Inside the Army's extreme test lab, inventing futuristic food, gear, and warfighters

Tech Insider : Business, Style, Technology
A soldier aiming a gun at a virtual screen with digital people walking toward him.
Soldiers train on digital screens at Natick.

Business Insider

Every test at the US Army's mad science lab

Tech Insider : Business, Style

Inside the Natick Soldier Systems Center, the US Army puts its own gear through extreme tests—burning uniforms, freezing equipment, and pushing soldiers to their limits—to make sure everything can survive the harshest environments on Earth.

The US Army has been surging cheap interceptor drone purchases to flip the cost war with Iran's Shaheds

Tech Insider : Business
The American Merops drone system, deployed by Poland and Romania to defend Russian drones, is tested in Nowa Deba, Poland, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025.
The Merops system has been used in Ukraine and is now deployed to the Middle East.

AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

The US Army surged its largest counter-drone training deployment to the Middle East during the Iran war

Tech Insider : Business, Technology
US soldiers carry an AS3 interceptor, part of a modular American-made AI-powered counter-drone system Merops, during a presentation at a polygon in Nowa Deba, Poland, November 18, 2025.
The US Army has surged dozens of Merops counter-drone systems to the Middle East during the Iran war.

Kacper Pempel/REUTERS

Top US general says American forces have been sinking Iranian warships, including a submarine, with the ATACMS ballistic missile

Tech Insider : Business
US Army soldiers launch the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) from a HIMARS system in Australia during a training event on July 27, 2023.
US Army soldiers launch the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) from a HIMARS system in Australia during a training event on July 27, 2023.

U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Dickson

The Army is getting a new lethal hand grenade for the first time in decades

Tech Insider : Business
The Army's new hand grenade is has a body made of plastic instead of asbestos
The Army's new hand grenade is has a body made of plastic instead of asbestos

US Army

The 25 largest militaries in the world in 2026, ranked by the number of active troops

Tech Insider : Business, Economy, Technology
Military parade in Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) staged a military parade marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the nation.
North Korea has the fourth-largest number of active armed forces in the world.

Alain Nogues/Corbis via Getty Images

The new US Army drone course is teaching soldiers that drones aren't always the right weapon

Tech Insider : Business, Politics, Style
Two men in green camouflage gear walk across a snowy field holding a large grey drone, with a grey sky and trees behind them.
The proliferation of drones in Ukraine and other conflicts has pushed the US Army to create new drone warfare training.

Dmytro Smolienko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images

This US Army drone school is training students on what it's like to be hunted

Tech Insider : Business, Environment
US Army soldiers during drone operator training.
US Army personnel fly the commercial UAS First Person View simulators during the inaugural Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course (UALC) at Fort Rucker.

US Army/Leslie Herlick

The US fired $500 million in top interceptors defending Israel from missile attacks, new documents show

Tech Insider : Business
A missile being launched, producing fire and smoke.
A THAAD interceptor is launched from the Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in August 2019.

Missile Defense Agency

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