Category: Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership

For Australia, Sovereign Doesn’t Have to Mean Alone

10/14/2026

The question for Australia isn’t whether a capability is foreign or domestic. It’s whether Australia can control what happens next. 

By Sean Colvin, Director of Business Development, Asia Pacific, AV 

During six deployments to Afghanistan as a field service rep at AV, I learned that having a capability and being able to keep that capability in the fight are two very different things. 

We were fielding, training, and repairing small unmanned aircraft systems (s-UAS) in an environment where missions could change quickly and equipment was being used far harder than it ever would have been in a normal training environment. We couldn’t assume that the aircraft, payloads, batteries or support equipment would always be available when we needed them. 

So, we adapted. 

We learned to anticipate failures, carry the right spares, cross-train personnel and find solutions with whatever resources were available rather than waiting for the perfect replacement or support package. The people closest to the mission often had to make the adjustment in real time. 

Those deployments changed how I think about military capability. 

Having the best technology is not enough. What matters is whether you can get it where it needs to go, adapt it when the mission changes, sustain it when conditions become difficult and keep enough of it in the fight to matter. 

Nearly two decades later, I see a version of that same challenge playing out at a much larger scale in Australia and across the Indo-Pacific. 

For years, the defense industry has tended to treat sovereignty, or independence, as a question of origin. 

Where was a system designed? Where was it manufactured? Who owns the intellectual property? How much of its supply chain sits inside the country? 

Those are legitimate questions. But I don’t believe they are sufficient anymore, especially as they relate to Australia and the Indo-Pacific. 

The Australian Army is preparing for what its leadership describes as “archipelagic warfare” across the Indo-Pacific. It is prioritizing littoral maneuver, surveillance, reconnaissance, long-range strike, autonomous systems, resilient logistics and the command-and-control infrastructure required to connect them. 

In that environment, I believe sovereignty should be measured by more than where a capability was built. It should be measured by how much control Australia has over what happens next: how quickly it can acquire and field that capability, integrate Australian technology, adapt it as requirements change, sustain it at distance and scale it when demand grows. 

That is the distinction between possessing sovereign equipment and possessing what I would call operational sovereignty. 

Despite the fact that Australia has the ability to go it alone inside of its own very capable industrial infrastructure, I believe operational sovereignty means going together. 

Sovereignty Is Meaningless if You Don’t Control the Timeline 

During 16 years of working with customers in more than 40 countries, I have watched the same pattern repeat itself: the technical capability is often ready before the acquisition architecture, integration permissions or sustainment model required to actually field it. 

If we are serious when we talk about “speed to capability,” then sovereignty cannot only describe who built something. It must also describe whether the customer has a practical pathway to obtain and field it at operationally relevant speed. 

That issue was s particularly relevant last week at LAND FORCES 2026 in Perth, where I met with Australian customers about expanding their one-way attack capabilities. These conversations are about more than buying additional systems. They are about whether a different acquisition pathway can shorten the distance between an operational requirement and a fielded capability while creating a more responsive way to scale as demand grows. 

The fact that AV can now pursue Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) for one-way attack systems in Australia matters for precisely that reason. It creates another potential route between an operational requirement and the capability intended to satisfy it. And it does it with speed. 

That lesson extends well beyond one-way attack systems. 

A sovereign requirement without a responsive acquisition pathway is still a dependency. 

Don’t Build a New Aircraft Every Time You Invent a Better Sensor 

The same principle applies in the opposite direction. 

Australia has an extraordinarily capable defense technology sector. But sovereign industrial capability should not require every Australian innovation to sit on top of an Australian-built platform. 

That can actually constrain Australian technology rather than strengthen it. 

Our work with Australian defense technology company ARKEUS is a useful example of what the alternative can look like. Together, AV and ARKEUS integrated the Warden payload, an Australian-developed hyperspectral sensing technology, onto AV’s JUMP 20®, creating the first uncrewed platform to carry ARKEUS’ real-time, wide-area Hyperspectral Optical Radar capability. The result combines Australian sensor innovation with a proven allied aircraft to deliver a new intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability without requiring Australia to develop an entirely new platform around the sensor. 

We integrated Warden onto JUMP 20 because JUMP 20 gives Warden the endurance, altitude, payload capacity and runway-independent access needed to keep that sensor on station for extended periods. Rather than building a dedicated aircraft around the sensor, we use JUMP 20’s modular architecture to put the right sensor on the right platform for the mission. 

I think the significance of that is larger than either ARKEUS or JUMP 20. 

The traditional way of thinking about sovereign capability might ask: Who built the aircraft? 

A more useful question is: How far can Australian technology travel? 

If an Australian company develops a better sensor, autonomy package, communications capability or payload, it should not necessarily need to develop an entirely new platform around it, even though Australia has the industrial capability to do just that. With modular architectures and willing industry partners, that technology can be integrated onto proven allied platforms and potentially gain access to a much larger capability ecosystem. 

That is not a concession of sovereignty. 

It is leverage. 

Australian innovation strengthens an allied platform. The allied platform gives Australian innovation another route to the warfighter. Both industrial bases become stronger. 

Critically, the customer gets capability faster than if every innovation requires a new platform to be designed around it. 

The Platform Is No Longer the Finished Product 

This matters because military requirements are becoming increasingly difficult to freeze. 

In conversations across the region, I routinely encounter customers who know the operational problem they need to solve before they know exactly what the final technical solution should look like. 

That is not indecision. It is increasingly the nature of modern warfare. 

Threats evolve. Sensors change. Communications requirements change. Adversaries introduce countermeasures. New payloads emerge. Lessons from current conflicts move around the world faster than traditional acquisition systems can respond to them. 

A platform selected against today’s requirement can therefore become inadequate long before the end of its intended service life. 

That changes what “proven” should mean. 

A proven platform is not merely one that works today. It is one that has enough architectural flexibility, industrial support and production maturity to keep changing tomorrow. 

I sometimes describe systems like our P550® as trucks for exactly this reason. The value isn’t simply what is carried on the platform when it leaves the factory. The value is that the platform provides the power, interfaces, payload capacity and architecture to carry different things as the mission changes. 

The platform becomes infrastructure for capability. 

That distinction will become increasingly important in the Indo-Pacific. 

Australian Capability Should Move in Both Directions 

If Australian technology should be able to move outward onto allied platforms, allied technology should also be able to develop deeper roots inside Australia’s industrial base. 

That is the other half of operational sovereignty. 

AV and NIOA Australia are pursuing an agreement around one-way attack systems. Signed during LAND FORCES 2026, the agreement establishes a framework for the companies to develop a path toward Australian co-production and localization of AV’s one-way attack systems. The specifics of that relationship matter, but the larger model matters more. 

Australia should not have to choose between fielding mature allied technology and developing its own industrial capability. 

The objective should be to do both. 

Trusted international technology can be paired with Australian industry for integration, sustainment, support and, where appropriate, deeper industrial participation. At the same time, Australian technologies can be integrated into international systems and potentially reach allied capability ecosystems. 

That is not a one-way supply chain. 

It is a two-way industrial network. 

I believe that is a much more useful way to think about the promise of AUKUS. 

AUKUS Should Be an Integration Engine 

The ambition for AUKUS should be greater than making it easier for three countries to purchase one another’s technology. 

The real potential of AUKUS is considerably broader than the submarine program (SSN-AUKUS) that is expanding the nuclear-powered attack submarine fleet. With proper execution, AUKUS could become a long-term integrated defense-industrial and technology ecosystem, particularly across the Indo-Pacific. 

Proper execution means that an Australian sensor should be able to find its way onto an American aircraft without years of unnecessary friction. American technology should be able to establish Australian sustainment and industrial capacity. British software or autonomy should be capable of being combined with technology developed in Australia or the United States when the mission demands it. 

The competitive advantage is not simply interoperability. 

It is recombination. 

Whichever alliance can identify the best available technology, combine it fastest, put it into the hands of warfighters and then change it again when the adversary responds will possess a significant advantage. 

That is particularly important for Australia. 

Geography makes sustainment difficult. Distance makes logistics unforgiving. The Indo-Pacific places extraordinary demands on range, persistence, communications and supply chains. And the pace of technological change means Australia cannot assume that the capability it purchases today will remain configured the same way throughout its operational life. 

So, I would judge sovereign capability against four practical questions. 

  1. Can Australia integrate it? Can Australian sensors, payloads, software and other technologies connect to it? 
  1. Can Australia adapt it? Can the capability change when Australian requirements or the threat changes? 
  1. Can Australia sustain it? Are the industrial relationships, technical knowledge and supply chains in place to keep it operating when distance and disruption begin to matter? 
  1. Can Australia scale it? If operational demand changes dramatically, can the industrial base deliver meaningful quantities rather than exquisite prototypes? 

If the answer to those questions is yes, I care considerably less about the flag painted on the factory where every component originated. 

Sovereign Doesn’t Have to Mean Alone 

Australia is right to demand greater self-reliance. 

But self-reliance and self-sufficiency are not the same thing. 

In fact, insisting that sovereignty requires Australia to independently recreate every platform, sensor, payload and component its military may need could produce the opposite of the intended result: slower capability, smaller production runs, less access to allied innovation and systems that become harder to adapt as the threat changes. 

There is another model. 

Build Australian technology that can make allied platforms better. Bring proven allied technologies into partnerships that strengthen Australian industrial capacity. Design systems around modularity rather than technological lock-in. Create acquisition pathways that move at the speed of operational requirements. Use AUKUS to make technology move more freely across trusted industrial bases. 

That is not giving up sovereignty. 

That is exercising it. 

The tactical edge in the Indo-Pacific will not belong to the country that can claim it built everything itself. 

It will belong to the force that can get the right capability, integrate the best available technology, sustain it at distance, produce it at scale and change it faster than the adversary can respond. 

Sovereign does not have to mean alone. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Sean Colvin, CAPM, is Director of Business Development for Asia Pacific at AV. During his 16 years with AV, he has supported customers and operations in more than 40 countries, including six deployments to Afghanistan. His experience spans international program management, business development, Foreign Military Sales and direct commercial programs. 

—— 

ABOUT AV, JOINING THE MISSION 

AeroVironment (AV) is a defense technology company with a mission to invent and deliver advantage to U.S. and allied militaries. AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed.  

AV doesn’t just build defense technology; we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., we deliver breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From autonomy-enabled drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve. 

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul MacCready, AV has spent more than 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters – with speed, scale, and purpose – come find your people.  

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Thought Leadership

The OODA Loop for the Autonomous Age: From the F-16 to the Autonomous Fight

10/12/2026

By Mary Clum, President of Space, Cyber and Directed Energy, AV 

My grandfather helped change the way we think about air combat. 

