That concept was one of the key testing lines of effort in an Army Corps of Engineers and Army Research Laboratory experiment in Pituffik, Greenland, earlier this year. The whole endeavor was part of a broader testing series organized by the International Cooperative Engagement Program for Polar Research (ICE-PPR) and the Office of Naval Research, a multi-national endeavor that underscores the ever-increasing importance of the Arctic as a warfighting domain.

It is also a domain that presents unique challenges for camouflage, said Dr. Tom Douglas, a research chemist and senior scientific technical manager of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory Alaska Research Office in Fairbanks, Alaska.

“It’s dark for some periods; it’s light for other periods,” Douglas told Military Times in an interview. “Everything can look kind of yellow or orange when the sun’s setting … you’ve got sea ice, which can look kind of gray … You can stand out pretty blatantly in a vast open white field where there’s no vegetation, right? So there’s that, and then thinking about coatings or snow covering things, and maybe making it worse now that your camo doesn’t work.”

Anthony Fragoso, a cold regions artificial intelligence lead at CRREL, said that his lab worked with ARL staff during ship-to-shore operations to test “a number of novel coatings,” using sensors to assess the effectiveness of concealment.

“If you go beyond the visible, which our adversaries can do, snow in certain wavelengths looks black. But it’s white in visible,” Fragoso told Military Times in a separate interview. “So trying to match that is a challenge.”

Researchers, Fragoso said, were inspired by Arctic foxes in Pituffik, which change colors over the course of the year – from white in the winter to brown in the summer. 

“Things that are reversible, flexible is kind of what we’re after,” he said, adding that researchers considered units like the Alaska-based 11th Airborne Division, which also regularly deploys to the Pacific.

“They’re the Arctic Angels, but they are also worried about fighting in the jungle,” he said. “So they don’t want to paint stuff white, and then it has to go to Taiwan.”

While still at the scientific research and development level, the work is making its way to operational units already, with upcoming plans to test a rapidly deployable coating system on the Army’s Cold Weather All-Terrain Vehicles in Alaska.

“The Alaska National Guard is going to fly over it with helicopters, film it with thermal, all that stuff,” Fragoso said. “Everything now is counter-[unmanned aerial systems], so it’s making sure stuff isn’t being spotted from above by a $1,000 drone.”

Mike Parker, the cold regions mobility lead for CRREL, emphasized that this effort to test flexible camouflage extends beyond the Arctic.

With surveillance from above essentially a given in contemporary warfare, additional layers of concealment, particularly those that can be easily altered to fit changing environments, are in unprecedented demand.

“It has to remain flexible, and all aspects of it are on the table,” Parker said. “It doesn’t have to be just a coating; it could be a fabric … anything that can give us the tactical advantage is being evaluated.”

The Defense Health Agency has not released full details of Tricare changes expected in 2027, but updates to its operations manual this month show that beneficiaries ages 21 to 26 who use Tricare Young Adult, or TYA, will pay $893 for TYA Prime or $394 per month for TYA Select beginning Jan. 1. 

The increases — of 12.5% and 8.5% respectively, from 2026 — were first reported by Federal News Network. 

Tricare Young Adult was established in 2011 to provide military dependents a coverage extension similar to the one required by the Affordable Care Act, which mandated that private health insurers cover children on their parents’ employee-based healthcare policies up to age 26. 

By law, however, TYA must cover the full cost of providing Tricare benefits, and under this construct, beneficiaries pay monthly premiums.  

Premiums for TYA Prime have always been higher than those for TYA Select, once known as TYA Standard. TYA Prime requires patients to see a primary care provider, often based in a military hospital or contract clinic, requires referrals for specialty care and has no deductibles or copayments.  

TYA Select allows patients to see any physician, including specialists, without a referral, and offers savings for seeing network providers. It has a higher deductible and requires copayments. 

The small number of patients enrolled in TYA Prime — 1,287 — are bearing the costs of the program, according to the Defense Health Agency.  

“A relatively small pool of insured population, combined with a high number of healthcare encounters, result in higher premium rates, particularly for TYA Prime,” DHA officials said in a statement to Military Times. 

The increases represent a 192% increase in TYA Prime premiums and 73% increase for TYA Select premiums since 2016. A decade ago, TYA Prime enrollees paid $306 a month in premiums while those in TYA Standard paid $228 per month. 

At the time, 26,910 beneficiaries were enrolled in TYA Prime while 18,273 had TYA Standard. 

According to DHA, roughly 27,600 beneficiaries are currently enrolled in TYA Select.  

The new rates translate to $4,728 to $10,716 in added healthcare costs for active-duty military and retiree families with young adult beneficiaries. Active-duty families without older children have no enrollment fees or premiums for Tricare Prime and, depending on rank and date of enlistment, pay between $50 and $397 a year for Tricare Select plus out-of-pocket costs. 

Retiree families pay between $765 and $1,191 per year in enrollment fees and bear out-of-pocket costs.  

The National Military Family Association, an Alexandria, Virginia-based non-profit that advocates for military personnel and their dependents, said the information provided by the Defense Health Agency on the rising costs of TYA doesn’t “fully explain the underlying factors driving the increases.” 

In a message posted on its website, the group said it is trying to determine the changes in healthcare use or costs that have contributed to the increases and what is attributable to rising medical expenses.  

Also, the organization is seeking to determine why costs have risen for TYA Prime at rates faster than TYA Select. 

Eileen Huck, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association, said the group is concerned that military dependents will forego health coverage if premiums continue to rise. 

“It is a vicious cycle because the costs are fully borne by the beneficiary. There’s no government offset. So, as the costs have gone up, young people who either can find less expensive options or feel that they are healthy enough to go without, risk going without health coverage,” Huck told Military Times in an interview.  

Tricare Young Adult offers coverage to unmarried dependents under age 26 of Tricare-eligible sponsors who don’t have access to employee-offered healthcare or meet the age requirements to remain on regular Tricare — age 21, or 23 if the beneficiary is a full-time college student. 

Since 2021, members of Congress have supported legislation that would allow military dependents to stay on Tricare until age 26, similar to the young adult children of employees enrolled in their company’s health plans. 

The current iteration of the bill, sponsored by Rep. Patrick Ryan, D-N.Y., in the House and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in the Senate, has 98 sponsors from both political parties. 

“We absolutely feel that it’s unfair for military families to have to pay extra for their young adults’ health coverage when … civilian families with employer-based plans get that coverage automatically,” Huck said. 

She added that barring passage of that legislation, NMFA would like to see all young adult beneficiaries have access to Tricare until at least age 23. Currently, dependents lose coverage under their sponsor at age 21 if they aren’t enrolled in college. 

“It really makes no sense that health coverage is connected to college enrollment,” Huck said. “We’ve always been concerned that large numbers of military-connected young adults are going without health coverage because of the cost.”  

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the annual cost of a U.S. family’s employer-provided healthcare plan was an average $28,303 in 2026. 

An Army market survey published Monday focuses on two ISV versions: the ISV-9, which carries nine passengers, and the ISV-Utility, which carries five passengers plus a utility bed to haul cargo.

“The estimated total requirement is for 20,787 vehicles (9,003 ISV-9 and 11,784 ISV-U), subject to fund availability and requirements from the U.S. Army, other sister services and potential Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers,” the survey said.

“To ensure the most streamlined, competitive, and cost-effective approach, the government is utilizing the results of this market survey to determine the feasibility of several procurement pathways.”

The ISV, from GM Defense, is based on General Motors’s commercial Colorado and Silverado pickups. GM Defense was awarded a $697.7 million contract modification last month for engineering changes to the ISV-U and the ISV-U Utility Winch Kit, bringing the cumulative value to $915.6 million.

GM Defense announced Oct. 12 that the Army expanded orders for the ISV from an initial 649 to nearly 12,000.

In the market survey, contractors are asked to provide the Army with manufacturing cost estimates based on “varying annual production volumes (e.g., 100, 500, 1,000, and 1,500+ units per year) to evaluate economy-of-scale thresholds.”

The survey also includes a timeline that begins in fiscal 2028 with an acquisition of 106 vehicles. The acquisition continues to fiscal 2036, with the Army receiving around 2,000 to 2,100 vehicles per year.

The survey also listed numerous technical specifications. The ISV-9 and ISV-U will have a maximum vehicle curb weight of 5,200 pounds, plus an operational payload of 5,000 pounds for the ISV-9 and a payload capacity of 5,000 pounds for the ISV-U. Both versions will have a gross vehicle weight rating of up to 10,200 pounds, the survey said.

Both vehicles require baseline military modifications, including blackout lights, 24V electrical systems, main power disconnect, run-flat tires, the ability to ford both salt and fresh water, MIL-STD-814/MIL-STD-209K life and tie-down provisions, 24V NATO slave receptacles on the front and rear bumper, an integrated winch and Military Petroleum, Oils, and Lubricants (POL) compatibility.”

The ISV-9 and ISV-U will have full rollover protection for their passengers. The ISV-U will also have a winch, a 4,000-watt inverter with multiple electrical outlets, towing capacity of up to 6,500 pounds and the capability to carry “non-ambulatory patients as a kit.”

The vehicles should be capable of traveling up to 55 miles per hour on good paved roads and 17 miles per hour cross country.

“Both the ISV-9 and ISV-U shall be capable of traversing longitudinal grades up to 60% and must reliably meet stringent mobility profile requirements across improved, secondary, and un-improved surfaces (trails and cross-country) without fatiguing the occupants when the platform is operating at GVW [gross vehicle weight],” the Army said.

The Congressional Military Range and Test Facility Caucus was formed with the purpose of highlighting the role military ranges and test facilities play in advancing research, technology development and test missions for the military, according to a Tuesday announcement.

“America’s military ranges and test facilities are where our nation’s warfighters get their edge, and I am proud to represent some of the most critical in the world,” Rep. Vince Fong, R-Calif., who launched the caucus, said in the release. 

“This caucus will ensure that Members of Congress understand what is at stake, fight for the resources these facilities need, and protect the missions that keep America ahead of our adversaries,” he continued.

The caucus was formed by Fong alongside co-chairs Reps. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., George Whitesides, D-Calif., and Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M. Other members include Reps. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., Julia Brownley, D-Calif., and Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., per the statement.

The caucus news comes after the Army announced earlier this year that it is opening five of its test ranges to private industry, aiming to quicken the development and testing of drones, counter-drone systems, long-range fires and cheap interceptors. 

The Army isn’t the only service that eyed opening up its ranges to approved companies. Earlier this month, Air Force leaders said they were working with the Army to understand how they could also apply the concept.

Although the Air Force has yet to open any ranges, Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro, the commander of the Air Force Test Center, said at an October Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies forum that in a previous posting he worked with officials and contractors to coordinate smaller-scale test range access for specific tests, which gave him insight into how opening the ranges to industry could work. 

The Army has tinkered with high-altitude balloons for some time, but interest and experimentation have grown in recent years. Against China’s growing arsenal in the vastness of the Pacific, those balloons could provide a cheaper, lower-signature platform that can be employed from dispersed positions, Maj. Gen. Bernard Harrington, commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division/Multi-Domain Command-Pacific, or MDC-P, said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month.

Harrington’s command was recently established to merge the ground-maneuver elements of the 7th Infantry Division and long-range capabilities of the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force. Part of the unit’s mission is to operate in space, cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum and use long-range fires to help the rest of the Joint Force maneuver, including by opening gaps in China’s anti-access/area-denial network — the air, sea and land-based sensors and weapons designed to keep U.S. forces at bay.

“For us in the Pacific, we really are looking at a specific pacing threat and an anti-access/area-denial network,” against which MDC-P aims to create “windows of opportunity for that Joint Force, whether it be a carrier strike group that’s going to pulse into the weapons engagement zone, whether it be a bomber task force, whether it be a ground unit doing a joint forcible-entry operation,” Harrington said.

High-altitude balloons, or HABs, could facilitate that by carrying “launched effects” — the Army’s term for an aerial system deployed from crewed and uncrewed vehicles for reconnaissance, communications, strikes and other missions. HABs would give MDC-P soldiers more ways to employ attack drones and munitions that are cheaper than “exquisite” missiles, available in greater numbers and harder for adversaries to spot.

Interest in HABs has grown in part due to technological improvements that allow them to stay aloft for weeks or months at a time and give operators more control over where they go. That enhances balloons’ value as platforms for radars and other sensors which, at operating altitudes above 60,000 feet, can see far into rival territory while remaining in international airspace. They also offer a cost-effective complement to satellites, which are more expensive and whose orbits limit their time over any one area.

Harrington described high-altitude balloons as part of “an ecosystem” of data-collecting assets in space, in the air, on land and at sea. HABs in particular could compensate if space-based assets are taken out, Harrington said. “So our ability to employ HABs [and] have HABs be persistent enables both our collection and targeting as well as us [to] provide that information to the Joint Force for their collection and targeting.”

Harrington also described a role for balloon- or unmanned surface vessel-launched effects in kinetic strikes. With the right timing and enough precision, those strikes may not even need to eliminate their target to create an opening.

“Maybe I don’t necessarily need to sink a ship, but if I take out certain systems on that vessel, well, then it creates this temporal window of opportunity,” Harrington said.

“We saw great value [in] that maybe I don’t have to use specifically or unmask an exquisite system to achieve that effect. If I can achieve effect of mass utilizing lower-cost systems, maybe that will get me there,” Harrington added. “So we modeled that, and what we saw was — particularly with our unmanned surface vessels, long-range one-way attack, long-range launched effects — the ability to synchronize and mass that could potentially get us to achieve that effect.”

Harrington’s command experimented with some of those systems during Bayonet Quest 26, an exercise held in Michigan and on Lake Huron from late September to early October. An official video showed soldiers working with air and maritime drones, including a quadcopter launched from a surface vessel and a fixed-wing drone hooked up to a balloon. Harrington said Bayonet Quest tested MDC-P’s ability to “orchestrate those systems” by launching them, gathering data from their sensors, and using AI and LLMs to process that data and produce tasking orders.

“If you see [a potential target], then task a UAS to be able to come over and actually validate if that meets the target folder,” Harrington said, describing the approach. “Then I can task long-range one-way attack [or] an attack USV to be able to achieve that effect or I could send that as a potential fire mission to a more exquisite munition to be able to close that kill chain.”

That reduces the need for a large, easily targetable ground presence, Harrington added: “This is all about integration: Integrate multiple systems into one data layer, be able to lay something like a large language model on top of it, and allow orchestration so we don’t have a lot of soldiers in fixed sites on ground control stations.”

Harrington’s comments come amid a flurry of HAB-related experiments by the Army in North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Pacific.

At exercise Valiant Shield in Guam this summer, soldiers experimented with HABs and launched effects “within an island-chain operational construct.” One test sent a HAB aloft towing a long-endurance drone “to evaluate stratospheric payload deployment capabilities.” Soldiers tested the same balloon-drone combo in Japan during Orient Shield in September.

The Army’s Multi-Domain Command-Europe has done dozens of HAB launches over the past year to examine the logistics of employing balloons and to test sensing and communications capabilities using “experimental payloads.”

Speaking alongside Harrington this month, MDC-E commander Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter said HABs have a role, alongside other sensors and weapons, in opening “windows of opportunity” against anti-access/area-denial networks, in particular by providing resilient communications and additional strike platforms.

“We like to proliferate the stratosphere with high-altitude balloons, but I mean 200, 300 at a time. We like to use them as drones, [communications retransmission], electromagnetic sensing, electronic attack, and then to drop them down and have air-launched effects,” Carpenter said. “During different seasons, the flight paths are different. We study that. We understand during what seasons, where the best places are to launch those high-altitude systems and then, again, to hold enemy cities and capabilities at risk at any time.”

During an exercise in North Carolina, engineers, preventative medicine teams, chaplains and fatality management specialists prepared for mass temporary interment not used on a large scale since the Korean War, the Army announced in a release last week.

For more than twenty years during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. air superiority allowed the quick evacuation of remains back to the United States through mortuary affairs channels. Future conflicts — especially those with large-scale combat operations, or LSCO — may not have the same capabilities.  

Phase II of Operation Dragon Covenant challenged troops to test and validate temporary burial operations and remains preservation at a large scale. Engineer soldiers involved had to use their equipment to excavate and then fill burial trenches without damaging mock remains, made of skeletal models and water containers, so that hypothetical future forensic teams could unearth and repatriate them after the end of a conflict. 

“This exercise allowed us to take a critical look at how we respect, honor, and systematically manage our fallen in a high-intensity conflict,” said Sgt. 1st Class Delbert Ruede, the senior fatality management leader for 3rd Corps Sustainment Command (CSC), in the release. “If we went to war tomorrow, we would be making this up as we went along. What we are doing here is taking a scientific, field-tested approach so that we can maintain positive control and respectfully care for our fallen.”

The U.S. requires the evacuation of human remains when operations in wartime situations permit, but U.S. joint service guidance authorizes temporary graves during mass casualty incidents in war, where decedents cannot be safely moved due to safety, lack of transportation, or if the deaths are a result of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.

Soldiers, civilians or enemy combatants buried in temporary graves must be treated with dignity and their information — if available — preserved, the military dictates. 

The Geneva Conventions require that even the bodies of enemy forces be recorded and that identifying information be collected. Cremation is rarely authorized, save for hygiene or religious grounds. 

Army doctrine prescribes that temporary interment plots consist of five parallel trenches to hold 100 bodies, with ten bodies lining each side of the trenches. In previous trials, units using standard backhoes could excavate only one trench — and thus ten remains — per three hours. According to the service’s release, operators during the most recent exercise used D6 bulldozers to excavate a trench large enough for 20 remains in an average of one hour and 15 minutes. 

Based on that, commanders can plan for an engineer company with the requisite equipment to dig and cover trenches for up to 2,400 bodies every 24 hours, if operating nonstop. 

Operators also learned that published instructions on trench standards did not reflect current Army equipment. The service said that doctrine called for seven feet between rows, which the team found too narrow to drive a dozer without disrupting the burial trenches. This discovery, and any others, will be reflected in future Army doctrine. 

Beyond the physical trenches, the exercise also gave religious specialists and chaplains an opportunity to prepare for LSCOs by developing sensitive protocols. 

“In a high-intensity, contested combat environment, fatality management teams cannot stop a 24-hour interment operation for individualized religious gravesite services,” Lt. Col. Ruska, chaplain for the 3rd CSC, said in the release. The team, he added, also may be unable to determine an individual’s faith after death. 

“We consulted with Chaplains from various low density faith groups for advisement,” he said. “The consensus was that by consecrating the site before remains are placed in the ground reassures families that their loved ones are treated with reverence, dignity and honor despite the inability to provide a memorial ceremony in a contested combat environment.”

The exercise will continue, the Army said, with Phase III of Dragon Covenant in Spring 2027, integrating security, medical facilities and a mortuary affairs collection point. 

All Department of Defense personnel are forbidden from such financial transactions either directly or through a third party when using insider information, according to a memo signed last week by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“The lives of our service members often depend on the enemy not knowing what is coming,” Hegseth wrote in the memo. “The men and women who carry our flag into harm’s way deserve a Force that protects them — not one that exposes them to the enemy for personal gain.”

The memo comes six months after a U.S. soldier involved with the capture of ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was charged with using insider information to win $400,000 by betting on his removal through the prediction market Polymarket. The soldier, a master sergeant with U.S. Army Special Forces, later pleaded not guilty, and his criminal trial is slated for early December.

The same month, individuals across the globe used Polymarket to place bets on the rescue mission of Dude 44 Bravo, one of the airmen who ejected from a U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle that was shot down over Iran by enemy fire during Operation Epic Fury. 

Polymarket later took down the wagers, saying it didn’t meet the site’s integrity standards, but other war-related markets users can bet on were created before and after the Iran war began, causing concern over national security among lawmakers and experts. 

