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Marcus Schuler edits BattlePolicy, a daily defense-technology brief connecting the companies and capabilities behind modern war to the contest among Europe, the US, Russia, and China.
Allen Control Systems raised $200M at a $2.2B valuation to scale Bullfrog, an AI-aimed gun turret that shoots drones down with machine-gun rounds instead of missiles.
Ukraine is now Quantum Systems' second-largest international base, with several hundred staff, three joint ventures and a 15,000-drone National Guard order, the German maker says.
Drone-on-drone interceptors now down most of Russia's Shaheds for about $2,500 each, cheap enough that the US, NATO, and Gulf states want to import the capability. Russia is scaling a 500 km/h jet drone built to beat them.
A Reuters investigation ties the combat-proven drone now sold to Ukraine, Greece and the US Coast Guard to a run of crashes, a severed-fingers injury, and a whistleblower who says the company buried the failures.
Ukraine's military has fielded an AI-controlled turret in more than ten units to shoot down the fiber-optic drones that electronic warfare cannot jam, the Defense Ministry says.
The Army is buying 82 runway-free reconnaissance drones for its battalions and wants them delivered within seven weeks, from the maker of the Switchblade munitions sent to Ukraine.
Ukraine's drone forces say they have wrecked Shahed launchers and logistics at the occupied airfield, hitting Russia's drone campaign at the launch site instead of in flight.
A maritime drone of the type Ukraine uses against Russia's Black Sea Fleet blew up inside Romania's largest port during inspection, no casualties, pulling NATO soil into the Black Sea drone war.
Ukraine's largest missile maker flew a prototype interceptor it says could stop ballistic missiles for under $1 million each, against a PAC-3 that runs $5.3 million, if it works by 2027.
A bipartisan House forced through $8 billion in military loans and USAI funding to 2027, but the package still has to clear a Republican Senate and an opposed White House before it buys a single interceptor.
China's semi-automatic precision grenade launcher, fielded in 35mm for the PLA and 40mm for export — delivering airburst rounds through a window at 600 m.
China's first indigenous automatic grenade launcher — a gas-operated 35mm weapon that delivers squad-level suppressive fire and has proliferated across conflict zones from Sudan to Iraqi Kurdistan.
China’s standard under-barrel grenade launcher — a muzzle-loaded single-shot 35×32mm caseless system that arms the QBZ-95-1 and QBZ-191 rifle families with HE-frag, airburst and dual-purpose grenade effects.
China's Type 86P fragmentation hand grenade — an ovoid plastic-bodied design packing ~1,600 steel balls that replaced the stick-grenade lineage and remains the PLA's standard-issue close-combat frag.
The AGS-30 "Atlant" is Russia's lightweight, crew-served automatic grenade launcher, a 30×29mm belt-fed successor to the AGS-17 that weighs only 16 kg on its tripod and sustains ~400 rpm for mobile infantry fire support.
The AGS-17 "Plamya" is a Soviet-designed, tripod-mounted 30×29mm automatic grenade launcher in service since 1971, delivering indirect suppressive fire to 1,700 m and widely proliferated across Soviet-legacy and export armies.
The GP-25 “Kostyor” is a 40mm caseless under-barrel grenade launcher for AK-pattern rifles — fielded in 1978 and a fixture of Russian infantry squads from Afghanistan to Ukraine.
The iconic Soviet-era defensive fragmentation hand grenade, known as the Limonka, in continuous combat service since the late 1930s.
The standard Soviet/Warsaw Pact offensive fragmentation hand grenade since 1954 — a lightweight, smooth-bodied anti-personnel weapon built for close combat, in continuous service from Afghanistan to Ukraine.
The M32 MGL is a six-shot revolver grenade launcher in 40×46 mm, fielded by the US Marine Corps and SOCOM, offering rapid semi-automatic fire of up to six rounds in under three seconds.
The standard U.S. belt-fed 40 mm automatic grenade launcher — a crew-served, blowback weapon that delivers high-velocity grenade fire against personnel and light armor out to 2,200 m, and has served in every major U.S. deployment since the Gulf War.
The M320 is a single-shot 40×46mm low-velocity grenade launcher that mounts under a service rifle or operates as a standalone weapon with a collapsible stock, adopted by the U.S. Army in 2009 to replace the M203.
The iconic US under-barrel 40mm grenade launcher — a single-shot, slide-forward break-action launcher that equips M16 and M4 rifles with high-explosive, HEDP and specialty rounds, the standard squad-level grenade system for 30+ years.
The M67 fragmentation grenade is the standard US defensive hand grenade since 1961 — a spherical, Composition B-filled weapon with a 5-meter lethal radius, used in every major American conflict from Vietnam to the present.