European defense technology company Destinus has manufactured its 1,000th T150 turbojet engine.

The engine powers the Ruta B1 and Ruta B2 cruise missile family. This milestone is enabled by the company`s vertically integrated approach to propulsion, which removes supply chain and geopolitical risks and strengthens Europe’s capability to produce cruise-class propulsion systems at an industrial scale.

The wider supply chain context

Destinus produces compact turbojet engines in a thrust class suited to expendable aerial platforms and autonomous systems. The market for such propulsion units has expanded rapidly alongside growing procurement of one-way attack drones and aerial target systems by NATO-aligned militaries. The company’s manufacturing base in Europe positions it to serve defense contractors seeking supply chains outside of U.S. or Asian sources, a consideration that has become increasingly relevant given export control regimes and industrial policy shifts across the continent.

The 1,000-unit figure is meaningful in manufacturing terms. Turbojet engines involve precision machining of turbine discs, combustion chambers, and compressor blades — components that demand tight tolerances and consistent metallurgical quality at elevated temperatures. Reaching four-digit production volume indicates that Destinus has moved beyond prototype or low-rate initial production into a process capable of repeatable, quality-controlled output.

Sidney Berndt, Destinus’ Chief Manufacturing Officer said, “Producing one engine is engineering. Producing a thousand is industrial capability.” .

“The T150 was built from scratch. The design, tooling, test infrastructure, supply chain and quality control were all developed and are owned by Destinus. What you see here is not a prototype line. It is a European production system that can sustain the production of thousands of missile systems per year.”

According to the company, the T150 production line is designed for continuous ramp-up, and is capable of sustaining the current and future output levels of Ruta cruise missile family.

The engine specifications

The T150 has a length of 530 mm and an outer diameter of 245 mm. It weighs 17.5 kg and produces a thrust of 15 kN. The engine features an all radial design for compactness, and can use Jet A-1, JP-8, diesel, and petrol fuels. It powers the Ruta Block 1 (B1) and Ruta Block 2 (B2) family of cruise missiles designed and developed by Destinus.

Ruta B1 has a range of 300+ km and can carry a payload of 150 kg where as Ruta B2 has a range of 700+ km and can carry a payload of 250 kg.

These missiles are capable of flying low-altitude terrain-following flight trajectories, and are designed for stand-off precision strike against hardened and high-value military targets. They incorporate an electro-optical and infra-red (EO/IR) terminal guidance and are capable of operating in GPS denied and contested electronic warfare environments.

The company is also working on a follow on T220 turbojet engine, for powering the Ruta Block 3 missile. It probably has a thrust rating of 22 kN. The Ruta Block 3 missile incorporates a low observable airframe, has a range of 2000 km, and can carry a 250 kg payload.

Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and drone specialist SpearUAV have jointly announced Iron Wasp, a tube-launched counter UAS interceptor drone, intended for providing an aerial protection layer for ground maneuvering combat platforms and fixed installations.

The system combines SpearUAV’s canister-launch architecture with Rafael’s warhead and guidance integration, producing a weapon that can be deployed by infantry as well as armor units.

Yiftach Kleinman, CEO of SpearUAV said, “Rafael is the innovation leader of the Israeli and global defense industry. Its Active Protection Systems (Trophy and Irone Dome) are remarkable examples of this. We are proud that, after an extensive process, SpearUAV is selected to be part of the family of systems that has saved and will save many lives all over the globe.

“This collaboration underscores our commitment to delivering state-of-the-art encapsulated solutions that address the evolving threats faced by maneuvering forces.”

System architecture and launch mechanism

Iron Wasp is derived from SpearUAV’s Viper I (Interceptor) System. Viper I provides interception capability against drones, top attack as well as loitering munitions.

Its low SWaP (size weight and power) design enables mechanical, electronic as well as software integration on armor platforms like IFV (infantry fighting vehicles), main battle tanks (MBTs), armored cars and UGV (unmanned ground vehicles). Its open systems architecture facilitates integration with third party sensors and warheads.

Iron Wasp is fired from a canister tube, a form factor that eliminates the need for a dedicated runway or catapult and reduces the logistical footprint at the point of launch. The interceptor is initially cued by a radar to launch towards the direction of the approaching threat, it might also depend upon mid course data link corrections. The interceptor transitions to autonomous flight in the terminal phase, using onboard electro-optical seeker and machine vision capabilities to acquire, track and neutralize the target.

Other technical specifications of Iron Wasp, including endurance, warhead mass, and operational range, have not been publicly released by the companies at the time of this article’s publication.

Operational role and target set

The proliferation of unmanned aerial threats has fundamentally reshaped the risk environment for ground maneuver units. Commercially derived drones, loitering munitions, and top-attack systems pose persistent, low-cost challenges.

