In Wednesday’s announcements, the company explained that its Missionforce National Security platform received Impact Level 5, or IL5, authorization, meaning it is “trusted” to address the “most sensitive, unclassified missions.”

Kendall Collins, the chief executive officer of Missionforce and Government Cloud at Salesforce, said the platform is “modernizing government IT” and that they’re “building the trusted AI backbone for America’s national security.”

According to the announcement, Missionforce is the DoD-authorized variant of the commercial Agentforce platform, which is a network of AI agents designed to support analysis and decision-making.

This is the latest application of the technology since Salesforce won the $5.6 billion contract to build Missionforce in January. In early July, Salesforce said the Air Force deployed Missionforce with the 441st Vehicle Support Chain Operations Squadron to help manage its $13.5 billion fleet of over 84,000 vehicles across nearly 389 locations.

The company called the approval a “milestone” because it moves the national security and defense entities “beyond predictive AI and chatbots” and onto “autonomous AI execution.” The AI agents will have access to controlled unclassified information as well as unclassified National Security System data.

While Missionforce is tailored for government use, the underlying technology is based on Salesforce’s commercial Agentforce 360 platform, which the company introduced in late 2025.

Ryan Von, a writer for Salesforce Ben, a publication that covers the company’s products, described Agentforce as Salesforce’s “boldest leap into AI,” and called the latest 360 variant, “the most powerful version of the tool yet.” He said it’s marketed as able to deliver “accurate, context-rich responses across text and voice.”

In an early review of the commercial platform, Von said demonstrations were promising. Still, he suggested the AI performed best on routine, keyword-based requests while struggling with more complex questions, such as personalized recommendations.

For the Army HRC, the company said AI agents will “provide around-the-clock support, respond to routine inquiries, summarize case histories, and surface relevant policy and career information from approved Army sources.”

According to the company, HRC handles more than 1,500 personnel cases each day. Salesforce estimates the AI agents could save roughly $6 million annually while handling more than 55 million conversations a month.

Bill Pessin, SVP of Missionforce National Security at Salesforce, said that the platform will allow the human staff to “focus more on the complex, career-defining decisions that directly affect the readiness and lives of our Soldiers and less on the mundane tasks that can be handled by AI.”

Under the settlement agreement, NCNG agreed to restore Timothy Stanhope’s access to its Facebook page and make reasonable efforts to unhide his comments.

The agreement also requires the Guard to revise its Facebook moderation policy. It can no longer block users or remove, hide or filter comments simply because they are deemed “inappropriate.”

However, comments will still be subject to Facebook’s community standards, and each side agreed to pay its own legal fees and court costs.

Michelle Scott, an attorney with the Center for Individual Rights, which represented Stanhope, called the settlement a victory for free speech.

“When a government agency opens an official page for public comment, it cannot treat that page as a one-way bulletin board where praise is welcome but criticism is censored,” Scott said. “Government officials don’t get to invite public comment and then censor the citizens who take them up on their invitation.”

In a statement about the lawsuit, CIR said the case was about more than “one person or one post.” Instead, it said, the lawsuit was about protecting the public’s right to criticize the government in online public forums.

According to the complaint filed in March 2025, Stanhope was blocked from NCNG’s Facebook page after years of commenting on its posts.

Although superior officers had confronted him about his comments while he was still serving, the Guard did not block him until after he retired in 2023.

The complaint said Stanhope frequently criticized what he viewed as mismanagement by Guard leaders.

In 2019, he commented, “so when do we get the results from the leader[’]s test?” in response to a post about a combat fitness test.

In 2021, he criticized what he described as the Guard’s “ill-conceived and hastily planned” deployment to Washington, D.C., following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In 2023, he responded to a post announcing an officer’s promotion by sharing the officer’s mugshot from a previous drunken driving arrest along with a news article about the incident.

The complaint also cited several posts Stanhope made on his own Facebook page that tagged NCNG, making them visible on the Guard’s page.

In a statement, Stanhope said the settlement affirms that “constitutional rights are not optional.”

“The right to speak freely includes the right to criticize the government, and that right doesn’t disappear when the conversation moves online,” he said. “Officials don’t get to pick and choose which opinions are allowed. I’m glad the Guard finally agrees.”

Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis, commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division, called the system “functional but not optimized” and said they will “spend the next year refining how we fight using the technology to share our lessons learned across the Army.”

The Army had been scaling the NGC2 prototype since 2025, an effort that concluded at Project Convergence-Capstone 6. The 10-day event tested NGC2 hardware and software using some 10,000 participants from U.S. and allied forces as well as industry partners using 90 different technologies and a series of complex yet realistic scenarios.

“The dedicated opposing force and the unrelenting Fort Irwin conditions afforded us a great opportunity to stress the full NGC2 stack at PCC6,” Ellis said, adding that he’s “proud to have delivered a prototype at the division scale.”

NGC2 will replace the Army’s legacy C2 systems, which are a collection of systems for managing fire, logistics and airspace on the battlefield. Officials say it will unify data across all functions to increase the speed of decision-making and operational maneuver.

The Army said NGC2 will enable “every echelon from soldier to Corps to run modern warfighting apps and artificial intelligence to support their mission, while providing resilient communications across vast distances for greater dispersion and survivability.”

The Army’s executive leadership stressed the importance of updating its command system but also emphasized the need to implement it rapidly.

“We know the biggest risk to our national security and our national defense is not moving too fast. It’s not moving fast enough,” said Dan Driscoll, secretary of the Army. “The side that can sense a target, process the data, and deliver a kinetic effect the fastest, wins. That is the decisive advantage this capability provides.”

In the Army’s proposed budget for 2027, officials requested $904 million in research and development funding to scale NGC2, saying it will improve its communications and networking technologies. A year before that, Anduril Industries developed the prototype for $99.6 million and has been spearheading parts of the project.

The Army said its I Corps headquarters, which commands tens of thousands of soldiers in the Indo-Pacific region from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, will be the next NGC2 capabilities.

When compared to a rifle, though, a shotgun is less capable on the battlefield because it holds less ammunition, has a significantly shorter range and delivers more noticeable recoil. It also poses logistical hurdles. Someone has to carry it along with ammo that’s incompatible with other squad weapons.

In a nutshell, that’s how anti-drone ammo was born. Connor Schnepf, co-founder of the Arizona-based company Drone Round, explained that about a year ago, he and his partner were already making targets in the defense space when they learned that shotguns weren’t really working to address the military’s drone problem.

“It kind of sparked the idea with one of our other business partners. He was like, ‘Hey, we make ammo. Let’s make a rifle cartridge that almost simulates a shotgun that you can use in a regular battle rifle to shoot down drones,’” he said in an interview with Fox 10 Phoenix.

A small unmanned aerial system, or UAS, equipped with an explosive device can be used to destroy major infrastructure and expensive equipment. In turn, traditional counter measures prove either to be ineffective or too expensive to deploy. Therefore, the U.S. military is prioritizing inexpensive yet practical solutions.

Although Drone Round isn’t the only company making anti-drone ammo, the Marine Corps said in a notice of intent filed in June that its 5.56 L Variant is the only kinetic munition currently available in the commercial and defense marketplace that meets the service’s minimum standards for immediate counter-drone defense.

“Specifically, this round is the only solution offering ‘drop-in’ compatibility that requires no physical modifications, specialized upper receivers, or distinct weapon platforms to be operable in current-issue Marine Corps 5.56mm weapons,” the announcement said, referring to the M27 and M4A1.

Last week, the service confirmed with Task & Purpose that it has already bought 400,000 rounds from the company and plans to buy another 1 million in the next fiscal year.

Justin Lawrence, the company’s other co-founder, explained that the L Variant functions like a standard 5.56mm cartridge, but it has multiple projectiles.

“It’s essentially five bullets coming out of one trigger pull. Basically, what the real technology and advantage is sticking with the one caliber in a rifle platform, your soldier [or] warfighter is already carrying,” he said. “So you don’t have to change to a 12 gauge because these FPV drones move very fast and it’s something you need to have very quickly.”

From a logistical standpoint, a single magazine loaded with anti-drone ammo replaces an entire weapon system or expensive countermeasure.

Schnepf added that although they came up with the idea about almost a year ago, they didn’t have the ability to scale production, so they partnered with the Idaho-based Freedom Munitions. He said together, they now produce millions of rounds per month.

“The capability truly fills a gap in what we call counter UAS or counter unmanned aerial systems, so it is a needed solution … It’s like, you know, we brought water to a desert and they can’t keep enough of it because it’s so needed.”

SOFWERX, in collaboration the Marine Forces Special Operations Command, or MARSOC, is hosting an event in mid-September to develop ways to replace manual steps for documenting serialized inventory with digital and automated tools.

The July 27 announcement said the event’s purpose is “to design a secure, zero-signature automated armory that relies exclusively on optical recognition and computer vision.”

But here’s the catch: the tools cannot use RFID — the most common technology for tracking inventory — or active Bluetooth or radiating digital transmitters.

