According to Israeli companies, the official reason given was related to security concerns. The organizers’ move became public a day after Israel carried out an air strike targeting Hamas negotiators in an attack in Doha on Tuesday.

The Dubai Airshow is one of the largest aerospace exhibitions in the Middle East that takes place every two years. Israeli defense companies left open the possibility of attending the event in hopes that the situation would change in the coming weeks. Qatari officers present on the DSEI show floor told Defense News they were “very angry” following the news of Israel’s attack on their country’s capital and that it was “upsetting” to think that Israeli weapon makers were on the floor near them at the exhibition.

Since normalizing ties in 2020, the UAE and Israel have deepened their defense cooperation in several fields. The following year was marked by several major defense projects inked between the two nations. Elbit Systems opened its first office in the UAE; the state-owned firm IAI and Emirati defense conglomerate Edge Group signed a contract to develop an unmanned surface vessel together; and Rafael formed a joint venture with the UAE-based G42 group in 2021 to develop artificial-intelligence and big-data technologies. In 2024, IAI and Edge Group also signed an agreement to establish a center in the UAE to maintain and market the Israeli company’s advanced electro-optic arrays.

The tourism industry, which has welcomed more than 22 million foreign visitors so far this year and generated over 1 trillion baht in revenue, is equally concerned. Thienprasith Chaiyapatranan, president of the Thai Hotels Association (THA), warned that a strong baht makes Thailand appear expensive compared with regional rivals. Tourists may not cancel their trips outright, but they are spending less. With fixed travel budgets, a stronger baht translates into fewer restaurant meals, less shopping, and fewer excursions. Although the upcoming high season may temporarily mask these effects, the longer-term picture is troubling as competitors like Vietnam and Japan—where the yen has fallen dramatically—become more attractive. Farmers, too, are feeling the strain. Revenues from rice and field crop exports have been cut even as domestic costs continue to rise. The result is a squeeze on rural producers who already operate on thin margins, deepening financial pressure in the agricultural sector.


> Business leaders are calling for urgent intervention. The Thai Chamber of Commerce has described the current situation as a “currency shock that runs counter to the real economy,” urging the government and the Bank of Thailand to act before competitiveness erodes further. The Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking has gone so far as to recommend separating Thailand’s gold balance sheet from its core economic indicators, arguing that gold-related inflows distort the real strength of the baht. At the same time, officials are cautious, knowing that overly aggressive intervention could risk accusations of “currency manipulation,” particularly from the United States, which has linked exchange-rate issues to trade negotiations.

Kasikorn Research believes the baht could soon test the 31.50 per dollar level if U.S. interest rate cuts go ahead, with the next support point seen at 31.30. Few expect it to return to the historic peak of 30 baht per dollar reached in 1978, as the central bank is expected to quietly intervene to prevent excessive gains.

Yet the warning signs are already visible. Kriangkrai Thiennukul, chairman of the Federation of Thai Industries (FTI), has stressed that the sharpest rally in four years is damaging exporters, tourism operators, and small businesses across the board. While cheaper imports such as oil offer some relief, the net effect is decidedly negative. If the baht continues to appreciate independently of economic fundamentals, he said, Thailand risks losing its competitive edge.

For policymakers, the paradox is stark. A strong baht is often hailed as a sign of investor confidence, but its rapid and excessive rise is inflicting real pain on the ground. Exporters are losing contracts, tourists are spending less, and farmers are taking losses they cannot pass on. With a new finance minister and central bank governor preparing to take office, the business community is urging swift action. Unless the baht is managed more carefully, Thailand could be left with a currency that looks strong on paper while the real economy weakens beneath it.

Both machine learning algorithms and other, more deterministic forms of automation have a major role to play in streamlining often cumbersome cybersecurity processes, especially getting software a formal Authority to Operate on Pentagon networks, defense officials said this week. “We need tools and capability and AI to make that faster and less expensive,” said Katie Arrington, who’s currently performing the duties of the Pentagon CIO, in a high-energy address to the Billington Cybersecurity Summit. “Why am I so hell-bent that I’m getting an automated ATO and reciprocity? You, as a taxpayer, pay for ATO.” An ATO is the cybersecurity seal of approval required before a new piece of software is allowed to operate on a Pentagon network. The process can often take a year or more, which is long enough that new cyber threats can arise and render once-secure software obsolete. Once an ATO is granted, it may be years before anyone manages to follow up and check that the software is still safe to use.

But one Marine Corps program manager said at Billington that his team is using automation to help get to ATO in less than a month — sometimes much less. “We’ve compressed the timeline for a traditional ATO package down inside 30 days,” said Dave Raley, head of a team called Operation Stormbreaker at Marine Corps Community Services. “We’ve seen where the Marine Corps AO [Authorizing Officer] approves a package in 24 hours.” The agencies of the Intelligence Community are also looking at AI and automation to speed the ATO process, among others, said the IC’s CIO, Doug Cossa. “For the community, we’re doing ‘espresso ATO,’ which is the minimum set of controls that you would have in place to automatically get your authorization,” Cossa told the Billington conference. “Right now, while we define those, it’s a manual process. We’re looking to automate that evaluation … over the next year.” The ultimate goal, Cossa said, is an automated process similar to getting your car’s emissions checked: You hook the software up to the diagnostic system and see whether the light turns red or green.

cybersecurity in massive government organizations is totally the same as measuring gas emissions, you see!

