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Back to Defence & SecurityMilitary drones, uncrewed platforms and the boundaries of machine autonomy.
Germany has committed hundreds of millions of euros to Helsing’s AI-enabled HX-2 strike drone, and investors value the company at about $18bn. The battlefield evidence is more mixed, and the gap between the two is the story.
The US military has fielded a low-cost attack drone reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed-136. It is a striking admission about where value now sits in long-range strike, and a test of how far autonomy will be allowed to go.
The US Air Force has put two uncrewed fighters into production and bought their autonomy software separately. That split could matter more to the defence industry than either aircraft.
The US is buying hundreds of thousands of small attack drones through competitive trials and falling unit prices. The Drone Dominance programme is less a weapons purchase than an experiment in buying munitions the way consumers buy electronics.