The change in the drills comes as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visits South Korea on Wednesday and Thursday for regional security talks expected to cover developments on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, sister of leader Kim Jong Un, late on Wednesday dismissed the move, saying the nature of the exercises remained provocative and aggressive even if the scale and duration had been reduced, according to a statement published by state media KCNA.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on Aug. 17, will now run through Aug. 21, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Pentagon official said, instead of the original end date of Aug. 27.

South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the allies were moving to cancel the drills’ second phase, media said, adding that it had been expected to involve counterattack operations after an initial defensive phase.

At the suggestion of the United States, the countries agreed on partial adjustments to the duration and scope of the drills, the JCS said. Some combined field manoeuvre training would also be scaled back, although details were still being discussed.

A Department of Defense official said the department had substantially reduced the exercise and associated live-training events, with some cancelled or switched to simulations.

The changes would preserve essential readiness and training aims, with no degradation to U.S. training objectives, the official added.

The changes follow Trump’s order on Sunday to “substantially reduce” the U.S. role in the drills, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. On Monday, Trump added that Kim had responded to his steps, without giving any details.

Trump’s objectives in the order appeared to be to pressure Seoul over the pace of its promised U.S. investments under a trade deal, shift attention away from U.S. challenges in Iran and reopen diplomacy with Pyongyang, one analyst said.

“Trump is trying to catch three birds with one stone here,” said Ellen Kim, senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America.

Kim Yo Jong said she was unaware of recent communication between the two but added that Kim Jong Un held fond personal memories and feelings towards Trump.

“The relationship between the two leaders remain excellent,” KCNA quoted her as saying.

North Korea denounces drills

North Korea had earlier on Wednesday denounced the drills and said it would continue exercising its right to self-defense against what it called military threats from Washington and Seoul, KCNA said.

In a commentary, it called the United States and South Korea “warmongers” raising tension on the Korean Peninsula, but stopped short of mentioning Trump, his order or the scaling back.

North Korea’s decision to issue the commentary, rather than a statement by a senior official or a military show of force, may signal an effort to leave room for diplomacy, said Hong Min, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

Trump has pushed aides to arrange an in-person meeting with Kim as soon as this autumn, the Wall Street Journal said, citing U.S. officials.

He has discussed holding talks during a possible November trip to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen, the paper added.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on its approach to North Korea or the military exercises.

Pyongyang routinely condemns joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises as rehearsals for invasion, while Washington and Seoul say they are defensive and necessary to ensure readiness against North Korea’s military threats.

Neither South Korean nor U.S. officials knew in advance about Trump’s order, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, President Lee Jae Myung said the Ulchi exercises were defensive and Seoul had no intention of using them to attack North Korea or heighten tension on the peninsula.

China, North Korea’s only formal treaty ally, has not commented directly on Trump’s remarks, but Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Seoul that Washington should change its “hostile policy” towards Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap reported.

The agency announced that the company AVIDrone pushed the limits with its electric helicopter design that lifted an unprecedented payload-to-weight ratio of 3.84 to 1.

In practical terms, that means the company’s Katana heavy-lift drone, weighing 29.3 pounds, lifted and carried a payload weight of 112.4 pounds across approximately five nautical miles.

AVIDrone, a Canadian company with U.S. headquarters in Maryland, specializes in cargo delivery drones for the defense and commercial sectors.

In a statement, the company called its first-place performance the “result of bringing together years of know-how, our proprietary autopilot and flight-control technologies, and decades of experience designing and flying aircraft specifically for heavy cargo lift.”

With the DARPA Lift Challenge, the agency aimed to advance vertical lift in a small unmanned aerial system. Calling it the “heavy-lift bottleneck,” multirotor drones typically can only carry payloads equal to or less than their own weight.

Phillip “Donna” Smith, the Lift Challenge program manager, described heavy vertical flight as the “next great technological inflection point that is economical for widespread adoption.”

He explained that its application could revolutionize industries like agriculture, logistics, construction and more.

By placing first, AVIDrone won $1.25 million in prize money. But the company also described the competition as an “outstanding environment for accelerating new ideas and turning them into real-world applications.”

The second-place winner, Massachusetts-based MTech Operations, was awarded $750,000 for lifting 3.64 to 1; and the third-place winner, California-based Xtreme Aerial Concepts, was awarded $500,000 for lifting 3.45 to 1.

And then DARPA issued awards for subjective categories, which were determined by a panel of program managers with deep aviation expertise.

These included the University of Maryland team for the Most Revolutionary Aerodynamic Design, the Texas-based Portal Aircraft Company for the Most Revolutionary Powertrain Design, and the Utah-based DefendTex for the Most Promising Technology.

For the latter, DARPA said it had the highest ratio in the competition, with 9.63 to 1, but it did not complete a scored run.

Smith told Military Times that besides the prize money and the cool demonstrations, the Lift Challenge created a huge networking event that allowed inventors, investors and users to set new goals and create future projects.

“So now, the challenges can get organized and the community that is built can start moving and (try) to solve problems that different organizations have across the United States or even the world,” Smith said. “Like we’ve seen in past challenges, the people here oftentimes combine forces and build the next generation of aircraft or whatever the challenge is.”

Unitree’s $1,600 Go2 model, launched in 2023, helped the company rapidly dominate the global quadruped robot market — its Shanghai IPO has drawn frenzied demand. Another Unitree robot has been shown on Chinese state television, armed and accompanying People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops on an exercise.

These robots draw on breakthroughs in quadruped movement financed by the U.S. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and other military programs, the researchers and the former official told Reuters.

The Army-funded project turned into, “basically, the first Unitree robot that had any kind of scale,” said Gavin Kenneally, a former University of Pennsylvania researcher involved in the program.

Ben Katz, who worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Biomimetic Robotics Lab, among a consortium of universities financed by the military programs, said the dimensions of Unitree’s popular Go series were “to the millimeter” almost identical to a groundbreaking robot he helped develop called Mini Cheetah.

Reuters is the first media outlet to detail connections between Unitree designs and the Army program.

The episode underscores broader problems with the United States’ ability to compete with China’s state-directed manufacturing sector in high-tech strategic industries, including those critical to national security.

Backed by subsidies, clusters of component factories, and a tolerance for heavy losses, Chinese companies have seized market share across industries such as solar panels, drones, EVs and quantum communications, many of which were first developed in the U.S. with government or military backing.

Kenneally commercialized the U.S. breakthroughs through his company Ghost Robotics, which supplies U.S. special forces with advanced, ruggedized robots. But compared to Unitree, its production is small and costly.

In June, the Pentagon added Unitree to a list of Chinese military companies, calling it a “contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base.” That designation falls short of a sanction but limits the U.S. military’s future use of Unitree’s technology. Unitree has said its robots are for civilian use.

Unitree, China’s State Council and China’s defense ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Unitree did nothing underhanded in using the U.S. Army research. The program’s findings were published openly to stimulate progress in the field, a common practice.

ARL spokesperson Amanda Ligon said the research “strengthened the broader U.S. robotics ecosystem” and informed subsequent work across government and the private sector.

ARL referred questions about Unitree’s commercialization of the technology to the Pentagon, which declined to comment.

US companies versus China’s industrial policy

Unitree sold more than 5,500 humanoids and 18,000 quadrupeds last year, company filings show, and it’s now valued at about $9 billion ahead of its stock market debut on Wednesday.

By contrast, no U.S. company has mass-produced such robots, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which has displayed prototypes of its Optimus humanoid for years. On a January earnings call, Musk called China “incredibly good” at scaling production.

Boston Dynamics, the U.S. company whose 2019 canine, Spot, used different technology, recently argued in a Congressional hearing that China’s low pricing would drive U.S. firms out of the market.

