Russia can't bomb the factories arming Ukraine, so it targets the will behind them: a 50,000-account bot network, Kremlin money in the AfD, and Germans recruited to spy and set fires.
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Helsing raises $1.8 billion, valuing the maker of Ukraine's HX-2 strike drones at $18 billion
The largest round a European defense startup has ever raised lands with a heavily American investor syndicate, even as Helsing insists it stays European-owned and keeps arming Ukraine's front.
Europe · Funding · Helsing
Raytheon and Rheinmetall land the British Army's £2 billion AI training contract
The UK's 15-year collective-training award puts a US prime and Germany's Rheinmetall inside the British Army's training pipeline; Rheinmetall's share alone is just under 1 billion euros.
Europe · Policy · Omnia Training
Shield AI's V-BAT is finding the targets for Ukraine's campaign to cut off Crimea
A CBS News report from Kyiv details how Shield AI's V-BAT reconnaissance drone finds targets for the Ukrainian strike campaign that has hit dozens of Russian tankers and left Crimea rationing fuel.
Ukraine · Autonomy · Shield AI
Iran fires on US bases in four countries as CENTCOM hits 90 more targets
Iran answered a second night of US strikes by firing on bases in four countries, aiming, by its own account, at a Patriot battery in Kuwait and an early-warning radar in Qatar.
Iran · Air Defense · CENTCOM
Kraken raises $175M at a $1bn valuation, days after airdropping a drone boat from an A400M
A $175 million Series B makes Kraken Technology Group Europe's newest maritime-defence unicorn, a week after its uncrewed K3 SCOUT became the first drone boat parachuted into the sea from a transport aircraft.
Europe · Naval · Kraken Technology Group
Quantum Systems Sends Ukraine's National Guard Ten Ground Robots and Ten Driverless Trucks
A week after its $1.2 billion raise, the Munich drone maker moves from the air onto the ground in Ukraine, fielding its Mandrill robot and autonomy-fitted Zetros trucks for combat validation with the National Guard.
Ukraine · Autonomy · Quantum Systems
A CBS News report from Kyiv details how Shield AI's V-BAT reconnaissance drone finds targets for the Ukrainian strike campaign that has hit dozens of Russian tankers and left Crimea rationing fuel.
A week after its $1.2 billion raise, the Munich drone maker moves from the air onto the ground in Ukraine, fielding its Mandrill robot and autonomy-fitted Zetros trucks for combat validation with the National Guard.
Russia has begun fielding Volna Kupol Garant jammers that blank Starlink over 20 square kilometers, the network most of Ukraine's long-range strike drones fly on, Reuters reports, but the complexes radiate a signature loud enough to become targets.
A $50,000 drone flew 2,500 kilometers to Omsk and completed a target list Kyiv worked through for two years. Reach is no longer the problem. What remains is a race between repair crews and strike tempo, and a second front against the tankers that move whatever Russia still refines.
Trump granted Ukraine a license to build Patriot interceptors and said the US would buy Ukrainian drones, while Germany signed to produce Kyiv's Bars missile-drone. In one Ankara afternoon, the four-year one-way arms pipeline became two-way trade.
Lockheed and Rheinmetall will build ATACMS at Unterlüß, the first production line outside the US. The same summit gave the Patriot interceptors Kyiv is dying without only a repair shop.
On NATO summit day, Ukraine flew drones 3,000 km to hit Russia's largest refinery and stopped none of 29 ballistic missiles over Kyiv. The split is the war's next phase.
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