Sunday, October 18, 2026

Pressure mounts on US defense executives to boost weapons production

CARLISLE, Pennsylvania — President Donald Trump is expected to urge top defense executives on Wednesday to accelerate weapons production and expand manufacturing capacity as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East strain U.S. stockpiles and expose bottlenecks in the nation’s industrial base. Trump is scheduled to participate in a roundtable discussion capping a two-day Defense…

MBDA appoints Airbus executive Jean-Brice Dumont as new CEO

PARIS — MBDA, Europe’s largest missile maker, appointed Airbus Defence and Space executive Jean-Brice Dumont as its new chief executive officer effective Nov. 1 to succeed Eric Béranger, who has led the maker of the Meteor air-to-air missile and Aster air-defense missile since June 2019.The executives will start a handover process in October to ensure…

US Air Force turns to cheaper cruise missiles it can buy by the thousands

The Pentagon is moving to buy thousands of affordable cruise missiles, reaching framework agreements with three companies on Wednesday. The deals fall under the U.S. Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, or FAMM. The Defense Department said it reached agreements with Anduril for its Barracuda-500, CoAspire for its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile…

Fedorov out as Ukraine’s defense minister in major government shake-up

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Mykhailo Fedorov as the country’s minister of defense after just six months in office as part of a major shake-up in Kyiv’s leadership.The move, which has been the subject of speculation, was confirmed when Fedorov published a farewell social media post on Wednesday. It followed Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko’s resignation…

AI can now power every stage of a cyberattack

Just two years ago, hackers were tapping into generative artificial intelligence to probe targets, translate technical material and troubleshoot malicious code. The technology sped up some key parts of a cyber operation, but other stages remained solely in human hands. That line is now beginning to blur. In a range of cyberattacks observed over the…

How a former Marine is rewriting the future of battlefield AI

One stubborn former Marine is changing how the Pentagon moves data to farflung troops—a change intended to enable them to use advanced AI tools, and one that just might reshape how lightweight models are developed. Some of these new workflows have already been used during the U.S. war on Iran. “If you look at what's…