That’s exactly what happened this week.

But the Large Hadron Collider isn’t shutting down because it failed. It’s shutting down because scientists have squeezed almost everything they can from its current configuration.

Now they’re making it better. Note that I said better, not bigger. Sometimes more is better, and that’s exactly the case here.

This upgrade isn’t really about making the collider more powerful. It’s about increasing its luminosity—one of the most misunderstood concepts in particle physics.

People assume every new collider is built simply to smash particles harder. Not necessarily.

The High-Luminosity LHC won’t dramatically increase collision energy. Instead, it’ll increase how many collisions happen.

It’s the difference between buying one lottery ticket and buying a million. The jackpot doesn’t change. Your odds do.

That’s exactly what CERN is doing. And they’re doing it so they can more effectively hunt some of the biggest physics mysteries of our time.

One of those mysteries is antimatter. According to our best models, the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter. If it had, the universe as we know it wouldn’t exist.

Yet somehow, matter gained the tiniest advantage—roughly one extra particle for every billion matter-antimatter pairs. That microscopic imbalance left behind every star, every planet, and every person you’ve ever met.

We still don’t know why.

By the way, this mystery is the one I lean into most in Flash Point. I’ve always believed the best fiction begins with the biggest unanswered questions in science.

[Bonus points to CERN’s social media team, who announced the shutdown with: “So long #LHC, and thanks for all the collisions.” Douglas Adams would approve.]

This Week’s Free Story

Thanks for reading. If you’ve already grabbed a copy of Flash Point, thank you for taking a chance on a new series.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection
of advanced physics and covert operations.
Technothrillers at the Edge of Tomorrow

BookLife Critic’s Report

Overall: 9.75/10

• Plot / Idea: 10 / 10

• Prose: 10 / 10

• Character / Execution: 10 / 10

• Originality: 9 / 10

The BookLife Prize is the review program operated by Publishers Weekly, one of the publishing industry’s most established trade publications.

One line from the review especially stood out to me:

It comes just weeks after Kirkus Reviews called Flash Point “a breathless tech thriller” and concluded simply:
“Get it.”

It’s encouraging to see two independent editorial teams respond so positively to the same story.

Professional reviews don’t determine whether a book succeeds. Readers do.
But they’re one more signal that the story I hoped to tell is connecting with the people picking it up.

If you’ve been considering Flash Point, I hope these reviews give you a better sense of whether it’s the kind of thriller you’ll enjoy.

If you’ve already read it, thank you for taking a chance on a new series. Every review, recommendation, and conversation helps another reader discover this story.

—Jake

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Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection
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Technothrillers at the Edge of Tomorrow

Today, it’s information.

Modern battlefields generate mountains of data from satellites, drones, sensors, radar systems, and troops on the ground. The challenge isn’t collecting information anymore; it’s turning that information into action before the other side does.

That’s where military AI is beginning to make a difference.

A recent report highlighted how military leaders view artificial intelligence not as a replacement for human decision-makers, but as a tool to accelerate the “kill chain” — the process of finding, identifying, tracking, and engaging targets. Human commanders remain responsible for the final decision. The goal is speed, not autonomy.

In practical terms, AI can sift through thousands of inputs, identify patterns, flag anomalies, and surface potential threats far faster than a human staff ever could.

That matters because the side that completes the decision cycle first often wins.

We’re already seeing examples of this shift across the military. AI-enabled systems are helping commanders process battlefield information faster, while new targeting networks promise to compress planning cycles from days into hours—or even minutes.

The technology is still evolving. So are the ethical questions surrounding it. But one thing is becoming clear: The future battlefield won’t belong to whoever has the most information. It will belong to whoever can understand that information first.

And that’s a theme that shows up repeatedly in technothrillers—and increasingly in real life.

This Week’s Free Book

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. FLASH POINT is available now.

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Until next time,
Jake
Technothrillers at the Edge of Tomorrow

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that someone is bleeding out right now.

Ten seconds after the first gunshot, autonomous microdrones are already converging on the scene.

Thirty seconds later, an agentic swarm has mapped the surrounding streets, identified casualties, and established overwatch.

Ninety seconds after the attack, a robotic medic arrives, delivered by an autonomous UAV staged less than a mile away.

By the time the first helicopter lifts off, an AI system already knows who’s wounded, who’s stable, who’s critical, and who needs immediate evacuation.

The first medic reaches the wounded in thirteen minutes.
The first medical assessment arrives in ninety seconds.

A decade ago, autonomous battlefield triage would have sounded like a Tom Clancy novel crossed with a robotics conference.

DARPA is building it now.

DARPA’s recent triage challenge isn’t about replacing medics. It’s about extending them.

The goal is to use autonomous systems to locate casualties, assess injuries, gather vital signs, and help prioritize treatment in the critical minutes before human responders arrive. In mass-casualty events and contested environments, those minutes can mean the difference between life and death.

These systems act as force multipliers—robotic scouts gathering medical intelligence before a medic ever sets foot on scene.

And that’s where near-future technothrillers like FLASH POINT intersect with reality.

The DARPA challenge isn’t quite the scenario I described above. Yet.

The future rarely arrives all at once.
More often, it arrives ninety seconds ahead of the cavalry.

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Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His novel, FLASH POINT, is available now.

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What if it failed?

And what if someone decided to weaponize it?

That’s the question behind Flash Point, the first Project RIFT novel.

Today, it’s finally available.
If that sounds like your kind of thriller, you can grab it below.

The experiment succeeded. That was the problem.

Amazon Kindle | Paperback | Kobo | Nook | Apple Books | Google Play

Thank you to everyone who followed along during the launch.
I can’t wait to hear what you think.

— Jake

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

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In other words, while there are plenty of operators, intelligence agencies, and military elements, the story is ultimately driven by a scientific breakthrough and its consequences.

Given that fact, you’d think the ‘techno’ angle would be the thing I most need to keep pace with when I write… but that’s not always the case. Keeping up with emerging technology is part of the job, but so is paying attention to how quickly military organizations adapt when new capabilities emerge.

Take the Army’s new M7 rifle, for example.

This weapon has been in widespread use for barely a year, yet SIG SAUER and the Army are already iterating on the design. The result? The M8: a lighter, more maneuverable evolution of the M7, with improvements based on immediate feedback from the field.

What caught my attention wasn’t the rifle; it was the process. Historically, military procurement has been measured in years, even decades. In this case, the Army gathered feedback from soldiers, identified problems, and moved quickly to implement improvements. You can read the full Task & Purpose article here.

For military planners, that’s modernization. For thriller writers, it’s a reminder that technology doesn’t stand still.

The battlefield is constantly evolving, but the pace of change appears to be accelerating. Sometimes the most interesting stories emerge where new capabilities collide with old assumptions.

One of the challenges in writing near-future technothrillers is deciding which emerging technologies are believable enough to include. Authors spend a lot of time studying trends, capabilities, and experimental systems, trying to imagine which ones will shape the next conflict.

The tricky part is that reality has a habit of moving faster than expected. Sometimes a piece of technology that seems experimental while you’re outlining a novel becomes operational before the manuscript is finished. Other times, the breakthrough everyone expects never materializes at all.

That’s part of what makes writing books like Flash Point so fascinating. The goal isn’t to predict the future perfectly. It’s to explore what happens when today’s emerging technologies collide with tomorrow’s geopolitical realities.

Flash Point launches Tuesday.

The ebook is currently available for preorder at $2.99 and will increase to $4.99 when it goes live on June 16.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, Flash Point, is available wherever books are sold.

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Galileo’s discovery that the Earth orbited the Sun was possibly the ultimate historical example of science being branded as dangerous and evil, but it’s far from the only one.

There are plenty of candidates from recent history. The scientific bogeyman in the 40s, 50s, and 60s was nuclear fission. In the 90s and early 2000s, it became the internet.

Today, CRISPR is one of the most controversial scientific advancements on Earth. CRISPR is a gene-editing technology that makes bespoke medicine possible, treatments tailored to an individual’s unique genetics. Depending on who is discussing it, it’s portrayed as:

• a miracle cure,

• a biosecurity threat,

• a designer-baby tool,

• a national security concern, or

• a revolutionary medical platform.

For KJ Muldoon, CRISPR wasn’t a debate. It was a lifeline.

Born with a rare, one-in-a-million genetic disorder, KJ faced a grim prognosis. Scientists at CHOP developed the world’s first personalized gene-editing therapy specifically for his mutation. Six months after birth, he became the first person ever to receive a custom-designed CRISPR treatment.

Today, he’s thriving at home with his family.

For all its promise, CRISPR remains controversial. Critics worry about unintended genetic changes, the ethics of editing future generations, and the possibility that increasingly accessible gene-editing tools could be misused for purposes far removed from medicine.

That includes weaponization of the technology. Nation-states could arm CRISPR by exploiting its dual-use potential to engineer advanced bioweapons, disrupt agricultural supply chains, or optimize human performance for warfare.

Those concerns aren’t imaginary. Neither are the benefits.

The truth is that technologies that shape our future are rarely good or evil on their own. The same discoveries that can save a child’s life can also create risks we struggle to anticipate. What matters is who controls them, how they’re used, and whether our wisdom keeps pace with our ingenuity.

That’s one of the questions at the heart of Flash Point. In fact, the Cousteau quote at the top is the epigraph that opens the novel.

READ FIRST 4 CHAPTERS

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Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

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The F-47 is the centerpiece of the Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, program, which will replace the F-22 as America’s premier tool for winning control of unfriendly skies.

There isn’t a lot of intel out there about the Boeing-made aircraft. Much of it comes from statements made by then-Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin. He revealed that the F-47 would have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth capabilities, and be easier to support downrange than fifth-generation fighters like the F-22 and the F-35. Yet it would undercut the F-22’s hefty price tag.

What is China Saying?

Unsurprisingly, China isn’t impressed. State run media outlets are spinning this as a ‘Sputnik moment,’ pointing to the complex technology and questioning whether the fighter will ever see the skies.

One of their military experts blamed it on a feeble attempt to ‘hold a vanishing technological edge over China.’

Fear Response or Valid Concern?

Whether China’s concerns are justified remains to be seen. One thing is certain: nobody spends this much time explaining away a capability they truly consider irrelevant.

If you want to read more about the F-47, head over to Task & Purpose.

Today’s Free Read

Looking for your next military thriller? Jessie Clark’s full-length novel SILENT VALOR is currently free.

Fresh from a tour in Afghanistan, Army Ranger Emily Jensen returns stateside to discover that a fellow soldier has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Her search uncovers a dangerous web of betrayal that follows her from the war zone to her own backyard. Grab it while you can.

READ FIRST 4 CHAPTERS

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

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Modern militaries increasingly locate each other through electronic emissions. Every radar ping, radio transmission, or drone feed increases the risk of detection.

Why it Matters

In Ukraine and elsewhere, armies are learning that the electromagnetic spectrum is now part of the battlefield.

Hiding troops is no longer just about camouflage. It’s about data, emissions, and whether your systems can operate without being detected.

The strange thing about modern warfare is that the more connected an army becomes, the easier it may be to find.

That raises an uncomfortable question: In a future war, will silence become the ultimate tactical advantage?

Those same questions sit at the heart of FLASH POINT: What happens when emerging technology changes the balance between secrecy, surveillance, and power?

It's now just over two weeks until launch.

This Week's Featured Books

Grab free samples of these to test drive. If you like what you read, do the author a solid and grab a copy of the full book.

Silent Code

Former Army Ranger Emily Jensen stumbles upon a shadowy conspiracy involving a rogue cyber attack where the line between friend and foe blurs. Blackmail, high-stakes political intrigue, and encrypted secrets threaten to bring down the foundation of the U.S. government.

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Frontier Justice

Afghanistan veteran Danny Coogan hopes to bury his demons in the wilderness around the town of Darwin, Montana, but a brutal betrayal leaves him bleeding out in the freezing wilderness. To survive, he must navigate a high-stakes web of FBI rivalries, weapons traffickers, and deep-seated tribal secrets before a ruthless killer strikes again.

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Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

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• The vast majority (some say 95%+) of intercontinental internet traffic
  travels through undersea cables.

• Most people never think about them.

• Militaries think about them constantly.

• Mines are one of the cheapest, most asymmetric ways to disrupt global trade and military movement.