Another instance of an individual betting on military operations involved an anonymous Polymarket account making $550,000 off of trades on the first day of strikes in Operation Epic Fury, wagering on the U.S. strikes against Iran and the removal of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by Israeli air strikes on the war’s first day.

The recent memo, which was shared with senior Pentagon leadership, combatant commanders, defense agencies and field activity directors, reinforces federal law that prohibits government employees from using nonpublic information from their work for personal financial gains.

The ban extends to all financial platforms, including betting platforms and prediction markets, with the directive pointing to Polymarket and Kalshi as specific examples. 

The memo first publicly circulated on the unofficial Facebook page Air Force amn/nco/snco. A Defense Department official shared a copy of the memo with Military Times, confirming the authenticity of the one circulating on social media.

The directive asserts that signals are generated when personnel engage in a financial transaction on a military outcome. The signal can then be watched by adversaries in these markets and exploited by hostile foreign intelligence services to anticipate American movements, targets and timing.

“The memorandum from the Secretary of War regarding predictive markets is a reminder that engaging in financial transactions using nonpublic information, and using nonpublic information to further private interests, is prohibited and may result in punitive action,” the Pentagon official told Military Times.

“The Department takes this misconduct seriously and will take appropriate action, to include coordinating with the Department of Justice, to ensure anyone who engages in this misconduct is held accountable,” the official concluded.

Violations can result in administrative, disciplinary or criminal action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or applicable federal law, the memo says.

Alongside operational security unease, Hegseth argues in the memo that financial stakes can negatively impact judgment and weaken the “warrior ethos” as personnel become invested in certain outcomes. 

“We are restoring lethality, discipline, and singular focus on fighting and winning our Nation’s wars, and nothing should distract us from that sacred mission,” Hegseth writes. “Not entertainment. Not a payout.”

Barrett was commissioned through Navy ROTC in 2000 and spent four years leading infantry and scout sniper Marines from 2000 to 2004.

When most of his platoon headed to sniper school, he went with them.

It was a “pretty unusual” move for a Marine officer, he told Military Times.

The Marine Corps has since trained its final scout snipers and moved sniper training into reconnaissance and Raider units under Force Design 2030.

After the Marines, Barrett built a business, sold it and started farming. When a friend asked him to join an aid convoy to Ukraine, he had four kids in school and a harvest underway. His first answer was no.

That night, he read about pastors killed and churches destroyed by Russian forces. As a Christian, he wondered how he’d missed it. He made the trip, then kept going back.

Now, despite declaring that he is “not a filmmaker,” Barrett has produced two series on the war in Ukraine: A Faith Under Siege and Faith in War. Within that series is Safe Ground, the story of a Green Beret who removes landmines in Ukraine.

During those trips, Barrett heard about a sniper with the call sign of Lektor, a special forces sniper from the Department of Active Measures with Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence, who, in December 2024, hit a moving Russian soldier at 2,069 meters using a single .338 Lapua Magnum round from a Sako TRG M10. He fired standing in a trench, nearly level with his target, and hit on the first shot.

Lektor is still running missions and only reluctantly agreed to press, Barrett said. Soon, however, Barrett’s time with Lektor will become a short documentary.

Barrett’s crew spent a morning on the range with his unit testing whether American M118 ammunition could match its costly hand-loaded rounds. Lektor said there was “practically no difference,” so the unit stuck with the M118 it already had.

“I was struck by just his humility,” Barrett said.

Lektor, a former gamekeeper, waved off the praise.

“Honestly, I don’t consider myself a super expert,” he told Barrett’s crew in an interview translated from Ukrainian. “This is my job for the duration of the war.”

Before the shot, his team had spent two weeks on the zero line watching for a Russian assault, under orders not to fire. When the situation changed and the team was set to move, Lektor asked for one more chance.

“So I simply begged the commander: give us a day or two for free hunting,” he said.

He spotted a soldier whose gear set him apart from ordinary infantry. The man was walking a tree line at a steady pace and a workable angle. As Lektor prepared to fire, his partner called a wind correction in the wrong direction.

