The equipment office of the German armed forces signed a contract with MBDA Deutschland and Rheinmetall Waffe Munition in June to develop the full system, from reconnaissance to target tracking and engagement, the companies said in statements on Thursday. The contract value is in the “mid three-digit” million-euro range, Rheinmetall said.

Several European navies are working on laser weapons, with the United Kingdom’s Royal Navy planning to fit the DragonFire directed-energy weapon on a destroyer by 2027, in work led by MBDA in partnership with Leonardo and QinetiQ. Naval vessels are particularly suited to deploy powerful lasers, as they can provide the physical space, electrical power, sensors and cooling required.

“The laser weapon system will provide our personnel deployed on naval vessels with a significantly higher level of protection, particularly when it comes to countering drones,” Roman Koehne, head of Rheinmetall’s weapons and ammunition division, said in a statement.

The laser weapon system from MBDA and Rheinmetall has a “very high level” of technological maturity, the companies said. The demonstrator has been deployed on the German frigate Sachsen, covering 28,000 nautical miles from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, and firing over 1,000 shots at air, sea and land targets in more than a year of testing, according to MBDA and Rheinmetall.

The containerized laser effector will also be a cost-effective weapon for port security, MBDA Deutschland Managing Director Thomas Gottschild said. The system can focus power on an area measuring just a few centimeters, and has proven to be effective even in adverse weather conditions, according to Rheinmetall and MBDA.

The MBDA-Rheinmetall joint venture will place “particular emphasis” on German supply chains and local systems expertise to secure national sovereignty in the technology, the companies said. Serial production will “largely” take part in Germany, according to Koehne.

In other weapon-development news, the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis said it tested its electromagnetic railgun outdoors for the first time in June, moving the system out of laboratory conditions. The institute will now work on higher energy levels and longer distances as a path towards a possible future deployable system, it said in a statement on Thursday.

Railguns use electromagnetic acceleration rather than chemical propellants to fire a projectile, and could provide a possible counter to hypersonic threats.

Meanwhile, Belgium said it will buy 20 of Rheinmetall’s Skyranger 30 anti-drone cannons as well as 14 Thales GM200 radars, in addition to a previously announced plan to buy 10 NASAMS air-defense systems from Kongsberg. The country is investing €3.1 billion ($3.5 billion) to build up a layered air defense system, after two decades of going without, Defense Minister Theo Francken said.

Thales will offer to buy the remaining Exail shares for €134 each, the company said on Monday. That’s a 44% premium to the Exail share price on June 25, the day before Safran announced talks with the Gorgé family at a price of €128.50 a share.

Safran said it ended exclusive negotiations on Friday about the potential acquisition after the parties were unable to reach mutually acceptable terms.

Exail provides maritime drones for several European autonomous mine-hunting systems, including the French program led by Thales. The market for mine warfare is expected to grow in the high single digits through to 2030, while the addressable market for unmanned anti-submarine warfare is forecast to increase eightfold by the end of the decade, Thales said in a presentation.

“With this acquisition, Thales aims to increase its scale in the underwater warfare market, and to expand its capabilities in inertial navigation systems through the addition of Exail’s complementary expertise,” the company said.

Thales said the acquisition allows it to gain critical mass in the growing market for unmanned mine countermeasures and speed up innovation in anti-submarine warfare. Exail produces a range of underwater and surface drones, as well as inertial navigation technology, with 76% of its sales coming from navigation and maritime robotics, and the remainder from advanced technologies.

Exail’s autonomous maritime drones are used for underwater mine clearing and seabed mapping, with emerging uses including anti-submarine warfare as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Thales is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of sonar systems, including towed sonar used by many Western navies.

The purchase by Thales of the Gorgé family stake is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, after which the company will file a mandatory tender offer for all of Exail’s shares and convertible bonds that is expected to close by early 2028 at the latest.

Thales said it expects “significant value creation” for its shareholders from the acquisition, with Exail adding to the company’s earnings per share from the first year, and an impact on Thales operating profit of more than €90 million by 2032.

Exail had 2025 revenue of €479 million, and an order book of €1.1 billion at the end of March, according to the presentation document. That compares with Thales sales of €22.1 billion last year, and an order book of €53.3 billion at the end of December.

Thales said the purchase will strengthen its underwater warfare business, allow it to gain market share in inertial navigation systems, and help accelerate development of quantum sensors. Combining the two companies could generate additional revenue of €500 million within 10 years, Thales said.

Fincantieri acquisitions

Meanwhile, Italian shipyard Fincantieri is spending €600 million to acquire four maritime drone and undersea engineering firms as it seeks to strengthen its role in the growing civil and defense undersea market.

The Italian state-controlled yard said it was buying firm Next Geosolutions, which offers offshore construction support services, as well as Italian start-ups WSense, Graal Tech and Defcomm which specialize in underwater communications and surface and undersea drones.

“The acquisitions announced today mark a historic transformation for Fincantieri, as it creates an international champion in the underwater domain,” the group’s CEO, Pierroberto Folgiero, said in a statement.

Supported by a €500 million capital increase in February, the acquisitions add to Fincantieri’s recent purchases of undersea firm Remazel and torpedo maker WASS.

Following the new acquisitions, Fincantieri’s sub-sea revenue will hit €1.1 billion this year, €1.4 billion in 2028 and €1.8 billion in 2030, the firm said.

Fincantieri said it would seek synergies between civilian and military sub-sea technologies, in the same way it has long sought synergies between its naval vessel and cruise ship businesses.

