Tag: pentagon

Stockpiling Begins: Neros Awarded $100 Million Pentagon Contract For Kamikaze Drones

US defense company Neros Technologies, which focuses on Category 1 one-way attack drones, was awarded a $100 million contract under the Department of War’s Drone Dominance Program for 14,000 drones and explosive payloads.

The award, under the Drone Dominance Program’s Gauntlet II, prioritizes Archer AI, the Category 1 FPV attack drone. Its automated kill chain lets the FPV fly to an operator-selected target, a huge advantage in battle zones where electronic warfare jammers, such as those targeting radio frequencies and GPS signals, dominate.

Neros CEO Soren Monroe-Anderson stated:

“We’ve developed our Archer FPV system to be highly modular and easily adapted to end user needs. Pairing real warfighter feedback with our deep engineering talent is the reason Neros is the only manufacturer to have placed in the top three across two fundamentally different mission sets, deep strike and close quarters battle, with the same drone platform.

Ultimately, Drone Dominance is a test of two things: can competitors build high-performance drones? And can they produce them in massive quantities with short notice? We’re the only manufacturer to receive multiple bonus awards for Gauntlet I based on our delivery speed. We’re ready to fulfill this next batch of 14,000 drones, and more whenever the Department of War signals need for them.”

The announcement comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that Autonomous Warfare Command, dubbed “AutoWarCom,” will become operational in the fall of next year and will accelerate the DoW’s purchases across all drone categories. 

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“Are You An FPV Pilot”: Pentagon Calls On Drone Operators For Next “Gauntlet” Showdown

The Department of War has put out a request for service members with “FPV experience” to participate in testing events called “Gauntlets” and fly Category 1 drones in field training exercises to accelerate drone development and prepare the US for the next conflict, where drones, robotics, and automated kill chains dominate the modern battlefield.

“Are you an FPV pilot? We want to hear from you!” DoW asked on X on Friday morning.

“The Drone Dominance Program is recruiting service members with FPV experience who would like to be considered as pilots for future Gauntlets and related efforts,” the request said.

The Drone Dominance Program is the DoW’s answer to purchasing large quantities of drones across every category, from 1 to 5, and building out a domestic supply chain of components free from dependence on conflict areas and countries such as China, which can easily weaponize supply chains to hinder procurement.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealed that Autonomous Warfare Command, dubbed “AutoWarCom,” is set to accelerate the DoW’s purchases across all categories of drones, robotics, and AI.

What’s key is that drone procurement will be a massive part of the rearmament supercycle and provide tailwinds to drone companies, such as heavily shorted Ondas, whose Ultra drone could very well see ramped-up orders by the military as it’s seen as an MQ-9 Reaper alternative for ISR missions. 

“Once we apply sustained budget to changed doctrine, we will outperform the world,” said Owen West, a former Marine, assistant defense secretary, and Goldman Sachs trader who has been tasked with leading the DoW’s Defense Innovation Unit. “And by snapping in AI, we will be ahead of the world, because we are the leaders in AI.”

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RTX’s Raytheon Awarded $24.4B Missile Contract as Trump Finally Admits Stockpiles “A Little Bit Lower”

The Pentagon on Thursday announced a massive new defense contract at a moment many Congressional members are concerned over America’s dwindling arsenal of both defensive and offensive missiles and weapons systems.

Raytheon, an RTX unit, has been awarded a $24.4 billion contract for the accelerated production of SM-6 missiles, amid the scramble to replace them in the wake of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury bombing campaign of Iran.

A Pentagon statement described the missiles as “critical anti-air and anti-surface warfare munition” and previewed that “this five-year agreement, with two additional option years, will drive faster production.”

The announcement further described that the deal “provides the defense industry with the long-term predictability needed to expand workforce capacity and secure critical supply chains.”

Additionally, “The Navy said the multiyear contract is meant to provide a steady and reliable supply of the Standard Missile-6 interceptors, which can carry out both offensive strikes and missile defense missions.”

President Trump has stretching back over weeks and months consistently denied that the Pentagon is suffering a weapons shortage due to the Iran war. Instead, he has blamed any shortfall or stockpile concerns on his predecessor Biden and his Ukraine war policies.

But certainly the Pentagon is acting like there’s a problem, given it is quickly handing out these large contracts in order to establish “faster production” and greater “long-term predictability”. This after a mid-July report from the Pentagon’s inspector general did point to a serious and growing problem.

Trump had slammed the report as “mostly fake news” at the time; however, just this week he finally did acknowledge that some munitions “are a little bit lower” in the wake of the seven-month long Iran conflict. Trump’s new remark this week is as follows:

“Some forms of ammunition are a little bit lower than other forms,” the president said in an interview with TIME magazine published Thursday, adding: “We’re stocking up at levels we’ve never done before.“

Some critics among MAGA have underscored that the munitions crisis reveals an abandonment of ‘America First’ policy, also given the immense amounts of interceptors expected on Israel and Gulf allies of late.

Ultimately the only winners in all of this are Israel and the major defense contractors, who will continue to see huge returns with the help of the US taxpayer.

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The War Department’s Robot Army Is a Moral and Strategic Disaster

By any measure, September 30, 2026, was a dark day for American military ethics.

Standing at Quantico, War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of AUTOWARCOM – a new four-star command whose entire purpose is to accelerate the deployment of autonomous robots and AI-driven weapons onto the battlefield. He dressed it up in the language of innovation, citing Ukraine, promising speed, invoking “the fastest peacetime shift in modern military history.”

But let’s be clear about what he actually proposed: a military architecture designed to remove human beings from the kill chain. Machines that select targets. Machines that decide who lives and who dies. Machines that answer to no conscience, no court, and no law.

Amnesty International has been warning about this exact future for years. Fully autonomous weapons, the organization argues, are inherently incompatible with international human rights law. They cannot be held accountable. They cannot exercise mercy. They cannot distinguish between a combatant and a child who picks up a rifle out of fear. A machine has no empathy, no reason, no restraint – only code, and code carries the biases of whoever wrote it.

Hegseth’s answer to that concern? “We are putting on the full armor of God. Because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual.” That is not a policy justification. That is a sermon deployed to sanctify a killing machine.

And the timing is obscene. The United States is seven months into a war with Iran with no exit in sight. American troops are burning through missile interceptors defending against Iranian drones. The Strait of Hormuz is a stalemate. The Pentagon is begging for $74 billion for drones and counter-drone systems while contractors admit it will take **at least three years** to replenish basic stockpiles. And in the middle of that, Hegseth wants to stand up a new bureaucracy, hand it a four-star general, and call it strategy.

Worse still, he’s hollowing out the officer corps that would have to run it.

Hegseth confirmed he is doubling his earlier order to cut flag officers — from 10% to 20%.** That’s roughly 160 generals and admirals gone by January 2027. He calls it “accountability.” Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot, calls it what it is: a purge. “He’s purging a generation of great leaders of the military,” Kelly said, “and it’s going to take a generation to recover from it.”

Kelly is right. More than two dozen senior officers have already been fired or forced out – Brown, Franchetti, George among them. Many were women. Many were people of color. Many were simply not ideologically pliant enough for a secretary who seems to view the uniformed military as a personal fiefdom rather than a profession.

So here is the real picture: a secretary who has never commanded troops in combat is dismantling the professional military while building a robot army that no human being will be legally responsible for.

This is not strength. This is not innovation. This is moral cowardice dressed in techno-optimism.

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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth Taps Elon Musk for New Pentagon Role Focused on Futuristic Warfare

The world’s richest man, the legend, Elon Musk has returned to the Trump administration.

This time, the Tesla CEO is returning to the Trump administration in a new Pentagon role that could give him a direct hand in shaping the future of warfare.

On Wednesday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that Musk will co-lead a new government project that is tasked with studying the future of warfare.

The new project is being called Project Meridian, and according to the Pentagon, its goal is to “identify the capabilities required to achieve absolute technological dominance on the next-generation battlefield”.

Per The Hill:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced that SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) will lead a new Pentagon effort to study the future of warfare, dubbed “Project Meridian.”

