Welcome to this Friday’s edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Patrick Tucker with Lauren C. Williams. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here.
Around the Defense Department
‘Top Gun’ but made for drone pilots. The Pentagon is launching its very own Maverick-approved school for first-person view drone pilots. Next month, teams from across the services will gather at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, for a training camp and competition. There they will hone skills on FPV kamikaze drones, as seen in Ukraine, Patrick Tucker reports for Defense One.
A little more: The pace of drone warfare in Ukraine is forcing the Army to rethink how it trains. “We usually have these large clusters of formations. We like to drive in convoys,” Maj. Gen. Ronald R. Ragin, commander of 21st Theater Sustainment Command, told Stars and Stripes. “I do not believe that that will be applicable on future battlefields, because if you can be seen, you can be killed.”
Drone shock therapy: Epirus Inc. just scored a $43.5 million contract to deliver two new high-power microwave (HPM) weapons–key to knocking lots of drones out of the sky–to the U.S. Army. Andy Lowery, Epirus’ CEO, told Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams the two electronic warfare systems are scheduled to be delivered by the end of the year. After that, the systems will be tested to “understand if the system meets the engineering expectations.” More to come, but here’s a bit of background.
SOCOM issues a ‘heads up’: U.S. Special Operations Command has quietly warned some retired special operators, particularly those who served in Iraq or Syria, that they may be targeted by terrorist groups seeking revenge, The New York Times reports. The alert is not related to a specific group and does not apply to active-duty personnel, but SOCOM urges them to “to remain alert to their surroundings—both on and off post—and to report any suspicious activity to appropriate authorities.”
Navy Secretary John Phelan pushes for more tech in shipyards. Speaking at the Reindustrialize conference in Detroit on Wednesday, Phelan said shipbuilders should embrace emerging technologies that could make workers’ jobs “easier” and improve training, Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams writes.
“A lot of people are afraid of automation and robotics. I think it just enhances and makes the workers’ jobs easier. I’ve seen that at a number of yards. It’s not to replace jobs, it’s to make [them] more efficient,” Phelan said. “I spent one hour with the workers who told me how bad their training was—I realized there’s a big problem here. And we need to start equipping them with the tools that they need to get their job done easier.”
Background: The Navy’s shipbuilding programs are behind schedule, in a large part due to a lack of skilled workers needed to do the job. Read more here.
Robot wingmen to head overseas. General Atomics announced plans Thursday to develop and build collaborative combat aircraft for European militaries, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports. The news comes after competing dronemaker Anduril announced similar plans with the German defense company Rheinmetall in June.
General Atomics’ German affiliate, General Atomics Aerotec Systems GmbH, will be part of a “teamed” effort “to build fighter jet drones in Europe, offering customized drones to other nations,” Decker writes.
“We’re eager to combine our uncrewed aircraft system expertise with the airborne sensor and weapons system expertise of the European defense industry,” General Atomics CEO Linden Blue said in a statement. “With a proven CCA design already in production today, these systems will be delivered in significant quantity with high-technology European inputs to build and sustain affordable mass for NATO’s fighter forces.” Read more here.
Indo-Pacific
Exercise Talisman Sabre kicks off in Australia. In a historic first, the U.S. Army’s 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force launched a successful strike of an at-sea target via a Standard Missile 6 fired from its Typhon, Gordon Arthur of USNI reports.
“The deployment of the MRC and successful execution of an SM-6 live fire against a maritime target is another significant step forward in our ability to deploy, integrate and command and control advanced land-based maritime strike capabilities,” Col. Wade Germann, who commands the task force, said. More details here.
Big boat moment for the Army. A U.S. Army vessel that’s typically docked in Japan joined the Talisman Sabre joint military exercise in Australia to haul battle tanks. The USAV Paulus Hook, a U.S. Army Runnymede-class landing craft utility, docked in Townsville, Australia and is expected to load four M1A1 Abrams tanks on Saturday in what Seth Robson at Stars and Stripes described as a “first of its kind” mission.
Looking ahead: The move could give Australian forces a glimpse of what’s possible as landing craft in their fleet can carry trucks but not tanks. “It’s a peek into our future,” Maj. Brenton Chapman, commander of Townsville’s 35 Water Transport Squadron, told Stars and Stripes. Read more here.
Ukraine
Ukrainian leadership shuffle. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appointed former economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko to be prime minister, the first new head of government since Russia’s 2022 invasion, AP reports. Svyrydenko helped to negotiate the mineral deal with the United States, a key to maintaining support from Washington.
“Our priority steps in the first six months are to provide the army with high-quality equipment, increase our own weapons production, and improve the technological capabilities of the army,” she said on Facebook.
Big goal: Zelenskyy wants more weapons made domestically. “We must reach the level of 50% Ukraine-made weapons within the first 6 months of the new government’s work,” Zelenskyy said.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration informed Switzerland that it will divert Patriot missiles that were headed there to Ukraine.
Et cetera
House NDAA goes big on Golden Dome. The House passed its version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act earlier this week. The bill includes a 3.8% pay increase for service members and Trump’s Golden Dome plan gets a boost, as the bill mandates the Defense Department develop missile defense “against any foreign aerial attack on the homeland.”
That’s a big step up from the interceptor network that is primarily focused on smaller powers like Iran or North Korea. Congress also takes aim at acquisition reform in the bill and calls for a drastic makeover for the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports.
One out of three Iranian nuclear sites destroyed in U.S. strike, according to a new report. In June, Donald Trump declared that a U.S. strike on three Iranian sites had “obliterated.” Experts immediately cast doubt on the characterization, prompting angry reactions from the White House and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Officials speaking on background to NBC said that only one of the sites was mostly destroyed and “nuclear enrichment could resume in the next several months if Iran wants it to.”
Read the full article here
