U.S. Army
Every UASFeed story on U.S. Army — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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Tech & Builds
Optionally Piloted Aircraft: The Platform That Bridges Crewed and Autonomous Flight
Optionally piloted aircraft hold manned airworthiness certificates while enabling fully autonomous operations—closing the regulatory gap that stalls pure UAVs. From proven Afghan cargo resupply missions to DARPA’s autonomous Black Hawk delivered to the Army in 2026, the concept reshapes military logistics and aviation.
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Tech & Builds
Zephyr S: Inside the Solar Stratospheric Drone That Stayed Aloft for 64 Days
Airbus's Zephyr S occupies the stratosphere at 70,000 feet, loitering for months with ISR and 5G connectivity payloads on power equivalent to a single light bulb. Here's how the platform works, what the 2022 Army record flight proved, and where the newly spun-out AALTO HAPS company is taking it.
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Defense & Combat
Loitering Munition, Cruise Missile, One-Way Attack Drone: What's the Difference?
Loitering munitions, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones are routinely conflated in defense reporting. The distinctions -- in target acquisition timing, terminal human control, cost, and payload -- determine which arms control regimes apply and how international humanitarian law governs each weapon's use.
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Defense & Combat
Raytheon Coyote Explained: The Army's Counter-Drone Interceptor and Its Cost Problem
The Raytheon Coyote began in 2014 as a disposable ISR drone. It is now the U.S. Army's primary counter-drone interceptor — fielded in kinetic and non-kinetic variants under a $5 billion contract — and caught in an unresolved cost-exchange equation that defines modern C-UAS.
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Defense & Combat
ISIS Drone Warfare in Iraq and Syria: How Commercial Quadcopters Became a Military Weapon
In 2016, the Islamic State turned cheap commercial quadcopters into a documented, bureaucratized weapons program — the first non-state drone campaign to kill soldiers in combat and force NATO armies to rebuild air defense doctrine from scratch.
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Counter-UAS
Leonidas Explained: How Epirus's High-Power Microwave System Kills Drone Swarms
Epirus's Leonidas achieved a 100% kill rate against 61 drones — including 49 in a single pulse — in a DoD demonstration. Here is how its solid-state GaN architecture works, what the Army and Marine Corps have bought, and where the technology stands today.
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Industry & Contracts
AeroVironment: How a Glider Champion Built America's Tactical Drone Empire
From Paul MacCready's human-powered aircraft to a $990 million Switchblade contract and a $4.1 billion BlueHalo merger, AeroVironment has quietly become the backbone of U.S. tactical UAS — and is now reshaping itself into a multi-domain defense-tech mid-prime.
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Industry & Contracts
Anduril Industries: The Software Company Rebuilding the Defense Industrial Base
Founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey and four co-founders, Anduril Industries has grown from a border-surveillance startup into a $30.5 billion defense technology company producing autonomous systems across air, sea, and ground domains on its Lattice AI platform.
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Defense & Combat
Air-Launched Effects and Drone Motherships: How Stacking Range Reshapes Aerial Warfare
Air-launched effects (ALE) divorce mission risk from platform cost by stacking a mothership's standoff range on top of a drone's own reach — letting aircraft dispense swarms deep inside defended airspace without entering it. From DARPA's Gremlins to China's Jiutian, the concept is going mainstream.
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Defense & Combat
MQ-1C Gray Eagle: The Army's Only MALE Drone, Caught Between Congress and Obsolescence
The MQ-1C Gray Eagle is the U.S. Army's sole medium-altitude long-endurance drone — a Predator descendant rebuilt around Army logistics, manned-unmanned teaming, and ground-force integration. Now Congress and Army leadership are openly fighting over whether it has a future.
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Defense & Combat
Pocket ISR: How Nano and Micro Drones Rewired Squad-Level Reconnaissance
From a 16-gram helicopter checking walls in Afghanistan to a 70-gram system with thermal imaging deployed across 50 countries, nano-UAS technology has pushed intelligence collection down to the fire team — and the next frontier is autonomous swarms constrained by battery physics.
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Commercial & Delivery
Tethered Drones: The Persistent Aerial Mast Redefining Overwatch
Unlike battery-powered UAS that fly to a destination, tethered drones hover over one — drawing continuous ground power through a Kevlar-reinforced tether to deliver days of unbroken ISR, secure fiber-optic data, and jamming-immune comms relay that free-flying platforms simply cannot match.