“Instead, this event challenges industry partners to develop a passive, image-based inventory system where weapons, gear, and serial numbers are automatically tracked, verified, and logged simply by taking a digital photo or scanning an optical image as items enter or exit the facility,” the invitation said.

It explained that the current process requires a person to manually inventory weapons using handwritten forms, resulting in repetitive data entry and multiple independent records.

“These processes are labor intensive, susceptible to human error, and consume significant man-hours while increasing accountability risk,” it said.

While eliminating “slow, legacy paper-based workflows and human-error bottlenecks,” the desired application would guarantee “absolute property accountability without exposing our facilities to electronic detection.”

Around 2010, the U.S. military began using RFID tags as a practical and simple way to keep track of weapons, but later discovered the technology can pose a major security concern.

An RFID tag, like the ones used by the military, consists of a microchip and a small antenna and does not require a battery. It is programmed with a unique ID signal that can only be activated by a reader.

Once a tag is read by a reader, that reader can be used to continue to track the weapon or clone the ID signal, creating a security risk.

Companies interested in attending the event must submit a request by Aug. 16. While the initial meeting will begins Sept. 17, additional events are planned throughout the year and and will conclude in December.

Phillip “Donna” Smith, the Lift Challenge program manager and a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, said that multirotor drones are limited in their usability because of their low payload-to-weight ratios, meaning they can only transport a payload equal to or less than their own weight.

“This means as payload requirements increase, so does the size and the cost of the drone,” he said. “With the Lift Challenge, our goal is to dramatically increase the useful load, which will then drive down the cost per pound of transported cargo.”

He described heavy vertical flight as the “next great technological inflection point that is economical for widespread adoption,” comparing its potential impact to the assembly line for automobiles and reusable rockets for spaceflight. He added that it could revolutionize industries like agriculture, logistics, construction, and more.

The competition aligns with the Defense Department’s Drone Dominance initiative, which aims to accelerate drone technology and reduce costs.

While Drone Dominance challenges a company’s ability to scale production, DARPA is open to anyone who can build a drone that meets the minimum standards.

The Lift Challenge has attracted more than 100 competitors for drones, ranging from drone manufacturers to engineers to academics to hobbyists.

One participant, YouTuber Hoarder Sam, who documents his DIY drone projects, said the challenge appealed to him because of its ambitious goal.

Sam recalled watching DARPA’s self-driving car challenge years before autonomous vehicles became commercially viable and said the Lift Challenge struck him in much the same way.

Competitors must build a drone capable of non-assisted vertical takeoff that weighs less than 55 pounds. During the competition, the drones will have to pick up a minimum payload of 110 pounds and move it back and forth on a 1,000-foot course 30 times, or five nautical miles, in less than 30 minutes.

“Carrying this much weight for that far of a distance isn’t going to be easy, and honestly, I think it might be almost impossible. That’s because DARPA is famous for setting the bar extremely high,” Sam said.

He added that when DARPA first held its self-driving car challenge, no team completed the course. “They had to run the challenge again the next year, and even then, only four cars finished the challenge,” he said.

Others see the challenge as a chance to advance research.

Hao Xu, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno who is leading a team of five engineering students, called the challenge an “interesting opportunity” that will result in a “fruitful discussion among national partners for us to boost Nevada drone R&D and workforce development.”

Some have commercial goals. The Colorado-based company Alpine Combat Systems has been showcasing its design on social media as a way to highlight its products.

In an introduction video, Amanda Barron, who runs the business with her husband Jesus Barron, an Army veteran, said they entered the competition because they want to “network with DARPA and other agencies.”

Jesus Barron added that their “experimental” Samson drone was their “first drone build and it shows what Alpine Combat Systems can do when we put our minds to it.”

The competition begins Aug. 2 at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, and the final four days will open to the public. DARPA will also livestream the event on YouTube beginning Aug. 3.

According to the July 1 policy message, the service announced the Voluntary Enlisted Early Release Program as “a deliberate force-shaping initiative” that allows eligible Marines to apply for separation before the end of the fiscal year.

Yvonne Carlock, a spokeswoman for the service’s Manpower and Reserve Affairs, told USNI News that the program was “designed to balance the Marine Corps’ end strength and ensure long-term fiscal health and operational readiness.”

The program allows certain enlisted Marines to leave active duty early if they meet eligibility requirements. According to the message, eligible Marines must serve in one of 24 military occupational specialties and have an end-of-active-service date on or before Sept. 30, 2026.

The eligible fields range from infantry jobs and amphibious vehicle crews to Marine Corps band members and other specialties.