Harry J. Hillaker, the “Father of the F-16,” was part of the small group of engineers, pilots and strategists known as the Fighter Mafia. Alongside John Boyd and others, he challenged a powerful assumption of his time: that the answer to every new threat had to be a larger, more complex and more expensive system. 

The result was the F-16 fighter aircraft. 

Its significance went far beyond a new airplane. The F-16 helped redefine fighter design around agility, responsiveness, affordability and scale. It demonstrated that operational advantage could come not from adding complexity, but from making disciplined engineering choices around what the mission actually required. 

Boyd would eventually formalize another idea that has endured for generations: 

Observe. Orient. Decide. Act, a four-step decision-making model that allowed late commitment and decision-making during changing environments, which was particularly relevant to pilots operating in conflict. 

We know this today as the OODA Loop. 

Today, I believe we need to rethink the OODA Loop as it relates to the autonomous age. 

When machines begin operating at machine speed, the OODA Loop can no longer be treated only as a process.  

The OODA Loop must evolve into an architecture that depends less on accelerating a single kill chain and more on coordinating multiple OODA Loops across sensors, software, operators, networks, and effectors. 

A Different Kind of Fight 

Our forces increasingly face inexpensive unmanned systems that can arrive in numbers, approach from multiple directions and operate with increasing levels of autonomy. 

That creates two problems simultaneously. 

The first is speed. 

Defenders must detect what is happening, understand it, determine what matters and respond before the threat completes its mission. 

The second is economics. 

We cannot sustainably defeat every inexpensive drone with an interceptor costing many times more. And we cannot assume that a single sensor, effector or standalone counter-unmanned aircraft system will be appropriate for every threat. 

The question, then, is not simply how we make the OODA Loop faster. 

It is how we architect the OODA Loop into the defense itself. 

When the OODA Loop Becomes an Architecture 

In an autonomous fight, Observe can mean multiple sensors detecting different aspects of the battlespace simultaneously. 

Orient increasingly means software, AI and machine learning helping fuse those inputs, identify potential threats and present operators with information they can actually use. 

Decide requires understanding not only whether something is a threat, but what response is appropriate and the tradeoffs associated with that choice. 

And Act can no longer mean applying a single effector. It requires orchestrating effects across multiple capabilities as part of a coordinated response. 

Electronic warfare may be appropriate for one threat, a kinetic interceptor for another, while directed energy would introduce a fundamentally different cost-per-engagement and magazine-depth equation, perhaps, making it the best option for yet another significantly different threat like drone swarms. 

That means the modern OODA Loop increasingly looks less like a sequence performed by one person operating a single fixed-point system and more like a distributed architecture connecting sensors, decision aids, weapons pairing and scheduling, operators and effectors. 

That is the thinking behind AV’s Halo_Shield™, a modular, scalable counter-UAS mission orchestration system that connects distributed sensors and effectors to rapidly detect, coordinate and defeat complex threats, including drone swarms, advanced UAS and subsonic cruise missiles. 

Halo_Shield is focused on the tactical level of combat and supports the transmission of critical battlefield information to legacy command-and-control (C2) systems such as Integrated Battle Command System-Maneuver (IBCS-M). 

The objective is not to create another standalone counter-UAS system. It is to connect sensing, artificial intelligence-enabled decision support and layered effects so commanders can understand what is happening and match the right response to the right threat at the right time and cost.  

That’s what Halo_Shield does. 

It offers mission orchestration capabilities that are critical to accelerating the OODA Loop for several reasons: 

  1. Networking requirements and limitations: Addresses the constraints associated with IP-based radios and the networking demands of distributed operations. (Observe)
  2. Redundant transport-layer pathways: Provides multiple pathways to ensure distributed information reliably reaches the orchestration layer, even in degraded or contested environments. (Orient)
  3. Anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) readiness: Prepares forces to operate effectively in anti-access/area-denial environments where communications and connectivity may be disrupted or contested. (Decide)
  4. Decentralized mission command: Enables warfighters to exercise mission command and execute counter-UAS courses of action in a decentralized manner, reducing defeat timelines while establishing the foundation for collaborative autonomy threat requirements. (Act) 

But an architecture diagram can only tell you so much. 

Eventually, you have to put the architecture under pressure. 

What T-REX 26-3 Taught Us 

AV had the opportunity to exercise this approach at the Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) 26-3 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in late August.  

We demonstrated this OODA Loop architecture in real time in an operationally relevant environment designed to identify capability gaps and gather feedback from warfighters before systems are fielded. 

Proving Halo_Shield in that specific environment matters. 

The value of an integrated architecture is not demonstrated simply because its individual components work. The real test comes when multiple sensors are generating information, different threats are appearing, operators are making decisions and different effects must be brought together under real-world friction and in a kill chain that can function at speed and against scale.: 

And while the official data and results from T-REX 26-3 will be published in late October, I can anecdotally share that Halo_Shield performed exceptionally in this environment and showed that: 

  1. The fundamentals are there: The system performs as intended. It is not perfect yet, but the foundational capabilities are present and working.
  2. It can handle complexity: The system can manage complex scenarios and continue operating as additional layers of complexity are introduced.
  3. The architecture can move at speed: It supports the rapid resolution of situations that require a high degree of context, allowing information to be processed and acted upon quickly.
  4. AI/ML can simplify the kill chain: AI enabled decision support simplifies critical steps in the C-UAS kill chain, reducing the burden on the operator and accelerating decision-making.
  5. It can handle greater threat loads: The system moves rapidly through each cycle of the kill chain, increasing its capacity to manage multiple threat UAS compared with traditional C-UAS approaches. 

These results matter because the objective of counter-UAS is bigger than defeating a single drone. 

It is managing the fight at scale. 

It means seeing more of the battlespace sooner, understanding which threats matter, selecting the appropriate response and preserving scarce or expensive effects for the threats that actually require them. 

In other words, the advantage isn’t merely completing the OODA Loop faster; it is building an architecture capable of running many OODA Loops simultaneously. 

Faster Is Not the Same as Better 

There is another lesson from Boyd that I believe becomes even more important as artificial intelligence enters the fight. 

Speed matters. 

But speed without understanding is not advantage. 

As AI and machine learning help us observe and orient faster, there will be a temptation to assume the logical destination is removing people from the decision entirely. 

I don’t believe that should be our default assumption. 

Machine speed should not automatically mean removing human judgment.   

Machine speed means detecting early, rapidly fusing multi-phenomenology sensing, receiving weapons-pairing and scheduling recommendations, evaluating a valid course of action and its tradeoffs, and sending that execution plan to effectors. 

It means operating at the edge of “human on the loop” while recognizing that the autonomous phase is just around the corner. 

AI can help operators understand complexity, prioritize information and make better decisions faster. But particularly around consequential actions, we must remain deliberate about human authority and the safeguards built into the architecture. 

Sometimes the most important thing a system can give an operator isn’t the ability to shoot faster; it’s the information required to know whether to shoot at all. 

That is a fundamentally different way of thinking about counter-UAS performance. 

Detection range matters. Probability of kill matters. Cost per engagement matters. 

At T-REX, we learned that decision quality, operator confidence and the ability to select the right effect under pressure were enabled by Halo_Shield moving information quickly. 

We also learned that the operator’s problem changed once information from multiple sources arrived in a usable form and at speed. The question shifted from “Can we detect the threat?” to “Which threat deserves attention first, and which response preserves our options?” 

The Lesson Across Generations 

I often think about the connection between the problems my grandfather’s generation confronted and the ones we face today. 

The Fighter Mafia questioned assumptions about what a fighter had to be. 

Today, we should be willing to question assumptions about what an air-defense system has to be. 

The answer to an increasingly autonomous threat cannot simply be another exquisite standalone system. 

The architecture has to observe across multiple sources. It has to make sense of information quickly. It has to help humans make better decisions. And it has to provide multiple ways to act so that the economics of defense remain sustainable. 

That is the OODA Loop for the autonomous age: 

Observe: See sooner. 

Orient: Understand faster. 

Decide: Decide smarter. 

Act: Apply the right effect. 

My grandfather’s generation helped change the relationship between performance, affordability and scale in air combat. 

Drones, AI, autonomy and directed energy are creating another such moment. 

The technology is different. The threat is different. 

But the imperative is remarkably familiar: 

Question the assumptions. Move faster than the threat. And design differently enough to change the fight. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Mary Clum is President of Space, Cyber and Directed Energy at AV, bringing more than 25 years of leadership and operational experience across the defense, space, and technology sectors. Her career spans program management, systems analysis, operations, business development, and the development and delivery of highly technical products supporting the Department of War, Department of Energy, and other national security customers. She holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of New Mexico and an M.S. in Project Management from the University of Southern California. 

—— 

ABOUT AV — JOINING THE MISSION 

AeroVironment (AV) is a defense technology company with a mission to invent and deliver advantage to U.S. and allied militaries. AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed.  

AV doesn’t just build defense technology; we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., we deliver breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From autonomy-enabled drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve. 

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul MacCready, AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters – with speed, scale, and purpose – come find your people.  

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Thought Leadership

When a Drone Threat Becomes an EOD Problem

09/09/2026

By Florian Gruener, Managing Director of Telerob, an AV Company 

A recent incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport is a good example of how the threat from unmanned systems is changing. 

Authorities discovered an unmanned drone carrying an improvised explosive device on airport grounds near Ukrainian cargo aircraft. Leipzig/Halle is one of Europe’s largest freight hubs and a critical logistics gateway supporting global commerce and the movement of military supplies into Eastern Europe. 

In a matter of moments, a transportation hub became the scene of an active security incident. 

Flights were disrupted. Security perimeters expanded. Explosive ordnance disposal specialists responded. 

For investigators, the danger was not simply the drone itself. It was everything they did not know. 

Was the explosive stable? Could it be remotely triggered? Would moving the drone initiate the device? Was there a chemical, biological or radiological threat? Was this the only device? 

These are the kinds of questions EOD operators must answer before they can safely deal with an unknown explosive. 

And the basic principle is quite simple: the more distance you can put between the operator and an unknown explosive, the better. 

That is why another unmanned system became an important part of the response that day at Leipzig. 

AV’s tEODor™ EVO, a remotely operated unmanned ground vehicle, moved toward the threat, allowing bomb technicians to remain at a safer distance while they investigated and manipulated the device and supported the safe removal of the detonator. 

The headlines were about a drone. 

But for me, Leipzig demonstrated something that deserves much more attention as governments and critical infrastructure operators invest in counter-UAS: 

Stopping the drone is not necessarily the end of the mission. 

When Counter-UAS Becomes EOD 

A great deal of investment is currently going into counter-UAS capabilities, and as the modern UAS threat continues to evolve quickly, we are constantly asking questions like: 

Can we detect the drone? Can we identify it? Can we track it? Can we jam it, intercept it or otherwise defeat it? 

All of these are important questions. 

