“Expertise is not a drone, but a skill, a strategy, a system where a drone is one part of the defense,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Reuters on Monday.

Ukraine now produces roughly 1,000 interceptor drones a day through hundreds of vetted manufacturers, deliberately dispersed so that no single strike can cripple the supply chain, Zelenskyy reported last month. The country has the technical capacity to double that figure, he said, but lacks the budget to do so.

While Ukraine has built that infrastructure gradually over the last few years, most countries now trying to integrate interceptors into the air defense have not invested in building the necessary logistical framework needed to effectively build, arm or deploy the cheap flyers.

Some countries have already learned this lesson the hard way.

After some Ukrainian companies built interceptor drone factories abroad without state approval, multiple buyers complained because the drones were sold without the warheads or expertise needed to operate them properly, Zelenskyy said on Friday, per Ukrainska Pravda.

“They had also been sold a certain number of interceptors — again without explosives,” Zelenskyy said about a European country he visited recently. “And they asked me whether we could send more operators. I said no.”

The bottleneck isn’t the interceptor itself, but the logistics infrastructure to produce and sustain them at scale, officials said.

“It seems there is still a misconception,” Artem Moroz, head of investor relations at Brave1, wrote on LinkedIn last month.

Brave1, Ukraine’s defense-tech accelerator, has worked with more than 500 defense startups since 2023 and now serves as the primary gateway for foreign governments seeking access to Ukrainian drone technology and production partnerships.

“Many believe Ukraine could simply send a few hundred interceptor drones to the Middle East and stop the Shahed drones currently hitting critical infrastructure,” Moroz said. “Drone warfare is far more complex than that.

“Yes, hardware matters. And Ukraine knows how to build drones at scale. But the real advantage lies in the infrastructure behind them.”

Companies launch drone-production innovations

The gap between buying a drone and building the system to sustain it is the market several defense companies are now racing to fill.

A handful of defense companies from Helsinki to San Francisco are offering the production line, the detection system and the supply infrastructure compressed into a portable unit that can be shipped anywhere to produce up to dozens of drones a day.

Sensofusion, a Finnish defense company founded in 2016, sells a full-cycle drone production chain as one of the latest innovators in this arena.

The company’s $2.4 million (€2.1 million Euros) Tactical Drone Factory is a standard 20-foot shipping container equipped with industrial 3D printers, an electronics assembly station and enough spares to run around the clock with a crew of three, producing up to 50 interceptor drones a day, according to the company.

What sets the Finnish system apart from its competitors is that it’s not just a factory: It ships as a package with Sensofusion’s Airfence radio-frequency detection and tracking platform, designed to detect a hostile drone, cue an interceptor and guide it to the kill — a full sensor-to-effector chain in a box.

The company says each interceptor costs less than $580 (€500) and is built to chase targets at speeds up to 310 mph (500 km/h).

Although Sensofusion boasts some of the highest production numbers on the market, it’s not the first company to market the concept of a portable all-in-one drone production hub.

Firestorm Labs' xCell system, the most tested U.S. equivalent to Sensofusion, uses two containers and works at a significantly slower pace by producing roughly 50 drones per month. Its newly announced SQUALL airframe is the first drone purpose-built to come off a mobile factory line, according to the company.

Founded in 2022, Firestorm’s biggest selling point is its testing and validation. The company holds a $100 million U.S. Air Force contract, has run field exercises with Air Force Special Operations Command and the Air National Guard and raised $47 million in Series A funding.

Per Se Systems, a French firm, operates in a middle ground by building micro drone factories on trailers — instead of shipping containers — that produce up to ten drones per hour on a generator with 19 hours of autonomous operation.

Per Se has been field-tested with 12 French Army regiments and is embedded in four active development projects with the French military, according to Army Recognition.

The drawbacks of production containers

Some logistics and strategy specialists say the all-in-one package wrapped into the portable factory concept ignores some critical battlefield questions that could render the projects useless.

A container full of printers, raw materials, sensitive electronics and proprietary design files concentrates exactly the kind of capability an adversary would want to destroy or capture, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis that identified several strategic vulnerabilities in frontline drone production.

And the problems compound from there.

Airframes can be printed, but the motors, batteries, electronic speed controllers, radios and sensors that make a drone combat-capable cannot, and those components must be trucked to the container through the same supply chains the factory is supposed to bypass.

Quality control under field conditions remains untested. Vibration, temperature swings, dust and intermittent power degrade the dimensional tolerances that 3D-printed parts require, and no company has demonstrated sustained production outside a controlled environment.

“Industrial resilience is combat power,” the CSIS experts concluded. “The next war will not be won by who initially fields the most drones, but by who sustains building them at scale.”

Several countries are catching on to the growing need to invest in drone production logistics.

Five NATO nations — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Poland — launched a joint initiative in February to develop affordable interceptor drones within a year under a program called LEAP, explicitly drawing on Ukrainian battlefield know-how to do it.

Ukraine’s experts say they are ready and willing to share their hard-earned lessons with allies, including the strategies to build a new layer of defense alongside the new weapons themselves.

“What Ukraine has built is a deep operational ecosystem across multiple domains, designed for conflicts where entirely new types of threats appear,” Brave1’s Moroz said.

“And ecosystems like this are extremely hard to copy,” he explained. “Even investing hundreds of billions or a trillion today would not easily replicate the experience, integration, and speed of iteration built over years of real combat.”

His final words of advice to allies?

“Drones are the tool. The infrastructure is the weapon.”

The air-defense interception rate has been steadily rising in recent months, according to data from Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, climbing to 89.9% in March from 85.6% in February and 80.2% in December. At the same time, Russian attacks increased to 6,600 last month from 5,345 in February, the ministry said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week visited Middle Eastern countries facing Iranian drone attacks, offering to share the interception expertise Ukraine has built up over four years of Russian air war. With air-defense missiles in short supply and costly, Ukraine has turned to solutions ranging from AI-assisted machine guns on pickup trucks to electronic warfare and interceptor drones.

“The frequency of attacks is increasing but air defense performance is improving,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said.

Russia is promoting its own air-defense successes, with TASS reporting on Tuesday that a so-called Donbass Dome is making Ukraine’s high-speed Skat drone ineffective, citing claims by the Russian Federal Security Service Directorate. The air-defense system is able to repel “virtually any drone of this type,” the state-owned news agency said.

Ukraine is building a multi-layered air defense system and stepping up production of interceptors in order to protect civilians and critical infrastructure, according to a war plan presented by Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov in February. The goal is real-time detection of all aerial threats, and intercepting at least 95% of them.

The country could produce 2,000 drone interceptors a day, provided it has sufficient funding, Zelenskyy told Reuters in an interview in March. In the Kyiv region in February, more than 70% of Russian Shahed-type drones were destroyed by interceptor drones, according to Ukraine’s commander in chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Recent Ukrainian interceptor-drone models include the JEDI Shahed Hunter, a multi-rotor drone that can hit speeds of more 350 kilometers per hour, and the winged Shvidun with a speed of more than 250 kilometers per hour and an operational range of more than 70 kilometers.

Beyond equipment innovation, Ukraine is also experimenting by allowing private companies to develop their own air-defense capabilities to protect infrastructure, while being part of the broader command-and-control system. One company already shot down several drones in Kharkiv Oblast, with another 13 firms authorized to set up air-defense groups, the Ministry of Defense said on Monday.

The reusable Bird of Prey interceptor drone completed its first demonstration flight at a military training area in northern Germany in a “realistic mission scenario,” the companies said in a joint statement on Monday. The interceptor autonomously searched, detected and classified a medium-sized one-way attack drone, which it then engaged with Frankenburg’s Mark I air-to-air missile.

The war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East have underscored the challenge of defending against relatively low-cost one-way munitions such as Iran’s Shahed drones, which can cost a fraction of the interceptors used to shoot them down, leaving Western militaries and defense firms scrambling to find affordable countermeasures rather than relying on scarce, high-end air-defense missiles.

“Defending against kamikaze drones is a tactical priority that urgently needs to be tackled,” said Mike Schoellhorn, the chief executive officer of Airbus Defence and Space, in a statement. He said the Airbus drone with Frankenburg’s affordable missiles is an “effective, cost-efficient interceptor, filling a crucial capability gap in today’s asymmetric conflict theaters.”

The Bird of Prey drone is based on the jet-powered Airbus Do-DT25 target drone, which has a published maximum speed of 300 knots, or 555 kilometers per hour.

The drone-missile combination makes large-scale interception economically viable, with a single reusable interceptor able to perform multiple air-to-air engagements, with an “order-of-magnitude reduction in cost per intercept,” Frankenburg said in a social-media post. Integration of its missile on the Airbus platform was completed in nine months, according to the startup.

Airbus & Frankenburg: Mark I missile engages kamikaze drone in first airborne intercept

Frankenburg’s Mark I guided interceptor missile has been successfully integrated for air-to-air launch with @AirbusDefence Bird of Prey uncrewed interceptor drone.

In a live demonstration,… pic.twitter.com/L6pmjxssJO

— Frankenburg Technologies (@FrankenburgTech) March 30, 2026

The interceptor-drone prototype has a wingspan of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) and a maximum takeoff weight of 160 kilograms. The drone in the test was equipped with four of Frankenburg’s Mark 1 missiles, while the operational version will be able to carry eight of the missiles, the companies said.

“This is a defining step for modern air defense,” Frankenburg CEO Kusti Salm said. “It marks the first integration of a new class of low-cost, mass-manufacturable interceptor missiles onto a drone, creating a new cost curve for air defense and enabling defense against mass aerial threats at a fundamentally different scale.”

The Frankenburg Mark 1 missile is a high subsonic, fire-and-forget missile with an engagement range of up to 1.5 kilometers (0.9 mile), and its length of 65 centimeters and weight of less than 2 kilograms makes the Mark 1 the lightest guided interceptor developed to date, according to the companies. The missiles are equipped with a fragmentation warhead.

Airbus and Frankenburg plan more test flights in 2026 with a live warhead to move to “further operationalize” the system, and demonstrate its capabilities to potential customers. Bird of Prey is designed to fit into NATO’s integrated air-defense architecture via Airbus’s integrated battle-management system, the companies said.

The most serious incident occurred at 3:43 a.m. on March 25, when a drone crossing Estonian airspace from Russia struck the chimney of the Auvere power station in the eastern Ida-Viru County − located less than 50 kilometers from the Russian port of Ust-Luga, which Ukraine was striking overnight. No one was injured and the plant’s power output was not affected, Estonian energy company Enefit Power said. But the incident was enough to trigger an emergency government session in Tallinn and a nationwide alarm alert that caused confusion when it failed to specify the affected region.

The Director General of the Estonian Internal Security Service, Margo Palloson, confirmed it was “indeed a drone of Ukrainian” origin, and Estonia’s foreign minister stressed it “was not directed at Estonia.”

Estonian Defense Forces Commander Lt. Gen. Andrus Merilo said investigators were working to determine what type of drone hit the plant, but he was unambiguous about its payload. “We can say with fairly high confidence that it was not a reconnaissance drone, but rather an explosive-laden device — either an attack drone or a decoy drone,” he told reporters.

Earlier the same night, a drone entered Latvian airspace from Russia and detonated in the Krāslava region in southeastern Latvia at around 2:30 a.m., according to Latvian military authorities. Latvian Deputy Chief of Joint Staff Egils Leščinskis said the object was detected by radar roughly ten minutes before impact. “The aircraft most likely veered off course or was affected by electromagnetic warfare measures,” he said.

On Monday night, a Ukrainian drone had already come down in the Varena district of southeastern Lithuania, near the Belarusian border, following a separate attack on Primorsk − Russia’s other major Baltic oil port, which had been burning for over two days by Wednesday. Lithuanian authorities confirmed the drone had flown over Belarus before crashing.

Researchers home in on origins of Russia’s Baltic GPS jamming

It’s not clear why these Ukrainian drones are now repeatedly falling on Western territory rather than reaching their intended Russian targets, but Russian GPS jamming and spoofing have been singled out as a likely cause by officials and analysts. Russian transmitters are known to block and falsify Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, such as those from the GPS and European Galileo satellite constellations. This can cause drones to lose track of their location or even veer off course when the systems on board are fed falsified location information.

“It’s electronic warfare with the aim of preventing being hit by things that use satellite navigation – drones,” Ralf Ziebold of the German Aerospace Center DLR previously told Defense News for an investigation that geolocated the origin of these signals.

It’s unclear whether Russia is actively redirecting drones to NATO countries or whether the incursions are simply a byproduct of EW defenses protecting key infrastructure and assets on Russian soil. Western officials so far have described the incidents as accidents.

In addition to electronic warfare, the distances at play are huge: Some of the targets Ukrainian drones were intending to strike were up to 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian territory, making these some of the longest-distance strikes Ukraine has conducted. These long flights can magnify minor navigational errors.

Russian media, heavily controlled by the Kremlin, have reported that the Baltic States have opened their air spaces for the overflight of Ukrainian drones on their way to strike targets in the Leningrad oblast. The claim, which was picked up by Russian state-owned TV channel Rossiya 1, appears to have originated from Mash, one of the most widely read Russian-language Telegram channels.

None of the three drones was intercepted by the Baltic states’ or allied air defense systems. The EDF commander acknowledged that engaging drones near the Russian border is legally and tactically constrained. “Our goal is to avoid any unintended escalation, so we certainly cannot engage drones where there is even the slightest risk that our actions could carry over into Russian territory,” Merilo said.

The incidents follow a growing number of drone incursions along the eastern flank. In July 2025, Lithuania recorded two incursions by Russian-origin Gerbera drones crossing from Belarus − the second of which was found at the Gaižiūnai military training ground carrying approximately two kilograms of explosives, some 100 kilometers inside NATO territory. In August, Ukrainian drone fragments were found near Elva in south-central Estonia after a night of Ukrainian strikes on Russian inland targets. The following month, Latvia recovered Gerbera fragments on a western beach.

That accumulation of incidents has sharpened allied frustration. “These are the effects of Russia’s full-scale war of aggression. We can assume that we will see more such incidents,” said Margo Palloson, director general of Estonia’s Internal Security Service.

Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina drew a connection with Western capitals’ preoccupation with the war against Iran: the attacks on Ukraine and their spillover were intensifying “at a time when the attention of the West has been diverted by events in the Middle East,” she said.

Latvian Defense Minister Andris Sprūds cut short a visit to Kyiv, where he had been delivering drones to Ukrainian forces, to return home. Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said Vilnius had opened talks with Kyiv. None of the governments signaled any intent to invoke Article 4 or 5, and all three publicly attributed the drone incidents to the spillover of Russia’s war.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi addressed the incidents at a press conference, stating that Kyiv is in close contact with its partners to clarify all details and that such incidents “have been occurring regularly” in the Baltic states.

The incursions show that the Baltic states’ air defenses may still be unprepared to tackle modern drone threats and raise questions about whether Russia is deliberately redirecting Ukrainian drones to Western states, or whether the incidents can be chalked up as collateral. With Ukraine striking deep into Russia and targeting the Leningrad Oblast along corridors that pass directly over or near the Baltics in particular, more incidents of the Baltic states inadvertently ending up in the crossfire of the war in Ukraine seem likely.

The service received the aircraft, designated H-60Mx, and said the Black Hawk variant will begin rigorous testing of its ability to operate with a reduced crew or autonomously.

According to a March 20 Army release, the helicopter uses autonomy software developed under a Defense Department program to enable flight with minimal human input.

The Army said the aircraft is modified with “fly-by-wire” controls, which replace mechanical systems with electronic ones that allow computer-assisted flight. The system allows onboard computers to interpret pilot inputs and adjust flight controls in real time, making the aircraft more stable and easier to handle in difficult conditions.

“Functioning like a highly advanced digital co-pilot, the system can manage the most complex tasks of flight, from takeoff to landing,” the statement reads. “This allows the helicopter to perform missions completely on its own or with a remote crew supervising from a secure ground station, offering unprecedented flexibility.”

The technology behind H-60Mx traces back to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program known as Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System, or ALIAS, which began more than a decade ago to develop automation kits for aircraft already in use. The program was intended to create a removable autonomy kit that could be installed on existing aircraft to reduce crew workload so pilots could focus on other critical tasks.

Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary that manufactures the Black Hawk, worked with the Army to integrate the autonomy system onto the aircraft, the company said in a release.

In the coming months, Army test pilots and engineers will put the helicopter’s autonomy systems through rigorous testing, the Army said, to see how effectively the technology can be controlled from the ground and how successfully the systems perform in complex scenarios.

The Army said that this aircraft represents the start of a potentially larger initiative, as it is the serves as the “primary testbed” for the Strategic Autonomy Flight Enabler program, or SAFE, which seeks to create an autonomy kit that could be put into any of the Army’s Black Hawks.

The Army said it is working with Texas A&M University’s George H.W. Bush Combat Development Complex, which is also using ALIAS technology, to study how autonomous aircraft can be used for combatting wildfires, among other things.

The Army has tested autonomous technology in a Black Hawk before. In a 2025 training exercise, a U.S. Army National Guardsman used a touchscreen tablet to operate an Optionally Piloted Vehicle Black Hawk. The Guardsman transported a 2,900-pound water buffalo slingload, according to previous Military Times reporting.

Lockheed Martin announced the first autonomous Black Hawk flight in 2022, when the aircraft finished a 30-minute mission without a human in the cockpit.

The push towards autonomy goes beyond helicopters. Defense technology firm Shield AI in 2025 unveiled an autonomous vertical takeoff fighter jet, called X-BAT, that is designed to operate without runways.

Autonomy has also become a touchpoint of military innovation outside of aviation, with developments ranging from unmanned vehicles for mortar supply to autonomous drones to clean up chemical and biological weapons.

The two nations are seeking a comprehensive suite of commercial systems that can detect and destroy a variety of undersea robots, including unmanned underwater vehicles, remotely operated vehicles and semisubmersibles.

“Current solutions are fragmented, expensive, and limited in number,” warned the solicitation. The primary focus of the Robotic Exclusion and Engagement Framework, or REEF, project is to protect “ports and harbors from underwater threats of varying size and sophistication, while the broader goal is to protect all U.S. critical waterways.”

DIU envisions using off-the-shelf sensors, edge processing, active and passive sensors, sensor fusion, decoys and other technologies to create a stand-alone solution that can be quickly deployed as needed. This can include fixed systems such as moored buoys and buried cables, or mobile systems such as USVs, UUVs, UAVs and drifting buoys.

Sensors should be able to utilize artificial intelligence to discriminate between hostile undersea drones, versus nonthreats such as marine life, cargo ships and fishing vessels.

“The system must provide sufficient detection-to-response time for human in-the-loop decision-making such that underwater threats can be safely interdicted or neutralized,” the solicitation noted.

The system will employ kinetic and nonkinetic approaches to stop drones. Nonkinetic methods can include rapidly deployable nets, bubble curtains and synthetic barriers. Kinetic defenses can include kinetic payloads, acoustic directed energy and physical coupling devices.

Preference will be given to nonkinetic solutions, the solicitation said.

REEF will emphasize decoys to protect waterways and critical infrastructure. “Capabilities to confuse adversarial underwater craft are of high interest. These can be low-cost attritable systems or more technologically advanced systems that use signals to act as a decoy to prevent the successful completion of the adversary’s mission,” according to the solicitation.

REEF should require little training to operate, and use AI to provide users with suggestions. It must be compatible with existing U.S. command-and-control systems and common operating pictures.

Cooperation with the U.K. will be eased by a 2024 Department of Commerce interim final rule that allows some controlled items to be shared with Britain. British companies are eligible for export control relief under General Export Authorization No. 001.

The Dutch armed forces already incorporate drones in their operations, and will expand that capability “significantly” by deploying 1,000 to 1,200 personnel specifically for drone and counter-drone operations, Eichelsheim said in the WNL Op Zondag podcast on Sunday.

Drones have become ubiquitous on the battlefield in recent years, with much of the development driven by the war in Ukraine, where the government says unmanned aerial systems now account for more than 80% of enemy targets destroyed. Meanwhile, Iran’s one-way Shahed drones have been causing destruction across the Middle East since the United States and Israel started striking the country.

“The lessons identified and learned from the war in Ukraine were in any case that unmanned systems were going to play a much greater role,” Eichelsheim said. “We’re seeing that now in the Middle East, and the same goes for the conflict with Iran.”

Eichelsheim said drone warfare requires a “completely different approach” to collaborating with industry on the front lines, as systems require continuous modernization and adaptation. That includes radars that have to be adjusted to respond to threats, or unmanned systems that become either more or less effective over time, the defense chief said.

“So you have to continuously adapt,” Eichelsheim said. “That too requires a change in how we operate.”

Armed forces across Europe have been trying to figure out how to adapt to an era of mass drone warfare, with Russia and Ukraine each using millions of drones a year in their war that has entered its fifth year. The Netherlands in December ordered Skyranger anti-drone cannons from Rheinmetall to protect maneuvering troops as well as static sites.

Regarding the conflict in the Middle East, the Dutch chief of defense said that while Iran’s defensive capabilities have been destroyed, the country retains a large portion of its offensive capabilities.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the U.S. was “getting very close to its objectives” in Iran, with the fight militarily won.

“Iran is still perfectly capable of launching ballistic missiles and maintain mobility regarding its launch sites,” Eichelsheim said. “So it is not quite as Mr. Trump says that Iran has been completely taken out. That is absolutely not the case.”

While the United States and Israel have air superiority, Iran has been clever about hiding launchers, and making them mobile, according to the Dutch general. He said Iran is “nowhere near halfway” through its missile stock, which makes it hard to say how long the conflict will continue.

The Netherlands and its allies are drawing up an inventory of the capabilities that could contribute to securing the Strait of Hormuz, to be able to brief policy makers on what the military options are, according to Eichelsheim. “We’re really still right at the very beginning of the planning process.”

The vessel, identified as an AEGIR-W variant, came aground on a beach in the Yüceler neighborhood of Ünye district in Ordu province. Locals discovered the craft and informed the authorities.

According to a statement issued by the Ordu Governorate, Turkish Navy explosive ordnance disposal specialists conducted a technical inspection of the vesselon March 21.

The examination determined that the craft remained operationally active and was carrying a warhead. Given the assessed risk, authorities made the decision to tow the vessel approximately four kilometers from the shoreline and destroy it in a controlled detonation.

Görseller üzerinden yapılan incelemelerde, bahsi geçen İDA'nın, AEGIR ailesinin AEGIR-W adlı üyesi olduğu görülüyor.

Yaklaşık 10 metre uzunluğundaki AEGIR-W, azami 900 kilometre menzile sahip ve 25+ knot sürate ulaşabiliyor. Otonom olarak görev icra edebilen İDA'nın faydalı yük… https://t.co/Uqdb24Z73G pic.twitter.com/jZ3DjBbdx0

— SavunmaSanayiST.com (@SavunmaSanayiST) March 21, 2026

The AEGIR-W is a long-endurance unmanned surface vessel designed for operations in high-threat maritime environments. The platform measures under ten meters in length, is constructed from high-density polyethylene, and is powered by a diesel combustion engine.

It is capable of reaching speeds in excess of 25 knots and carries a maximum payload of 300 kilograms across a range of 500 nautical miles at cruise speed. The vessel can operate either fully autonomously or under direct human operator control, depending on mission requirements.

According to Sierra Nevada Corporation’s product documentation, the AEGIR family — which also includes the AEGIR-F stealth variant and the longer-range AEGIR-H — is designed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare, offensive operations, and autonomous resupply tasks.

The Black Sea has become an increasingly active theater for unmanned maritime systems since the start of Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion in February 2022.

This is the fifth time an out-of-control naval surface drone has been found on Turkish shores since September 2025. In previous cases the vessels were Ukrainian Magura-family craft. This is the first time that a foreign-made system has been confirmed present in the region.

“In the early hours of Operation Epic Fury last month, a deployed [Fly-Away Kit] successfully detected and defeated sUAS operating over a strategic U.S. installation,” Guillot said in his written statement ahead of a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday.

Although he did not give details about the installation threatened, Guillot revealed that the threat was defeated by USNORTHCOM’s counter-drone Fly-Away Kit.

The FAK is produced by Anduril and was “designed specifically to detect, track, identify and mitigate drone incursions at military installations within the United States,” USNORTHCOM previously said. The kit is manned by a team of 11 soldiers who became operational as a rapid counter-drone response force last November.

The Defense Department’s lead counter-drone task force, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, did not provide specific details about the location or nature of the incident but told Military Times that the unit will continue to monitor the situation.

“We are aware of the action reported by U.S. Northern Command, and we continue to work closely with them on how best to array our c-UAS capability to defend the homeland,” a spokesperson for the JIATF-401 told Military Times.

“We also work with our law enforcement and interagency partners to monitor and investigate illicit drone use around military installations and other defense critical infrastructure. Our top priority is the safety of our service members and civilian personnel that work and live on the base.”

The FAK features an enhanced array of sensors to detect rogue drones, including Anduril’s Wisp, an AI-infrared system with 360-degree motion sensor; a Heimdal mobile sensor trailer that uses thermal optics and radar; and Pulsar, an AI-enhanced electromagnetic warfare platform.

It uses a self-guided drone interceptor called Anvil to home in on and ram drones out of the sky.

USNORTHCOM expects to receive more of the kits in late spring, according to Guillot’s written testimony.

During the committee hearing Thursday, in response to questions from Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Guillot also revealed that the U.S. has seen a spike in drone intrusions over military installations over the the last year.

“Some of that might be due to the fact that we have more detection capability now than we did in the past, and then our ability to defeat them has improved,” Guillot said. “Whereas a year ago, almost every one that was detected was not defeated. Now about a quarter of the ones that we detect we’re able to defeat.”

Guillot stated that he works closely with U.S. Strategic Command to ensure that submarine silos, aircraft bases and other key locations have adequate protection from potential threats posed by small unmanned aircraft systems.

Meanwhile, as a deterrent to drone intrusions, the Defense Department, along with the Federal Aviation Administration and other federal agencies, announced a zero-tolerance policy toward unauthorized drone flights in restricted airspace, with penalties including fines of over $100,000, criminal charges and imprisonment.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said teams had been sent to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan, states that have come under fire during the Iran war.

He said that local air defense units were dealing with ballistic missiles, while Ukrainian specialists were focused on the waves of Iran’s Shahed drones.

“I believe no one has experience comparable to ours,” Zelenskyy told journalists in audio messages on a WhatsApp chat, adding that 228 Ukrainian specialists were now in the region.

“We are working with the Middle East — with leaders, at the technical level, and with ministries of defense. In general, we are preparing serious arrangements and agreements,” he said.

Ukraine opens battlefield AI data to allies in world-first move

His security council secretary Rustem Umerov has visited all five of those countries this week, and said earlier on Friday that further steps for “long-term security cooperation” had been outlined with each, without giving details.

Kyiv has said nearly a dozen countries have sought its help and advice in defending against cheap kamikaze drones, which Iran is using against its Gulf neighbors. Russia has launched similar drones at Ukraine since its 2022 invasion, and Kyiv has developed its own advanced interceptor drone capabilities.

Although Gulf states operate sophisticated U.S.-made air defense systems, the missiles they use are in short supply and they cost much more than Iran’s Shahed drones.

Moscow has bombarded Ukraine with nearly 60,000 Shaheds and similar systems. It initially bought thousands of them from Iran, before establishing its own production facilities to make them under license. Ukraine has also launched drone attacks at Russia, although on a smaller scale.

Umerov said on Friday that drone interception units were initially protecting civilian and critical infrastructure, and work was under way to expand their coverage areas.

The teams were using Ukrainian technology to counter drone attacks and partners were consulting with them, he said.

Ukraine wants money and technology in return

Zelenskyy has said Kyiv wanted money and technology in return for its help in the Middle East, adding that the United States was among nations that sought Kyiv’s help, and that Ukrainian specialists had been sent to a U.S. military base in Jordan.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has a rocky relationship with Zelenskyy, has denied Washington needs Kyiv’s help in downing drones.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that teams from Kyiv and Washington would hold talks in the U.S. on the weekend, where they would discuss a wide-ranging drone deal and work on bilateral documents.

He did not specify which documents would be discussed, but Kyiv wants post-war security guarantees from Washington, and to agree a “prosperity plan” for economic revival after fighting ends.

Ukraine has spent a year trying to finalize a drone-cooperation package with Washington worth up to $50 billion. The proposal would see Ukraine share the innovative drone technologies it developed during the war in exchange for U.S. investment

“First and foremost, it includes naval drones and our long-range drones that have already been proven in the war,” Zelenskyy said.

He said that Ukraine was already jointly producing drones with Germany, Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands, and that it was starting to do so with Norway.

“It is important that Ukraine’s global significance in ensuring security and the quality of Ukrainian security expertise in safeguarding lives are recognised by all partners,” he wrote on Telegram.

Amid cornfields and horse farms 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Columbus, Ohio, the defense tech start-up is expecting its $1 billion Arsenal-1 autonomous systems manufacturing campus to employ more than 4,000 people over the next decade, starting with roughly 250 by the end of this year, officials said on Thursday.

Anduril is one of a new but growing group of small defense firms hoping to win lucrative Pentagon contracts for next-generation weapons. The Trump administration hopes the newer firms will help upend weapons manufacturing by delivering cutting-edge technology more quickly and at a lower cost.

Matt Grimm, Anduril’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said its approach to manufacturing differs fundamentally from traditional defense contractors.

Rather than designing products first and worrying about production later, the company bakes manufacturability in from Day 1 — choosing commercial materials such as aluminum over titanium, using composite techniques borrowed from the recreational boat industry and selecting a commercial business jet engine for the Fury program specifically because of its well-established supply chain and maintenance ecosystem.

Production of the company’s Fury autonomous aircraft will be the first to launch at the facility. The Fury is Anduril’s entrant for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program — part of an Air Force plan for a next-generation family of systems, an effort to equip crewed fighter jets and other planes with an uncrewed platform that would fly alongside the human pilots.

“From the very first prototype, we’ve been working with our engineers on every single build, thinking, how do we design it for production?” Grimm said.

Anduril said its Roadrunner interceptor, Barracuda cruise missile family and a classified program were all expected to be produced at the new factory by year-end.

The company said it is already operating production facilities in Mississippi, Australia, Rhode Island, Colorado, Atlanta, North Carolina and Southern California.

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Ohio; Editing by Chris Sanders, Rod Nickel)

During Operation Skyfall held at Grafenwoehr Training Area, soldiers of the 2-159th Attack Battalion, 12th Combat Aviation Brigade, used the Boeing AH-64E Apache to pursue and attack Unmanned Aircraft Systems.

It is not the first time that the Army has ever practiced using Apaches against drones. In December, the service held an air-to-air combat training exercise in Yuma, Arizona, that saw the Apaches destroy a a variety of drones in flight using a 30mm fragmentation round called the APEX.

The exercise in Germany, however, marks the first time that the U.S. Army has wielded Apaches for this purpose in Europe. It is a significant move due to the relevance of anti-drone training for NATO allies.

Soldiers of the 12th CAB train regularly alongside British, Dutch and Polish NATO forces. They remain in Germany as “a tactical necessity,” the service said in a statement last month.

Operation Skyfall is aimed to advance NATO’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, or EFDI, to protect countries in Eastern Europe from incursions.

The Apache has proved well-suited to chasing and killing drones as it can fly at speeds of over 180 miles per hour and is more nimble at maneuvering than many larger fixed-wing aircraft.

Many pilots within the 12th CAB’s attack unit, known as the “Gunslingers Battalion,” had never previously used Apache helicopters in this manner.

“Most pilots in our unit and across the Army have never engaged in air-to-air with the Apache, so this is a new engagement profile for us that we have to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures for,” said Maj. Daniel Murphy, operations officer for the battalion, in a statement.

“We’re looking forward to sharing what we learn so we can continue developing the EFDI alongside our NATO allies.”

The new training will provide “a blueprint for Allied aviation units“ across Europe, the Army has stated.

The service also noted that this training is “more critical than ever as Poland prepares to become the second-largest operator of Apaches in the world.”

Last November, Boeing announced that 96 Apaches would be produced for the Polish Armed Forces under a $4.7 billion U.S. Army Foreign Military Sales contract, with deliveries expected to start in 2028.

While the PrSM Increment 2 is part of the U.S. Army’s long-range fire program, it is designed for sea denial. It features a seeker within its navigation system that provides targeting guidance and homes in on fast-moving threats, including ships.

Its new capabilities will allow the Army to “strike relocating or fleeting targets in both land and maritime environments,” according to a statement released by Lockheed.

The company said the first flight test was a “major milestone” and added that missile development was “backed by significant investment,” thus advancing rapidly through initial tests. Two more tests are set to take place this year.

The upgraded missile builds off the foundation of its predecessor, and both systems share common baselines.

US launches Precision Strike Missiles in Iran war in first combat use

Both missiles are compatible with M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as well as the M270A2 Multiple Launch Rocket System, or MLRS, which is commonly used in European countries.

The missiles are designed to withstand turbulent in-flight weather conditions, and their warheads are built to deliver fragmentation effects when they explode on impact.

During the recent test, the upgraded PrSM launched from a HIMARS system and flew more than 200 miles.

“With Increment 2, PrSM delivers the long-range capability the Army asked for to defeat moving land and maritime threats,” Carolyn Orzechowski, vice president of Lockheed Martin Precision Fires Launchers and Missiles, said in the statement.

Production of the the original PrSM was already accelerated last fall prior to its combat debut in Operation Epic Fury, during which it was fired against Iranian targets from HIMARS launchers positioned in open terrain.

The PrSM was launched among an array of weapons systems, including Patriot Interceptor Missile Systems and THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems. LUCAS one-way attack drones were also used for the first time by the U.S. Special Operations Command-led Task Force Scorpion Strike.

“Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) and Special Tactics (ST) units currently lack a purpose-built First-Person View (FPV) unmanned capability,” warned the RFI, which is due April 17. “This deficit restricts the force’s ability to employ FPV systems in specialized mission sets and limits the development of standardized Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) essential for modern, high-intensity conflict.”

The service is looking for a drone with a range of at least 10 kilometers, and ideally more than 20 kilometers. It would be armed with a fragmentation warhead of 1.5 to 3 kilograms. Flight time should be 15 to 30 minutes.

Guidance would be via GPS, and include the ability to function in GPS-denied environments.

“This system needs to integrate Global Positioning System (GPS), 4G/LTE/5G cellular connectivity, true frequency hopping between bands, and an optional repeater to extend operational range to over 20 kilometers,” the RFI said.

The initial weight limit is no more than 30 pounds, including two drones and a ground control system, all of which would be hauled by two operators with backpacks. The final goal is a 10-pound system that can be carried by a single operator.

The drones should be ready for launch under three minutes, with an ideal setup time of less than a minute. The controller device would use the Android Team Awareness Kit UAS interface.

The attack drones will equip “specialized individuals” within AFSOC Special Tactics Teams, which normally comprise combat controllers, pararescuemen, Tactical Air Control specialists and special tactics officers. These teams perform missions such as coordinating close air support and assisting airfield seizure operations.

But armed with kamikaze drones that can hit targets 12 miles away, Special Tactics Teams will have their own strike capability to assist capturing objectives, or defending those that have been captured. The drones will enable integration of first-person attack drones “into core mission sets, including Global Access, Precision Strike, and Personnel Recovery,” the Air Force noted.

With drones dominating the battlefield in Ukraine and elsewhere, the U.S. special operations community is devoting a great deal of attention to UAVs. This includes small missiles that can be launched from drones, and drones that can be used inside caves. SOCOM also wants to teach some of its personnel to build and repair drones.

The sea service reached an agreement with the Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics, the company confirmed Tuesday, to deploy tech capable of streamlining repairs and reducing maintenance delays for a surface fleet that continues to be stretched thin.

The contract will begin as a 5-year, $54 million indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity deal that will soon see Gecko begin work on 18 ships assigned to the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Fleet.

To expedite what has in recent years become a headache for naval readiness, Gecko uses drones, wall-climbing robots and fixed sensors to gather data on components, decks, welds and hulls.

That information, paired with AI tools, is used to identify current and potential structural issues that may remain hidden to the naked eye.

“A single robotic evaluation and digital rendering of a flight deck eliminated over three months of potential maintenance delay days,” the company release stated about one such procedure.

These measures have expedited maintenance “up to 50 times faster and more accurately than manual methods,” the company added.

“Readiness isn’t just a metric, it’s all that matters,” Jake Loosararian, co-founder and CEO of Gecko, said in the release. “This growing partnership is about unfair advantages Gecko is deploying to our Navy; and how prediction, through our robotics and AI products, ensure our brave men and women are the most advantaged in the world in their fight to defend freedom.”

In fall 2024, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti unveiled a goal of having 80% of the Navy’s fleet ready to deploy at any given time by 2027.

Obstacles to reaching that goal materialized quickly, however, with a Government Accountability Office report in December 2024 highlighting a readiness rate among the Navy’s amphibious warfare ships of just 46% between 2011 and 2020. This rate, in turn, significantly hindered Marine Corps deployment and training plans.

In August 2025, that rate reportedly dipped to just 41%, resulting in a more than five-month gap in Marine Expeditionary Unit deployments that year and further straining resources amid the Trump administration’s push to counter the illicit drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The 80% plan, meanwhile, was picked up by Franchetti’s successor, Adm. Daryl Caudle, who called the rate “an ambitious but essential readiness goal.”

“Achieving this requires shorter maintenance cycles, increased spare-parts availability, improved training pipelines and targeted upgrades across the fleet,” Caudle wrote for Military Times in December.

“Readiness is not a budget line — it is a promise to the American people that their Navy will never arrive late to a fight."

Roughly 240 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, two soldiers — part of the Norwegian Armed Forces’ long-range reconnaissance unit — were imperceptible from their position deep in the woods during NATO’s Cold Response 2026 exercise.

One of the only clues of their presence was a small, grey, first-person-view drone lying on the snow — a stark contrast to their all-white uniforms. The drone in question is an American system, the Skydio X10D, which is also used by Ukrainian forces.

The U.S. manufacturer was awarded a $9.4 million contract by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense in July.

“We are trying our best in Norway to implement lessons from Ukraine — for us, it’s all about increasingly using FPV and intelligence-gathering ones but adapting them to our environment,” said a Norwegian officer who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity around the unit.

The Norwegian officer told Defense News during the NATO exercise, which lasts from March 9 to 19, that there is also an interest in incorporating FPVs into high-value target operations. While some operators have begun simulator training to fly them, this is a fairly recent development and has not yet been formally incorporated into their training.

Another drone model was displayed by the Norwegian Army Land Warfare Centre, which is responsible for training and developing weapon systems, including testing drones and sensors.

An officer with the Land Warfare Centre who flies the Skydio explained that, as part of Cold Response, almost every unit of the Norwegian Army was equipped with this capability to rehearse intelligence-gathering maneuvers. So far, it has performed relatively well, but it has experienced some difficulties, like most drones, in harsh conditions found in the Norwegian Arctic, he said.

One of the key challenges is battery life, which degrades significantly in cold environments.

An additional FPV used by the Norwegians during the exercise was a self-built one, with cheaply procured parts. It served as a one-way attack drone whose purpose was to carry explosives and see how far it could fly.

Another Arctic nation to have brought along an experimental drone was the United States.

The U.S. Marines tested a unique-looking FPV provided by Johns Hopkins University. The variant was equipped with a cage, the purpose of which is to prevent an excessive loss of the systems during training. The cage prevents it from crashing, and if repairs are needed, they can be carried out easily.

The U.S. troops used it in force-on-force scenarios, in which a friendly force engages a live adversary. This type of training allows their operators to enhance their piloting skills in a strike manner while also improving their counter-drone tactics, increasing pilots’ survivability.

Similar to the Norwegians, Master Sgt. Patrick Harrington, director of the unmanned systems center of excellence at the 2nd Marine Division, highlighted power as one of the biggest challenges to operating FPVs in Arctic conditions.

“We’ve been able to exchange with our allies here also, there’s interest in how each country [ourselves included] uses them, what they fly, how they fly it,” he said.

The Pentagon announced the CAMP program last April with the release of a solicitation calling for a new class of XL-AUV, or extra large underwater vehicle.

The solicitation called for a large underwater vessel that could maneuver in GPS-denied environments, dive over roughly 656 feet (200 meters) deep and drop “various payloads to the sea floor.” It specified that the vessel had to stay underwater for prolonged periods and be able to be transported and recovered easily by commercially available freight and logistics equipment.

Anduril was chosen for the CAMP program after wrapping the longest-ever XL-AUV demonstration, per a company statement. It will conduct an extended demonstration of its Dive-XL platform within four months of contract award.