“I managed to shout: recalculate, something’s wrong,” Lektor said. They fixed it in seconds while the target was still moving.

Barrett pointed to the longest confirmed .338 Lapua kill — British Cpl. Craig Harrison’s 2,475-meter shot in Afghanistan in 2009 — which came after several sighting rounds. Shots like that, he said, are “really more like competition shooting.” Lektor is skeptical of the rankings for the same reason.

“Two shots maximum: if you didn’t hit, that’s it,” he said. “That’s how you should compare.”

Within half an hour of the shot, drones were overhead.

“The only thing that saved us was that the enemy didn’t expect a shot from such a distance,” Lektor said. The Russians shelled an area about 500 meters out. His team waited a full day in a dugout before slipping out.

Now, thermal cameras hunt for heat.

“After a shot, a simple suppressor can give you away, because it’s hot, it glows,” Lektor said.

Early in the war, Lektor said, the walk to a firing position was about a kilometer. He now walks eight.

Barrett asked him whether snipers were even relevant anymore. Lektor admitted the role is “a little outdated” but not finished.

“Snipers, in my opinion, are the neurosurgeons,” he said. A sniper team can watch a sector almost continuously, he explained. “Drones have to return to recharge, they get shot down.”

Near Bakhmut, Lektor’s team killed a Russian sniper. A neighboring unit then told them he was the fifth one killed at that position.

“They have absolutely no regard for the lives of their own men,” Lektor said.

Barrett sees Ukraine’s regard for its own people as an advantage, along with its speed in adapting to new technology. Russia, he said, treats the war like a meat grinder: “If I just put so much meat into it, that it breaks the grinder, then we’ll win.”

Lektor’s son enlisted first, and the two have served together most of the war.

“He’s my child, I have to be there,” Lektor said.

Once, while Lektor was hospitalized with wounds, his son was fighting with another team in Chasiv Yar. He was the only one of four men in his group to come out unharmed.

On his own team, Lektor keeps one rule.

“I [am] the first to go in and the last to come out,” he said. “That’s our unwritten rule.”

The extent of the drone war is underestimated, with Ukraine and Russia each using roughly 10,000 drones a day, the former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said, speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington.

“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said. “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”

For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.

But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.

“Really, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,” he said.

The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.

“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.

Washington is making “some commendable steps” toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.

“But my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,” Petraeus said.

That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”

“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.

Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech, with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components — including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable — becoming the domestic industry’s production bottleneck.

The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington’s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”

The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September.

“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

The Army wants contractors that can manufacture up to 10 barrels per month within three years, according to the Sources Sought notice. The deadline is Nov. 23.

Companies were asked to provide details of their ability — or their subcontractor’s capacity — to make barrels, including whether they could add “chrome bore coatings on a steel tube up to 30 [feet] long and up to 7,500 pounds in weight,” the notice said. They should also provide the maximum length and weight of tube that they could coat.

Also desired are details on a company’s boring, milling and rifling capabilities, as well as details on raw materials, such as “steel preform production, forging, guide bore, and heat treatment.”

The notice asks contractors to estimate their capacity to manufacture 155mm barrels within 18 months, and up to 10 barrels per month within 36 months. Companies should also offer a cost estimate for an “initial production quantity of 40 cannon tubes (broken down by caliber or indicating pricing for a combined/flexible mix),” the Army said.

Currently, the Army makes large-caliber barrels for howitzers and tanks only at the aging Watervliet Arsenal in New York.

While America and Europe have been focused on expanding production of howitzer ammunition to meet demand in the Ukraine war and replenish domestic stockpiles, another problem is a lack of manufacturing capacity to replace worn-out cannon barrels.

A 2024 Pentagon budget document stated that Ukraine’s heavy use of M777 howitzers created a demand for more than 30 M776 tubes per month, according to The War Zone. The document admitted that Watervliet could not keep up with demand, and asked for emergency funding to be transferred to enable a second manufacturer of barrels.

The new notice doesn’t mention how many additional barrel manufacturers are needed. However, the Army is exploring whether to replace the M777 with a weapon based on Korea’s popular K9 howitzer.