According to the statement of work, the app will provide dietitian services to SOCOM troops by coordinating with dining halls to develop meal plans that “optimize human performance and lethality.”

The platform will connect a team of up to 55 performance dietitians to provide “personalized, mission-specific nutrition plans” for more than 18,000 tactical troops across geographically disparate locations, according to the document.

Teamworks Tactical Solutions’ “core business,” according to James Coffos, Teamworks’ chief strategy officer, includes working with Division 1 athletes to professional and Olympic-level athletes.

“With stakes literally being life and death in the tactical context,” Coffos said, “when looking at a software platform to run your HP program, it makes sense to look to a system like Teamworks, which has been proven at the very highest levels of human performance.”

The contract comes as the Pentagon works to improve fitness standards and rally against “fat” troops, but Coffos said the app has already been in use by the U.S. military.

“SOCOM has actually used this particular product for years, so this isn’t an entirely new capability for them,” he said in an email to Military Times.

The original contract was through the Air Force Research Laboratory’s STRONG Lab, but the new contract moves the agreement directly to SOCOM.

Coffos said his company worked with SOCOM’s senior performance dietitian to tune the software to better suit the organization’s needs.

“It’s really a great situation where we have this virtuous circle from sport to military and back again,” he said.

The app allows SOCOM troops to engage with dietitians in two ways. They can see nutritional ratings for options at the chow hall, or, when military dining facilities are not available, they can ask for guidance regarding the food available to them.

“It just removes a lot of friction from the process of making good decisions around what you’re eating, and that in turn frees an operator up to focus on the mission at hand,” Coffos said.

Troops can also adjust their plans based on food preferences and personal goals. But the technology does not eliminate the need for individual decision-making, Coffos said.

“You still have to have a basic understanding of nutrition and the willpower to choose what your body needs versus what just looks like it tastes best,” he said.

As for how the app improves “lethality” through diet, Coffos explained it depends on how the term is defined.

“I’d start by pointing out that ‘lethality’ is SOCOM’s word, not ours,” he said. “But I’d also gently point out that the word isn’t at all foreign to sports.”

He explained that it’s often used to describe performance by professional athletes, like “Mariano Rivera was described as lethal for 19 seasons and no one thought twice about it” or “Steph Curry is lethal from 30 feet.”

But he has come to understand the term, at least in the case of SOCOM, as a reference to maintaining physical performance deep into an arduous mission.

“When SOCOM writes ‘lethality,’ I really think what they’re describing is the mile-22 problem,” he said. “It’s about the quality of the human being at the end of the effort, not the beginning.”

He compared the nutritional demands of a special operator on a long mission to those of a marathon runner nearing the end of a race.

“Watch a marathon at mile 22. You’re absolutely going to see somebody who was running beautifully at mile 18 reduced to a shuffle, and it isn’t because they got less fit in the last four miles. They ran out of fuel,” he said.

In the case of SOCOM, Coffos said, imagine an operator about 20 hours into a mission, carrying about 65 pounds of gear and running on about four hours of sleep.

“That’s the same physiology and the stakes are the only thing that changed,” he said. “When SOCOM writes ‘lethality,’ I really think what they’re describing is the mile-22 problem.”

The new UAS, dubbed Gamera, comes as the Air Force searches for risk-tolerant aircraft that can be produced cheaply and in large numbers as part of its new Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA, program.

The company revealed the platform at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual conference near Washington.

In a press release, the company said Gamera is the first UAS designed to carry bomber-class strike munitions such as the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, or LRASM, and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, or JASSM-ER, as well as other cruise and hypersonic missiles.

The company added that it “will be able to deliver all of the capabilities of the MQ-9, as well as employ payloads that the MQ-9 cannot, at a fraction of the price.”

Although Swarm did not give a specific price point, the company said comparable strike effects would cost 10 times less than existing platforms. The company also cited recent Defense Innovation Unit statements, calling existing systems “unsustainable.” The MQ-9 Reaper purportedly costs more than $30 million apiece.

Oliver Palmer, Swarm’s chief revenue officer and co-founder, explained that the design’s lower cost will enable the U.S. and partner nations to find other civil and commercial applications for the new UAS.

“The next few decades will see a continuous contest with China over global power projection, first focused near China over Taiwan, over time extending globally,” he said. “The [People’s Liberation Army] has built asymmetric ways to challenge our legacy force structure.”