Following the acquisitions, Fincantieri will employ 1,500 in sub-sea activities in Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K., Norway and the United Arab Emirates, the firm said.

With the counter-drone market “red hot,” demand for affordable short-range radars could grow tenfold by 2030, Frankenberg told Defense News at the Eurosatory defense show near Paris last month. Echodyne, based near Seattle, is shipping radars as fast as it can make them, and will cut the ribbon on a new facility this month that at full rate will lift production capacity tenfold.

As drones have become the main killers on the battlefield in Ukraine and inflicted billions of damage in the Middle East, counter-unmanned aerial systems could be spotted all over the 2026 edition of Eurosatory, the world’s biggest defense show. The Echodyne team tallied at least 29 stands displaying the firm’s radars integrated in C-UAS offerings.

“There is a rush of interest globally for counter-drone,” Frankenberg said. “The Ukraine war made it obvious to everyone that drones had changed the face of warfare, but the Iran war made it obvious that everything’s at risk.”

Defeating drones starts with detection, and suppliers of relatively small and affordable radars such as Echodyne, Blighter and Robin Radar have benefited from surging interest in anti-drone warfare, which doesn’t require the powerful and expensive radars that equip missile and air-defense systems.

“The more traditional defense-radar companies make amazing radars,” Frankenberg said, citing RTX, SRC and Thales. “But they all cost half a million dollars or a million dollars a face. If you have a million cheap, lethal drones, you can’t have one battlefield-wide system at $5 million or $10 million. You have to have a ton of inexpensive, yet highly effective systems.”

Echodyne’s compact, solid-state radars use the firm’s proprietary metamaterials technology, with densely packed antenna arrays to electronically steer radar beams without much of the complexity and cost of traditional phased-array systems.

The firm was founded in 2014 as a spin-off from Intellectual Ventures, with early investors including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Frankenberg said the reason to create Echodyne was to make radars with the performance of active electronically scanned array radars “for fractions of the cost.”

Echodyne’s small radars, about as big as a hard-cover book, cost around $40,000 a panel, while its bigger radars, the size of a small carry-on suitcase, are in the $160,000 range, the CEO said.

The company is investing $40 million in a new facility that will lift production capacity to 30,000 radar panels a year, a mix of smaller and larger models. Frankenberg said Echodyne has advanced its entire 2027 expansion plan to this year, with the new plant already online before the official ribbon cutting in July.

“There’s just massive demand now, and it goes back to the point that the only way to counter mass is with mass, and so there’s just going to be a huge number of these systems,” Frankenberg said. “We’re building this new factory for a reason.”

The market for small radars will probably reach hundreds of thousands of panels by 2030 from a market that today numbers in the tens of thousands, according to Frankenberg. He said Echodyne is currently leading in the segment, but didn’t want to provide an exact number for market share.

Echodyne’s first radar, the book-sized EchoFlight, designed for commercial drone collision avoidance, got a lot of press but “wasn’t going in a hurry anywhere commercially,” the CEO said. The firm got its first big break in 2017, when Anduril adopted EchoGuard for its Sentry autonomous surveillance tower, which in turn kicked off interest in the radar for ground-to-air drone detection.

The company developed the larger EchoShield radar using its metamaterials technology for clients wanting more detection range, and introduced the model around the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as demand for military counter-drone systems took off. Defense now accounts for about 65% of sales, a reversal of the mix before 2022.

EchoGuard can typically track a small quadcopter drone at 1 km (1,100 yards), while the larger EchoShield can do the same at 3 km and track more than 1,000 objects at a given time. The radars are usually part of a sensor stack including optical sensors and often also radio-frequency detection.

While “exquisite systems” for traditional air defense won’t go away, Echodyne expects much greater demand for affordable short-range radar than high-end systems, according to Frankenberg.

“You’re going to need a massive number of short-range systems. All those short-range systems need to be able to detect and track the incoming threat, which means they’re going to need some kind of radar.”

Echodyne has outgrown the startup phase and considers itself a medium-sized technology company, with around 60% of revenue from the United States and 40% from international markets, Frankenberg said.

The firm worked with Northrop Grumman around 2020 to integrate EchoGuard on Bushmaster chain guns for counter-drone fire control, with Frankenberg saying radar cueing solved tracking problems that optical sensors alone struggled with. That approach has since been adopted by turret makers including Kongsberg and Rheinmetall.

For any platform with a gun, “that gun needs to be able to defend the platform,” Frankenberg said. “Every maneuver unit should have this. At the end of the day, is that your most exquisite counter- drone system? Maybe not, but does it allow you to defend yourself in battle? Yes.”

The CEO said turning guns into anti-drone weapons requires a radar, maybe a computer upgrade depending on the platform, software algorithms, “and then the gun is ready to go. We think there’s going to be huge demand for this.”

Echodyne radars are used on high-powered microwave C-UAS from Epirus and ThinKom, laser-based systems from AeroVironment and Electro Optic Systems, in European laser-weapon programs, and in directed-energy projects with primes who make their own radars, Frankenberg said. Other solutions include pallets loaded with interceptors, and an Echodyne radar to cue them.

“We’re on pretty much anything you can think of in the counter drone space,” Frankenberg said.

No single system will win the C-UAS race, “you’re going to see a mass of systems,” Frankenberg said. He said lasers and high-powered microwaves are good options where appetite for collateral damage is low, whereas rotary machine guns are extremely effective “if you don’t care about collateral effects.”

With the proliferation of new drone counters, “I’m sure it’s confusing for buyers,” Frankenberg said. “There’s going be room for a lot of them to be effective and be winners, but which ones, it’s hard to pick right now.”

As for Echodyne, the firm became profitable last year and is open to all long-term options, including staying private, an initial public offering or an acquisition, according to the CEO. Frankenberg said his investors right now are “incredibly happy” with how business is going.

“We’re clearly in the middle of this market that’s red hot, and so from that standpoint, it makes sense that we would be attractive to people,” Frankenberg said. “We’re profitable, attractively profitable, so we can run as long as we want, but good business management is, always be open to what comes around.”

ICEYE is currently manufacturing satellites at a pace of 50 per year, Modrzewski said at the European Defence & Security Summit in the Belgian capital, and the goal is to ramp up production to two satellites a week as the company responds to surging demand from European militaries.

The CEO said future constellations will be “in the hundreds of satellites,” pointing to the example of Elon Musk’s Starlink with its thousands of satellites. He said ICEYE’s planned manufacturing line for 100 satellites a year “is still too small, so we will keep on growing that production.”

European governments are trying to reduce their dependency on the United States for a number of critical defense enablers, including satellite intelligence, and ICEYE has benefited from efforts to close the gap. The company has said the U.S. halt of intelligence sharing in March 2025 really drove home the need in Europe for sovereign access to space-based intel.

The ICEYE CEO said Germany’s order for a 40-satellite constellation in December was “the first-ever European move to actually create a properly large tactical system in Europe.”

The company was founded in 2014 by Modrzewski and Pekka Laurila as a Finnish university spin-off, and it supplies Earth-observation data using synthetic aperture radar, or SAR for short, which ICEYE initially intended as a tool to help ships avoid sea ice.

ICEYE took less than 12 months from contract signature to deliver full radar-satellite systems to Poland, Greece and Portugal, according to Modrzewski, calling that a big change in an industry where one satellite used to take five years.

“Here we are talking about three different countries, each of which has received a constellation of five, six, seven within less than 12 months,” the CEO said. “Those are off-the-shelf satellites, that’s how crazy it got right now. And it is what we need in order to be responsive to the threats that are outside of our borders.”

Modrzewski said the cost of an ICEYE system is ten times lower than that of legacy systems, allowing the likes of Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands to own not just satellites but entire constellations.

He said ICEYE has delivered a four-satellite system to the Polish Armed Forces, adding that the country is continuing to grow its constellation, “and soon they will have high tactical capability which is fully sovereign to Poland.” The Finnish company signed an agreement in May 2025 to provide Poland with three SAR satellites, with an option for three more.

Modrzewski has been pushing a proposal for a system of 1,000 satellites called Constellation Europe that would combine space-based ground observation, space situational awareness and in-space defense capabilities. He said access to space-based surveillance to “know, react or act” has been a common thread in recent conflicts, and a capability that Europe is still missing.

“The war in Ukraine and the war in the Middle East, they differ in many ways, but they actually are extremely similar in the fact that the tactical access to satellite intelligence has proven to be critical for both sides,” Modrzewski said.

With a growing number of countries such as India, Japan and Australia trying to move away from a purely U.S.-based supply chain, there is “a massive opportunity for our European defense sector” as long as European firms can show credibility in their home markets, according to Modrzewski.

He said Constellation Europe would be a way for the European space industry to show it produces “capabilities which are equal or better to our counterparts,” and is happy share those capabilities to contribute to a “bigger, safer world” of middle powers.

He said Europe was previously able to jointly procured a satellite-navigation system with Galileo, and now needs to do the same for Earth observation.

“if we really want to catch up to this massive gap that’s developing between us and the United States, when it comes to space, we’ve got to start moving fast and acting now,” the ICEYE CEO said.

ICEYE raised €450 million (US$510 million) in a Series F funding round earlier this month that valued the satellite company at more than €10 billion, with the firm saying it will use the proceeds to expand its global footprint.

While the latest funding round was led by a U.S. investment firm, Modrzewski said the majority of the ICEYE board is European, the company’s technology was developed in Europe and being a European firm “is critical.”

“Them choosing to put money into European company actually is a statement of the fact that they see something more unique over here,” Modrzewski said. “So I consider this a win.”

The French Army technical section built a prototype of the metal cage, which is now being manufactured by KNDS France and in the process of being delivered to the tank units, said Gen. Olivier Coquet, head of the section known as STAT, in a briefing with reporters at the Eurosatory defense show near Paris on Sunday.

Roof-mounted armor variants have been adopted by both Russian and Ukrainian forces as drone threats proliferate.

The Leclerc is being upgraded as part of France’s Scorpion armored-vehicle modernization program, which includes equipping the French heaviest armored unit with new computers, additional armor and a remotely operated turret to operate in urban areas, according to Coquet. The Leclerc has a 120 mm cannon and an autoloader, with a crew of three.

France’s main battle tank will be reaching the end of its service life by 2035, and the Army plans to acquire an interim capability to bridge the gap between the end of the Leclerc and the arrival of the Main Ground Combat System, Coquet said. The joint MGCS project is more likely to arrive towards 2045, according to the head of the STAT.

“We already have some ideas, we know full well that it won’t be an exact copy of the Leclerc tank. There will be drones operating alongside it, and we know there will be a robotic element,” said Gen. Philippe de Montenon, the commander of the French land forces and operations, in the same briefing.

