Social Media App TikTok the New Military Tool for Military Defence and Cooperation?

In today’s age of social media and Generation Z (Gen Z) "taking over" the world, there is a new modern approach to military defence. Ordinary citizens record military activities on their phones and post videos on social media. The social media app TikTok, which is often associated with dance trends, is currently being used to watch a very different kind of choreography: the movement of military forces that could be on the brink of a new severe conflict on European soil (Britton and Mulligan, 2022). The app has recently come into the spotlight as tensions between Russia and Ukraine have led to what could be called "the first TikTok conflict" (Bowman, 2022). Videos of Russian troops gathering at the borders of Ukraine are widely distributed on TikTok (Sonne et al., 2022).

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UAE’s Halcon Introduces New Swarming Drone System: Hunter 2-S

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.

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High-power Microwave Pod for Drones proposed by Epirus

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.

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US and UK Army to Cooperate on Future Vertical Lift (FVL)

On 14 February, the army leaders from the United States and the United Kingdom signed a Future Vertical Lift Cooperative Program Feasibility Assessment project agreement on behalf of their re-spective countries' services, promising to collaborate to ensure interoperability between the two countries' future rotorcraft aviation forces. The two nations will share information regarding their rotorcraft requirements and future projects. Moreover, they will look into and evaluate new ideas for using coalition airpower in the lower-tier air domain, which is where Army aviation usually oper-ates.

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Ukrainian Crisis Makes Czech Drone Maker Withdraw from Russia

Czech and European news outlets reported that the current crisis unfolding between Ukraine and Russia is forcing a company that produces Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to halt their branch in the latter country. The company in question is the Czechia based Primoco UAV, which has business manufacturing drones. With Czechia being a NATO and EU member, as the crisis began, the company has faced several challenges in Russia and decided to shut down its operations at the end of January. As of now, Primoco UAV is still in business but not in Russia. After the halt, their Russian subsidiary AO Primoco BPLA was sold to Russian buyers.

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