Alarm bells are ringing across Europe following a series of incidents in France, including one in which a drone positioned itself directly above a military convoy transporting Leclerc main battle tanks and filmed the armored column at close range before vanishing into the night. Another incident saw a drone breach the airspace above the Eurenco ammunition and explosives plant — one of France’s most sensitive defense-industrial sites.

Threat Status Special Correspondent Guillaume Ptak examines the situation in a dispatch from France, noting that the Eurenco facility manufactures the propellants used in Europe’s artillery shells, including ammunition earmarked for Ukraine. While Russia has denied any involvement, many in Europe believe the incidents are part of a wider “hybrid” campaign being waged by Moscow against NATO countries.

A broader surge of mysterious drone activity has been occurring for months over NATO territory, including in Germany, where authorities have logged repeated drone overflights above Ramstein Air Base, the Rheinmetall arms factories and even critical energy infrastructure. “These are unattributable, asymmetric actions, but the pattern is increasingly clear,” according to Ned Price, a former CIA analyst, who says “many of these plots and attacks are being carried out at the behest of Russian intelligence services.”

The Chinese government is developing capabilities for cutting undersea communications cables as part of its large-scale military buildup and preparation for war, according to the annual U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report to Congress that was made public this week.

The report says new cable-cutting technologies are being deployed as part of Beijing’s plans for “gray zone” warfare — activities below the level of kinetic conflict. Undersea cables are the backbone of modern global communications infrastructure and transmit an estimated 95% of all global internet traffic. The links are used for financial transactions, government services, commercial activities and military communications.

The report reveals that in February, Chinese scientists at the China Ship Scientific Research Center, which was sanctioned for acquiring U.S. goods for the Chinese army, made public a new design for an “electric cutting device for deep-sea cables.” The device is said to be capable of severing armored cables at depths of more than 13,000 feet.

The secretive “Replicator” drone program, established by the Biden administration within the Defense Department’s leading tech-industry collaboration unit to accelerate the acquisition and deployment of unmanned systems to U.S. warfighters, has a new home under the U.S. Special Operations Command.

The Pentagon told Threat Status in a statement that the entire Replicator portfolio has officially “transitioned from the Defense Innovation Unit to a newly formed Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG)” within U.S. Special Operations Command, also known as SOCOM. The Pentagon issued a statement following our publication last week of an article examining the effectiveness of the Replicator program and the extent to which it has succeeded or failed in achieving its goal of fielding “multiple thousands” of attritable autonomous systems by August 2025.

The DAWG is now responsible for Replicator under the direction of Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Francis L. Donovan, according to the Pentagon statement, which said Gen. Donovan has been named director of the new group by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Gen. Donovan was previously assigned as the vice commander of SOCOM by then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in 2020.

Threat Status was in Camden, Arkansas, this week as the little-known town broke ground on a new $400 million solid rocket motor and propulsion factory owned and operated by L3Harris Technologies. The expanded operations — part of the U.S. defense industry’s response to the increased demand for missiles around the world — have brought 500 new jobs to Camden over the past year.

The Camden facility is already a primary producer of guided multiple launch rocket system munitions. GMLRS have featured heavily in the long-range strike capabilities for Ukraine that have been provided by the U.S. and others. The Javelin is an example of a smaller but critical solid-fuel rocket weapon. Thousands of Javelins have been sent to Ukraine from the arsenals of countries around the world — so many that invoking “St. Javelin” is now a cultural refrain among international military members supporting Ukraine.

The situation has highlighted a strategic need in the U.S. arsenal. The Camden facility, built by Aerojet Rocketdyne, was started more than 40 years ago on the site of a former Navy depot left over from World War II. L3Harris acquired Aerojet Rocketdyne in 2023. The company says it has made significant investments since then. The new facility will sit alongside the current 2,000-acre site in Camden.

The race to develop nuclear propulsion “isn’t just about reaching Mars; it’s also an important next step in our battle for space dominance,” according to Tory Bruno, who writes in a Washington Times op-ed that while NASA is developing both nuclear electric propulsion and nuclear thermal propulsion, the latter “has greater implications for our national security posture in space.

“For an in-space application, nuclear thermal propulsion is the ideal solution to many challenges in space exploration,” writes Mr. Bruno, the CEO of United Launch Alliance. “Today, that need is urgent. With China and Russia developing new counter-space systems, the ability to move freely in orbit has become the new high ground of deterrence.

“Now is the time to kick nuclear thermal propulsion into high gear,” he writes. “We’ll plug the development time gap with novel chemical approaches, but the sooner nuclear thermal propulsion is ready, the faster we can get to Mars (pun intended), and the sooner we can guard the peace here to allow space for that to happen.”

• Nov. 20 — Delivering Space Capabilities for Warfighting Advantage, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Nov. 20 — Countering the Criminal Drone Threat in the Americas, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Nov. 20 — Prepared, Not Paralyzed: Managing Artificial Intelligence Risks to Drive American Leadership, Center for a New American Security

• Nov. 20-21 — Dubai Air Show 2025, United Arab Emirates

• Nov. 20-21 — Defense TechConnect Innovation Summit & Expo

• Nov. 21-23 — Halifax International Security Forum, Nova Scotia

• Dec. 2-3 — AI+ Space Summit, Special Competitive Studies Project  

• Dec. 6 — 2025 Reagan National Defense Forum, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute