drones

The U.S. Army has set a goal of buying one million new drones of all types over the next two to three years. This comes as senior officials within the service have acknowledged that it continues to lag behind global trends when it comes to fielding uncrewed aerial systems, especially weaponized types within smaller units. The Army’s planned drone shopping spree could also include large numbers of longer-range one-way attack types, something TWZ laid out a detailed case for doing just a few months ago.

Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll talked about his service’s new drone acquisition plans in a recent phone interview with Reuters from Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. The service also hopes the purchases will foster an industrial base that can churn out uncrewed aerial systems at similarly high rates for years to come.

“We expect to purchase at least a million drones within the next two to three years,” Driscoll told Reuters. “And we expect that at the end of one or two years from today, we will know that in a moment of conflict, we will be able to activate a supply chain that is robust enough and deep enough that we could activate to manufacture however many drones we would need.”

The report from Reuters does not provide a detailed breakdown of what might be included in that million-drone bundle. It does indicate that Driscoll was talking primarily about smaller weaponized types, such as first-person view (FPV) kamikaze drones and ones configured to drop small munitions. These kinds of uncrewed aerial systems have existed in various forms for years, but have now been fully thrust into the public consciousness by their daily use on both sides of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

“Driscoll and Picatinny’s top commander, Major General John Reim, spoke to Reuters about how the United States was taking lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has been characterized by drone deployments on an unprecedented scale,” according to that outlet. “Ukraine and Russia each produce roughly 4 million drones a year, but China is probably able to produce more than double that number, Driscoll said.”

“Driscoll said he fundamentally wanted to change how the Army saw drones – more like expendable ammunition rather than an ‘exquisite’ piece of equipment,” Reuters‘ story added.

This latter point is also directly in the stated aims behind a sweeping array of drone policy and other changes the Pentagon announced back in July. The main focus of that initiative, described as “unleashing U.S. military drone dominance,” is to accelerate the fielding of huge numbers of uncrewed aerial systems, especially weaponized types, across the entire U.S. military, as you can read more about here.

All this being said, the Army’s plans to buy at least a million new drones could easily include a wide array of types intended to perform an equally diverse set of missions. As mentioned, long-range kamikaze drones in the vein of the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 could be part of this equation, as well. Russia also regularly uses variants and derivatives of that design, including ones it now produces domestically, in attacks on targets in Ukraine. Forces in Ukraine have been moving to field their own comparable designs, among many other one-way attack types.

Directly influenced by Israeli kamikaze drones, the Shahed-136 has become something of a global standard for uncrewed aircraft of this type, with similarly-sized delta-winged designs steadily emerging globally, including in the United States and China. Developments out of China include the Feilong-300D from state-run conglomerate North Industries Group Corporation, which is reportedly particularly geared toward low-cost, high-volume production. So far, the examples being built in the United States have been sold largely as training aids reflecting growing threats to friendly forces. TWZ‘s feature in September delved deeply into the benefits they could offer to the U.S. military as operational weapons in line with broader long-range fires initiatives across the services.

Another Group 3 threat system (target) broadly similar to the FLM 136 G3 ‘reverse-engineered Shahed’ threat system.

“The MQM-172 Arrowhead is designed as a high-speed, maneuverable one-way-attack and target drone platform—perfect for realistic threat emulation, training, and… https://t.co/qaEanNEC8T pic.twitter.com/DwxlGypV4E

— AirPower 2.0 (MIL_STD) (@AirPowerNEW1) August 12, 2025

This is 🇨🇳China’s version of the Geran-2 Drone, The Feilong-300D Suicide Drone, a low cost-High performance drone, and the future of combat.

It carries a High-explosive warhead, and has a range of over 1000km in just a cost of $10,000 USD. pic.twitter.com/XZBEGW1AoK

— PLA Military Updates (@PLA_MilitaryUpd) November 2, 2025

“Absolutely,” Maj. Gen. James “Jay” Bartholomee, head of the Army’s Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, said in response to a question from our Howard Altman about interest in Shahed-like drones at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) annual symposium in October. “We are behind on long-range sensing and long-range launched-effect strike.”

“I think we do,” Army Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, commander of V Corps, which has its main headquarters at Fort Knox in Kentucky and a forward command post in Poland, said separately at the AUSA gathering in response to a similar question from Howard Altman about the need for Shahed-type drones.

Costanza also offered a blunt assessment of the service’s work to field various tiers of drones, as well as capabilities to counter the growing threats they pose.

“We’re behind. I’ll just be candid. I think we know we’re behind,” the V Corps commander said. “We aren’t moving fast enough.”

“And it really took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [in 2022], and the way they’re innovating, and Ukrainians are innovating, to realize, hey, we need to move fast,” he added.

For Ukraine, moving fast has become a matter of life or death, and rapidly iterating capabilities has become critical because of the speed at which countermeasures are also developed.

Army units in Europe have been very much at the forefront of current efforts to accelerate and expand the fielding of new weaponized drones, as well as counter-drone systems. However, some of those activities have drawn criticism for how much they still appear to be behind the curve, especially compared to what is regularly seen on battlefields in Ukraine.

Army Secretary Driscoll’s million-drone plan is clearly a new push toward a real paradigm shift, in line with the direction from the Pentagon in July. At the same time, there are significant questions about whether the service will be able to even come close to reaching its new procurement goals, especially when it comes to funding, contracting processes, and the capacity of the U.S. industrial base. The policy changes rolled out earlier this year did include several aimed at simplifying contracting processes.

Just today, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced further plans for even more sweeping changes to acquisition processes across the U.S. military. The goal here is also to fundamentally change how the Pentagon works with the U.S. defense industrial base, all with an eye toward moving things along faster.

“This relates to the whole industrial base, and most importantly, to the large primes [prime contractors] that we do business with today,” Hegseth said in a speech earlier today. “These large defense primes need to change, to focus on speed and volume and divest their own capital to get there.”

We’re moving from a slow, contractor-dominated system (marked by limited competition, vendor lock, and cost overruns) to an industrial base that drives speed, innovation, and investment—powered by America’s unmatched ability to scale quickly. pic.twitter.com/n9lYE02WTr

— DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) November 7, 2025

As TWZ often notes, there has been steadily growing interest across the U.S. military in recent years when it comes to engaging with smaller or otherwise non-traditional companies, including to help meet complex requirements on aggressive timelines.

“Instead of partnering with larger defense companies, he [Driscoll] said the Army wanted to work with companies that were producing drones that could have commercial applications as well,” according to Reuters.

“We want to partner with other drone manufacturers who are using them for Amazon deliveries and all the different use cases,” Driscoll said.

Whether or not the Army ultimately acquires a million new drones in the next few years, and what is included in that mix, remains to be seen. However, Secretary Driscoll has started the clock now on what could be a transformational shift for the service when it comes to fielding unrewed aerial systems.

Contact the author: [email protected]

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 7 (UPI) — Lebanon faces the dilemma of whether to go ahead with negotiations with Israel to end the ongoing cycle of violence and prevent a full-scale war despite Hezbollah‘s rejection of the talks — highlighting a deep political divide within the country.

The Hezbollah-Israel war, which broke out when the Iran-backed group opened a support front for Gaza on Oct. 8, 2023, never came to an end, even after a cease-fire agreement was reached on Nov. 27, 2024.

Israel has continued its unrestrained attacks on Hezbollah, causing further casualties and destruction. It has refused to withdraw from five strategic positions it still occupies in southern Lebanon, refrained from releasing Lebanese prisoners detained during the war, and prevented displaced residents from returning to their border villages turned to ruin.

The Lebanese Army’s successful advance in taking control of southern Lebanon and eliminating Hezbollah’s military presence along the border and south of the Litani River, as stipulated by the cease-fire agreement, does not seem sufficient for Israel, which wants Hezbollah to be completely disarmed.

In fact, Hezbollah, which suffered heavy losses during the war, has refrained from firing a single shot in retaliation to Israel’s continued air and drone strikes, which allegedly target the group’s remaining arms depots and military infrastructure beyond southern areas of the Litani River.

However, Hezbollah’s recent claims that it has fully recovered, restructured its military capabilities and rebuilt its command structure — coupled with its refusal to disarm or support Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in his new approach to negotiations with Israel — put the country at risk of another round of war.

While Aoun said that Lebanon has no choice but to engage in talks with Israel to end its occupation and halt its attacks, Hezbollah rejected any attempt to involve the country in new negotiations — outside the framework of the “mechanism” committee responsible for supervising the implementation of the ceasefire accord — arguing that they would only serve “the enemy and its interests.”

Hisham Jaber, a Lebanese military expert and former Army general, said it is the Lebanese state — not Hezbollah — that should negotiate with Israel, based on terms set by President Aoun: no direct or political negotiations, only military-security talks conducted via a third party, such as the U.S. or the United Nations, and no use of force to complete Hezbollah’s disarmament.

Jaber said that indirect talks with Israel had proven successful, recalling the 2022 U.S.-mediated maritime border deal that ended a years-long dispute between Lebanon and Israel over the ownership of natural gas fields.

“Why not do that again?” he told UPI. But to sit at the negotiation table, he added, the United States, which is pressuring Lebanon to accept the talks, should ensure that Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon and releases the prisoners, instead of “cornering us.”

What Lebanon wants is for Israel to abide by the truce accord through the “mechanism” committee, which is made up of Israel, Lebanon, the United States, France and the United Nations. However, the newly proposed negotiations, although their framework is still unclear, would also address land border disputes and other issues.

“There is a need for an agreement on the disputed points along the border, and this is not within the mandate of the mechanism,” said Riad Kahwaji, a Middle East security analyst, adding that the truce committee is charged with ensuring Hezbollah’s disarmament, the return of prisoners, and Israel’s withdrawal behind the [U.N.-drawn] Blue Line that existed before the last war in October 2023.

If the new negotiations with Israel proceed and result in a final land border agreement, it would lead to the cessation of the state of war between the two countries, and “the 1949 Armistice will prevail,” Kahwaji said..

“But, of course, Hezbollah does not want an end to the state of war between Lebanon and Israel, because that would require it to disarm, causing it to lose its value for Iran and its significance and standing within its own popular base,” he told UPI. “Its resistance will no longer be needed or relevant.”

However, Hezbollah’s attempts to rearm appear extremely difficult after the group lost its main supply route after the overthrow of its key ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, as well as its long-standing access to Beirut’s port and airport, which it had used for years to smuggle weapons and funds.

It is now impossible for Hezbollah to smuggle large weapons, such as heavy missiles, across the border with Syria, though it may still attempt to acquire Grad rockets, anti-tank Kornet missiles and drones.

“If Hezbollah goes into another war with Israel, it will be using whatever is left from its arsenal, which is not that much,” Kahwaji said, noting that the group now has “a different leadership” after Israel killed most of its top leaders and military commanders, and that “its popular base is exhausted … so the repercussions will be huge.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is acting as a victor,” refusing to make any concessions and imposing all his conditions, he added.

Lebanon has been facing mounting pressure, especially from the United States and Israel, to disarm Hezbollah even forcibly. Authorities prefer a quiet approach to avoid a confrontation between the Lebanese Army and the militant group, which could create divisions within the army and potentially spark a civil war.

Jaber, the former Army general who is well-informed about Hezbollah, said Washington should instead understand and support Lebanon’s approach, because the group “is ready to hand over its weapons” if Israel stops its attacks and withdraws in line with the truce accord.

“Hezbollah is prepared to relinquish its offensive weapons first, followed by its defensive weapons at a later stage, as part of a national defense strategy,” he said. “This is now an attrition war, not between two parties, but led by only one [Israel].”

Iran, which has funded and armed Hezbollah since its formation in the early 1980s, no longer is interfering in the group’s day-to-day affairs, but remains keen to preserve it as a political and military entity -a card in its hand — after “losing all its other cards in the region,” Jaber said.

With Israel threatening to expand its attacks and launch a full-scale war to force the complete disarmament of Hezbollah, Lebanon remains with few options: diplomacy and political pressure.

“It is in Lebanon’s best interest to seize this opportunity and drag Israel into negotiations to end the war and the conflict,” Kahwaji said.

Russian forces have spread rapidly through Pokrovsk, the city in Ukraine’s east where the warring sides have concentrated their manpower and tactical ingenuity during the past week, in what may be a final culmination of a 21-month battle.

Geolocated footage placed Russian troops in central, northern and northeastern Pokrovsk, said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank.

Russia sees control of Pokrovsk and neighbouring Myrnohrad as essential to capturing the remaining unoccupied parts of the Donetsk region.

It set its sights on the city almost two years ago, after capturing Avdiivka, 39km (24 miles) to the east.

Ukraine sees the defence of the city as a means of eroding Russian manpower and buying time for the “fortress belt” of Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk, the largest remaining and most heavily defended cities of Donetsk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded their surrender as part of a land swap and ceasefire he discussed with United States President Donald Trump last August. Ukraine has refused.

A recent US intelligence assessment said Putin was more determined than ever to prevail on the battlefield in Ukraine, NBC reported.

Russia seems to have outmanoeuvred Ukraine by striking its drone operators before they had time to deploy, and cutting off resupply routes at critical points.

“Operational and tactical aircraft, backed by drones, significantly disrupted the Ukrainian army’s logistics in Pokrovsk,” said Russia’s Ministry of Defence on Friday. It said it had destroyed two out of three bridges across the Vovcha River, used by Ukrainian logistics to reach the city.

“Unfortunately, everything is sad in the Pokrovsk direction,” wrote a Ukrainian drone unit calling itself Peaky Blinders on the messaging app Telegram. “The intensity of movements is so great that drone operators simply do not have time to lift the [drone] overboard.”

On October 29, Ukrainian commanders reported only 200 Russian soldiers in Pokrovsk.

Peaky Blinders said Russia was sending as many as 300 into the city a day, “in groups of three people with the expectation that two will be destroyed”.

By neutralising Ukraine’s drone operators and using fibre optic drones immune to jamming, Russia reportedly acquired a numerical drone advantage in the city’s vicinity.

Ukrainian commanders said Russia also took advantage of wet weather, which disadvantaged the use of light, first-person-view drones.

Ukrainian military observer Konstantyn Mashovets said the Russian command had developed these new infiltration tactics to exploit Ukrainian vulnerabilities – a lack of manpower and gaps among their units.

“The Russian command ‘tried different options’ for some time,” said Mashovets.

“Russian technical innovations, such as first-person-view drones with increased ranges, thermobaric warheads, and ‘sleeper’ or ‘waiter’ drones along [ground lines of communication], allowed Russian forces to … restrict Ukrainian troop movements, evacuations, and logistics,” the ISW said.

As recently as Saturday, Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii framed the battle as one of counterattack rather than defence.

“A comprehensive operation to destroy and push out enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “There is no encirclement or blockade of the cities.”

Yet there was clearly alarm. Ukraine sent its intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, to the Pokrovsk area with military intelligence (GUR) forces to keep supply lines open.

Two Ukrainian military sources told the Reuters news agency that the GUR had successfully landed at least 10 operators in a Blackhawk helicopter near Pokrovsk on Friday.

On Saturday, Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed “an operation to deploy a GUR special operations group by a helicopter in 1km (0.6 miles) northwest of [Pokrovsk] was thwarted. All 11 militants who disembarked from the helicopter have been neutralised.”

It was unclear whether the two reports referred to the same group.

Deep air strikes

Russia kept up a separate campaign to destroy Ukraine’s electricity and gas infrastructure, launching 1,448 drones and 74 missiles into the rear of the country from October 30 to November 5.

Ukraine said it intercepted 86 percent of the drones but just less than half the missiles, such that 208 drones and 41 missiles found their targets.

With US help, Ukraine has responded with strikes on Russian refineries and oil export terminals.

Ukraine appeared on Sunday to strike both a Russian oil terminal and, for the first time, two foreign civilian tankers taking on oil there.

Video appeared to show the tankers at Tuapse terminal on the Black Sea on fire, and the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region confirmed the hit.

“As a result of the drone attack on the port of Tuapse on the night of November 2, two foreign civilian ships were damaged,” he said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it intercepted another 238 Ukrainian long-range drones overnight.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said it struck the Lukoil refinery in Kstovo in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow.

Russian regional authorities also said Ukraine attempted to damage a petrochemical plant in Bashkortostan, 1,500km (930 miles) east of Ukraine.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down 204 Ukrainian long-range drones overnight.

According to the head of Ukraine’s State Security Service, SBU, Kyiv’s forces have struck 160 oil and energy facilities in Russia this year.

Vasyl Maliuk said a special SBU operation had destroyed a hypersonic ballistic Oreshnik missile on Russian soil.

“One of the three Oreshniks was successfully destroyed on their (Russian) territory at Kapustin Yar,” Maliuk briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday.

Russia unveiled the Oreshnik with a strike on the city of Dnipro a year ago. It says it will deploy the missile in Belarus by December.

Ukraine has been lobbying the US government for Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of 2,500km (1,550 miles). So far, Trump has refused, on the basis that “we need them too.”

The Pentagon cleared Ukraine to receive Tomahawk missiles, after determining this would not deprive the US military of the stockpile it needs, CNN reported last week, quoting unnamed US and European officials.

The political decision now rests with Trump on whether to send those missiles or not. The report did not specify how many Ukraine could have.

General Atomics’ Gambit family of drones, with its common modular core ‘chassis’ concept, now has a sixth member optimized for air-to-surface missions, such as attacking hostile air defenses or enemy ships. The company is already eyeing international sales of the new Gambit 6, particularly in Europe, but it could also be of interest to branches of the U.S. military. The latest Gambit configuration underscores the growing pursuit of loyal wingman-type drones, also now often referred to as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), by armed forces globally.

Gambit 6 made its official debut yesterday at the annual International Fighter Conference in Rome, Italy. General Atomics’ Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI) first unveiled the Gambit family back in 2022, at which time it included four designs. They were joined last year by Gambit 5, which is intended for carrier-based operations.

“The Gambit Series is a modular family of unmanned aircraft designed to meet diverse mission requirements, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; multi-domain combat; advanced training; and stealth reconnaissance,” according to a press release from GA-ASI. “It’s built around a common core platform that accounts for a significant proportion of the aircraft’s hardware, including the landing gear, baseline avionics, and chassis. This shared foundation reduces costs, increases interoperability, and accelerates the development of mission-specific variants like Gambit 6.”

“The multi-role [Gambit 6] platform is optimized for roles such as electronic warfare, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), and deep precision strike, making it a versatile option for evolving defense needs,” the release adds.

An accompanying rendering, seen in part at the top of this story and below, shows a trio of Gambit 6s. Each one is depicted releasing several GBU-53/B StormBreaker precision-guided bombs, also known as Small Diameter Bomb IIs (SDB II).

The Gambit 6 design looks similar, at least externally, to General Atomics’ YFQ-42A. The YFQ-42A is one of two uncrewed aircraft currently under development as part of the first phase, or Increment 1, of the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program. The other is Anduril’s YFQ-44A, also known as Fury. General Atomics has previously confirmed that the YFQ-42A leverages prior work on an experimental drone called the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station, which flew for the first time last year, and the Gambit family. The YFQ-42A made its maiden flight earlier this year, and a second example is now in flight testing.

General Atomics is also now among the companies under contract to develop conceptual CCA designs for the U.S. Navy.

“It’s best to think of Gambit 1 as optimized for advanced sensing, and represented by our XQ-67A OBSS [Off-Board Sensing Station] flying today,” C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for General Atomics, told TWZ. “Gambit 2 is optimized for air-to-air combat and represented by our YFQ-42A, which has multiple airframes currently flying. Loaded with the proper weapons, a Gambit 2 could conduct a ground or surface strike as a multirole aircraft, but it is not optimized for that ground mission.”

“The Gambit series, including YFQ-42A, can be equipped with EW [electronic warfare] suites or EW-capable launched effects [uncrewed aerial systems],” Brinkely added.

The Gambit 3 design is primarily intended to act as a ‘red air’ adversary during training. The flying wing Gambit 4, so far the most visually distinctive member of the family, is focused on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. As noted, Gambit 5 is designed for carrier-based combat operations.

“Gambit 6 will be truly optimized for air-to-ground/surface operations. It might visually look like a Gambit 2, and perhaps the differences would be imperceptible to the casual viewer, as both would utilize RF [radiofrequency] and optical sensing,” Brinkley added. “But the mission systems inside Gambit 6 are fine-tuned specifically for ground/surface operations, missions in which General Atomics has developed deep experience over decades of ground/surface sensing and strikes. Gambit 6 could also be outfitted for an electronic warfare mission, for instance, or even naval strikes.”

Overall, “the idea is that Gambit 6 will be primarily looking down.”

Just like an air-to-air combat optimized CCA-type drone, an air-to-surface focused design would help friendly forces expand their coverage and capacity to perform relevant missions over one or more areas of the battlespace, while also reducing the risk to crewed platforms. As described, Gambit 6s seems geared to be particularly well-suited to the suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses mission sets, or SEAD/DEAD, to aid in clearing the way for follow-on operations.

The idea of CCA-type drones taking on these ‘downward-focused’ missions is not new. Though the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program is currently focused on air-to-air missions, the service has expressed interest in future air-to-surface strike and electronic warfare capabilities. Previous U.S. Marine Corps testing of Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie has put particular emphasis on the ability to launch electronic warfare attacks as part of SEAD/DEAD missions conducted together with F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. Earlier this year, the Marines confirmed that experimental work with the XQ-58 was transitioning into a full program of record with a clear eye toward a real operational capability. Air-to-surface missions are also a component of other CCA-type programs globally.

“Air forces throughout the world are looking to air-to-ground-capable CCAs to enhance operational capabilities and address emerging threats in a denied environment,” the General Atomics press release says. “Airframes will be available for international procurement starting in 2027, with European missionized versions deliverable in 2029. GA-ASI is building industry partnerships throughout Europe with the aim of providing sovereign capabilities for all its platforms.”

It has been pointed out that the schedule stated aligns particularly well with a German requirement for a CCA-type drone capable of air-to-surface missions. Last year, Airbus also unveiled a loyal wingman drone with a clear eye toward meeting German Air Force needs. Airbus and Kratos also announced a partnership earlier this year to supply a version of the XQ-58 to the Germans.

General Atomics has made clear that it is looking at multiple potential foreign sales opportunities with Gambit 6.

“Many international allies and partners have expressed interest in a CCA optimized for ground or surface strike. Gambit 6 was announced here in Rome on the first day of the International Fighter Conference, and the resulting interest and inquiry from attending military representatives has been great,” Brinkley, the General Atomics spokesperson, also told TWZ. “We look forward to continuing those discussions here this week. We absolutely intend to submit Gambit 6 for various emerging international opportunities.”

“Nothing would prevent the United States from procuring a Gambit 6 variant, fine tuned to American specifications,” he added.

“I don’t have any additional details to offer on Gambit 5 or the US Navy opportunity. We’ve been talking about the Gambit 5 concept for about 16 months at this point, since Farnborough 2024,” Brinkley also said when asked for a general update on the work the company is doing in relation to the Navy’s CCA effort. “There is no specific relationship between Gambit 5 & Gambit 6 at this time. The point of the Gambit Series is to quickly deliver affordable mass at scale, and to adjust to customer demands rapidly, and each of these aircraft does that, while also leveraging years of hard work and demonstrated success. “

As has been made clear in this story already, the market space for CCA-type drones has been steadily growing in recent years, and extends well beyond General Atomics. Just since September, Lockheed Martin’s Vectis and Shield AI’s X-BAT have joined the growing field of relevant designs. The jet-powered X-BAT is a particularly novel design, intended to take off and land vertically, as you can learn more about in great detail in this recent TWZ feature. In addition to the Gambit family, Vectis, X-BAT, and Anduril’s Fury, among other drone designs, are also being showcased at the International Fighter Conference this week. Also on the market now is Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, originally developed for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Aviation Week just recently disclosed the existence of a new drone design from Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites, referred to now simply as Project Lotus, which could be in the broad CCA category, as well.

Oct. 27 (UPI) — The United Nations said its peacekeepers in southern Lebanon came under Israeli fire over the weekend, and were forced to “neutralize” one of its drones.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon accused Israel of violating a U.N. Security Council resolution as well as Lebanon’s sovereignty with the attacks. It said in a statement that the military actions “show disregard for safety and security of peacekeepers implementing Security Council-mandated tasks in southern Lebanon.”

UNIFIL said it thrice came into contact with Israeli forces on Sunday near Kfar Kila in southern Lebanon.

An Israeli drone flew over a UNIFIL patrol in what it described as “an aggressive manner,” prompting peacekeepers to take “necessary defensive countermeasures to neutralize the drone.”

Then, at about 5:45 p.m. local time, an Israeli drone flying close to a UNIFIL patrol in the same area dropped a grenade, followed by an Israeli tank firing toward the peacekeepers as well as UNIFIL assets, it said.

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed UNIFIL had shot down one of its drones, The Times of Israel reported, asserting the aerial posed no threat to the peacekeepers.

According to the report, the IDF said it flew a second drone in the area after UNIFIL shot down the first one, which had dropped the grenade prevent others from approaching the downed aerial.

The IDF also denied one of its tanks having fired toward UNIFIL, saying it had detected no gunfire in the area.

UNIFIL has twice previously this month accused Israel of dropping grenades near UNIFIL peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

On Oct. 12, UNIFIL said a grenade exploded near a UNIFIL position in Kfar Kila. On Oct. 2, grenades were dropped near peacekeepers in Maroun al-Ras.

UNIFIL maintains about 10,500 peacekeepers from 50 countries to monitor the 2006 cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah and prevent a large conflict from spiraling.

It comes as the stages of fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza are being implemented.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 24 (UPI) — The inhabitants of southern Lebanon continue to live under the shadow of war, enduring near-daily Israeli airstrikes, intensive shelling and persistent drone activity that inflict further casualties and destruction, deepen suffering and shatter what remains of daily life.

A cease-fire accord brokered by the United States and France on Nov. 27 intended to end Israel’s devastating war against the Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah militant group has failed to halt hostilities or restore calm to the embattled region.

Interpreting the truce accord as granting it the right to respond to any emerging threat, Israel has continued its attacks without restraint across southern Lebanon and beyond.

The post-truce phase has proven even more difficult and uncertain than the war itself, which began on Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah entered the conflict by opening a front in support of Gaza.

Suspected Hezbollah positions and efforts to prevent the group from regrouping and rearming have not been Israel’s only targets. The strikes now also include private construction equipment businesses, bulldozers, excavators and anything related to rebuilding while showing no restraint toward civilians — whether in vehicles, on motorcycles or even at home.

The most intense strikes occurred Oct. 11, targeting bulldozer and excavator yards in the al-Msayleh area, where more than 300 vehicles worth millions of dollars were destroyed. One Syrian passerby was killed, and seven people, including two women, were wounded.

A week later, a quarry and cement-asphalt factory in the village of Ansar, in the Nabatiyeh district, was hit by another Israeli attack and destroyed. Israel claimed that the targeted facilities were being used by Hezbollah to produce cement for rebuilding infrastructure that had been demolished during the war — an allegation strongly denied by the plant’s managing director.

“We are a 100% civilian institution and have nothing to do with anything else,” Ali Haidar Khalifeh, who is running the targeted cement factory, told UPI. “We are a registered company with around 70 employees and a large-scale production, serving dozens of clients, distributors and suppliers from across all regions of Lebanon.”

Khalifeh, who estimated the losses at more than $15 million, said it was inconceivable to hide “weapons, missiles or military infrastructure” in the plant.

“The enemy [Israel] needs no excuse or reason. … The message is clear: it is forbidden to rebuild,” he said. “It is also meant to frighten businessmen and investors, to keep them away from southern Lebanon.”

Even civilian engineers, who assist in assessing the damage inflicted on houses and villages during the war, have been threatened and targeted.

Tarek Mazaraani was one of them. He, his family and neighbors endured a frightening experience when an Israeli drone flying over several villages in southern Lebanon broadcast a voice message calling his name and warning that he was “dangerous,” telling people to keep away from him.

At first, when his friends started sending him videos of the drone, Mazraani thought it was a joke. He soon realized it was “something serious.”

His three sons, including 8-year-old twins, began to cry, while neighbors in the compound where he was temporarily living in the village of Zawtar al-Sharkiyeh in the Nabatiyeh district rushed to his house to bid farewell before leaving for safer locations. His family packed their belongings and went to relatives in a nearby village, while he quickly headed to Beirut.

“I was surprised. … I am a simple civilian engineer and don’t belong to any party or provoke anyone,” Mazraani told UPI, adding that he felt guilty for his family and neighbors, who had to “live through the tension” and leave their homes.

He asked why Israel had “created all this terror” if its intention was to kill him, adding, “They could have done so without even a warning.”

It could well have been a warning to him and others not to deal with Hezbollah, directly or indirectly. Earlier this year, while unemployed, he briefly worked as part of a team of engineers assessing war damage with “Jihad al-Binaa,” a Hezbollah-affiliated development and reconstruction organization.

Probably, he said, his other “sin” was trying to help displaced people return to their border villages, which had been reduced to rubble during the war, and seek compensation.

Mazraani was forced to leave his border village of Houla, where his house had been badly damaged by intensive Israeli bombardment. He then established the “Gathering of Residents of Southern Border Villages,” composed of displaced people from 45 villages, to draw attention to the plight of some 80,000 inhabitants who remain displaced and without resources.

Israel is making it clear, residents say, that it will not allow reconstruction in southern Lebanon or international funding unless Hezbollah is fully disarmed and the Lebanese government accepts direct negotiations on security arrangements.

Even prefabricated houses, water tanks and small vans are not permitted and are being destroyed. With the olive harvest season beginning, farmers in the border areas must obtain permission from Israeli authorities to harvest and are usually accompanied by the Lebanese Army and U.N. peacekeeping forces.

According to a Lebanese Army source, Israel has been using Hezbollah and its alleged efforts to rebuild military infrastructure as a pretext to block any reconstruction efforts and hinder a return to normalcy.

The source explained that destroying cement plants and bulldozers, threatening engineers and imposing curfews were intended to block the return of inhabitants to their villages and establish a security belt in the area until an agreement with Lebanon could be reached.

“These are also political pressures exerted on the government,” he told UPI.

Referring to recent Israeli war threats, drills on its northern front and intensified drone surveillance over Beirut — specifically targeting the presidential and government palaces — the source explained that “it is a psychological war aimed at dragging the government into accepting direct negotiations [with Israel], while the drones are searching for new targets.”

With the Army successfully advancing in taking control of southern Lebanon, the source confirmed that “there is no Hezbollah presence” along the border or south of the Litani River, as stipulated by the cease-fire agreement.

Regarding growing fears that Israel might be preparing to escalate the war on Lebanon, he said, “It can — as no one is deterring it, and it listens to no one except [U.S. President Donald] Trump.”

Many Lebanese, especially the inhabitants of southern Lebanon believe the war was never truly over, and that the truce accord merely prolonged the conflict to Israel’s advantage.

“The first thing we want is safety and security — to stop the fire so we can go back and rebuild our villages and homes,” said Mazraani, who said he was exhausted by the war, echoing the wish of many others in southern Lebanon.

Explosions were heard in the vicinity of Khartoum International Airport amid uncertainty over its reopening.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have targeted Sudan’s capital Khartoum and its main airport with drones for a fourth consecutive day, as the government-aligned Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) attempts to resume air traffic after regaining control of the city several months ago.

Drones and surface-to-air missiles were heard above the capital in the early hours of Friday morning, residents living close to the Khartoum International Airport told Al Jazeera, before loud explosions went off.

It is unclear whether the capital’s main airport was successfully hit and the extent of the damage.

The attack marks the fourth consecutive day of attacks that began on Tuesday, a day before the airport was scheduled to become operational after at least two years of war.

A single plane operated by the local Badr Airlines landed on Wednesday, before an airport official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the airport’s reopening has been postponed “under further notice” because of incoming attacks.

Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan, reporting from Khartoum, said that “despite authorities saying that operations are scheduled to start on October 26, there are concerns that this will not happen”.

The war, which started in April 2023, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced about 12 million more and left 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, making it the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Return to Khartoum

The Sudanese military retook the capital from the paramilitary force in March. Since then, residents have been tentatively returning to their homes, often to find them destroyed.

Alfatih Bashir’s house in Omdurman, which he built using all his savings, has collapsed ceilings and damaged walls. “I built it when I was working abroad,” Bashir told Al Jazeera, adding that now he did not posses the necessary funds to repair the damage.

“I’m not working, I’m just sitting idly with my wife and two children. We sometimes barely have enough to eat. How can I even start to rebuild?” he said.

Authorities are still assessing how many houses have been damaged in the conflict, but the scars of the battle between the military and the RSF are visible across the capital.

Another resident, Afaf Khamed, said she fainted when she saw the extent of the damage.

“This house is where we were born, where all our family members got married. I now live here with my sister, and we can’t rebuild because we don’t have anyone to help us,” she told Al Jazeera.

The collapse of the local currency makes reconstruction an impossible feat even for those who have retained a job during the war. While salaries have remained stable, the Sudanese pound spiked from 600 pounds to the US dollar in April 2023, when the conflict started, to 3,500 pounds.

Goods are also hard to come by in the war-torn country, hampering reconstruction. Shop owner Mohammed Ali said materials take too long to arrive because of security checks, and that makes them more expensive. As a consequence, “fewer and fewer people are coming to buy building materials”, he said.

Sudan’s government has pledged to rebuild the capital, but its focus as so far has been on state institutions, while residents are left to figure out how to rebuild on their own.

The U.S. Army is in the very early stages of formulating a vision for fleets of advanced and highly autonomous drones in a similar vein to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) that the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Navy are now developing. The Army’s CCA endeavor may ultimately be linked, at least in some way, with work already being done on so-called “launched effects,” a term generally applied to smaller uncrewed aerial systems designed to be fired from other platforms in the air, as well as on the ground and at sea.

Army aviation officials talked about the current state of the service’s CCA plans during a roundtable on the sidelines of the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual conference this week, at which TWZ was in attendance. The topic had also come up elsewhere during the three-day event, which ended yesterday. Army CCAs would be primarily expected to operate in close cooperation with the service’s existing crewed helicopters, as well as its future MV-75A tiltrotors.

“So, one, we’re following the other services very closely as they’re looking at this, this [CCA] concept,” Brig. Gen. Phillip C. Baker, the Army’s Aviation Future Capabilities Director, said. at the roundtable. “I think for the Army, especially launched effects, it comes down to a discussion of mass. … A platform, a loyal wingman, a CCA concept, allows you to increase mass while also reducing the amount of aviators you’ve got to have in the air.”

Baker noted that the Army is working in particular with U.S. military commands in the Pacific and European regions as it begins to explore potential CCA requirements, which might lead to an operational capability in the next few years. For the past year or so, the Army has been working to figure out “the capabilities that they need in order to deliver that mass, and really survivability,” he added.

At present, a key aspect of the ongoing discussions within the Army seems to be focused on where the service’s existing work on launch effects ends and where a CCA-like effort might begin.

“Launched effects, if you think about it, is a CCA, right?” Maj. Gen. Clair Gill, commander of the Army Aviation Center of Excellence, also said at the round table. “These are things that we’re going to launch off of aircraft and are going to operate in a collaborative fashion, potentially autonomously, but we’re going to give them instructions, and they’re going to operate based off of guidance, either off of something on the ground or maybe they’re being quarterbacked in the air.”

“Manned-unmanned teaming is the future. We’ve talked about the potential of launched effects off the aircraft, or a potential loyal wingman,” Col. Stephen Smith, head of the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, better known as the Night Stalkers, had also said during a separate panel at this year’s AUSA conference. Smith had talked about increased use of drones as part of larger efforts to help his unit operate more effectively and just survive in higher-threat environments during future high conflicts, which you can read more about here.

The Army is already envisioning at least three categories of launched effects, broken down into short, medium, and long-range types. They could be configured for a variety of missions, including reconnaissance, electronic warfare, communications relays, and as acting as loitering munitions or decoys. The service has long said that it sees these systems, which could also be networked together in highly autonomous swarms, operating forward of friendly forces, extending the reach of their capabilities, while also reducing their vulnerability.

In some broad strokes, the benefits that launched effects and CCA-types drones offer do align, on top of the “affordable mass” they both promise to provide. However, as the Army currently describes them, even the largest launched effects are substantially smaller and less capable than something in the generally accepted CCA, or ‘loyal wingman,’ category. Most, if not all launched effects are also expected to be fully expendable, unlike a CCA. Any Army CCAs would likely carry launched effects themselves, further extending the reach of the latter drones into higher-risk environments, as well as the overall area they can cover quickly. This, in turn, would allow for a crewed-uncrewed team capable of executing a complex and flexible array of tactics.

When asked then to clarify whether a future Army CCA effort would be distinct from the service’s current launched effects efforts, Maj. Gen. Gill said that “it could be, yes.”

“So, last fall, we actually asked industry what they can provide for a Group 4 VTOL/STOL [vertical takeoff and landing/short takeoff and landing] perspective,” Brig. Gen. David Phillips, head of the Army’s Program Executive Office for Aviation (PEO-Aviation). “So we use that as a great set of information on what the state of the art of technology is from a range, speed, payload, and really effects perspective. What can we bring to bear, given modern technology versus some of our older UAS [uncrewed aerial systems].”

The U.S. military groups uncrewed aircraft into five categories. Group 4 covers designs with maximum takeoff weights over 1,320 pounds, but typical operating altitudes of 18,000 feet Mean Sea Level (MSL) or below. As mentioned already, this is far heavier and higher-flying than any of the UASs the Army is currently considering to meet its launched effects needs.

“I think we’re informing Gen. Gill and Gen. Baker’s teams on what industry has told us on what requirement that shapes out to be,” Phillips added. “It might not look like some of the things we’ve seen on the [AUSA show] floor today. But I can tell you, we received a very robust response from industry, and it’s a combination of maybe some of the things you’d seen on the floor, but we’re excited to start thinking about that space.”

Boeing announced plans for a family of new tiltrotor drones, collectively called Collaborative Transformational Rotorcraft, or CxRs, at this year’s AUSA conference, which you can read more about here. The company said the designs will fall into the Group 4 and Group 5 categories. Per the U.S. military’s definitions, the only difference between Group 4 and Group 5 is that the nominal operating altitude for the latter extends above 18,000 feet MSL.

Last week, Sikorsky, now a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin, announced its own plans to expand existing work on a VTOL drone with a so-called rotor-blown wing configuration into a full family of designs dubbed Nomad, which is set to include a Group 4 type. You can learn more about Nomad, which was also showcased at AUSA, here.

Nearly a decade ago now, Bell also announced it was working on a design for a Group 5 tiltrotor drone called the V-247 Vigilant, aimed originally at a Marine Corps requirement. The V-247, or a scaled-down derivative, could be another starting place for a future Army CCA. Bell has notably shown renderings, like the one below, depicting V-247s operating together with versions of its crewed V-280 Valor tiltrotor design, which the Army’s MV-75A is based on.

Brig. Gen. Baker said that experimentation with CCA concepts, to varying degrees, is already underway, and that more is planned for the near future. He also pointed out that the Army is presented with unique questions to answer compared to the Air Force, Marines, and Navy, given that those services primarily expect CCA-type drones to operate collaboratively with higher and faster-flying fixed-wing tactical jets. The Army, in contrast, as noted, sees any such uncrewed aircraft partnered with its existing helicopters, as well as its future MV-75A tiltrotors, with much lower and slower operational flight profiles. It is worth noting here that the other services still have many questions to answer when it comes to their future CCA fleets, including how they will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated, let alone employed tactically.

The video below from Collins Aerospace offers a relevant depiction of what the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy expect future air combat operations involving their CCAs to look like.

“So, our experimentation really lies in two areas. One, our modeling that we do constantly. We do that with the feedback that [Brig.] Gen. Phillips talked about from industry. How do you put that [notional system] into a threat environment, and how does that play out, and really render the specifications that we’re looking at,” Baker explained. “The second piece is, we do an annual experimentation out west. That will be the second quarter this year. And, so, we are looking at vendors, potentially, to come out and partner with us to build off the study that [Brig.] Gen. Phillips did, of what’s truly [the] capability out there.”

“When you look at a CCA role for – really linked to rotary wing, that is a different dynamic than you have at 20-to-30,000 feet,” he added. “So it’s a whole set of different behaviors, a whole set of different capability you need to marry that up with an aircraft that’s flying at 100 feet, at 150-plus knots, at night. So that is what we’re really looking at, is what is the state of technology right now to develop a requirement that we can deliver.”

Altogether, the Army still clearly has many questions of its own to answer as it begins to explore concepts for future CCA-drones in earnest, including how such a program would fit in with work it is already doing in the uncrewed aerial systems space.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Another senior U.S. Army officer has spoken out about the service’s need for Shahed-136 like long-range, expendable drones. The need for the U.S. to procure exactly these kinds of relatively simple, comparatively very cheap and adaptable drones, built at scale, is something that TWZ has recently made a detailed case for.

When asked by Howard Altman of TWZ about a possible Army requirement for Shahed-like drones, the answer from Maj. Gen. James (Jay) Bartholomees, commanding general of the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, was unequivocal.

“Absolutely,” Bartholomees said, speaking this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) annual symposium. “We are behind on long-range sensing and long-range launched-effect strike.”

Bartholomees confirmed that the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), the unified combatant command responsible for the Indo-Pacific region, is “learning from what is happening in Ukraine,” where the Pentagon’s tardiness at widely adopting lower-end drones for its own offensive operations has been highlighted.

The Iranian-designed Shahed-136 long-range one-way attack drone, which is being mass-produced in Russia as the Geran, has become Moscow’s primary standoff weapon with which it bombards Ukraine on a daily basis.

While the U.S. military is lagging behind, Bartholomees said there’s good news on this front, too.

“I think we can catch up very rapidly,” Bartholomees said. “The formations that we built are ready for those capabilities to land.” Those formations include a launched effects company that the 25th Infantry Division is currently standing up. This will join the launched effects platoon that already exists within its multifunctional reconnaissance company.

As an initial experiment, the launched effects company will be created within the 25th Infantry Division’s artillery unit.

“We absolutely need to build this capability quickly,” Bartholomees continued. “We need to test it in our region; we also need to work with our allies and partners to do the same.”

Referring again to the Shahed, Bartholomees noted that, because this kind of drone “is very cheap, easy to produce, and easy to put together,” it makes it “exactly the type of capability that we would love to have for our allies and partners in the region.” Not only would long-range, expendable drones of this kind help regional allies and partners protect their sovereign territory, but they would also be relevant to defend their maritime spaces, something Bartholomees described as “a unique problem set.”

When asked where the U.S. Army was in relation to Russian efforts in the field of long-range one-way attack drones, Bartholomees admitted that “We are behind in that sense, we need to push faster, all the services, frankly, are on this chase to move faster.”

He did, however, note that there are some “defeat mechanism concerns” that have put something of a brake on the development of at least certain types drones.

Bartholomees identified the importance of the work being done within divisional innovation labs, specifically the work on a nascent long-range one-way attack capability.

“We’re building our own drones,” Bartholomees said. “We’re already starting to produce one-way attack, fixed-wing [but] the longer range obviously gets harder and harder to do, that’s where you need more airworthiness expertise.”

It should be noted that, with its focus on long range and cost effectiveness, a drone in the mold of the Shahed is of particular relevance to a future contingency in the Indo-Pacific theater in which the 25th Infantry Division would likely be engaged.

The Shahed-136 has a range of around 1,000 miles, depending on variant and payload. The extreme challenges of the Pacific call for strike weapons with long range. In fact, TWZ has advocated in the past for an extended-range one-way attack drone, which would be especially useful for reaching from the Second Island Chain to the Chinese mainland — a one-way trip of roughly 2,000 miles.

Bartholomees said he agreed with Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, commander of the Army’s V Corps, which has a presence on NATO’s eastern flank, who also discussed drones and counter-drone capabilities at AUSA before talking further with Howard Altman of TWZ.

“We aren’t moving fast enough,” Costanza continued. “And it really took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [in 2022], and the way they’re innovating, and Ukrainians are innovating, to realize, hey, we need to move fast.”

When asked specifically if the U.S. military needed a capability broadly in line with the Shahed drone, Constanza responded: “I think we do.”

Returning to Bartholomees, he argued that the rapid pace of drone development in the Ukrainian war is, in no small part, due to the result of an existential threat, which means the Ukrainian industrial base is “pushing incredibly hard for the sovereignty of their entire nation.”

“I have no doubt that we can push further, faster to get there,” Bartholomees, pointing to the partnership the Army is forging with the Marine Corps and Air Force, in this regard.

Of course, as we have argued repeatedly in the past, the United States could also find itself facing an existential threat, including an adversary that has a much larger arsenal of long-range, expendable drones. Namely, China.

At the same time, the need for huge numbers of long-range guided weapons that can pierce China’s anti-access bubble is coming to the forefront at a time when existing stockpiles are clearly below the required threshold. This is a reality that is meanwhile driving the development of a wide array of lower-cost, long-range weapons. These include low-cost jet-powered cruise missiles, but these are still significantly more expensive and complex than a Shahed-136 clone and/or they lack range in comparison.

Currently, there are a handful of smaller companies in the United States that are pitching a Shahed copy, or something very similar. While this is a useful starting point, it should be recalled that Russia is already mass-producing these kinds of weapons and is now understood to be building 5,000 a month.

Thankfully, we are finally seeing some much-needed change when it comes to the U.S. military’s plans for fielding its own lower-end drones.

With senior officers like Bartholomees and Costanza making the case for long-range one-way attack drones, we might also start to see some more urgency here, too.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Oct. 15 (UPI) — The CIA is authorized to conduct operations in Venezuela and likely has been for at least a couple of months, President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday.

Trump commented on a possible CIA deployment in Venezuela when a reporter asked why he authorized the CIA to work in the South American nation during a Wednesday news conference.

The president said he has two reasons for authorizing the CIA to be involved in Venezuela.

“They have emptied their prisons into the United States,” Trump said. “They came in through the border because we had an open-border policy.”

“They’ve allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, people from mental institutions and insane asylums emptied out into the United States,” Trump said. “We’re bringing them back.”

The president said Venezuela is not the only country to do so, “but they’re the worst abuser” and called the South American nation’s leaders “down and dirty.”

He said Venezuela also is sending a lot of drugs into the United States.

“A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you see it,” the president explained. “We’re going to stop them by land, also.”

Trump declined to answer a follow-up question regarding whether or not the CIA is authorized to “take out” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The president called the question a fair one but said it would be “ridiculous” for him to answer it.

The president’s answer regarding CIA deployment in Venezuela comes after he earlier said the U.S. military obtains intelligence on likely drug smuggling operations in Venezuela.

Such intelligence enabled the military to strike a vessel carrying six passengers off the coast of Venezuela on Tuesday.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narco-terrorist networks and was transiting along a known [designated terrorist organization] route,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the military strike.

All six crew members were killed in the lethal kinetic airstrike on the vessel, and no U.S. forces were harmed.

Trump told media that Venezuela and a lot of other countries are “feeling heat” and he “won’t let our country be ruined” by them, ABC News reported.

The president in September notified several Congressional committees that the nation is in “active conflict” with transnational gangs and drug cartels, many of which he has designated as terrorist organizations.

Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua is among those so designated, and the United States has a $50 million bounty on Maduro, whom Trump says profits from the drug trade.

During Trump’s first term in office, the CIA similarly worked against drug cartels in Mexico and elsewhere in Central and South America.

The Biden administration continued those efforts, including flying drones over suspected cartel sites in Mexico to identify possible fentanyl labs.