But if that drone is carrying an explosive payload, bringing it to the ground does not necessarily solve the problem. 

It changes the problem. We need to start asking new questions. 

The threat that was moving through the air is now sitting on the ground. Someone still needs to determine what it is carrying. Someone needs to inspect it. Someone needs to understand whether it can be moved. And eventually, someone needs to render it safe. 

The mission has transitioned from counter-UAS to EOD. 

This is an important connection because counter-UAS and EOD are often treated as separate capabilities. Operationally, however, the transition between them can happen in seconds. 

First, you have a drone in the air. 

Then, you have a drone on the ground. 

If that drone is carrying an explosive payload, you now have an EOD problem. 

That means protecting airports, military installations, ports, logistics hubs and other critical infrastructure requires us to think beyond how we defeat the aircraft. We also have to plan for what happens after the aircraft is defeated. 

A Cheap System Can Create an Expensive Problem 

Leipzig also demonstrates why this problem is becoming more urgent. 

The economics of the drone threat are highly asymmetric. 

Commercial drones can fly significant distances, navigate accurately and carry meaningful payloads. At the same time, they are widely available and comparatively inexpensive. 

A system costing hundreds or thousands of dollars can potentially create effects costing millions. 

It can interrupt airport operations. It can disrupt logistics. It can threaten military movements. It can force the closure of infrastructure and require a significant security response. 

We have seen this development very clearly in active conflicts over the last several years. The same technologies and tactics can create serious problems far beyond a traditional front line. 

For me, the important question is not simply what the drone costs. 

It is what effect the drone can create and whether we are prepared for the complete response that follows. 

Why Distance Matters 

EOD robots are not new. We have been building these systems at Telerob and AV for decades, and the basic principle behind them has remained remarkably consistent. 

If a dangerous task can be performed remotely, there is no reason to put a person directly next to the danger when that can be avoided. 

That does not mean the robot replaces the EOD operator. I think this is an important distinction. 

The operator understands the situation. The operator evaluates the threat. The operator makes the decisions. 

The robot gives that person the ability to act on those decisions from a safer distance. 

At Leipzig, bomb technicians could maneuver tEODor toward the drone, inspect the device through its cameras and use its manipulator to interact with the payload while remaining at a protected distance. 

There is no single technical feature that makes an EOD robot effective. It is the combination of mobility, cameras, manipulation, communications and mission-specific tools working together to give the operator the capabilities needed for a particular situation. 

Technology does not resolve an EOD incident. 

Trained people do. 

Planning for the Complete Response 

We should not think about counter-UAS simply as a sequence that ends when a drone is detected, tracked and defeated. 

We should think about the complete response. 

Can we detect the drone? 

Can we identify what it is doing? 

Can we stop it? 

And then, can we safely deal with what remains? 

That last question will become increasingly important as drones become more capable, accessible and adaptable. 

Different missions will require different robotic systems. Some situations will require larger platforms with significant manipulation capabilities. Others may require smaller, rapidly deployable systems. There will not be one robot that fits every mission. 

But the objective remains the same: give operators the information and physical capability they need while keeping them as far away from the danger as reasonably possible. 

Leipzig demonstrated why that matters. 

Leipzig is a reminder that defeating an unmanned threat doesn’t necessarily eliminate it. Sometimes, it simply moves the threat from one domain to another. 

The organizations responsible for protecting critical infrastructure need to plan for that transition before it happens. 

Because the C-UAS mission may end when the drone reaches the ground, but the EOD mission may only be beginning. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Florian Gruener is Managing Director of Telerob GmbH and leads AV’s Unmanned Ground Vehicle product line. He has worked in the unmanned ground systems industry for many years, supporting military, law enforcement and public safety customers worldwide. 

JOIN THE AV MISSION  

AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed. The best of the best.  

We don’t just build defense technology—we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., AV delivers breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From AI-powered drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve.  

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul B. MacCready, Jr., AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next.  

If you’re ready to build technology that matters—with speed, scale, and purpose—there’s no better place to do it than AV.  

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Thought Leadership

The Laser’s Radar Moment: Changing the Economics of Air Defense

09/03/2026

By Mary Clum, President of Space, Cyber and Directed Energy, AV 

Every generation sees a small number of technologies move into military force structure and fundamentally change the dynamics of warfare. 

Radar did it. 

Uncrewed and autonomous aircraft did it. 

Now, high-energy lasers are doing it. 

This week’s announcement that the United States Army has selected AV’s LOCUST® laser weapon system for its Enduring-High Energy Laser (E-HEL) program is a significant moment in American history.  

The selection represents the first-ever production contract for directed energy systems in United States history, signaling a historic transition from prototype to production for laser weapon systems.  

After decades of research, development and demonstration, lasers are ready to become part of how we defend the force and they have arrived at exactly the moment we need them. 

We Have a Magazine Problem 

The proliferation of inexpensive drones has fundamentally changed the economics of warfare. 

An adversary no longer needs an exquisite aircraft or sophisticated missile to create a significant threat. Increasingly capable unmanned systems can be produced inexpensively and employed in large numbers, forcing defenders to respond again and again. 

At the same time, recent conflicts have underscored the importance, and limits, of our inventories of sophisticated interceptors. Those weapons remain essential, but they are expensive, take time to manufacture and exist in finite quantities. 

That creates an equation we cannot ignore. 

We cannot afford to routinely expend scarce, high-value interceptors against every low-cost drone launched by our adversaries. 

We need to change the dynamics of the engagement. 

High-energy lasers can help do exactly that. 

Thin the Herd. Preserve the Magazine. 

The power of directed energy is not that a laser replaces every missile, gun or electronic-warfare system. 

It is that it changes what those systems have to fight. 

Think about a large group of unmanned aircraft systems approaching a defended position. Today, the defender may have to make difficult choices about when to employ finite kinetic weapons and against which targets. 

Now, introduce high-energy lasers into that defensive architecture. 

The laser can engage appropriate threats repeatedly at the speed of light without consuming a traditional munition with every shot. Combined with electronic warfare and other counter-UAS effects, directed energy can thin the herd before the remaining threats reach the layers where scarce kinetic interceptors are required. 

That changes the battle. 

If lasers and other lower-cost effects can defeat a meaningful portion of an incoming raid, commanders can preserve missiles for the sophisticated, hardened or time-critical threats that truly require them. 

In a world where magazine depth matters as much as individual weapon performance, that is a profound advantage. 

It is also why the right comparison isn’t laser versus missile. 

The future is laser plus electronic warfare plus guns plus missiles, connected through sensors and command and control. 

The objective is simple: use the most appropriate and affordable effect first and preserve the most capable, and scarce, effects for when they are needed most. 

From Radar to Autonomy to Directed Energy 

There is an important historical precedent for what is happening. 

Radar transformed air defense not simply because it could detect an aircraft. Its real impact came when radar entered the force and became part of an integrated architecture connecting sensors, command and control, aircraft and weapons. 

Decades later, unmanned aircraft followed a similar trajectory. 

Their transformational moment wasn’t the first unmanned flight. It came when unmanned systems moved into military operations at scale. Today, increasingly autonomous aircraft have changed how militaries sense, target and fight. Inexpensive drones are changing the economics of warfare itself. 

Directed energy has now reached its own inflection point. 

The historic milestone is no longer proving that a laser can destroy a drone. 

We have proven that. 

The historic milestone is bringing lasers into the force structure and making them an enduring part of the architecture of air defense. 

Lasers Are Ready 

For decades, directed-energy programs were judged primarily on laser power and whether they could destroy a target under controlled conditions. 

That is no longer the standard that matters. 

A weapon has to work for the warfighter and it has to answer these questions before it can be truly operational at scale. 

  • Can soldiers operate it?  
  • Can it detect, track and defeat relevant threats?  
  • Can it perform outside the laboratory?  
  • Can it integrate with existing sensors and command and control?  
  • Can it operate across different platforms?  
  • Can industry manufacture and sustain it at scale? 

Those are the thresholds separating promising technology from an operational weapon system. 

They are also the thresholds AV has been working to cross with LOCUST. 

We have proven LOCUST across fixed-site, mobile and maritime environments. 

We rolled a palletized LOCUST system aboard the USS George H.W. Bush, powered it from the ship and we trained sailors to use it. After less than an hour of training, those sailors shot down 100-percent of the target presented during the demonstration. 

We took LOCUST to White Sands Missile Range and conducted a counter-UAS laser engagement in coordination with the Department of War and Federal Aviation Administration in complex national airspace. That led to a DOW-FAA agreement that established how lasers can deployed safely and predictably in domestic airspace.   

These were more than demonstrations of physics. They were demonstrations that prove the viability of lasers, specifically our LOCUST, for use at scale. 

Scaling the Industrial Base 

Introducing a new class of weapon into the force creates another responsibility: America must be able to build it at scale. 

Technology without production capacity does not create deterrence. 

That is why AV has invested ahead of the requirement. 

We are investing more than $30 million to expand our Albuquerque, New Mexico, manufacturing operations, including the facilities where LOCUST is produced.  The investment will further establish a vertically integrated, next-generation manufacturing campus expected to generate more than $670 million in economic impact over the next 10 years, boost production of mission-critical defense and space technologies, create more than 450 high-wage jobs, and enable AV to scale domestic production of directed energy systems and space-grade components that support national security and resilient supply chains. 

We didn’t invest simply to prove that another laser could work. 

We invested to build a weapon system that can be produced, fielded and scaled. 

That distinction matters.  

Recent conflicts have reminded us that America’s technological advantage must be matched by industrial capacity. We need both exquisite capabilities and the ability to produce sufficient quantities of the systems that protect our forces. 

Directed energy can contribute to that equation from both sides: expanding defensive magazine depth while preserving the kinetic inventory we already have. 

A New Air-Defense Equation 

Transformational technologies rarely eliminate what came before them. 

Radar didn’t eliminate pilots. 

Autonomous aircraft haven’t eliminated crewed aircraft. 

And lasers will not eliminate missiles, guns or electronic warfare. 

They change the architecture around them. 

Radar changed how we see. 

Autonomy changed how we sense and operate at scale. 

Directed energy changes the economics of how we defend. 

That may ultimately be the most important contribution of laser weapons. 

In an era of mass, autonomous threats and constrained interceptor inventories, victory will not simply go to the side with the most sophisticated individual weapon. It will increasingly depend on which side can generate and sustain combat power longer. 

Lasers give the defender something fundamentally different: the ability to repeatedly remove threats without depleting a traditional magazine with every engagement. 

Thin the herd with directed energy. Preserve kinetic weapons for the threats that require them. Give commanders greater magazine depth and more choices. 

For decades, laser weapons represented the future. 

