First issued one year ago, the government’s original solicitation from the Missile Defense Agency’s Rapid Response Small Launcher Technology program called on tenders that could “rapidly demonstrate very low cost, modular interceptor designs to counter ballistic and hypersonic threats.”

Two companies, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne, have long held the domestic market for the solid rocket motors inside those weapons, while production of the Patriot itself runs through Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Japan remains the only country ever licensed to build the missiles abroad.

“The contract will aim to address the critical need to expand the SRM industrial base, which is currently reliant on a duopoly of two primary manufacturers,” the DoD wrote in its contract announcement last month.

The program has taken on new urgency since the war with Iran left the U.S. with fewer than 1,000 Patriot interceptors and roughly 250 THAAD rounds, with each Patriot replacement costing roughly $3.9 million and taking years to build by a handful of licensed manufacturers facing almost no competition.

“America can’t out-produce today’s threats with yesterday’s supplier base,” X-Bow founder and CEO Jason Hundley said in a statement. “Our new manufacturing technology lets us bring affordable interceptors and rocket motors to the warfighter faster, and this award is a chance to prove it.”

X-Bow prints its solid rocket motors and propellant in-house and will use the phase 2 award, under MDA’s Low-Cost Interceptor effort, to fund further motor development and a first flight test.

“We’re taking a look at propulsion, we’re taking a look at all the expensive parts of an interceptor to look for opportunities to drive down every bit of cost in there as we move forward,” MDA’s Collins said earlier this month at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, per DefenseScoop.

Other parts of the government have also been trying to tackle the global interceptor shortage.

Last year, the U.S. Air Force solicited industry for a counter-air missile under $500,000 that it wants built by the thousands each year, according to Air and Space Forces Magazine.

Allied countries, still dependent on Patriot stocks to protect their own cities, have begun working toward antiballistic capabilities at lower price points, too.

Over the summer, Ukraine and European partners opened at least three new tracks toward cheaper ballistic defense, including the nine-nation Freyja initiative — a $700,000-a-round interceptor that Ukrainian strike-drone maker Fire Point says will be battlefield-ready next year — and Lockheed Martin’s new PAC-3 ACE missile, which the company says will be faster to produce and cost less than half as much as a PAC-3 MSE round.

Lockheed Martin and Raytheon have said little about providing Kyiv with the licensing necessary to begin manufacturing their own Patriot missiles, despite President Donald Trump’s July pledge to license the technology after years of withholding it.

None of the new options, American or Ukrainian-European, is expected before next year.

X-Bow’s agreement stipulates that the company must produce a prototype for the DoD for flight demonstration by late 2027 — not a battle-tested weapon — and the furthest-along Ukrainian alternative would reach the battlefield by mid-2027 at the earliest, according to manufacturers.

Over the last decade, “these delays resulted in an estimated $3.4 billion in costs to sustain crews and submarines that provided no operational capability,” according to the Government Accountability Office study.

Perhaps even worse for a Navy already overstretched and exhausted, maintenance backlogs for attack subs between 2016-25 resulted in 15,000 lost operational days. This includes “active idle time,” when submarines and their crews “must remain pier-side because they are no longer certified to conduct normal operations and cannot be inducted into a maintenance period,” the GAO report found.

In other words, the Navy is stuck paying for a fully-crewed submarine that cannot be deployed.

For Los Angeles-class subs, active idle time is costing almost $220,000 per day for the entire group. For the Virginia-class, that figure is more than $237,000 per day.

“Active idle time increases the strain on the heavily used sub fleet,” Diana Maurer, a director of GAO’s Defense Capabilities and Management team, told Defense News. “It’s essentially a traffic jam — subs waiting to get into dry dock for depot maintenance.”

Compounding the problem are shipyard delays in decommissioning nuclear submarines that have cost $722 million from 2016 to 2025. Such “inactive idle time” means boats must “remain pier-side until a shipyard has the capacity in a dry dock to defuel their nuclear reactor.”

For example, the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Pasadena became inactive in January 2025, but is not expected to enter Norfolk Naval Shipyard for almost four years, until November 2028.

“During this time, the attack submarine is unable to be operational since its dive certification is expired, but is still fully crewed with sailors,” GAO noted.

While the Navy will use the boat as a training platform, GAO estimates the delay will cost more than $300 million.

While GAO credits the Navy with making progress in reducing active idle time, “inactive idle time for submarines has grown and is projected to worsen,” GAO warned.

Given current trends, the Navy will be stuck with 15 subs and 14,000 days of inactive idle time between 2026 and 2030, at an estimated cost of $3.1 billion.

Maintenance for nuclear subs is performed at four public shipyards: Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Certain maintenance can also be done at two private shipyards: General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia.

While one solution would be to expand the capacity of shipyards already suffering from aging infrastructure and shortages of labor and materials, revitalizing shipyards will take years.

In the meantime, Navy officials told GAO that one alternative is to allow nuclear reactors to be defueled while the subs are pier-side, rather than waiting for a slot at a shipyard.

“However, officials were unable to provide documentation of detailed analyses conducted on the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of this option,” the report noted.

Using floating dry docks for defueling is another option, though this “would require additional analysis to determine technical viability.”

For inactive subs awaiting decommissioning, the Navy is looking at transferring crews to active boats over months or years until a shipyard slot opens. Nonetheless, Navy officials believe this option is still limited by lack of shipyard capacity.

As for extending the service life of submarines to avoid decommissioning backlogs, “these service life extensions are still pending approval,” the report noted.

Issues identified by GAO are another chapter in the Navy’s long-running maintenance saga.

“The problems we reported for attack subs are similar to what we’ve seen over the years in other parts of the fleet,” Maurer said.

NATO allies worry that the six-month review, announced in June, will lead to large-scale cuts to the roughly 80,000 U.S. forces across Europe and punish countries that President Donald Trump believes failed to support the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

The Pentagon’s “Terms of Reference,” which have not been previously detailed, explain the steps that the internal review will take and some of the criteria that will be used to evaluate U.S. basing decisions throughout Europe.

One important disclosure in the document is a plan for the top U.S. general in Europe to participate in a decision briefing with the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, by Sept. 18, according to the document.

That briefing will be key, according to the document, in hashing out options to develop for Hegseth.

NATO skepticism of US review process

Colby is expected to speak with NATO ambassadors about the review on Thursday at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters.

Asked about the Terms of Reference, a senior Pentagon official said the fact that a spectrum of options would be generated, in detail, underscored the seriousness of the process.

“We want to be able to talk through the pros and cons of a variety of different force levels or dispositions,” the official told Reuters.

It is unclear, however, whether the details will convince European officials skeptical of the review process, who say privately they are concerned Washington’s decision is all but made.

The Trump administration has long signaled it intends to reduce the military resources it devotes to Europe, with the expectation that NATO allies will carry a greater share of the burden than they have historically.

Trump has also fumed that European NATO allies have long relied on U.S. security guarantees while providing inadequate support for the Iran war. Accusations include that some allies failed to grant basing and overflight access to U.S. warplanes, or did it too slowly.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has expressed some understanding of Trump’s disappointment but said the large majority of Europeans have been helpful.