• A $5,000 naval mine can threaten a $13 billion aircraft carrier.

That imbalance is why the next major maritime conflict may belong not to destroyers or stealth fighters — but to autonomous underwater drones hunting silently beneath the world’s shipping lanes.

We like to think of the internet as something floating invisibly in a cloud. In reality, modern civilization runs through pipelines and fiber-optic cables lying exposed on the ocean floor.

The Baltic Sea has become a testing ground for that vulnerability. Over the past year, multiple undersea cables—including the C-Lion1 link between Finland and Germany—have been severed in suspicious incidents involving commercial vessels tied to Russia’s shadow fleet.

Maybe accidents. Maybe sabotage. That uncertainty is part of their strategy.
Modern seabed warfare is cheap, deniable, and incredibly difficult to police.

One response is Greyshark, an autonomous underwater drone, jointly developed by Euroatlas, and EvoLogics, and Fassmer Defence.

Powered by hydrogen fuel cells, it can remain submerged for up to four months with a range of over 10,000 nautical miles while patrolling pipelines, shipping lanes, and communications cables.

Its mission is simple: detect mines, monitor infrastructure, and identify disturbances along the seabed before they become a crisis.

And this isn’t just a Baltic problem.

Chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, the Malacca Strait, and the English Channel contain dense clusters of vulnerable subsea infrastructure critical to global trade and energy distribution.

That creates a dangerous asymmetry: nations spend billions building offshore infrastructure, while sabotage may require little more than a commercial vessel, a dragged anchor, and plausible deniability.

We spent decades building a hyper-connected world, but forgot one uncomfortable fact:

The cloud still depends on physical cables resting in dark water.

And for the first time in decades, militaries are preparing for the next conflict to begin there first.

The idea that critical infrastructure could become the frontline of a future conflict isn’t theoretical anymore. It was one of the core concepts that inspired my techno-thriller, FLASH POINT, built around how fragile modern systems become when invisible networks beneath the surface start to fail.

Because the deeper you look into modern warfare, the clearer it becomes: some of the most important battlefields of the future may be completely invisible.

FLASH POINT — Project Rift, Book 1
DARPA proved the impossible.
Hours later, someone tried to shut the project down.

Preorders are now open.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

That’s not supposed to happen.

Quantum states like this—where something exists in two opposing conditions at once—are incredibly fragile. Normally, they collapse almost instantly.

Milliseconds are typical. Seconds are difficult. Minutes? That’s new territory.

In late 2024, researchers created a microscopic “quantum cat” using thousands of ytterbium atoms, cooled to near absolute zero and stabilized with laser precision. The result: a system spinning in two opposite directions at the same time—held there for nearly half an hour.

Why does that matter?

Because controlling quantum states for this long isn’t just a lab trick—it’s a door opening. And that changes everything.

• Systems that don’t collapse the moment you use them
• Sensors that detect what’s currently invisible
• Technologies that could shift the balance of power in computing, energy, and defense

In short: we’re getting better at holding reality in impossible states—and deciding when it breaks.

Now push that forward.

By 2046, imagine a breakthrough that doesn’t just stabilize quantum states—but weaponizes them. A method for tunneling matter into a decoupled quantum domain.
Limitless resources. Strategic dominance.

Until it goes wrong.

That’s the premise behind my upcoming technothriller—where advances like this don’t stay in the lab. They reshape the battlefield.

Because the future of quantum tech isn’t just powerful. It’s unstable. And once someone learns to control it, everyone else has to catch up—or get erased.

If you want in, you can read the opening now.
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There are also a limited number of ARC spots left, if you’re in the mood to review an advance copy. The book is currently $2.99 on pre-order (that price goes away June 16).

Join the ARC Team

The “Stingray” Mission

For decades, the mission of aerial refueling at sea has fallen to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. While capable, using a primary strike fighter as a “tanker” is an inefficient use of a high-performance airframe. It puts unnecessary wear and tear on the fleet and, more importantly, keeps a combat-ready pilot occupied with a logistics task.

The Stingray changes that math. By moving the refueling mission to an uncrewed platform, the Navy effectively:

• Recovers Strike Power → Frees up Super Hornets to do what they were built for: combat.

