🐕 Warhound raised $200M to build genetically enhanced war dogs

Smack Technologies won a Special Operations Command (SOCOM) Other Transaction agreement worth up to $7.5M to prototype Omega, its AI platform for generating courses of action in joint campaigning.

Omega runs small, domain-specific models on-prem at distributed nodes, solving locally when communications drop and vetting new data before training to resist spoofing and poisoning.

Founded by Marine Raider veterans and already prototyping with the Marines, Air Force, and Navy, Smack expects Omega to enter production across multiple services in the coming months.

Germany’s Helsing unveiled Contra, a pair of AI-coordinated interceptor missiles priced under $100,000 per shot and built to down Russia’s faster Geran attack drones.

The jet-powered Inferno flies 700 km/h out to 20 km, while the rocket-driven Ambush reaches nearly 3,000 km/h to catch leakers just before impact.

Contra targets market readiness in the second half of 2027 with one contract already signed, as Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones now slip past nearly half of Ukraine’s defenses.

Warhound, a Texas startup conceived by Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Colossal Biosciences founder Ben Lamm, launched with $200M in seed funding to produce genetically enhanced military and police dogs.

Overseas suppliers provide 80% of US military working dogs, and the military trains roughly 200 dogs to field 100 because so many wash out.

Led by former DoD chief data officer David Spirk, the company pairs Colossal’s genetics with Anduril tech for handlers, aiming to cut washouts and foreign supply dependence.

The Army launched Project Gatekeeper Friday, automating the months-long authority to operate (ATO) process so vendors can commit code to its DevSecOps pipeline for near-real-time validation.

Vendors with a common access card (CAC) can test now in containerized enclaves, with access soon expanding to the public through GSA’s Login.gov credentials.

The Army plans to add unnamed frontier AI models to strengthen security tooling and prioritize fixes, letting vendors arrive pre-vetted before they ever go on contract.

The Space Force awarded its first operational Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) contracts to six space monitoring firms, building a commercial surge pool modeled on the Civil Reserve Air Fleet.

The awards follow $1.1M in three-month pilot contracts to four unnamed firms in March 2025, which tested contracting processes rather than delivering operational data.

Officials expect CASR to expand to more companies and mission areas, but the legal and financial terms needed to draw commercial firms in remain unresolved.

Unmanned systems cause over 90% of Russian casualties in Ukraine, yet no NATO military has begun the institutional overhaul that demands, retired Gen. David Petraeus said.

Ukraine and Russia each fly roughly 10,000 drones a day, and Petraeus called for surge manufacturing capacity able to push software changes weekly and hardware changes every few weeks.

He praised the new Autonomous Warfare Command but urged change across force structure, training, procurement, personnel, and basing, swapping manned legacy systems for cheaper unmanned ones.

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