Palmer added that “we cannot continue to pursue incremental improvements in legacy approaches and hope to protect U.S. interests and deter [the People’s Republic of China] coercion of our allies and partners.”

The Gamera is classified as a Group 5 UAS, the largest category of unmanned aircraft under the Defense Department’s classification system. The company said it has a roughly 72-foot wingspan and can fly 9,000 nautical miles before needing to refuel.

Swarm said it has invested tens of millions of dollars into Gamera’s design since it launched in 2022. Over the past four years, the company has been awarded millions in Defense Department contracts and raised more in investments.

The company described Gamera as “well positioned to support the generational transformation the Air Force is advancing with MMA.”

Markoff explained that calling in air support was an effective way to clear an area, but with thousands of potential targets and few available weapon systems, he constantly had to calculate whether a particular target was worth it.

“Even if that target wasn’t active, knowing that it might be and maintaining availability of that type of a weapon system on station in case it showed up, that was all math I was doing in my head,” he said, adding, “We had to be really careful about saving those munitions.”

In an interview with Military Times, Markoff, now the co-founder and chief executive of Smack Technologies, said his experience in Mosul illustrates the kind of problem his company’s artificial intelligence software, Omega, is designed to help solve.

Earlier this month, Markoff spoke with Military Times about Smack’s Alpha, the wrist-worn device for which the company recently raised $61 million. He followed up to discuss its flagship product, Omega. The company shared a 14-minute video demonstration typically reserved for general officers.

“What the demo shows is a Joint Fires workflow from long-range planning, through what we would call basically the deliberate planning cycle, through the phased execution horizon, to literally right now: What do we do in the context of that larger plan?” he said.

According to the video, a commander begins the process by uploading intelligence and planning documents to give Omega operational context. The commander can then customize that information by selecting factors, such as units and boundaries. Lastly, the system generates high-level plans and detailed workflows.

“The outputs of this workflow look like what a human would create. We’re just generating it automatically for them and then letting them adjust it … We’re just doing it faster and helping them run calculations that are complicated enough that you don’t want to have someone do it on a whiteboard,” Markoff said.

He explained that Omega’s goal is to determine not just which targets to strike, but how to sequence strikes over the course of a month or two to systematically degrade an adversarial force. He added that Omega gives commanders options, along with the pros and cons of each.

“Sometimes it takes people like a month to build that plan. Building the next one to four days takes one to four days,” he said. “And figuring out, ‘What do we do right now?’ Well, the good news is you only have a few seconds, and it only takes a few seconds.”

During the execution phase shown in the video, a commander can monitor operations in real time and adjust plans using information like new intelligence reports, inventory lists or weather forecasts.

For comparison, Smack’s demo likens Omega to Amazon’s approach to the “last-mile delivery problem,” which refers to the logistical challenge of finding the most efficient and resourceful way to get a package to its destination.

Markoff explained the reasoning behind the comparison, saying that while risk tolerances and resources can change during an operation, the overall objective may not.

“It’s not just a scheduling problem, but it’s a pairing of assets and scheduling of assets,” he said, adding that it’s “optimizing that usage in the context of what we’re trying to do long term.”

The demo depicts Omega generating a large number of actions, targets and destinations. The software is designed for campaign-level threats and for developing plans at both the operational and tactical levels. But his company is actively expanding the scope of what it offers to include coordinating humanitarian efforts.

“That has not been the use case that our contracts have focused on, but there is absolutely a demand signal and a requirement for it that we are getting from the users, and it is something that we are building into that longer term,” he said.

While Smack has already shared parts of the demo in marketing materials, the company is in the process of transitioning from prototyping to production, Markoff said. Smack currently has contracts with three U.S. military branches and expects to expand to all six by the end of the year.

The goal, as military officials and industry executives often describe it, is to give commanders the information they need to make consequential decisions as quickly as possible.

But no matter how fast or accurate the analysis is, there’s still a gap between identifying what needs to happen and acting on it. Much of that AI processing happens on computers and servers miles from the battlefield, leaving troops to receive the information through radios, tablets or other devices.

That means the next step in military AI may be putting the technology directly on the bodies of those in the field. While some companies are exploring wearable technology like helmets equipped with heads-up displays, Smack Technologies thinks the answer may be much simpler: Instead of putting AI in a helmet, put it on an operator’s wrist.

The California-based defense tech startup recently raised $61 million in Series B funding to develop Alpha, a wrist-worn device designed to connect operators in the field to real-time data collected and processed through Smack’s Omega AI software.