• Extends the Reach→ Creates a persistent ‘gas station in the sky,’ pushing the carrier air wing farther out while keeping the carrier itself outside anti-ship missile range.

• Force Multiplier → A single MQ-25 can carry up to 15,000 lbs of fuel, significantly extending the reach of the F-35C and the rest of the wing.

As a pilot, what stands out to me isn’t just the tech. It’s the shift in how carriers will fight under pressure.

Why This Matters for the Project Rift Series

In a story set in 2046, the line between ‘pilot’ and ‘processor’ isn’t a debate any longer. It’s a settled reality.

The MQ-25A Stingray is a vital missing link in that evolution. While it’s cutting-edge tech in 2026, by the time we reach the mid-2040s, uncrewed tankers and autonomous wingmen have become run-of-the-mill.

Milestones like this successful flight are the reason the tactical landscape of Flash Point feels so grounded. We aren’t just speculating about ‘drone wars’; we’re watching the foundation of tomorrow’s battlespace being laid on carrier decks today. When you watch a Stingray catch a wire, you’re not just seeing a new aircraft. You’re seeing the first piece of 2046 come online.

As we head toward the June 16 launch of Flash Point, how much more of the 2046 tech tree do you think we'll see go live this year?

If you enjoy grounded, high-stakes technothrillers, you can pre-order Flash Point here: https://books2read.com/u/3ndDM9. Pre-order is currently $2.99 — it goes up after launch.

I still have a handful of early reader spots open if you want in before release: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/dir0no0p3t.

And I’m always curious—what’s a thriller that’s stuck with you long after you finished it? Hit reply and let me know.

More soon.

— Jake

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

But the most critical breakthrough isn't designed to destroy. It’s designed to sustain. The innovation? Shelf-stable, portable blood substitutes.

If it sounds dramatic, maybe even a little futuristic, that’s because it is.

The Logistics of Survival

On the battlefield, survival often comes down to minutes.

For decades, the "Golden Hour" has been dictated by a brutal constraint: real blood expires, requires refrigeration, and demands precise type-matching. Even in modern warfare, something basic, like blood, can be the difference between life and death.

Changing the Constraint

A shelf-stable substitute removes the timer.

• Zero Refrigeration: Ready anywhere, instantly.

• Universal Use: No typing, no delay.

• Extended Reach: Units can operate further and longer from medical hubs.

When the window between injury and treatment widens, the tactical map chan

The Quiet Arms Race

We often ignore the unglamorous side of war: the logistics, the support frameworks, the stabilization kits. But this is the ultimate “leave no one behind” technology.

It’s a different kind of arms race. We aren’t just building better weapons; we’re perfecting the tech that keeps our most important asset—the warfighter—alive.

Advance Praise for Flash Point

Early readers are already calling it a fast-paced, high-stakes thriller with nonstop action and a gripping blend of science and suspense:

Want an advance copy?

I’m opening up a limited number of advance reader copies of the full book. In exchange, I’m looking for an honest review during launch week.

I’m keeping this group small so I can focus on readers who want to be part of launch.
Interested?
👉 Get My Advance Copy (Join the ARC Team)

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Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

It’s a great headline. It’s also physically impossible with any technology known to man.

The Reality Gap

Magnetocardiography (measuring the heart’s magnetic field) is real. But there’s a massive catch: the magnetic signal of a human heart is roughly one-millionth the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.

To detect it, you usually need:

• A magnetically shielded room (to block out everything from power lines to passing cars).

• Sensors placed centimeters—not miles—from the chest.

Why 40 Miles is a Fantasy

In the real world, magnetic field strength follows the Inverse Square Law. By the time that tiny heartbeat signal travels 40 miles through mountainous terrain, atmospheric interference, and crustal magnetic noise, it doesn’t just “fade”—it vanishes.

Isolating a single heart from 40 miles away is like trying to hear a specific whisper in the middle of a hurricane, from three states away.

What Actually Found Him?

We don’t need ‘magic’ tech to explain this rescue. The military already has highly effective, proven tools:

• CSEL (Combat Survivor Evader Locater): Flight vests are equipped with these. They transmit encrypted GPS data and pre-loaded status bursts (e.g., “Injured” or “Ready for extraction”).

