KYIV, Ukraine--Last October, as artillery shells fired by Moscow-backed separatists pounded a Ukrainian mechanized brigade, Kyiv responded with a powerful new weapon. A Turkish-made drone launched a missile and knocked out a Russian-supplied howitzer. This demonstration of force--the first drone strike in combat by Ukraine's military--unnerved Russia and fueled complaints from Moscow that North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries including Turkey, the U.S. and Britain were threatening Russia's security by supplying sophisticated new weapons to Kyiv.

The Trump administration announced on Friday that it would allow the sale of advanced armed drones to other nations and bypass part of an international weapons export control agreement that the United States helped forge more than three decades ago. Administration officials have debated for years how to sell the armed drones despite clauses in the agreement, known as the Missile Technology Control Regime, that prevent its 35 members from doing so. The administration announced in 2018 that it was expanding drone sales, but has not been able to do so because of the limits set by the deal. The agreement is not legally binding and is treated as an understanding among its member nations. But circumventing one part of the pact could undermine the agreement in general and encourage other nations to selectively ignore or reinterpret clauses that they find inconvenient.

From virtual reality police training programmes to gun-toting drones and iris scanners, a public security expo in China showed the range of increasingly high-tech tools available to the country's police. The exhibition, which ran Tuesday to Friday in Beijing, emphasised surveillance and monitoring technology just as the Communist government's domestic security spending has skyrocketed. Facial-recognition screens analysing candid shots of conference attendees were scattered around the exhibition hall, while other vendors packed their booths with security cameras. From virtual reality police training programmes to gun-toting drones and iris scanners, a public security expo in China showed the range of increasingly high-tech tools available to the country's police. More innocuous applications, like smart locks for homes and big data applications to reduce traffic congestion, also occupied large swathes of the conference.

The U.S. military presence in Niger has expanded in recent years to an 800-strong force that accompanies Nigerien troops on intelligence gathering and other missions, reflecting U.S. concerns about rising militancy in West Africa's Sahel region.

A day after President Trump promised to slash the red tape involved in weapons sales, the administration announced on Thursday a new policy that could vastly expand sales of armed drones, a contentious emblem of the shift toward remotely controlled warfare. That change, in addition to a newly released update to the policy governing which nations are allowed to buy sophisticated American-made weapons, is intended to accelerate arms sales, a key priority of Mr. Trump. The president seemed to foreshadow the new policies on Wednesday night, when he said at a news conference with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan that after allies order weapons from the United States, "we will get it taken care of, and they will get their equipment rapidly." "It would be, in some cases, years before orders would take place because of bureaucracy with Department of Defense, State Department," Mr. Trump said. It's now going to be a matter of days.

"When they order military equipment from us, we will get it taken care of and they will get their equipment rapidly," Trump told reporters at a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Florida on Wednesday. "It would be, in some cases, years before orders would take place because of bureaucracy with Department of Defense, State Department. It's now going to be a matter of days. If they're our allies, we are going to help them get this very important, great military equipment. And nobody, nobody, makes it like the United States.

French President Emmanuel Macron has made fighting Islamist militants his primary foreign policy objective and the move to armed drones fits into a more aggressive policy at a time when it looks increasingly unlikely Paris will be able to withdraw from the region in the medium to long-term.