The Torch
Illuminating Security and Defence Issues
Emerging Technologies
Cheap drones are reshaping the war in the sky
8 April 2026
How the US is fighting a war without sending ground troops to Iran — and the inexpensive drones making it harder....
Railgun Being Fired By U.S. Navy Again After Abandoning It For Years
8 April 2026
The Trump class "battleship" has breathed new life into the Navy's railgun ambitions, which it previously shelved after hitting technical hurdles....
Caltech Team Finds Useful Quantum Computers Could Be Built with as Few as 10,000 Qubits
8 April 2026
Theoretical discovery opens the door to building quantum computers with significantly reduced resources....
Hunt For Container Launchers Packed With Drones Kicked-Off By Pentagon
10 March 2026
The U.S. military wants proposals for containerized systems that can launch and recover a mixture of drone swarms on land and sea....
Military AI Adoption Is Outpacing Global Cooperation
10 March 2026
Militaries worldwide are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) while international cooperation flounders. With the United States and China less engaged at a recent AI military summit, middle powers appear to face a choice: lead the conversation or proceed into a future devoid of guardrails....
Not today, but soon: fully autonomous air combat is coming
10 March 2026
Top Gun: Maverick begins with Rear Admiral Cain alluding to how Maverick and human pilots in general will have no place in the future of air combat. Maverick’s response is calm but defiant: ‘Maybe so, sir, but not today.’ The scene may be fictional, but it reflects current developments in military aviation as technological advances in increasingly autonomous uncrewed aircraft are disrupting long-standing doctrines developed around manned aircraft....
The U.S. DoD’s AI Acceleration Strategy
2 February 2026
On January 9th, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released its Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy. The Strategy promotes a familiar outcome: for the U.S. military to become “AI-first.”...
DARPA’s Advanced Technology Development and Commercialization
2 February 2026
In its Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) requested roughly $1.9 billion to fund new projects that were previously part of its Network-Centric Warfare Technology program. The new efforts, aligned under the DARPA Advanced Technology Development program, signal continuity with Network-Centric Warfare, focusing on the unification of technologically advanced systems across U.S. services....
Cyber isn’t the whole story in Venezuela—but it’s a key takeaway
2 February 2026
For Australia and the Indo-Pacific, one of the more consequential and under-recognised takeaways from the United States’ operation in Venezuela is how cyber and digital effects were integrated alongside kinetic force....
More AI tools coming in days or weeks, Pentagon R&D chief says
4 January 2026
The Pentagon will widely deploy new AI tools for logistics, intelligence analysis, and combat planning in days or weeks, its research-and-engineering chief said Monday, adding that wide deployment of artificial intelligence now tops his list of “critical technologies.”...