Lethal Autonomous Weapons & Combat Drones Watch Thread

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Robot guard dogs help Asylon raise a $26M Series B
Julie Bort
5:00 AM PDT · July 22, 2025

Philadelphia-based robotics company Asylon announced Tuesday that it raised a $26 million Series B led by Insight Partners, with participation from Veteran Ventures Capital, Allegion Ventures, and the GoPA Fund.

Asylon began as a drone company for securing facilities. It’s best known for a drone that has a robotic arm that can change its own batteries.

But it also has a robotic guard dog service called DroneDog. Asylon takes the famed Boston Dynamics robot dog Spot and modifies it for guard work and to integrate with its command-and-control Guardian software. Asylon offers the drones, dogs, and software as its robotic security-as-a-service (RaaS).

A site can be secured with ground patrols via robot dogs and flying cameras that cover more areas than stationary cameras. DroneDogs can be sent to places unsafe for humans or real dogs. And they can perform almost dog sniffing-like tasks such as detecting gas leaks or dangerous chemicals.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/22/robot ... -series-b/

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Royal Navy robotic sub controlled from 10,000 miles away
By David Szondy
August 16, 2025
https://newatlas.com/military/royal-nav ... e-control/

The prototype Royal Navy robotic submarine XV-Excalibur has provided a glimpse of the fleet of the future by patrolling the waters at HMNB Devonport in Plymouth, England while controlled from a command center in Australia 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away.

Part of Project Cetus and built by Plymouth-based MSubs, the Extra-Large Uncrewed Underwater Vessel (XLUUV) XV-Excalibur was unveiled in May as a demonstrator platform to explore how best to use large robotic submarines to augment the Navy's fleet of nuclear attack boats. Under a two-year test program, Excalibur will study how such submarines can be employed in anti-submarine warfare, seabed warfare, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

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China Making Hypersonic Drones and Carrier Planes for those Drones to Compete with US Stratolaunch
August 27, 2025 by Brian Wang

China (via SCMP – South China Morning Post) is developing a carrier plane that will launch shorter range hypersonic drones. The planes would likely be subsonic but would launch the drones that will eventually be able to go over mach 5.

China is looking at scissor wing technology (which the US examined in the 1970s) for its hypersonic drones.
There are video and pictures of China’s MD-19 test hypersonic drones. The Chinese MD-19 drone has reportedly reached hypersonic speeds. Mach 7 (seven times the speed of sound) have been reached for the Md-19 in successful test flights.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/08/c ... aunch.html

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How Did the World’s Most Sophisticated Military Fall So Far Behind with Drone Warfare?
By Michael Hirsh
August 27, 2025

Introduction:

(Politico) When the Pentagon announced a “joint interagency task force” in July to bring the U.S. military up to speed on drone warfare, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. James Mingus compared drones to the threat of improvised explosive devices two decades earlier in Iraq.

The drone, said Mingus, “is our IED of today” — a war-transforming technology that smaller powers could use to put big powers at a disadvantage.

Ukraine has demonstrated this brilliantly over the last few years through its innovative use of drones to stymie the invading Russians. And 20-odd years ago, another nation that once saw itself as all-powerful on the battlefield — the United States — found itself flummoxed in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan as insurgents deployed IEDs to kill or maim thousands of young Americans in a new kind of “asymmetric” warfare.
“We cannot move fast enough in this space,” Mingus said last month…

Additional extract:

By the accounts of many experts, the U.S. military is not close to developing, much less deploying, the dizzying array of sophisticated drones mastered by the Ukrainians and Russians — including “kamikaze” drones used to destroy enemy tanks and vehicles; ground drones that can lay mines and deliver ammunition and medicine; larger drones that can ferry smaller ones behind enemy lines, among others.

Read more here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine ... 00525058

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Flights bring Ghost Bat drone closer to combat readiness
By David Szondy
September 14, 2025

The RAAF's MQ-28 Ghost Bat drone has completed public flight trials to demonstrate its operational capabilities. Performed for select journalists, the flight of the Boeing Loyal Wingman took place at RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory.

The Capability Demonstration 2025 that took place between April and June of this year, capped by the highlight flight for the media, is the culmination of six years of development by the RAAF and Boeing Australia to create the first Australian designed and built combat plane since the Second World War.

According to Boeing, the recent test campaign comes after 150 flight hours and 20,000 simulated hours by the Ghost Bat, with real-world and digital development reinforcing one another to speed production. This resulted in the first prototype being delivered in May 2020 and the first flight in February 2021. As of today, eight prototype Block 1 vehicles have been delivered to the RAAF.

https://newatlas.com/military/ghost-bat-drone/

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New Arms Race- China versus the USA for AI Superdrone Fighter Jets
October 1, 2025 by Brian Wang

US-China are in a race to 1000 wingman drones by 2030—the tech that could rewrite World War III and shape the balance of geopolitical power.

Think if five R2D2s were each flying X-wings fighter in Stars Wars to help Luke Sky Walker. In the real world these unmanned fighter drones will be ‘loyal wingmen’— sidekicks for US F-35s or China J-20s fighters. They will be scouting, jamming, or kamikaze-striking without a human pilot. Powered by machine learning, they swarm like angry bees,enhancing one pilot into a 10x deadlier air squadron.

