Defense

The Defense Department this week began testing for the initial phase of its Drone Dominance Program, an effort to expand the use of commercial drones across the military. Dubbed “the Gauntlet,” military operators will fly and evaluate uncrewed aerial systems, or UASs, at Fort Benning, Georgia, to determine which of the 25 competing vendors will advance to the next phase of the…

PARIS — Airbus is open to a “two-fighter solution” to break the deadlock on the future air-combat system that France, Germany and Spain are developing, Chief Executive Officer Guillaume Faury said, as work on the next-generation fighter (NGF) that’s part of the program has stalled amid infighting between Airbus and Dassault Aviation. The Future Combat Air System program, or FCAS, is at…

BERLIN — Germany does not want to pursue nuclear weapons of its own, but is interested in incorporating French and British atomic bombs in a deterrence arrangement reminiscent of NATO’s U.S.-based nuclear umbrella, according to Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “I don’t want Germany to consider developing its own nuclear weapons,” Merz said in the Machtwechsel podcast, published online on…

The United States plans to deploy more high-tech missile systems to the Philippines to help deter aggression in the South China Sea, where the treaty allies on Tuesday condemned what they called China’s “illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activities.” Beijing has repeatedly expressed alarm over the installation in the northern Philippines of a U.S. mid-range missile system called…