Defense & Combat
Military drone news from UASFeed — UAS programs, battlefield lessons from Ukraine and beyond, loitering munitions, and how uncrewed systems are changing combat.
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Defense & Combat
Ukraine's Top Strike-Drone Maker Turns to Missile Defense: Inside Fire Point's $700K 'Freyja' Interceptor
Fire Point, the firm behind Ukraine's FP-1/FP-2 deep-strike drones and FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, is building 'Freyja,' a sub-$1M ballistic-missile interceptor around the FP-7.X, integrating German Hensoldt radar and aiming for a first operational intercept by end of 2027.
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Defense & Combat
Ukrainian Drones Knock Russia's Fourth-Largest Refinery Offline as Fuel Crisis Spreads
A June 24 Ukrainian drone strike forced Russia's NORSI refinery in Kstovo offline, damaging its primary CDU-5 crude unit as fuel-sales restrictions spread across Russian regions.
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Defense & Combat
Hezbollah's Fiber-Optic FPVs Are Killing IDF Soldiers and Bypassing Trophy
Hezbollah has deployed fiber-optic FPV drones in southern Lebanon that defeat electronic jamming and slip past Merkava tank active protection systems, killing at least four IDF soldiers and wounding dozens since March 2026.
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Defense & Combat
Poland Navy Contracts Shield AI V-BAT for Ship-Deck Maritime ISR
Poland's Armament Agency signed a contract with Shield AI for MQ-35 V-BAT VTOL drones to be deployed aboard Polish Navy vessels for Baltic Sea maritime surveillance, with delivery expected by end of 2026.
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Defense & Combat
Army Deploys Autonomous USV Swarm to Escort Logistics Vessel in Philippine Waters
During Exercise Salaknib 2026, U.S. Army unmanned surface vessels autonomously screened a logistics ship carrying Philippine Army armor across Casiguran Sound — the service's most visible maritime drone demonstration in the Indo-Pacific to date.
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Defense & Combat
Air Force Awards CCA Production Contracts to Anduril and General Atomics Early
The U.S. Air Force selected General Atomics and Anduril Industries on June 17 to produce the first operational Collaborative Combat Aircraft — the FQ-42A and FQ-44A — targeting more than 150 combat-capable drones by decade's end under a unit cost ceiling near one-third of an F-35A.
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Defense & Combat
Ukraine's USF Strikes Crimea's Only Underground Gas Storage in Logistics Lockdown Push
Ukraine's 414th Brigade drones hit the Hlibivka underground gas storage facility on the Tarkhankut Peninsula — Crimea's sole gas buffer — along with radars, a locomotive, and a Russian command post overnight June 18–19, as Kyiv's mid-range drone campaign claims a 71% drop in southern supply traffic.
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Defense & Combat
How a $300 FPV Drone Rewrote the Economics of Precision Strike
Ukraine's FPV war has inverted battlefield cost logic: a $300-to-$500 commercial quadcopter competes with munitions costing fifty times more. A breakdown of the bill of materials, cost-exchange math, industrial-scale production, and the fiber-optic upgrade now driving a global supply crisis.
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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
Phoenix Ghost: The Air Force's Classified Loitering Munition Family Built for Ukraine
AEVEX Aerospace's Phoenix Ghost — developed under a classified U.S. Air Force program before Russia's 2022 invasion — grew from a 121-drone Ukraine announcement into a $576 million, 5,000-unit program encompassing four named variants across two UAS groups. Here's what's confirmed, and what remains classified.
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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
Russia's Shahed Swarm Doctrine: Saturation, Decoys, and the Cost-Kill Math
Russia's 54,000-drone Shahed campaign against Ukraine has evolved far beyond crude attrition into a disciplined saturation doctrine — multi-directional swarms integrated with decoy drones, coordinated missile strikes, and countermeasure upgrades designed to exhaust defenses faster than they can be rebuilt.
