Author: Defenceline Webdesk

WASHINGTON – Raytheon has secured another multi-year munition deal, this time for up to $6.3 billion for Standard Missile-3 Block IB production, the Pentagon announced today. The base value of the five-year contract is $4.4 billion, but options include an additional nearly $2 billion for more of the air defense munitions over another two years. The announcement did not say how many of the missiles were under order. “This contract provides production certainty to our defense industrial base, breaks sub-tier manufacturing bottlenecks, and ensures that our fleets and combatant commands have the interceptors required to dominate the battle space —…

WASHINGTON — Gecko Robotics will deploy its robotics and AI software at Anduril facilities, the company announced today, as Anduril prepares to launch its new Arsenal-2 shipyard in Baltimore County, Md., to manufacture submarine parts.  Gecko Robotics will utilize its inspection technology and its AI-powered software to conduct non-destructive testing (NDT) on these submarine components and will establish a “digital thread” of data to assist with maintenance planning, per Gecko’s announcement. “It allows us to go in and assess and create that digital baseline of the actual, as-built condition of this critical component, and so it takes things like our…

Shield AI expects to start flying its X-BAT prototype unmanned fighter jet by year’s end—and is getting $150 million from the Navy to keep developing it, officials said.“We’ve been building two prototype vehicles—they’re full scale. The first one will be done in the next couple of weeks here,” said Armor Harris, Shield AI’s senior vice president of aircraft. “And then we’ll be getting into flight testing at the end of this year…going straight to the vertical takeoff and landing tests as the final de-risk of the [technology].”Shield AI also secured $150 million from the Navy to continue developing the X-BAT,…

YUMA PROVING GROUND, Ariz. — As American servicemembers sweated in the Arizona desert, stress testing various counter-drone technologies, some senior officials had their minds thousands of miles away — thinking about how lessons gleaned here could help protect troops under US Central Command in the Middle East. “Operating capabilities day after day in extreme desert conditions provides invaluable data on system durability and operator usability that directly translates to contested environments like the CENTCOM AOR [area of responsibility],” Marine Col. Scott Humr, deputy director of science and technology for the Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) 401, told Breaking Defense…

First Gripen fighter built outside Sweden completed maiden flight in São Paulo State. Credit: Embraer. The first Saab Gripen fighter jet assembled outside Sweden has successfully completed its inaugural flight at Embraer’s Gavião Peixoto site, paving the way for local production of supersonic aircraft in Brazil. The maiden sortie took place on 6 October, with Saab chief test pilot Jakob Högberg at the controls. Discover B2B Marketing That Performs Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms. Find out more The flight, designed to verify basic systems and assess preliminary performance, also marked…

Ground combat vehicles such as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle have run out of room to add new capabilities, while the next generation will need to power not only what is built into them from the start, but what’s to come over the lifespan of the vehicles. Improved power generation and efficiency will be critical to ensuring troops can rely on the capabilities they need from their vehicles. Breaking Defense spoke with SAPA Transmission President Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Darren Werner, former commanding general of US Army Tank Automotive and Armament Command (TACOM), and John Tasdemir, vice president of engineering and operations,…

Airbus H225M. Credit: Airbus. Romania has signed an agreement with France’s Armament General Directorate (DGA) for the acquisition of 12 Airbus H225M helicopters. The contract is supported by the European Commission’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, which finances urgent and substantial defence investments among EU Member States. Discover B2B Marketing That Performs Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms. Find out more Under the agreement, the 12 H225Ms will form the first wave of replacements for the Romanian Air Force’s IAR-330 Puma helicopters, which are domestically built under license from Aerospatiale.…

WASHINGTON — Artificial intelligence startup Shield AI and the Navy are putting another $300 million into the company’s X-BAT vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drone, the firm announced today.  The Navy has signed off on a $150 million modification to an existing Other Transaction agreement for the X-BAT program under the Pentagon’s Defense Exportability Features program, and Shield AI has agreed to match that funding with $150 million of its own capital, according to the firm.   The investment builds upon another $100 million in government and private funding announced. In August, the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive (Aviation) Rapid Capability Cell…

GDLS and Primordial Labs plan to bring natural language command and control to ground combat vehicles. Credit: Primordial Labs, Inc./PRNewswire. General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) and Primordial Labs have agreed to explore the use of natural language command and control technology on the former’s combat vehicle portfolio. The companies signed a master teaming agreement on 6 October 2026 that will see them integrating Primordial Labs’ Anura Natural Language Command and Control (NLC2) software across GDLS’s vehicle portfolio, including the Abrams tank and the company’s next-generation combat vehicle programmes. Discover B2B Marketing That Performs Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to…

BELFAST — The UK and Germany are working “to progress” the potential for Germany to join the UK-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), Prime Minister Andy Burnham said today, in what would be a major shake-up for the next-generation fighter effort. Speaking at a joint press conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to ratify a bilateral security and defense treaty, Burnham said he and Merz talked about the UK’s “openness” to Berlin joining GCAP. “That is something that we seek to progress in in the coming period, working with our other partners, Italy and Japan, in relation to…