Department of Defense
Every UASFeed story on Department of Defense — across defense, counter-UAS, industry, commercial, policy, and tech, newest first.
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Industry & Contracts
DJI Dominates the Drone Market — And Washington Wants It Out
DJI controls over 70% of the global commercial drone market and 90% of consumer sales, yet faces an effective US ban after a cascade of legislative and regulatory actions. Six independent audits have found no evidence of covert data exfiltration — but the structural debate is far from resolved.
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Industry & Contracts
DroneShield: The Counter-UAS Company Redefining Drone Defense at Scale
From a 2014 Virginia startup to an ASX200-listed company with 4,000+ systems deployed in 70 nations, DroneShield has built the counter-UAS industry’s most comprehensive product line—and is now betting that software subscriptions, not hardware sales, define its next decade.
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Industry & Contracts
Skydio Explained: The Autonomy-First Company Built to Replace DJI in American Defense
Founded by MIT researchers who trained on Google's Project Wing, Skydio built America's leading small-drone platform by betting on AI autonomy before the defense market existed. Congressional bans on Chinese hardware turned that bet into a franchise—then China struck back.
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Defense & Combat
AeroVironment RQ-20 Puma AE: The Hand-Launched ISR Platform That Lands in the Ocean
AeroVironment's RQ-20 Puma AE is a hand-launched, battery-electric small UAS that operates from ship decks to desert outposts, delivering day/night ISR without a runway. A two-decade operational record and front-line deployments in Ukraine make it the Group 1/2 benchmark for allied militaries worldwide.
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Defense & Combat
China's GJ-11 Sharp Sword: From Stealth Prototype to Deployed Combat Drone
China's GJ-11 'Sharp Sword' flying-wing stealth UCAV has moved from a 2013 technology demonstrator to official PLAAF formation footage, high-altitude border deployments, and a folding-wing carrier variant. A full technical breakdown of the world's most advanced non-NATO stealth combat drone.
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Defense & Combat
China’s WZ-7 Soaring Dragon: The HALE Drone Reshaping PLA Surveillance
China’s WZ-7 Xianglong is the PLA’s operational high-altitude ISR drone — a joined-wing platform purpose-built for Pacific and Indian Ocean surveillance. Documented sorties from Tibet to the Sea of Japan and a naval variant wired to feed anti-ship targeting data mark it as the backbone of China’s kill-chain architecture.
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Defense & Combat
ScanEagle and RQ-21A Blackjack: Inside Insitu’s Runway-Free ISR Platform Family
From a commercial fish-finder drone to front-line ISR in Ukraine, the Insitu ScanEagle and RQ-21A Blackjack are defined by a single design constraint: no runway needed. Here is how the platforms work, where they’ve fought, and why the formula endures.
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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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Tech & Builds
Who Pulls the Trigger? The AI Targeting and Autonomous Weapons Debate, Explained
From DoD Directive 3000.09's misunderstood three-tier framework to Ukraine's jamming-resistant FPV drones, this explainer maps the legal, ethical, and battlefield fault lines in the global debate over lethal autonomous weapons.
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Tech & Builds
What 'Autonomous Drone' Actually Means: A Field Guide to the Spectrum
The word 'autonomous' covers everything from a DJI's return-to-home button to a 103-drone swarm with no designated leader. Five competing frameworks — NIST ALFUS, LORA, SAE-adapted, DoD's loop taxonomy, and Exyn's aerial scale — each illuminate something different about a genuinely hard engineering problem.
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Tech & Builds
eVTOL, Drone, UAV, UAS, RPAS: A Precise Guide to Six Terms That Aren't Interchangeable
Six overlapping terms describe aircraft that fly without an on-board human — or sometimes with one. Which label applies determines which regulations govern you, how DoD classifies a platform, and whether a Joby air taxi is legally a drone at all.
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Tech & Builds
Anduril’s Lattice: The Software Stack Rewriting How the Pentagon Fights
Lattice is Anduril’s AI command-and-control platform fusing sensors, drones, and effectors into a unified operational picture. With over $25 billion in known contract ceilings and a $20B Army enterprise agreement, it’s becoming the connective tissue of U.S. autonomous warfare.