Rafael’s layered defense approach, to these challenges is combat tested in some of the most demanding battlefield environments. Iron Wasp is an extension of this layered defense approach intended to provide organic aerial interception capability for enhancing platform survivability.

Possible future trends

Interceptor drones like the Iron Wasp are part of a counter UAS tool box comprising of guns, rockets and directed energy weapons. The hard kill measures provided by the interceptor is highly effective in neutralizing wire (optical fiber) guided drones, as these drones are highly immune to radio frequency based electronic warfare techniques.

Future interceptor drone developments might be directed towards increasing magazine size and miniaturization to cater for the emerging threats of increasing drone swarm sizes and behavioural sophistication.

Shield AI and Destinus have completed a flight test exercise demonstrating autonomous collaborative strike capabilities from an interceptor drone system, named Hornet.

Hornet is designed and manufactured by Destinus, a European defense technology company. It is a multi-role autonomous platform capable of counter-unmanned aircraft system, strike, reconnaissance, and data relay missions. It can also be integrated into the existing multi layered air-defense architecture for protecting forward bases and critical infrastructure from kamikaze drone swarms. Hornet can operate in GPS denied environments, has a minimum range of 75 km (46.6 miles) and can carry a payload of 1.5 kg (3.3 pounds).

According to the company the Hornet serves as an initial integration baseline for Shield AI’s Hivemind AI pilot across the Destinus product line. The company’s product line of unmanned aircraft systems and cruise missiles is based on a common architecture which facilitates cross platform integration. The integration also serves as a technical risk reduction measure.

Tim Moser, chief technology officer at Destinus, said: “Destinus platforms operate on our own flight control architecture, and Hivemind validated that we can integrate third-party autonomy without surrendering system design authority.”

What the exercise involved

The main aim of the full mission flight test is to facilitate the integration of Hivemind with Ruta cruise missile. The missile is intended for precision strike against hardened and high-value military targets. It will be fielded in two blocks with iterative capability enhancements in range and payload. The missile will be capable of flying low-altitude terrain-following flight trajectories and can operate in GPS denied and contested electronic warfare environments.

The flight test covered the complete mission sequence akin to the Ruta’s operational engagement. It included autonomy-assisted mission planning via ground control station, radio testing, autonomous terrain following, in-flight target updates, and autonomous terminal maneuver execution on operator command.

Previously, the company has also carried out tests demonstrating an inflight teaming of Hornet with Shield AI’s V-BAT UAS. In these tests, the V-BAT served as a communications relay between the ground station and multiple Destinus Hornet interceptor drones.

How Hivemind functions in a teaming role

Shield AI’s Hivemind AI pilot is a platform agnostic autonomy software. It enables platforms to sense, decide, and act independently, within operator-defined parameters under established command authority. It can dynamically reroutes mission plans, responds to unexpected conditions, avoids obstacles, and executes complex tasks.

In a teaming context, individual aircraft running Hivemind communicate peer-to-peer to distribute situational awareness and coordinate maneuvers to lessen reliance on a ground control station. The architecture is intended to preserve mission continuity even when datalinks are jammed or severed.

Destinus intends to transition these capabilities via the Ruta platform to Ukraine. This will enable the coordinated strike behaviors between V-BAT and multiple Ruta systems to be tested in a combat environment.

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Bayou Metals, a manufacturing partner of defense shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), has stood up a dedicated production line for the Romulus uncrewed surface vessel (USV), a move intended to compress delivery timelines and increase throughput for the US Navy’s growing unmanned maritime program.

The production line is located in Slidell, Louisiana. Bayou Metals is also serving as a strategic marine-grade aluminum supplier to the HII. 

A purpose-built line for an uncrewed hull

Rather than routing Romulus components through a generalized fabrication workflow, Bayou Metals configured a dedicated manufacturing line specifically for the vessel’s metalwork and structural assemblies. This single-product-line architecture reduces setup changeover time and allows process engineers to optimize fixturing, weld sequencing, and quality inspection around a single repeating geometry—a standard lean-manufacturing approach when volume and schedule pressure justify the capital allocation.

The Romulus family of USVs is designed for a wide range of mission sets, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), mine countermeasures, strike operations, and counter-unmanned systems. It can also serve as a mother-ship to launch and recover unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is centered on HII’s Odyssey autonomy software suite and open systems architecture.

HII has been developing the platform as part of the broader US Navy push to field autonomous and semi-autonomous surface vessels capable of operating alongside crewed combatants. Romulus is being developed in partnership with Breaux Brothers, Shield AI, Beier Integrated Systems, and Incat Crowther. 