Now they are ready for the force—and they can change the dynamics of air defense. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Mary Clum is President of Space, Cyber & Directed Energy at AV, bringing more than 25 years of leadership and operational experience across the defense, space, and technology sectors. Her career spans program management, systems analysis, operations, business development, and the development and delivery of highly technical products supporting the Department of War, Department of Energy, and other national security customers. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of New Mexico and an MS in Project Management from the University of Southern California. 

—— 

ABOUT AV — JOINING THE MISSION 

AeroVironment (AV) is a defense technology company with a mission to invent and deliver advantage to U.S. and allied militaries. AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed.  

AV doesn’t just build defense technology; we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., we deliver breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From autonomy-enabled drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve. 

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul MacCready, AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters – with speed, scale, and purpose – come find your people.  

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Thought Leadership

Stop Defending One Door. Start Defending the Whole Building.

08/24/2026

By Paul Webber, Director, Strategic Initiatives, Advanced Defense Solutions, AV 

There is a moment that is becoming increasingly common for operators. 

The sky gets busy. Alerts stack up. Tracks multiply. Radios get louder. Somebody says, “Just keep it moving,” which is not a strategy. It is a reaction to a symptom. 

In that moment, nobody is really asking, “Can we intercept a drone?” 

The real question is, “Can we get ahead?” 

That is what modern unmanned aircraft system, or UAS, threats do best. They do not need to be perfect. They just need to be numerous, fast, persistent, and cheap enough to push a defense past its carrying capacity.  

Once that happens, the attacker is no longer trying to beat your interceptor. They are trying to beat your decision loop. 

I’ve spent most of my career working with people whose job is to keep bad things from happening to Americans. For the past several years, I’ve architected counter-drone (C-UAS) solutions at AV and I’m watching the threat continue to move faster and scale wider while putting unprecedented strain on defenses both domestic and worldwide. 

In Part one of this series I’m authoring, I framed the problem as an S-curve mismatch: legacy air defense architectures built for a different threat regime, now stressed by UAS operating at scale, tempo, and decision-compressing speed. 

Part two is about the path to a solution: not a single sensor, not another screen, and not a big-bang leap to autonomy. The answer, I believe, is a phased, distributed architecture that increases defensive carrying capacity without overwhelming operators. 

At AV, I’m part of a team that is making that path real through testing with an important milestone upcoming as we deploy our layered defense product known as Halo_Shield™ at GrandSKY in Grand Forks, North Dakota, one of the nation’s premier unmanned aircraft systems research and testing hubs.  

GrandSKY is the right kind of environment for this work: operationally relevant, adjacent to Grand Forks Air Force Base, deeply tied to unmanned aircraft system research and testing, and complex enough to expose whether a layered counter-UAS architecture can move from concept to implementation. 

GrandSKY is not just a demonstration site. It is a proving ground for how Halo_Shield can grow from an initial tile into a scalable, distributed shield over time. 

The goal is not just to defend GrandSKY. The goal is to show how a critical asset location can evolve from an initial protective footprint into a distributed, layered shield that can be adapted for military installations, research facilities, airports, seaports, borders, power grids, energy sites, data centers, and other critical infrastructure. 

MAYA Applied to Counter-UAS 

MAYA, Most Advanced Yet Acceptable, is not a branding exercise.  

Applied to C-UAS, MAYA means being advanced enough to compress the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) against scale and speed, while still acceptable enough to fit real operator workflows, rules of engagement constraints, and integration realities. 

In counter-UAS, it is the difference between a capability that looks impressive in a briefing and one an operator will actually use when the sky gets busy. 

It’s more than “Just keep it moving.” 

MAYA keeps the solution path honest by forcing three questions: 

  • Can we field a solution now without breaking existing workflows? 
  • Can we grow the solution without rewriting the system every time we add a sensor or effector? 
  • Can we trust the solution under load, when timelines collapse and operators are attention-limited? 

That is why the path has to be fielding a solution that is incremental.  

You do not jump from manual control to full autonomy in one leap. You earn trust in phases. Each phase should be measurable, explainable, and operationally useful on its own. 

Phase One of deploying Halo_Shield at GrandSKY allows for that trust to grow, beginning with a Terrestrial Tile-driven configuration focused on detection, tracking, identification, and defeat of small UAS threats, while also establishing initial Left-of-Launch detection and a focused ARGUS™ perimeter defense footprint.  

This phase is advanced but not abstract. It is designed to show what can be fielded, measured, improved, and expanded. 

What Distributed Defense Looks Like in Practice 

Traditional point defense concentrates sensors and effectors in one location and runs the mitigation cycle from that single position. It is a valid construct, but it comes with hard ceilings: finite magazine depth, finite operator bandwidth, limited coverage geometry, and a natural pull toward centralized decisions that can make the system itself the bottleneck. 

Distributed defense does not concentrate capacity. It multiplies it. 

Halo_Shield is built around mission-specific, purpose-built Tiles: Sentinel, Terrestrial, Nautical, Aerial, and Celestial. Each Tile is a defined operational area where sensors, effectors, software, and command-and-control workflows are configured around a mission, terrain, asset, and threat profile. 

In Phase One of deployment at GrandSKY, the first step is the Terrestrial Tile. That configuration integrates AV_Halo™ COMMAND for layered battle management and command and control (C2), while remaining compatible with peer and higher-echelon battle management command and control (BMC2) platforms. It brings together: 

  • TITAN®-SV MPV3 — C-UAS RF detection  
  • ARGUS™ — perimeter security and ground-domain awareness  
  • Passive radar — non-emitting detection and tracking of airborne targets  
  • Acoustic sensors — passive detection and cueing based on aircraft signatures  
  • EO/IR — visual confirmation, classification, identification, and precision tracking  
  • TITAN® — C-UAS RF detection and defeat  
  • AV_Halo™ COMMAND — battle management C2 that fuses these sensor inputs into a common operating picture and enables automated edge responses  
  • — along with additional AV and OEM partner capabilities. 

The practical effect is straightforward: distributed, multi-modal sensing extends detection and tracking, improves identification and situational awareness, and creates multiple opportunities to detect the same threat before it reaches the defended asset. RF, passive radar, acoustic, and EO/IR sensors provide complementary views of the battlespace, while AV_Halo COMMAND correlates those inputs into a common track picture. A predominantly passive sensor posture also allows the system to maintain persistent awareness while minimizing emissions and reducing the likelihood that the defensive architecture becomes an obvious target itself. 

Point defense is a single strong door.  

AV’s Halo_Shield is the perimeter, the hallway, the cameras, the listening posts, the lighting, the locks, and the guards moving through the building. You still want the strong door. You just do not want your first indication of a threat to be the sound of the doorframe cracking. 

At GrandSKY, the objective is not simply to defend the front door. It is to create multiple layers of awareness and response throughout the entire building. 

A New Mitigation Cycle for a New Threat Curve 

Distributed defense also requires updating the targeting methodology. The legacy cycle — Detect, Track, Identify, Process, Engage — was built around individual engagements. 

The distributed cycle is built for throughput: 

Place → Sense → Find → Fix → Pair → Engage → Assess 

This shift is not cosmetic. It changes how you scale. 

Place creates capacity. Coverage is designed, not assumed. 

Sense, Find, and Fix build confidence early and reduce downstream uncertainty. 

Pair preserves resources by matching the right effector to the right threat at the right time. 

Engage and Assess close the loop fast enough to handle the next track, the next axis, and the next wave. 

This is where GrandSKY becomes more than an installation. It becomes an operational test of whether a modular architecture can reduce operator workload, validate advanced planning and engagement tools, and support coordinated response in a realistic environment. 

The legacy cycle optimizes for the single shot. The distributed cycle optimizes for sustained throughput under pressure. 

The Phased Maturity Model, Building Trust 

The solution path for counter-UAS leaders is not “autonomy now.”  

It is staged maturity that builds confidence, capability, and trust over time. 

Phase 1: Auto-cue 

Auto-cue speeds Observe and Orient without changing the fundamentals of control. The solution architecture cues higher-fidelity sensors based on initial detections. Operators retain ownership of identification and engagement decisions. 

This is a natural fit for GrandSKY Phase One. The Terrestrial Tile establishes the foundation for early detection, sensor cueing, track development, and operator confidence without forcing a leap into unfamiliar workflows. 

Phase 2: Auto-task 

Auto-task makes the network behave like a network. Sensors and workflows are coordinated across the Tile automatically. Operators stay in control of decisions, but the system reduces the manual choreography that burns time and attention. 

This is where defensive carrying capacity starts to increase without simply adding more people. The goal is not to make the operator work faster. The goal is to remove work the operator should not have to do in the first place. 

Phase 3: Recommendations 

This is where scale becomes real. The solution architecture recommends actions, particularly weapons pairing and scheduling, based on track confidence, resource availability, constraints, timing, and rules of engagement. Humans remain in charge. 

Two rules apply here: recommendations must be explainable, and they must perform under load. If the system cannot explain why it recommends a course of action, operators will not trust it. If it only performs on a quiet day, it is not ready. 

At GrandSKY, this is one of the key values of a phased approach. Initial deployment can validate sensing, tracking, and workflow performance. Later phases can add more complex effectors, additional sensors, and more advanced pairing logic once the foundation is stable. 

Phase 4: Conditional autonomy with human oversight 

When threat volume or time-of-arrival compresses beyond human-compatible tempo, the system can execute within pre-approved policy, constraints, and commander’s intent, with humans supervising and able to intervene. 

This is not humans out of the loop. It is humans above the loop. 

Autonomy should function as a relief valve, not a default setting. The goal is not to replace human judgment. It is to preserve it when the sky gets crowded. 

Phasing to the Solution 

The solution path is not a big-bang leap to autonomy. It is phased adoption that builds trust, increases throughput, and expands defensive carrying capacity over time. 

GrandSKY gives that path a real implementation environment. 

Distributed Tiles expand situational awareness and multiply capacity. The updated mitigation cycle creates room for pairing, scheduling, and rapid assessment at scale. MAYA keeps the approach grounded in what operators will actually use, leaders can actually field, and integrators can actually sustain. 

The question to carry into Part 3 is simple: 

Are you buying point solutions, or are you building a path to scale that holds up when the sky gets busy? 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Paul Webber is a retired Marine Raider and strategic advisor with over two decades of leadership, special operations, and systems analysis experience. He blends operational insight with design thinking to tackle complex defense challenges, particularly in emerging domains like C-UAS. Paul holds an MBA from the University of Georgia, an MS from the Naval Postgraduate School, maintains a Top Secret-SCI clearance, and applies a human-centered lens to technology adoption and workflow design in defense environments. 

—— 

ABOUT AV — JOINING THE MISSION 

AeroVironment (AV) is a defense technology company with a mission to invent and deliver advantage to U.S. and allied militaries. AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed.  

AV doesn’t just build defense technology; we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., we deliver breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From autonomy-enabled drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve. 

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul MacCready, AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters – with speed, scale, and purpose – come find your people.  