Andy Markoff, Smack’s co-founder and chief executive, told Military Times that his company started with the software because it could train its AI around day-to-day operations.

“Alpha tackles a much harder problem because you have to make the model work in the field with hardware and little to no connectivity, but we’ve always known this is what has to happen to enable decision dominance,” he said.

During an interview, Markoff walked Military Times through the concept of Alpha, from how operators would wear the device to how it’s used.

As a former Marine Raider, Markoff said he and his team of former military personnel believe the wrist is a more convenient place to access intelligence in the field.

“The form factor we’re building replaces what I literally used to wear on my forearm, only here I’m exchanging a whiteboard and grease pencil for a flexible computer screen that has our models’ capabilities on it,” he said.

He likened the concept to a QB sleeve, which allows a quarterback to see plays at a glance.

“Our sensors that are out collecting information about enemy forces and their location are sending that information to a screen on my forearm along with actionable decision options informed by campaign equities and adjacent units,” he said.

Markoff said he recognizes that a heads-up display could be useful for some missions, but he also sees drawbacks, particularly in hot or humid environments.

“If you’ve ever walked in the jungle at night, you know you’d actually rather risk having an eyeball poked out by a tree than wear shooting glasses that fog up and prevent you from seeing anything,” he said.

However, Markoff said that the hardware is the easy part of building an AI-enabled wearable. The more difficult problem is figuring out what information an operator needs in the field.

He explained the fundamental idea behind Alpha is to decentralize command and control in environments where operators cannot communicate directly with commanders.

“To do this, we’re essentially encoding commander’s intent: here’s our goal, here’s what makes the most sense for the theater and the theater’s goals, and here’s context around how everyone at the front lines should be going after that goal, including constraints and contracts with adjacent units,” he said.

He added that the goal isn’t to have AI make decisions, but to give the operator enough information to make better ones, potentially increasing effectiveness while reducing wasted time and resources.

Alpha has been in development for only about four months, but Markoff projects that Smack will have a working prototype within the next year and could secure contracts for the device within two years.

“One of the most important functions of (the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation) is to provide transparency about the safety and effectiveness of major weapon systems,” wrote Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) in a letter this month.

Warren is a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, and Norcross is a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.

“A key element of this function is the release of publicly available annual reports that detail findings by DOT&E to make sure critical deficiencies are fixed so service members are not harmed or killed,” they added.

Despite legal obligations to publish the annual reports it sends to Congress online, the office now requires a Defense Department-issued common access card to access the collection, which includes material that has been available to the public for years.

A Defense Department official told Federal News Network that the decision to remove the materials was based on concerns that foreign adversaries could use artificial intelligence tools to develop detailed profiles of the U.S. military’s vulnerabilities.

But critics of the decision say the reasoning is part of an ongoing effort to reduce oversight and accountability as Defense Department officials set records for spending and budget requests.

Last May, Hegseth issued a memo directing the DOT&E to significantly reduce its workforce and budget in the name of cost-savings. In turn, the office’s staff was cut by some 74% and its budget by nearly 80%. The Defense Department subsequently proposed a $1.5 trillion budget for 2027.

In an interview with Military Times, Gabe Murphy, a policy analyst with Taxpayers for Common Sense, or TCS, called it “suspicious” that officials gutted the DOT&E office prior to proposing a massive spending increase.

Murphy pointed to the ambitious Golden Dome Missile Defense System as an example of a project that warrants more oversight.

“They know that missile defense in general — and I think in particular, the space-based interceptors they want for this program — are not going to perform well in real tests,” he added.

To those pitching and building the project, the trillion-dollar Golden Dome is described as a missile defense system capable of detecting, tracking and intercepting aerial threats before reaching American soil.

But to critics like Murphy, it’s “questionable strategically and questionable in terms of their affordability.”

In a TCS report, the organization argued against the project because of concerns of scale and price. The group argued that while Golden Dome is modeled after Israel’s “Iron Dome,” which is designed for short- and medium-range missiles, the U.S. model would have to adjust for scale and threat, which would significantly increase costs.

While Defense Department officials say the estimated cost for the Golden Dome will be about $175 billion within the next three years, others say it could be anywhere from $1.2 trillion to $4.4 trillion over the next two decades.

As for the project’s effectiveness, the TSC report said the technology is unproven and that the available evidence suggests it will not work as proposed. But without live-fire testing and analysis by independent offices like the DOT&E, it would be difficult to know for sure.

“Without these reports, Congress has a lot less information to work with in terms of figuring out, you know, the sort of appropriate acquisition approach to some of these programs,” he said, adding that eliminating funding for the DOT&E would end up costing more money than it saves.

Historically, Congress uses DOT&E reports to inform funding decisions, and making them publicly available gives voters and taxpayers insight into the lawmakers’ decisions, according to the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO, a non-profit government watchdog group.

Months after Hegseth proposed the $300 million cuts to DOT&E, POGO released a detailed analysis showing how DOT&E reports have been effective in the past.

For instance, Congress made DOT&E responsible for live-fire testing in 1986, after Army officials allegedly misled lawmakers about the performance of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

The Government Accountability Office seemed to validate critics’ concerns about defanging DOT&E as well. In a June report, the office warned that the Pentagon’s drive to field new weapons will outpace the DOT&E’s ability to catch problems before systems reach troops.

In their letter, Warren and Norcross requested that the Defense Department submit responses to their committees by Aug. 26.

The Aug. 7 statement followed a review of the Modular Handgun System, a program led by the Army’s Project Manager Soldier Lethality, initiated after an airman was shot and killed because of an alleged “uncommanded discharge” with an M18 handgun.

Last year’s incident resulted in an immediate inspection of all M18 handguns issued by the Air Force Global Strike Command as well as a temporary pause of their use, which was lifted a month later.

Additionally, three airmen involved in the deadly shooting were charged with lying to investigators. They claimed the gun just “went off” when the shooter slammed his duty belt against a desk, when in reality, he had pointed it at the victim in a “joking manner.”

According to the statement, the Army has investigated all reports of incidents involving MHS pistols discharging without a trigger pull, and firearms mishaps account for less than 0.006% of all MHS pistols issued.

“All investigated incidents of alleged ‘uncommanded discharges’ have been traced back to the trigger being pulled,” Army officials say, adding that they blame “public speculation and online misinformation” for the safety concerns regarding the handgun design.

However, the civilian version of the handgun has been linked to dozens of injuries and a handful of deaths, with victims claiming the gun discharged a round without a trigger pull. In turn, the design has been the subject of more than 100 legal challenges since it was introduced in 2014, with varying outcomes.

In many of the lawsuits, attorneys argue that the design’s passive safeties can fail to adequately prevent unintentional manipulation of the trigger. It’s important to note that unlike the civilian P320, the M18 and M17 pistol designs are equipped with a manual safety.

Since the SIG design won DoD approval in 2017, M17 and M18 pistols have become the standard-issue sidearm for the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy. There are more than 400,000 currently in service.

In an announcement, Sheehy said the Special Operations Forces Concealed Carry Act would align the status of special operators with active and retired law enforcement officers, who are permitted under federal law to carry concealed weapons across state lines.

“Our elite warfighters never stop serving, and this bill ensures the law reflects the trust they’ve earned through a lifetime of sacrifice,” Sheehy said, adding that “Special Operations Forces spend their careers protecting the American people with unmatched discipline, judgment, and professionalism.”

According to Sheehy’s office, when Congress passed the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, or LEOSA, in 2004, lawmakers recognized that active and retired officers may need to respond to violent crime or terrorists while off duty. They also recognized that officers face ongoing threats from individuals they previously encountered while on duty.

Sheehy’s office explained that his bill would build on the framework created by LEOSA because individuals in special operations “have completed rigorous selection and possess firearms training that meets or exceeds professional law enforcement standards.”

Congressman Pat Harrigan, a Republican from North Carolina, filed a companion bill in April. In a statement, he said that “it makes no sense that an active or retired SEAL or Green Beret, someone who spent a career mastering firearms under the most demanding conditions in the world, has no equivalent recognition under federal law.”

While the bill would extend concealed carry privileges, it would also require participants to complete annual active-duty-level firearms qualification tests, as well as a Justice Department concealed carry class.

During Sheehy’s bid for a Senate seat in 2024, The Washington Post published an article about an incident in which Sheehy was cited at Glacier National Park for illegally discharging a firearm. According to the report, the park ranger investigating the incident interviewed Sheehy at an emergency room in Kalispell shortly after the shooting in October 2015.

“(Sheehy) stated he was arranging gear in the back of his vehicle, and that the gun (Colt Revolver, .45 long) had slipped down the pile of gear, hit the ground and fired. The round hit him in the right forearm and did not pass through,” the ranger wrote in a narrative with the citation.