“The subsea domain currently is patrolled and serviced by a very small number of exquisite capabilities,” Dr. Shane Arnott, senior vice president of Anduril’s maritime division, told reporters at a March 11 roundtable. “The Pacific and also the High North, which is the new fight that’s starting around the Arctic, are water-based fights. So it’s a no-brainer that robots are needed to supplement the crewed systems.”

The Dive-XL meets many of the desired features noted in the original CAMP solicitation. The vehicle is propelled by an all-electric powertrain that allows it to speed through the depths without needing to break the surface and can travel in excess of 2,000 nautical miles.

It has a highly flexible design that be modified for different mission types, including reconnaissance, and can carry up to three payload modules at once. These loads can include smaller unmanned underwater vehicles, effectively making the Dive-XL an type of mothership for even smaller drones that can conduct surveillance or strike underwater.

Additionally, the Dive-XL platform fits into commercial freight containers and can be transported via train or trucks, which corresponds to the Navy’s demand for a modular, easy-to-use system.

Anduril’s selection for the project follows its formal adoption last September by the Royal Australian Navy to deliver a fleet of AI unmanned submarine called Ghost Sharks within the next three years.

The announcement, reported by Reuters, marks a striking role reversal from years of Western forces training Ukrainian troops and underscores the value of lessons learned on the increasingly drone-dominated battlefield of the Russian invasion. ​

“We have high expectations,” Lt. Gen. Christian Freuding told Reuters in an interview. “The Ukrainian military is currently the only one in the world with frontline experience against Russia.”

Ukraine’s top drone units to bring frontline lessons to Washington this month

The deployment follows an agreement signed between the German and Ukrainian defense ministries, under which Ukrainian instructors will embed at Bundeswehr schools to pass on battlefield knowledge accumulated over more than four years of full-scale war. The first contingent is expected to number in the “middle double-digits” and will rotate through for several weeks at a time, Freuding said.

Their expertise will span artillery, engineering, armored operations, drone employment, and command and control − precisely the capability types where the Ukraine war has produced the most rapidly evolving battlefield lessons. The move reflects growing recognition across NATO that European armies have more to learn from Kyiv than they can offer in return.​

Freuding grounded the urgency in Western intelligence assessments suggesting Russia could be in a position to mount a large-scale offensive against the alliance as early as 2029. “That’s almost the day after tomorrow. We have no time - the enemy doesn’t wait for ‌us ⁠to declare we’re ready. So we have to use every possibility to prepare,” he said.

Germany has trained Ukrainian personnel on platforms including the Marder infantry fighting vehicle, Leopard main battle tanks, artillery systems, and air defense since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. That the relationship has now effectively inverted − with Kyiv dispatching trainers north rather than receiving them − is, Freuding said, a reflection of “an equal partnership in the field of security.”

Berlin is currently Kyiv’s most significant backer, having provided the most aid of any country aside from the United States, which has paused direct military support to Ukraine under the Trump administration. By the end of 2025, Germany had provided a total of €20 billion ($23.1 billion) in military aid to Ukraine, according to a running tally by the German-based Kiel Institute, an economics research organization.

Defense and government officials from both countries have launched a number of initiatives to benefit from each other’s comparative advantages, including taking steps to foster tighter integration of their defense industrial bases.

The latest announcement comes as Berlin accelerates its broader Bundeswehr buildup, with Defense Minister Boris Pistorius targeting defense spending of 3.5% of GDP by 2029 as part of an ambition to field Europe’s most powerful conventional army.

The Ground Truth Symposium will be hosted on March 25 by the Peace Through Strength Institute, a foreign policy and defense think tank based in Washington.

The event promises to translate “Ukraine’s frontline reality into clearer congressional understanding of the war, the capabilities shaping it and the conditions required to help bring it to an end on terms consistent with both Ukraine’s survival and United States strategic interests,” according to a release.

Representatives from several Ukrainian drone units will participate in the symposium, including soldiers from the country’s most effective UAV squads like Lazar Group, the 12th Special Forces Brigade and the 414th UAV Brigade “Magyar’s Birds.”

Discussions are expected to focus on Ukraine’s expertise in drone tactics and technology, along with the best practices for integrating the newer class of weapons into countries’ existing air defense systems.

The heavy use of several types of drones by multiple countries since the start of the recent conflict in the Middle East, currently involving about a dozen countries, will be a major talking point.

“Ukraine’s experience offers critical lessons for the United States and its allies — lessons the United States and our allies need now in the Iranian conflict,” the event’s press release stated.

Ukraine first made the shift to cheap interceptors not by choice, but because Russia’s nightly Shahed waves were burning through Western-provided missiles faster than allies could resupply them.

Last month, Ukrainian interceptors destroyed more than 70% of incoming Shaheds over Kyiv, freeing scarce Patriot missiles for the ballistic threats they were designed to stop.

Interceptor drones are small, fast, semi-autonomous unmanned aircraft — often costing between $1,000 and $2,500 each — designed to hunt and destroy incoming drones by ramming into them or detonating alongside them at altitude.

Compact enough to fit inside a duffel bag and fast enough to chase a Shahed in the dark, Ukraine’s interceptors can fly at speeds between 195 and 280 miles per hour, depending on the model.

Most combine thermal imaging with radar tracking and AI-assisted guidance, with a human operator taking manual control for the final seconds of the intercept.

Aureus Greenway Holdings Inc., a golf course holding company backed by the two eldest Trump sons, is merging with drone producer Powerus Corporation, the companies announced Monday in a release that names Eric and Donald Jr. as “notable investors.”

“We’re huge fans of our backers,” said Brett Velicovich, a co-founder of Powerus. “Eric and Don Jr. have been just fantastic supporters behind the scenes. They see the need for us to build drone technology at scale.”

Their investment will enable Powerus to create a manufacturing strategy and acquire other drone technology companies, Velicovich said.

Pentagon acknowledges tough quest to counter Iranian drones

Matthew Saker, the interim chief executive officer of Aureus Greenway Holdings, said in a statement that the merger was a “compelling opportunity” made “even more relevant by current geopolitical uncertainties.”

“The need for and uses of autonomous technologies, such as those produced by Powerus, are front page news given developments in the Middle East and elsewhere,” he said.

News of the merger came nine days after the U.S. and Israel launched military strikes against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian leaders.

In the days since, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has launched thousands of one-way drones toward U.S. military bases and diplomatic sites across the region. Trump administration officials conceded that Iran’s Shahed-136 drone, which costs only $20,000 to $50,000 to produce, is proving more disruptive on the battlefield than the Pentagon had anticipated.

The U.S. has turned to Ukraine for assistance in countering the drones, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said March 5. Engineers in Kyiv have developed a range of anti-drone laser systems, some of which cost as little as $1,000.

“We’re learning we have a lot of gaps in our air defenses, and right now there is a race at high levels to fix it, to pour money into it,” said Velicovich, an Army special operations veteran and Fox News commentator. “I worry that soldiers have a false sense of security, tactically, to what is out there, and that makes me very nervous. We need to get the right tools in their hands.”

Velicovich spent more than a year in Ukraine after Russia invaded the country, taking with him U.S. defense technology on behalf of various defense firms.

“In many cases, it failed miserably,” he said of the technology, adding that U.S. counter-drone systems, in particular, “are a real false sense of security wrapped around a very expensive price tag.”

Powerus intends to bring lessons learned in Ukraine to the U.S. military, Velicovich said.

“There are a number of engagements at senior levels of the Pentagon where they’re trying to find ways to formally bring in Ukranian technology and get it in the hands of soldiers,” he said. “We want to be part of that. We want to provide the Department of War an outlet as a company to connect those dots and add an American face to it.”

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report about the investment made by Trump’s sons. Eric Trump shared the article Monday on X with the comment, “I happen to believe drones will be a much better investment than companies that still print newspapers.”

Eric Trump invested in another defense technology company Feb. 17, according to PitchBook, which tracks private capital markets.

The company, Xtend, developed an AI-driven operating system that enables drones “to execute complex, dynamic missions with immediate operational readiness,” it said in a release, which goes on to say Eric Trump made a strategic investment in the company.

“The demand for systems that keep operators out of harm’s way is surging as the global security environment grows more volatile, and this represents one of the largest market opportunities in defense technology today,” Xtend CEO and co-founder Aviv Shapira said in a statement.