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Thought Leadership

From Lab to Life: How Digital Avatar Technology Is Redefining Biomedical Research

08/10/2026

By Rachel Hopton, Ph.D., Technical Program Manager at AV  

Modern warfighters operate in an environment where some of the most dangerous threats are the least visible.  

Chemical and biological agents can silently degrade lung function, trigger inflammatory cascades, and, ultimately, disrupt cognitive performance before detection is even possible. The result is a direct threat to readiness, decision-making, and mission success. 

Understanding and countering these threats remains a significant scientific challenge. Traditional approaches, such as animal studies and limited clinical trials, are often slow, costly, and fail to accurately predict how the human body responds to real-world exposures. 

In a battlespace defined by speed and uncertainty, the need is clear: faster, more predictive, human-relevant systems that accurately assess risk, anticipate outcomes, and inform protective and therapeutic decisions in real time. 

Enter nxtHealth™ mimiq:  the “Digital Avatar”.  

Imagine a system where we can grow human cells, from lungs, brains, livers, kidneys, and even our guts, inside precisely engineered chips that mimic how organs truly function, interact, and respond to threats.  

This is the promise of nxtHealth™ mimiq, an “organ-on-a-chip” technology that my colleagues and I have been advancing with the Air Force Research Laboratory 711th Human Performance Wing for the last several years.  

Our team at AV formally introduced nxtHealth mimiq to defense medical researchers, industry stakeholders and most importantly, our warfighters at the Military Health Sciences Research Symposium 2026 last week in Kissimmee, Florida.  

What we showed was a solution that the entire defense health organization can use to gain a new data-rich foundation for risk prediction, resource allocation, and strategic intervention. 

These organ-on-a-chip systems build on traditional cellular models by combining microfluidics (tiny channels for liquid flow), three dimensionality, advanced sensors, and living human cells into realistic in vitro organ models. 

Essentially, the technology mimics an organ and provides an environment where threat exposures can be simulated and observed in real time. More importantly, these systems enable faster, human-relevant insight into how chemical, biological, and environmental threats move across interconnected organ systems, overcoming the limitations of traditional research. By integrating advanced modeling and machine learning, they allow for earlier detection, predictive analysis, and more effective interventions to protect warfighter health, performance, and mission readiness.   

Now imagine connecting multiple organ chips together to create a Digital Avatar that models how the human body responds as an integrated system. Researchers can study complex exposures rapidly and safely, without placing people at risk. 

Examples of Simulating Organs 

A powerful example of our work is in partnership with the Naval Research Laboratory that combines lung, brain, liver, and kidney chips, which enables us to simulate an interconnected human organ system. Researchers introduce chemicals into the system and track how they move through the system to examine any brain cell changes that may be early indicators of cognitive impairment or toxicity.  

In this platform, we use microelectrode arrays (MEAs) and imaging to precisely monitor neuronal cellular activity. Importantly, this method generates rich data sets, which sophisticated machine learning algorithms analyze. This enables the rapid detection and prediction of abnormal neural firing patterns caused by exposure, offering a revolutionary “sentience-in-a-dish” capability. This helps us predict human performance impacts before obvious symptoms arise. 

We are also developing an “intestine-on-a-chip” in our DARPA-sponsored ADAPTER program to study traveler’s diarrhea, a leading cause of impaired combat readiness. ADAPTER chips host complex microbial communities, faithfully simulating human guts. Pathogens effects and even engineered therapeutics of live bacterial treatments (synbiotics) are tested in the chips to help down-select the best treatment candidates and dosing, including guiding the design of bioelectronic devices for on-demand interventions for deployed soldiers.  

Stakeholders in Development 

So, who would benefit from our technology development? Our suite of stakeholders includes defense medical researchers, operational planners, regulatory officials, and most importantly, our warfighters. The entire defense health organization gains a new data-rich foundation for risk prediction, resource allocation, and strategic intervention. Pharmaceutical partners, synthetic biology firms, and diagnostic innovators all stand to benefit from the rapid screening capabilities. Our advances will not only protect individuals but also shape the future of operational safety and medical science for the broader armed forces and society as a whole. 

Imagine giving warfighters access to a deployable microbial pharmacy capable of responding to harmful exposures in real time. Our technology enables us to model, test, and predict how these countermeasures will perform in the field, ensuring they are effective when they matter most.  

Why I Take Pride in This Work 

Our ability to combine microfluidics, machine learning, real-world exposure simulation, and multisystem data analytics into a Digital Avatar sets AV apart as a driver of innovation in military medical preparedness. By integrating living tissue models, real-time data acquisition, and predictive computational tools, AV is delivering a comprehensive, responsive solution that today’s complex threat landscape demands. This convergence of multidisciplinary expertise isn’t just a scientific achievement. It’s a direct and powerful answer to some of the most stubborn problems facing defense, readiness, and human health at large, problems I am proud to tackle as a scientist. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  

An Ohio native, Dr. Rachel Hopton spent over a decade on the West Coast and earned her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Oregon. Her expertise is in intestinal stem cell biology and high-resolution fluorescent microscopy. At AV, she supports the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing studying multicellular gastrointestinal systems. Outside of work, she enjoys outdoor adventures in Southern Ohio with her family. 

JOIN THE AV MISSION 

AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed. The best of the best. 

We don’t just build defense technology—we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., AV delivers breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From AI-powered drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve. 

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul B. MacCready, Jr., AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters—with speed, scale, and purpose—there’s no better place to do it than AV. 

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Thought Leadership

TWIX 2026: Proving the Power of Halo_Shield™

08/05/2026

Bryan Tisinger & Stephen Lloyd, AV 

Our team spent some valuable time at TWIX 2026, an event that brought together the U.S. Air Force, MITRE, DHS, the National Guard, and industry partners to solve real tactical problems in an operationally realistic environment at the Poinsett Electronic Combat Range, a 12,500-acre military training facility located in Wedgefield, South Carolina, near Shaw Air Force Base. 

AV’s role was to demonstrate our tile-based layered defense product known as Halo_Shield™ as well as our AI-powered software tool AV_Halo™. The assignment was to show how those tools could integrate with Air Force, Department of Homeland Security and National Guard systems but also enhance capabilities across Air Traffic Control (ATC), Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), and counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) missions. 

For AV, the event was deliberately structured as an interoperability trial. We pre‑deployed Halo_Shield in parallel with a next‑generation ground radar, with clear objectives: 

  • Define deployment requirements for future Halo_Shield sites, including GrandSky in North Dakota 
  • Collect real-world data from all sensors and actors to inform future development 
  • Demonstrate a layered, multi‑sensor/multi‑effector defense against realistic UAS threats 
  • Validate interoperability over the Air Force’s Unified Data Library (UDL) data framework 
  • Showcase integrated ATC, BVLOS, and C‑UAS operations with AV and USAF systems 
  • Distribute multi‑sensor data through emerging, government-led data sharing prototypes 

In practical terms, this meant deploying and operating sensors, effectors, communications, power systems, and AV_Halo™ COMMAND in field conditions while integrating them into a UDL-centric ecosystem of government and industry systems. 

HALO_SHIELD DEPLOYED AND FIGHTING 

The TWIX setup was not a benchtop experiment. It was a mobile, live, multi‑sensor architecture operating under range constraints, weather, and real flight activity. On the ground, the AV team deployed a full command-and-control suite, a mix of passive detection and defeat systems, acoustic panels, cameras, and supporting communications and power.  

AV’s Puma™ LE UAS served as our “blue” aircraft and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platform, while an advanced ground radar provided additional sensing. More importantly, these systems demonstrated how a layered, integrated architecture, like Halo_Shield, can deliver greater capability than any single component alone.  

This is what Halo_Shield achieved at TWIX: 

  • Layered Defense: Used overlapping sensors to detect, track and classify threats while identifying the most efficient defeat option. 
  • Central Control: Combined all offensive and defensive tools, with clear views of options, system status, and threats.  
  • Resilient, Robust Communications: Brought offensive and defensive systems into a single operating picture with clear visibility into threats, available responses, and system status. 
  • Integrated Sensors:  Fused systems with built‑in health checks, so operators know what is online and can trust the operational picture. 
  • Interoperability:  Implemented secure, standards-aligned sharing for UDL and partner specifications, so tracks, alerts, and system status were easily exchanged. 

In short, Halo_Shield didn’t just “see” the airspace. It sensed, decided, acted, and shared, behaving as a warfighting defensive architecture regardless of hardware or software of origin. 

WHAT WE LEARNED: INTEROPERABILITY, AGILITY and RESILIENCE 

Our TWIX After Action Review highlighted three big wins that validate the Halo_Shield model. 

  1. Interoperability by Design

Halo_Shield demonstrated that it could publish and consume data using common, government‑backed standards. Tracks and detections flowed between AV systems, Air Force tools, and MITRE prototypes. Simulated and live air tracks appeared where they needed to, in air traffic views, counter‑UAS views, and integrated mission displays. The key impact: Halo_Shield did not operate in isolation. It contributed meaningfully to the broader command‑and‑control picture, showing that Halo_Shield can be dropped into complex environments and still “speak the same language” as other systems. 

  1. Rapid Deployment and Field Operations

Pre-integration work ensured that, by the first day of range operations, the full system was deployed, networked, configured, and operational. Throughout the exercise, remote sensor nodes were repositioned and reconfigured with minimal downtime, demonstrating the system’s flexibility in dynamic environments. For operators focused on Agile Combat Employment (ACE) or rapid base defense, that agility is critical. Our work at TWIX demonstrated that Halo_Shield™ can be deployed quickly, adapted in the field, and restored to full operational capability with minimal maintenance, precisely the responsiveness required for modern airspace defense. 

  1. Human and System Resilience

TWIX was not a perfectly controlled environment. There were range outages, weather shifts, and evolving coordination demands. The team adapted, but more importantly so did Halo_Shield.  

One memorable moment came when the team was asked, with roughly 15 minutes’ notice, to conduct a live AV_Halo COMMAND demonstration. Despite the compressed timeline, the system successfully showcased distributed sensing and generated meaningful discussions with stakeholders. As flight paths and ingest settings changed throughout the event, the team quickly retuned acoustic coverage and sensor configurations to deliver a clearer, more compelling operational picture. That ability to rebalance sensors, displays, and data flows in real time is exactly what operators need in the field. 

No serious field event is complete without lessons learned. TWIX surfaced several areas where we are now sharpening the Halo_Shield offering. We are strengthening our tools, processes and infrastructure from practical experience. We gathered input to make Halo_Shield more plug‑and‑play and reduce setup variability, with better tuning, better sensor fusion, and more relevant performance data. We continue to refine displays and user flows so that operators can understand the picture and act quickly under pressure, even when they are new to the system. These are not theoretical improvements. They are directly traceable to TWIX, and they are now informing how we design, deploy, and operate Halo_Shield. 

