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USNDA Forms Inter-Service U.S. Military Competitive Drone Teams, U.S. Marines First to Fight in International Military Drone Crucible Championship on Independence Day Week

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the USNDA announced its sponsorship of the first interservice, international U.S. Military Drone Crucible Championship (MDCC), to measure, incentivize and rapidly integrate small drone skills and capabilities across the armed services.  The MDCC will develop camaraderie across services and allied partners, and exchange lessons learned from the rapidly growing field of emerging drone technology to hone the skills of operational forces.

The U.S. Marines are the first service to launch an official U.S. Military Competitive Drone Team, co-led by Training Command and the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, as part of a joint initiative to challenge and enhance the skills of warfighters through interservice competition within the operating forces and neighboring services.

“Just as early aviation races advanced our understanding of manned flight, drone racing will accelerate the integration and advancement of drones across all aspects of Marine Corps warfighting. As we incorporate FPV and small drone capabilities, we remain committed to demonstrating the highest standards of professional excellence in the Military Drone Crucible Championship. The technical expertise of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, combined with the competitive experience of the Marine Corps Shooting Team, in establishing the Marine Corps Attack Drone Team for the championship is just another step in ensuring that our Corps remains more ready than ever to meet current and future challenges,” said Major General Anthony Henderson, Commanding General, Training Command, and Brigadier General Simon Doran, Commanding General, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, in a joint statement.

Other participating DoD organizations include the Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, and U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command.

“As we contend with the challenges and opportunities presented by UAS proliferation, the Joint Force is seeking the collective ingenuity of our Services, Allies and partners, and industry stakeholders. The rapid innovation and iteration of critical UAS and C-UAS technologies strengthens the posture of the Joint Force for the wars of tomorrow,” said Lieutenant General Dagvin RM Anderson, Director of Joint Force Development, Joint Staff, Pentagon.

“Running concurrently with the MDCC, the DroneWERX Supply Web Challenge will allow drone industry supply chain innovators to integrate the latest technology into the competition teams inventories,” said the USNDA DroneWERX Director Marcus Rossi. “Counter Drone companies and prototypes are also encouraged to demonstrate in the Match 3 Drone Crucible. As an output of the overall competition the USNDA DroneWERX Report will provide the DoD with an analysis on drone supply chain resilience and vulnerabilities.”

“The Nation is hungry for earnest transparency on the state of both drone and counter drone capabilities,” said the Nathan Ecelbarger, Board Chairman on behalf of USNDA’s Directors and Advisors. “The Match 3 Drone Crucible is designed intentionally as a double-blind experiment to allow the data speak for itself. We look forward to meaningful discussion on the implications of the event with the Trump Administration, and Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and Transportation to help ensure that our nation remains at the edge of these critical emerging technologies. Also… #GoNavyBeArmy.”

The MDCC will be open to selected academic and civilian teams, showcasing drone technologies emerging from industry partners and classrooms across the nation. Regionally supported by the Central Florida consortia of universities and colleges, both Full Sail University and University of Central Florida will award full scholarships to winners of the U.S. Drone Competition for prototype innovation. Central Florida is home to over 100,000 college students and 400,000 high school students, in addition to being the modeling and simulation capital of the Nation.

“With the USNDA’s national headquarters based on the campus of Full Sail University, alongside the talent, growth, and innovation within our dynamic emerging technologies focused educational offerings, we look forward to collaborating with our neighboring higher education institutions to welcome the U.S. Military Drone Crucible Championship (MDCC) to our campus, region, and state,” said Full Sail University President, Garry Jones.

University of Central Florida President Alex Cartwright further stated, “We are pleased to support this event and highlight the innovation ecosystem within the State of Florida to help grow the talent and technology that will contribute to the United States’ defense and civilian sectors.”

The scholarships are part of a larger prize pool that also include opportunities for U.S. Government Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards, federal internships, and cash prizes awarded by the USNDA for Championship and Competitive Category winners.