• ISR Fusion: A net of drones, satellites, and AI-driven pattern tracking.

• SIGINT: Picking up brief electronic signatures or emergency beacon pings.

The Narrative is the Weapon

‘Ghost Murmur’ likely isn’t a breakthrough in physics; it’s a breakthrough in psychological operations.

If the Pentagon can make an adversary believe we can ‘hear’ their pulse from the next county over, they’ve won the psychological battle before a shot is fired.

But there is a second, more internal benefit to these stories: The reinforcement of the ‘No Man Left Behind’ creed.

A Promise, Not Just a Sensor

When a pilot hears that we can track a heartbeat through 40 miles of rock and radio noise, they aren’t thinking about the Inverse Square Law. They’re thinking about the promise that someone is always listening.

That narrative is a massive morale booster. It tells our operators that the military will quite literally move the laws of physics to bring them home. Even if the tech is ‘ghostly,’ the commitment to the recovery mission is absolute.

The Bottom Line

We don’t need “magic” tech to explain these rescues. The reality—a combination of CSEL, satellite fusion, and the sheer will of rescue teams—is more impressive than any click-bait myth.

Science is cool enough without making things up. And the promise to bring our people home is strong enough that it doesn’t need fake physics to back it up.

If you like grounded, high-stakes science mixed with military realism, I’m currently offering early copies of my upcoming technothriller.

You can grab an advance copy here:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/dir0no0p3t

Or, if you prefer NetGalley:
https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/823353

If you’d rather, just hit reply and I’ll send it your way.

Appreciate you being here.

— Jake

P.S. If you end up reading the ARC, even a short review makes a huge difference.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

They’re incredible—especially the views from the far side of the Moon, including a rare in-space solar eclipse.

But there’s one detail most people don’t think about when they see images like this:

From the Moon’s surface, Earth wouldn’t rise or set.

Because the Moon is tidally locked, the same side always faces us. From that surface, Earth just hangs there—almost motionless in the sky, shifting only slightly over time.

The reason we get images like “Earthrise” at all is because the spacecraft is moving.

From the ground, it would feel very different.

Not a moment.

A constant.

There’s something about that idea that sticks with me—the sense of something always present, always just… there.

Quiet. Unmoving. Watching.

QOTD — Artemis II

Artemis/Reid Wiseman:
“We just realized we have… Earth out window 4 and Moon out window 3, and it just gives you the best idea of scale we’ve had yet…”

Mission Control:
“Amaze. Amaze. Amaze. 👎”

(If you’ve read — or seen — Project Hail Mary, you know.)

If you like grounded, high-stakes science mixed with military realism, I’m currently offering early copies of my upcoming technothriller.

You can grab an advance copy here:
https://dl.bookfunnel.com/dir0no0p3t

Or, if you prefer NetGalley:
https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/823353

If you’d rather, just hit reply and I’ll send it your way.

Appreciate you being here.

— Jake

P.S. If you end up reading the ARC, even a short review makes a huge difference.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

Government procurement doesn’t move fast… until it suddenly does.

This week, the U.S. Army went from bid to a $52 million award for Skydio’s X10D drones in roughly 72 hours. That’s not a pilot program. That’s large-scale deployment.

When the Pentagon compresses timelines like that, it’s not experimentation. It’s urgency.

The real shift isn’t the drone — it’s the assumption

For years, U.S. doctrine leaned on a simple premise: If you control the airspace, your systems work. That assumption is gone.

In a peer conflict, GPS degrades. Comms get jammed. Links go dark.
Anything that requires constant human input or a clean signal becomes dead weight.

The X10D is built for that reality

What matters here isn’t that it flies. It’s that it doesn’t need you to fly it.

Skydio’s autonomy stack allows the drone to navigate visually, building a real-time 3D model of its surroundings. Trees, buildings, terrain—it routes around them without operator input.

No signal? It keeps going.

I’ve seen it up close—a Skydio drone locking onto me and maintaining track through trees and around structures without operator input.

It doesn’t lose you.

What it’s carrying

Sensors:
48MP telephoto + FLIR Boson+ thermal
Translation: it sees you before you see it, even through cover.

Onboard compute:
Edge processing for object detection and tracking. No reliance on cloud or remote processing.

