Germany is preparing to finalise a €900m contract to manufacture 12,000 kamikaze drones, in cooperation with Helsing, Stark and Rheinmetall. The contract will apparently be split equally among the three companies. The drones will be supplied to a new German brigade stationed in Lithuania, with the aim of defending NATO’s eastern flank against Russia.

Quantum Systems, a German manufacturer of surveillance drones, valued at over €3bn, announced the acquisition of Spleenlab, a German company specialising in AI perception systems.

The Royal Navy has set a two-year goal to operate a jet-powered, carrier-launched Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP), dubbed Vanquish. The plan is to launch these off Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers and eventually complement the UK’s F-35B fleet of fighter jets.

The head of UK Space Command revealed that Russia has been stalking British satellites, flying its own satellites close to them in order to collect information. It also regularly tries to jam British satellites with ground-based lasers.

Last week I covered Lockheed’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), and I have previously written about China’s wingman drones which were unveiled at its military parade three weeks ago.

China’s government has told Chinese tech companies not to buy NVIDIA’s new RTX Pro 6000D. NVIDIA launched it in the last few months specifically for the Chinese market, to comply with US export restrictions.

Hong Kong’s research labs have been restructured to align with Beijing’s national technology goals, with quantum science emerging as a central priority.

China marked 80 years since the defeat of Japan with a military parade attended by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and others. It was an opportunity for Xi Jinping to project China’s military power and demonstrate his dominance of the axis of nations in support of China.

I had a lot of feedback to last week’s rumination on AI-generated newsletters, so I have tested it out this week. The third news story is written by ChatGPT, trained to write in the style of Samuel Burrell. Going forwards, I will continue to write the content myself, not least because I enjoy doing the actual writing.

I sometimes get asked if I use AI to write this newsletter. I have tried it but find that it doesn’t quite write in my style. I have, of course, tried to teach it to be Samuel Burrell - to no avail. Perhaps GPT 6 will unlock that.

I wrote last week that OpenAI does not have an open-source model. At the time of writing, that turned out to be wrong. OpenAI had in fact just launched a set of open-source models for the first time since 2019, as well as launching GPT5.

China's AI companies have announced two new industry alliances, aiming to develop a domestic ecosystem to reduce dependence on foreign (ie American) technology.

Ukraine started a “test in Ukraine” initiative open to foreign defence companies to bring their tech and see if it works. Under the Test in Ukraine scheme, companies will send their products to Ukraine, give some online training on how to use them, then wait for Ukrainian forces to test them and send back reports.

The British Army has just released its rapid capability development Challenge Set 2025, marking a pivotal moment in UK defence innovation. This comprehensive document outlines four critical capability areas where industry partnerships can help double the Army's lethality by 2027.

Pete Hegseth released a video, posted on X, in which he announced a Pentagon memo ‘Unleashing US Military Drone Dominance’. The video featured unauthorised use of music by Metallica as a background track. Metallica then requested that he remove the music, so he was forced to delete the original video and re-upload it with no backing track.

Skyeton, a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) producer and Prevail Partners, a British defence and security company, announced a joint venture to fast-track the integration of Skyeton’s Raybird drone into UK military applications.

A consortium of Ukrainian, Nordic and eastern European companies is hoping to raise more than €100m to build a constellation of 70-plus imagery satellites that would provide intelligence along Russia’s border. It would enable them to secure direct, persistent access to high-resolution imagery without relying on American providers.

OpenAI appears to have a US DOD deal worth up to $200m. Earlier this year it created ChatGPT Gov. Now it has just launched a larger initiative - OpenAI for Government. People say that government is a late adopter of technology, but this seems in line with the rest of the market.

Echoing Ukraine’s attack on Russian airfields last week, Israel’s attack on Iran this week also appears to have used pre-positioned consumer-grade drones (as well as more traditional systems). Mossad apparently built a covert drone base in Iran and smuggled components into the country over a long time period.

In defence partnership news, the UK and the EU signed an expansive new agreement to deepen security and defence cooperation across a broad range of areas.