The Pentagon official said the Trump administration had made clear that “we are transitioning to provide critical, more limited support with allies in the lead.”

“President Trump has also been quite rightly and clearly frustrated with certain allies’ behavior in recent months. So there’s clearly at least some demand signal to have options that would show us (downgrading) our force levels in Europe,” the official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

Still, the official said the review sought to “provide a spectrum of options from where we are to wherever” the review leads.

Hegseth accuses some NATO allies of ‘free-riding’

Announcing the review in June, Hegseth chided some “free-riding” NATO allies and said the review would ensure U.S. military “access, basing, and overflight are clearly delineated.”

The Terms of Reference go further.

Beyond calling for reliable U.S. access, basing and overflight rights, called ABO, in allied NATO nations, they examine space, cyber and “intelligence architectures and infrastructure that enable U.S. global power projection,” the document says.

The Pentagon expanded the definition of ABO to ensure the U.S. takes into account all the types of support that NATO allies provide, the senior official said.

The Terms of Reference also address other ways allies will be evaluated, and appear to be in line with previous U.S. remarks by senior officials.

The document says the Pentagon will seek to determine whether allies have a credible path to meet their NATO spending pledges and fill in gaps to NATO crisis forces — known as the NATO Force Model — after U.S. reductions were announced earlier this year.

Reuters has reported on a U.S. questionnaire sent to allies to inform the review. It covers issues ranging from defense spending to strategy, procurement and support for U.S. foreign policy priorities.

“What if any restrictions has the country placed on U.S. access, basing, and overflight (ABO)? If so, why? Are they willing to reduce or eliminate any such restrictions?” the U.S. asked in its questionnaire.

“Has the country publicly opposed regulations or other measures designed to inhibit or reduce transatlantic defense industrial cooperation? If so, how? If not, would they be willing to do so?” another question read.

The responses are due by Friday.

“We are working very, very hard, and it is a relatively tight timeline,” the official said. “A lot of prior analysis will inform this, which should allow us to move quicker on our end.”

In an August statement, Harry Mandeles, the service’s project officer for the Optics Team at Program Manager Ground Weapons Systems, called the Squad Aiming Laser, or SAL, a “generational leap” from the previous system, which had been in service for nearly three decades.

“Infantry Marines will notice significantly less eye strain and a much clearer target picture through their Night Vision Goggles (NVGs) compared to the legacy PEQ-16,” he said.

While both systems can be mounted to a weapon’s rail and project visible and near-infrared lasers, the two share few other similarities.

The SAL has an “ultra-compact” design, weighing approximately three ounces less than the legacy system and measuring nearly half an inch shorter.

Mounted to an M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle, or IAR, the lighter system improves the weapon’s overall balance and maneuverability, particularly during fast-paced operations.

But the Marine Corps says performance is the system’s biggest advantage. The SAL produces “a uniform, clean beam” that allows Marines wearing NVGs to identify targets faster and at greater distances.

The system also replaces the PEQ-16’s selector switch and activation buttons with all-digital controls.

Mandeles called that the transition to the SAL will represent a “fundamental shift” in how small units operate at night.

In February 2025, the Marine Corps awarded New Hampshire-based Envision Technology a $249 million contract to supply SAL systems and parts through 2030.

Roughly six months before, U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, awarded B.E. Meyers & Company a $49.9 million contract for a similar laser aiming system and for an even smaller design in 2025.

The Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Agency selected Terra B1, a rocket-launched interceptor drone, after a demonstration with the Maritime Self-Defense Forces last month.

Terra B1 is developed by domestic industrial giant Terra Drone and serves as the Japan-made counterpart to Terra A1, which had been fielded on Ukraine’s battlefields earlier this year.

ATLA neither disclosed the number of units on order nor the contract price.

In late May, the defense ministry released a tender to rapidly acquire and deploy drones that can intercept one-way attack drones such as the Shahed and anti-radar loitering munitions such as the IAI Harpy.

The latest decision is the fastest to date, industry insiders say, as the tender took only three months compared to previous bids which took one to two years.

The decision also reflects the government’s growing efforts to increase 3D printing capabilities to support defense needs.

Using 3D printers will “simplify and shorten” the design and prototyping stage, CEO Toru Tokushige told Defense News. It will also allow Terra B1 to move into mass production as quickly as possible and meet contract requirements.

Aside from lowering costs and accelerating production, 3D printing will allow the company ample time to modify the interceptors to adapt to evolving threats and the fast-changing drone tech landscape without delaying the deployment schedule.

Terra Drone also plans to spread out production across multiple locations, and later expand to local printing farms, as a precautionary measure to ensure manufacturing can continue even if one facility comes under attack.

“Even if one production site were attacked by a system such as a Shahed-type drone, this distributed model could significantly reduce the risk of the entire supply chain being disrupted,” Tokushige said.

3D printing has been changing military and defense logistics since the U.S. Army and Navy deployed printers in the field in 2012. In Ukraine, printing farms have become a frontline

necessity: They produce drone parts and a range of tools to support brigades in the ongoing war.

The defense ministry’s decision to adopt the technology signals a massive shift in the defense industry, which experts warn may be unable to keep pace with the current administration’s export drive and increasing global demands.

“We believe 3D printing is not simply about reducing manufacturing costs. It has the potential to transform Japan’s defense manufacturing into a faster, more flexible and more resilient production model,” Tokushige said.

Rolls-Royce emerged as a serious contender after the British aero-engine maker and Reliance Industries, one of India’s biggest conglomerates, announced their “strategic intent” this month to jointly develop and manufacture an indigenous engine for the stealth fighter program.

The companies also said they will also explore forming a dedicated aerospace gas turbine complex in India.

France’s Safran has separately proposed developing a high-thrust engine with India’s state-run Gas Turbine Research Establishment for the jet known as the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA). The company’s offer is being evaluated by the Cabinet Committee on Security, India’s top government body for major defense approvals.

India seeks role in France’s sixth-generation fighter program

New Delhi’s goal is to end its long-standing dependence on foreign engines, one of the most challenging aspects of its fighter jet programs. Despite decades of efforts, India has not been able to build an engine capable of powering a frontline fighter. As a result, all such fighters built in India rely on foreign-origin engines.

The initial variants of its planned fifth generation fighter are also expected to use the American GE F414 engine.

But for later variants named AMCA Mk-2, India wants a foreign partner willing to co- develop and share the advanced technologies for a high-thrust 120 kN class turbofan engine. Both Rolls Royce and Safran are vying for that program.

Earlier this year, the British company proposed developing the engines in India with full technology transfer and Indian ownership of the intellectual property.

Now under the proposed partnership with Reliance Industries announced on Aug. 14 it is offering to go further by exploring the creation of an aerospace industrial base in India.

A joint statement by the two companies said the proposed gas turbine complex will build Indian capability from engine design to testing, production and support.

“Together, with our existing partnerships and capabilities in India, this marks a major milestone towards building a robust, self-reliant aerospace ecosystem in the country,” Rolls Royce Chief Executive Tufan Erginbilgic said.

Reliance executive director Anant Ambani said the aim was to combine Rolls-Royce’s propulsion expertise with Reliance’s manufacturing and execution capabilities to build the ecosystem. “India’s strategic autonomy requires sovereign capability in critical technologies,” he said.

Safran’s proposal, meanwhile, is already well advanced. The French company has committed to co-developing a new jet engine with India and sharing the technologies required to build and maintain it. Under the proposal, Indian engineers will work on skills considered essential for future propulsion programs.

“It’s a complete transfer of technologies. We along with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) are basically going to develop a new engine together in India. This is unique because no one else has made that offer,” Safran’s chief executive, Olivier Andries, said in an interview to the Economic Times newspaper last November. He said this will include critical hot-section technology and turbine architecture.

With air power becoming increasingly central to modern warfare, the goal for New Delhi is to learn how to build a fighter jet engine and secure access to a critical technology available to only a handful of nations.

“India’s dependence on foreign suppliers represents perhaps the single most technological vulnerability in India’s aerospace ecosystem and developing an indigenous engine is a non-negotiable priority,” retired Air Marshal Anil Khosla, a former vice chief of the Indian Air Force, told Defense News. “As India considers these offers, the question is whether these companies will share the deepest layers of their process knowledge.”

Speaking to reporters in Norfolk, Virginia, on Wednesday, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle acknowledged that the carrier faced problems with resupply during its 250 days without a port visit, though he didn’t fully confirm individual accounts and photographs showing mostly-empty trays of food in the mess decks.

“This is typically not about whether or not there’s protein and whether or not there’s the right amount of starches, the right amount of green vegetables, that are coming,” Caudle said. “This is really about the things that sailors expect that are above and beyond that. These are, you know, the kind of ship store items that we do to try to make this right. These are, you know, Monster drinks and hygiene products and Starbucks coffee.”

In addition to accounts of scant rations and deteriorating mental health onboard the Lincoln, with at least two reported suicide attempts, sailors and families have spoken out about severe shortages of basic hygiene products, including soap and toothpaste. Navy officials have said resupply had to be prioritized, with hygiene products taking a backseat to food, as the deployment continued.

“It’s a fair critique that there were some puts and takes at the beginning of Epic Fury until we got [resupply] dialed in,” Caudle said Wednesday, using the name the Pentagon has given to the Iran conflict. “I think we’re in a good place with that now.”

Logistical hurdles remain, including the destruction of Naval Support Activity Bahrain, a main supply hub for the Navy in the Middle East, at the start of the conflict. Caudle did not detail how the Navy was overcoming structural resupply challenges, but said efforts were underway to prepare the carrier Theodore Roosevelt for its next deployment, likely to the region, later this fall.

“We are working to get into that strike group’s pre-deployment, from briefs to stockpiling things that are part of the ship store to making sure parts support is at its highest for the air wing as well as ship’s force equipment,” Caudle said, adding that sailors and their families were getting advance briefs on what they should expect during the deployment.

He said he was working with Vice Adm. Curt Renshaw, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, to determine potential port calls in locations less vulnerable to attack from Iran, naming Kenya, the island Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and India itself as possibilities. Caudle acknowledged, though, that all of these farther-out locations come with a “transit tax” in time off-station and resources expended to get there and back.

“I’ve got to work very carefully with the Fifth Fleet commander to go do that and make sure that there’s an understanding of the forecast and combat operations to allow something like that to be done,” he said. " [U.S. Central Command Commander] Adm. [Brad] Cooper wants to work with me on this. He understands what we’re asking of our Navy … I’m confident that what we’ve learned from Abe, that I can apply, to do that more effectively as other carrier strike groups move into the theater."

Caudle also indicated he was hopeful that better communication around deployment extensions could prevent some of the anger and desperation that military families expressed over Lincoln’s seemingly interminable deployment. He described seeking greater “risk-sharing” between the Navy and Cooper, the combatant commander, to deliver more clarity on expectations.

“The families, [when] they don’t see any endpoint in mind, so they can plan their own lives, I think that creates a lot of stress for sailors,” he said. “If I can get the actual extension and when we’re coming home a little bit more defined, I think that relieves a lot of tension that I think that sailors experience.”

Antares Nuclear will develop a microreactor — or microreactors — at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; BWXT Advanced Technologies at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; General Atomics Electronagnetic Systems at Fort Hood, Texas; Radiant Industries at Fort Benning, Georgia; and Westinghouse Government Services at Fort Drum, New York. The service said it expects to field more than 20 microreactors across Department of Defense installations.

The agreements, worth up to $2.2 billion combined, mark a step in the Army’s Janus program, an initiative that aims to introduce microreactors to power installations independently rather than relying on civilian electrical grids. The Army introduced the program in 2025 after an executive order called for the military to speed up its integration of nuclear power, with the goal of having an operational reactor at a military base by Sept. 30, 2028.

“Awarding these contracts accelerates our ability to deliver safe, reliable baseload power directly to our installations,” Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll said in a release. “We are building the energy resilience necessary to project combat power globally, without relying on potentially vulnerable external grids.”

The reactors will be contractor-owned and operated, the Army said, adding that vendors will only be paid if they hit technical milestones. Each installation will remain on the commercial power grid, officials said at a Wednesday media briefing, and the reactors are not intended to power the base completely.

The Janus program follows the Pentagon’s 2022 announcement of “Project Pele,” which sought to develop a portable 40-ton nuclear reactor that could generate one to five megawatts of power.

None of the base’s future reactors use highly enriched — or weapon’s grade — uranium, according to Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment. In the briefing, he said the push toward nuclear energy stemmed from the nation’s growing awareness of security risks and reliance on fossil fuel.

“Unlike in prior conflicts, we now know that our domestic electric grid is potentially at risk in a conflict,” he said during the briefing. “We also know that we will not necessarily be able to move fossil fuels easily wherever we need them to go. Right now, all critical infrastructure that the Army has is backed up by some form of liquid fossil fuel, primarily diesel.”

Outside of the continental U.S., the threat remains, he said, as U.S. interests often rely on international ships.

“We’re often dependent. In a lot of our Pacific islands, we’re dependent on foreign-shipped fuel from foreign-flagged vessels, and that doesn’t give us a lot of comfort if there were to be a future conflict,” he continued.

Nuclear waste will not be stored on bases long-term, Waksman said.

The effort comes as the U.S. is currently at war with Iran, with both countries insisting that the Strait of Hormuz, in which around one-fifth of the global oil supply passes, is under their respective control. The war has driven up energy costs worldwide.

Installations were chosen based on a multilayered analysis including mission-set, power grid feasibility, environmental concerns and safety, according to Brandon Cockrell, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Energy & Sustainability. He also nodded to the bases’ role in deploying troops.

“It’s really difficult to look across the five and not draw the immediate conclusion that this is a direct link to power projection,” he said, adding that such a component was part of the assessment. “This is because we have to be able to project power. We have to be able to meet the Army’s mission if there is any vulnerabilities in the grid.”

In Nov. 2025, the Army said it was also considering Fort Wainwright, Holston Army Ammunition Plant, Joint Base Lewis-McChord and Redstone Arsenal.

Energy resiliency has become an increasingly important facet of technology development across the Army, which has pitted three contractors against each other to build a light tactical vehicle capable of producing large amounts of energy to power counter-drone systems, electronic warfare and directed energy weapons.

The Army did not disclose the contract amounts for each nuclear microreactor company. Radiant, which has a contract tied to a Georgia base, disclosed that it secured an agreement totaling $750 million for 15 Kaleidos nuclear microreactors, which are currently undergoing testing at the Idaho National Laboratory DOME facility.

In a Wednesday release, the company said that the 1-megawatt microreactors would be transportable and “plug-in ready.”

General Atomics, which is tied to a Texas base, advanced its Tactical Energy System, or GA-TES, that has a baseline output of 5 megawatts and can scale up to 20 megawatts, a Wednesday announcement said. The GA-TES is transportable by rail or truck.

The missile should be “capable of integrating with joint manned and unmanned air, ground and waterborne platforms using a M299 launcher or equivalent,” the Army said.

The specifications for the missile mirror that of the Hellfire, with a minimum range of 1,640 feet (500 meters) and a maximum range of 2,6246 feet (8,000 meters) or greater. Potential targets include “heavy/light armor track vehicles, command and control nodes, air defense artillery radars, Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS), [and] small fast attack maritime targets,” according to the notice.

The missile should be capable of operating amid jamming and GPS denial. Contractors “must provide technology and performance details on seeker sensors, warhead and propulsion solution.”

The Lockheed Martin M299 is designed to fire the company’s Hellfire and JAGM weapons. The launcher can be fitted to helicopters such as the Apache, Cobra and Seahawk, drones and even cargo containers.

Companies are expected to have their manufacturing and supplier base set up by late 2028. The initial delivery of up to 8,000 missiles is scheduled to be completed within two years after contract award. This would be followed by annual orders of up to 8,000 missiles per year.

Amid shortages of missiles and delays in producing munitions such as howitzer shells, the Army appears serious about manufacturers meeting this deadline. “Interested sources shall submit verifiable evidence demonstrating their capability to produce, test, and deliver the specified quantities within the mandated lead times,” the notice said. “Submissions must confirm the utilization of an active, qualified, and operational production line.”

The AGM-114 Hellfire is used by more than 30 nations. Originally designed in the 1970s as a helicopter-launched tank-buster, the current Hellfire II uses semi-active laser guidance. The JAGM — intended to replace the Hellfire, TOW and Maverick — uses laser and millimeter-wave homing. The JAGM achieved initial operating capability in 2022.

Lockheed Martin has produced more than 145,000 Hellfires and JAGMs. In August 2025, the company was awarded a $720 million contract for both missiles, with buyers including the U.S. Army and Navy, as well as Britain, Canada, Poland and other NATO nations.

The late decision marks a step back from original plans to tap the scheme for €14.9 billion euros in loans for defense procurement.

Italy’s right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni has hesitated over the low-cost loans, which are being offered by the EU to help member states beef up military readiness in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Trump’s demands that NATO members spend more on defense.

Meloni herself suggested Italy would not take out the loans as the League party - a member of her ruling coalition - said public spending should be prioritized over defense spending.

That view is shared by opposition parties as well as a sizable number of Italian voters ahead of national elections next year.

The decision to apply for €8 billion in loans was confirmed to Defense News on Wednesday by a source knowledgeable of talks with the EU.

When Italy first considered applying for loans from the bloc’s €150 billion SAFE warchest it planned to spend cash on programs including new Lynx armored fighting vehicles and Panther tanks that local defense firm Leonardo is building for the Italian army with Germany’s Rheinmetall.

The deal envisages the delivery of 1,050 Lynx vehicles and 272 Panther tanks as part of a €23 billion euro deal.

In July, Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto said Italy would however cut 18% in costs from the program, suggesting possible delays and order number reductions.

Speaking at last month’s NATO summit in Turkey, Meloni said, “Today, what we are seeing in Ukraine is that a tank worth millions can be destroyed by a drone worth 20,000 euros, and that a person trained to fly drones remotely can be more lethal than a sniper. A reflection is therefore needed on how we invest.”

Last year, Italy said it pushed defense spending from 1.54% of GDP to around %, albeit by reconfiguring existing expenditures as defense spending.

Speaking at the NATO summit, Meloni said spending rose to 2.8% in 2026, although the rise is mainly accounted for by spending on domestic security rather than defense programs.

The 29-year-old — a former science teacher who joined the army in 2023 — was watching the soldiers on a screen in his command post around 15 km (9 miles) away.

Between them stretched the “kill zone,” riddled with mines and swarmed by aerial drones ready to attack anything that moved.

Polskyi, whose military call-sign is “Teacher,” hopped into his grey pick-up truck and raced past scorched fields and the charred husks of other vehicles left on the battlefield of northern Ukraine. He had no helmet or body armour.

“If it had happened to me, I would’ve wanted them to come take me away, and not just leave me there,” the junior lieutenant told Reuters, recalling his Aug. 15 mission to save both men, who were members of another battalion.

His feat captured the country’s attention and earned him its highest military honour, Hero of Ukraine, days later. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy presented him with the award at Independence Day celebrations in Kyiv on Monday.

“People must be taken care of. Thank you, Vladyslav!” Zelenskiy said, announcing the award.

STRANDED DRONE SHOWED LIMITS OF BATTLEFIELD TECH

Speaking to Reuters less than a week after the operation, Polskyi described speeding toward the men while planning how he would load them onto the flatbed of the truck.

The two Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded during a combat mission in the Kharkiv region and were being evacuated atop an unmanned ground vehicle when it was struck by one of Russia’s small, agile helicopter drones loaded with explosives.

Kyiv’s forces have been using remote-controlled unmanned vehicles to help limit human involvement in dangerous tasks like evacuations inside the “kill zone”, seeking an edge against Moscow’s bigger army.

Russia’s successful attack cast light on the limits of the relatively slow and rudimentary vehicles. The Russian drone knocked out the land drone’s Starlink terminal, severing the link with its pilot and leaving it immobilized.

One of the wounded soldiers had managed to crawl into a ditch off the road and hide in the vegetation; the other lay helpless on the four-wheeled vehicle under an open sky, his right foot dangling from the bone.

Ukraine has also made widespread use of attack drones on the battlefield, and says it is killing or wounding around 30,000 Russian soldiers a month — a figure Moscow dismisses as exaggerated.

Both sides frequently post videos of drones hunting down each other’s soldiers in the “kill zone.”

Surveillance drone footage, obtained exclusively by Reuters from Polskyi’s unit, the 475th Assault Regiment, shows his truck hurtling down a gravel road before turning and rapidly reversing toward the damaged drone.

Reuters was able to verify the exact location of the rescue using the full-length footage. However, the regiment asked not to disclose where it took place for security reasons.

