Drones and Autonomous Systems

• The zone of highest battlefield risk has expanded from a few kilometres around the contact line in 2022 to tens of kilometres today, driven by reconnaissance drones, FPVs, loitering munitions and unmanned ground vehicles
• Anduril unveiled Thunder, a hybrid electric tiltrotor Group 5 autonomous rotorcraft co-developed with Archer Aviation, launched publicly at the Farnborough International Airshow
• Saronic's Corsair unmanned surface vessels struck Iran's Bandar Abbas naval base, the first time American forces have used sea drones in combat
• A German built electric drone broke the world air speed record at 434 mph, designed for the anti-aircraft interceptor role
• ARX Robotics is building AI enabled autonomous unmanned ground vehicles for military logistics, reconnaissance and casualty evacuation
• High power microwave systems are emerging as a way to disable drone swarms using electromagnetic energy instead of projectiles
• US Marines are getting new ammunition for the M4 carbine and M27 rifle designed specifically to shoot down small drones

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Ukraine War Tech

• Britain agreed to transfer the intellectual property behind its Stone Cloak electronic warfare technology to Ukraine, letting it manufacture, modify and evolve the system on the front line
• A Russian strike destroyed a Kyiv factory owned by US company Terminal Autonomy, producer of the AQ-400 Scythe and AQ-100 Bayonet drone systems
• Ukraine's drone sector grew from seven companies to nearly six hundred in a few years
• A Ukrainian naval drone landed an armed robot on a Russian occupied beach, described by Kyiv as a world first
• Ukrainian surveillance drones directed strikes that destroyed three Russian fuel trucks in a convoy headed for occupied Crimea
• Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces report an 878 dollar cost per kill ratio, with Motor G alone producing 200,000 drone motors a month to cut Chinese dependency
• Ukraine's Defense Tech Valley 2026 summit was postponed after a missile strike on a training ground in the Kyiv region killed people from the country's defence tech community

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Corporate Deals, Funding and Procurement

• Darkhive, founded in 2021 by a former Navy combat technician, raised a 30 million dollar Series B, taking total funding to roughly 55 million dollars, after winning a 49.7 million dollar APFIT contract, the largest award in the programme's history
• BAE Systems' half year results describe a shift from platform manufacturer to AI enabled defence technology company, headlined by the Brontanax autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft
• Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri acquired four technology firms to build a European underwater technology champion
• Munich based Helsing was valued at 18 billion dollars after five years, built on AI, software and autonomous systems rather than classic weapons manufacturing
• Anduril opened its 900 million dollar Arsenal 1 factory in Ohio
• Thales agreed to acquire marine drone specialist Exail in a 3.9 billion euro deal
• Helsing is building a new Resilience Factory in West Virginia to produce drones proven in Ukraine

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EU Policy and Defense Cooperation

• The EU defence ecosystem now spans five layers: funding programmes including EDF, EDIP, SAFE, EUDIS, ASAP and PESCO, an industry layer of primes and SMEs, an R&D layer, a governance layer and a finance layer
• EU member states endorsed the high level requirements advancing the European Combat Vessel toward a hybrid fleet under the Integrated Maritime and Seabed Defence programme
• Portugal's BASEYARD initiative aims to position Braga among Europe's leading hubs for defence and dual use technology industrialisation
• Ukraine formally became an associated country to the European Defence Fund, an agreement signed by EU Commissioner Andrius Kubilius and Ukraine's defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov
• The EU signed a defence industrial partnership with Ukraine that includes a drone deal with an additional 1 billion euros for drone capacity and a new 115 million euro AGILE fund for startups and SMEs
• The European Commission published a new EU technology roadmap targeting FPGA and chiplet sovereignty for space and defence
• NATO's Ankara Summit Defence Industry Forum focused on converting alliance ambition into fielded capability faster, with panellists pointing to a step change in investment and demand consolidation over the last twelve months

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Space and Aerospace

• China demonstrated an independent reusable rocket design, not a SpaceX imitation, prompting warnings that Europe risks falling a generation behind on launch capability
• ESA's Hera mission received a software update enabling autonomous vision based deep space navigation for the first time, validated on a spacecraft 144 million kilometres from Earth
• EASA halted its plans for single pilot flight operations, stating that cockpit technology is not yet sophisticated enough to match the safety of two qualified pilots
• ESA's Call for Ideas is seeking avionics and GNC technologies across twelve technical fields for future space transportation
• The European Service Module, built in Bremen through the work of more than 100 companies across 13 ESA member states, powered NASA's Artemis II mission
• ESA will hold its first Fault Detection, Isolation and Recovery conference in June 2027 at ESTEC in Noordwijk
• King Charles III opened Harwell's new Space and Defence Gateway, a hub for collaboration between government, academia and industry

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Careers, Events and Community

• BAE Systems' communications team executed three major events within one month: the UK's Defence Investment Plan announcement, a Farnborough product launch, and half year results held on location in Barrow in Furness
• Anduril is recruiting mechanical engineers, technical programme managers and an air vehicle lead for its Thunder rotorcraft programme
• Anduril is also hiring information system security officers to get its autonomous hardware and software accredited
• STARK is hiring sales managers with defence procurement networks as it expands its European footprint
• At Farnborough, BAE Systems revealed Brontanax, its uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft roughly the size of a Hawk trainer, set to flight test next year
• Anduril sponsored the Maritime Hacking Village at DEF CON 34 in Las Vegas
• A Black Hat and DEF CON panel brought together security leaders from Anduril, CoreWeave, Palantir and Cape to discuss defence tech security careers

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Thanks to Patrick Lurtz, Blake Sedgley, Torsten Staab, Simon Luck, Jackson Moses, Nick Colosimo, Marc A. Wietfeld, Aviv Bar Zohar, Robert du Mont, Richard Gwilliam, Mark K., Valeriya Ionan, Stephanie Gaïa, Marijn Markus, Justin Nerdrum, Artem Moroz, Weston Moyer, Johanna Hutchinson, Jean Yves Schmitt, Harald Köppe, David Goodrich, Yann Geffroy, Al Cameron, Victor Sabaldashov, Jürgen Scraback and Michael L. for contributing insights to this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: