The economics are hard to ignore. Shooting down a drone with AeroVironment's LOCUST laser system costs less than $10, using just two to five seconds of laser energy. Compare that to the interceptor missiles currently used against Iranian drone swarms, which cost orders of magnitude more and are in short supply across allied arsenals.
"To accelerate current weapons development timelines, DARPA is considering an alternative development paradigm to increase the nation's magazine depth and breadth."
Our war fighters are leveraging a variety of advanced AI tools. These systems help us sift through vast amounts of data in seconds so our leaders can cut through the noise and make smarter decisions faster than the enemy can react. Humans will always make final decisions on what to shoot and what not to shoot and when to shoot, but advanced AI tools can turn processes that used to take hours and sometimes even days into seconds.
John Conafay, a veteran of the US Air Force, has spent most of his career leading business development at public and private aerospace companies, including Spire, Astranis, and ABL Space Systems. At each company, Conafay ran into the same software hurdle: collaborating on government contracts was a logistical mess that forced his teams and their federal counterparts to rely on a tedious back-and-forth of PDFs and Excel files.
From the very beginning, this has been about one fundamental principle: the military being able to use technology for all lawful purposes. The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command by restricting the lawful use of a critical capability and put our warfighters at risk.
In military service, reliability is priceless, at least until the bill comes due. Some vehicles earned legendary status because they rarely failed in combat and delivered results under pressure. The problem was what it took to keep them that way. Heavy fuel use, maintenance-intensive systems, specialized parts, and recovery demands typically followed these platforms wherever they deployed. Here, 24/7 Wall St. is taking a closer look at reliable military vehicles that were logistically expensive.
Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, is currently on a spending spree: it has more than 108 billion ($129 billion) at its disposal this year a gigantic, unprecedented sum. This is being financed both by the official federal budget and special funds, for which the state is taking out loans. This money is intended to make the Bundeswehr, which has been subject to decades of cutbacks, more powerful and modern. There is also time pressure.
Number one is speed takes priority over perfection. We can iterate to get to operational capability. And the second is that early soldier feedback is critical in order to make sure we're getting the right technology for the future fight, and then we want to be able to prove the demand signal before we spend big dollars on programs.
Small British defence companies are set to gain easier access to Ministry of Defence contracts after the government launched a dedicated unit to simplify procurement and boost spending with smaller suppliers. The Ministry of Defence has unveiled the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, a new service designed to cut through what ministers describe as labyrinthine procurement processes that have historically shut small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) out of the defence market.
With the fight evolving quickly, arms companies in Ukraine and Europe say that they can't afford to start from scratch and completely redesign entire systems each time conditions shift. Instead, companies making aerial drones and ground robots told Business Insider that their focus is now on creating weapons that can be upgraded by simply changing parts or software rather than overhauling the whole system. Designs are modular, like Lego pieces, with parts being easily swapped out as new mission demands arise.
The cost for the US and other militaries to keep newer combat aircraft ready to fly is going to soar in the coming years, a new report on sustainment trends argues. A new report from the American consulting firm Oliver Wyman projects global military aircraft spending over the next decade, including an annual sustainment cost growth of 1.1% through 2036. That's a pace roughly 11 times faster than the previous decade.
But logistical consistency, like coherence and gravitas, does not characterize the new NDS. It is a document that supposedly nests within the National Security Strategy, explaining at greater length the implications of overall policy for the armed forces. The 2026 version does not do that. Rather, it restates some of the basic priorities of the Trump administration but for the most part confines itself to flattery of the president, insults, and bombast.
The US Army's biggest AI gamble may not be on autonomous weapons, but instead whether Silicon Valley software can tackle the service's most tedious and, more often than not, grueling administrative jobs. Think less uncrewed aircraft and more behind-the-scenes tasks like recruiting, equipment maintenance, and endless gear inventories. Through a mix of new tools, redesigned workflows, and data integration, logisticians
According to the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's memorandum on the Strategy, this AI-first status is to be achieved through four broad aims: Incentivizing internal DOD experimentation with AI models. Identifying and eliminating bureaucratic obstacles in the way of model integration. Focusing the U.S.'s military investment to shore up the U.S.'s "asymmetric advantages" in areas including AI computing, model innovation, entrepreneurial dynamism, capital markets, and operational data.
