Britain’s defense spending plan is causing political upheaval, as a focus on incorporating uncrewed systems brings with it concern the military is relying too heavily on what some say is unproven technology.

Politicians, pundits and media have been furiously debating the 81-page Defense Investment Plan since its release this week, particularly its budget shortfall and its striking plans for the Royal Navy.

As Britain prepares for the possibility of a future conflict, unmanned systems are seen as a route to solving recruitment shortfalls and a way to minimize political risks for governments that could face voter backlash over wartime casualties.

The Pentagon is moving nearly every unmanned and autonomous systems program into a new office. That new office will oversee unmanned systems funding and programs currently spread across four bodies: the military service components, Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Defense Innovation Unit, and the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group.

The Pentagon has not yet named anyone to lead the new office, but whoever takes the job will report directly to Stephen A. Feinberg, the deputy secretary of defense.

U.S. rivals China and Russia are widely seen as outpacing the West when it comes to manufacturing cheap and effective drones for use on the battlefield. Ukrainian intelligence figures estimate that Russia plans to manufacture more than 7 million small first person view, or FPV, drones in 2026, while the Pentagon’s new Drone Dominance program plans to field approximately 340,000 drones over two years.

American war fighters equipped with the latest technology increasingly find themselves grappling with an endless sea of information — so much so that the U.S. military needs new tools to cut through and make sense of the data overload.

Capt. Randy Cruz, the commander of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, told an auditorium full of defense industry leadership last week that the lab he commands needs partners to help the military achieve what he called “decision superiority.” The laboratory’s research includes using AI as part of new command and control systems in an effort to make the vast amount of information available to warfighters more manageable.

The conversation took place at IndoPac 2026 | Naval Dominance: Shipbuilding, Autonomy & C2, an event hosted by the Threat Status national security team at the U.S. Navy Memorial in downtown Washington last week. 

The Space Force says its Meadowlands system, a large ground-based satellite jammer, is operational.

The trailer-towed system will allow troops to detect, deny, disrupt and degrade enemy satellites and other electronic forces, according to the announcement. The new system is part of a concerted effort to field more advanced space weapons and challenge China and Russia’s arsenal of anti-satellite developments.

“This upgraded system enables us to more effectively and efficiently support the joint scheme of maneuver across the continuum of conflict,” said Space Force Lt. Col. Ryan Skilling, 4th Electromagnetic Warfare Squadron commander.

Industrial capacity is its own path to success, writes retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Harris. Being able to produce “surveillance, electronic warfare and precision strike effects cheaply, continuously and at enormous scale” will be central to future conflicts, Gen. Harris writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times. 

“In a straight contest of mass against the world’s largest manufacturing power, on its own terms and near its own shores, the United States may not hold the advantage for long. So the real question is not how many drones to buy, but which types of mass to surge and whether industrial options complicate China’s ability to scale.

“The real story is not the drone,” he writes. “It is the return of mass, affordability, adaptation and industrial endurance and the uncomfortable fact that in the Pacific, that endurance may be on the other side.”

• July 6 — A Rebalancing NATO Gathers in Ankara, Brookings Institution 

• July 7 — Sixteenth Annual South China Sea Conference, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• July 7 — Was the Iran War Worth It? Assessing Costs, Benefits and U.S. Interests, Stimson Center

• July 8 — Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Proposers Day: Lightweight Universal Codec Program, DARPA

• July 8-9 — Military Robotics and Autonomous Systems USA Conference, SAE Media Group

• July 10 — Taiwan’s Institutional Defense: Countering Chinese Communist Party Infiltration and Transnational Repression, Hudson Institute

• July 14-17 — Aspen Security Forum, Aspen Strategy Group

• Aug. 4-5 — Air and Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance