Leonardo and Baykar completed the first live phase of their K-SWARM program in May at Baykar's Çorlu, Türkiye center, pairing an M-346 fighter with a Bayraktar KIZILELMA uncrewed aircraft.

After autonomous taxi and takeoff, the KIZILELMA rejoined the M-346 using Smart Fleet Autonomy algorithms, with the crewed jet commanding formations, position changes, separations, and rejoins.

The trials move European manned-unmanned teaming from simulation to live flight, positioning Leonardo's LBA Systems venture to field an exportable collaborative combat model for NATO buyers.

A Pentagon official said the revamped Foreign Military Sales process under the America First Arms Transfer Strategy is on schedule, but initial changes will not roll out until later this year.

Michael Cadenazzi, assistant secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, said the overhaul will be incremental, adding a sales catalog of prioritized platforms and a single tracking system for arms deals.

The reforms land as European buyers describe a Catch-22, pressed to buy American while facing long US production queues worsened by backfilling stocks spent against Iran.

Teledyne FLIR Defense launched three upgraded vehicle vision systems at Eurosatory 2026, expanding field of view up to 360 degrees for targeting and driver vision.

The lineup pairs the ThermoVision Situational Awareness HD and Driver Vision HD systems with the MilSight LIRC III weapon sight, improving detection through smoke and fog.

Built in Täby, Sweden and available now, the systems target manned and unmanned platforms as armored vehicles add layered sensing against drones and dispersed threats.

The Air Force Research Laboratory commissioned Flyer, a $20 million supercomputer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, to accelerate hypersonic weapons research, AI development, and next-generation aircraft design.

With roughly 186,000 cores, 800 terabytes of RAM, and 18 petabytes of storage, Flyer runs in a day what an average laptop would take 500 years to compute.

Part of the Defense Department's High Performance Computing Modernization Program, the machine lets engineers iterate designs digitally before building prototypes, saving an estimated $800 million over five years.

Two executive orders signed June 22 direct the Pentagon to identify at least three next-generation quantum sensor projects and field them by September 30, 2028.

Executive Order 14411 also tasks the Pentagon to help the Energy Department build a quantum computer, with Commerce, Energy, NASA, and the National Science Foundation planning quantum sensing and networking.

Quantum sensors promise navigation in GPS-denied conditions and detection of submarines or faint signals, an area where China has invested heavily in quantum networking.

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