The planned MGCS will “clearly” not be just a tank but a networked system of systems with artificial intelligence, and the interim capability will be a “first building block of the MGCS,” according to Coquet. “So that’s what we’re looking for.”

The French have been developing the system with local companies including Mistral AI, Safran.AI, Thales and Airbus, Justel said in a media briefing on Thursday. The French Army has already tested the system, dubbed Arcadia, in exercises including Dacian Fall in Romania and Orion 26 in France.

NATO military personnel started training with Palantir’s Maven Smart System in August 2025, the alliance’s first use of AI-enabled command and control software. The platform is derived from the Pentagon’s Project Maven and ties together massive amounts of battlefield data and AI analysis to help commanders identify targets and make decisions more quickly.

Arcadia “is our response to Maven,” said Justel. He said NATO’s use of Maven raises issues of digital sovereignty, “so the question arises whether should we adopt Maven blindly, or should we look for other solutions.”

France’s army, general staff and Defense Digital Commission “have been working on what other solutions might look like,” Justel said. France will deploy Arcadia during NATO’s Coalition Warrior Interoperability Exercise, or CWIX, a live exercise held in Poland June 8-26.

Justel said several NATO countries including France have raised questions around interoperability with the Palantir system. The Army deputy chief of staff said Arcadia is designed to comply with NATO’s Federated Mission Networking standards, or FMN, and contrasted that with Maven, which he said hasn’t integrated FMN requirements.

Palantir said Maven Smart System is “compliant with the principles of FMN” and that it is working with NATO toward official certification, in an emailed response to a request for comment. The company added that the platform has proven compliance with two NATO data-security standards that are “key building blocks” of FMN.

“NATO Maven Smart System is compatible, and does allow interoperability, but of course nations are free to choose what systems they use,” said Martin O’Donnell, a spokesperson for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, in an emailed reply to questions.

The Palantir system is already integrated with more than 10 NATO systems, according to U.S. Army Col. Arnel David, the director of Task Force Maven at SHAPE, who said his team is “focused on securing final certification across all FMN milestones,” with the declaration of full operational capability imminent.

France plans to propose Arcadia to its European partners, with a number of countries expressing interest, and has organized demonstrations for NATO, which is also interested, the general said. “When we talk to our European partners, we get the same reaction of, `well, we’ve kind of gone with Maven because there’s no choice, but if countries in Europe are able to build an alternative, we’ll go for it.’”

Palantir said it “welcomes the opportunity to integrate with Arcadia, or any other national system.”

Arcadia builds on previous work by the Armed Forces Ministry as part of the Artemis project started in 2022, which uses AI to process massive amounts of defense data. The French Army has been developing use cases for Arcadia internally as well as in cooperation with the industry partners, according to Justel.

The United Kingdom is working on a similar AI-enabled command and control system, and is also in discussions on how to interface with Maven, according to Justel.

Based on discussions with the British, “their concept is well-established, but they don’t yet have all the technological building blocks,” said Col. Frédéric Vola, head of the planning and capacity development office in the Army general staff, in the briefing.

While Palantir is behind the version of Maven used by NATO, the system is not the same as that used by the U.S., with different databases and functionality and “certainly not the same performance,” according to Justel.

The French system is conceived to be a more resilient alternative to Maven because it will be “highly decentralized” rather than a centralized system, with all command posts connected to field-deployed servers in a mesh-network architecture rather than a distant central cloud. The French Army already has a network of data hubs and is acquiring more, Justel said.

“First, it distributes the data, and in the event of destruction or loss of connection, it allows us to maintain the autonomy of what remains, and second, it’s easier to implement,” Justel said.

The system has an open architecture, with the French armed forces inviting “all the major players in artificial intelligence” and being open to working with others, according to Justel. “We don’t want to enter into the logic that we’ve known for years, where we give a manufacturer the system and then everything goes via them, everything is closed, they own all the data,” Justel said. “We want an open system where any manufacturer can plug in, and all data can be shared by everyone, without any notion of exclusive ownership.”

As part of its work on AI for command and control, the French Army has developed its own large-language model for staff officers, called Berthier, named after Napoleon’s chief of staff, and which Justel said is used to synthesize information, retrieve operational data, and support drafting of proposed courses of action, while leaving decisions to commanders.

After an initial intercept by local drone maker Eraser failed and the target returned unharmed, CEO Edgars Gauručs was so stressed in a later demonstration that he missed the details of the successful takedown. Nordic Air Defense’s Kreuger 100 interceptor hit its target on the first try, missed on a second attempt, before succeeding again in a third and final simulated attack.

Finding cost-effective drone counters has become urgent for NATO, as countries on its eastern flank have found themselves unable to fend off multiple drone incursions in recent months. Meanwhile, Russia uses thousands of drones in Ukraine every day, and Iranian drone attacks caused the United States to burn through years of interceptor production valued at billions of dollars in just weeks.

“We face serious problems, not only in Latvia,” said Maj. Modris Kairišs, head of Latvia’s Autonomous Systems Competence Center, at the testing range on May 26. Drone technology is “a couple of steps ahead” of C-UAS, he said, with interceptors having to be successful every time while only one attack drone needs to get through for damaging effect.

The threat felt particularly acute in Latvia last month after the country was unable to challenge repeated incursions by Ukrainian drones believed to have been diverted by Russian jamming. In response, the country is sending mobile teams equipped with interceptor drones from Latvia’s Origin Robotics and Eraser to its eastern border with Russia.

The war in the Middle East exposed a cost-exchange problem for C-UAS, with Shahed-class threats costing $15,000 to $50,000 being shot down with interceptors costing anywhere from $1 million to $12 million, PitchBook senior research analyst Ali Javaheri wrote in a May 26 report. He said investors should look for solutions that cost less than $30,000 per engagement against such threats.

The demonstrations at Sēlija, which hosts NATO’s new uncrewed systems testing range, featured a range of approaches by European startups to the drone problem, from autonomous interceptors to a mothership drone and jet-powered systems to engage faster threats. Much of it inspired by the war in Ukraine, and in some cases battle-tested there.

Origin Robotics showed off the Blaze interceptor that will equip Latvia’s mobile teams and which the company hopes to deliver to Ukraine “soon.” The four-rotor drone is fully autonomous, with radar for initial target detection and computer-vision software to close in on and follow the target, with an operator deciding whether or not to trigger the interceptor’s fragmentation warhead.

Light rain complicated visibility across the testing range, a 2 by 2 kilometers square of cleared terrain of grass and sand hemmed in by pine forest, with military brass and officials following the action on a several meter-high video screen set up for the occasion.

“There was the big kaboom and the target is down,” said Maris Kuda, head of government relations at Origin Robotics, after the drone identified, approached and hit a target drone from Temeso, another Latvian company. “Hopefully soon those will be some Shaheds on the eastern border.”

Ukraine remains the reference for combat drone operations, and several companies at the Sēlija range noted their systems had already been tested there. While the concept of interceptor drones predates Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukraine has turned them into a mass weapon, with production of 100,000 units in 2025, according to the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.

“Ukraine has demonstrated with absolute clarity that drones, counter-drone systems, electronic warfare, autonomy and rapid innovation cycles are now central to the military efficiency,” said Maj. Gen. Andis Dilāns, undersecretary of state for logistics in Latvia’s Ministry of Defence.

Latvia aims to develop the Sēlija training area into a place where NATO allies and industry can test technologies, validate concepts and speed up development, which is especially important in counter-UAS due to constantly evolving threats, according to Dilāns.

The country signed a letter of intent with the Netherlands last week to let the Dutch armed forces use the range for drone and counter-drone exercises and testing.

NATO is setting up five innovation ranges as part of its Rapid Adoption Action Plan, including the one in Sēlija focused on unmanned aerial systems and their countermeasures. The goal is to make it easier for companies to test new systems and show they work, and make it less risky for countries to buy those systems because the capabilities are proven.

Sweden’s Nordic Air Defense demonstrated its first C-UAS product, a portable carbon-fiber drone called Kreuger 100, which it launched from a winged mothership that can additionally function as a communications relay or be equipped with a sensor gimbal to cue the interceptor.

The drone performed three simulated strikes on the target, with a first head-on hit counting as a kill as the Kreuger got within the 3-meter distance where its fragmentation head is effective. The interceptor, chasing the threat in intercept mode without manual control, didn’t get close enough in a second pass from a cornering angle, before success on a third attempt.

The company says it aims to reach a price point at which the interceptor can be used as a disposable air-defense tool.

With Russia adapting to Ukraine’s drone interceptors by switching to jet-powered attack UAVs, two German companies demonstrated high-speed drones for use against high-flying or faster targets, though neither demo included an interception.

Munich-based RDC Systems showcased a 3D-printed rotor-powered interceptor drone called Raven, with rocket-assisted launch to save battery life while climbing to operating height. The company says the drone was measured by NATO radars at the Sēlija range in March doing 450 kilometers per hour.

JetDrones, a startup from the same German city and only registered since February, demonstrated a jet-powered interceptor aimed at Shaheds flying at an altitude of four to eight kilometers, a range which the company said would typically require expensive interceptor missiles such as IRIS-T. The firm says its drone can operate fully autonomously or monitored by a human operator.

The company was flying the drone in FPV mode, and a company representative said adding a radar would double the price tag, when JetDrones has been told by Ukrainian operators that the cost needs to below that of a Shahed.

Eraser wrapped up the demonstrations at Sēlija with a successful takedown of the Temeso target using a faster version of its modular drone, after the earlier attempt with a slower version and a smaller target proved inconclusive.

“There is the target,” Gauručs said, tracking the interception on-screen, after just describing how cloudy skies and sun can complicate visual detection. “We think we… oh, no, we got it, the target is going down in the corner.”

The executive said he wasn’t sure whether the Eraser drone took down the target autonomously or in manual mode.

“To be fair, I was so stressed that I didn’t see the result.”

Apart from their combat fatigues, the drone pilots with first-person view goggles and joystick controllers could have been hobbyist racers, maneuvering quadcopter drones through bright yellow gates and an abandoned building. But simulated strike missions added a distinctly military edge to the two-day competition, with bonus points for hitting targets including a moving Ford pickup truck.

“Even with the British Army we do racing events, because obviously that’s where FPV has always been,” Guardsman Mark, a drone pilot in the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, told Defense News. “It’s good to see that the events here are like almost a homage to FPV racing. It’s kind of, thank you, we will take over from here into the tactical side.”

As FPV drones have become an inescapable part of infantry operations on the frontline in Ukraine, NATO countries have started to apply the lessons, at their own pace. Some teams in the two-day competition, including from the United Kingdom and Denmark, had been using FPV drones in their units for only several months, while some from France had been flying them for more than a year.

For drone pilots from eight NATO members, the competition at the Chaumont-Semoutiers airbase was a chance to see allies at work, share tactics and technical tips, and study each other’s equipment. For instructors, the event provided ideas on how they might improve training to use FPV drones in combat.

“We saw some really interesting things because, and I won’t go into details, but each team had its own small innovations in how they managed their equipment,” said Sgt. Edgar, an FPV drone pilot in the French Army’s 61st Artillery Regiment, which hosted the event at its base on the former airfield near Chaumont.

Cheap consumer racing drones flown via FPV goggles and low-latency video links were turned into weapons of war by soldiers in Ukraine, who combined them with explosive charges such as rocket-propelled grenade warheads. FPV drones now inflict 60% of the losses on the Russian army, the National Security and Defense Council for Ukraine said in January.

For Gen. Pierre Schill, the commander of the French Army, the challenge was an occasion to take stock of where his forces stand compared to allies. He said drones have become an “unavoidable reality,” and also a way to push the land forces towards innovating in the lowest ranks.

“You can build, for not much money, your own drone,” Schill said. “It’s a way to unleash innovation.”

Nearly 50 teams, each comprising a pilot and a spotter, took part in the International Drone Challenge on May 19 and 20, scoring points over four courses testing speed, drone control and successful strikes. Teams brought their own drones, some custom-made, others issued by their units, with the rules limiting entries to FPV drones in the 5-inch rotor class.

While many teams used similar systems and components, some pilots on allied teams used “quite different” ways to approach targets, “so it’s really interesting to be able to talk with them,” said Chief Cpl. Jean-Baptiste of the French 82nd Infantry Regiment.

Allied teams came from Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., Italy, the U.K. and Poland, with Luxembourg joining as an observer.

Chief Sgt. Aymeric of the 7th Battalion of Chasseurs Alpins — “Alpine Hunters” — kept a hand on the shoulder of pilot Chief Cpl. Clément during one of the exercises, pointing his masked teammate in the direction of the drone for the best signal.

“When I put on the mask, I no longer exist in this reality,” Chief Cpl. Clément said after completing the course. “That’s actually why it’s important to have a partner. They’re not only there to help me with my mission, but also to keep me grounded in reality.”

Buddy interaction was an area where teams used different methods, with some spotters guiding their pilots with verbal instructions rather than remaining in physical contact.

“We see different things again from Ukraine, we still learn from how they do it,” said Lance Cpl. Martin, a drone pilot from the Danish Royal Life Guards. “But definitely I’m not a one-man operation when flying. Especially if I have goggles on, I’m going to need a guy or two to keep me covered.”

Ukraine will have the capacity to produce more than 8 million FPV drones in 2026, with more than 160 companies producing the systems in Ukraine, the NDSC said in January.

Skill levels ranged widely, with French sergeant Edgar noting strong teams from the U.K. and Belgium. “This raises everyone’s game, because at the end of a lap where someone posts an exceptional time, we saw several teams approach them to ask for advice or to take a look at the equipment they had.”

Two French teams took the top spots, with the 13th Parachute Dragoon Regiment of the French special forces the winner and the 61st Artillery Regiment that hosted the competition finishing second. One of the British teams took third place.

Sgt. Luke Crossley of the U.K.’s 3 Royal School of Military Engineering Regiment, reportedly the country’s fastest military drone pilot, said that what he found most impressive was how well some of the French teams were doing with only two to five months of flying FPV systems, compared to the Belgium team and U.K. teams with up to two years of experience.

“Clearly other armies, other nations, France, Belgium, they’re getting after all this FPV drone stuff,” Crossley said. “As united nations, we are going be stronger on that battle front. Which is reassuring.”

The 1st Battalion Scots Guards has two qualified pilots with FPV drone experience who are still exploring how to use their gear, according to Guardsman Mark. He said the competition allowed him to tap into experience and knowledge from allies, including on setting up drones and programming the Betaflight control software.

NATO militaries are still figuring out procurement for FPV drones, a newer category than larger intelligence and targeting drone systems with established suppliers and procurement processes. Guardsman Mark said that while his unit receives fully assembled bigger drones, he built the smaller model used in the competition from parts.

Seeing how other forces deal with procurement was instructive, according to Staff Sgt. Shay Burnett of the U.S. Marine Corps, who teaches an attack-drone operator course at the service’s School of Infantry.

The Marines are tied to a contract for a single model of FPV drone, the Neros Archer, according to Burnett. With FPV drones so interchangeable “we shouldn’t have to be stuck to one system,” and being able to build them in-house and branch out to other models would reduce costs and make the force more effective overall, he said.

The biggest takeaway was learning where allies stand on FPV drones “and seeing how we can make ourselves better overall,” according to Burnett, who said the Marines started using the systems about 15 months ago. “It’s so new across the board. Everyone’s relatively in the same boat.”

Burnett also took home lessons from how organizers set up the trials. “We’re never going to try to get to the racing side, but we do think that the way that they had some of the things, with obstacles to get to the main target, is something we can bring back and actually start implementing.”

An officer of the Danish armed forces was keen to observe how the French organized the competition. While Denmark has previously held military competitions for snipers, infantry-fighting vehicles and battle tanks, the country wouldn’t be able to set up an event like the one near Chaumont just yet, said Lt. Col. Nicolai, head of the training department for the Danish forces.

Drone pilots also discussed training, with most agreeing that pilots need to fly regularly to keep their skills sharp. The French require potential drone pilots to train at least 20 hours in a simulator before they start flying small drones and then work their way up, said Sgt. Edgar.