LOOKING AHEAD: The Next Integrated Installation at Grand Forks, ND 

The next major milestone is our integrated installation at Grand Forks, North Dakota. There, Halo_Shield will be tested in an even more demanding, operationally aligned setting. Lessons from TWIX are already being folded into the architecture, deployment plan, and operational concepts for Grand Forks, from network design and data flows to user experience and training. 

TWIX showed what Halo_Shield can deliver when it is deployed, networked, and integrated into a live command‑and‑control fabric. The forthcoming integrated install at Grand Forks will show the next step: a more refined, resilient, and operationally aligned Halo_Shield, built on hard‑earned lessons from the range.  

We invite you to come to Grand Forks. See the sensors and effectors in place. Sit in front of the live displays as detections stream in, tracks are fused, and decisions are accelerated. Experience firsthand how Halo_Shield operates as a repeatable building block for modern airspace defense and help shape what comes next. 

About the Authors 

Bryan Tisinger is a Program Director at AV, where he leads advanced airspace management and autonomous aviation initiatives supporting defense and commercial beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations. An aerospace engineer with more than 16 years of experience spanning NASA, the Department of Defense, and the aerospace industry, he specializes in integrating scalable command-and-control technologies that enable safe, secure, and adaptable unmanned aircraft operations. Tisinger is a recognized leader in advancing next-generation airspace management and accelerating the deployment of autonomous aviation capabilities. 

Stephen Lloyd is a Senior Director, C2 & Tracking Systems at AeroVironment, where he leads development of AV_Halo for air traffic control, BVLOS drone operations and counter-UAS applications. He retired from the Federal Aviation Administration after a 40-year career, having held senior roles in air traffic operations, safety management systems and the National Airspace System. A former chair of the FAA ATO Safety Committee, he collaborated closely with the National Transportation Safety Board and later joined the Air Force Research Laboratory SkyVision GBDAA team. His contributions have been recognized with awards including the 2019 ATCA Civilian Team Award and the 2020 AUVSI Excellence Award in Technology & Innovation. 

—— 

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Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul B. MacCready, Jr., AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

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Thought Leadership

Operation Jailbreak and What Comes Next for Defense Integration

07/27/2026

Scott Bowman, Chief Technology Officer & Senior Vice President of Global Engineering

The defense industry just received an early look at its own future, and it arrived under the banner of Operation Jailbreak, a U.S. Army hackathon that brought together hundreds of engineers across our industry to expose the gaps in sharing data across systems.  

What I witnessed firsthand at Fort Carson this spring was not just another interoperability demo; it was a proof point that open architectures and published APIs are moving from talking points to hard requirements. For the defense technology industry, the message is clear: integration can no longer depend on heroic, one-off events. It has to be designed into systems from day one.  

Building the Software Bridge  

The most important thing about Operation Jailbreak is that it was, by design, a bridge-building exercise. The Army asked industry to do something that has traditionally been painful and slow: connect legacy command-and-control (C2) architectures, autonomous systems, and sensors through a common, well-documented interface.  

For this sprint, that bridge took the form of a complete, published software interface:  

  • Synchronous REST/HTTP APIs for command, configuration, and status.  
  • Asynchronous event and telemetry channels over WebSocket or publish–subscribe patterns.  
  • High-performance gRPC/Protocol Buffers for low-latency, time-sensitive data exchange.  
  • Formal specifications, including OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and Protocol Buffer definitions, that compliant platforms could consume without a closed-door integration effort.  

The AV_Halo™ COMMAND submission covered node discovery, telemetry, and flight actions across these protocol layers. During the sprint, AV_Halo COMMAND was used to connect the Switchblade® 400 from the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System – Maneuver (IBCS-M) without custom one-off integrations on either side.   

What It Signaled to Industry  

Operation Jailbreak made several points explicit. 

  • First, interoperability is now a design requirement, not a future enhancement. The Right to Integrate initiative sets the expectation that open interfaces, documented APIs, and Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) principles are prerequisites for participation, not optional differentiators.  
  • Second, the Army is shifting the burden of integration away from the warfighter and into the architecture. Army Chief Technology Officer Alex Miller has described the challenge bluntly: for too long, warfighters have been forced to serve as the integration point between disconnected systems. In an environment characterized by information overload, contested domains, and compressed decision timelines, that approach does not scale.  
  • Third, success will be measured less by the sophistication of any one system and more by how quickly that system can be integrated into a larger operational context. Army leadership has started to frame isolated, closed capabilities as a form of capability debt: impressive on their own but limiting when they cannot participate in a networked fight.  

The Army’s emerging API marketplace, and its intent to make published interfaces and MOSA compliance contractual requirements, formalize this direction. Defense software is beginning the same transition that commercial platforms made years ago: ecosystems grow around specifications, not claims of openness.  

A First Bridge, Not the End State  

It is important to recognize what Operation Jailbreak was, and what it was not. It was a focused event where government and industry deliberately built the software bridge between legacy and modern systems under a clear set of constraints and success criteria. That bridge was necessary, and it worked.  

But the long-term objective is not to hold recurring bridge-building events on every program. The objective was to encourage a different way of thinking: design future systems so that these bridges are inherent, not exceptional.   

Operation Jailbreak provided the testing ground for this new way of thinking.  Using specifications and disciplined architectures with modern APIs, integration timelines can collapse from months to days compared to traditional integrations using interface control documents (ICDs). Our own experience proved that to be true. AV achieved jailbroken status in just four days by integrating AV_Halo COMMAND’s open APIs, enabling status monitoring and high-level behavioral control from IBCS-M through AV-connected systems at the tactical edge. 

Operation Jailbreak should be remembered as the first proof point of the operating model to come, and this level of connectivity should be the expectation, not the exception.  

What Built-In Interoperability Should Look Like  

If industry gets this right, the next generation of systems will not require ad hoc software bridges to connect into the fight. Instead, they will arrive with published, machine-readable APIs covering the full functional surface area; support for multiple interface patterns aligned with real operational use cases; and security architecture designed from the outset for shared, controlled access.  

They will also include requirements and test cases tied directly to interface specifications and validated continuously, not just at milestone events. Equally important, they will be built for mixed, multi-vendor environments where collaboration is normal rather than exceptional.  

Operation Jailbreak showed what happens when engineers from different organizations work side by side with soldiers and acquisition teams to integrate real systems while solving real mission problems such as counter-UAS and battlefield data sharing. That level of transparency and shared problem-solving needs to move from rare to routine.  

The Path Ahead  

For my team here at AV, Operation Jailbreak did not force a change in direction; it validated a strategy already centered on openness, modularity, and rapid integration. AV_Halo was built around the belief that future missions will be defined by how well systems work together, not how impressive they appear in isolation.  

What Operation Jailbreak added was urgency. It clarified that the organizations that can integrate quickly, share data securely, and adapt software at operational tempo will be the ones that matter most on the modern battlefield.  

For industry, the path forward is straightforward: design for integration as a primary requirement, publish interfaces with the same rigor applied to core mission software, and recognize that value increasingly comes from how well a system plugs into the larger architecture. For government, the task is equally clear: continue pushing openness into contracts, reward architectures that reduce operator burden and integration time, and keep creating venues where real systems can be integrated, tested, and iterated with soldiers in the loop.  

Operation Jailbreak showed that when the right people, architectures, and incentives come together, the integration problem looks less like a barrier and more like a solvable engineering task. The next challenge is to make that solvable task the new normal rather than a once-a-year event. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  

Scott Bowman is AV’s Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Engineering, leading the company’s technical strategy and engineering organization. With more than 18 years of experience, he specializes in robotics, autonomous systems, software, RF systems, and open architecture technologies that enable interoperable, mission-ready uncrewed systems for defense customers. 

JOIN THE AV MISSION 

AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed. The best of the best. 

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Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul B. MacCready, Jr., AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters—with speed, scale, and purpose—there’s no better place to do it than AV. 

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Thought Leadership

2nd Marine Regiment Tests First-Ever Group 3 UAS Capabilities at the Conventional Level

07/22/2026

Posted to DVIDS

07.17.2026

Story by Sgt. Alexis French 

2nd Marine Division  

MARINE CORPS AIR GROUND COMBAT CENTER TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. – Amidst the remote sands and sweltering heat of the California desert, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, embarks on the U.S. Marine Corps’ pioneer test of the JUMP 20-X equipped with the Switchblade 300 Block 20 at the conventional level during Service Level Training Exercise 4-26.

JUMP 20-X is a Group 3 unmanned aircraft system possessing capabilities of 12 hours in-air flight time, electro-optical infrared camera payloads, a 115-mile operational range, and up to 30-pounds of payload capacity—leading to one of Jump 20-X’s biggest assets: the Switchblade 300 Block 20, a loitering munition released from the undercarriage of the JUMP 20-X.

On July 16th and 17th, 2nd Marines experimented JUMP 20-X equipped with the Switchblade 300 Block 20 munition alongside developer, AeroVironment. In a groundbreaking success for the regiment, they accurately engaged a target 25 kilometers into the battlespace.

“[Switchblade 300 Block 20] can be launched, go into a holding pattern as you look for your adversary and you can directly fly some organic precision fires that are tube launched from Marines on the ground,” said CWO2 Christopher Leone, the 2nd Marine Regiment intel operations and fusion officer; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tactical controller. “For the JUMP 20-X experiment that we’re doing, AeroVironment has tested its capabilities to launch that same ground loitering munition from the belly of the bird itself.”

Incorporating the Switchblade 300 Block 20 into the battlefield gives the Marine Corps an additional loitering munition that organically incorporates with troops on the ground–similar to Organic Precision Fires-Light that is currently used by infantry units–and provides fires at the regiment level to engage the adversary.

“We at 2nd Marines are the first ones testing a Group 3 asset at the Regimental level,” Leone said. “[The Marine Corps has] the Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadrons 1, 2, and 3 that fly the MQ-9s in the Group 5 level of assets, but it would be great for the Regiment because we’re outside of the [air] wings. We’re supporting the Ground Combat Element that doesn’t have an asset that can fly as far as the Group 5, so this is something that hasn’t been tested before.”

2nd Marines realizes the positive impact this Group 3 asset will have in future operations as it provides capabilities not found in the Marine Corps’ other assets.

2nd Marine Regiment has only USMC Group 1 Program of Record in their arsenal to include the Puma AE, and quadcopters such as SkyDio X2D and Sky Raider, stated Leone.

With Group 1 assets having small duration flight times ranging from 30 minutes to an hour and a half and limited flight distance, the JUMP 20-X stands out for its longevity and ability to travel miles into deep battlespace.

