On Monday, China decided to impose new sanctions on U.S. defence contractors Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin due to their arms sales to Taiwan, stepping up a feud with Washington over security and Beijing’s strategic ambitions. It is the third time China has announced punishments against U.S. companies.
During the Unmanned Systems Exhibition, Halcon, a subsidiary of United Arab Emirates’ Edge Group, introduced a novel tube-launched swarming drone system called Hunter 2-S. This swarming drone system belongs to the Hunter 2 series of unmanned aerial vehicles. The purpose of these drones is to share information with one another for tracking and position purposes and to engage with the correct target.
Smart Shooter, the Israel based high-tech arms manufacturer, has reported this week that the Dutch military has decided to purchase and make use of the company' SMASH AD system “immediately”. The SMASH AD system, a Counter Unmanned Aircraft System (C-UAS), is part of a “wider family of Smart Shooter solutions, with some additional enhancements made for counter-drone capabilities.” The decision to buy Smart Shooter' SMASH AD system comes after a series of successful tests conducted by the Dutch military since 2020. Moreover, the Dutch army has already previously placed orders with the Israeli company.
A contingent of some-2400 European troops are set to leave Mali and continue counter-insurgency operations from Niger, as the former colony’s President Mohamed Bazoum said on February 18th. The Sahel area has been constantly plagued for years by Islamist groups, with hundreds of victims and millions of displaced. In the past decade, France, at the helm of a European coalition, has shown a keen interest in collaborating with former colonies to contrast the threat, but the missions have encountered both logistical problems and local dissatisfaction with foreign presence, with Malian armed forces spokesperson Souleymane Dembele lamenting the inefficacy of European troops and Nigerine anti-foreign leader Maïkol Zodi considering them «as an occupying force».
On 14 February, the Venture capital-backed startup Epirus unveiled a high-power microwave system capable of deploying on a drone. According to a company statement, the Leonidas Pod makes the company’s ground-based system designed to protect forward operating bases from incoming threats and mountable on a variety of other systems. This system is thought to address drone swarms rather than singular done threats. In fact, these swarms are a growing problem for the U.S military as it develops counter-unmanned aircrafts system capability.