Younger pilots, especially those with experience flying model aircraft or in video games, tend to take more naturally to FPV drones, though some personnel in their forties are “very quick” learners, according to the French sergeant. But the main variable remains training time, he said.

Training time for the competing teams varied greatly, said Danish Lance Cpl. Martin, who said he is one of the first in his unit to train with FPV drones, and had been flying them for only about one-and-a-half months. He said after discussing training regimes, one lesson he’s bringing home is to train intensely at the start, then allow pilots to build flying experience at a more casual pace.

“It’s been fun talking to the others to see how they’ve been doing,” Lance Cpl. Martin said. “Most of them have had FPVs for a longer time, so they had more training compared to myself. I’m bringing home how we can train, all the success and all the failures. No need to reinvent the wheel.”

The Latvian armed forces will deploy teams up to four soldiers in 4×4 vehicles, equipped with interceptor drones from Latvian manufacturers Origin Robotics and Eraser, to the eastern border with Russia, said Maj. Modris Kairišs, head of the center, in a briefing with reporters here on May 26. The goal is to have the units operational by early next month, he said.

Low-altitude drone defense has become one of the most critical security gaps for Latvia and neighboring Lithuania and Estonia amid a growing number of drone incursions from the direction of Russia. Independent Russian media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe counted at least 24 drone incidents in the three Baltic countries since early 2025.

“The force teams we plan to deploy to the border in the coming days will be equipped with local interceptor drones,” Kairišs said, adding that the number of teams to be deployed is confidential.

Latvia’s government collapsed this month in the wake of a renewed incursion of Ukrainian drones into the country’s airspace, with two drones crashing in Latvian territory on May 7, including one that hit an empty fuel depot, and a third drone entering the country’s airspace before leaving again. Kairišs said Russia is using “very powerful” jamming to disrupt navigation of Ukrainian drones.

“At least if we will send these initial teams, it will solve the society requirements, politicians’ requirements, and we are moving forward,” Kairišs told Defense News. “Let’s say it is initial capability. We need a lot of teams to fully cover the border.”

Ukraine has been using mobile fire teams to defeat Russian drone threats since 2022, though the country has increasingly shifted to interceptor drones.

Interceptor teams are not a long-term answer, according to Kairišs, who instead envisages a future solution of fully automatic interceptor drones stationed along the border in launch canisters, “where you can, from the command and control center, just give the command to intercept.” He said Latvia is testing what he called “launch-box technologies.”

“This is where Western countries need to move, because our human resource is very expensive,” Kairišs said.

With Latvia’s eastern border with Russia and Belarus nearly 400 kilometers long, achieving Ukrainian-style levels of drone protection would require “a huge number” of personnel and put significant stress on the armed forces, Kairišs said in the briefing. He said Latvia needs to “find a balance between peacetime and war.”

The country is counting on assistance from Ukrainian experts for tactical advice and practical operator experience on intercepting drones, according to Kairišs. He said Latvia is seeking Ukrainian expertise rather than hardware, for example, on tactical procedures related to the kill chain and sensors.

One of the biggest challenges NATO faces in dealing with drone threats is what Kairišs called “a legacy way of thinking” around command and control, in which all sensor data is fused and information classified. Delivering that classified information to a mobile group operating near the border then stumbles over procedures that disrupt effective C2 at the tactical level, the Latvian major said.

Kairišs said countries need a cross-border solution for drone interception that allows for command and control at a “very low classification level.” With multiple NATO countries working on their own C2 systems for drone defense, there will need to be an effort to let them work together, he said.

Shahed-type drones, once detected, are “not a hard target” due to their relatively low speeds, according to Kairišs, who compared them to World War I-era biplanes. However, detection is the hardest part, with the drones flying at low altitudes and usually built from cheap composite materials that are radar-transparent, the major said.

Latvia has deployed a network of acoustic sensors for several months already, which when combined with radar and optical sensors is “quite effective,” Kairišs said. With drones flying at altitudes of 50-100 meters, detecting them requires tactical radars every 10 to 20 kilometers, with associated infrastructure, he said.

Latvia hosts the NATO innovation range for counter-unmanned aerial systems at the Sēlija training area in the center of the country, and is taking a leading role in the alliance’s C-UAS efforts. European countries and more broadly NATO lack the opportunity to test systems against real front-line drones, which is something the Sēlija range allows, Kairišs said.

Testing of drones, counter-UAS and electronic warfare is “almost impossible” in some European countries due to bureaucracy, population density and air-traffic density, “and here in Latvia we have this opportunity, and we want to share it,” the Latvian major said.

He said that due to the urgency of the security situation, the government has exempted the Sēlija range from some restrictions regarding use of electronic warfare and high-altitude flights, and Latvian forces are “more or less” capable of simulating current battlefield conditions as they exist on parts of the front line in Ukraine.

In addition to interceptor drones, Latvia is field-testing an automated .50 caliber turret that Kairišs said may be demonstrated within several weeks, as well as working on electronic warfare and cheap missile systems. The Autonomous Systems Competence Center has special governmental permission to fast-track procurement, Kairišs said.

Latvian troops tried out unmanned ground vehicles during the Crystal Arrow exercise as part of operational testing to integrate new technology into NATO’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, inspired by lessons from Ukraine, said Brig. Gen. Chris Gent, deputy chief of staff transformation and integration at NATO Allied Land Command.