The ranger also told The Washington Post that the revolver that Sheehy said had accidentally discharged was loaded except for a single missing bullet.

When confronted with the details, Sheehy told reporters that he lied about accidentally discharging his firearm and that the shooting injury actually occurred during a deployment in Afghanistan. He said he didn’t report it because a teammate’s negligent discharge caused the injury, and he didn’t want to get his teammate in trouble.

“I guess the only thing I’m guilty of is admitting to doing something I never did,” Sheehy told the newspaper. He added: “It was a small price to pay to make sure that a whole team of really great Americans didn’t get dragged through the mud over this.”

The parents of an Air Force Academy graduate who died by suicide filed a federal lawsuit against the school, arguing that it failed to protect her from sexual assault and adequately address the trauma that followed.

Gary and Colleen Foster filed the wrongful death case on July 13 in a Colorado federal court on behalf of their daughter, 2nd Lt. Cailin Renee Foster, who died six months after graduating from the academy in 2021.

In court documents, the Fosters detail a disturbing narrative about their daughter’s rape and argue that “systemic negligence, regulatory violations, and failures of clinical and administrative safeguards” contributed to her “severe psychological trauma and preventable death.”

Although they only list the federal government as the defendant, court documents identify by name the alleged rapist, other cadets at the school who knew Foster or witnessed concerning behavior, and Foster’s commander, whom her parents argue made the issue worse.

The sexual assault

According to court documents, Foster was sexually assaulted by a male cadet during her first year at the academy in 2017. He allegedly followed her into her dorm room after a party, locked the door and then attacked her.

“He then threw Cailin onto her bed and forcibly raped her, ejaculating inside of her and leaving shortly thereafter,” the court documents say.

The Fosters argue that the school failed to hold the cadet accountable because, even before the attack, he had displayed “coercive, threatening, and nonconsensual advances toward multiple female cadets.”

According to court documents, school authorities received multiple reports of him confronting Foster outside her dorm, peeping into dorm rooms, inappropriately touching female cadets and consuming alcohol on school grounds.

Despite the reports, he “was not issued a No Contact Order, not placed in quarters away from cadets he’d harassed, or otherwise restricted in any way from accessing freshman female cadets at the Academy.”

Months after the attack, however, the suspect was issued No Contact Orders for multiple cadets. The school also encouraged him to voluntarily disenroll for poor academic performance. Despite his reported behavior, he received an honorable discharge.

The academy’s failed response

The lawsuit says Foster’s mental health deteriorated after the sexual assault and argues that the academy failed to provide adequate support.

Citing the 2003 Fowler Commission, which found that Air Force leadership showed “indifference, incompetence or a combination of both” toward sexual assault allegations at the academy, the lawsuit says Foster “feared reporting the rape” because she believed officials “would take punitive action against her and her friends.”

Still, near the end of her freshman year, Foster did report the attack to her element leader — a cadet in a leadership position — along with four friends. One of them told a chaplain, who “actively discouraged” the friend from reporting the rape to authorities.

In the years after the attack, Foster’s friends described her as “extremely depressed” when comparing her behavior before the sexual assault.

In March 2020, two cadets died within two days of each other, both believed to have died by suicide. The lawsuit says one of the cadets was Foster’s boyfriend.

The lawsuit argues that the academy did not formally activate its disaster mental health team to help Foster, nor did it take decisive action when her parents reported that she was sending suicidal messages to her deceased boyfriend’s social media account.

Then, in October 2020, Foster was forced to complete a physical fitness test despite an injury. The lawsuit argues that the combination of her grief and failing a fitness test for the first time contributed to her suicidal ideation.

Additionally, sometime between March and October 2020, Foster attempted to kill herself by hanging, but another cadet stopped her.

Although Foster’s commander sent the academy’s Commandant of Cadets a message describing her disturbing behavior, the lawsuit says she received “no professional mental-health care.” Instead, medical personnel completed a one-page intake form.

Out in the fleet

In May 2021, Foster was assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where she experienced “unnecessary psychological pain” and “bullying” from her supervisor, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says the former was because Wright-Patterson was where Foster’s deceased boyfriend was buried and the latter was because her supervisor’s actions were “unusual and inappropriate” for the supervisor’s rank and position.