Supply chain structure for unmanned programs

The Bayou Metals arrangement illustrates how prime defense contractors are structuring supply chains for unmanned platforms differently from traditional crewed ships. Because USVs are expected to be procured in larger numbers at lower per-unit cost than destroyers or frigates, the production economics demand a more industrialized approach from tier-one and tier-two suppliers early in the program lifecycle — before the Navy has necessarily committed to a high-rate production contract.

HII’s unmanned systems portfolio

HII has been expanding its unmanned and autonomous systems work through its Mission Technologies division, positioning itself beyond traditional nuclear shipbuilding. The Romulus program sits within that strategic push.

By anchoring a dedicated supplier line, HII is attempting to demonstrate production readiness — a factor the Navy weighs when evaluating whether a program can transition from development and low-rate initial production to full-rate procurement.

Production readiness reviews assess not just the prime contractor’s internal capacity but the depth and reliability of the supplier base. A named, dedicated manufacturing line at a partner facility is a tangible data point in that evaluation criteria. 

What comes next

In addition to the vessel currently under construction, four additional Romulus 151 vessels will be built by Breaux Brothers Enterprises in Louisiana. This effort for HII also supports the expansion of the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base by growing Gulf Coast manufacturing capacity.

The United States is working to rebuild its domestic uranium enrichment infrastructure for its defense programs, through a project known as DUECE (Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment).

It began in 2016, with an objective to develop and demonstrate the next generation of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment. DUCE is based out of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

The project is strategically significant as it aims to provide a domestic source of highly enriched uranium for powering US nuclear submarines as well as provide tritium for the US nuclear weapons stockpile.

The US imports low enriched uranium for its commercial power reactors but international treaties prohibit the use of imported uranium for military applications.

A capability gap decades in the making

The US once operated three large gaseous diffusion plants for uranium enrichment. These were located in Oak Ridge Tennessee, Portsmouth Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky (which remained operational until 2013).

These facilities consumed enormous amounts of electricity and were gradually shut down as cheaper, more energy-efficient centrifuge-based enrichment became the global standard.

The US was also developing centrifuge technology at Oak Ridge to eventually replace gaseous diffusion. But events like the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, the end of the Cold War, and the decrease in global demand for enriched uranium halted plans for commercializing the gas centrifuge technology.

The enrichment process

Gas centrifuge enrichment works by spinning uranium hexafluoride gas at high speed; the heavier uranium-238 isotope migrates toward the outer wall while the lighter, fissile uranium-235 concentrates near the axis. Cascades of thousands of centrifuges connected in series are required to achieve commercially useful enrichment levels.

In general the enrichment levels of uranium fuel in US nuclear submarines is 93-97%. These enable high power density and long-lived reactor cores. It also facilitates in building more compact naval reactors.

What DUECE is building

Currently the project is focused on building a pilot plant in collaboration with BWX Technologies (BWXT). BWXT built a Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility to support the pilot plant, it commenced operations in January 2026. The plant will use centrifuges based on the ORNL’s Generation 1 centrifuge design. Currently the Generation 1 design is deployed in a laboratory cascade at ORNL.

It commenced operations on June 1, 2026. Additional deployments of the Generation 1 machine at ORNL are planned through the early 2030s to mature the TRL (Technology Readiness Level) of the design in time for the pilot plant deployment.

Michael Whedbee ORNL’s technical project manager for DUECE said “ The DUECE project plans to use the developments in computing and in materials to continue to advance and develop new potential designs and capabilities in the centrifuge arena.”

Eventually the technical and operational learnings from the pilot plant will be utilized in building a follow on commercial scale facility in the 2040s. The DUECE project fits within a broader federal push to secure the nuclear fuel cycle, which includes funding for domestic uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and reprocessing.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions is ramping up manufacturing capacity for its Spartan family of small gas turbine engines, responding to increased procurement activity across missile programs and loitering munition platforms.

The company confirmed the production expansion through an official press release.

What the Spartan engine is and why it matters now

The Spartan family comprises of compact turbojet engines designed specifically for expendable and attritable platforms — systems built to be used once or with minimal recovery expectation. These engines sit in a performance envelope suited to subsonic cruise missiles, decoy drones, and one-way attack munitions, where cost-per-unit and production throughput matter as much as raw performance.

Steve Fendley, President of Kratos Unmanned Systems Division said “As the Department of War focuses on rebuilding critical missile inventories and increasing affordable precision-strike capacity, the need for scalable, high-performance but low-cost propulsion systems has never been greater.”

He further said “Kratos is investing today to ensure our customers have access to affordable, reliable, American-made propulsion systems that can be delivered at the speed and scale required by the modern threat environment.”

