The global defense industry is developing directed energy weapons, cutting-edge electronic warfare and computerized fire control systems as affordable ways to improve the capabilities of an AR-15, enabling a soldier to combat the small attack drones that have revolutionized modern warfare.

Tactical drones, many of them costing no more than a few thousand dollars — used to great effect in the Russia-Ukraine war and in the conflicts in the Middle East — can’t be stopped with large, expensive ground-based missiles. Nor is it practical to shoot them down with manned aircraft, especially in the coming age of “drone swarms.”

“Everyone knows that the trade-off cost of a kinetic effector against a cheap $300 drone is not sustainable,” says Wesley Sparks, director of business development at Honeywell, which is working on projects to provide components for laser weapons systems that could be used to take out enemy drones. Such lasers, or directed energy weapons, are no longer limited to the realm of science fiction and soon could be part of a regular anti-drone tool kit for the U.S. and its allies.

The effort is top of mind for defense companies worldwide. Israel Weapons Industries’ contribution to the mission is Arbel, a computerized fire control system built to dramatically improve the accuracy and lethality of standard AR-15 rifles when used against drones. While connected to the rifle, the Arbel system continuously analyzes the shooter’s micromovements. It automatically times the release of rounds, firing only when a shot is calculated to cause the most damage to a drone.

Debate over the cost and feasibility of the planned Golden Dome missile defense system is raging, despite the White House’s insistence that the plan is affordable and will be completed by 2028. A report this week from the Congressional Research Service outlined some of the friction between the White House’s cost estimates and those of defense experts and Congress.

Golden Dome was allocated $24.4 billion from President Trump’s fiscal 2025 reconciliation law, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In May, Mr. Trump said the system would cost $175 billion and would be completed by the end of his term.

The CRS report homes in on the prospect that the system may cost much more. The Congressional Budget Office was one of the first to throw cold water on the $175 billion figure, predicting that Golden Dome could eventually cost up to $542 billion, driven mostly by its inclusion of space-based interceptors.

Targeted killings between Russia and Ukraine have intensified and spread over the past month. Threat Status special correspondent Guillaume Ptak in Ukraine examines the situation in a dispatch from Kyiv, where Ukraine’s military intelligence took credit Monday for a car bomb that killed a Russian national guard lieutenant colonel deep inside Russia’s Stavropol Krai, near the village of Tambukan.

Although targeted killings have long been part of Moscow’s tradecraft, the tempo and reach of such attacks have accelerated since the full-scale invasion in 2022. Today, Kyiv and Moscow use covert operations but with very different aims.

On Wednesday, Volodymyr Leontiev, a Russian-installed official in occupied Nova Kakhovka long accused by Kyiv of collaboration and abuse, was reportedly killed by a Ukrainian drone. “We go after Russian generals, collaborators and war criminals — people who are legitimate military targets,” said Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian political figure and outspoken critic of Russia who has survived multiple attempts on his life widely attributed to Russian security services.

The Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration is not saying whether the Los Alamos National Laboratory has met a legal requirement to produce “war reserve” plutonium pits needed to keep the U.S. nuclear warhead arsenal ready for deterrence or conflict.

Plutonium pits are the core of thermonuclear weapons. Thousands of current warhead pits are old, and many need to be replaced. Los Alamos National Laboratory is currently the sole production facility for full-scale pit production. A second plant is being built in Georgia at the NNSA Savannah River complex.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz examines the issue in his latest Inside the Ring column, noting a 2014 defense authorization law that required NNSA, which runs Los Alamos, to produce at least 10 “war reserve” plutonium pits in fiscal 2024, at least 20 in fiscal 2025 and at least 30 in fiscal 2026. Asked if the legal requirement was met, an NNSA spokesman declined to specify, citing classification reasons.

The moment for “shaking hands with AI has arrived,” writes Frank Perley, who contends that “sadly, that age-old custom of the handshake is useless when faced with an entity whose hands — and entirety — are nothing more than an intricate set of electronic computations.

“Synthetic intelligence, like the authentic kind it is manufactured to augment or replace, has some image shortfalls to address,” writes Mr. Perley, a former senior editor and editorial writer for The Washington Times Opinion section.

He points to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, which found that U.S. adults are decidedly pessimistic about the prospect of a bot-infused future. “Humanity’s journey toward a better future is replete with surprises,” he writes. “Those who may once have expected artificial intelligence to usher in only ‘the best of times’ could be forgiven for looking askance at its burgeoning impact.”

• Oct. 6 — Big Deal, Small Deal or No Deal? Possible Outcomes of a Trump-Xi Summit, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Oct. 8 — Investing in the North Korean People: Broadening Access to Information in North Korea, Stimson Center

• Oct. 8 — Relearning Great Power Diplomacy: A Conversation with Wess Mitchell, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 13-15 — AUSA 2025 Annual Meeting & Exposition in Washington, Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA)

• Oct. 21-22 — Missile Defense Agency Small Business Conference, Tennessee Valley Chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA)