Drones dominate AUSA as the Army seeks more UAS

On this week's breakout, it's Drones! Drones! Drones! at AUSA 2025. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started. The Army has several priorities that involve both unmanned aerial systems as well as counter drone options. The service wants to get more drones to more soldiers faster. It wants longer range options and even 1U solutions. And, as always, industry is showcasing its own unmanned capabilities on the AUSA show floor. We all know General Atomics with the Reaper and the Predator aircraft. Behind me, that's the Grey Eagle STOL. What sets it apart is the short takeoff and landing. It can land well within the length of a football field and also on rugged terrain. That's a big aircraft, and below it is the PELAE. PELAE stands for Precision Exportable Launched Effect. And this is a multi-mission, small UAS system. And it's a treadable, meaning that it can be sent out on a mission, but you might not necessarily see it back. And that's just part of how it's designed. Let's go see the next aircraft. And this is the EV Vision. You can see it's a little bit different. It's not a quadcopter. It doesn't have rotors. It has a propeller, and it's a fixed-wing drone. It's only 4 pounds. It's said to go on missions up to 12 miles and deliver ISR day and night. And the sensor payload is actually already on here. There are other drones that we saw on the show floor, but this one was just a company walking around. We are a company called NEARTHLAB from South Korea, and we are an autonomous drone provider. This product here is called our Kaiden solution. It is a kinetic hard kill for CUAS purposes. So whenever an enemy drone is in the air, the drone would automatically launch and ram into the enemy drone at around 250 kilometers per hour or 70 meters per second, knocking it clear out of the sky. And stick around. After the break, we'll see a new take on the Black Hawk. At Leonardo DRS, our agility helps bring the ability to dominate in any scenario on any platform, helping our warfighters accomplish the mission and get home safely. Leonardo DRS, our agility, your advantage. And behind me is a Sikorsky S-70 UAS U-Hawk from Lockheed Martin. And while it may look like a Black Hawk, this is fully autonomous and has no crew. That extra space allows for longer cargo such as missiles, as well as roll-on, roll-off cargo. It'll carry more fuel for longer missions and even launch swarms of drones for reconnaissance and attack. And all this is only a slice of the autonomous unmanned aircraft at AUSA 2025. And guess what? Breaking Defense has a lot more coverage on BreakingDefense.com. We'll see you there. Thanks for watching.