Loitering munitions, sometimes referred to as kamikaze drones, have moved from niche battlefield tools to standard procurement items for multiple NATO and allied militaries following their documented use in conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. That shift has created a supply pressure on propulsion systems, which have historically been a bottleneck in scaling expendable platform production.

Production expansion details

Kratos states that it will produce 3000 engines in 2027. The Spartan line covers multiple thrust classes (ranging from 30 lb to 200 lb at sea level), allowing a single manufacturing infrastructure to serve different platform weight categories without requiring entirely separate production lines.

The vertical integration Kratos maintains over its propulsion systems — designing and building engines in-house — gives the company tighter control over delivery schedules, a factor that has become a competitive differentiator as defense primes face long lead times on subcomponents.

This investment by the company is strategically aimed at supporting US Department of War`s priorities to replenish missile inventories, expand production capacity for precision-strike weapons, and deliver affordable mass capabilities across the US armed forces

Engineering tradeoffs in expendable propulsion

Designing a gas turbine for an expendable platform involves deliberate compromises. Engineers typically target a service life measured in hours rather than thousands of flight cycles, which allows for reduced material grades in certain hot-section components (cooled by the onboard fuel in Spartan engines) and simplified maintenance architecture.

Supply chain and geopolitical context

Western defense planners have grown increasingly focused on magazine depth — the ability to sustain munitions expenditure over a prolonged conflict — following assessments of consumption rates in Ukraine. Loitering munitions and cruise missiles consume propulsion units at a pace that peacetime production lines were not sized to support. Kratos quotes an annual production capacity of 10,000 Spartan engines probably indicating towards a buffer surge production capability.

According to the company these engines are designed and manufactured in the United States at Oxford, Michigan, with all parts and components sourced from U.S. companies.

Rare Element Resources (RER) has issued a project update on its Bear Lodge rare earth element deposit in Wyoming, one of the largest known carbonatite-hosted rare earth deposits in North America. According to the update the environmental review and mining site permitting is in progress and is anticipated to be completed by March 2028. The update also states that the demonstration rare earth element (REE) separation plant will commence operations by late summer 2026. It is scheduled to run for up to 12 months and will produce an up to 10 tons of neodymium-praseodymium (Nd/Pr) oxide.

The mineral deposits at Bear Lodge contain both the magnet rare earth materials neodymium, praseodymium, samarium and terbium as well as cerium (Ce), lanthanum, yttrium, gadolinium, europium and dysprosium. All these elements are on the U.S. Geological Survey`s list of 60 critical minerals. The minerals on the list have been identified as critical due to their role in national security or economic development and by their risk of supply chain disruption.

The project details

The vertically integrated Bear Lodge Rare Earth Project encompasses mining of rare earth element (REE) ore which will become feed material for a state-of-the-art commercial processing facility. The facility will produce high-purity separated neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide using the company`s patented, environmentally friendly technology. It will be designed as a zero discharge facility and will located approximately 40 miles from the mining area.

The full scale commercial processing facility will be built based on the operational, economic, and engineering data derived from the demonstration plant. This US Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified plant is located at Upton, Wyoming.

Ken Mushinski, President and CEO of RER said “The primary objective of a Demonstration Plant is to systematically uncover and resolve mechanical and operational challenges before scaling to a commercial facility”.

He further said “By fine-tuning our primary processing circuit and resolving these filtration inefficiencies now, we are effectively de-risking our commercial trajectory. Once this front-end optimization is complete, the primary circuit will continuously feed our completed separation circuits to yield high-purity NdPr.

The separation process

According to the company the proprietary separation process involves four steps. It commences by crushing and screening of the feed sample to 1mm size followed by counter-current leaching and selective precipitation, to chemical digestion and solvent extraction, and finally to REE separation and refining.

The final REE separation and refining process involves multiple steps, these remove the Nd/Pr (at greater than 99.5 percent purity) as well as samarium, europium, gadolinium, lanthanum and heavy rare earth concentrates.

The company states that it has done extensive laboratory bench-scale and pilot plant testing on metallurgical processes to recover saleable rare earth products and has been granted two patents on its metallurgical processing. These involve removal of thorium from REE containing acidic solution, as well as the selective extraction of REEs using oxalic acid. These patented processes have been further advanced in collaboration with General Atomics, the company’s majority shareholder.

Supply chain context

The United States currently has limited domestic capacity for separating and processing rare earth elements into refined oxides or metals. Mountain Pass in California remains the only operating rare earth mine in the country, though its concentrate is largely shipped to China for separation (which accounts for 91 percent of the global refined output). Projects like Bear Lodge are positioned as potential contributors to a more complete domestic supply chain, from ore to separated material.

Although permitting timelines, metallurgical recovery rates, and sustained financing are the primary variables that determine whether a deposit moves from resource estimate to operating mine.

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