Naval Group placed a 170-meter concept ship, called the SCX 26, on display at Euronaval 2026 that measures roughly 8,000 tonnes and is drawn for speeds of 30 knots with a range beyond 8,000 nautical miles. The design places two large, widely separated superstructures along the hull, each carrying its own bridge and mast so sensors, antennas, and command functions stay distributed. A single hit or electronic failure on one section therefore leaves the other able to continue operating, while the spread of equipment also reduces mutual interference among radar and electronic warfare systems.
Anduril has partnered with Qualcomm to launch BlueChip, a new line of rugged laptops designed and assembled in the United States for government agencies, the military, first responders, and public safety teams. Palmer Luckey’s defense company already has working prototypes, and it expects to start taking orders in 2027.
Airbus and Kratos completed the first flight of the U740 Valkyrie on October 12, 2026, from a test facility in Northern Europe, confirming the program remains on schedule for a combat ready collaborative combat aircraft by 2029. The aircraft lifted off with rocket assistance that removed any need for a runway, then performed maneuvers at several altitudes while reaching speeds up to Mach 0.8 and accepting changes to its mission plan in the air. All planned objectives were met on this initial European sortie, which used an airframe already proven in American testing since the XQ-58A first flew in 2019.
An electric helicopter built by a small team in Columbia, Maryland, flew away with first place in the DARPA Lift Challenge after hauling a load of cast iron that weighed nearly four times the aircraft itself. The machine, called Katana, finished its winning run in just over nineteen minutes at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. Judges measured an empty weight of 29.3 pounds and a payload of 112.4 pounds, producing a ratio of 3.84 to 1. No entry cleared the official four-to-one mark that would have unlocked the full prize amounts, so the top check was cut to $1.25 million. Still, the result set the highest completed score of the week and left every other finished aircraft behind.
North of Seoul on September 16, a 29-foot uncrewed aircraft left a conventional Army runway, joined air operations over a live-fire range, then settled onto a rough maneuver trail normally reserved for tanks and artillery. Ground-station pilots sent it rolling again. It lifted off in less than 200 meters, resumed the sortie, and flew back to the 513th Aviation Battalion. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Hanwha Aerospace called the sequence the first battlefield short-field operation ever completed by a medium-altitude, long-endurance uncrewed aircraft. The Mojave STOL carried dual weapon rails loaded with four inert AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and wore South Korean markings for the Defense Drone Technology Exhibition at Seungjin Training Field in Pocheon-si. In a real fight, crews on that same trail could have refueled and rearmed it before sending it back up.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works just decided one flying prototype is not enough. This week at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, the company said it will build four more Vectis collaborative combat aircraft on top of the airframe already taking shape, for a planned test fleet of five. First flight remains aimed at the end of 2027, and the extra jets are already in work.
Soldiers still burn hours and calories moving water, ammunition, and radios across ground that wrecks ordinary trucks. Pack animals once filled that gap. Conventional electric robots often stall in the same mud, sand, snow, and rubble because their motors sit in the middle of the chassis and feed torque through gearboxes and shafts that lose grip the moment the surface turns ugly. ESOX Group finished a compact uncrewed platform, called the X2, this summer that tries to skip that failure.
High in the Swiss Alps, frozen lakes hide risks that surface checks often miss. Snow piles up, presses the ice sheet down, and new layers form on top. Thin spots or cracks stay invisible until someone or something falls through. For more than a century people have cut holes by hand, measured with tape, and hoped the ice held for skating, racing, or simple crossings. In 1907 St. Moritz turned that hope into spectacle with skijoring, horses pulling skiers across the ice. The tradition continues, yet the dangers remain. In 2017 a crack swallowed horses during an event. Manual surveys still demand hours of chainsaw work and firefighters on standby, and they only sample a few points while ice thickness can change across short distances.
Anduril Industries revealed Thunder today at the Farnborough Airshow, a Group 5 autonomous attack rotorcraft developed jointly with Archer Aviation. The platform is designed from the start to fly alongside current and next-generation crewed attack and assault helicopters, multiplying their firepower while keeping human crews farther from the most dangerous parts of the fight.
