring news: West Point cadets can be trained to be more appropriately skeptical of AI’s output—while remaining broadly optimistic about its potential.

Researchers from Georgetown University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Military Academy published a paper last week comparing 236 West Point cadets to a demographically similar sample of 702 members of the public. The paper explores automation bias—humans’ tendency to over-rely on automation—and algorithm aversion, an inclination to “prematurely distrust automated outputs in ways that increase the risk of accidents or mistakes.”

One hypothesis they sought to test was that the pressures of battle would make military members would be more inclined to trust faulty outputs from a decision-support system, or DSS.

“Major powers such as the United States, China, and Russia are experimenting with integrating AI DSS into their command structures, thereby decreasing their sensor-to-shooter timelines,” they write. This might lead officers “to delegate decision-making authority to AI DSS.”

The military has long grappled with AI-enabled decision assistants. But the recent arrival of large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini led West Point to declare a special academic focus for the 2024-25 school year: “The Human and the Machine: Leadership on the Emerging Battlefield.”

This and other efforts seemed to work. In the study, West Pointers demonstrated “AI knowledge scores” nearly twice as high as the general public, and were less than half as likely to commit an automation bias error—that is, to trust a mistaken chatbot.

Cadets were also more likely to assess AI output by looking at the tool’s own confidence indicators, something few regular users do.

“These findings align with the way the USMA seeks to train cadets so they can achieve justified confidence, that is, to be properly calibrated so their expectations of an AI system’s accuracy match the reality of the accuracy of the system,” the researchers wrote.

In the study, about twice as many cadets expressed worry about the dangerous consequences of AI than did members of the public, but they were much less likely to describe AI as “sinister.”

Cadets were also more enthusiastic about the potential of the technology: 87.7 percent saw strong beneficial applications for AI compared to 72.5 percent of the public, while 79.5 percent described it as “exciting,” versus 61.6 percent of the public.

UPenn’s Michael C. Horowitz, a former deputy assistant defense secretary for force development and emerging capabilities, told Defense One that the study “shows what some of the opportunities might look like for further training within the U.S. military at least. This suggests that training to reduce the risk of automation bias for military personnel using artificial intelligence could be effective.”

Horowitz noted that cadets’ training is “probably not representative of the average military right now, but it shows the path forward, at least for the U.S. military.”

Such training might also benefit the U.S. public, which might soothe the worries of technologists and leaders who say Americans’ declining trust in AI, compared to populations in China, is a national security concern.

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US investors warm to Ukrainian defense startups—but export laws slow cooperation

Patrick Tucker — Mon, 11 May 2026 04:31:38 -0400

Ukrainian companies are attracting American private investment and Pentagon interest with award-winning drones, but U.S. export laws threaten to squelch efforts to develop technology, company execs said Friday.

U.S. investors are pouring money into Ukrainian defense startups. For example, Swarmer, which makes AI software to control multiple drones simultaneously, saw its shares rise 700 percent on its first day of trading.

Meanwhile, a joint effort of Ukraine’s SkyFall and UK’s SkyCutter won the initial competition of a series held by the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance effort, which would grow by several thousand percent to $54 billion under the White House’s 2027 budget plan. Several other Ukrainian drone companies took spots on the leaderboard.

“We're excited about that,” Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Emil Michael told reporters at the Pentagon last week. “These companies now that have gotten big and had a lot of expertise, if they're willing to do it in America, because we want to control our own supply chains. I think that's excellent.”

But Ukrainian companies say U.S. export-control laws make it all but impossible to build cutting-edge defense products in the United States. Take Airlogix, which has a joint venture with Auterion, a U.S.-German company, to develop and build drones in the United States. The company has found it can take four months to obtain licenses to send its U.S.-developed tech to Ukraine, even if the tech it developed in the United States is based on information from the Ukrainian front line.

“That is not fast, I would say. We iterate with a pace of weeks, not months,” Airlogix CTO Mykola Mazur said Friday at the Special Competitive Studies Project AI+ Expo in Washington D.C.

This should be remedied, perhaps by granting Ukraine a special status, like designating Taiwan a major non-NATO ally, said John Hardie, the deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Russia Program.

Failure to lift the barriers will slow the Pentagon’s efforts to buy the best drone and counter-drone technology, which increasingly comes from Ukraine, said Joseph Gagnard, who runs U.S. field operations for Swarmer.

“There has to be some sort of middle ground where the government says, ‘OK, this technology is born in Ukraine. This technology was shared with the United States for our benefit. There's got to be some sort of expedited ITAR process that is going to encourage countries to do this—Ukraine specifically,’” Gagnard said Friday.

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Pentagon seeks smarter, self-organizing drones as autonomous-warfare budget is poised to skyrocket

Patrick Tucker — Mon, 04 May 2026 21:47:59 -0400

Two requests to industry may help the Pentagon address one of the emerging challenges of warfare: enabling a relatively small number of human operators to direct a far larger number of robots.

The Materials for Physical Compute in Untethered Robotics effort seeks to make autonomous systems more intelligent, while Decentralized Artificial Intelligence through Controlled Emergence aims to help robots form teams and carry out missions. These DARPA projects may feed ideas to the Defense Autonomous Working Group, the lead Pentagon office for drone warfare, whose budget would soar from $226 million this year to $54 billion under the new 2027 spending proposal.

Much of that huge sum will be wasted if the military spends it before establishing a clear understanding of how operators will buy, train on, use, and maintain autonomous weapons, according to a recent commentary piece by David Petraeus, the retired Army general and former CIA director, and scholar Isaac Flanagan. Writing for The Hill, they argue that the lack of such understanding constrained the use of drones during the past decade of U.S. wars in the Middle East.

“Each Predator combat air patrol of continuous surveillance required nearly 150 personnel,” they write. “As demand for drone coverage surged, the limiting factor was not the number of aircraft but of the trained personnel and the organizational structure to enable them.”

Until the military fixes this, they write, any new drone is “not a weapons system at all—it is an asset on a spreadsheet.”

The new DARPA efforts aim to help change that.

Materials for Physical Compute in Untethered Robotics seeks to help robots think and reason without relying on connections to vulnerable data centers and without using valuable battery life to upload video and receive commands. Even the most advanced robotics “still require constant internal data processing, with either the end-users or data centers, creating delayed actions through latency and consuming power for data transmission,” the request for information says.

The RFI also urges industry to move beyond the conception of autonomous systems as assemblages of wire, metal frames, and motors. This mindset has been “yielding a robot with small behavior diversity. Therefore, current robot capabilities are limited in ever-changing and contact-rich environments.” It seeks new concepts at the “material, component, and kernel level”—down to chemistry and physics—that can change the very nature of machine intelligence.

DICE aims to enable machines to talk and collaborate with each other, to “dynamically form teams using peer-to-peer coordination to execute complex missions.”

The two DARPA projects are hardly the Pentagon’s only efforts to answer fundamental questions about robots. A contest run by DIU, the Defense Department’s innovation arm, seeks ways to control drones with plain language commands, as one might direct a soldier or a large-language-model tool.

The problem that Petraeus and Flanagan discuss is not as simple as it seems. Technology is moving faster than doctrine. So should doctrine come first? Or the other way around?

U.S. Southern Command is moving to answer that sort of question. Last week, Gen. Frank Donovan announced the SOUTHCOM Autonomous Warfare Command to “maximize the efficient fielding of autonomous systems.”

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