This Week in Dual-Use

NEWS

Ukraine shoots down Shahed from USV

Ukraine's 412th Brigade has shot down a Russian Shahed drone using an interceptor launched from a USV, marking the first recorded instance of a sea-launched drone intercept in this war.

This is a combination of two platforms that, until recently, operated independently. A USV, operating autonomously at sea detected an incoming Shahed and launched an interceptor to destroy it. The vessel and the drone together constituted a single integrated air defence system.

Ukraine has been at this longer than anyone. It was first to use USVs to strike warships. And first to use underwater drones against a submarine. Now first to use a USV as a launch platform for drone interception at sea.

Each of these firsts has followed the same pattern: a cheap, expendable platform doing something that used to require an expensive, crewed one.

The tactical implications are straightforward. Russia fires Shaheds in large numbers, often at night, relying on volume to overwhelm defences. Ukraine's layered response has historically depended on ground-based air defence, FPV interceptors, and electronic warfare. Adding a maritime layer, one that can be positioned far from shore and requires no permanent infrastructure, makes the problem significantly harder for Russia.

At a strategic level, Ukraine has already begun marketing its maritime expertise to Middle Eastern partners whose critical infrastructure faces similar threats. This model does not require the industrial base of a major naval power. That makes it eminently exportable.

France runs out of missiles

France is stepping up missile production after operations against Iran burned through its stockpiles faster than anticipated. A single air defence engagement required roughly 80 MICA missiles to intercept incoming Iranian Shahed drones. Each MICA costs around €1-2M.

Under a new military planning law, France will increase loitering munitions inventories by 400%, AASM Hammer guided bombs by 240%, and Aster and MICA missiles by 30%, backed by €8.5B in dedicated funding.

This is a story Europe keeps living. Ukraine drained stockpiles that NATO had spent decades accumulating. The Middle East is doing the same thing, faster. Western nations have been building weapons for the wars they imagine, then find themselves in wars they didn't.

The underlying problem is structural. Western defence procurement is designed around peacetime production rates. The current production delay of nearly two years at MBDA, France's missile manufacturer, illustrates the gap between industrial capacity and operational demand.

Unfortunately it isn’t possible to surge output overnight. Machine tools take years to procure and skilled workers take years to train. The factory you need in 2026 required a contract in 2022.

There are a number of European and American startups looking to innovate on the current manufacturing paradigm. That feels much needed.

Oxford achieves a quantum first

Physicists at Oxford have demonstrated quadsqueezing for the first time. Using a single trapped ion, the team generated fourth-order quantum interactions that were previously considered practically unreachable.

To understand why this matters, it helps to know what squeezing is. Quantum mechanics places hard limits on how precisely certain paired properties, like position and momentum, can be measured simultaneously. Squeezing gets around this by trading precision in one property for greater precision in the other. Standard squeezing is second-order. Trisqueezing is third-order. Quadsqueezing is fourth-order, and until now it has been too weak and too easily overwhelmed by noise to observe.

This is the kind of result that does not obviously change the world on the day it is published. But the history of quantum physics is largely a history of effects that seemed esoteric until they weren't. Squeezed light was a laboratory curiosity before it became essential infrastructure for detecting gravitational waves. Entanglement was Einstein's "spooky action at a distance" before it became the foundation of quantum cryptography.

The Oxford result is significant for two reasons. First, it opens up new quantum states that were not previously accessible in practice. Second, it does so using tools already present in many quantum computing platforms, meaning the technique is portable. The team has already used it to simulate a lattice gauge theory, a class of quantum field theory with applications in everything from particle physics to materials science.

I wrote recently that the first company to produce a useful quantum computer would inherit the same pressures as Anthropic or SpaceX, becoming an unelected gatekeeper of strategically consequential capability. Research like this is a reminder of how much fundamental science still sits between the current state of the art and that moment.

FUNDRAISING

Quantware, a Dutch developer of processing chips for quantum computers, raised a €152M Series B co-led by Intel and Forward.one.

Quantum Art, an Israeli developer of trapped ion quantum computers, raised a $140M Series A led by Bedford Ridge Capital.

ANELLO Photonics, an American developer of resilient navigation technology for unmanned systems, raised an additional $25M for its Series B from Washington Harbour Partners and others.

Juno Industries, a Canadian company aiming to build Canada’s modern defence prime, raised a $12M round led by Trail Blazer Capital Corp.

Online Oceans, a British builder of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), raised a £4M round led by Seraphim Space.

Spaceflux, a British space domain awareness company, extended its seed round by £3.5m to £9m, led by Blackfinch Ventures.