The development of the Autonomous Warfare Command was mandated by SOUTHCOM Commander Gen. Francis L. Donovan in an effort to further support the Trump administration’s national security objectives and SOUTHCOM’s operational dominance, per the statement.

Once fully operational, the new command will be tasked with engaging autonomous, semi-autonomous and unmanned platforms to “counter threats across domains.” The announcement did not specify when SAWC will reach operational status.

“From the seafloor to space and across the cyber domain, we fully intend to leverage the clear superiority of the American defense ecosystem by deploying cutting-edge innovation and working ever closer with our enduring partners in the region to outmatch those who threaten our collective peace and security,” Donovan said in the release.

The announcement stated that SAWC will work toward shared purposes with allies and partners in the region, such as missions focused on “degrading” narcoterrorist and cartel networks and responding to national disasters.

SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility includes the Caribbean, South America and Central America.

“Our geographic area of responsibility has a wide range of conditions, varied terrain and diverse operational environments that make it an ideal setting in which to innovate,” Donovan said in the statement.

“It is also a region with very capable and committed security partners who lean forward, embrace technologies and are very eager to work collaboratively with us to support regional stability in new and effective ways,” Donovan continued.

SOUTHCOM, military services and the Department of Defense’s Defense Autonomous Warfare Group will collaborate ahead of SAWC’s full launch, the release noted.

The groups will strive to ensure that SOUTHCOM will be able to completely integrate the new command into their mission, while pinpointing necessary expertise and capabilities required for the new command’s commencement.

The addition of the unmanned-focused unit, meanwhile, continues a trend of increased U.S. emphasis in the region.

In January, the U.S. Space Force officially activated its southern component, formalizing Space Forces Southern’s role in space capabilities across the Western Hemisphere.

U.S. Space Command played an integral role in the recent high-risk operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, providing space-based capabilities such as satellite communications and position, navigation and timing.

Donovan assumed command of SOUTHCOM after the Maduro raid, replacing Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, who retired last year amid increasing scrutiny over the Trump administration’s deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the region, a remarkable extension of American power in Latin America.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The K2 is a fixed-wing loitering munition measuring 5.1 meters in length and 2.1 meters in height, with a wingspan of 10 meters. The maximum take-off weight is 800 kilograms, of which 200 kilograms is allocated to the warhead payload.

Baykar states that the K2 has a maximum range in excess of 2,000 kilometers, a cruising speed of over 200 km/h, and an endurance exceeding 13 hours.

The K2 carries an electro-optical and infrared gimbal camera, providing day and night reconnaissance and surveillance capability alongside a visual target lock-on function for terminal guidance.

The K2’s navigation architecture is designed to function in conditions where global navigation satellite systems are unavailable or subject to jamming. The platform supports coordinate-based targeting and visual lock-on engagement. Datalink architecture includes both line-of-sight and beyond-line-of-sight satellite communications.

The platform uses terrain-referenced visual navigation — scanning ground features through its gimbal and underside cameras — to derive positional estimates without reliance on external satellite signals.

This approach has become a stated design requirement across a growing number of loitering munitions programs, driven by the prevalence of GPS jamming and spoofing observed in Ukraine and other recent conflicts.

According to Baykar, in the test scenarios, five K2 platforms operating with AI-assisted swarm synergy, used their artificial intelligence, sensors and software to determine their position relative to other aircraft in the swarm, maintaining their place within the formation without error and successfully completing all assigned tasks

Baykar has marketed the K2 as a relatively inexpensive strike option for military forces, with unit cost low enough to permit large-scale fielding and reduce dependence on more expensive precision munitions

The Nordic country is seeking two models of robots, a large and a smaller variant, that will equip the Finnish Defense Forces’ explosive ordnance and improvised explosive device teams.

“Robots will be used in all standard EOD/IEDD operations, mainly in Finnish terrain, but shall also be capable of operating in international crisis management missions around the world,” a notice published last month by the military’s Logistics Command said.

The initial planned purchase is for four platforms, including spare parts and training, but a follow-on order could entail a total of eight. The tender envisions vehicles that weigh less than 300 kilograms (662 lbs), move on tracks, can be operated wirelessly, and can be fitted with at least two disruptors, which are typically used for disabling explosive devices.

In addition, a human operator must be able to use the system’s remote control or interface to activate the disruptors. The estimated value of the purchases is 14,3 million euros (16,7 million USD).