The move comes despite the Marine Corps meeting both its recruiting and retention goals ahead of schedule last year. Earlier this year, the service also offered reenlistment bonuses of up to $50,000 for select enlisted jobs.

The early-release program appears aimed at reshaping specific career fields rather than reducing the force broadly. The Marine Corps has not publicly identified how many Marines it expects to separate through the program or explained why the 24 military occupational specialties were selected.

A review of Marine Administrative Messages shows the Marine Corps has announced at least four voluntary separation programs since 2020.

In 2025, the service offered two early separation programs for enlisted Marines but did not specify which military occupational specialties were eligible.

In 2021, the Marine Corps allowed enlisted Marines and officers serving on tank crews to apply for voluntary separation as the service moved away from its tank battalions.

The announcement sparked speculation that similar barracks could be built elsewhere, but the service said the Okinawa complex is a unique case rather than a blueprint for installations in the United States.

A Marine Corps official told Task & Purpose this week that the service has no plans to build similar barracks for corporals and below at its U.S. bases.

The official said the Okinawa project differs from typical Marine Corps barracks because the Japanese government funded the $320 million complex as part of an agreement between the United States and Japan.

The official defended the service’s existing shared-room model, saying it “promotes camaraderie and small-unit leadership, which are foundational to the Marine Corps ethos.”

The official added that shared rooms also make more efficient use of available space and resources, “maximizing our ability to provide quality housing for all personnel.”

News of the private rooms was first reported by Stars and Stripes, which attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the facility in June. About 1,100 Marines are expected to move into the new barracks complex in August.

Joseph Scala, director of Camp Hansen, where the barracks are located on Okinawa, described the facility as “just phenomenal.”

“If I was Joe Scala, lance corporal, way back when … I would love to live here,” he told the outlet.

According to the Marine Corps, construction of the three new barracks was completed in May. In addition to private bedrooms, each unit includes a kitchenette, washer and dryer.

In announcing the project, the service called the facilities “a major step forward in the Marine Corps’ initiative to enhance the quality of life for enlisted Marines and Sailors.”

The guidance is considered “interim” because it has not yet been incorporated into the Marine Corps Safety Management System, but it remains in effect until it is formally adopted or superseded.

The new guidance directs commanders and officers in charge to ensure personnel receive training on the causes, prevention and treatment of heat and cold stress injuries. Leaders also must develop standard operating procedures for training and operational activities conducted in hot and cold environments.

Required training includes work-rest cycles, heat flag warning systems, the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) index and the wind chill index. The guidance also stresses the importance of trained medical personnel in evaluating and treating Marines who suffer heat or cold injuries.

In addition to requiring medical personnel assigned to Marine units to maintain rapid response plans and designated cooling or warming areas, the guidance notes that personnel exposed to excessive heat stress may require evaluation by a qualified health care provider to determine whether they have suffered a heat-related injury.

The guidance places particular emphasis on using the WBGT index to assess environmental heat stress. Unlike the standard heat index, which measures only temperature and humidity, the WBGT factors in direct sunlight, wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover, providing a more complete picture of conditions that can contribute to heat illness.

Additionally, the guidance has reporting requirements in that the unit safety representative must enter all confirmed heat or cold injuries into the Risk Management System.

The updated guidance comes as weather-related injuries continue to affect all branches of service.

According to a recent report by the Military Health System, 2,751 servicemen and women experienced heat-related injuries — heat exhaustion and heat stroke — in 2025 with the Marines reporting 641 of them. However, the data also shows that the total number of cases for the Marines dropped from 655 the year before.

As for cold weather injuries, the service reported 107 cases, likewise the second-highest total behind the Army. Those included 40 cases of non-freezing peripheral injury, commonly known as trench foot, 49 cases of freezing peripheral injury, or frostbite, and 18 cases of hypothermia.

According to Task & Purpose, which first reported on the message, this is the first update to the service’s heat and cold injury prevention guidelines in 11 years.

During the 12-day event at Camp Grayling, Michigan, 49 companies competed across multiple mission sets. Officials evaluated their small unmanned aircraft systems on performance, ease of use and each company’s ability to produce at scale. By the end, 19 companies advanced to the next round of testing, scheduled to begin in August.

The list of finalists offers a snapshot of the rapidly evolving defense drone industry. Nearly all are privately held companies focused on small UASs rather than traditional weapons. About half already have systems on the Defense Department’s Blue UAS Cleared or Blue UAS Select lists, making them easier for military units to purchase. Most are also relatively young: seven were founded within the past 13 years and eight within the past four.

To better understand why the field looks the way it does, Military Times spoke with J.R. Mullis, a retired Air Force contracting officer who founded the defense technology consultancy ellimaC Partners and Watchtower, a nonprofit that connects emerging defense technology companies with military organizations and hosts its own Best Drone Team Competition.

While many of the companies are young, Mullis said they are considerably “more mature” than the average drone startup. More importantly, they are developing technologies the military can field today.

“I mean, they’re able to be deployed right now,” he said.

Mullis said the finalists share less in common than many observers might assume. Rather than competing to build the same aircraft, many are developing different pieces of the same capability, from airframes and sensors to autonomy software.

“If you were to circle all of them and mash them together,” he said, “I think it would make a really good capability.”

Still, the dominance of younger companies reflects a broader shift in how the Pentagon acquires technology.

Mullis said the government has become more willing to identify operational gaps, giving entrepreneurs with specialized expertise an opportunity to build products that directly address military needs.

He pointed to one company competing in Drone Dominance, which he declined to identify by name, describing it as “one of the best ones” in the competition. Founded by what he called a “young founder” with deep technical expertise, the company grew from zero to millions of dollars in revenue in roughly two years by solving a specific problem.

One example from the list of qualifiers is Massachusetts-based Ascent AeroSystems, founded in 2014 by two brothers and a friend who originally set out to build a rugged drone small enough to fit inside a backpack during hiking and rock climbing trips.

The company later adapted its technology for military use and, in 2024, was acquired by California-based Robinson Helicopter, which later formed Robinson Unmanned. Today, Ascent’s Aero Spirit drone appears on the Defense Department’s Blue UAS Cleared list and the company has received more than $2 million in Defense Department contracts.

“Going back years and years, a lot of the defense-tech founders were developing technology based on headlines,” Mullis said. “As the government is more open about what its capability gaps are, the real experts are able to put their hands up and build solutions for it.”

Manufacturing, not innovation, is the biggest hurdle

Coming up with a good idea is only part of the challenge. According to Mullis, the biggest obstacle facing small defense companies isn’t developing technology, but rather, producing enough of it.

A startup may successfully build a prototype, sell a handful of systems and convince the military it has a winning product. But when the government suddenly wants thousands, a small company or startup may lack the manufacturing capacity and capital needed to meet demand.

One example of how companies overcome that hurdle is the partnership between Georgia-based Kinetic Frames and Alabama-based Griffon Aerospace. Kinetic Frames is a relatively young company with a modest public presence — a simple website and Instagram page — while Griffon has received more than $400 million in federal contracts since 2009.

Together, the companies have produced and delivered more than 2,000 drones to the Defense Department, illustrating how smaller innovators can pair with established manufacturers to meet the military’s production demands.

“Scaling in order to meet the needs of the government is, I would say, one of the valleys of death [for a small company],” Mullis added.

Where defense giants fit in

At first glance, Drone Dominance appears to be dominated by startups, but Mullis said that doesn’t mean major defense contractors are ignoring the market.

Many of the industry’s largest “prime” contractors — companies that hold the government’s primary contracts — are already working on similar technologies through existing programs. Because those efforts are often backed by long-term government funding, he said, they don’t need the visibility that comes with participating in a public competition.

“The publicity matters for those small companies,” Mullis said. “It does not matter at all for those primes.”

That doesn’t mean established companies are absent from the competition, though.

Among the current finalists are publicly traded companies such as Kratos Defense & Security Solutions and Red Cat Holdings, both of which have built businesses around unmanned aircraft. Others represent partnerships between established defense manufacturers and newer drone developers, reflecting the increasingly collaborative nature of the market.

Mullis said acquisitions are often a natural outcome for successful startups, rewarding founders while helping proven technologies reach larger production scales.

“It’s good for the whole ecosystem because the founders are being rewarded for solving a problem,” he said, adding, “An acquisition is just an absolute success.”

Building the next generation of defense companies

Mullis said he thinks Drone Dominance is doing more than selecting companies for future contracts. He said the competition reflects a broader shift in defense acquisition by “encouraging and almost forcing collaboration.”

Earlier this year, the Defense Department announced the Drone Dominance Lethality Prize, which paired drone competitors with approved manufacturers capable of supplying standardized explosive payloads for one-way attack drones.

Even companies that fail to win contracts stand to benefit. “The best founders in the world wear failure like a badge of honor,” he said. “If you go to Drone Dominance, you get, if nothing else, real feedback on your technology.”

In an increasingly crowded drone market, that feedback should be considered valuable. “Even if they’re not selected, they’ll have their marching orders and they’ll know what to do to make it better,” Mullis said.