The U.S. Army continues to lag behind global trends when it comes to fielding drones and systems to counter their use by hostile forces, according to a top general overseeing soldiers in Europe. Units forward-deployed in the European theater are trying to break a cycle of seemingly endless experimentation to actually operationalize relevant capabilities, especially within smaller units, buoyed now by major U.S. military-wide initiatives.

Army Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, commander of V Corps, talked about issues relating to drones and counter-drone capabilities at a panel discussion at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium yesterday. TWZ‘s Howard Altman was in attendance and had a chance to talk further with Costanza immediately afterward. From World War II through the Cold War, and for years afterward, V Corps was a key component of the Army’s presence in Europe. Inactivated in Germany in 2013, it was reestablished at Fort Knox in Kentucky in 2020, and a forward headquarters in Poland was subsequently stood up.

“We’re behind. I’ll just be candid. I think we know we’re behind,” Costanza said in response to a direct question at the panel from our Howard Altman. “We’ve been talking about counter-UAS [uncrewed aerial systems] and UAS capability for a better part of a decade, since, really, we watched the war in Armenia and Azerbaijan go on, and saw very much the beginning of the drone UAS capabilities.”

Azerbaijan’s armed forces captured particular global attention with their use of kamikaze drones during a war with Armenia in 2020. They had already been employing those capabilities on a more limited level for years beforehand. The Israeli-made drones they employed traced their roots back decades, and came from companies that continue to be world leaders in this space, as you can read more about here. In 2020, Azerbaijan also employed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2s, a traditional fixed-wing design capable of employing precision munitions that has seen significant sales globally, including to Ukraine.

The propaganda video below from the State Border Service of Azerbaijan highlights how much of a fixture kamikaze drones were in the 2020 war between that country and Armenia.

“We aren’t moving fast enough,” Costanza continued. “And it really took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [in 2022], and the way they’re innovating, and Ukrainians are innovating, to realize, hey, we need to move fast.”

Both sides of the ongoing conflict now make extensive use of various types of weaponized drones, especially highly maneuverable first-person view (FPV) kamikaze designs, in and around the front lines, and now increasingly deeper behind them. Ukraine and Russia also employ longer-range kamikaze drones for attacks further inside each other’s territory. Various types of uncrewed aerial systems had already become steadily more significant factors in the fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country that followed Moscow’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“I think we do,” Costanza also said when asked specifically if the U.S. military needed a capability broadly in line with the Iranian-designed Shahed-136 long-range kamikaze drone. The Shahed-136 has become something of a household name as a result of Russia’s heavy use of variants and derivatives, including types it now produces domestically, in attacks on Ukraine. Last month, TWZ laid out a detailed case for why the U.S. military should already be buying tens of thousands of Shahed-136 clones, which you can find here.

As part of his response to the questions from our Howard Altman, Costanza highlighted Project Flytrap as a prime example of efforts underway to try to reverse these trends. Flytrap is an ongoing series of Army-led training events in Europe focused on counter-drone capabilities and tactics, techniques, and procedures to go with them.

“I think Flytrap is the start point to that, right? So I think Flytrap is taking the capabilities we have right now, identifying how we layer those capabilities, and then taking that, giving it back to the Army, and saying, here’s how you do it now, go make the acquisition purchase,” Costanza said. “Flytrap is just really trying to figure out what the systems are that we need. The scope and scale piece goes back to the Army.”

“What we learned is that there’s really no one system solution. It takes a layered approach. And you know, the way to think about it is, you have to detect what’s in the air, what’s a threat. You have to decide what you’re going to do about it, and that you need the means to actually do something about it,” Col. Donald Neal, commander of the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, which falls under V Corps, also said yesterday while speaking alongside Costanza. “There’s no one system solution to protecting the air above you.”

A key “challenge has been getting the network straight, being able to have the data in a cloud-based environment that we can process it in a way that’s integrated, not just with the counter-UAS systems, but the larger, integrated air and missile defense network, and how we do that. So we’re working through that,” Costanza further noted. “What we need to do now is take those systems, integrate them with an AI [artificial intelligence] capable, data-driven mission command system, [and] sync it all together, not just [for the] U.S., but across all our NATO partners.”

The 2nd Cavalry Regiment has been taking a leading role in Project Flytrap, as well as separate but adjacent efforts to step up the fielding of uncrewed aerial systems, including weaponized types, within the service’s own formations.

“2nd Cavalry Regiment is standing up what they call Delta Company,” Costanza noted during the panel. “It’s taking all the different systems that can have effects, lethal, non-lethal – so not just kinetic, but EW [electronic warfare] – counter-UAS, [as well as] UAS, [and] creating one organization to synchronize those capabilities faster than what we’re able to do right now.”

The Army has already been experimenting with similar units, which have been referred to as Strike Companies and Multi-Purpose Companies (MPC) in the past, outside of 2nd Cavalry, which you can read more about here.

Project Flytrap is also tied in with a NATO-wide initiative announced earlier this year, dubbed the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, to bolster counter-drone and a wide array of other capabilities with a particular eye toward threats emanating from Russia. America’s allies in Europe have been seeing a surge in drone incursions, including over sensitive sites, as Moscow has been ramping up hybrid war efforts.

“I think Putin feels he’s in conflict with NATO right now,” Costanza told our Howard Altman in the interview after the panel. “I think he’s just going to continue to ramp that up until we stop it, and NATO knows that, but we still haven’t done that yet.”

When it comes to the broader issue of the Army lagging in the fielding of drones and counter-drone systems, Project Flytrap and the other work V Corps is involved in are clearly aimed at operationalizing new capabilities. The Pentagon has publicly lauded Flytrap as an example of the services moving to act on the new direction from the Secretary of War intended to address increasingly worrisome capability and capacity gaps that extend well beyond American forces in Europe.

In July, the Pentagon announced a sweeping array of policy and other changes structured around the central goal of getting huge numbers of drones, including weaponized types, into the hands of units, especially smaller ones, across the entire U.S. military. In August, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) stood up as the newest U.S. military organization intended to act as a focal point for the accelerated development and fielding of counter-drone systems for use on the battlefield, as well as to defend facilities and assets within the homeland.

At the same time, what Gen. Costanza talked about yesterday still sounds very much like the kinds of test and evaluation efforts that have been going on for years already. As he himself acknowledged, much of the work that has been done to date has not translated into major new operational capabilities, even as Ukraine and Russia, and many other countries globally, particularly China, have pushed ahead. The Army faced pointed criticism in July after touting the test of a grenade-dropping drone in Europe, a capability that has been in daily use for years now on the battlefield in Ukraine.

AeroVironment has unveiled a new member of its Switchblade family of loitering munitions, the Switchblade 400. It is designed to offer similar capabilities, especially when it comes to destroying enemy tanks and other heavy armor, to the larger Switchblade 600, but in a package that a single individual can employ. It is also sized to fit into U.S. military standard Common Launch Tubes (CLT), which are typically used to fire precision-guided munitions and small uncrewed aerial systems from crewed and uncrewed aircraft, primarily within the special operations community.

Todd Hanning, product line director for what AeroVironment is currently calling its Mojave systems, which includes the Switchblade 400, talked about the new offering with TWZ‘s Howard Altman on the show floor at the Association of the U.S. Army’s (AUSA) main annual symposium today. The Switchblade 400 was originally developed to meet a U.S. Army requirement under the service’s Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance (LASSO) program. LASSO is also part of a larger effort that the service calls its Lethal Unmanned Systems Directed Requirement (LUS DR). The Army has already been buying Switchblade 300s, which are smaller than the new 400 version, as well as the bigger 600s, to meet its LASSO/LUS DR needs.

Hanning explained that the core Army requirement that led to the Switchblade 400 was a total weight of 40 pounds for the All-Up-Round (AUR), which consists of the loitering munition and its launch tube. AeroVironment’s website says a single individual can carry the weapon and have it ready to launch within five minutes. The Switchblade 600 is available in a man-portable form, but is designed for employment by a team and takes twice as much time to set up.

Switchblade 400 needed to be a “single soldier lift,” Hanning said. “Switchblade 600, coming in at about 67 pounds, so right out of the gate, we’ve got to shed about 30 pounds off this thing. Yet we still want the same lethality for [sic; as] a Javelin.”

The Switchblade 600 notably features an anti-armor warhead based on the one in the FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). AeroVironment also unveiled a Block 2 version of the Switchblade 600 today, which offers greater endurance and a new secondary payload bay for added flexibility, as well as improvements to its artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven automated target recognition capabilities.

Hanning said that the Switchblade 400 and Switchblade 600 Block 2 reflect a new modular, open-architecture approach AeroVironment is taking, which offers benefits when it comes to manufacturing and supply chains. The “same avionics, … the same camera architecture, same motor, [and] same power technology” are used in both models.

Overall, Switchblade 400 is “how do we take, really, a Block 2 [Switchblade 600], the next-gen, take 30 pounds out of it, and still do the same mission,” Hanning added. “Now you’re losing a little bit of endurance, right? We had to pull two cameras out, but you still have a gimbaled payload with probably the best optics out there on this kind of a platform, you’ve got the Javelin [warhead], you’ve got some new battery technology, and it’s very lightweight.”

AeroVironment’s website says Switchblade 400 has a maximum endurance of 35 minutes, and a speed profile that allows for 27 and 15 minutes of loiter time after reaching target areas 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) and 21.7 miles (35 kilometers) away, respectively. The company also says it can reach out to around 40 miles (65 kilometers) by handing off control to an operator closer to the target.

This all puts Switchblade 400 roughly in between current-generation Switchblade 300s and Switchblade 600s in terms of range and endurance, but with the ability to engage the same kinds of targets as the latter. Switchblade 300s have much smaller warheads weighing just under four pounds. Switchblade 400 also gives a single user a major boost in capability over a Javelin, which has a demonstrated maximum range of just under two and a half miles (4,000 meters) in its latest man-portable configuration, and no ability to loiter.