The MDCC will consist of three back to back matches over the July 4th holiday weekend in Orlando, Florida, each increasing in difficulty and culminating in the Drone Crucible Championship event. The matches will test not only the speed and dexterity of Drone Pilots, but will also challenge problem solving and navigation skills through unknown obstacles, and task and technology-based skills navigating courses against unknown counter-drone measures provided by the defense and national security industry.

Match 1 will be held at professional sports venue, open to the public. Match 2 will be held on the campus of Full Sail University Campus. The Match 3 Drone Crucible held at an undisclosed military location in Central Florida.

In addition to U.S. services, a challenge has been extended to a consortia of European and Allied Nation drone operators. “It will be regrettable to deliver a victory for Britain on American soil on such a noteworthy American holiday. However, challenge accepted,” said Lieutenant Colonel Karl Eze, Chair of the British Army Drone Association, and Staff Officer for the British Army Drone Capability Development.

Highschool, College, Industry, International and U.S. Military applicants are encouraged to join the waiting list at www.usnda.org for additional details and MDCC rules to be released in February 2025.

About the USNDA:
The United States National Drone Association is not for profit, bipartisan, practitioner led Think Tank dedicated to rapidly and responsively advancing small drone and counter drone technology and capability primarily for National Defense, Security and Public Safety through increasing transparency and cooperation between academic industry, government and allied partners to primary events; U.S. National Drone Conference, The Annual Military Drone Championship “Drone Crucible”.

Press and media inquiries can be sent to press@usnda.org

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SOURCE United States National Drone Association

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Huawei Cloud Launches Agentic Infrastructure and CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, Accelerating Enterprise AI Innovation

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BANGKOK, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Huawei Cloud hosted Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026, bringing together leaders from government, business, industry partners, and the technology community to exchange views on how cloud and AI can support Thailand’s digital economy. During the event, Huawei Cloud announced “Huawei Cloud Agentic Infrastructure: Now Available for Thailand” and officially launched Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent Open Beta Testing (OBT) in the country.

Mr. Sunny Shang, President of Huawei Cloud APAC, outlined the company’s commitment to working with customers and partners to build an AI-driven digital future for Thailand. Regarding the government’s direction, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society emphasized the acceleration of digital transformation through national AI policies, public-sector adoption, and stronger public-private collaboration.

The public-sector highlighted how AI can improve government operations and make public services faster and more convenient. NECTEC also presented a Government AI case study covering the development of AI infrastructure and platforms, as well as AI chatbots and intelligent assistants designed to support government officials and improve services for citizens.

Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era

Mr. Surasak Wanichwatphibun, CTO of Huawei Cloud Thailand said Huawei Cloud will continue to strengthen its technological capabilities and build a robust computing infrastructure to drive AI innovation across enterprises.

At the center of the announcement is Agentic Infra, a new infrastructure designed specifically for developing and deploying AI agents. It supports efficient token generation, unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources, continuous learning, and secure and autonomous agent operations.

Mr. Surasak introduced four new features under Agentic Infra:

UnifiedBus-based AI Cluster Service (AICS), which supports highly efficient token generationAgentic Memory Storage Service (AMS), which delivers PB-scale memory storage to address a key bottleneck in agent memory, enabling long-horizon tasks and facilitating continuous learning.AgentSphere, which offers a secure and autonomous runtime environment for AI agentsCCE VolcanoNext, which enables unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources

CodeArts Agent OBT Launches in Thailand

Another major highlight was the launch of Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, giving local developers and enterprises an opportunity to experience Huawei Cloud’s coding agent and provide feedback before its wider release.

CodeArts Agent combines IDE functionality, autonomous development capabilities, and coding models. It supports project-level code generation, code completion, R&D knowledge Q&A, and unit test case generation.

The platform also applies Specification-Driven Development (SDD) to help development teams maintain code quality from the requirements stage through to final delivery.

It is worth mentioning that this release also introduces the Agent Team mode, which can automatically form a development team, enabling multiple agents to collaborate concurrently and execute tasks simultaneously.

By reducing repetitive tasks, CodeArts Agent can help developers work more efficiently and allow organizations to bring digital products and services to market faster.

The OBT launch forms part of Huawei Cloud’s efforts to support Thailand’s developer community and make AI-assisted software development more accessible to organizations of different sizes.

Strengthening Security for Enterprise AI

Mr. Surasak also emphasized security, stability, and quality as key priorities for enterprise AI adoption. As cyberattacks become increasingly automated and AI-driven, Huawei Cloud has upgraded its security services in two areas: protecting AI systems and using AI to strengthen cyber defense.

Its model lifecycle security solution covers AI infrastructure, training data, model inference, and agent applications.

For enterprises concerned about data sovereignty and privacy, Huawei Cloud provides dedicated security zones that allow customers to independently manage their encryption keys while preventing platform administrators from accessing customer data. Software-hardware integration and hardware acceleration are also used to maintain encryption performance without compromising service efficiency. Huawei Cloud has also introduced Data Capsule technology, which ensures that data can only be used within authorized environments and automatically becomes invalid if moved outside a designated security zone.

Showcasing AI Use Cases Across Industries

Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026 also featured AI and cloud use cases from organizations in Thailand. These included the development of AI platforms and intelligent assistants for the public sector, the use of AI coding and large language models in banking, and AI-powered learning and skills development platforms for the HR sector.

Huawei Cloud and its partners also shared how ecosystem collaboration can help solve industry challenges and accelerate AI adoption among enterprises.

About Huawei Cloud Thailand

Huawei Cloud Thailand is a leading cloud service provider committed to accelerating Thailand’s digital transformation under the mission of “In Thailand, For Thailand.” According to the latest report from Gartner, Huawei Cloud is ranked No.3 by revenue in Thailand’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market, solidifying its position as one of the most trusted and fastest-growing international cloud providers in the country.

As the first international public cloud vendor to establish local data centers in Thailand, Huawei Cloud now operates three Availability Zones, ensuring high reliability and low-latency connectivity for local users. Leveraging Huawei’s 30-plus years of expertise in ICT infrastructure, it integrates cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud-Native 2.0, and Big Data technologies to empower over 40 government agencies and thousands of enterprises across the Kingdom. By building a robust digital ecosystem and fostering local talent, Huawei Cloud aims to drive Thailand’s “Digital Economy” forward, bringing cloud and intelligence to every corner of the country for a fully connected, intelligent future.

For more information, please visit Huawei Cloud Thailand online at

https://www.huaweicloud.com/intl/th-th/ or follow us on:

https://www.facebook.com/HuaweiCloudTH

https://www.youtube.com/@HuaweiCloudAPAC

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/huawei-cloud-launches-agentic-infrastructure-and-codearts-agent-obt-in-thailand-accelerating-enterprise-ai-innovation-302833957.html

SOURCE Huawei Cloud Thailand

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Huawei Cloud Launches Agentic Infrastructure and CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, Accelerating Enterprise AI Innovation

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BANGKOK, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Huawei Cloud hosted Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026, bringing together leaders from government, business, industry partners, and the technology community to exchange views on how cloud and AI can support Thailand’s digital economy. During the event, Huawei Cloud announced “Huawei Cloud Agentic Infrastructure: Now Available for Thailand” and officially launched Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent Open Beta Testing (OBT) in the country.

Mr. Sunny Shang, President of Huawei Cloud APAC, outlined the company’s commitment to working with customers and partners to build an AI-driven digital future for Thailand. Regarding the government’s direction, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society emphasized the acceleration of digital transformation through national AI policies, public-sector adoption, and stronger public-private collaboration.

The public-sector highlighted how AI can improve government operations and make public services faster and more convenient. NECTEC also presented a Government AI case study covering the development of AI infrastructure and platforms, as well as AI chatbots and intelligent assistants designed to support government officials and improve services for citizens.

Building the Foundation for the Agentic AI Era

Mr. Surasak Wanichwatphibun, CTO of Huawei Cloud Thailand said Huawei Cloud will continue to strengthen its technological capabilities and build a robust computing infrastructure to drive AI innovation across enterprises.

At the center of the announcement is Agentic Infra, a new infrastructure designed specifically for developing and deploying AI agents. It supports efficient token generation, unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources, continuous learning, and secure and autonomous agent operations.

Mr. Surasak introduced four new features under Agentic Infra:

UnifiedBus-based AI Cluster Service (AICS), which supports highly efficient token generationAgentic Memory Storage Service (AMS), which delivers PB-scale memory storage to address a key bottleneck in agent memory, enabling long-horizon tasks and facilitating continuous learning.AgentSphere, which offers a secure and autonomous runtime environment for AI agentsCCE VolcanoNext, which enables unified scheduling of general-purpose and AI computing resources

CodeArts Agent OBT Launches in Thailand

Another major highlight was the launch of Huawei Cloud CodeArts Agent OBT in Thailand, giving local developers and enterprises an opportunity to experience Huawei Cloud’s coding agent and provide feedback before its wider release.

CodeArts Agent combines IDE functionality, autonomous development capabilities, and coding models. It supports project-level code generation, code completion, R&D knowledge Q&A, and unit test case generation.

The platform also applies Specification-Driven Development (SDD) to help development teams maintain code quality from the requirements stage through to final delivery.

It is worth mentioning that this release also introduces the Agent Team mode, which can automatically form a development team, enabling multiple agents to collaborate concurrently and execute tasks simultaneously.

By reducing repetitive tasks, CodeArts Agent can help developers work more efficiently and allow organizations to bring digital products and services to market faster.

The OBT launch forms part of Huawei Cloud’s efforts to support Thailand’s developer community and make AI-assisted software development more accessible to organizations of different sizes.

Strengthening Security for Enterprise AI

Mr. Surasak also emphasized security, stability, and quality as key priorities for enterprise AI adoption. As cyberattacks become increasingly automated and AI-driven, Huawei Cloud has upgraded its security services in two areas: protecting AI systems and using AI to strengthen cyber defense.

Its model lifecycle security solution covers AI infrastructure, training data, model inference, and agent applications.

For enterprises concerned about data sovereignty and privacy, Huawei Cloud provides dedicated security zones that allow customers to independently manage their encryption keys while preventing platform administrators from accessing customer data. Software-hardware integration and hardware acceleration are also used to maintain encryption performance without compromising service efficiency. Huawei Cloud has also introduced Data Capsule technology, which ensures that data can only be used within authorized environments and automatically becomes invalid if moved outside a designated security zone.

Showcasing AI Use Cases Across Industries

Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026 also featured AI and cloud use cases from organizations in Thailand. These included the development of AI platforms and intelligent assistants for the public sector, the use of AI coding and large language models in banking, and AI-powered learning and skills development platforms for the HR sector.

Huawei Cloud and its partners also shared how ecosystem collaboration can help solve industry challenges and accelerate AI adoption among enterprises.

About Huawei Cloud Thailand

Huawei Cloud Thailand is a leading cloud service provider committed to accelerating Thailand’s digital transformation under the mission of “In Thailand, For Thailand.” According to the latest report from Gartner, Huawei Cloud is ranked No.3 by revenue in Thailand’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market, solidifying its position as one of the most trusted and fastest-growing international cloud providers in the country.

As the first international public cloud vendor to establish local data centers in Thailand, Huawei Cloud now operates three Availability Zones, ensuring high reliability and low-latency connectivity for local users. Leveraging Huawei’s 30-plus years of expertise in ICT infrastructure, it integrates cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud-Native 2.0, and Big Data technologies to empower over 40 government agencies and thousands of enterprises across the Kingdom. By building a robust digital ecosystem and fostering local talent, Huawei Cloud aims to drive Thailand’s “Digital Economy” forward, bringing cloud and intelligence to every corner of the country for a fully connected, intelligent future.

For more information, please visit Huawei Cloud Thailand online at

https://www.huaweicloud.com/intl/th-th/ or follow us on:

https://www.facebook.com/HuaweiCloudTH

https://www.youtube.com/@HuaweiCloudAPAC

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/huawei-cloud-launches-agentic-infrastructure-and-codearts-agent-obt-in-thailand-accelerating-enterprise-ai-innovation-302833957.html

SOURCE Huawei Cloud Thailand

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Loomis Interim Report January – June 2026

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STOCKHOLM, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ —

Continued strong growth and record operating margin (EBITA %)

President and CEO Aritz Larrea comments:

“We delivered another very strong quarter reflecting the continued execution of our strategy and the strength of our diversified model. Revenue reached SEK 7.9 billion with a currency-adjusted growth of 9.1 percent. Both segment USA and segment Europe and Latin America contributed to the performance driven by continued strength in our International and Automated Solutions business lines. Operating income (EBITA) exceeded 1 billion SEK and we increased our EBITA margin by more than 1 percentage point year–over–year to 14.0 percent.

Our financial position remains strong. Supported by robust cash flow generation and a solid balance sheet, we continue to invest in long-term growth opportunities, pursue value-creating acquisitions, and maintain our commitment to delivering attractive returns to shareholders.”

Quarter 2, April – June 2026

Revenue for the quarter was SEK 7,891 million (7,407). The currency-adjusted growth was 9.1 percent (4.8), of which organic growth was 6.7 percent (3.8) and acquisitions contributed 2.5 percent (1.0). Including the exchange rate effect, the total growth was 6.5 percent (-3.0).Operating income (EBITA) 1) for the quarter was SEK 1,102 million (944) and the operating margin (EBITA) increased to 14.0 percent (12.7).Operating income (EBIT) before items affecting comparability for the quarter was SEK 1,062 million (882) and operating margin (EBIT) before items affecting comparability was 13.5 percent (11.9).Income before taxes for the quarter was SEK 869 million (664) and profit for the period was SEK 608 million (478).Basic earnings per share for the quarter were SEK 9.09 (7.01) and diluted earnings per share were SEK 9.06 (6.99).Cash flow from operating activities 2) was SEK 683 million (550) in the quarter. The cash flow from operating activities for the rolling twelve months was 95 percent (105) of operating income (EBITA).Net debt in relation to EBITDA was 1.60 times (1.75) in the quarter.Loomis expanded its presence in Latin America through the acquisition of Transportadora del Interior in Argentina and the announced acquisition of Hermes Transportes Blindados in Peru.

1)  Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Amortization of acquisition-related intangible fixed assets, Acquisition-related costs and revenue and items affecting comparability.
2)  Cash flow from operating activities is exclusive of impact from IFRS 16.

Report presentation today at 10.30 a.m. (CEST)

The report will be presented in a webcast conference today at 10.30 am (CEST) by President and CEO Aritz Larrea and CFO Johan Wilsby.

To follow the webcast, please follow this link.

The presentation materials and a recorded version of the conference will be available on https://www.loomis.com/en/investors/reports-and-presentations/ following the presentation.

For more information, please contact:

Jenny Boström
Head of Sustainability and IR
ir@loomis.com
+46 79 006 45 92

Fredrik Hammarbäck
Media and External Communications Manager
media@loomis.com
+46 76 311 56 29

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/loomis-ab/r/loomis-interim-report-january—june-2026,c4377246

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/51/4377246/4201809.pdf

Loomis Interim Report January – June 2026

https://mb.cision.com/Public/51/4377246/940bbe0a24c483c8.pdf

Loomis Interim Report January – June 2026 – press release

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/loomis-interim-report-january–june-2026-302833961.html

SOURCE Loomis AB

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