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After a federal watchdog found a staff of two overseers insufficient to vet 27,000 research awards for ties to adversaries, namely China, the Pentagon says computers will now screen military-funded academics, including artificial intelligence experts. The move has stakeholders urging not to lean too hard on algorithms to distinguish, for instance, a scientist-spy sharing secret nano-energy plans with China from a Chinese professor publishing AI safety studies. Hanging in the balance lies troops’ technological edge, veteran intelligence officials and academics say. AI’s confusion over the timing and nature of research partnerships may obscure real espionage if humans are not the…

The new Street Fighter movie finally received its first full trailer this week, and of course there’s even more promotion to be done for the project. Legendary and Capcom have now released a number of new posters for the fighting game adaptation, which not only gives us more looks at the cast, but may also clue us in on where some allegiances may lie. There is one poster that features…

3DP Aurora Visual Display System 3D perception (3DP), a global leader in visual display systems for simulation and training, has successfully supplied its Northstar™ Aurora Visual Display System to Saab for the SYSIM-T simulator programme. The system now supports Saab’s work in aircraft development and flight control system testing. To ensure the system met all the unique operational requirements of Saab’s facility, 3DP worked closely with Saab to adapt the Aurora system to the building’s specific conditions while maintaining full functionality. Built on the powerful Northstar™ platform, 3DP’s Aurora Visual Display System delivers a seamless 180° × 50° immersive view with smooth 120 Hz performance. Featuring proprietary…

Want to safely land a Black Hawk on a frozen Alaskan lake? There could be an app for that.The Army Corps of Engineers’ research and development component is working to disprove old assumptions about the risks of landing on frozen lakes and other “terrestrial ice” in hopes of opening up as much as 25% more space for soldiers to land on, take off of and even use as a base for firing and maneuvers from the aircraft.The Corps’ Engineering Research and Development Center, or ERDC, conducted a critical test in January, completing a controlled and monitored landing with a CH-47…

In Sept. 2025, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual defense pact, formalizing what decades of quiet cooperation had already made real. The defense pact signed in Riyadh was presented in official communiqués as a natural deepening of bilateral ties. It was that, but it was also something larger: The latest installment in a pattern that has persisted for half a century and that continues to confound the logic of power politics. Pakistan, a state dependent on International Monetary Fund bailouts and outmatched conventionally by its larger neighbor, has once again positioned itself at the center of a consequential security…

The U.S. Army is turning to low-cost interceptor drones first tested in Ukraine to counter Iranian-made Shahed drones, aiming to flip the economics of air defense that have long favored combatants using quick, disposable technology.Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told lawmakers last week during a budget hearing that the service has already begun deploying the system — known as the Merops — and is rapidly scaling production as part of a broader push to defend against cheap, massed drone attacks.“When the conflict kicked off, within about eight days, we were able to purchase … 13,000 Merops, which are incredible,” Driscoll said…

Over the course of six weeks of war between Iran, Israel, and the United States, Saudi Arabia’s restraint has perplexed some onlookers. After all, the war almost immediately spilled into the Persian Gulf. Iran’s retaliatory attacks on infrastructure in Gulf countries—and then Tehran’s closure and Washington’s subsequent blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—ended a security paradigm that had dominated for decades and facilitated the astonishing rise of the Gulf’s economies. Although Saudi Arabia allowed U.S. forces to use its bases, it refrained from directly responding to Iran’s strikes. It issued terse diplomatic warnings, but unlike the United Arab Emirates, it…

The YFQ-48A Talon Blue. Credit: Northrop Grumman. Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A Talon Blue Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) has successfully completed its first engine start on 17 April 2026. The advancement, achieved in collaboration with Pratt & Whitney and the US Air Force, paves the way for scheduled flight tests, Northrop Grumman said in a post on LinkedIn. Discover B2B Marketing That Performs Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms. Find out more “Our progress is a sign of how quickly next-gen capability can move from development toward flight, and why speed increasingly matters…

Credit: AF.milDefense Feeds, Fort Campbell – The U.S. Army has achieved a transformative milestone in helicopter automation. A CH-47F Chinook completed its first fully automated approach and landing using Boeing’s Approach-to-X autonomy software, executing a precise touchdown with zero pilot intervention.The successful flight demonstrates supervised-autonomy capability that reshapes how transport helicopters operate in contested environments while preserving complete human control over tactical decisions.Initial flight testing began in January 2026. Since then, the U.S. Army Chinook autonomous landing system has already performed more than 150 automated approaches, achieving sub-five-foot positional accuracy with remarkable consistency. That repeatability is crucial for operational reliability.…

The UFC’s use of AI in promotional content remains a point of tension with part of its fan base, and Craig Borsari’s latest comments make clear the company has no plans to move away from it. In his interview with Jake Arier, the UFC chief content officer defended AI as a production tool and framed it as part of the company’s push to keep changing how it presents events. UFC pushes back on AI backlash: “Not a substitute for content creation” Fan criticism has picked up in 2026 as AI-made or AI-assisted UFC promos circulated during the promotion’s new Paramount+…