None of the U.S. robotics researchers who spoke with Reuters advocated for keeping such government-financed research secret. Instead, they said, U.S. policymakers should focus on enabling companies to quickly commercialize such advances to compete with China.

ARL also said publication was important to scientific and technological advancement.

The U.S. excels in innovation and software development but needs to ensure the capital, industrial base, highly skilled workforce and parts supply chains to scale up breakthroughs, said Vijay Kumar, dean at Penn Engineering.

For now, U.S. authorities often protect companies with trade restrictions on innovative Chinese products. In July, the Federal Communications Commission banned imports of future models of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, including those from Unitree. China has threatened to retaliate against the FCC ban.

China’s Washington embassy said in a statement its companies are making new technologies affordable and accessible internationally. It accused the U.S. of abusing administrative power, and of “market distortion and unilateral bullying.”

Most of the experts who spoke to Reuters supported the U.S. ban but said the policy is not enough to build an industry to catch up with China.

“This isn’t just a competition between U.S. and Chinese robotics companies,” said Kenneally, the Ghost Robotics founder. “It’s between private U.S. companies and China’s coordinated national strategy.”

In 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping set out a 10-year plan to lead industries including green energy, electric vehicles and robotics. Since then, China has channeled capital into risky bets on low-margin 21st-century advanced manufacturing.

Chinese robot manufacturers’ rapid reverse-engineering of products draws on the country’s dominance in refining critical minerals needed for magnets in robotics applications and the density of suppliers of motors, gears, ‘muscles’ known as actuators, and other components clustered near Unitree’s base in Hangzhou.

Reyk Knuhtsen, a robotics analyst at SemiAnalysis, called the United States’ failure to commercialize domestic research a “dropped ball,” citing U.S. venture capital’s preference for high-return software startups. It would take more than trade barriers on China to boost robotics manufacturing, he said.

“This is a very big hill for the U.S. to climb,” he said.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment about U.S. industrial policy. An FCC spokesperson said the commission was protecting Americans from foreign threats and preparing the country “to deliver on President Trump’s vision to lead the world on the next generation of technologies.”

Jaret Riddick, who as a former Army Research Laboratory director oversaw the Army-funded robotics project, said it did kick-start the U.S. quadruped industry. But in the end, without support for large-scale production, Unitree in China “just kind of consumed that space.”

Teaching robot dogs new tricks

The Army funded the Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance (RCTA) between 2010 and 2020.

The RCTA gathered government, academic and industry researchers from UPenn, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston Dynamics, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other research institutions. The alliance’s top commercial partner was General Dynamics Land Systems, the Michigan-based defense manufacturer that makes Abrams M1 tanks.

In 2016, UPenn researchers, including Kenneally, eliminated heavy central gearboxes and placed motors in robots’ legs, enhancing the ability to sense and respond to terrain. UPenn’s progress built on the MIT lab’s work funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA.

In 2019, the MIT lab presented the Mini Cheetah, building on UPenn features with increased strength – and the ability to do backflips.

Months earlier, Katz published his MIT masters thesis, detailing Mini Cheetah’s actuators. Within six months, he found Chinese companies manufacturing actuator copies “you could buy on AliExpress,” he said, referring to the Chinese online retail giant.

Unitree had been founded three years before by Wang Xingxing, then 26 years old. In his 2016 master’s thesis from Shanghai University, which Reuters reviewed online, Wang cited the work done at MIT, including on earlier iterations of the Cheetah, and set out principles consistent with those developed at the U.S. lab. He acknowledged the lab’s “pioneering” contributions.

In his thesis, Wang explored design tweaks to speed up development, saying his findings could have future “defense, security, family and education” applications. He referenced Kenneally’s ARL-funded UPenn paper.

On its website, Unitree says the company “independently developed the motors, reducers, controllers, and even some sensors of the quadruped robot.”

Katz told Reuters he decided against taking his actuators into production, thinking there would be no market. He said China’s ability to move fast had broad benefits: Robotics “has advanced a lot because of the availability of actuators.”

Joao Ramos, who did research at the same time as Katz at the MIT lab, said Unitree copied the Mini Cheetah shape, structure and design. But he credited the company with doing “proper engineering” to perfect a mass-produced robot.

“The actual practical implementation, bringing it to real life, that’s all on them,” Ramos said.

Gun-totting robot dogs

Walking robots aren’t yet widely deployed on battlefields, but the United States and Chinese militaries have both explored the prospect. In October, another Chinese company’s “Robot Wolf” quadrupeds featured in Chinese media coverage of the PLA conducting mock beach landings.

Unitree has said in public statements that its products are intended for civilian use. In 2022, the company signed an open letter along with U.S. companies pledging not to weaponize robots, citing risks of harm and serious ethical issues.

But Chinese state television has featured Unitree’s Go2 model robots alongside Chinese troops and a modified version of the firm’s B1 series robot firing a mounted assault rifle.

In September 2023, the U.S. Army secured a federal waiver from laws requiring government agencies to prioritize American-made products, in order to purchase two Unitree Go2s, according to procurement records that described the devices as crucial tools in the absence of sufficient commercial quantities of U.S.-produced alternatives “of a satisfactory quality.” Reuters could not establish whether the purchases went ahead.

Later that month, U.S. Marines conducted an exercise attaching a rocket launcher to a Go1 to enable remote firing.

Kenneally’s Ghost Robotics has shipped about 1,000 of its Vision 60 robots, mostly to military and government customers for surveillance and search applications in harsh environments. The company’s first customer was Navy Special Warfare Command, which oversees Navy SEAL teams.

Some components for the Vision 60s, which sell for upwards of $165,000, are built in China, though the company has sought to move its supply chain. By comparison, Unitree lists its B series robot for below $100,000 in the U.S.

Ghost Robotics shifted its motor supply from China to South Korea two years ago, though it still finds it difficult to eliminate Chinese magnets and some metal components, Kenneally said.

The only way to escape China’s chokehold on the robotics supply chain, he said, is to secure supplies from other countries that have the manufacturing capacity that the United States lacks. In 2024, South Korea’s LIG Defense & Aerospace acquired a 60% stake in Ghost Robotics for $240 million. The company is exploring production in Taiwan, Kenneally said.

“We need to work closely with our allies,” he said. “There’s absolutely no path forward without them.”

The goal is to create a family of drones that can “represent the full range of airborne threats, spanning from inexpensive ‘hobby drones’ to the most advanced adversary fighter and large-scale aircraft,” according to the Air Force’s Request for Information, which has a deadline of Sept. 28.

At the same time, the Air Force desires next-generation target drones that are so inexpensive and easy to manufacture that they can be “treated as attritable or expendable when required.”

As with drones and other new technologies, the Pentagon is turning to private industry for fresh ideas, “including commercial, modified commercial, dual-use, and non-developmental solutions,” the RFI said. “The government is particularly interested in non-traditional, commercially derived, or dual-use solutions that offer advantages in cost, scalability, and simplicity over legacy systems.”

The new target drones are expected to simulate a wide array of capabilities.

For fighters, the drones should have “supersonic capabilities (up to and exceeding Mach 1.6 at 40,000 feet), high-agility/high-G combat maneuvers, precise low-observable Radar Cross-section (RCS) profiles, multi-spectral Infrared (IR) signatures, active RF emissions, and integrated Electronic Attack (EA) capabilities,” according to the RFI.

To simulate C-130-sized multiengine aircraft, the focus is less on high performance and more on “matching the physical scale, slow subsonic flight envelopes, and propeller or turbofan propulsion characteristics of larger multi-engine aircraft. These platforms must prioritize representative physical volume, basic RF/IR emissions, and realistic radar returns to verify missile seeker guidance, and warhead lethality against large-frame targets.”