“[JUMP 20-X] is big for us, and to fly it into the regimental deep space as we’re looking to shape fires in the environment for our battalions to keep moving towards the next objective–none of our current PORs that are Group 1 would be able to go that far,” Leone said. JUMP 20-X is a product of AeroVironment, who is also the producer of the Marine Corps’ Puma AE. Having that working relationship with the company, 2nd Marines reached out in February of this year, interested in their Group 3 capabilities.

“As the [2nd Marine] Regiment, this is the first conventional unit to at least test and do a combat research and development agreement with AeroVironment,” Leone said, referring to the predominant units working with AeroVironment being special forces across the Department of War. “We invited AeroVironment out here for our mid-planning conference, all in support of SLTE 4-26, and they agreed upon it and are in direct support of the regiment to give us this capability.”

As of now, 2nd Marines does not have any Small Unmanned Aircraft System Operators, MOS 7316, who have the training to fly Group 3 assets.

We’re trying to fix the lack of pilots for Group 3 through this week’s testing, experimentation and research, Leone said. Currently, MOS 7300 Marines fly the Group 2 Stalker and Group 5 assets.

Through learning side-by-side with AeroVironment contractors, who operate JUMP 20-X for the Marines at SLTE 4-26, 2nd Marines is confident that with their support through MDMX and MWX force-on-force later this August, they’ll be ahead of the curve in targeting the adversary–advancing the Marine Corps’ future of UAS capabilities deep into the ever-changing battlefield.

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Demystifying Directed Energy Starts at the Trigger

07/21/2026

Aaron Westman, Senior Director of Business Development at AV 

In his April 2026 comments to the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made an important point about directed energy.  

“The Department must reform its procurement processes, warfighting tactics, and policy limitations to ‘demystify’ Directed Energy weapons and facilitate their integration into the force structure,” he said. 

The recently reported directed energy demonstration at White Sands Missile Range shows that strategy starting to take share in real time. During the event, Secretary Hegseth took the controls of AV’s LOCUST® laser weapon system and defeated a drone within minutes after a brief introduction to the system. 

By directly participating in this kind of testing, Secretary Hegseth is doing more than observing another defense technology demonstration. He is helping demystify a class of weapons that many people still treat as futuristic, exotic, or experimental. For those of us who have spent years in this field, that matters. 

It also tells us something important about the weapon itself. 

Traditional air defense tests, especially kinetic interceptors, are rarely hands-on events for senior leaders.  

I’ve been a part of many of these events over the years and they are usually tense, highly choreographed, heavily instrumented exercises. Control rooms fill with engineers, range safety personnel, test directors, operators, telemetry specialists, and program officials.  

Everyone knows the stakes.  

A target is launched. Radars acquire it. Fire-control systems calculate firing solutions. An interceptor leaves the rail. Then everyone waits to see what happened. 

Senior leaders may attend. They may receive the briefing. They may watch the screens. But they usually do not pull the trigger. 

That is not a criticism of kinetic interceptors. It is the nature of the weapon.  

A missile shot is expensive, range-constrained, safety-intensive, and largely irreversible once launched. Before the test ever begins, there are extensive plans made around a potential misfire, a malfunction, or a debris event. The entire environment reflects the complexity and risk of putting a guided projectile into the air at high speed. 

What happened recently at White Sands, where AV’s LOCUST directed energy laser weapon system was fired by senior Pentagon officials, including Hegseth, represents a different paradigm. 

With directed energy, particularly AV’s LOCUST, senior leaders are not just watching an abstract engagement unfold on a screen. They can see the system. They can understand the engagement sequence. In some cases, they can directly participate in the act of operating the weapon by manipulating an intuitive XBOX™ gaming controller.  

Seamless integration of automation and artificial intelligence algorithms effortlessly guides the user’s hand to snap to the target. That is profoundly different from the traditional air defense test environment. 

And when you think about the drone threat, that difference matters. 

The unmanned aircraft threat is not terrifying because every drone is sophisticated. It is terrifying because so many are not. Commercially available drones are cheap, accessible, adaptable, and increasingly lethal in the hands of hostile actors. They do not require deep pockets, years of training, or a traditional defense industrial base to acquire and employ. 

That reality changes the problem. 

A threat that is cheap, numerous, and easy to use cannot be defeated only by systems that are expensive, scarce, and difficult to employ at scale. The countermeasure has to match the character of the threat. It has to be affordable. It has to be repeatable. It has to be trainable. It has to be safe enough to use in complex environments. And it has to be available when the next drone appears, not just when the magazine has been reloaded. 

That is where laser weapons, particularly AV’s LOCUST, are different. 

A directed energy laser weapon is technically sophisticated, but the engagement can be operationally intuitive. The system tracks the target. Engagement safety zones are tightly managed. The beam is precisely pointed. The effect is delivered at the speed of light. If the operator needs to engage again, the weapon can fire again. There is no interceptor to reload after every shot and no missile debris field to manage in the same way. 

These properties make laser weapons what I like to refer to as “unusually usable” for the C-UAS mission.  

And usability matters. 

It matters for training. It matters for confidence. It matters for safety. It matters for sustainment. It matters for cost. Most importantly, it matters for scale. A weapon that can be understood, trained, and operated repeatedly is a weapon that can move out of the demonstration lane and into the hands of warfighters. 

We’ve proven LOCUST in the field numerous times, including when we rolled it onboard the USS Bush and trained sailors who then shot down 100 percent of their targets after less than an hour of training. 

Having a laser weapon that is “unusually usable” also matters to the industrial base. 

Secretary Hegseth was clear in his posture statement that the Department needs a stronger and more consistent demand signal for directed energy weapons, not just for a handful of prototypes, but for production in meaningful quantities.  

That demand signal will not emerge if senior leaders, operators, acquisition officials, and policymakers continue to treat laser weapons as exotic technologies that only specialists can understand. 

Demand comes from confidence. 

Confidence comes from seeing the weapon work. It comes from understanding how it is employed. It comes from watching operators engage targets safely and repeatedly. And in some cases, it comes from experiencing the engagement first-hand. 

That is why the image of senior leaders engaging directly with directed energy is more than a photo opportunity. It is part of the demystification process Secretary Hegseth described. The point is not that dignitaries like firing lasers. Of course they do. 

The point is that they can. 

When a system like AV’s LOCUST can be demonstrated safely, repeatedly, and credibly in front of senior defense leaders, it shows that directed energy is no longer just a technology to be explained by specialists in a control room. It is becoming a weapon that operators can understand by using. 

For counter-UAS missions, that is exactly what the moment requires. 

The drone threat is scaling. The demand signal for directed energy has to scale with it. And before the Department can buy laser weapons in meaningful numbers, it has to become comfortable treating them not as mysteries, but as practical air defense tools. 

Demystifying directed energy does not start in a policy memo or a fancy PowerPoint slide; it starts at the trigger. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  

Aaron Westman is an engineer and leader specializing in counter-UAS and directed energy systems. He has played a key role advancing mobile laser weapon integration and operational deployment, supporting a variety of cross-domain capabilities that improve precision engagement and layered air defense. 

JOIN THE AV MISSION 

AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed. The best of the best. 

We don’t just build defense technology—we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., AV delivers breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From AI-powered drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve. 

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul B. MacCready, Jr., AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters—with speed, scale, and purpose—there’s no better place to do it than AV. 

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Thought Leadership

The New Arsenal: Biology, Manufacturing, and National Security

07/15/2026

AV’s investment in Dayton is an investment in America’s biomanufacturing future to reduce dependence on China’s critical materials 

By Lucas Beagle, Ph.D., Senior Director of Advanced Research and Development Division 

With AV’s recent announcement of its $15 million investment in the Dayton area, we’re bringing online a 46,000‑square‑foot manufacturing facility in Xenia, Ohio, dedicated to advanced biomanufacturing that will support both commercial partners and the Department of War.  

AV has been advancing breakthrough technologies in the Dayton region for more than five decades, helping pioneer biomanufacturing capabilities that produce the critical materials needed to strengthen U.S. manufacturing, secure domestic supply chains, and enhance national resilience.  

To me, this expansion facility in Dayton represents a special moment that I have been building toward ever since I was a kid growing algae in vats in my parents’ garage and making a mess. I was convinced biology could power the next generation of breakthroughs in fuels and materials. But forty years later, I’ve learned that this isn’t just science; it’s national security. 

As this facility has moved from concept to reality, its strategic importance has become increasingly clear. In a world where China dominates critical rare earth supply chains and has shown a willingness to use that position as geopolitical leverage, rebuilding domestic manufacturing capacity is no longer optional. 

That’s why biomanufacturing appears on the Department of War’s critical technology list, and why it’s central to concepts like contested logistics, producing essential materials closer to where they are needed, under more challenging conditions. AV’s Dayton‑area investment is designed to help address these national needs. 

Why Biomanufacturing, and Why Now 

Over the last several years, we’ve learned some hard lessons about supply chains. COVID-19 exposed just how fragile our industrial base can be. More recently, global events have strained critical material supplies once again. We’ve seen firsthand that the United States is grossly “under-infrastructured” when it comes to biomanufacturing capacity.  

We’ve also witnessed China’s rapid rise as a dominant force in rare earth minerals and its willingness to leverage that advantage against geopolitical rivals. Just last week, Reuters reported that China began restricting exports of rare earths and rare-earth magnet precursors (terbium, dysprosium oxide, and yttrium oxide) to Japan, a move that could disrupt Japanese manufacturers supplying critical components to global semiconductor companies, automakers, and defense contractors. 

China currently accounts for an estimated 70% of global production of rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and ytterbium. These are the very materials AV is working to produce at scale, helping reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources and strengthen the resilience of domestic supply chains. 

Industry partnerships, including the Defense Industrial Base Consortium and other public-private initiatives, are beginning to shift the landscape but significant work remains to build a secure, domestic rare earth supply chain capable of competing with China’s longstanding dominance. 

Biomanufacturing offers a fundamentally different way to produce the materials we need. We’ve used biology in production for a long time; brewing is one simple example. But we haven’t fully harnessed the power of precision fermentation: engineering microbes to produce exactly the molecules we want, at scale, and often more efficiently than traditional chemical processes can manage. As reactors get larger, the economics improve. The core challenge shifts to feeding and managing the bacteria, rather than wrestling with complex synthesis routes.  

What We’re Building in the Dayton Area 

At this new facility, we’re bringing online 1,200 liters of biomanufacturing capacity, along with matching downstream processing capabilities, and we’ve deliberately designed it for future expansion. Our goal is to reach military-relevant production volumes of key products from this site within about a year. 

We’re initially focused on three main product lines, with others in development:  

  1. Drop‑in biofuel replacement
    A biologically produced fuel designed as a drop‑in replacement for standard fuel, allowing us to integrate with existing infrastructure and platforms while reducing logistics risk.  
  1. Bio‑cementation for advanced construction
    A bacterial system capable of bio‑cementation of loose aggregate, using living systems to bind and stabilize materials. This can support construction or reinforcement of surfaces and structures in austere, resource‑constrained environments, with applications for both defense and civil infrastructure.  
  1. Proteins for rare earth element recovery
    A protein that selectively binds to individual rare earth elements in a mixture, enabling their separation and recovery. Rare earth elements are essential components of modern electronics and defense systems. Biologically enabled separation offers more flexible and potentially more sustainable recovery pathways. 

The facility is designed to serve as a higher‑throughput prototype‑level production site: a place where we can develop and prove technologies, then transition them to larger contract manufacturing organizations as demand grows, while continuing to produce meaningful quantities here in Dayton.  

Why Dayton, Why Greene County, Why Now 

We could have built this capability in a lot of places. We chose Greene County and the broader Dayton region for several reasons that go beyond proximity to Wright‑Patterson Air Force Base.  

First, this is not new ground for us. AV has had a deep commitment to Dayton and surrounding communities for roughly fifty years, building advanced materials and technologies for the government and the community at large. Over those decades, we’ve learned how to move novel materials from concept to production, and many of those lessons translate directly into biomanufacturing.  

Second, the Dayton region is logistically and structurally ideal. The Midwest is hard to beat when it comes to feedstock availability, transportation infrastructure, and space to build. Here, we have access to I‑70 and I‑75, rail, and water, everything you need to move inputs and products efficiently. We’re already seeing large‑scale fermentation facilities planned just across the border in Indiana, and we believe Ohio is still an under‑tapped opportunity in the broader bioeconomy.  

Third, the talent and ecosystem are here. The region has a highly trained workforce and a growing base of technical and industrial expertise. Proximity to Wright‑Patterson Air Force Base matters, but just as important is the broader ecosystem of engineers, scientists, manufacturers, and community partners that will help this facility succeed.  

This is not a one-time investment. We are working closely with local communities to grow a sustainable talent pipeline that supports the region’s long-term economic growth. 

This new facility will create 200 permanent jobs and an estimated $28 million per year in economic impact to the Beavercreek-Dayton region. 

Our partnerships with the University of Dayton, Wright State University, and Sinclair Community College are creating internship and workforce development programs that give students hands-on experience in advanced manufacturing, biomanufacturing, and materials science before transitioning into full-time careers. 

We are also investing in the next generation by partnering with local high schools to increase awareness of advanced manufacturing careers and inspire students to pursue opportunities in STEM and the skilled trades. Programs like DaytonMADE (Dayton bioManufacturing Awareness and Discovery Experience), our free immersive summer camp held at Wright State University designed to introduce local high school students to biotechnology and biomanufacturing. 

Years in the Making 

This project is the result of four to five years of sustained effort, not a recent pivot to a trending topic. Long before biomanufacturing was in the spotlight, we were traveling to Washington, D.C., and working with congressional representatives in the Dayton area to explain what biomanufacturing is, why it matters for our nation’s resilience, and why our team at AV is uniquely positioned to lead.  

We’ve had strong support from leaders including Congressman Mike Turner, and representatives at the county, state, and federal levels, as well as engagement from other states. Those conversations have been constructive and ongoing, helping build the policy and funding environment needed to make facilities like this possible.  

Looking Ahead 

We expect production to begin within the next year, with the first economic and employment impacts becoming visible over that same period. The 200 positions we’ve announced are permanent roles in the Beavercreek/Xenia area, not just temporary construction jobs, and we’ve designed the facility with expansion in mind.  

For me, personally, this is the culmination of a long‑held vision: using biology to produce fuels and materials in ways that are more resilient, more flexible, and better aligned with the nation’s strategic needs. If I could talk to that younger version of myself tending algae vats in the garage, I’d tell him two things: use better containers and keep going. The technology needed time to mature and so did the need for it. 

That moment is here now, and Dayton is at the center of it. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Dr. Lucas K. Beagle is a scientist and leader specializing in materials science, technology transition and biomanufacturing. He has played a key role in advancing and onboarding biomanufacturing capabilities and pipelining new technologies from AV’s fundamental research into innovative defense-focused products. 

JOIN THE AV MISSION 

AV isn’t for everyone. We hire the curious, the relentless, the mission-obsessed. The best of the best. 

We don’t just build defense technology—we redefine what’s possible. As the premier autonomous systems company in the U.S., AV delivers breakthrough capabilities across air, land, sea, space, and cyber. From AI-powered drones and loitering munitions to integrated autonomy and space resilience, our technologies shape the future of warfare and protect those who serve. 

Founded by legendary innovator Dr. Paul B. MacCready, Jr., AV has spent over 50 years pushing the boundaries of what unmanned systems can do. Our heritage includes seven platforms in the Smithsonian—but we’re not building history, we’re building what’s next. 

If you’re ready to build technology that matters—with speed, scale, and purpose—there’s no better place to do it than AV. 

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Thought Leadership

NATO’s Next C-UAS Challenge: Orchestrating the Alliance’s Defense Network

06/15/2026

By Zach George, Director of Business Development, C-UAS, AV Europe 

Over the past decade working in counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) across Europe, I have watched NATO nations make significant investments in radars, electronic warfare systems, kinetic interceptors, command and control networks, and advanced detection technologies to counter the growing drone threat. 

The Alliance has made tremendous progress. 

What I am seeing today is not a procurement challenge. 

It is an integration challenge. 

NATO nations have spent years acquiring world-class sensors and effectors. The next step is connecting those capabilities into a unified architecture capable of detecting, identifying, tracking, and defeating threats at operational speed. The war in Ukraine has highlighted this ability as critical.  

That challenge reminds me of a world-class kitchen. 

You can buy the finest ingredients, the best cookware, and the most advanced appliances available. None of that guarantees a great meal. 

What matters is orchestration. 

Someone has to bring everything together at the right time, in the right sequence, and for the right purpose. The meal needs a chef. 

C_UAS defense is no different. 

The Alliance already possesses many of the ingredients required for effective air defense. The challenge is ensuring they operate as a coordinated system rather than a collection of independent tools. 

That is exactly why AV developed Halo_Shield™. 

Halo_Shield is not another sensor or another interceptor. Designed from the hard-earned lessons and operational truths from Ukraine, it is the orchestration layer that connects sensors, effectors, operators, and command systems into a unified C-UAS architecture. It simplifies deployment, improves interoperability, and helps operators make faster, more informed decisions across increasingly complex environments. It is also a distributed layered defense, which enhances its autonomy and resiliency.  

As NATO strengthens its defenses against emerging drone threats, three operational realities are becoming increasingly clear: 

  • Civil and military systems must work together. 
  • Nations must win the cost exchange. 
  • Operators need more time to make decisions. 

Halo_Shield was built with those realities in mind. 

CONNECTING CIVIL AND MILITARY DEFENSE 

The drone threat does not recognize organizational boundaries, as seen in Ukraine and now in the Middle East. 

A drone targeting a military installation may transit commercial airspace, pass over civilian infrastructure, or threaten critical services that support both military and civilian populations. Across Europe, the first line of defense often includes private infrastructure operators, law enforcement agencies, border security organizations, and national militaries. 

During a crisis, these organizations must operate as one network, not as separate systems. 

Many NATO nations continue to face challenges integrating civil, commercial, and military capabilities into a common operational picture. 

Halo_Shield addresses this challenge through a modular, open architecture designed to connect disparate sensors, effectors, and command systems into a unified framework. Through AV_Halo™ COMMAND, military forces can rapidly integrate with existing national infrastructure, air traffic systems, and partner networks to create a more comprehensive and responsive defense architecture. 

The result is faster coordination, greater interoperability, and a stronger forward line of defense. 

WINNING THE COST EXCHANGE 

Drone warfare is not only a military challenge. It is an economic one that our NATO allies are witnessing being played out during the war in Ukraine and other conflicts. 

Many UAS can be fielded at relatively low cost. Defending against every threat with expensive interceptors alone is not sustainable during prolonged operations. These ‘swarms’ can and have overwhelmed point-based defenses. 

Halo_Shield helps operators make smarter engagement decisions by continuously evaluating available response options based on threat characteristics, engagement geometry, inventory levels, and mission priorities.  

The Terrestrial and Sentinel tiles integrate kinetic interceptors, electronic warfare capabilities, RF countermeasures, acoustic sensor, passive radar such as AV’s Titan® C-UAS platform, and directed energy solutions such as AV’s LOCUST® laser weapon system into a single decision framework and in a repeatable deployment pattern. 

A skilled chef knows when to use premium ingredients and when a simpler option will achieve the same result. So does Halo_Shield. It helps operators apply the right capability to the right threat at the right time, right-sizing the effect to the threat. 

THE RACE AGAINST TIME 

Every second matters in C-UAS defense. 

The earlier a threat is detected and understood, the more options operators have to respond successfully, also known as the “elongation of the kill chain.” 

This is where Halo_Shield extends beyond traditional C-UAS architectures. 

The CELESTIAL Tile provides wide-area intelligence that can identify threat staging, deployment, and launch activity well beyond the defended perimeter, creating earlier warning and additional decision space for operators. 

The AERIAL Tile extends sensing vertically, providing elevated coverage that fills gaps, improves track quality, and increases awareness across complex terrain and threat corridors. 

Together, these capabilities help move detection and decision-making further left, extending and automating the kill chain, giving our NATO allies more time to act before threats reach critical assets. 

THE HEAT IS ON 

NATO’s C-UAS challenge is no longer defined by a lack of technology. 

The Alliance already fields some of the world’s most capable sensors, effectors, and command systems. It continues to invest heavily in the technologies needed to counter increasingly sophisticated drone threats. 

The challenge now is integration.  

Success will depend on how effectively NATO can connect those sovereign capabilities across national borders, military services, and civil authorities to create a layered, scalable, and interoperable defense architecture. It is doing so at the operational and theater level with air defense, but now tactical C-UAS integration is needed. 

That is the role Halo_Shield was built to play. Ready to be validated at the NATO edge. 

Because the future of C-UAS defense will not be determined by who has the most ingredients. 

It will be determined by who can bring them together fastest when the mission demands it, with the flexibility to adapt to a changing threat and incorporate new technologies at the speed of relevance.  

And that is why NATO needs a counter-drone orchestration layer as much as it needs another sensor or interceptor. It needs the right pairing and balance.  

It needs Halo Shield.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Zach George is Director of Business Development for Counter-Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (C-UAS ) at AV Europe. A recognized expert in electronic warfare, air defense, and C-UAS operations, he has spent more than a decade working with military and defense organizations across Europe on integrated air and missile defense challenges. A transatlantic defense professional, Zach lives and works in Europe and continues to serve in the U.S. Naval Reserve, supporting missions throughout the European theater. He holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from American University and a Bachelor’s degree from Auburn University. He speaks English and German and is an avid sailor and skier. 

 

 

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