Exploring the halls and hallways of the Air, Space & Cyber Conference south of the Capitol this week makes one thing clear: The drones are here, and they're here to stay.

Why it matters: War is changing, stimulated by smart-machinery assaults in Eastern Europe, bloody air-defense lessons in the Middle East and a marathon hardware-software competition with China.

• Pilots are being augmented by processors; cockpits are being swapped for cargo holds.

Driving the news: U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink on Monday committed to having hundreds of these futuristic aircraft in hand in 2032.

• The service's arsenal will include Collaborative Combat Aircraft and Massed Modular Aircraft.
• The former effort seeks robo-wingmen for fighters, like Lockheed Martin's F-35 and Boeing's F-47. The latter, the newer of the two, seeks a cheap successor to General Atomics' MQ-9, a wildly successful drone beaten up in the Iran war.
• "When we pair manned aircraft with lower-cost autonomous systems, we will be able to unlock combat power at scale," Meink said.

Zoom in: Industry is jazzed. Some companies this week revealed new products, while others piled onto what was already public. Of note:

🐢 Swarm Aero lifted the curtain on Gamera, a Group 5 drone with a 72-foot wingspan, seven hardpoints and a turboprop engine. It will initially be built in California, with plans for future production in Arkansas.

• "The modularity allows us to do all the same missions the MQ-9 can do: sensing, electronic warfare, signals intelligence, communications relay, cargo and logistics," co-founder Oliver Palmer told me.
• "This is a first principles, ground-up build to optimize the overall swarm."

📦 Merlin and Textron Aviation introduced the autonomous Cessna SkyCourier UX, designed with contested logistics in mind and expected to shuttle thousands of pounds of materiel loaded through a nose that flips up and open.

• "There's been a lot of wargaming that's happened over the past 12–24 months around, 'Hey, if we did have to go operate in areas where we don't necessarily control 10,000-foot runways, where would that break down?'" Merlin CEO Matt George told me.
• "The point is the customer shouldn't have to adapt their cargo to the aircraft. The aircraft should be capable of handling it."

💣 Anduril Industries revealed it's considering additional armaments for its FQ-44, including 500-pound guided bombs, low-cost cruise missiles, rocket pods and targeting pods. Some 150 aircraft could be produced annually at Arsenal-1, the mega-factory in Columbus, Ohio.

• "This is a pretty unique capability. The external storage makes it really fast to hot reload the aircraft," Jason Levin, senior vice president of air dominance and strike, told reporters.
• "We've already begun integration and fit-check on our aircraft with other munitions."

🛠️ Lockheed Martin committed to building four more Vectis, bringing the total to five. The stealthy drones are roughly 34 feet long, 38 feet across and feature a submerged inlet. A full-scale model dominated the company's pavilion.

• "We've been building drones for a very long time," Ron Fehlen, Skunk Works vice president and general manager, told reporters.
• "We are on schedule to fly by the end of 2027, so we are extremely excited."

The bottom line: "Every booth that you go to, you see autonomous systems, something new," Matt Milas, president of defense and space at Honeywell Aerospace, told me.

Go deeper: For the Pentagon's drone push, the "factory is the weapon"

Embraer wants to grow its Middle East customer base on the heels of a deal with the United Arab Emirates for up to 20 C-390 Millenniums.

The big picture: The Brazilian company is racking up buyers across the world for its transporter and refueler.

Driving the news: Frederico Lemos, the Embraer Defense chief commercial officer, yesterday told me there have been "discussions with other countries in the region" and that "a lot of demos in the desert" were done alongside the UAE.

• "They were very stringent on the requirements and on the capabilities," Lemos said.

By the numbers: Embraer is planning to produce 10 KC-390s per year by 2030.

Go deeper: Trump inherits a Middle East in flux

Space weapons are real, and the U.S. has them in orbit right now, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said at Air, Space & Cyber.

Why it matters: The declaration is a first — and marks a significant change in the way the world discusses such systems, considered highly sensitive and provocative.

Friction point: Meink, when pressed by reporters, would not elaborate on what these astral weapons are capable of, how many exist, or if they've been tested.

• "There are a lot of factors that go into how we talk about these things. We spend a lot of time talking about how we're going to talk about these things," Meink said.
• "Me talking about the details of what we're doing would actually not benefit deterrence."

Context: The Trump administration has expressed interest in both the exploration and weaponization of space.

• Militaries rely on the domain for navigation, long-haul communications, surveillance, targeting, missile tracking and more.

Flashback: The U.S. in 1962 executed Starfish Prime, a nuclear burst in space. China and Russia blew up their own satellites in 2007 and 2021, respectively.

• "Is there any question in the room — by anybody — whether or not the Chinese and Russians have been developing these sorts of weapons?" Meink said.
• "We are focused on making sure we can protect ourselves and operate in that environment, as we've done for decades."

More from Axios:

Global powers brace for space warfare

True Anomaly CEO: The future is "space warfare, flat out"

A "more powerful" Space Force requires upgraded arsenal, says Kendall

Autonomy specialist Swarmer is buying ground-robotics company Ratel for as much as $224 million in a mix of cash and stock.

Why it matters: This international deal signals two things, one in the boardroom and one on the battlefield:

1. Defense industry consolidation is afoot. Not every startup can or will stand on its own.
2. And a world where machines launch machines to fight other machines doing the same, while humans scheme offscreen, has already arrived.

Driving the news: I spoke with Swarmer's U.S. chief executive, Alex Fink, and non-executive chairman of the board Erik Prince last week.

• Fink told me the unmanned ground vehicle market "is, obviously, on fire" and that Ratel is "the most technically advanced. They have no salespeople, no government relations, no lobbyists."
• Prince, the Blackwater founder, told me that both the U.S. (where Swarmer is based) and Ukraine (where Ratel is based) were only a few years ago reliant on a "Soviet-style acquisition system," in which everything was "centralized." That has since been thrown out the window — in Kyiv, at least.

Zoom in: Ratel's catalog includes several unmanned transporters, such as the H, M, X and Nurse TB. Vehicles like those, Fink said, are the "perfect launch platform for other assets."

• "You want to launch drones? You want to launch interceptors? You want to put an entire air-defense system — from detection all the way to the effectors — in one place and drive it somewhere? This is the best way to deploy it."

Follow the money: Swarmer's stock is up some 375% since listing in March.

What's next: Ratel CEO Taras Ostapchuk will report to Fink, if and when the deal closes. Swarmer's workforce is expected to grow significantly.

• "We already have a Ukrainian subsidiary," Fink said. "Now we'll have two."

Go deeper: Vectus, led by Erik Prince, pitches air defense as a service

🚀 Stratolaunch is gearing up for a potential $500 million initial public offering in the U.S., sources familiar with the matter told me.

• Why it matters: Stratolaunch is a key contributor to American hypersonic testing and development, including MACH-TB. The company flies Talon-A, an autonomous, reusable test platform. It's backed by Elliott Investment Management and Cerberus Capital Management.
• 💭 My thought bubble: September is for speed!

🇾🇪 U.S. airstrikes on Yemen between December 2023 and May 2025 caused 576 civilian casualties, including dozens of women and children injured, according to a Costs of War report published Sept. 10.

• Why it matters: "The bombs hit civilian structures such as homes, shops, farms, residential neighborhoods and infrastructure, violating various rules and standards of international humanitarian law," the summary reads.
• 💭 My thought bubble: This spans administrations — both Biden and Trump.

🧲 Northrop Grumman's Lumberjack flew in recent tests using SandboxAQ's magnetic-navigation technology.

• Why it matters: Northrop said the trial proved the drone to be "jam-proof." The quantum-based navigation system, it elaborated, "resisted jamming and operated reliably in GPS-denied environments, including over open water."
• 💭 My thought bubble: Alt-PNT needs more love. So does this kind of quantum.

↔️ The U.S. National Drone Association is taking over the under secretary of defense for research and engineering's Top Drone program, with its "National Drone Wars" now billed as "the primary venue to identify America's top drone talent among the military's rank and file."

• Why it matters: "War has always been the most transparent baseline of warfighter readiness," USNDA president Nathan Ecelbarger said in a statement. "The second-most transparent baseline is through competition, in advance of war."
• 💭 My thought bubble: Do soldiers or Marines fly drones better?

The Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, all grown up.

The big picture: The U.S. Air Force and Northrop Grumman shared this image Monday, after completing the vertical stacking.

• The assembly "demonstrates the momentum toward test-launching Sentinel in 2027 and having missiles on alert by the early 2030s," according to Northrop's Amanda Davis.

More from Axios:

Trump's perplexing North Korean nukes assessment

As costs soar, Air Force says it "neglected" Sentinel infrastructure

Energy Department orders "special" investigation of plutonium pit problems