The U.S. Army’s Seventh Infantry Division on Sunday posted a photo online of Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, leader of the U.S. Pacific Command, walking next to the new Long Range Hypersonic Weapon — the formal name for the U.S. Army’s newest ultra-high-speed missile, which is also known as Dark Eagle. 

PACOM spokesman Army Maj. Jimmy Sheehan told Stars and Stripes, which first reported the deployment, that the photo was taken during the Valiant Shield exercise that was held on Guam last month. but he did not say if the missile system remains on the island.

Dark Eagle missiles can travel a speeds up to 17 times the speed of sound — fast enough to evade missile defense systems — and have a range of about 2,175 miles — enough to reach targets in China. The new missile is one of the first hypersonic weapons that Adm. Paparo has called for deploying to better deter China, which also has deployed hypersonic missiles, specifically the DF-17 road-mobile missile.

Lockheed Martin is developing lower-cost interceptors to defend against cruise and ballistic missiles and cheap drones that have caused havoc on battlefields in Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. defense industry giant unveiled the Patriot PAC-3 Adapted Capability Effector this week at Britain’s Farnborough International Airshow near London.

Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn offers a deeper dive on the ACE, which Lockheed says is designed to defeat a wide range of threats for less than half the price of a PAC-3 Missile System Engagement, which costs about $4 million per missile.

Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in a statement that developing and producing the interceptor with European partners will create a shared, interoperable system that strengthens NATO’s transatlantic defense posture. 

For Ukraine, it could be a much-needed lifeline. But for the U.S., giving Kyiv a license to produce its own Patriot missiles underscores the erosion of  production capabilities across the American defense industrial base.

On the latest episode of the Threat Status podcast, Miles Arnone, CEO of Re:Build Manufacturing, explains how the once-mighty U.S. defense industry is now struggling to manufactire critical weapons systems at scale — including the Patriot batteries that have become crucial elements of Ukraine’s defense against Russian ballistic missile attacks, as well as the last line of defense for Gulf allies against incoming Iranian missiles.

Ukraine has pleaded for more Patriots, made by U.S. firms Lockheed Martin and RTX. But the Trump administration says it will give Ukraine a license to build them, viewing that as a better option than attempting to rapidly scale up production in America.

“It’s a poster child for the problem that we have from all of this deindustrialization that we’ve allowed to happen,” Mr. Arnone said of the Patriot licensing decision. “We literally have a product in super high demand that we have unique capability to design and make — and we can’t produce it.”

Washington and Kyiv have signed a preliminary agreement for testing by the U.S. military, which seeks access to Ukrainian drone innovations for the Pentagon’s “Drone Dominance Initiative,” a $1 billion program to purchase 200,000 small, lethal drones by 2027.

The preliminary agreement, first reported Wednesday by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, marks a major shift in Ukraine’s relationship with the West, as it evolves from being purely a recipient of military aid to a respected producer of defense technology.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington hosted a memorandum of understanding signing ceremony Wednesday between UFORCE, a Ukrainian company that designs and manufactures aerial, ground and maritime drones, and Oregon-based RECONCRAFT, which focuses on high-performance vessels for military, law enforcement and search-and-rescue operations.

Hundreds of millions of license plates in the United States are being tracked by something called “Flock,” and most people do not even know it, according to Dylan Oliver, who writes in a Washington Times op-ed that advanced license plate-reading Flock cameras are being used by law enforcement agencies and municipalities across the United States.

AI surveillance is spreading, leaving us all at risk of government overreach, writes Mr. Oliver, the social media manager at The Alliance for Secure AI. He adds: “Three-quarters of American voters now support limits on AI surveilance, opposing the indiscriminate monitoring of civilians that we see today.

“They are worried because AI is clearly making it easier for the federal, state and local governments to violate our constitutional rights,” Mr. Oliver writes. “As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, Flock has created a ‘dangerous nationwide mass-surveillance infrastructure’ that tracks U.S. citizens without a warrant, ‘expand[ing] beyond the uses for which it is initially justified.’”

• July 23-29 — Project Convergence-Capstone 6, U.S. Army

• July 23 — The Path Ahead for U.S.-South Korea Shipbuilding, Stimson Center

• July 24 — Taiwan’s National Mobilization Against the China Threat, Hudson Institute

• July 29 — North Korea’s Post-Party Congress Economic Course and Implications for the Korean Peninsula, Stimson Center

• July 30 — The Board of Peace’s Gaza Plan: Broken or Working as Intended? Arab Center Washington D.C.

• Aug. 4-5 — 2026 Air Force & Space Force Procurement Conference, American Defense Alliance

• Aug. 5-6 — Border Security & Intelligence Summit, Defense Strategies Institute