The half-life of humanity is currently around 35 years, said Nobel laureate in physics David Gross as he concluded an evening lecture at the German Physical Society's conference in Erlangen in March.
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."
CMCs are a composite material, one in which the fibers are ceramic or carbon, embedded in a ceramic matrix. They are created to overcome the brittleness of traditional ceramics, while providing high-temperature resistance, light weight, and high strength. According to DSTL, they are capable of withstanding temperatures exceeding 1,000°C (1,832°F), and unlike metals, they hold their strength and shape under extreme heat and stress.
Ondas said Q4 revenue landed between $29.1 million and $30.1 million, comfortably above the $27 million to $29 million range it had guided to in January. For the full year, revenue came in at $49.7 million to $50.7 million versus prior guidance of $47.6 million to $49.6 million. Adjusted EBITDA losses narrowed in line with expectations, and the company reiterated its 2026 revenue target of $170 million to $180 million.
China accounts for roughly 90% of global NdPr production, yet even there, most of that output comes from just 2 hard rock mines and refineries. Outside China, only Mountain Pass and Australia's Mount Weld operate at meaningful scale. That structural scarcity is MP's most durable competitive advantage.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