Why care? In a Taiwan showdown, whoever fields these first can own the air. US sims show swarms overwhelming carriers. China thinks they will use them to down US fighters and B-21 stealth bombers. It’s not sci-fi—it’s 2025 reality, with superdrone budgets going to $30B+ and beyond

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/10/n ... -jets.html

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Autonomous combat aircraft unveiled as Europe’s loyal wingman
By David Szondy
October 04, 2025

Autonomous fighter planes are popping up all over the place these days as more air forces opt for pilotless loyal wingmen. The latest example is Europe's version, the multi-role Helsing CA-1 Europa, which has just made its public debut.

Only a few years ago, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) seemed like something out of a science fiction film. Jet fighters that could fly autonomously, had performance equivalent to a fifth-generation fighter, and could act as teammates and force multipliers for human pilots were exotic promises given substance by one or two prototypes. Today, they're proliferating, with multiple countries and companies jumping on the bandwagon.

Given the current geopolitical situation, combined with NATO countries rapidly expanding and modernizing their armed forces – not to mention the drive for an increasing emphasis on European strategic autonomy – it isn't surprising to see Europe rolling out its own entry into the race.

https://newatlas.com/ca-1-europa-loyal-wingman/

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US 3rd Army Testing Drone Factories in Shipping Containers
October 2, 2025 by Brian Wang

Army 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade 3D printing K9 Genesis UAV.

Printed, components sourced, and fully assembled on base referencing our fully open source wiki, files, & guides.

Soldiers from the Hunter Army Airfield Innovation Center received initial training on the Expeditionary Manufacturing Cell or xCell, 3d-printer system, at Ft. Stewart and then manufactured around 90 unique parts in various quantities.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2025/10/u ... iners.html

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Autonomous combat vehicle prototype fast-tracked for US Army demos
By David Szondy
October 05, 2025

BAE Systems has teamed up with Forterra to develop a new autonomous Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) prototype that has been fast tracked for live demonstrations next year as part of a program to enhance the US Army's Armored Brigade Combat Team.

The AMPV program was launched in 2020 to replace the Cold War–era M113 Family of Vehicles (FoV). Though the M113 served for half a century, it was slated for retirement due to shortcomings in survivability, force protection, mobility, and reliability. It also lacked the ability to integrate advanced Size, Weight, Power, and Cooling (SWaP-C) capabilities, and could not operate effectively alongside the M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank or the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.

Available in five variants, the AMPV is designed as a general purpose, multi-mission vehicle that can be used for general duty, medical evacuation, medical treatment, mission command, and as a mortar platform. Now, the agreement with Forterra aims at turning the AMPV into a self-driving autonomous vehicle that can be deployed quickly and take on new mission sets.

https://newatlas.com/military/bae-syste ... t-vehicle/

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Black Hawk swaps cockpit for cargo doors to go fully autonomous
By David Szondy
October 13, 2025
https://newatlas.com/military/sikosky-b ... rgo-doors/

Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky has taken the next logical step in making a Black Hawk helicopter autonomous by not only installing the gear needed for self-flying, but by yanking out the entire cockpit and replacing it with cargo doors.

Making a Black Hawk helicopter autonomous isn't new. DARPA and Sikorsky have been doing conversions on production versions of the aircraft for years – they've even been testing them as firefighting platforms. That's fine if the goal is to make Black Hawks pilot optional, but how about getting rid of the pilot and the cockpit altogether?

Revealed at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) exposition this week, the S-70UAS U-Hawk is Sikorsky's answer to that question. Based on the UH-60L Black Hawk, it shares the same lines of its predecessor except for one glaring difference. There's no cockpit, no windows, no seats – in fact, no provision for any passengers or crew.

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These 16-ton self-driving cargo trucks are joining the US Army
By Abhimanyu Ghoshal
October 14, 2025

Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense is upgrading its lauded Palletized Load System (PLS) vehicles for transporting cargo across battlefields with the ability to drive themselves – providing a critical advantage to troops moving supplies to where they're needed most during conflicts.

The next iteration of these 10-wheel trucks, designed to carry 16.5-ton payloads across practically any terrain, will get "by-wire functionality to enable autonomous operation and active safety systems that increase protection and efficiency for soldiers operating in complex environments."

In the video below, you can see the A2 outfitted with a bunch of driving assistance features – including automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control – as well as driverless operation. From the footage, it appears A2 trucks should be able to drive themselves in convoy-like formations. That can reduce the need to place soldiers on board and in harm's way while hauling equipment, field supplies, ammo, shelter, and fuel.

https://newatlas.com/military/oshkosh-p ... go-trucks/

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Lockheed's Nomad drones blur the line between helicopter and plane
By David Szondy
October 19, 2025
https://newatlas.com/military/sikorsky- ... ol-drones/

Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky is blurring the line between helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft with its new Nomad family of Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS) that combine the versatility of a helicopter with the speed and endurance of a fixed-wing aircraft.

If "rotor blown wing" is a term you run across a lot, then you've been hanging around too many aerospace engineers and should get out more. However, it is not only seen in the field as an innovation that not only increases the capabilities of VTOL aircraft, but also one that is scalable enough to produce a whole new family of drones.

A rotor blown wing is a configuration where twin rotors are mounted on a long wing so that the airflow blows over the wing's surface with enough force to generate additional lift during vertical flight. This way, the wing not only helps in taking off vertically, but provides lift during the transition from vertical to horizontal flight.

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Strike Variant Joins Gambit Family Of Autonomous Air Combat Drones
By Joseph Trevithick
November 5, 2025

Introduction:

(The War Zone) 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).

Read more here: https://www.twz.com/air/strike-varian ... at-drones