The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s tactical technology office is sponsoring the contest, which kicked off earlier this month.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) issued a challenge, the DARPA Lift Challenge, in October 2025 to develop novel drone designs that have greater payload-to-weight ratio. DARPA, which ...

Pentagon neglect played a key role in China’s rise to global dominance in the small drone industry, but now the U.S. Army wants to buy 1 million small UAS over the next 2-3 years and ramp up domestic ...

The US military is keen to have industry support to improve the capabilities of its drones and better prepare its uncrewed fleet to succeed on tomorrow’s battlefield. This approach involves overcoming ...

As military missions become more complicated, warfighters need more capable drones to use across diverse scenarios. The same also applies to civilian applications, like infrastructure inspection, ...

RACER Heavy Platform (RHP) during RACER testing in April 2025. (DARPA) The U.S. Army is slated to begin its first integration of an unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, produced by the Defense Advanced ...

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few ...

Drone technology has reached new heights in recent years, with huge implications for the U.S. military. For example, the U.S. Navy is searching for ways to integrate unmanned vessels like the DARPA ...

The Army already has an effective mine-clearing weapon—the M58 MICLIC rocket—but will use the drone to reduce the need for a human presence along the front lines. There remains an urban legend that ...

The Rated Red Crew tracks the Sea Hunter drone as it passes DARPA tests and hunts submarines without a crew.