“By working hand-in-hand with the [Federal Aviation Administration] and our interagency partners, we are ensuring that these cutting-edge capabilities are safe, effective, and ready to protect Americans from emerging drone threats,” U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Matt Ross, director of the JIATF-401, stated in a release. “Our measure of success is to quickly deliver state-of-the-art C-UAS capability to the warfighter, and this test furthers that mission.”

The release did not state the specific laser system being tested.

The test will be conducted in partnership with the FAA. It aims to address FAA safety concerns about lasers, and will gather data for the agency regarding eye safety for aircrews and potential effects on aircraft during tests conducted using aircraft surrogate models, according to the release. The trials will also test laser systems’ automatic safety shut-off functions.

The test will focus on demonstrating the systems’ built-in safety features and training protocols to allow operators to use them securely and effectively. The laser will engage a variety of targets.

High-energy laser systems are manufactured by many leading defense contractors and provide a “soft kill” approach to taking out small drones using photons, or light particles. The concentrated beams track small unmanned aircraft systems and burn them with focused rays, bringing them down without expending munitions.

The test is part of a steady upswing in the integration of laser weapons into the services. Last year, the U.S. Army released a Request for Information to obtain up to 20 high-energy laser weapons to kill three different classes of drones. This followed a U.S. Navy disclosure that the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Preble fired a high-energy laser weapon against a drone during an exercise.

Figures published by Gulf defense ministries indicate that as of March 3, Iran has launched more than 540 missiles and carried out over 1,450 drone strikes against regional countries, with drones constituting roughly three-quarters of the attacks, Reuters reported.

While the patterns seen since the start of the Iranian attack window resemble the saturation logic observed in Ukraine, where large waves of cheap one-way attack drones combined with ballistic missiles are deployed to overwhelm defensive systems, analysts note some differences in their roles.

“In Ukraine, Shahed-type drones often serve as nightly, persistent harassment and infrastructure attrition tools, whereas in the Gulf they’re being used inside a broader missile campaign intended to stretch the Gulf and U.S.-aligned air defenses across multiple states, bases and urban areas simultaneously,” Kristian Patrick Alexander, senior fellow and lead researcher at the UAE-based Rabdan Academy, said.

Thus far, Gulf countries have reported high interception rates of missile attacks, and to a lesser extent, against low-flying drones. For example, data published March 4 by the United Arab Emirates, which has absorbed a large number of the offensives, claimed military forces detected 941 drones and intercepted 876 of them.

Some of the weaponry used by countries and their allies to shoot down low-cost drones includes the U.S.-made Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) systems as well as Rafale fighters, F-15s and Eurofighters.

Francesco Schiavi, research fellow at the Middle East Institute Switzerland, concurs that one of the main challenges for the region will be endurance, especially as the fighting continues.

“Each interception carries a financial and logistical cost – estimates suggest that for every dollar Iran spends producing drones, Gulf states may spend $20-$28 on defensive fire, with individual interceptors often costing more than $1 million,” Schiavi added.

Both experts advised that countries under attack must urgently look to cheaper and scalable counter-drone layers: electronic warfare, jammers, guns or close-in weapons, directed energy, and enhanced shared air picture coordination.

“The ‘winning’ defense will be the one that can kill lots of targets cheaply without burning premium interceptors – without cheaper layers and better integration, the cost curve favors the attacker,” Alexander said.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s offensive arsenal, already degraded by U.S. and Israeli air strikes, is also running lower, said Federico Borsari, non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis

What to watch

As hostilities drag on, subject experts highlight three important factors to monitor: the type of attacks, the nature of targets, and the performance of strike weapons.

According to Alexander, one tactic to watch is whether Tehran will continue to send attack drones in big waves or if they will be used in sequenced packages to probe radars before firing missiles.

Schiavi adds that it will be important to pay attention to the strike pattern Tehran adopts: Until now, the regime has followed a dispersed approach, targeting several Gulf countries at once with a mix of weapons, but it could shift toward true saturation attacks as observed in Ukraine.

The primary targets of Iranian attacks have so far been military bases and embassies. It remains to be seen if Tehran is able to expand the target set to include more critical infrastructure, such as ports, logistic hubs, or energy facilities, which experts say would signal an escalation.

Sam Bendett, advisor at the Center for Naval Analyses, said he’s keeping close tabs on the flight ranges of Iran’s Shahed drones, and the variety of similar weapons the country has in its arsenal.

It will also be important to see if Washington’s role changes as the conflict continues, considering that Gulf countries’ interception capabilities are closely tied to U.S. technology.

“Gulf air defense systems and their performance remain closely linked to U.S.-enabled radar coverage, early warning, and operational coordination – interceptions over Qatar, for example, rely heavily on radar networks connected to Al Udeid Air base, while missile engagements in Kuwait occur in airspace shared with American aircraft,” Schiavi added.

Various countries, including the United States, have approached Ukraine for help in defending against the Iranian drones, Zelenskyy said late Wednesday. He said he has spoken in recent days with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait about possible cooperation.

Russia has fired tens of thousands of Shaheds at Ukraine since it invaded its neighbor just over four years ago, launching a swarm of more than 800 drones and decoys in one of its biggest nighttime barrages. Iran has responded to joint U.S.-Israeli strikes by launching the same type of drones at countries in the Middle East.

Ukrainian assistance in countering Iranian drones will be provided only if it does not weaken Ukraine’s own defenses, and if it adds leverage to Kyiv’s diplomatic efforts to stop the Russian invasion, according to the Ukrainian leader.

“We help to defend from war those who help us, Ukraine, bring a just end to the war” with Russia, Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine has battle-tested drone defenses

Ukraine has pioneered the development of cut-price drone killers that cost as little as $1,000, rewriting the air defense rule book and making other countries take notice.

European countries got a wake-up call last September on the changed nature of air defense when Poland scrambled multimillion-dollar military assets, including F-35 and F-16 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters, in response to airspace violations by cheap drones.

Ukrainian manufacturers have developed low-cost interceptor drones specifically designed to hunt and destroy Shaheds, and its rapidly expanding drone industry is producing excess capacity.

Zelenskyy announced earlier this year that Ukraine would begin exporting the battle-tested systems.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said before chairing a meeting of EU and Gulf foreign ministers via video link Thursday that the talks would look at how Ukraine’s experience can help countries counter Iranian drones.

Middle East war delays Russia-Ukraine talks

The Iran war, now in its sixth day, has drawn international attention away from Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II, and forced the postponement of a new round of U.S-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine planned for this week, Zelenskyy said.

Western governments and analysts say the Russia-Ukraine war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, while there is no sign that yearlong U.S.-led peace efforts will stop the fighting any time soon.

“Right now, because of the situation around Iran, there are not yet the necessary signals for a trilateral meeting,” Zelenskyy said. “But as soon as the security situation and the overall political context allow us to resume that trilateral diplomatic work, it will be done.”

Zelenskyy thanked the United States for the return from Russia on Thursday of 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war. Russia’s Defense Ministry also said it received the same number of prisoners from Ukraine and thanked the U.S. and United Arab Emirates for mediating.

Prisoner swaps have been one of the few tangible results of the talks. Vladimir Medinsky, a Russian negotiator, said on social media that a total of 500 prisoners from each side would be exchanged between Thursday and Friday.

Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to drag out the negotiations so that he can press on with Russia’s invasion while escaping further U.S. sanctions.

He urged the U.S. administration to look at the Russia-Ukraine war and the war in the Middle East as linked.

“In reality, Russia and Iran are close allies that act in concert — Iran supplies weapons and Russia helps Iran develop its defense industry. These are interconnected conflicts,” Merezhko told The Associated Press.

Ukraine’s army has recently pushed back Russian forces at some points along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (750-mile) front line, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Localized Ukrainian counterattacks liberated more territory than Ukrainian forces lost in the last two weeks of February, the Washington-based think tank said this week, estimating the recovered land at about 257 square kilometers (100 square miles) since Jan. 1.

Over the capital, the new class of interceptors is even more effective. Drones were credited with more than 70% of Shahed downings in February, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi announced on Tuesday.

The math tells the story: A single Patriot interceptor costs over $3 million, a NASAMS round slightly over $1 million — and each Shahed costs Russia as little as $35,000 to manufacture, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That puts Ukraine on the wrong side of an approximately 85-to-1 cost exchange every time it uses a Patriot to defend against a drone.

