Military drone news from UASFeed — UAS programs, battlefield lessons from Ukraine and beyond, loitering munitions, and how uncrewed systems are changing combat.
In a Boeing/Northrop Grumman demo, a P-8A Poseidon crew tasked an MQ-4C Triton via machine-readable UCI messages — the drone planned its own transit, worked its sensors, processed data with AI and reported back over satellite relay, no ground control station required.
Read the story →A Jane's special report details how ammunition makers like Fiocchi are engineering tungsten-shot and fuzed 12-gauge cartridges as a last-ditch, close-range defense against FPV kamikaze drones that give soldiers as little as one second to react.
A new Janes special report details how ammunition makers are fielding tungsten-shot 12-gauge rounds and other counter-UAV cartridges as militaries scramble to give infantry a fighting chance against kamikaze FPV drones.
Janes reports China's PLA Ground Force has operationalized the CASC-built KVD002 unmanned combat aircraft, with state media footage showing 13 airframes and a live-fire strike on a naval target.
Ukrainian manufacturer F-Drones delivered the first 2,000 F10 FPV strike quadcopters to US forces on July 31, becoming the first Ukrainian drone cleared for export to the US under the Pentagon's $1 billion Drone Dominance Program.
Russia's overnight July 28-29 raid mixed jet-powered Shaheds with warhead-free Parodiya decoys to saturate Ukrainian radar and drain interceptor drones, even as defenders still downed 81% of the 80-UAV package.
In the same week, New Zealand's defence ministry announced plans to buy loitering munitions and opened market research for a 1,400nm, six-hour endurance uncrewed maritime patrol aircraft covering the South West Pacific.
CENTCOM and Saudi forces jointly struck Iran-aligned militia sites in Iraq on July 28 after 30+ IRGC-directed drone attacks on U.S. troops and Saudi oil infrastructure, killing at least 20 PMF fighters in the first Saudi-claimed strikes inside Iraq since the US-Iran war began.
Romania scrambled F-16s and NATO Eurofighters to shoot down at least three suspected Russian Shahed-type drones over three straight days, prompting a diplomatic expulsion and a stark 2026 tally: 19 incursions and counting.
The Indian Air Force has bought a 300 km variant of Veda Aeronautics' jet-powered Sureshastra Mk1 loitering munition — double the original range — with a 500 km Mk2 in flight trials and a Shahed-class 1,500 km weapon in development.
Two U.S. Navy one-way attack unmanned surface vessels detonated at the waterline of the decommissioned ex-USS Peleliu during RIMPAC 2026 off Hawaii — the first time kamikaze sea drones featured in a Pacific SINKEX.
MBDA confirmed at Farnborough 2026 that its 100km-range SPEAR mini cruise missile enters low-rate production this year, and a 20 July MoU with General Atomics will integrate the networked weapon onto the MQ-9B Protector and Gambit 6 collaborative combat aircraft.
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