For even bigger aircraft, such as strategic bombers and AWACS planes, the key is “replicating the massive physical dimensions, multi-spectral thermal signatures, and heavy-aircraft radar strategic threats.”

To mimic big Group 5 unmanned aerial vehicles, the target drone should be capable of flying at 50,000 feet. For Group 3 and 4 UAVs, the targets should be capable of flying at Mach 0.5 to 0.8, and maneuver at 3 to 6 Gs. For small Group 1 and 2 drones, the targets should fly at speeds of less than 150 knots and be capable of drone-swarm operations.

Remote-controlled target drones have been used for nearly a century, including Britain’s Queen Bee — a converted Tiger Moth trainer — in the 1930s.

More recently, the U.S. Air Force has relied since 2007 on the subsonic — and subscale – BQM-167A. At 20 feet long and with a wingspan of 11 feet, it hardly resembles a 67-foot-long Chinese J-20 stealth fighter or a 108-foot-wide Chinese H6 bomber.

The Air Force also has the QF-16, a converted F-16 that can play the role of a full-sized target, such as a fourth-generation fighter. While a practical way to make use of retired jets, they aren’t meant to simulate fifth-generation stealth fighters or large aircraft, nor are they cheap enough to be expended in quantity.

The CIA has worked closely with Ukraine’s intelligence services since Russia’s 2014 invasion, growing a partnership built on assistance and training into a two-way exchange of intelligence, according to Forbes. However, the relationship nearly collapsed in February 2025, when a contentious Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended with Washington temporarily cutting off the flow of intelligence and weapons to Kyiv.

But Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, said this month that the two countries have moved past previous hurdles and returned to a strong intelligence partnership.

“I don’t want to get into any specifics, but it has improved,” Warner told Politico.

The CIA has spent more than a decade and millions of dollars training and equipping Ukrainian intelligence officers, building around a dozen secret forward-operating bases along the Russian border, ABC News reported in January 2025, citing former U.S. officials.

The senator said the current arrangement has helped Kyiv gain an edge, with long-range drones and missiles now hitting targets far inside Russia.

While American weapons deliveries have taken the spotlight in what Washington gives Ukraine, intelligence is the one U.S. asset Kyiv cannot replace, especially for the long-range strikes now making headlines.

That intelligence reaches directly into the strike campaign, including “the targeting packages for strikes on Russian-troop positions in Ukraine and on energy infrastructure inside Russia,” The Atlantic reported, citing American and Ukrainian sources.

Those sources called intelligence “the one thing the United States still provides free of charge,” crediting CIA Director John Ratcliffe with keeping it that way.

Zelenskyy seems to have risen in Trump’s estimation as Ukraine increasingly fights on its own terms, redefining modern warfare by crafting new tech and strategies, clawing back territory and taking the war deep into Russia — leaving Kyiv looking less dependent and more like an ally with something to trade.

“Trump doesn’t like losers,” one Western intelligence official told the outlet.

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another intelligence committee member, and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico they see a direct connection between the White House’s view of Ukraine’s battlefield successes and Kyiv’s access to intelligence.

“It sure seems like that,” Cornyn said. “Everybody loves a winner and looks like Ukraine has turned the tide.”

The strengthening relationship between Washington and Kyiv is apparent on multiple fronts.

Trump’s negotiators to end the war, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, plan to head to Ukraine for the first time later this month, a trip that coincides with the country’s independence celebrations, according to Radio Free Europe.

The intel trade is going both ways, with Zelenskyy stating publicly as early as March that Kyiv had proof of Moscow passing intelligence to Iran that he later promised to put in front of Trump.

“We have irrefutable evidence that the Russians continue to provide intelligence to the Iranian regime,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “Russia is using its own signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capabilities, as well as part of the data obtained through cooperation with partners in the Middle East.”