But at $3,000 to $5,000 apiece and an average success rate over 60%, interceptors are now changing the calculus of war, Zelenskyy told Fox News late last year.

These drones, a weapons category that barely existed a few years ago, have become the fastest-growing layer of Ukraine’s air defense.

“We are the first in the world to have a system of destroying drones with drones in the air,” Col. Yuriy Cherevashenko, deputy commander of UAVs for air defense of the Ukrainian Air Force, said in a video marking the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Facing an unrelenting adversary whose economy dwarfs its own by nearly tenfold, Ukraine had no choice but to outthink rather than outspend, and interceptor drones — mobile, cheap and scalable enough to answer Russian mass production with Ukrainian ingenuity — have emerged as their biggest bet.

Now, what began as battlefield improvisation has become a deliberate war strategy.

“Drones now occupy a wide segment of the air defense system,” Cherevashenko said. “In the future, they will be perhaps the most numerous means of destroying aerial targets.”

Their rapid development over the last year tracked Russia’s escalating use of Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, which by mid-2025 were arriving in record-breaking waves that overwhelmed Ukraine’s missile-based air defenses faster than Western allies could resupply them.

“We needed to supply a lot of interceptors this year, because without them, the winter would have been even harder for Ukraine,” Alona Zhuzha, director of digitalization at Ukraine’s newly established Defense Procurement Agency, told Military Times.

The National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) said the country produced 100,000 interceptor drones in 2025 and reported that production capacity has grown eightfold compared to the prior period.

Frontline units received an average of over 1,500 interceptor drones per day in December and January — up from about 1,000 per day during the previous period, the MOD said at the beginning of the year.

That supply is translating into operational tempo: Last month, interceptor drones flew approximately 6,300 sorties and destroyed more than 1,500 Russian UAVs of various types, Syrskyi said.

Interceptors are now a top priority on the DOT-Chain Defence marketplace, the digital platform through which units order directly from manufacturers.

“They are very critical for our defense,” Zhuzha said.

Russian tech continues to evolve, too.

Moscow’s drones have been equipped with rear-facing infrared spotlights designed to blind interceptor pilots, and some have been armed with air-to-air missiles to shoot back, Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov, a radio expert and early advocate of interceptor tech who was recently appointed as an adviser to the Ministry of Defence, wrote on Telegram in January.

Russia has also expanded its use of decoy drones — foam-and-plywood models including the Gerbera and Parody — which now constitute roughly one-third of all Russian mass attacks, specifically designed to exhaust interceptors and overload the detection layer, according to Defence-UA.

Ukraine now flies several distinct classes of interceptors: cheap FPV airframes built for last-kilometer kills — the kind that catch a Shahed before it reaches a substation or apartment block — and faster pursuit systems tied to forward drone lines, designed to launch immediately upon detection, climb fast, and intercept before the threat crosses into civilian airspace, according to the NSDC.

Higher-speed interceptors designed for targets like the jet-powered Geran-3 variants, where the old FPV chase math breaks, are emerging now too, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

And networked defense systems are beginning to link interceptor nodes across sectors, sharing tracks so a single incoming target can be handed off from one crew to the next as it crosses boundaries.

One unit trying to push forward the development and use of interceptors is Lazar’s Group — a drone formation within the National Guard’s 27th Pechersk Brigade known as one of the most effective interceptor units in the country.

Phoenix, who commands the group’s drone operations, told Military Times that the group has destroyed more than $15 billion in Russian military equipment since the full-scale invasion — part of Ukraine’s broader shift away from infantry warfare. Military Times agreed to refer to all active duty soldiers by their nom de guerre for operational security.

Strike drones, not interceptors — still account for “60 to 70% of confirmed hits” on Russian equipment and personnel across the battle zone. “Interceptors take out most of the rest.”

Lazar’s Group utilizes both. Fixed-wing strike models can engage deep targets and conduct reconnaissance well beyond the battle’s edge, while interceptors are optimized for counter-UAV work at shorter ranges and higher closing speeds.

For example: Ukraine’s Wild Hornets “Sting” interceptor — a quad-rotor designed to chase and collide with enemy drones — is reported to reach speeds over 300 km/h and operate out to roughly 25 kilometers in interception missions, with altitude service up to several thousand feet, while fixed-wing interceptor variants such as the VB140 Flamingo are designed with extended pursuit profiles that can engage reconnaissance drones at ranges up to 50 km.

The real challenge slowing interceptor innovation now? Sensors.

“We just need better radar,” Phoenix said. “It allows you to see your enemy and your plane. You understand where you are and where your enemy is, and you can fly to that position.”

Ukraine’s most common intercepts still start with cueing: radar tracks, acoustic spotters and stitched feeds from Ukraine’s master “Mission Control” battlefield management system that put a pilot in the right place at the right time.

“Without good radar — durable sensors, strong [electronic warfare] defense, etc. — it’s very difficult,” he told Military Times.

To counter Russian electronic warfare, another persistent problem, the unit builds its own interceptor drones with proprietary remote control and video transmitter systems designed to resist jamming.

“We create our own models because we understand the technical specifications that we need,” Phoenix said. “So they’re not immediately jammed or located.”

Illustrating the problem, SpaceX cut off Russian forces’ contraband Starlink terminals at Ukraine’s request last month — but the disruption also knocked out feeds for Ukrainian units sharing the same network, leaving parts of the front without connectivity or intercept capability, according to CNN.

Artificial intelligence has not yet come to dominate interception missions — today it is still manual ramming or close-in detonation.

“Our pilots mostly operate manually,” Phoenix told Military Times. “Because AI features are nice, but sometimes they just aren’t working.”

Finding solutions to the other common hurdles beyond radar — like battery endurance in freezing conditions or operator fatigue on overnight shifts — tends to be simpler, Phoenix said.

“After that, they just keep flying.”

Lazar’s Group’s strategy has become a national model for how to institutionalize a new layer of air defense into the existing military structure, both in Ukraine and abroad.

The 1,700-strong group is helping construct the country’s Drone Line — an unmanned kill zone stretching 15-kilometers deep across the front, announced by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense a year ago.

In Brussels, officials have been pushing their own version of a drone wall to bolster defenses along Europe’s eastern flank, but the effort has run into political and technical hurdles, according to Reuters.

Kyiv has taken note, and begun leveraging its country’s battlefield tech, skills and data as a major benefit of remaining its staunch ally as peace trilateral negotiations to end the war continue between Ukraine, Russia and the United States.

“As we work together to protect lives in Ukraine, we are building a new system – a new security and response architecture, new approaches – to protect lives in any European country when needed,” Zelenskyy told his counterparts at the Munich Security Conference in February.

“Our wall of drones is your wall of drones.”

Video released Wednesday shows the next-gen munitions being launched in open desert terrain from M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems as part of Operation Epic Fury. The operation against Iran has seen a variety of precision munitions launched from land, sea and air, according to CENTCOM.

“I just could not be prouder of our men and women in uniform leveraging innovation to create dilemmas for the enemy,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in a release.

The PrSM is enhanced with GPS capabilities to navigate in flight and can accurately strike targets from around 250 miles away. Its warhead is designed to deliver a fragmentation effect when it explodes, increasing power on impact. The missile, meanwhile, is reportedly built to withstand turbulent in-flight conditions.

The PrSM is among a wide array of advanced technological assets the U.S. military has deployed during its ongoing operations in Iran.

Other notable weapon deployments in the ongoing conflict include Patriot Interceptor Missile Systems and THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems. LUCAS one-way attack drones were also used for the first time in combat by the U.S. Special Operations Command-led Task Force Scorpion Strike.

Specific details about the targets engaged by the PrSMs have not been provided as of publication.

Prior to its combat debut, the U.S. Army was working with Lockheed Martin to ramp up production capacity for the munition, Defense News reported last October.

The Army tested its short-range and long-range capabilities on White Sands Missile Range in April and September of last year. Tests saw the munitions fired from HIMARS systems as well as the M270A2 Multiple Launch Rocket System, or MLRS.

Operation Epic Fury has seen over 2,000 military targets across Iran destroyed, the Pentagon said, including a naval frigate that was sunk in the first torpedo kill by a U.S. Navy submarine since World War II.