Ukraine has been at the forefront of unmanned ground vehicle technologies over the last few years, contributing to fast-track interest in them. The country recently announced the creation of the world’s first UGV battalion.

The development of such platforms has previously been slower, as militaries were gradually fine-tuning their plans to field them as a complement – or outright replacement – of legacy systems.

In July 2023, only a few months after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Estonian Defence Forces organized a demonstration for vendors to show off their vehicles’ abilities.

At the time, one of the event’s organizers told Defense News that for the systems to be deployed in operational scenarios like what was unfolding in Ukraine, they required much more robustness and testing.

Since then, UGV manufacturers have multiplied contracts both within and outside of Europe. The Estonian-based producer Milrem Robotics, which was acquired by the Emirati conglomerate Edge Group, has over a dozen of its THeMIS UGVs in various configurations to Ukraine and received orders from the Japanese and Emirati militaries last year.

In June, the Dutch Ministry of Defense signed a contract on behalf of the Ukraine Task Force with Rheinmetall Defense Nederland to supply 20 UGVs to the Ukrainian forces. France is currently testing the Aurochs 4×4 UGV as it plans to field combat-ready robotic capabilities by 2040. Similarly, last month, Italy hosted the first EU-wide OPEX operational experimentation, in partnership with the European Defense Agency, where six European defense companies demonstrated the capabilities of drones and robotic ground systems.

While many aspects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resemble World War I — trenches, barbed wires, heavy exchanges of artillery — the innovative use of drones has been game-changing. Unmanned systems are altering the character of warfare, and the ongoing integration of AI and robotics will further accelerate this dramatic shift. It is why these were my top modernization objectives during my tenure as Army secretary and secretary of defense.

The potency of unmanned systems is most pronounced when it comes to small aerial drones — essentially robots — that are used today to conduct the same tasks that soldiers performed in the past: reconnaissance, surveillance, targeting and direct attack. But they do it far more efficiently and accurately. For instance, when I was a platoon leader decades ago, it typically took a couple infantrymen to destroy a tank at a max range of 3,750 meters. Today, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can do the same at far greater distances, with better success, and at much less cost.

To date, Ukraine has destroyed over 10,000 Russian vehicles, nearly one-third of which are tanks. Many of these were killed by UAVs. Ukraine has also had great success using unmanned surface vehicles to sink or damage a number of Russian ships in the Black Sea.

The introduction of drone swarms — think of dozens or hundreds of UAVs being employed simultaneously — will make the battlefield more lethal than ever before. From a production perspective, generating such a number is not an arduous task. At a gathering this summer of the Aspen Strategy Group that focused on AI, I co-led a panel discussion where one former U.S. official reported that Kyiv is acquiring well over 50,000 drones a month. The speed and cost at which the Ukrainians can do this compared to the United States is shocking.

As important, because the software on these drones is easily modified, Ukraine’s military can keep up with the changing threats and tactics of the modern battlefield. This is something many of our existing platforms, which are defined — and usually trapped in time — by their hardware, often cannot do. The good news is that this can be remedied with more investment in American innovation and process changes.

AI is also revolutionizing a wide range of administrative and logistical functions far removed from the front lines. It will do what AI does best: improve the speed, accuracy, cost and quality of decision-making. Artificial Intelligence can be used for preventive maintenance to reduce the likelihood of equipment breaking down during the fight; it can ensure the right supplies get to the right place at the right time; it can improve talent management in the force; transform supply chain risk management in the defense industrial base; and the use of large language models can hyperpower military staffs. This is the future for a broad range of ordinary military tasks, in addition to enhancing our warfighters’ effectiveness and survivability on the battlefield.

All this demands that DOD accelerate its across-the-board adoption of AI and advancement of robotics and autonomy. It is an asymmetric advantage the U.S. must master first and retain preeminence over. This means investing far more in these technologies, adopting commercial standards and processes as much as possible, capturing all the department’s data in a central repository, prototyping and testing far more aggressively and showing a willingness to deploy needed systems even when one’s confidence level is less than 100%. At the same time, the Pentagon must continue to do these things responsibly, beginning with the ethical principles for AI that I established in February 2020.

As the war in Ukraine rages on, we must heed the lessons from it and do everything in our power to ensure our military has the advanced AI, robotics and autonomy tools it needs to fight — and win — the battles of tomorrow. Doing so, and with a far greater sense of urgency, will serve us incredibly well in any future conflict; especially if we must face off against our greatest strategic threat today — a People’s Republic of China — with the world’s largest and most concentrated armed forces.