At another nearby command post, drone-platoon leader “Malyi” watched as the rescue played out on screens in real time.

“Everyone in the command centre was shocked,” said the 22-year-old, who asked to be identified by his call-sign. Just a single Russian drone or land mine could have killed all three men, he added.

Polskyi — dressed in T-shirt and shorts — hoisted both men onto his truck and raced home, managing to evade the flying Russian drones that had been detected heading toward their new target.

Looking back, he remembered the fear in the men’s eyes. He was afraid too. “But you need to know how to control it,” he said.

France had already provided Ukraine with a production license for the Franco-British weapon, called Storm Shadow in its U.K. variant, back in July.

New U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced his decision to allow sharing the sensitive design details with Ukraine during his first visit to Kyiv on Monday. The two countries are bound by close military cooperation and strong British support for Ukraine’s defense, and signed a 100-year bilateral partnership agreement in 2025.

However, despite the highly symbolic and strategic nature of the SCALP move, it is unlikely that Ukraine will be able to produce large numbers of Storm Shadows in the near future, as it lacks specialized, high-precision manufacturing equipment at scale, complicated by the fact that the country is at war.

Denmark to host Ukrainian missile fuel production in NATO first

France and Ukraine are seeking to set up a joint SCALP production line in Ukraine, but the effort has so far stalled due to a lack of authorization for British-made components.

“The move follows the U.K. being the first to gift long-range strike weapons for defensive purposes to Ukraine in 2023 and will allow the French and Ukrainians to move forward with the Ukrainian assembly of the missile,” the British Prime Minister’s office said in a press statement ahead of Burnham’s public announcement.

The British government said the decision came alongside Project Brakestop, which aims to quickly develop effective and cheap long-range weapons for Ukraine’s use.

Moscow has not taken kindly to the announcement, with former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and current Kremlin advisor Andrei Fedorov telling the BBC that the U.K. could see its factories involved in support for Ukraine face a “semi-military” response, “not by Russia, but from unknown sources.”

Long-range strike abilities for Ukraine have been a sore point for a long time in the Kremlin, and with the humiliating Ukrainian deep-strike campaign targeting oil refineries and warehouses making the war tangible to the Russian public just ahead of elections this September, it’s an especially touchy subject. In response, hybrid warfare across Europe carrying Russian signatures, such as mystery drone appearances and sabotage, have increased.

In May 2023, the U.K. became the first country to publicly supply long-range missiles to Ukraine in the form of Storm Shadow, although initially with a restriction against using them on Russian territory. Shortly after, France followed suit and provided SCALP to Kyiv. In the fall, the U.S. quietly began delivering ATACMS ballistic missiles, though again on the condition they won’t be used on Russian soil directly.

A turning point came in summer 2024, when the Biden administration authorized the use of HIMARS rocket launchers across the border into Russia to help defend Kharkiv. Similar case-specific uses of SCALP and Storm Shadow against Russia followed later that year.

Finally, in May 2025, new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany, the U.K., France, and the U.S. had lifted range restrictions, allowing Ukraine to strike deep across Russia with Western-supplied weapons.

In parallel, Ukraine has been developing domestic deep-strike capabilities, most famously in the form of the FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missile built by the private but state-supported Fire Point enterprise. In recent months, the country has also field-tested various homegrown ballistic missiles, including an incident when the Russian military shot down a Ukrainian ballistic missile just 40 kilometers from Moscow.

Half-meter resolution Planet imagery captured in recent weeks shows the North Korean approach to the bridge fully built, including a customs building and a controlled entry point several hundred meters from the riverbank. Work on the Russian side, by contrast, is still continuing, with construction on border facilities and even the road itself still visibly ongoing. While the footprint for a large customs building and the gravel for a future highway have been laid, at present, the border is still far from opening to commercial traffic on the Russian side.

Long-sought manufacturing gains are boosting North Korea arms buildup

The crossing sits at Tumangang, a longstanding rail hub on the North Korean-Russian border that handled Soviet-era bulk trade before falling largely dormant after 1991. Activity there has picked up sharply since 2022, coinciding with Pyongyang’s decision to supply Moscow with artillery shells and troops for its war in Ukraine, and Russia’s decision to turn a blind eye to the application of UN sanctions against the Kim regime that Moscow had originally helped to put in place.

The border between North Korea and Russia is just 17 kilometers, or 11 miles, long, but increasingly geopolitically significant.

“It’s clear that Kim Jong Un has decided, ‘Our way forward is with Russia,’ and this is emergent proof of it,” said John Ford, a research fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, who has tracked North Korean infrastructure and arms production for years. Ford noted that Pyongyang had sought a symbolic road bridge at the crossing for decades, only for Moscow to rebuff the idea until the diplomatic fallout from its full-scale invasion of Ukraine reshaped the relationship.

According to Ford, in addition to the symbolic value, the bridge may aim to address a persistent bottleneck at Tumangang’s existing rail link, where North Korea’s lack of standardized ISO shipping containers has forced cargo to be transloaded by hand between rail cars − a slow process that has instead pushed much of the ammunition trade through the port of Rason, then by sea to Russia’s Dunai terminal.

A functioning road crossing could let trucks bypass that chokepoint, though Ford cautioned it remains unclear whether it would primarily move Russian goods into North Korea, or North Korean goods, including munitions, out.

“The most surprising thing is that it seems functional,” Ford said, pointing to the impractical location of the construction site. It sits far away from any major urban center in Russia’s far east, and even for North Korea, Tumangang is in a remote corner of the country. Existing transport options, primarily by ship from the nearby port of Rason, seem like the obvious choice. He also noted that Russian truckers are unlikely to drive deep into North Korea given the unpredictable and potentially hostile environment, making a river-adjacent transfer point more plausible to him than a true cross-border logistics route.

What is for certain, though, is that Russia and the country officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have moved much closer together on the world stage since Putin’s 2022 decision to invade Ukraine.

The two countries signed a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” in 2024, which includes a mutual defense clause committing both countries to defend the other in times of war, and many stipulations for cooperation ranging from nuclear to spaceflight.

Ford also pointed to symbolic markers of the deepening alignment, including the restoration of Lenin and Marx portraits at North Korea’s Military Officers Political Academy and Kim’s 2023 visit to Vladivostok, as evidence Pyongyang is betting on a durable partnership with Moscow that could outlast the war in Ukraine.

Whether the bridge meaningfully expands cross-border throughput, Ford said, will only become clear once construction wraps and analysts can watch for signs of actual truck traffic.

Fedorov, a young reformer whose dismissal last month sparked weeks of protests, said Ukraine lacked any overall vision for how to win the four-year-old conflict and was hobbled by its failure to innovate.

Ingrained corruption and patronage networks, as well as a lack of political independence in government institutions, were also holding the country back, he said in an interview.

“I think that there’s now a turning point which will determine our future trajectory, but it looks as though we’re gradually, slowly losing,” Fedorov said in a marked departure from Kyiv’s official rhetoric.

Ukraine still had “every chance” to win but urgently needed a plan to end the war, he added.

Ukraine’s presidential office said in response to Fedorov’s comments that he had been positive about the conduct of the war when he was at the ministry and the only thing that had changed was his personal status.

Lack of interceptors hinders Ukraine

Russia is hammering Ukrainian factories and warehouses with dozens of ballistic missiles a month, which Ukraine is mostly unable to take down as interceptors run low. Although Russia is gaining less ground than last year, it is still slowly crawling forward in the Donbas, while Ukraine’s sparse frontline infantry dugouts are manned mostly by unmotivated conscripts.

Ukraine, in turn, has ramped up its own drone and missile attacks deep into Russia, hitting some key military factories, causing serious damage to oil refineries and creating nationwide fuel shortages.

A poll conducted at the end of July found 82% of Ukrainians believed Ukraine would win, although most expected fighting to carry on into 2027 or later.

Fedorov, 35, was fired six months after his appointment, having initiated reforms around procurement and mobilization that put him on a collision course with the military establishment and political rivals.

Last week, he rocked Ukrainian politics by becoming the first major political figure to demand wartime elections, decrying a “systemic” crisis of governance.

In an interview on Monday, he emphasized the importance of developing autonomous drones guided by artificial intelligence, cheap interceptor missiles to stop Russia’s air attacks and Ukraine’s own ballistic missile program to turn the tide of the war.

Ukrainian manufacturers are already working on those technologies, but Fedorov said the country needed a joined-up strategy to maximize their effect once deployed.

He laid out a vision for a frontline covered by electronic sensors to detect enemies, with drones on land and in the air to minimize human presence.

“Technologies exist already which could completely stop the Russians, but our absence of vision ... means we do not apply them,” he said.

Fedorov criticized the wasted potential and inefficiency of the Ukrainian state, which he said was operating at “5% effectiveness.”

Budget deficit blame game

Fedorov says he was a driving force behind a drone campaign this year targeting Russia’s fuel and military logistics in the occupied part of southern Ukraine, causing problems for Moscow’s forces on the frontline.

He said there was still a window of opportunity of a few months to press ahead with that operation, seeking to isolate Russian-occupied Crimea, before Russia works out how to respond to Ukraine’s tactics.

This strike campaign was a significant factor in shifting narratives about Ukraine’s prospects.

Fedorov previously said the campaign’s success was aided by his decision to front-load spending, which had been earmarked for the second half of 2026.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy — Fedorov’s former political patron turned rival — said at the weekend that bringing spending forward had left a $27 billion hole in the ministry’s budget, for which donor-dependent Ukraine does not have a solution.

Fedorov said he had no idea where Zelenskiy got this figure, arguing his ministry devised a spending plan that relied on savings from new procurement tenders and international support.

Fedorov alleged that when he arrived at the defense ministry, he found department heads appointed at the behest of Ukrainian defense companies to lobby for their interests.

“By the end of the year, the budget deficit under our planning was around five billion dollars, and we knew where we would get it,” he said. “Perhaps the plan changed and new projects emerged that require such a budget.”

Election call

Fedorov’s call for elections was met with dismay from many Ukrainians and polls have consistently shown low enthusiasm for wartime elections.

Zelenskiy condemned Fedorov’s election call, arguing it could destroy Ukraine as it fights off Russia.

Ukraine has, since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, been under martial law which bans elections for security reasons.

The president said Fedorov may be being pushed by outside forces to call for elections. Fedorov staunchly denied this.

While there are enormous logistical challenges to holding wartime elections, Fedorov said that Ukraine would find innovative solutions. However, he said it was too early to say if he would run for the presidency.

In the meantime, Fedorov plans to split his time between his push to restore Ukraine’s elections and ventures focused on innovative military technologies, including an investment fund for which he plans to raise capital during an upcoming trip to the U.S.

The first is a new torpedo launched from an aircraft or drone that glides into the water and acoustically homes in on the target.

The other is a glide kit affixed to an existing torpedo.

The concept seems similar to the Navy’s existing High Altitude Anti-Submarine Warfare Weapon Capability system, which added a glide kit to regular Mark 54 torpedoes that can be launched from P-8 Poseidon patrol planes flying as high as 30,000 feet. Or, the Air Force’s highly successful Joint Attack Direct Munition, which added fins and GPS to turn iron bombs into cheap guided munitions.

Silent Anvil would extend the concept to a wider “range of manned and unmanned aircraft platforms capable of executing ASW missions,” according to the Navy Request for Information. The deadline is Sept. 29.

The Navy seeks a weapon that can be carried internally or externally, and is compatible with a standard BRU-61/A bomb rack. The torpedo should have “compact, lightweight form factor similar to the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) to maximize aircraft carriage options across multiple manned and unmanned platforms.”

This means a weight of no more than 268 pounds, a length of no more than 70 inches and a diameter of up to 7.5 inches. The RFI does not specify the range of Silent Anvil (the Mark 54 has a range of about 5.7 miles).

“The Government is seeking industry input on the maximum standoff glide range achievable,” the Navy said.

The RFI included launch speed and altitude bands: Mach 0.25, 0.50, and 0.85, at altitudes from 10 feet up to 60,000 feet. This is far higher than the P-8’s maximum altitude, and closer to the ceiling of an MQ-4C Triton high-altitude drone.

“SAA-LT shall maximize aerial flight endurance while minimizing aquatic immersion time, restricting water residence strictly to the minimum duration required for successful mission execution,” the Navy said. For the glide-kit version, the torpedo must enter the water at an angle of 45 to 90 degrees and at a velocity of 40-120 feet per second.

The SAA-LT timeline calls for a prototype within 18 months after an agreement award. This would be followed by 180 all-up-round prototypes within three years after a successful demonstration.

SAA-LT comes as China expands both the size and sophistication of its submarine fleet, including large, long-range robot subs. For its part, the U.S. Navy is also developing the Long Range Antisubmarine Warfare weapon, which will extend the reach of rocket-launched ASW torpedoes fired from vertical launch tubes on surface ships.

The Lincoln, which left the Middle East on Saturday, has not made a port call in over ​200 days, setting a modern-day record for consecutive ​days at sea, according to Democratic lawmakers.

The ship, which has roughly ​5,000 sailors and Marines aboard, will be in Thailand for “rest and recreation after their long sea journey,” the official said, asking not to be named.

Thailand’s Navy confirmed a U.S. Navy carrier strike group would make a brief stop in eastern Thailand, with no exercises taking place. It did not name the three vessels or provide a date for the visit, citing security concerns.

“The stop is a routine port visit intended to allow personnel to rest and recuperate ... as well as to receive logistical support,” the Thai Navy’s spokesperson said in a statement.

The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Lincoln left its home port of San Diego in November and was ​later redirected ​to the Middle ⁠East to support U.S. military operations in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Military Times spoke to family members of Lincoln sailors this month, who said that multiple sailors had attempted to go overboard at sea amid declining morale on the ship.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the reports “completely misrepresented” the conditions on board.

Thailand is the United States’ only treaty partner in mainland Southeast Asia, having been a treaty ally since 1954 and a major non-NATO ally since 2003. Both countries’ militaries maintain strong relations.