Hanning used the breadth of targets that Ukrainian forces have been using Switchblade 600s against to underscore the capabilities on offer. Ukraine has received tranches of both Switchblade 300s and 600s.

“They were shooting some tanks early on, but now you’re seeing them take out surface-to-air missile batteries constantly,” he said. “They’ve taken out some trains. A lot of command elements. But mostly what you’re seeing is those high-value assets, those mobile surface-to-air missile batteries.”

It is worth noting here that AeroVironment has been securing sales of Switchblade 300s and 600s to a growing number of countries beyond the United States and Ukraine in recent years. Last year, the U.S. government notably approved the potential sale of 720 Switchblade 300s to Taiwan. The Taiwanese armed forces have been stepping up their acquisition of a growing array of one-way attack drones as part of a larger strategy to challenge a potential intervention from the mainland, as you can read more about here.

That being said, lessons learned from the particular drone-heavy war in Ukraine have been very important for AeroVironment, according to Hanning.

“We take lessons learned from all of the systems that are in Ukraine, and rapidly inject that technology into the 400 and the 600 Block 2,” Hanning said. “So launching in different environments, on different ground surfaces, that was one. Tactics for range and for how you engage the target. So we’re engaging from higher altitudes. We’re engaging faster. We have different communication modes, silent modes, things like that.”

Hanning said the silent mode referred to here involves operating, at least for a time, without emitting signals that enemy forces could detect. He noted that members of the Switchblade family are designed around concepts of operations that involve a human at least ‘on-the-loop’ during any endgame attack run, despite their highly automated targeting capabilities.

In general terms of controlling Switchblades after launch, “we are running Silvus radio[s], but we are agnostic to radios. So we’ve also integrated an L3Harris radio. We did that about two weeks ago. Very easy,” he added. “So, we’re looking to, how can we shed weight at the soldier level so that we’re using all the common systems that they’re already carrying. So, if that’s a PRC radio that they’re already carrying, if we can leverage that for our C2 [command and control] scheme, then that’s what we’d want to do. … that’s part of that whole modular, open system architecture.”

Switchblade 400s, as well as 600s, could make use of their modularity in other ways going forward. Hanning highlighted the possibility of different warhead options by mentioning a test involving a different type supplied by a company called Corvid Technologies.

“We’re really open to whatever the DoD wants. When a lot of people come to us and say, ‘use my thing,’ and I’m like, well, what does the Army think about that?” Hanning said. “We need to know what they want versus what a vendor wants you to want. And so the best way to do that is to just be very open, hear the voice of the customer, and have the ability to integrate things.”

“When you start doing mixed payloads, you definitely want to play with some [things], maybe a smaller warhead, with some electronic warfare packages, things like that,” he continued. CACI is set to supply an electronic warfare package for testing on Switchblade 400 later this month.

AeroVironment’s emphasis on flexibility has already extended to launch modes. Launchers integrated into crewed and uncrewed armored and other ground vehicles, offering indirect fire and reconnaissance capabilities, have been put forward. The Switchblade 300, at least, has been test-launched from maritime platforms. Last month, General Atomics also announced a test launch of a Switchblade 600 from one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones.

Switchblade 400’s aforementioned ability to fit inside a CLT immediately opens up a host of additional potential launch platforms, including various crewed and uncrewed fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. CLT-launched munitions are a particularly significant part of the current armament package on the U.S. Air Force’s AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, something they inherited from the now-retired AC-130W variants.

When it comes to the Army requirement that drove the initial development of the Switchblade 400, the service is currently evaluating four different options, according to AeroVironment’s Hanning. A downselect of some kind is expected to come in time, but it’s unclear whether the service might choose to further pursue multiple entrants.

Whether or not the Army ultimately acquires Switchblade 400s, it looks to be a significant new addition to this family of loitering munitions, which is seeing growing popularity globally.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Oct. 13 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said Monday that he may supply Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for its fight against Russia.

Trump, on Air Force One, told reporters that he might issue an ultimatum to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I might say ‘Look: if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks.’ The Tomahawk is an incredible weapon, very offensive weapon. And honestly, Russia does not need that,” NBC reported he said.

Trump was flying to the Middle East Monday, to Israel and Egypt for talks on the Gaza peace deal.

Supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks would allow the country to hit targets more than 1,000 miles away, striking deeper into Russian territory.

A Russian lawmaker last week said if Ukraine fires Tomahawks, Russia will shoot them down, bomb their sites and retaliate against the United States, The Hill reported.

Ukraine President Volodymir Zelensky said on X that Russia “continues its aerial terror against our cities and communities, intensifying strikes on our energy infrastructure. The immorality of these crimes is such that every day Russians kill our people. Yesterday in Kostiantynivka, a child was killed in a church by an aerial bomb. In total, just this week alone, more than 3,100 drones, 92 missiles, and around 1,360 glide bombs have been used against Ukraine.”

Zelensky and Trump spoke on Sunday for 40 minutes, discussing Ukraine’s weapons, supply status and the energy sector ahead of Ukraine’s harsh winter, Axios reported. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top officials were on the call.

“We agreed on a set of topics to discuss today, and we covered all the aspects of the situation: defense of life in our country, strengthening our capabilities — in air defense, resilience, and long-range capabilities. We also discussed many details related to the energy sector. President Trump is well informed about everything that is happening,” Zelensky wrote on X.

Trump said he had “sort of made a decision” to sell Tomahawks to NATO countries, which would then be sent to Ukraine, Axios reported.

Putin said on Sunday that sending Tomahawks to Ukraine would be a “completely new, qualitatively new stage of escalation,” Axios reported.

Tomahawk missiles are subsonic cruise missiles that can precisely hit targets 1,000 miles away, even in heavily defended airspace, according to manufacturer Raytheon. They can be fired from land or ships and can have conventional or nuclear warheads. They cost an average of $1.3 million each.

The latest version, called the Block IV Tactical Tomahawk or TACTOM, has a data link that allows it to switch targets while in flight. It can loiter for hours and change course instantly on command, Raytheon said.

Oct. 11 (UPI) — Locals said a drone and artillery attack on a refugee shelter by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in el-Fasher, Sudan, late Friday killed at least 60.

Local activists said the RSF struck the Dar al-Arqam refugee camp with two drone attacks and eight artillery shells, which the RSF has denied, the BBC reported.

“Children, women and the elderly were killed in cold blood, and many were completely burned,” members of an el-Fasher resistance committee said in a prepared statement on Saturday.

The strikes killed at least 14 children and 15 women in the besieged city that is located in North Darfur in western Sudan.

Another 21 people, including five children, also were injured, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Network.

The SDN called the attack a “massacre” and blamed the RSF, despite the paramilitary unit’s denial.

The attack struck the al Arqam Home that shelters displaced families in el-Fasher, Sky News reported.

The city has been under siege from paramilitary forces and caught in the middle of fighting between Sudan’s military forces and paramilitaries operating in the region.

The RSF is among those paramilitaries and is trying to establish a separatist government in the North Dafur region.

El-Fasher is the last stronghold held by Sudan’s army in the Darfur area and has been surrounded by the RSF for 17 months.

The RSF controls most of the Darfur region and much of the Kordofan province in central Sudan.

SEOUL, Oct. 11 (UPI) — North Korea showed off its new Hwasong-20 intercontinental ballistic missile at a military parade, state-run media reported on Saturday, touting it as the North’s “most powerful nuclear strategic weapon.”

The parade, held on Friday night at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, was attended by foreign dignitaries including Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Vietnamese Communist Party chief To Lam and Russian ex-President Dmitry Medvedev, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

The event marked the 80th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and highlighted the North’s recent diplomatic outreach efforts as well as its growing military strength.

After a fireworks show and 21-gun salute, thousands of marching troops paraded past the grandstand, followed by a procession of military hardware, according to KCNA.

“The spectators broke into the most enthusiastic cheers when the column of Hwasongpho-20 ICBMs, the most powerful nuclear strategic weapon system of the DPRK, entered the square,” the KCNA report said.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

Also on display were medium- and long-range strategic missiles, drone launch vehicles, Chonma-20 battle tanks, 155mm howitzers and 600mm multiple rocket launchers, KCNA said.

In his remarks, Kim praised the “ideological and spiritual perfection” of North Korea’s military and called for its continued development.

“Our army should continue to grow into an invincible entity that destroys all threats approaching our range of self-defense,” he said. “It should steadily strengthen itself into elite armed forces which win victory after victory.”

Analysts had been anticipating the unveiling of the Hwasong-20 ICBM at Friday’s parade. Last month, Kim oversaw the final test of a new solid-fuel engine made with composite carbon fiber materials that he said would be used for the new ICBM.

Missiles using solid-fuel propellants have long been on Kim’s wish list of weapons, as they can be transported and launched more quickly than liquid-fuel models. North Korea has unveiled several long-range missiles that analysts believe are capable of reaching the continental United States.

It remains to be seen whether Pyongyang has the atmospheric re-entry vehicle technology to successfully deliver a nuclear payload, however.

Images released by KCNA showed Kim flanked by Chinese Premier Li and Vietnam’s To Lam, with Medvedev next to Lam. The parade comes as the isolated regime is making a renewed diplomatic push onto the international stage.

Last month, Kim traveled to Beijing to attend a military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, where he stood shoulder to shoulder with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

During that visit, Kim held his first summit with Xi in six years, as ties between the longtime allies show signs of warming after a suspected rift over Pyongyang’s growing military alignment with Moscow.