Dr. Mark T. Esper was the 27th secretary of defense and author of the New York Times bestseller, “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.” He is also a partner and board member in the AI venture firm Red Cell Partners.

“I think some of the areas that [Gen. Randy George], the chief [of staff of the Army] and I feel very strongly that we need to invest more in, both from the perspective of the Army… but also the needs of the joint force, is in the areas of unmanned aerial systems, counter-unmanned aerial systems and electronic warfare,” she said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference.

For instance, a Ukraine battalion commander told Wormuth earlier this year during training in Germany, that Russian electronic warfare capabilities were increasing “in ways that were concerning,” Wormuth detailed.

“I think you’ll see that in the budget that goes up to Congress next spring,” Wormuth said. “That’s an area where I think we also need to have more agility in our funding mechanisms because of the technology in those capability areas is changing so rapidly that we can’t afford to get locked into something and then be only allowed to use that something for the next 10 years.”

Both Wormuth and George have discussed the possibility of budgeting differently in order to get some capability into the hands of soldiers much more quickly. One of those possibilities is asking Congress to fund pots of money dedicated for a specific capability rather than budget across a number of specific line items that tend to be a specific product or program.

But both have also acknowledged that getting congressional appropriators on board might not be so easy. “Historically, they’re generally… very skeptical of what they see as kind of slush funds. They have a lot of scar tissue around [overseas contingency operations], and how the department has used that over the years,” Wormuth said.

Even so, “there is such a deep realization that we have got to change more quickly and that technology is changing rapidly right now that we do need to have more agile mechanisms,” she added.

Overseas contingency operations, or OCO, funding, used during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for operations abroad, was a separate account with billions outside of the Pentagon’s base budget. It was often used to get extra funding for a variety of things rather than commit to paying for it within regular funding. Congress eliminated OCO funding beginning in FY22. Now the Defense Department must budget for any overseas operations within its base budget.

The Army plans to present a budget in these areas, according to Wormuth, that, for example, used to have 10 to 12 individual line items and now may have two or three.

“If we keep it relatively narrow and focused and we demonstrate that we can use that agility in those areas effectively, we may be able to sort of have a proof of concept,” she said. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”

In addition to delivering two Naval Strike Missiles for the Corps’ anti-ship missile system, the autonomous low-profile vessel the Marine Corps is experimenting with also aims to better get critical supplies like food to forward deployed and distributed Marines, Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Simon Doran said at the Defense News Conference on Wednesday.

“Truth be told, this is just a narco-boat,” Doran said. “We stole the idea from friends down south. And so this is 55 feet long, completely autonomous. It’s able to go hundreds or thousands of miles. It’s able to carry weapon systems that we have that are new. … It can carry pretty much anything you want to put in it.”

Inspired by narco-boats, which are used by traffickers to smuggle illicit substances across bodies of water, the unmanned vessel remains close to the water-surface level to cut down on the likelihood of detection as it assists with logistics capabilities.

The service tested the logistics supply drone at the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone in February at Camp Pendleton, California, where the Marine Corps trained a cook in 21 days to operate the system off the islands of Japan.

The Army spearheads the Project Convergence to test out advanced technology and capabilities in modern warfare as part of a joint, multinational exercise.

The autonomous low-profile vessel is particularly important because it allows forces to resupply food, fuel and ammunition without jeopardizing the safety of Marines, Doran said.

“If you have that unit located inside a weapons engagement zone, contested logistics and the ability to maneuver in the littorals becomes key,” Doran said. “And for that, what we’re looking at is trying to acquire systems that we deem risk worthy, meaning that we don’t necessarily want to just waste them, but we’d rather put something in there that’s autonomous, that doesn’t have humans on it that can do some of these higher risk missions without having personnel put in that riskier situation.”

This system is something the Marine Corps wanted “yesterday,” but testing is ongoing, Doran said. The Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory received two prototypes in 2023.

The vessel is expected to join the III Marine Expeditionary Force based in Okinawa, Japan, for further evaluation this fall, he said.

The service hopes to purchase the vessels in the next several years, Marine Corps leaders said at the 2023 Defense News Conference.

The ground control station was part of a multiyear effort that took place aboard Bush during multiple ship maintenance stints and between deployments, Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, said.