“There’s no secrets here, it’s how warfare develops,” Gent told Defense News in an interview at the Sēlija training area in Latvia last week. “There is now a zone in front of you where you’re not going to put humans in harm’s way, and it’s all about machines taking the risk and absorbing that risk for you, and attrition.”

With European intelligence agencies warning Russia could threaten NATO territory within a few years after fighting ends in Ukraine, the alliance’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative aims to help build up a more credible border defense. Several countries on NATO’s eastern flank, including Latvia and Poland, have faced drone incursions from the direction of Russia over the past year.

The initiative, shorthanded as EFDI, “has really picked up momentum very quickly,” United States Army Europe and Africa commander Gen. Chris Donahue told officers and officials in a briefing at the Sēlija range, describing it as NATO’s war-fighting concept.

Donahue first discussed the concept at a conference in Germany last July. He said that beyond showing PowerPoint slides, it’s now about fielding capabilities and countries exercising with them to prove they work, and “make sure we have deterrence every day.”

The concept includes a unified network of connected sensors, unmanned systems and both offensive and defensive effectors, according to Gent. The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative envisions “an autonomous zone, well documented already” where only unmanned systems can operate effectively before either side starts taking casualties, Gent said.

“This is here right now,” Gent said, citing press reports of Ukraine capturing a position in April using only unmanned systems. “We’re not talking about science fiction, we’re not talking about the future. We’re not talking about 2040. We are talking about the requirement today.”

The challenge then becomes how many autonomous systems one side has, how effective they are, and how effective the counters are, according to Gent, who said the only way to understand that is through exercises such as Crystal Arrow. One hurdle remains different levels of permissions between NATO nations about allowing autonomous sensors to fire effectors, he said.

“More and more nations are being challenged or are having that argument developed for them in real time, when, for example, you might see a drone incursion in peacetime,” Gent said. “Do we shoot that drone down, where might it land, for example. It’s become very real here in Latvia.”

NATO has been testing new technologies in support of the EFDI since September within the Task Force X framework. During the first pilot in Lithuania in September, German forces integrated unmanned ground vehicles and counter-UAS in their operations, while testing in Finland in December focused on connectivity, according to Gent.

The alliance is developing a “data backbone” across the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, with a network tying together thousands of sensors and effectors, including acoustic and electro-optical sensors as well as counter-UAS and UGVs, Gent said. The idea is for sensors across the eastern flank to talk to each other and “trigger each other’s effectors across international boundaries,” he said.

Trying out new capabilities during exercises is key to helping troops integrate them, Gent said, noting how Latvia’s Mechanized Infantry Brigade used UGVs during Crystal Arrow. NATO covered the cost of travel and accommodation for media attending the exercise, including for Defense News.

The alliance is also asking companies to talk about how they’ll connect unmanned ground systems into NATO operating systems, with Gent saying there are lessons to be learned from Task Force X Baltic.

Work is ongoing within NATO’s operational experimentation to establish the effective size of the autonomous zone, which varies depending on the terrain, according to Gent.

In Ukraine, the term “kill zone” is used informally to describe an area near the front where movement is rapidly detected and targeted by drones, artillery or loitering munitions, and which can range to 15 kilometers or more from the line of contact in some areas.

Latvian troops are training every day to secure this “kill zone” with only unmanned systems, said Maj. Eduards Šinkūns, chief of the operational, planning and training department of the Mechanized Infantry Brigade, in a briefing with reporters during Crystal Arrow. He described a multilayered system of drones supported by infantry and artillery.

“What we see in Ukraine, no vehicle movements are in the gray zone at all,” Šinkūns said. “Any movement is destroyed.”

Šinkūns declined to detail how Latvia would defend against a Russian invasion, saying “we Latvians, especially the mechanized brigade, we have a plan, and we know how to execute it. That’s all I can say about it.”

The Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative is one part in a multilayered approach to dissuade a Russian attack, said Brig. Gen. Jamie Murray, the deputy commander of the Estonian Division, in an interview with Defense News at the Sēlija training area.

While the deterrence initiative creates a “day zero problem” by being able to detect and strike an attacker immediately, the next layer is the ability of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania to hit targets in the deep if Russia does invade. He noted Estonia’s purchase of additional Chunmoo rocket artillery systems from Hanwha Aerospace with a range of 290 kilometers.

He said the most demanding challenge for the alliance would be “a gambling Putin, throwing some forces, gambling that NATO doesn’t react, nibbling a bit of any of our countries,” Murray said.

“If deterrence has failed, we reserve that right to then strike back at military targets,” Murray said. “The thing about the kill zone, it’s not going to be symmetrical. The Estonians, for example, have a very clear ‘no Russian boots on our territory.’ So the kill zone could be conceivably on their side of the border.”

Shaping the terrain with physical barriers in combination with the deterrence initiative can allow NATO forces to compensate for the force-ratio imbalance with Russia, Murray said. He cited the Baltic Defense Line of anti-tank ditches and physical obstacles, and the difficulty Soviet troops faced in 1944 to remove German troops due to the forest cover.

“The first act is to deter them, the second is to stop them, and the third is to get them into a position where ultimately they’ve culminated, we’re forcing them to do an echelon change, and as they do that, they’re really vulnerable,” Murray said.

He said NATO’s logic has moved from the tripwire force to “deterrence by punishment and denial.”

“The end state is clear, and we’re all working towards it,” Murray said. “Prove to Russia that they shouldn’t invade.”