According to court documents, Foster failed another fitness test, but officials initially refused to tell her by how much. “After repeated inquiries, the Air Force finally admitted she failed by one point,” the lawsuit says.

Afterward, Foster received two “counseling” sessions from her supervisor for failing the fitness test and attending college classes outside of work, which the supervisor said demonstrated that Foster was “not supporting her mission.”

A little more than a month later, in November 2021, Foster died.

In 2022, the Air Force released the results of an investigation into the bullying allegations, which cleared the supervisor of wrongdoing. But the lawsuit says the full report was only released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and contained “159 completely blacked-out pages.”

Two years later, Foster’s parents received an email from a high-ranking civilian employee who said she was also being “harassed and bullied” by the same supervisor, which “negatively impacted her own mental and physical health.” The civilian employee said she had also filed multiple complaints against the supervisor.

The fight after Foster’s death

The Fosters say they have been pursuing legal action since learning of their daughter’s sexual assault, which she referenced in her suicide note.

“Mommy, Daddy and sissy, You couldn’t have done anything to stop this. Do all that you can to make sure that I am the last one. Love you for all to eternity, Cailin,” she wrote.

Initially, the Fosters said they could not understand why their daughter, who came from a family with a proud tradition of military service and attending military academies, would blame the school.

“You do not understand,” Foster wrote. “The Academy does not care. They will let you down.”

In 2024, the Fosters filed a $20 million wrongful death claim, which the Air Force denied a year later.

Bradford S. Hunt, writing as the chief of the General Torts Branch for the Air Force Judge Advocate, told the Fosters’ attorney that he had considered their claims and “after careful review, I regret that I must deny them.”

Hunt explained that the federal government “is not liable for servicemembers’ injuries or death that arose out of activities incident to their military service” and that legal precedent bars claims that the government was responsible for protecting Foster from sexual assault.

However, Hunt added that if the Fosters were dissatisfied with his decision, they “may now file suit” in federal court.

“I cannot begin to imagine the pain they have experienced through this ordeal,” Hunt wrote. “I am grateful for Lt. Foster’s dedication and service to our nation, and for your clients’ desire to improve the Air Force culture for all current and future servicemen and servicewomen.”

Foster’s father, Gary, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and academy graduate, told Stars and Stripes, which was first to report on the lawsuit, that he owes it to his daughter to push for accountability.

“We need people to stand up and be heard, to join the fight, for change, reform and system accountability,” he said, adding, “we just want to prevent the next Cailin from being victimized.”

Brig. Gen. Matthew Ross, the director of the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, the Defense Department’s lead organization for countering drones, described the handbook as “not a technical manual or detailed set of rules” but rather “a common foundation to shape our collective approach to this challenge.”

Using conversational language, freehand sketches and relatable references, Small Drones, Big Problems: A First Principles Approach to Countering-UAS makes the information approachable.

Inside, the handbook introduces the concepts of drones and drone protections. It offers guidance such as “The Four Ps of Drone Threats” and “The Five Ds of Protecting Against Drones,” as well as simple definitions of technical concepts and procedures.

But more importantly, it offers a perspective.

In the opening chapter, the handbook shares a brief anecdote from 1939 about the “happy time” for Nazi Germany because Allied Forces did not yet know how to react to U-boat operations.

“But the ‘happy time’ didn’t last forever,” the handbook reads. “British and American ships learned to adapt to the threat by implementing a convoy system to protect shipping lines, using escort ships, and developing new technologies like sonar, radar, and depth charges.”

The handbook grounds the subject for drone threats, explaining that technology in warfare has always changed, but weapons and equipment don’t win wars alone.

“Learning militaries adapt and innovate, repurposing existing defenses and building new ones to address vulnerabilities exploited by drones,” the handbook reads. “They change how they think about drones and how they fight.”

While a majority of the 100 pages is dedicated to applying tips and techniques to prevent or avoid drone attacks, it also offers a perspective on artificial intelligence, or AI.

“There is a temptation to talk about AI as either a savior or a threat, either a magical solution that fixes everything or a frightening force that removes human control. Neither description is useful. In practice, AI is far more neutral than either of these extreme perspectives suggest,” the handbook reads.

The handbook describes AI as a tool meant for helping analyze data by recognizing patterns and making predictions to assist humans in decision making.

“It does not replace judgment and disciplined decision-making. It does not understand intent or consequences. It does not decide what matters. What it does well is sort, compare, correlate, and highlight signals that would otherwise be lost in the noise,” the handbook reads.

