Military drone news from UASFeed — UAS programs, battlefield lessons from Ukraine and beyond, loitering munitions, and how uncrewed systems are changing combat.
Former Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov says a new interceptor built in a month shot down two jet-powered Geran-5s over Kyiv in its first week. His Palantir-backed company plans to build hundreds a month by the end of 2026.
Read the story →Ukraine's MoD says its Delta battle-management system took in aerial, surface and underwater drones plus radars at NATO's REPMUS 26 using STANAG 4817 telemetry. If that holds up, it shows Delta can work with NATO's new standard for unmanned systems. All performance claims come from Kyiv and have not been independently verified.
Instead of going to the Tucson boneyard, four divested Navy MQ-8C Fire Scouts are now flying Army sensor packages at Dugway and Redstone, a transfer the Navy says saved the Army just over $70 million in procurement costs.
Ukraine says a soldier clipped himself under a Gurzuf Defence heavy-lift hexacopter and was flown out after mines and Russian drones blocked every ground route. The 62 km and 1h14m figures come from the company, and no one has independently verified the 'world first' claim.
DIU's SWAP-USV challenge moves to Sprint 2, asking industry for production-ready uncrewed surface vessels with hard-kill counter-air weapons, from Hellfire and JAGM to APKWS, Stinger and lasers, fieldable within 120 days. Up to $40M in prizes, with $200M set aside for follow-on awards.
Taiwan's Coast Guard Administration, not its military, has taken delivery of its first Shield AI V-BAT under a competitive 'Shipborne UAV' program, with twelve aircraft due in the coming months and AIDC handling local support. No one has disclosed the price.
In an early-October test over Edwards AFB, an F-22 pilot sent tactical directives over a data link to a pre-production YFQ-44A Fury, and the drone's autonomy carried them out. Anduril says it is the first time a Raptor and a Fury have worked this way.
On Oct. 14, Ukrainian units found SpaceX Starshield terminals throttled above about 100 mph. The cap hampered interceptors hunting jet-powered Shaheds, and Ukrainian demand is growing for Helsing's Starlink-free HX-2 loitering munition.
Hegseth wants about $50B in one-time reconciliation money for autonomous and robotic systems, on top of a FY2027 request that already holds $53.6B for Drone Dominance. The Army's harder problem may be training the soldiers who will fly, fight and counter all those drones.
CBP says it detected more than 37,000 drone flights near the border in FY2026, down from 42,000, while the military's border task force logged 378 incursions in one month and calls the trend rising. The two counts measure different things.
The Army has a new autonomy command, breaching tests under way at Fort Bragg and a lab study showing 13 soldiers can run a mixed robotic formation. The open question is whether autonomy can grow from single robots to whole formations.
Airbus and Kratos have flown the U740 Valkyrie, a Europeanized XQ-58A, in Europe for the first time. The next test is whether Airbus's MARS mission system can make an American airframe a sovereign German combat drone by 2029.
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