The deals cover avionics and ejector assemblies Boeing supplies to prime contractor Raytheon, an RTX business, for both the SM-3 Block IB and the newer Block IIA. Both variants operate with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System to destroy incoming missiles outside the atmosphere.

“These agreements ensure our Warfighters get the munitions they need to win,” Michael P. Duffey, under secretary of war for acquisition and sustainment, said in the Pentagon release. “We are stabilizing our supply chains, expanding munitions production and putting our entire defense industrial base on a wartime footing.”

The frameworks run for seven years and allow Boeing to start building components before a contract is in place, while the three sides negotiate a multiyear deal. The long-term commitment is intended to give suppliers enough certainty to invest in added capacity. Neither the Pentagon nor Boeing released dollar figures or quantities.

“This gives us a clear demand signal to build and deliver SM-3 interceptors at the levels needed to counter threats,” Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems, said in a company statement. “The SM-3 is an essential part of the layered air and missile defense architecture that protects the U.S. and its allies worldwide.”

The approach mirrors a seven-year deal Boeing struck in April to triple production of PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement seekers, part of a broader Pentagon effort to lock in supply from key subcontractors alongside the prime contractors.

Earlier this month, the Missile Defense Agency awarded Raytheon a $745 million contract to produce fully assembled SM-3 Block IIA interceptors for the United States and Japan.

Demand for the interceptor traces back to April 2024, when Navy destroyers first fired SM-3s in combat, helping to thwart an Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel. Far more interceptors have been launched since, including those fired in Operation Epic Fury.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the SM-3 inventory at 414 as of December 2025. A May analysis from the center put wartime expenditures between 130 and 250 missiles and warned that replenishment will take years.

Congress has stepped in to keep the Block IB line open, the cheaper of the two variants covered by Friday’s agreements, after the Missile Defense Agency proposed ending new purchases in the fiscal 2025 budget request.

American officials are backpedaling too. Trump on July 20 told the Financial Times that the U.S. has to be “a little bit careful of who we license to.” Despite that, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday posted on X that the two sides have “now reached an agreement.”

The glacial progress may reflect American defense giants’ fear that Kyiv could become a defense industry competitor — rather than posing risk to technology or intellectual property — a Republican official on Capitol Hill told The Atlantic.

“Their real worry is that the Ukrainians will find a way to improve the Patriot and then produce them at scale faster and for much less money than what the existing production lines in the U.S. could do,” the official said, adding that the companies will publicly frame their concerns around “IP theft and tech transfer” instead.

Ukraine’s weapons industry, honed by nearly five years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, has been booming since the U.S.-Israel war with Iran began in the spring. The conflict with Iran has drained an estimated two-thirds of America’s pre-war Patriot interceptor inventory, sparking discussion about inventory and strategy.

Some defense partners are eager to work with Ukraine, a country with rare recent experience fighting a large-scale land war, and have shown strong interest in collaborating with Kyiv to develop and field cheaper, faster-to-produce alternatives to million-dollar weapons.

The race toward competition is problematic for the defense giants, the official said — not because Ukraine might steal the Patriot — but because the country’s partners might outbuild it, cutting into the current monopoly on antiballistic capabilities and profits.

Trump first pledged the license at the July NATO summit in Ankara, promising Ukraine permission to produce Patriot missiles for the first time.

“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving ‘em enough,” Trump said, adding that the companies had not yet been consulted on the plan.

Zelenskyy said the next day that the question had been “resolved politically,” telling reporters that technical teams needed to start work “without delay, so that we can get licenses very quickly and start production in Ukraine as soon as possible.”

Five days after Trump’s pledge, Ukraine, nine European countries and defense heavyweights including Eurosam, Leonardo, Thales and Saab launched a coalition in Paris to field Freyja, an entirely new antiballistic system built around a Ukrainian interceptor priced at roughly one-fifth of a Patriot round.

A week after that, Lockheed unveiled its own cheaper, faster-to-produce Patriot missile at the Farnborough International Airshow, advertising the PAC-3 ACE at roughly $2 million a round – less than half the price of the round Ukraine fires at Russian ballistic missiles today.

The Patriot line rarely moves that fast. Its current top round, the PAC-3 MSE, was first accepted by the U.S. Army in 2015 and took until 2018 to reach full-rate production, per the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance.

On July 21, one day after the ACE debut, Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, described production talks with Ukraine as simply “early,” telling reporters the company will “support the US Army and the [Trump] administration on what they want to go do,” according to Breaking Defense.

Raytheon’s process “has just started,” with the company working with the U.S. government “to determine what is feasible and what is best for Ukraine,” its president of land and air defense systems, Tom Laliberty, said at the same show.

Two days later, Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X that he was “grateful for the company’s readiness to take our partnership to an even higher level, where Ukraine would co-produce, together with Raytheon, some of the most vital air defense assets – Patriot interceptors,” after meeting representatives of the group.

But when Zelenskyy asked Trump for “several hundred” interceptors at a July 28 Oval Office meeting, the president refused, citing America’s shrunken stocks, The Atlantic reported.

Three days later, Trump reversed course on the license entirely.

“We have not agreed to that,” he said at a Camp David Cabinet meeting. “We’re talking about it, but it’s a hard thing to give away that kind of technology.”

Then, U.S. NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker dampened expectations further on Aug. 3, telling Fox News that “we do not allow anybody but US manufacturers to make those in the United States,” adding that a long-term production agreement “will not be concluded before this winter,” per Euronews.

The deal’s current status is unclear.

“The decision has been made,” Zelenskyy said during an interview on Ukrainian television over the weekend, according to United24. “It was made by the President of the United States and other important American government institutions.”

American officials have yet to respond to Zelenskyy’s latest comments.

Task Force Falcon Strike will utilize one-way attack drones composed of unmanned systems from above, on and below the sea, managed by U.S. military support staff and regional partners, according to a Thursday release.

The move to launch this unit follows CENTCOM’s establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike in December 2025, a Middle East-based task force equipped with one-way attack drones as the military strived to integrate drone technology across the services.

“Task Force Falcon Strike will expand on Scorpion Strike’s success given the tremendous innovation happening among our regional allies and partners,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in the release. “Integrating and deploying our new capabilities together will help us rapidly realize the new possibilities that are on the horizon.”

Scorpion Strike was the first to launch an aerial attack drone from a U.S. Navy warship last December, the month of its announcement. The unit also deployed one-way unmanned aerial systems during Operation Epic Fury and during strikes on Iranian port facilities in July with unmanned attack vessels at sea, the statement highlights.

CENTCOM began consulting with and officially inviting regional partners to join Falcon Strike, aiming to expand attack-drone capabilities across the Middle East into a “unified multi-domain, multinational deterrent.”

“The United States military has a lot of strong partnerships and friends in the region,” Cooper said. “We are collectively stronger when we integrate and deploy new capabilities together.”

The release did not specify which regional partners CENTCOM is working with on the unit.

Personnel from the U.S. Special Operations Command Central, located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, will lead Falcon Strike’s staff of U.S. and regional representatives after it launched Scorpion Strike, the release states.

The announcement comes as the U.S. continues its war with Iran, which has depleted the U.S. munitions stockpile and caused military leaders to weigh the possibility of developing cheaper anti-drone technology at a faster pace.

Following a NATO summit in Ankara, Trump was transferred from Air Force One to a military plane via a catering truck in an extraordinary deception prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, U.S. media reported.

The White House did not disclose the change, and it remained a secret until The Washington Post first reported it on Monday. Some media commentators questioned whether the operation left Trump’s aides and journalists traveling with him at risk aboard the plane presumed to be carrying the president.

“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane I think that they would be more likely to go for.”