On Thursday, Kim held one-on-one talks with Vietnam’s Lam and China’s Li, considered to be the second-in-command to Xi, according to KCNA.

At an event held on the eve of the anniversary, Kim vowed to transform North Korea into a “more affluent and beautiful land” and a “socialist paradise.”

Oct. 10 (UPI) — A plot to attack the Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever and other Belgian leadership was intercepted by police in Antwerp, and three young adult men were arrested.

Prosecutors described it as a “jihadist-inspired terrorist attack.” During a search in the Deurne area of Antwerp, police found a homemade explosive that the suspects were planning to attach to a drone to execute the attack. Deurne is near the prime minister’s residence.

“The news of a planned attack targeting Prime Minister Bart De Wever is extremely shocking,” Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Prevot wrote in a post on X. “I express my full support to the prime minister, his wife and his family, and my thanks go to the security and justice services, whose swift action has prevented the worst. It highlights that we are facing a very real terrorist threat and that we have to remain vigilant.”

Reports said that Antwerp Mayor Els van Doesburg and Dutch anti-Islam leader Geert Wilders may have also been targets. Defense Minister Theo Francken said he couldn’t confirm who else was a target but that he was not.

Francken said on Flemish public broadcaster VRT, “it is terrible for Bart and his family, and of course it’s Islamists again,” BBC reported.

The suspects were arrested on suspicion of attempted terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group. They all live in Antwerp, the prosecutor’s office said. The oldest one, who is 24, was released Thursday night due to lack of evidence. The other two are expected to appear Friday before an investigating judge.

At a press conference Friday, Federal Prosecutor Ann Fransen said searches found a “bag of steel balls” and a 3D printer with “indications that they intended to use a drone to attach a payload.”

She said there have been 80 terrorism investigations in Belgium this year, which is more than the number of cases in all of 2024.

Five people were convicted in April of a 2023 plot to attack De Wever while he was mayor of Antwerp. De Wever is conservative and is the first Flemish nationalist to be prime minister.

Northrop Grumman has been doing detailed design work that lays a path to air-launching its Lumberjack loitering one-way attack drone from Kratos’ stealthy XQ-58 Valkyrie uncrewed aircraft. Multiple crewed and uncrewed aircraft are being eyed as potential platforms for employing Lumberjack, which is already being tested in surface-launched modes and will have the ability to drop its own smaller precision munitions.

In a statement to TWZ today, Northrop Grumman confirmed that “Valkyrie is one of the multiple platforms we’re doing detailed design work for to ensure compatibility with Lumberjack” and that “Valkyrie is a good representation of a possible use case.” The XQ-58 is prominently featured in the Lumberjack product card available on Northrop Grumman’s website at the time of writing. It also depicts a Lumberjack launching a Hatchet miniature precision-guided glide bomb, which the company also produces, and that we will come back to later on.

Our own Howard Altman also recently had a chance to talk with Michael Bastin, Northrop Grumman’s director of programs for Lumberjack, to get a broader update on its ongoing development. The new one-way attacker was first unveiled in April at this year’s Modern Day Marine conference.

Since then, Lumber has “participated in both of the T-REX events this year. So, those are the technology, readiness, and experimentation events hosted by OUSD(R&E) [the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, also now referred to as the Office of the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering],” Bastin said. “Those are really valuable for us. We got a chance to get operators to look and engage with the system, [and] actually do an end-to-end simulated mission in a relevant type of environment with a lot of capabilities that people were looking for.”

At the T-REX events, Northrop Grumman also demonstrated Lumberjack’s “ability to launch from two different styles of [ground-based] launchers, the electric rail launcher and the pneumatic launcher,” both provided by other companies, he added. “We are launcher agnostic. So we don’t really develop the launchers ourselves. We just show up to the ride.”

Bastin declined to elaborate further on the mission scenarios and the capabilities demonstrated at the T-REX events. He also acknowledged that the same kinds of launchers could be employed in shipboard scenarios, but said that Northrop Grumman’s current focus in terms of the surface-launched mode is on ground-based applications.

When it comes to current plans for air-launched applications, “Lumberjack is the size, the length anyway, of the Small Diameter Bomb. So, we’re looking to be compatible with a wide variety of aircraft, [fixed-]wing and rotorcraft, manned and unmanned,” Bastin said. “Effectively, we’re looking at anything that could carry a Small Diameter Bomb.”

“We’re designing that [Lumberjack] for multiple BRUs. So, a couple different BRU installations are compatible against that sort of Small Diameter Bomb length,” he continued, using the U.S. military-standard abbreviation for Bomb Rack Unit. “We are working with two different customer communities right now, working through large plans and experimentation for next year. So that’s part of our flight test plan that we’re developing for next year.”

The GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) is a 250-pound-class precision-guided glide bomb that is just under six feet (1.8 meters) long. Northrop Grumman’s website says Lumberjack has a very similar form factor, but has a maximum gross weight of around 290 pounds.

Lumberjack’s weight is payload-dependent, which Northrop Grumman’s website says could include a “combination of kinetic and non-kinetic sub-munitions, or ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] sensors.” Without any payload or fuel for its small jet engine, the core system, with its composite material structure, only tips the scales at around 79 pounds, according to the product card.

How heavy a Lumberjack might be would also impact its range in both air and surface-launched modes. So far, Northrop Grumman has only said that the system is expected to be able to fly “several hundred” nautical miles. The company has also said that it will be able to cruise at around Mach 0.3 (some 230 knots) at an altitude of 20,000 feet.

“We have done testing with both kinetic and non-kinetic [payloads],” Bastin said. “Hatchet is certainly a candidate. It’s not the only type of kind of sub-munition that we’d be interested in being able to deploy. So, as I said, if customers come with whatever kinetic effect they want, as long as it fits on the center bay, we’re capable of integrating it.”

Hatchet is a roughly six-pound precision glide bomb that Northrop Grumman currently offers with one of three guidance options: a GPS-assisted inertial navigation system (INS), INS-only, and dual-mode GPS/INS and semi-active laser guidance. Versions that use GPS-assisted INS and INS-only can only be employed against static target coordinates. Laser guidance allows for the engagement of moving targets as long as they can be lazed either by the launching platform or another offboard source.

Each Hatchet has a three-pound high-explosive warhead, which Northrop Grumman claims is of an advanced type that is 50 to 80 percent as lethal as a 500-pound-class bomb, depending on the target type. Point-detonating, delayed, and air-bursting fuze options are available.

From the start, Hatchet has been presented as particularly well-suited as an armament option for drones because of its size. Multiple uncrewed aircraft have already been demonstrated as launch platforms for these munitions.

When it comes to munition options for Lumberjack, “there’s a variety [of other options] out there. I mean, everything from things like Hatchets to integrating existing artillery shells or custom kinetic effects,” Bastin noted. “So different customers have different interests in terms of what their target is and what their payload would want to be in terms of the kinetic effectiveness against their target.”

Lumberjack is being developed with modularity and adaptability, potentially even under field conditions, in mind. Another company, Palantir, is providing an artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) infused software backend to help with the rapid integration of now payloads and other capabilities, as well as help with “maintenance and reducing operator burden.”

In any configuration, Lumberjack already offers the ability to reach target areas at standoff distances. Its ability to launch unpowered gliding payloads like Hatchet, or even potentially small powered ones, only extended its operational reach. This would all be further magnified by pairing it with an aerial launch platform like the XQ-58. The Valkyrie has its own internal payload bay, said to be able to carry at least two SDB-sized stores, and can also carry payloads under its wings. Lumberjack’s range would also help keep the launching platform further away from threats. A full operational scenario might see a Valkyrie or similar launch platform use its own survivability to get close to an especially high-threat part of the battlespace before launching a Lumberjack, which then delivers munitions into the highest risk area. This could even involve taking out hostile air defense assets that threaten the launching aircraft.

Lumberjack can also make use of its range for other purposes, including launching kinetic or non-kinetic attacks on geographically separated targets during a single sortie, as well as just loitering in a particular area. Equipped with a stand-in jamming capability and/or sensor packages, the drones could be used to form temporary force protection picket lines, and do so rapidly.

There is also a cost factor, with Lumberjack’s design being focused on a low unit cost and producibility, with a heavy emphasis on commercial and modified commercial components. Another firm, ESAero, which specializes in rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing, is also working with Northrop Grumman on this design.

“For every pallet that I would ship a fixed number of Small Diameter Bombs on, we can ship the same number of lumberjacks on, but each lumberjack performs multiple effects, multiple missions, and can go on multiple vehicles,” Bastin explained. “So it helps drive down that cost, as I said, within a Lumberjack, because we designed it with open architecture and a very modular center bay.”

Northrop Grumman previously told TWZ that it is targeting between a “cost per effect” of $75,000 to $100,000 for Lumberjack, somewhat nebulous figures that factor in things beyond basic unit price. It is also worth noting here that while Lumberjack is intended to be a one-way system when used operationally, work is being done to improve its recoverability when used in training. Being able to reuse the drones for training, as well as test and evaluation activities, would also offer cost advantages.

It’s interesting to note here that the XQ-58 is at the low end of the cost range for loyal wingman-type drones, also now commonly referred to as Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Kratos is separately continuing to expand and evolve its Valkyrie family as its customer base grows. The U.S. Marine Corps notably confirmed earlier this year that it is now actively pursuing an operational capability with these drones after years of experimental work with the design.

Lumberjack otherwise reflects a flurry of development, especially in the United States, of longer-range one-way attack munitions, as well as other systems that increasingly blur the lines between traditional drones and cruise missiles, as well as decoys.

If Northrop Grumman keeps to its current test schedule, we may get actual looks at Lumberjacks launched from XQ-58s and/or other aircraft in the coming year.

Contact the author: [email protected]