Andrew Magliochetti, who previously served as the director of the Navy’s Office of Small Business Programs, was tapped by Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao to become the first deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for the defense industrial base.

As the principal civilian advisor to William F. Mahan, the assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, Magliochetti is “charged with driving the revitalization of the maritime industrial base, fostering supply chain resilience, and accelerating the transition of innovative technologies from the private sector to the Fleet,” according to the release.

Magliochetti is tasked with expanding the at times sluggish shipbuilding and U.S. manufacturing and mitigating “supply chain vulnerabilities” that have plagued the Navy in recent decades.

Last March, the Government Accountability Office released a report detailing nearly two decades of lackluster progress in U.S. shipbuilding. According to the GAO, not enough ships have been built, newly constructed ships are failing to function as expected and ships are being delivered up to three years later than ordered.

Overall, the service aims to increase its number of ships dramatically, according to President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion fiscal 2027 defense budget.

The document states that the Navy currently has over 290 battle force ships, though Navy requirements by law call for 355. The service intends to have 395 vessels in fiscal 2027 and 450 vessels by the end of fiscal 2031.

“I am deeply honored to serve as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for the Defense Industrial Base,” said Magliochetti. “An agile, secure industrial base is the cornerstone of our combat readiness. I am committed to accelerating the delivery of resilient supply chains and cutting-edge, dual-use technologies directly into the hands of our warfighters to ensure our sailors and Marines are ready for any high-end fight.”

The acquisition covers “several thousand missiles and several hundred launch units,” PGZ said in a statement. Deliveries of the group’s flagship weapon are to be completed by 2030, with Poland serving as the consortium’s leader.

On Poland’s side, the procurement will be financed from the European Union’s Security Action For Europe (SAFE) scheme which foresees around €43.7 billion ($50.9 billion) in low-cost loans for Warsaw. More than 80% of the acquired gear is to be delivered to the Polish military.

“Not only are we implementing this agreement through the Polish defense industry, but our partners from Lithuania, Latvia and Norway have also decided to make purchases in Poland,” Deputy Defence Minister Magdalena Sobkowiak-Czarnecka said. “For the first time, the Armament Agency is making purchases not only for the Polish Armed Forces, but also for the armed forces of our allies.”

Building on the weapon’s successful use in Ukraine and the resulting international demand for the Piorun, PGZ officials say that, over the past several years, the group has increased its dedicated missile production capacity from 300 to 1,500 units annually, with plans to reach a capacity of more than 2,000 missiles per year.

Amid the weapon’s increasing popularity among European allies, PGZ has also sold the Piorun to numerous countries outside Europe, including the United States, Japan and Indonesia.

The current generation of the MANPADS is able to hit targets at an altitude of up to 4 kilometers (2.5 miles), and it has a range of up to 6.5 kilometers (4 miles), according to data from the producer. PGZ’s subsidiary MESKO, the group’s leading maker of ammunition and rockets, manufactures the Piorun at its plant in Skarżysko-Kamienna, in central Poland.

Meanwhile, PGZ is also working on a new version of the product, the Piorun New Generation (NG). The weapon is to be enabled with a longer range, additional features, and improved portability, company representatives said.

The president discussed the missile shortage as he repeated his call to allies to help bridge the gap in Ukraine’s air defenses and weapons production capabilities during his annual speech commemorating 35 years of Ukrainian independence on Monday.

“A solution to [Putin’s] ballistic terror must be found, and this gamble of his must not pay off,” he said.

Dubbed a lower-cost analogue of the U.S.-made ATACMS, Fire Point’s FP-7 ballistic missile can strike targets up to 186 miles (300 kilometers) away, depending on the size of its warhead, which can weigh up to 331 pounds (150 kilograms), according to company representatives.

The missile was previously expected to be combat-ready no earlier than the end of 2026.

Showing what Ukrainian defence tech looks like when its built for real war 🦾 pic.twitter.com/sCZtUkFEfy

— Fire Point (@FirePointUA) August 19, 2026

Its accelerated debut comes as Kyiv seeks solutions to its shortage of ballistic interceptors and it doubles down on its “long-range sanctions” campaign of strikes on oil refineries and missile launchers across Russian territory.

“The FP-7 is currently undergoing final tests in order to also receive certification and proceed to combat trials. So we expect its first combat use at the end of September,” CEO Iryna Terekh said at the DALO Industry Days arms show in Denmark last week, according to UNN. “We are ready for this; not much preparation remains,” she said.

Producing ballistic missiles could offer Kyiv three forms of relief at once: a way to strike the launchers it can no longer reliably intercept, a way to hold Russian cities at the same risk Ukrainian ones now face and fresh leverage in any return to negotiations, according to Ukrainian officials and military strategists.

With interceptors running low globally, destroying launchers on Russian soil cuts the number of ballistic and cruise missiles that Ukraine has to take down in the air, swapping a small mark racing through the sky for a truck-sized target sitting stationary on the ground.

“Advocates of a more offensive approach argue that the country should be aiming to ‘shoot the archer, not the arrow,’” according to an Atlantic Council brief published earlier this month.

Fielding both missiles would “significantly enhance Kyiv’s ability to strike Russian missile launch and production sites, while also potentially boosting deterrence,” according to the analysis.

The ballistics would also put pressure on Moscow’s war infrastructure more broadly, a coercive deterrent that mirrors the strikes Russia has aimed at Ukraine’s since 2022.

Ukrainian officials and company spokespeople have also said that they hope that bringing ballistic warfare to Russian soil will help push Moscow back to the negotiating table.

“The Russians must be brought to the negotiating table. There finally must be sanctions that will make them howl,” Zelenskyy said during Monday’s address. “Ukraine must be given everything that will force [Russia] to end the war. And this is possible.”

Fire Point will debut its next-generation missile, the larger FP-9, by late autumn, company representatives told Reuters earlier this month.

Traveling at speeds up to 2,200 meters per second, the FP-9 will be capable of carrying a 1,764-pound (800 kilogram) warhead as far as 531 miles (855 kilometers) — putting Moscow well within range, according to United24.

Destinus will develop a kinetic counter-UAS capability for the Navy based on its Hornet B2 interceptor, the company said in an emailed statement late Monday. The program will include delivery of the interceptors, integration with several warships and support towards a possible initial operating capability, with the program slated for completion in the second quarter of 2027.

“The threat of drones at medium range is increasing,” the Dutch Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Monday. “That’s clear from both operational analyses as well as the current threat picture during maritime operations. Sailing units therefore need additional means to effectively defend themselves in fleets.”

Ukraine has been using low-cost interceptor drones to defeat one-way attack UAVs, offering a potential solution for Western navies that have found themselves firing expensive missiles at relatively cheap Houthi drones in the Red Sea. The U.S. Navy has already installed launchers for Raytheon’s Coyote interceptor on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

The new system will be an addition to existing armaments, the Dutch MoD said. The system will consist of a base station and a launch platform that can fire a drone interceptor, and the C-UAS solution will continue to be developed through testing, the ministry said.