The Pentagon chief said the project is meant to harness America’s innovators, senior leaders and technologists to look decades into the future and “forecast the creative solution for tomorrow’s conflicts.”

“It is futuristic on purpose,” he said of the project, noting it was not meant to develop new strategies or policies

“We should have the humility to recognize that the best forecasters of future conflict do not solely reside inside the Pentagon,” Hegseth continued. “There are obvious biases and risks to asking ourselves to both ask the questions and answer them.”

The Department of War revealed that Project Meridian will be completed in 120 days, and that its final report will be unclassified and presented to the public.

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Today In Dystopia: ICE Robots And Pentagon Puppets

Fortune reports:

“The Trump administration is exploring adding robot dogs to the expanding arsenal being used by federal immigration authorities as they seek to boost arrests and deportations across the country.

“US Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a market-research notice Friday saying the agency was looking into the purchase of ‘quadruped unmanned ground vehicles,’ known as robotic dogs, along with a draft of the robot specifications.”

I guess it makes sense that the empire’s mad rush to normalize police robots would be spearheaded by the department responsible for persecuting immigrants; there’d be more domestic pushback if these dystopian machines were patrolling the streets targeting less marginalized populations.

I still can’t stand how the western political/media class keeps calling these things “dogs” to make them seem cute and familiar so that people won’t recognize them for the autonomous dissent suppression weapons they are intended to become.

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IT’S OFFICIAL: Hegseth Orders U.S. Cyber Command and Pentagon Intelligence Apparatus to Mobilize Against Foreign Threats Targeting 2026 Elections

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is not playing games with America’s midterms.

A Sept. 22 memorandum directs U.S. Cyber Command, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the rest of the Defense Intelligence Enterprise to prioritize Department of War intelligence and cyber power against foreign actors trying to meddle in the 2026 elections.

The subject line is blunt: “Countering Foreign Threats to 2026 Elections.”

Hegseth writes that as the country approaches this election cycle, “we must prove that we can and will protect the integrity of our democratic processes from any threat.”

He quotes President Trump directly: “free and fair elections are the foundation of our republic” and “no country can be great without fair elections.”

Then he gives the order.

Cyber Command and the Combat Support Agencies “will prioritize the use of DoW intelligence and cyber capabilities to ensure foreign actors do not meddle in our democratic systems.”

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The Pentagon Flocked Itself. Should Big Brother Be Worried?

As the headquarters to the U.S. military, the Pentagon is surrounded by billions of dollars worth of surveillance and security technology.

These systems provide multiple layers of protection for the building but they also carry a risk of backfiring: any surveillance system that is vulnerable to intruders could potentially provide unauthorized users with details about the activities of the Defense Department (DOD) and its employees. This risk is higher than usual right now because of the decision to install a controversial piece of equipment all over the Pentagon grounds: Flock cameras.

There are at least nine Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) currently monitoring the traffic lanes used by drivers entering the Pentagon’s parking lots, including many of the DOD’s own employees. The purpose of these cameras is to give the Pentagon’s security forces the ability to automatically record information about incoming vehicles that may pose a security risk. But if the alleged vulnerabilities of Flock cameras are as serious as the company’s critics allege, then this equipment could be exploited to obtain a detailed list of the national security officials seen entering the Pentagon each day. In this way, the Pentagon’s rush to obtain security equipment from private contractors may pose a national security risk of its own.

Concerns about the ability of Flock products to track people alongside cars has produced backlash from privacy-minded citizens, resulting in both protests and contract cancellations. Others have criticized Flock’s devices for security vulnerabilities that expose them to unauthorized users, flaws which could be especially dangerous in the context of military facilities. Flock Safety has sought to downplay these issues, insisting that they have “never been hacked.” Critics dispute this claim, pointing to multiple different ways that Flock’s devices can be accessed by unauthorized users.

These concerns prompted two members of Congress’ Intelligence committees – Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) – to write a letter last year asking for an investigation into Flock’s “negligent cybersecurity practices.” The duo alleged that the company “needlessly exposes Americans to the threat of hackers and foreign spies tapping this data.” When asked about the Pentagon’s Flock cameras, Sen. Wyden said that “Installing internet-connected cameras in the Pentagon parking lot is obviously a dumb idea. In particular, given Flock’s troubling cybersecurity track record, the Pentagon might as well send the data from those cameras directly to China, Russia and Iran.”

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Russian Plot to Infiltrate Department of War and Secret Service During Biden Administration Busted – US Tech CEO Charged

Federal prosecutors have charged an American tech CEO and a Russian national over a plot to hide their company’s ownership and access federal databases through contracts awarded under Biden. 

Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber, 55, of Boise, Idaho, and Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, 52, of Moscow, Russia, were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The two are accused of “concealing from U.S. government agencies that their company was owned and controlled by Russian nationals and that its software was developed in Russia,” the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.

Reiber and Davydov allegedly concealed from federal agencies that their company was owned and controlled by Russian nationals and “conspired to obtain contracts from federal agencies” to analyze data from US agencies.

The agencies affected included the Department of War and the Department of Homeland Security, including the “Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI); Homeland Security Investigations; and the DHS Office of Inspector General.”

According to the DOJ:

Reiber allegedly represented to the government that the company had no foreign ownership or control and that its software was developed in the United States, when in fact five Russian nationals, including Davydov, owned and controlled the company and its software was developed in Russia.

The complaint does not allege that the software contained malicious code or that it was used to gain unauthorized access to any customer’s computer systems or data.

In a separate proceeding, a federal magistrate judge in the Central District of California on September 19 issued a warrant authorizing the seizure of corporate bank accounts, approximately 57 domains, and other cyberinfrastructure used in furtherance of the alleged acts. The domains and related infrastructure were seized on September 20.

According to an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint, from March 2022 to the present, Reiber, Davydov, and others conspired to obtain contracts from federal agencies through Oxygen Forensics Inc., a digital forensics company based in Alexandria, Virginia.

Digital forensic software is used to recover, preserve, and analyze electronic data from digital devices while keeping the original files unchanged.

The affidavit identifies the affected agencies as the U.S. Department of War and three components of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). These components include the U.S. Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI); Homeland Security Investigations; and the DHS Office of Inspector General.

According to the affidavit, Oxygen Forensics held itself out to the U.S. government as being an independent, U.S.-based company. In fact, Davydov and four other Russian nationals owned and controlled the company through a holding company based in Cyprus.

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US Shipment Of F-35s Goes MIA In Shocking Detour To Hong Kong

Lawmakers and the Trump administration are investigating the odd disappearance of a U.S.-bound shipment of F-35 fighter jet components from Australia, which were originally meant to be repaired on U.S. soil, according to new reporting by Politico.

The report, published Friday and citing three anonymous sources, noted that an intermediary was transporting the equipment on behalf of American defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin through the Pacific Ocean before it was diverted to Hong Kong.

The three unnamed sources suggested that neither the Pentagon nor Lockheed Martin knows why the shipment ended up in Hong Kong.

The current whereabouts of the components remain unknown, triggering concerns over whether China may have gotten its hands on them.

China, which has tightened its control of Hong Kong in recent years, has long sought to gather intelligence on the F-35 program.

The missing components were part of the F-35 Lightning II, which Lockheed Martin describes on its website as the “most lethal, survivable, and connected fighter aircraft” for America and its allies.

Specifically, among the missing items is an F-35 canopy, a major part of the fighter jet that contains sensitive technology, according to Politico.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has called the F-35 the “most costly weapon system” in the U.S. military, and the Pentagon has already spent between $200 billion and $250 billion on the program, according to estimates.

The State Department and the Pentagon reportedly briefed lawmakers on the matter in June, the report added.

In a statement, the Pentagon office responsible for the F-35 jets said it was “aware of a shipment issue of unserviceable F-35 Lightning II components.”

The military office said an investigation is underway to retrieve the missing components and determine what happened.

Headline USA reached out to the office for further clarification but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Lockheed Martin, for its part, declined to provide information on the matter, citing security reasons, Politico noted.

“Our teams handle every shipment with the utmost diligence and safeguards to ensure the integrity of the F-35 program and the security of our allied partners,” the company said.

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