Manufacturing reality:
This is the part most people miss.
Skydio isn’t building boutique systems. They’ve built for high-rate production.
Because in modern conflict, drones aren’t assets; they’re consumables.

The bigger signal

Strip away the headlines and this is what remains:
the future fight is short-cycle, high-attrition, and brutally local.

You don’t win that with million-dollar platforms. You win it with systems that are cheap enough to lose, smart enough to operate alone, and fast enough to replace.

The Jake Darst take

This is the end of the ‘Predator mindset.’ Not immediately, but certainly decisively. The Pentagon isn’t just buying drones. This move rewrites what capability means. And they’re doing it on a 72-hour clock.

Not two days later, DARPA announced that the U.S. Army officially took possession of the Sikorsky H-60Mx, another new Black Hawk variant.

It is not the S-70UAS. Though both are built on the exact same airframe, and both feature the DARPA-funded Sikorsky MATRIX™ autonomy suite, the U-Hawk and the H-60Mx are not the same.

The U-Hawk (S-70UAS) has no cockpit and could widely be considered a human-scale cargo drone. The H-60Mx is a true hybrid, extensively modified to fly with or without a pilot at the controls.

They’re calling the aircraft a next-generation ‘Optimally Piloted Vehicle,’ or OPV. Now that it’s in the Army’s hands, it’ll enter into a rigorous, advanced operational testing phase.

From DARPA’s site: “This milestone is the capstone achievement of DARPA’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program. The program’s objective was to create a highly automated system that could be integrated into existing aircraft to enhance mission flexibility and safety, particularly in complex and contested environments.

The phrase being linked to these two birds is “Major Leap into the Future of Aviation.” I can see why.

Not that the Bell Valor isn’t a fine piece of engineering, but with the Black Hawk’s storied history, I’m happy that we haven’t seen the last of this storied airframe.

— Jake

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

That’s where this potential new delivery method comes in. And when I say new, I mean that in a very forward-thinking sense: Point-to-point delivery via space.

The 60-Minute Global Reach

Rocket Cargo is a formal U.S. military program exploring the use of heavy-lift rockets—like SpaceX’s Starship—to move 100 tons of gear to any point on Earth in under an hour. Unlike traditional cargo planes, a rocket doesn’t need overflight permission from hostile nations, and it doesn’t care about surface-to-air missile batteries while it’s in the vacuum of space.

[Although an argument could be made that we would just be trading one threat for another in the form of co-orbital anti-satellite (ASAT) weaponry.]

The “Loitering” Threat

The most provocative version of this tech involves supplies loitering in orbit for up to five years. These aren’t just ‘packages’; they’re hardened, orbital caches waiting for a digital ‘call down’ signal. When an operator on the ground hits a button, a heat-shielded capsule de-orbits, surviving the 3,000-degree re-entry to land precisely at the GPS coordinates of the hot LZ. Sounds like science fiction, right?

The RIFT Connection

FLASH POINT is set in 2046, and though it doesn’t envision a resupply setup like Rocket Cargo, it does take into account that vehicles of all types, both ground and airborne, will be tracked by transponder.

Twenty years from now, it might not be as easy for an operator or tier 1 team to go to ground when needed. To hide caches in plain sight, 200 miles up, moving at 17,000 mph, sounds like the kind of thing worthy of a technothriller. Think about it: by the time local radar picks up the descent signature, the asset is already on the ground, the capsule has self-destructed, and the disappearing track has vanished into the noise.

Sometimes, the things currently in development exceed even a writer’s imagination.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

The Intel: Breaking the Projectile

The current gold standard for the U.S. military is the ESAPI plate. Unlike steel, these are made of boron carbide ceramic.

• The Physics: Boron carbide is one of the hardest materials on earth. When a high-velocity 7.62mm round hits, the ceramic is designed to be harder than the bullet itself. Instead of the plate deforming, the bullet's tip shatters on impact, dispersing its kinetic energy across the entire surface of the plate.

• The Sacrifice: The plate essentially ‘dies’ to save the wearer. It is designed to fracture and crack to absorb the energy. It’s a one-time-use miracle of materials science that weighs significantly less than the steel required to stop the same threat.

Now imagine a laboratory discovery that allows for armor that is thinner than a t-shirt but carries the stopping power of boron carbide.

This chainmail-like polymer could be the future of body armor. Such a polymer exists today, Scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation have created a 2D interlocked polymer, both lightweight yet flexible, with the highest density of mechanical bonds ever achieved.

A Tactical Shift: IHPS

Factor this in with the transition from the older Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) to the Integrated Head Protection System (IHPS). Now we have a system that isn’t just a bucket for your head; it’s a modular platform designed to integrate with comms and eye protection.

The Bio-Digital Leap

Beyond the physical plates, the next frontier for Tier 1 units isn’t something they wear—it’s something they integrate. We are already seeing the early stages of this with Molar Mic technology, which uses bone conduction through the teeth to transmit crystal-clear audio in high-noise environments.

The RIFT Connection

In 2046, the evolution might take this a step further. Imagine a hardened Cochlear Implant fused with a sub-dermal transceiver. This would allow operators to receive encrypted comms directly into the auditory nerve, bypassing the ear canal entirely. In a world of ‘signal silence,’ an operator with an internal loop is a ghost who can still hear his commander’s whisper.

The Darst Perspective

Consider this evolution: from boron carbide ceramic to 2D polymer chainmail, to integrated head protection (IHPS) and comms units. When the ‘sacrifice’ of a ceramic plate is no longer necessary, and your comms are literally part of your anatomy, the nature of covert operations—and the survivability of the operator—changes overnight.

If you can stop any round with a vest as thin as a t-shirt and coordinate via neural-linked audio, you aren’t just a soldier anymore. You’re a system. And the nature of covert ops changes forever.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.

The Intel: Breaking the “God” Barrier

After his dog, Rosie, was handed a terminal cancer diagnosis, Paul Conyngham refused to accept failure, or force Rosie to endure the kind of side-effects that chemotherapy might bring. Instead, using ChatGPT, Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold and virtual screening tools, he modeled her genome—both healthy and malignant. These tools allowed him to predict the protein structures of the tumor’s specific mutations, which led to several promising drug candidates.

• The Breakthrough: He moved from tissue to data to cure in months. Through his research, he identified an existing drug that could treat the cancer, but the manufacturer “refused to supply it for compassionate use.”

• Persistence: Undeterred, Conyngham reached out to Pall Thordarson, director of the UNSW RNA institute. With Thordarson’s help, an mRNA formula was created. The resulting vaccine, applied Winter 2025, as already shrunk the tennis-ball-sized tumor by 50%.

• The Scale: This wasn’t a pharmaceutical company’s triumph. It was a machine-learning expert using off-the-shelf AI tools to bridge the gap between biology and code.

The Darst Perspective: Bio-Security Friction

In FLASH POINT, we deal with the fallout of tech that ‘escapes the lab.’ The Conyngham case is the ultimate Crichton-esque proof of concept:

1. Democratized Design: If a civilian can design a life-saving vaccine with AlphaFold and a credit card, that suggests the opposite could occur. In truth, it means that the barrier to designing a life-ending pathogen has officially dropped, too.

2. The Regulatory Gap: As noted in the UNSW report, the red tape—getting official permission, the right way—was harder than the science. AI-designed biology moves in days; the law, in this case and for a dog, moved in three months. For humans, it moves in years.

The RIFT Connection

The democratization of mRNA, like any scientific leap, is neither good nor bad. It’s a tool. In the right hands, it can do amazing things.

Consider biocompatibility and what it might mean to the warfighter of the future. That same AI-driven sequencing used to map a canine tumor could be the key to solving hardware rejection.

If we can code the body to accept a custom protein, we can code it to ignore high-impact tactical implants. We are moving toward a future where the line between the soldier and the system is permanently erased.

Next Briefing: Hardening the Human Asset. We’re moving from biological code to physical defense—analyzing the limits of sacrificial armor plating and the next generation of Bio-Digital communication arrays.

// [Field Briefing: Tactical Bio-Hardware // RIFT-005] — Dropping 3/20.

Jake Darst writes technothrillers at the intersection of advanced physics and covert operations. His debut novel, FLASH POINT, arrives June 16, 2026.