U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Adm. Brad Cooper announced that U.S. forces have destroyed more than 100 Iranian naval vessels through a combination of air, land, and maritime strikes — a figure encompassing small combat ships, logistics vessels, and other surface units, with no independent verification yet available.

The announcement comes alongside confirmation from CENTCOM that over 6,500 combat sorties have been flown and more than 7,000 Iranian military targets struck since Operation Epic Fury began February 28, as well as a separate report from Task & Purpose that at least 200 U.S. service members have now been wounded in the conflict, with 10 seriously injured.

Iran's navy commander simultaneously claimed that Tehran struck U.S. installations across the Gulf, including Patriot radar systems, hangars, and fuel storage at Al Dhafra, Shaikh Isa, and Al Udeid air bases — claims that have not been independently verified but underscore the continued two-way intensity of the campaign now entering its 17th day.

The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy announced at a National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) conference in Honolulu that the U.S. is fast-tracking directed-energy weapons, including high-energy lasers up to 300 kilowatts and wide-area high-powered microwave systems, for operational fielding within 36 months to counter drone-swarm threats.

The push is driven by a recognized cost asymmetry: a Patriot missile costs $4 million per shot, while a laser engagement costs roughly $3, meaning adversaries can force disproportionate expenditure through mass drone tactics; microwave systems address the specific problem of simultaneous multi-drone defeat that single-target lasers cannot.

Systems already in the field, like the Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) Stryker, have demonstrated kills against Group 1-3 drones, but officials acknowledged that lasers are not a panacea and must be layered with radio frequency (RF) detection, kinetic interceptors, and electronic countermeasures to build effective depth — a lesson the Iran campaign is reinforcing in real time.

The Navy awarded Gecko Robotics a five-year Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract worth up to $71 million to deploy hull-scaling robots and AI across 18 ships in the Pacific Fleet over the first nine months, covering destroyers, amphibious warships, and Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), as part of a broader push to reach 80 percent surge readiness by 2027.

Gecko's robotic systems inspect hulls, decks, and welds without damaging materials, and collect data up to 50 times faster than traditional manual inspections, feeding AI-enabled software models that flag potential repairs before they become failures — converting what Gecko's CEO called "an analog process" into a digital, predictable maintenance pipeline.

As of April 2025, surface ship readiness stood at approximately 68 percent, making the 80 percent target ambitious; Gecko positions its technology as one of the most direct levers available, providing shipyard workers with actionable data models to prioritize repairs rather than relying on manual walkthroughs.

The Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defence signed a Joint Declaration of Intent establishing common formatting requirements for counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems (C-UAS) systems used by both militaries, creating a framework for closer interoperability between American and British counter-drone capabilities.

The agreement enables joint evaluation, potential co-development, and cross-adoption of C-UAS concepts and designs between the two militaries, with the UK's operational experience defending against Iranian drones over the UAE specifically cited as a source of tactics the U.S. could adapt for homeland and overseas defense.

The declaration arrives as the Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401), the Army-led counter-drone task force, is simultaneously standardizing testing protocols, locking in Anduril's Lattice as a common command-and-control platform, and working to resolve interagency friction with the FAA and CBP exposed by the Texas laser incidents — building the policy scaffolding that joint U.S.-UK standards will eventually plug into.

JIATF 401 and the Federal Aviation Administration conducted a first-of-its-kind joint test of the Army Multi-Purpose High Energy Laser (AMP-HEL) at White Sands on March 7-8, fast-tracked after back-to-back Texas incidents where military lasers shot down Mylar balloons and a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) drone, temporarily closing airspace and triggering bipartisan congressional criticism.

The test demonstrated the system's automated inhibit functions: the laser tracked a simulated target but shut down automatically when a distant commercial aircraft entered a one-degree angle of its line of track; on day two, the test fired the laser at maximum effective range for up to eight seconds at a grounded Boeing 767 fuselage, producing no structural damage.

JIATF 401 said the test met both objectives the FAA requested, though results were not publicly released; a Center for a New American Security (CNAS) researcher noted that layering remains critical because "lasers aren't the panacea," and that homeland counter-drone operations face legal, airspace, and coordination complexities distinct from overseas engagements like downing Iranian drones over Qatar.

AeroVironment announced it will acquire California-based Empirical Systems Aerospace (ESAero) for approximately $200 million, integrating the UAS engineering firm as a subsidiary under AV's Precision Strike and Defense Systems group and Loitering Munition Systems business unit.

AV CEO Wahid Nawabi said ESAero's value lies in its "agility in moving from design to manufacturing," which he framed as directly addressing a known bottleneck in defense innovation: the gap between conceptual prototyping and scaled production that slows time-to-field for emerging capabilities.

The acquisition is AV's second in 12 months, following its $4.1 billion purchase of BlueHalo in May 2025, and positions ESAero's California facilities as a center of excellence for advanced prototyping — a significant expansion of AV's industrial footprint as demand for loitering munitions and attritable systems continues to accelerate.

JIATF 401 awarded Anduril an $87 million contract to deploy its Lattice command-and-control (C2) software as the common platform for counter-UAS systems purchased across the federal government — the first major task order under a broader $20 billion Army enterprise agreement that authorizes any federal agency to buy any Anduril product.

The Army alone has 120 existing Anduril contracts migrating into the new enterprise agreement, with all future purchases flowing through Army Contracting Command rather than requiring new individual agreements — a friction reduction that Anduril's chief business officer said is specifically designed to accelerate new defense tech companies entering the procurement ecosystem.

Lattice is already the Army's chosen platform for its next-generation C2 architecture, and its selection as the standard counter-UAS C2 layer effectively makes Anduril the backbone of the federal government's drone defense command infrastructure at a moment when the Iran war is making counter-UAS the fastest-growing priority across the Department of Defense.

Israel Claims It Destroyed Iran's Presidential Airbus A340 in Tehran Strike — Read More

EA-18G Growler Spotted Over Iran With Mixed Old and New Jamming Pods — Read More

Air Force Gives MQ-9 Reapers a New Lease on Life With Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) Capability and Electronic Warfare Pod — Read More

Airbus Teams With MARS and Kratos on Valkyrie-Class Drone Production in Europe — Read More

Ireland and UK Explore Joint Defense Procurement Including Fighter Options — Read More

Japan Advancing Stand-Off Jamming Capability for Electronic Warfare Missions — Read More

Pentagon Dismantled Its Blueprint for Minimizing Civilian Casualties — Read More

Army Plans New Research Center Focused on Scaling Explosives Production — Read More

Norway's Arctic Soldiers Still Dig Snow Caves to Hide From Drones — Read More

Baykar Unveils K2 Swarming Kamikaze Drone With Autonomous Coordination — Read More

Could the Cybertruck Actually Work on the Battlefield? — Read More

200 U.S. Troops Wounded in Iran War, Pentagon Confirms — Read More

Iran Damaged Five KC-135 Tankers at Prince Sultan Air Base — Read More

Navy's Mine Countermeasures Options at Hormuz, From Remote Environmental Monitoring Units (REMUS) to Helicopters — Read More

Brazil's First Tamandaré-Class Frigate Nears Commissioning — Read More

Saab Restructures, Launches Dedicated Naval Division — Read More

Secretary of the Navy Phelan Stands Up Five New Acquisition Offices for Navy and Marine Corps — Read More

Israel's Defense Industry Is Accelerating Production Across All Domains — Read More

Pentagon Held Quiet Workshop to Shape the Future of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Research — Read More

North Korea Fires 10 Missiles Over Sea of Japan in Multiple Rocket Launcher Test — Read More

Precision Strike Missile Increment 2 (PrSM Inc 2) Hits Its Goals in First Flight Test — Read More

Baykar's New K2 Swarm Drone Previews Next-Generation Kamikaze Tactics — Read More