China copies Pentagon-funded robot dog design in move to own the market | Headlines

President Donald Trump on Sunday instructed the Pentagon to, quote

substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, citing the cost of the drills and Seoul's refusal to take part in actions against Iran

Hours before exercises were scheduled to begin, Trump said on his Truth Social site

he was, quote, not happy that the U.S. had agreed to participate in the exercise

and highlighted his relationship with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea

These exercises are not only costly, but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile to a country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been president, has been unthreatening and respectful, Trump wrote

The annual joint military exercises are scheduled to run until August 27th, with about 18,000 South Korean military personnel participating

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff told Reuters the drill started on Monday as scheduled

The U.S. Army is issuing a call to ramp up production of ground-launched rockets

The service sent out a request this week for 133,014 guided multiple launch rocket system rockets by 2034, according to the Army's Sources Sought Notice

Contractors have until September 1st to submit white papers on plans to meet that quota

The timeline calls for churning out 19,002 rockets per year from 2028 to 2034, with the first actual deliveries starting in February 2030, and comes amid questions about the depth of U.S. munitions stockpiles

Current GMLRS manufacturer Lockheed Martin announced last year that it is ramping up production capacity to 14,000 rockets annually

The Army's new plan would require a nearly 36% increase in capacity on top of that

GMLRS rockets are launched from the M270 multiple launch rocket system armored vehicle The munitions can also be fired from the smaller truck M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or HI The base version of GMLRS has a range of 70 kilometers while the extended range version can reach up to 150 kilometers

China's Unitree Robotics, the world's biggest producer of humanoid and canine robots

base designs for its most successful four-legged machines on innovations funded by the U.S. military

According to three top robotics researchers and a former U.S. defense official, the Chinese company's $1,600 Go-To model launched in 2023 helped the company rapidly dominate the global quadruped robot market

The firm's imminent Shanghai stock market debut has drawn frenzied demand. The success of these robots draws on breakthroughs in quadruped movement

financed by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and other military programs, the researchers and the former official told Reuters

That core technology is at the heart of all of the Chinese-legged robots

that I've actually seen be successful to date. It's a completely different paradigm that we were a part of developing

as part of our academic careers. There were papers published, and then these papers were very closely studied

by Chinese companies like Unitree, and these principles were put to work

and then scaled in an exceptional way using amazing manufacturing and supply chain technology

to where now you see companies like Unitree and other companies in China

are shipping way more legged robots than American companies are. I think the biggest factor in China's advantage

for developing its robotics industry is its massive industrial base. You know it a vast ecosystem of manufacturing factories and things that provide both kind of demand side support for its robotics industry as well as cheap access to all the components it needs to manufacture those And I think the military side of the robotics ecosystem

really is kind of riding on the benefits of that much broader commercial ecosystem

And when I look at where the U.S. has fallen behind, I see that loss and hollowing out of

the manufacturing sector as being a really big driver of why the kind of corresponding

national security applications have fallen behind as well. The episode underscores broader problems with the United States' ability to compete with China's

state-directed manufacturing sector in high-tech strategic industries, including those critical to national security. Backed by subsidies, Chinese companies have seized market share

across industries such as solar panels, drones, EVs, and quantum communications, many of which were first developed in the U.S. with government or military backing

There's no way we're going to do this completely on our own as the U.S

We need to work closely with our allies. In particular, at Ghost, we work very closely with companies in Korea, in Taiwan, in Japan

where they have some of this manufacturing and supply chain expertise. So there's absolutely no path forward without them

I do think that we also have to have strategic ability to source these products strategically in the U.S. as well

So I think some amount of strategic supply is going to be critical as well, and then the ability to service these products

In June, the Pentagon added unitary to a list of Chinese military companies, calling it a, quote

contributor to the Chinese Defense Industrial Base. That designation falls short of a sanction but limits the U military future use of Unitry technology The PLA did not respond to a comment request

NATO forces held major exercises in Romania recently, practicing to fend off an invasion on the Alliance's eastern flank

Over 1,000 troops from across Europe and led by France took part in the Eagle Spearhead exercises

in Transylvania. The forces tested their ability to fight off a large-scale attack on the country

which borders Ukraine. The exercise comes as other nations on NATO's eastern flank warn that Russia

could launch a limited attack on the alliance. The Kremlin says warnings of such attacks are unfounded

So this exercise is the main exercise of our rotation. It is called Eagle, a spare head

It is an exercise involving all the battlegrounds, which is approximately 1,300 soldiers from different countries

This exercise involved multiple level 4 battle groups

We did a tactical situation for the battle group with enemies coming from the south and

the east, which was supposed to take the region of Cincu. And our battle group, regrouped with also Romanian and Italians, were supposed to stop

this battle group. So the main battle was happening in Cinku