Trump was accompanied by several close aides when he secretly transferred from Air Force One to a smaller military aircraft in Turkey last month, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, executive assistant Natalie Harp and Oval Office operations director Walt Nauta made the move in the catering truck with Trump, along with several lower-profile aides, the Post reported. No Cabinet officials joined Trump in the truck, according to the newspaper.

After a day of social media memes portraying Trump as hiding out in the catering truck, the image-conscious president, who often promotes memes of himself as a bold and courageous leader, said he was following the direction of the Secret Service, the agency that protects the president.

“Well, it’s only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do, so I go by Secret Service and the military,” Trump said.

“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it. I get a lot of threats,” Trump said.

The White House said at the time that the president was flying aboard Air Force One from Turkey to Britain. But moments after Trump boarded the plane, he left it in secret via the catering truck and boarded another aircraft for the flight to Britain, the Post said on Monday, quoting unnamed sources.

Trump had taken a newly renovated Qatari-donated jet to Ankara for the NATO summit but unexpectedly announced he would use an older Air Force One when departing the country, a move that prompted questions about the newer plane’s security.

The trip to NATO was the first international travel for the new plane, whose speedy upgrades triggered questions over its cost and security, and took place as hostilities escalated with Iran, which borders Turkey.

Department of War Undersecretary for Policy Elbridge Colby made the remarks in Manila on Monday amid growing concerns that China has been narrowing the gap — or eclipsing — U.S. military capabilities, as its demands in the Middle East have potentially drained stockpiles.

“There’s been a lot of news about the United States military being stretched. Please don’t be misinformed,” Colby told Manila’s defense and security elites at a closed-door event organized by the Stratbase Institute think tank.

“The United States military, and especially including those [maritime and aerospace] capabilities, are ready and capable of filling the priority missions that the president has given to them,” Colby said.

Colby, one of the Pentagon’s leading strategists, has pushed to prioritize the Indo-Pacific and East Asia over the Middle East and Europe. The Manila stop is the first in a week-long Southeast Asian tour that includes visits to Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.

His visit also comes amid an increasingly tense period between Manila and Beijing following a confrontation in Second Thomas Shoal on July 20, when Chinese personnel hit and wounded a Philippine Navy sailor in the head.

The incident triggered another tit-for-tat between Manila and Beijing over the contents of a highly classified “provisional agreement” reportedly signed in 2024 that allows Philippine vessels to safely deliver supplies to troops stationed aboard the BRP Sierra Madre floating outpost.

After last month’s incident, officials noted that China has appeared more assertive, indicating a shift in how China perceives the implications of the mutual defense treaty.

Tensions have also intensified as China has routinely deployed carrier strike groups in the West Philippine Sea, and last month, fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile toward the Pacific.

While military deterrence forms one component of the U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific, Washington is employing a “strategy of strong, clear, but quiet” action designed to address the challenge without altering the status quo, according to Colby.

“In terms of our relationship with China, I think we’ve been able to communicate…our approach directly to Chinese counterparts,” Colby said.

“We combine a clear diplomatic line, a policy of respect towards the People’s Republic [of China], clarity about…our being in favor of the status quo, along with…strength in terms of being willing to defend our interests and those of our allies like the Philippines,” he added.

Apart from strengthening the U.S.’ forward posture and fielding combat-credible forces, Colby noted that measures are being set up, albeit quietly, to allow for the U.S. to come to the Philippines’ aid.

Colby described the U.S. approach to the region as “defensive” and “aligns with the interests of regional states.”

“We’re not trying to dominate this whole region. It’s a strategy of denial, designed to deny any state the ability to become the regional hegemon,” Colby said.

The visit comes a week after the Pacific Command and the Philippine armed forces signed an eight-point partnership plan for 2027, which includes an undisclosed series of joint military exercises, and before President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the U.S. in September.

“If you are trying to project power, whoever you are, into the aerospace and maritime environment in the Indo-Pacific, you are going to come up against the very best military in the world at its apex predator status,” Colby concluded.