The handbook argues that AI tools can be used for “helping humans apply the principles of detection, denial, disruption, defeat, and discipline more effectively.”

“When protecting against drones, AI is not only useful in moments of crisis, when stress is high in a (Base Defense Operations Center) or when a patrol is already reacting. Its value extends across the entire protection challenge, long before a drone poses a threat,” the handbook reads.

Army Maj. Joe Amoroso, deputy chief of strategic initiatives for JIATF 401, said the handbook offers “vital first principles” to help in “countering the defining threat of our time.”

“It is crucial to build a common foundation for counter-drone efforts as we work with the entire government and interagency partners to respond to this growing threat,” he said.

The disclosure offered a glimpse into how generative AI is being used by the military. It came in a court filing supporting the Justice Department’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit targeting a Mississippi power plant, also owned by Musk, that supplies electricity to data centers used to run the AI system.

Cameron Stanley, the Defense Department’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, made the disclosure in a statement filed in support of the government’s motion. He called the example “a testament to the greatly increased operational efficiency made possible by the Grok Gov Model.”

He added that if the lawsuit succeeds in shutting down the power plant, Grok’s parent company, xAI, would lose capacity to train and develop future versions of the AI tool. “And if xAI is hindered from continuing to improve and upgrade Grok, including the Grok Gov Model, [the Department of Defense’s] ability to meet its national security mission and keep pace with adversaries will be impaired,” Stanley said.

Although Stanley did not elaborate on how military operators used Grok during combat missions, he instead described it as a “critical national security” tool.

“For example, it is deployed in Maven Smart Systems (MSS) to support vital national security missions, including targeting, intelligence, readiness, and recruitment,” he said.

Stanley explained that MSS users process nearly two billion tokens on the Defense Department’s top-secret network each day. Tokens are units used to measure AI processing. “This amount of AI usage is roughly equivalent to 1.5 billion words or up to 6 million pages of text being processed by the technology,” he said.

The Justice Department filed Stanley’s statement alongside its motion on June 15. In the filing, government attorneys argued the lawsuit “threatens American national, economic, and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of Defense’s military operations.”

The lawsuit, filed in April by the NAACP and its Mississippi chapter, alleges that xAI and MZX Tech failed to obtain required permits before installing and operating 27 gas-powered turbines at a facility in Southaven, Mississippi, roughly 13 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee.

The facility, known as the Colossus Gas Plant, powers two data centers — Colossus I and Colossus II — used to operate the Grok chatbot. The complaint said xAI also plans to build a third data center closer to the plant.

The organizations argued the turbines are operating without adequate pollution controls and are emitting harmful pollutants that pose risks to public health. They say the facility operates near an area with “tens of thousands of people” and has the potential to emit more than 1,700 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides.

They contend that a Clean Air Act permit would require the plant to use the “best available control technology,” or BACT, to reduce emissions to acceptable levels.

“Had Defendants obtained a permit, they would have been held to this standard,” the complaint said. “By simply not applying for — or receiving — a permit, xAI and MZX Tech have avoided subjecting these twenty-seven unpermitted turbines to a BACT determination.”

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said the Justice Department intervened because enforcement of federal law falls to the executive branch, not private interest groups. “The Department of Justice is committed to maintaining that constitutional order while protecting national security and promoting American energy and innovation,” he said.

Justice Department officials added in a press release that the state of Mississippi is charged with administering the permitting program and decided no permit was required.

Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, said the government “will not sit idly by while private organizations use environmental laws to undermine our national security.”

In a statement, officials with Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center, the legal groups representing the NAACP in the lawsuit, framed the motion as the Trump administration’s attempting to protect wealthy, well-connected companies from being held to account.

They noted that instead of disputing xAI’s permit violations and allegations of unlawful polluting, the Justice Department expressed “vague” concerns about national security.

“This isn’t about national security,” said Laura Thoms, director of enforcement for Earthjustice. “It’s a desperate attempt to protect wealthy corporations like xAI from obeying our bedrock environmental laws.”

Last year, the Defense Department awarded xAI — along with other AI companies — a contract of up to $200 million for developing “agentic AI workflows across a variety of mission areas.” Around that same time, the White House revealed its plan for integrating AI into workflows across the federal government.

Kym Meyer, SELC’s litigation director, said the motion contradicts “decades of well-established legal precedent,” and called it “an unprecedented attack on the public’s ability to defend themselves from illegal pollution.”