The Pentagon selected Shield AI to integrate its Hivemind autonomous pilot software into the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), a one-way attack drone the U.S. military produced by reverse-engineering an Iranian Shahed variant and first used in combat during Operation Epic Fury in CENTCOM.

Hivemind will enable groups of LUCAS drones to coordinate, maneuver, and adapt to changing conditions in real time under a single human operator, allowing the swarm to sense, decide, and act independently in GPS-degraded and communications-contested environments without direct intervention.

Shield AI will demonstrate the capability this fall. The selection comes as the DoD's FY2027 budget requests $53.6 billion for autonomous warfare and drone platforms, and as LUCAS production ramps up from a handful of initial units to meet wartime demand, with each system costing in the low- to mid-tens of thousands.

The Advanced Manufacturing Company of America (Amca) closed a $300 million Series B at over $1 billion valuation, led by Caffeinated Capital with participation from Lightspeed, a16z, Lux Capital, and Construct Capital, roughly 18 months after a $76.5 million Series A, alongside an acquisition of BC Systems, a power electronics supplier supporting classified defense programs.

Amca's model acquires and modernizes legacy single-source component suppliers rather than building greenfield factories, integrating them into its manufacturing network via the RAPID software platform, which the company says compresses production lead times by more than 67 percent compared to industry-standard timelines, moving hardware from initial design to qualified production in weeks.

The company now operates six factories with a combined capacity of 123,000 square feet in California, Iowa, and New York, producing hydraulics, power electronics, and avionics, including an electromechanical component destined for the F-35; the CEO reported top-line revenue growth of 10x since the last funding round.

Cellula Robotics and Metron have signed a 10-year agreement to jointly develop and deliver autonomous undersea capabilities for the U.S. defense market, combining Cellula's commercial-off-the-shelf, long-endurance autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) platforms with Metron's mission-autonomy software and undersea operations expertise.

The partnership uses a modular, open-architecture approach that supports integration of third-party sensors, payloads, and mission systems, designed for faster fielding and adaptability as technologies evolve and operational requirements change, with a stated focus on supply confidence and long-term sustainment.

The agreement formalizes three years of prior collaboration and follows Cellula's March contract to build an AUV prototype for the U.S. government; Metron's CEO characterized it as delivering "the next-generation autonomous undersea system the US Navy has been pursuing for over a decade."

The Pentagon's Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) awarded Perennial Autonomy a $500 million, three-year indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract for AI-enabled counter-UAS systems, including the Merops interceptor, which has downed more than 4,000 Russian drones over Ukraine since mid-2024 and is confirmed to be actively deployed by U.S. forces in CENTCOM.

The contract covers Perennial's Bumblebee quadcopter, Hornet midrange strike drone, and Merops interceptor; the Army bought 13,000 Merops units early in the Iran war at roughly $15,000 per unit to address the cost imbalance of defeating cheap Shahed-variant drones with expensive defensive missiles.

Backed by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Perennial Autonomy recently partnered with Twentyfour Industries to manufacture the Merops in Germany; its systems feature computer vision, RF-based detection, jam-resistant communications, and autonomous precision engagement at significantly lower cost per intercept than traditional missile-based defense.

Dan Richard, Associate Deputy Director of the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate, called the emergence of advanced AI models like Anthropic's Mythos a "reflection point" for federal agencies, drawing a parallel to Ukraine's decade of preparation before Russia's 2022 invasion, and arguing that deep public-private partnership is now essential for both leveraging and defending against these capabilities.

Security experts at the same conference flagged that Mythos-class models dramatically lower the barrier to entry for would-be attackers, with former Pentagon CIO Katie Arrington warning that existing patch timelines of 15 to 30 days are obsolete when AI can reverse-engineer an exploit within hours of a vulnerability's release.

Richard framed the current moment as structural rather than transactional: with 80 percent of critical national infrastructure in private hands, he argued that government, industry, and academia must operate as genuine partners, not procurement counterparties, to turn advanced AI from a threat vector into an intelligence and automation advantage.

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