Drones and Unmanned Systems - Air, Sea, Land, Micro & Robot Systems

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has overturned the Navy’s decision to disqualify Saildrone from the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) competition, ruling the company was unlawfully excluded. The court ordered the Navy to promptly reevaluate Saildrone’s proposal under the same standards used for other competitors and barred the service from committing more than $1.5 billion of the program's $2.1 billion budget to production until the review is complete.

Saildrone filed the challenge after reportedly meeting or exceeding every solicitation requirement, only to be deemed non-compliant across three evaluation criteria. While the Navy dropped two of those determinations during the dispute, the court rejected the final one as arbitrary and capricious, finding that the Navy had unfairly held Saildrone to standards not applied to the rest of the field.

Source: https://oceannews.com/news/defense/court-orders-navy-to-reevaluate-saildrone-in-musv-competition/?utm_source=ONT+Newsletter&utm_campaign=285ad6d9c7-EM
Associated URL: Ocean News and Technology

SANDY HOOK, Conn. - In a sweeping power shift, Democrats won majorities in both the House and Senate in the midterm elections, raising questions about how Congress and the administration will navigate the stalled FY27 defense budget process, the war with Iran, and other defense policy measures. These issues will affect the timing of a final FY27 defense appropriations bill, as well as the handling of hundreds of billions of dollars in acquisition funding that might not materialize.

The biggest issue at hand for the Pentagon is the fate of the proposed reconciliation bill. The administration's $1.5 trillion FY27 request relies on $350 billion to be provided through budget reconciliation, a process that requires only a simple majority to pass the Senate. This process was already used to give the Pentagon more than $150 billion in additional funding for FY26, but the larger FY27 proposal has faced more resistance. Prior to the election, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon would continue to fight for the full $1.5 trillion request, even though some Republican lawmakers questioned whether they had the votes to pass the $350 billion reconciliation bill. The Democratic wins in both the House and Senate effectively kill the reconciliation bill under the new Congress. Republicans could try to pass the bill over the next two months before the next Congress is seated, but that appears unlikely. The GOP lacked concrete support before the election, and it has since lost political momentum typically needed to pass such a large piece of legislation.

Read the full post on Forecast International's Defense and Security Monitor blog using the link below.

Source: Forecast International
Associated URL: https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2026/11/06/midterm-results-trigger-a-showdown-over-defense-spending/
Author: s. McDougall, Defense Analyst 

ADAZI MILITARY BASE, Lv. -- NATO linked a Maven Smart System (MSS) targeting platform to a national military system in a matter of hours using agentic artificial intelligence and ran a cross-border counter-drone engagement during a two-week experiment in Latvia, per reports.

Agentic AI applications, in which actions are undertaken by software on behalf of human personnel, were run on NATO's MSS specifically to link up one unspecified country's command-and-control system with its MSS's own targeting platform. This is consistent with the reported description of a drone take-off in Lithuania which flew into Latvia and was, at that point, engaged by the counter-drone system linked between the unspecified country and NATO MSS.

5G commercial infrastructure was used for secure military communication in a contested environment (including slicing the network infrastructure) and towers therein to passively detect objects in motion (like drones).

Some tests were noted to have failed, but interoperability between systems was achieved.

Participating countries included Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, the United States, Canada, and Finland, among others. 60 private firms also participated, including Ericsson, Nokia, Thales, TEKEVER, and LMT.

Source: Defence Blog
Associated URL: https://defence-blog.com/nato-turns-5g-towers-into-sensors-in-baltic-battlefield-experiment/