Along with the required software and hardware, the drone nerve center features the first fully operational and integrated unmanned carrier aviation mission control system that the command says is critical to using the Stingray in operations.

Bush will conduct at-sea testing of the center early next year, according to NAVAIR.

The control station is the latest step toward getting the Stingray into the fleet, where it will refuel fighter jets midflight, helping the sea service’s strike arm to stay airborne longer — a capability that would be particularly helpful should war with China break out in the watery expanse of the West Pacific.

Standing up the Bush’s drone control room “lays the foundation” for how the Navy will operate and control unmanned aircraft, Unmanned Carrier Aviation (PMA-268) Program Manager Capt. Daniel Fucito said in a statement.

While such systems will initially support the Stingray, they will also be used for other services’ unmanned systems, such as the Air Force’s collaborative combat aircraft program, which seeks to pair air drones with unmanned aircraft in a so-called “air wing of the future.”

Such systems are also being planned for installation aboard fellow carriers Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan beginning in fiscal 2025, according to NAVAIR.

On July 20, the Royal Air Force announced the creation of a new MQ-9 International Cooperation Support Partnership, or MIC SP, formed under the NATO Support and Procurement Agency, or NSPA, that builds on a previous similar U.K.-led project.

“The MQ-9B International Cooperative Program was established in 2019 and the work to determine the best way forward to enhance cooperation was done in 2023/24 with the conclusion that NSPA and a MIC SP delivered the best path,” an RAF spokesman for the program told Defense News.

The drone program is growing rapidly, the spokesman said, as it initially included six nations and now comprises ten.

“In April 2023, MICP nations were Belgium and the U.K. as participants (to the memorandum of understanding); with Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, and Norway as observers — since then, we have added Qatar and Sweden as observers,” he said.

The representative added very few obligations come with joining the program under observer status and countries “only need to be ‘interested’ in potentially procuring the MQ-9B.”

The ambitions laid out by the RAF for the users’ club include developing and testing a framework to increase cooperation amongst member nations, enhance interoperability and facilitate joint training. Countries can join either as participants, associated states or in an observer capacity.

Affiliates will further have the opportunity to benefit from the air and ground crew training provided by the U.K. through the NATO Flight Training Europe Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems’ facility at the RAF Waddington base.

The station, located in Lincolnshire, is known as the hub of U.K. reconnaissance and surveillance, as well as the force’s main operating site for airborne intelligence aircraft and systems.

The MQ-9B is designed to be airborne for over 40 hours and differs from the MQ-9A variant in that it is able to be certified to operate in civilian airspace, according to its manufacturer, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, or GA-ASI.

The RAF is one of the main operators of this aircraft, which it has named the Protector. Although some smaller countries, such as the Nordics, have expressed a strong interest in acquiring these drones, the hefty price tag attached to them has been somewhat of a trade-off they’ve acknowledged.

In a recent interview with Defense News, Maj. Gen. Jonas Wikman, chief of the Swedish Air Force, said that Sweden had not yet decided to buy an asset such as the MQ-9 Reaper “mostly because it does not fit our size or budget.”

An advantage the new MIC SP framework would provide is enabling multinational contracting with GA-ASI or the U.S. government to achieve benefits through “sharing of costs,” among member nations.

Having all three Nordic nations — Sweden, Norway and Denmark — onboard as observers is a good signal, the spokesman said, that they eventually may opt to buy this drone, which would be a force multiplier for the alliance’s intelligence assets in this region.

“It is hoped that all Nordic nations might acquire the MQ-9B to enhance cooperation in the Northern Atlantic and Polar regions, particularly in the maritime domain and to partner with nations’ maritime patrol aircraft, such as the P8,” he said.

Norway announced plans in April to acquire long-range drones to bolster its maritime surveillance, which local media reported would likely be a choice between Northrop Grumman’s MQ-4C Triton platform and the MQ-9B.

In an opinion piece published in Aftenposter, Norway’s largest newspaper, a retired Army major argued General Atomics’ “more affordable” offering and longer endurance were key factors for a state with scarce resources like Oslo.

In an emailed statement to Defense News, a senior advisor to the Norwegian Minister of Defense said a prerequisite for establishing a long-range drone capability is “that it must be carried out as part of a multinational collaboration — which can involve training, operation and development — with close allies.”

The officer added no decision has yet been taken on who this cooperation should take place with.

This same weapon is widely used by Ukrainian soldiers against Russian invaders, plus Taiwan recently had a USD $60.2 million Foreign Military Sale of 720 of these loitering munitions approved.

Canberra’s announcement did not mention quantities or price, but it said the first examples would reach Australia later this year and enter Australian Defence Force service in 2025.

The Switchblade 300, which has a 3.69-pound (1.68kg) warhead and 19-mile (30km) range in its latest Block 20 variant, will “boost the ADF’s arsenal of drones, including those capable of being armed,” according to a Department of Defence statement.

The weapon can be transported in a backpack, before being launched from a tube.

“With autonomous weapon systems increasingly prevalent, the Defence Strategic Review made clear that new technology and asymmetric advantage are important priorities,” said Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy. “The delivery of this proven precision loitering munition demonstrates the speed at which we are introducing capabilities to the ADF.”

However, his reference to speedy introduction is incongruous. Ukraine has been demonstrating the utility of loitering munitions for the past 2.5 years of combat, and yet Australia is only now introducing this class of weapon.

Indeed, Travis Reddy, CEO of the Australian firm DefendTex, criticized the ADF for its tardiness in acquiring any loitering munitions. His company manufactures the D40 drone, essentially a flying 40mm grenade.

He told Defense News the Australian government even prevented DefendTex from exporting warhead-equipped D40s to Ukraine, because its fuse had not “been through all the certification and qualification stages”. Therefore, the Australian company could send only camera-equipped D40s.

Conversely, the “U.K. took a pragmatic approach” and delivered to Ukraine 300 warhead-equipped D40s that it had commercially procured from DefendTex. Reddy said this D40 case “very much talks about this risk-adverse culture that exists within Defence”.

“We’re running programs right now to develop Australian drones,” Conroy said. “And we’re hoping to get them into the inventory as soon as possible.”

One example is the One-Way Loitering (OWL) munition developed by Western Australia-based firm Innovaero.

Innovaero officials didn’t immediatelyrespond to Defense News requests for details, but it is known the OWL is being trialed by Australian Army special forces, and more will be delivered to the army this year.

The OWL is in a different class to the Switchblade 300, since it has a 125-mile range, 100-minute endurance and carries a 15-pound anti-armor or fragmentation warhead.

Another Australian firm delivering drones to Ukraine is Sypaq Systems. Amanda Holt, Sypaq’s CEO, previously told Defense News that her firm had been delivering 100 low-cost Corvo drones per month, and that Ukrainian troops often jury-rigged them with explosives to act as loitering munitions.

Speaking in Alaska at the onset of NATO’s large-scale Arctic Defender drills, Boris Pistorius announced that Germany would propose a joint procurement scheme at the alliance’s summit this week in Washington, D.C.

The summit, marking the alliance’s 75-year anniversary, is expected be dominated by talk about countering the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

The German defense minister said he expected the summit to result in the formal announcement of a command in the German city of Wiesbaden to coordinate the provision of military material and training to the Ukrainian armed forces. Germany will be “represented at a high level in the leadership,” he said Monday.

The new command, the name of which is still being debated, will have a staff of 700 people, the U.S. State Department has announced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed that “these efforts do not make NATO party to the conflict.”

Russian state media and government officials have repeatedly said they consider the war in Ukraine a conflict between their country and NATO as a whole and the U.S. specifically due to their crucial support of Kyiv.

Pistorius also announced that Germany will buy “tens of thousands of rounds” of armaments this year through the Czech munitions initiative. He pledged to continue the military support of Ukraine more broadly, noting that the third German-donated patriot system had recently arrived in the eastern European country and was already operationally deployed.

In Washington, Germany will present a plan for NATO to buy drones “from German industry” on behalf of the Ukrainian armed forces, Pistorius said. This proposal would serve as “a foundation for our partners for the joint procurement of drones of all kinds,” he said while speaking to the press in Fairbanks.

According to the German government, the country has already provided 537 surveillance drones to Ukraine, mostly VECTOR and RQ-35 HEIDRUN models. The proposed initiative would encourage NATO to jointly procure these and other German-made drones on Kyiv’s behalf.

As of the end of April, Germany had provided a total of €10.2 billion ($11.03 billion) in military goods to Ukraine since the onset of the invasion, putting it second only to the U.S. on the list of Kyiv’s most dedicated supporters. In 2024 alone, the government in Berlin has already authorized the export of €4.88 billion in armaments to Ukraine, contributing to record military export volumes.