Russian troop build-up threatens city seen as key to seizing Ukraine's Donbas Russian troops have infiltrated the strategic city of Kostyantynivka in eastern Ukraine and are now trying to surround it. The entire city is now effectively in a grey zone, no longer controlled by anyone, Ukrainian soldiers have told the BBC. They get into areas behind our backs and in urban conditions it's extremely difficult to push them out, says a Ukrainian drone pilot who operates in that area and prefers to remain anonymous. Kostyantynivka is a gateway to the rest of the Donbas region. If it falls, Russian forces would be able push towards Ukraine's last remaining strongholds in the east, the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, and move closer to seizing Donbas completely, one of the Kremlin's key objectives in this war.

Fully autonomous drones with no human oversight have killed soldiers on the battlefield for the first time. This is according to a senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry, marking a watershed moment in warfare. The one-off test involved 10 AI-controlled "Terminator" drones on the front line of the Ukraine war. "We tried it," says drone-maker Alexander Kokhanovskyy, who supplied the technology and spoke to at a press event hosted by the Ukrainian embassy. We never implemented it [more widely]." The test took place two years ago and involved quadcopter drones that were programmed to fly towards the front line, cover between 3 and 5 kilometres over around 10 minutes and then engage "Terminator mode", in which an AI model searches for and intercepts targets. "We just launch it and we know everything will be dead - everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead," says Kokhanovskyy. "There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, ...

Uncrewed ground vehicles have already been tested for defending the front line by the Ukrainian military. There's a received piece of wisdom among militaries around the world that whatever new technologies appear, in the end, foot soldiers are what matters. As British Army officer Field Marshal Archibald Wavell put it shortly after the second world war: "All battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman." This may now finally be changing. Robots in battle are about to reach a critical point for Ukraine. In May, it began the mass production of Legit, a low-cost robot capable of carrying a machine gun.

Could humanoid robots be heading for the battlefield? I've come to an industrial space in a tech-heavy area of San Francisco expecting to see a menacing humanoid robot solider doing something combat-like: the future of land-based warfare, perhaps. Instead, the black shiny faceless Phantom robot is engaged in free play, manipulating a bunch of coloured kids blocks. We need data from it just interacting with its environment [and] this is today's menu, explains Sankaet Pathak, co-founder and CEO of two-year-old start-up Foundation Robotics, which is developing Phantom for military and civilian applications. Later he pushes its 80kg steel-covered body around the room to demonstrate its stability and shows me how it walks.

The next Call of Duty game has been revealed, with much of the reaction focused on its campaign set around a fictional renewed conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Modern Warfare 4, due out 23 October, partly follows South Korean soldiers battling a full-scale North Korean invasion. Dr Sarah Son, Senior Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield, said the move could be controversial as it turns still-unresolved war into entertainment. Some Koreans reacted more positively, with one calling Korea's inclusion in one of gaming's biggest franchises a symbolic moment . Developer Infinity Ward said the game will be grounded in the military authenticity Modern Warfare is known for.

The US military has long known that cheap fixes could stop location data from exposing its troops. It adopted almost none--and now says adversaries are using the data to target soldiers during a war. For nearly a decade, the Pentagon was warned--by its own contractors, analysts, and intelligence agencies--that anyone with a credit card could buy a map of where American troops sleep, work, and store nuclear weapons. Now the bill has come due in a war zone. A newly disclosed letter shows the warnings went unheeded: US Central Command now confirms it has received "multiple threat reports concerning adversary exploitation of commercial location data to target or surveil US personnel in theater"--the first official acknowledgment that the data-broker economy is being used to hunt American forces in the Middle East.

Fibre-optic drones have become Hezbollah's primary weapon against Israeli soldiers and civilians, along both sides of the Lebanese border, and are now seen as the biggest threat there, as fighting continues six weeks into a supposed ceasefire. One Israeli soldier was killed and two others injured in a drone attack near the Israeli border community of Shomera on Wednesday. Of the 11 Israeli soldiers and one civilian defence contractor killed since the ceasefire came into force, eight have been killed by fibre-optic drones. Most of the attacks have targeted Israeli forces, which are currently occupying a large area of southern Lebanon, but Hezbollah is also increasingly attacking Israeli communities across the border, according to the Alma Research Center, an Israeli think tank which monitors the conflict. It has recorded more than 100 drone attacks against communities inside Israel since the ceasefire began in April.

Sharrell Shaw's request for strangers to visit her husband's Arlington grave on Memorial Day drew over 6 million views and visits from Trump administration officials.

Inside Anduril and Meta's quest to make smart glasses for warfare It's been a year since the duo entered the US Army's troubled augmented-reality contest. Here's what it looks like so far. The defense-tech company Anduril has shared new details about the augmented-reality headset for the military it's prototyping with Meta, including a vision for ordering drone strikes via eye-tracking and voice commands. Quay Barnett, who leads the efforts as a vice president at Anduril following a career in the Army's Special Operations Command, says his fundamental goal is to optimize "the human as a weapons system." The vision is undoubtedly cyborg-inspired: Barnett wants drones and soldiers to see together, share information seamlessly, and make decisions as one. Anduril actually has two such projects in the works.

Inside the'kill-zone' on Ukraine's front line, where new weapons have transformed war After 225 days stuck in a front-line foxhole, the Ukrainian infantryman's muscles were so weak he could barely walk. His commanders had tried five times to swap him with another soldier - but they could never reach him. Rotating soldiers on the front line in eastern Ukraine is extremely difficult because of the constant threat of drones. This area near Kostyantynivka is currently one of the most dangerous hotspots and the Ukrainian military admits that Russian forces have reached its outskirts. Known as Kenya, the infantryman took two days to walk 11km (6.8 miles) to get back to his brigade, avoiding mines and hiding from drones to get out.