⚓ Navy drone lands on pitching deck without GPS

Sikorsky unveiled the Nomad 100 Fast Pack, a standard 20-foot container holding four vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drones plus mission-command software, power, communications, and maintenance tools.

Two aircraft are flight-ready in under 15 minutes and two more within four to six hours, operating from ships, vehicle staging areas, or improvised landing zones without runways.

Configurable for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), light attack, or contested logistics, the container repacks onto a transport vehicle after each mission and relocates for follow-on operations.

Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) flew a tactical drone through mission tasks and an autonomous landing on a pitching ship at sea, with no GPS or pilot control.

Onboard cameras recognize the ship’s shape while guidance algorithms predict the rising and falling deck in real time, all on commercial-standard cameras, motion sensors, and electronics.

Conventional drone recovery needs multimillion-dollar radar, deck gear, and months of ship modifications, so the approach could spread drones across more vessels and keep them flying under GPS jamming.

The Pentagon selected KBR’s Firefly, a mobile high-energy laser built by subsidiary Kord Technologies, for a yearlong pilot defending US military installations against drones.

Operators use an Xbox controller to cut training time; AI tracks targets while a human picks when and where to fire, down to a single propeller or fuel tank.

Firefly engages one target at a time, so swarms require multiple systems, and the pilot will feed the Pentagon cost and logistics data on base laser defense.

BAE Systems unveiled a high-power microwave (HPM) counter-drone weapon at the Association of the US Army (AUSA) annual meeting, frying drone electronics with pulses rather than missiles.

The system uses 99% off-the-shelf parts, which BAE says speeds production and avoids the cost overruns and delays common in military procurement.

BAE positions it as the low-cost, high-volume layer against swarms, leaving conventional interceptors for high-value threats that demand precise engagements.

US Army Space and Missile Defense Command is pushing a family of stratospheric systems built on high-altitude balloons, already deployed for testing to Europe, the Pacific, and the Middle East.

Operating between 60,000 and 100,000 feet, the balloons ride prevailing winds to deliver sensing, communications, and launched effects, and officials say kinetic payloads remain an option.

More experiments follow over the next year, while the 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force develops concepts pairing a few high-end balloons with hundreds of cheap, expendable ones.

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