“The program addresses the growing requirement for scalable naval protection against low-cost, high-volume aerial threats,” Destinus said.

The company said an earlier version of the interceptor, the Hornet B1, is already in serial production. The system consists of an interceptor launched from a sealed canister by a rocket booster, before deploying its wings and transitioning to electric-powered cruise flight.

The interceptor is designed to intercept one-way attack systems using electro-optical and infrared sensing and AI-based processing for the terminal phase, at a cost per engagement “far below that of traditional interceptor missiles,” according to Destinus.

“Low-cost aerial threats have inverted the economics of naval air defense: no navy can sustainably trade multimillion-euro missiles against low-cost threats arriving at volume,” Destinus CEO Mikhail Kokorich said in a statement. “Hornet B2 answers this with a different architecture.”

The Dutch Navy will contribute direct operational expertise throughout the development and evaluation process, shaping capability requirements and system specifications, Destinus said. That will reduce the need for adaptation after system development, according to the company.

The U.S. Marine Corps formally notified its South Korean counterpart in June that force availability would be constrained for the division-level exercise, known as Ssangyong, a South Korean Marine Corps spokesperson told a press briefing.

The allies remain in close consultations on resuming the drills, the spokesperson said. He did not specify what measures might be taken to prevent future cancelations or to make up for lost training opportunities.

U.S. Forces Korea did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Later on Monday, the U.S. State Department said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun about a “range of issues” in their alliance.

Rubio told his South Korean counterpart that Washington and Seoul need to remain in close coordination on matters integral to their alliance, according to a State Department statement.

The cancelation of the amphibious landing drill follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise order to scale back a separate annual joint military exercise that ended last Friday, citing the cost and Seoul’s refusal to take part in the Iran war.

Trump also wrote on his Truth Social platform that the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills sent “a signal that was totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.” Despite the reduction of the exercises, Pyongyang fired 10 short-range ballistic missiles last week and issued a statement denouncing the exercises.

North Korea has long condemned such joint exercises as rehearsals for invasion.

The potential deal was made possible by the U.S. Department of State’s approval of a Foreign Military Sale to Italy of 5,031 BAE Systems Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) II guidance systems.

The APKWS, which can be inserted between the warhead of an unguided missile and its motor, features four fold-out wings which each carry a laser seeker, turning a missile that costs less than €100,000 ($117,000) into a guided weapon.

The solution would allow the Italian Air Force to avoid firing missiles like the AMRAAM - which costs ten times that - to destroy cheaply produced drones.

“The proposed sale will improve Italy’s capability to meet current and future threats by strengthening its homeland defense and serving as a deterrent to regional threats,” the State Department said.

The FMS approval also covers launchers, warheads and rocket motors, as well as technical support, taking the potential deal to $364 million, the State Department added.

Sources in Italy told Defense News no contract had been signed and the technology was still being evaluated. The likely recipient of the APKWS would be Italy’s Eurofighter jet, which is already guarding Europe’s borders against drone incursions.

This month, an Italian Eurofighter taking part in NATO air policing mission in the Baltics shot down an unidentified drone which flew into Latvian airspace.

In May, the Royal Air Force announced it was already using the system on its Eurofighters after a rapid acquisition which saw testing and deployment completed in two months.

“The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) gives RAF pilots a highly accurate option to destroy aerial targets and allows them to engage drones at a fraction of the cost of traditional air-to-air missiles,” the RAF said at the time.

The companies signed a letter of intent on Sunday to combine General Cherry’s expertise in small drones and Patria’s unmanned-technology expertise and defense-industry experience, which will allow them to jointly develop unmanned vehicles for Western European defense needs, they said in a statement on Sunday.

The announcement is part of a broader wave of European defense-industrial cooperation with Ukrainian drone makers. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in December announced plans to produce various Ukrainian drones in Germany, while Ukrainian UAV makers including Skyeton and Ukrspecsystems are partnering or investing in the United Kingdom to produce drones there.

“Unmanned defense systems are central to the future of defenses,” said Mikko Leino, Patria’s executive vice president for defense and weapon systems, in the statement. “The partnership with General Cherry further reinforces Patria’s expertise in unmanned defence systems and drone development.”

As part of the collaboration, Patria plans to start drone production in Finland, which would help build up Europe’s defense capabilities and support the Finnish firm’s aim to be an innovative product developer, the company said in a statement on Sunday.

“Our unique battlefield experience, combined with Patria’s technological capabilities, can help drive a fundamental transformation of the European and global security architecture,” said Stanislav Hryshyn, co-founder of General Cherry, in the statement.

Patria didn’t immediately respond to phone calls and emailed questions about the cooperation plans, including whether the Finnish company will produce existing General Cherry drone models or when Finnish production could start.

General Cherry produces a range of drones, including one-way FPV strike drones and interceptor drones, and the company says its products are in use with more than 200 military units across the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Burnham will be in Ukraine to co-chair a meeting of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, a group of countries backing Ukraine, on Monday, when he is also due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

He is set to announce that Britain has agreed to allow European missile manufacturer MBDA to release classified information on British-made components used in the SCALP long-range cruise missile, according to his office.

That will help enable France and Ukraine to establish local assembly lines for the missile, which shares British and French technology, according to Downing Street.

“Ukraine’s security is our security,” Burnham said in a statement, adding that Britain would stand by Ukraine “for as long as it takes.”

Britain has been one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, providing military support, economic aid and diplomatic backing.

Britain was the first country to announce plans to supply Ukraine with Western-made battle tanks and long-range cruise missiles following the invasion and has pledged more than £25 billion ($34 billion) so far in military and civilian support.

REASSURANCE OF UK SUPPORT

Moscow warned London last week of “consequences” for supplying drones to Kyiv, accusing Britain of deepening its involvement in the war following a report ​that British-made drones had been used for long-range strikes against Russia ​for the first time.

Burnham is expected to use his visit to reassure Ukraine and its allies that Britain would continue to play a leading role in efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s security under his government.

The push to expand Ukraine’s domestic missile production comes as Ukraine increasingly relies on long-range drones and strike weapons to target Russian oil refineries and logistics facilities far behind the front lines.

The visit comes weeks after Zelenskyy traveled to Britain in late July as Burnham’s first international guest, following the Labour leader’s election as prime minister a week earlier.

The United States, which has been at war with Iran since Feb. 28, requested their temporary deployment under an agreement governing the joint use of military facilities.

Iran said at the time that their deployment would constitute complicity in “aggression and war crimes”, a charge that Sofia dismissed.

The two U.S. Air Force KC-135 planes left Bulgaria on Friday, Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov told reporters.

The U.S. authorities could not be immediately reached for comment.

The deployment of the aircraft, approved by Bulgaria’s parliament on July 22, led to protests by nearby residents who feared the planes would be attacked by Iranian missiles and drones.

Stoyanov said all the aircraft’s flights during their temporary deployment had been training missions over allied countries and that Bulgaria had “no information about direct threats to our national security.”

“We are working in full coordination with the U.S. government and had prior information, which is why all our decisions were well-founded,” he said.