ATOs aren’t the only cybersecurity processes getting sped up with AI. Alexei Bulazel, the National Security Council’s senior director for cyber, noted that last month DARPA announced the final results of its AI Cyber Challenge, in which seven AIs competed to find and fix problems in 54 million lines of code from real-world software. Before the contest, DARPA coders deliberately introduced 70 cybersecurity vulnerabilities into the code: The AIs collectively found 54 of them (77 percent) and auto-patched 43 (61 percent). That’s far from perfect but definitely enough to be helpful to overworked humans trying to find all the problems by hand. Even more impressively, the AIs found another 18 vulnerabilities that DARPA hadn’t put there, genuine “zero day” threats, of which they auto-patched 11.

That said, speeding up the process takes more than new technology, Raley and other speakers at the Billington conference emphasized. Whoever’s building the software, for instance, needs to practice what’s known as “agile methodology” or DevSecOps, named because it relies on constant interaction and feedback between software developers, cyber security professionals, and the customer/end user/operator. They also need to document what they’re doing and present the Pentagon, not just with the software product itself, but with an array of supporting “artifacts” that testify to its cybersecurity soundness, such as a Software Bill Of Materials (S-BOM) — the digital equivalent of the nutritional and ingredients label on a box of cereal.

ah, agile development. wonder what government guys talk about on their daily stand-ups

The Pentagon’s new Software Fast Track (SWFT) initiative, established by Arrington in April, aims to institutionalize many of these best practices, as well as applying automation. “The goal there is to ask vendors who really want to get in quickly to give us all of these things [up front],” Dave McKeown, the Pentagon’s chief information security officer, explained. “Show us that you’re doing SSDF [Secure Software Development Framework]. Show us that you have an S-BOM. … We can leverage AI sort through those very quickly and come to a conclusion.” The next step, McKeown said, is a radical overhaul of the cybersecurity Risk Management Framework, another labor-intensive process of human bureaucrats checking off items on a checklist. “We’re looking to blow up RMF — which, by the way, is not getting rid of it, [but] to change the focus of it from compliance and checklists and humans to cybersecurity and cyber survivability and automation,” he said. “AI will play a big part there to help us continuously monitor [software], help validate the system, secure [it] at inception, and then maintain security over time.” The stakes are high, McKeown told the general session at the conference: “If we don’t adopt AI and stay ahead of the AI race, China’s gonna kick our butts, and we’re gonna lose our position in the world.”

Mr. President, we must not alloooow an AI gap!

Following a cost dispute with Switzerland that threatens to cut Bern’s planned buy of 36 F-35As, a defense official explained in a statement to Breaking Defense last month that “costs associated with the F-35 program, particularly for airframes and engines, have been trending higher than the initial estimates outlined in the F-35 Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA)” that Switzerland signed in 2022. The rising costs are “primarily attributed to inflation, significant global price increases for raw materials, and supply chain disruptions,” the official said. “Switzerland’s 2022 F-35 LOA faces a projected $610M price increase due to significant price increases in the Lot 18 production contract being finalized by the Joint Program Office (JPO),” they added.

The official’s claim of rising prices for Lot 18 comes amid ongoing negotiations between the JPO and F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which was awarded an $11.8 billion undefinitized contract — meaning dollar amounts and quantities were not settled — in December to kickstart production as details were hammered out. It’s not clear whether rising prices were already baked into that contract, which was issued before a global trade war initiated by the Trump administration in April that threatens to drive up prices of critical materials. Lockheed referred questions about Lot 18 negotiations to the JPO and queries about Switzerland’s order to the Swiss and US governments. A JPO spokesperson said in a statement to Breaking Defense on Wednesday that the “cost per aircraft varies as a function of quantity, variant mix, and economic forces. “The global economy has experienced significant inflationary pressures since the Lot 15-17 contract was signed. Nevertheless, the F-35 Joint Program Office and Lockheed Martin arrived at a cost per air vehicle” — an estimate limited only to the airframe and excludes key components like the engine — “below the relevant inflation indices, underscoring the F-35 Enterprise’s commitment to control costs.” When adjusting for inflation, the spokesperson added that “the cost per air vehicle” in Lot 18 “is consistent with the cost of those in Lot 15-17,” and said that more detailed information “will be available once Lot 18-19 are definitized,” the spokesperson added. F-35 engine-maker Pratt & Whitney referred a request for comment about engine prices to the JPO.

Swiss Cheese (As In Money)

The Pentagon’s estimate of the $610 million price increase is notably lower than that offered by Swiss officials, who last month projected a range of 650 million to 1.3 billion Swiss francs (at the time, roughly $807 million to $1.6 billion). The Swiss armament procurement department, or armasuisse, explained to Breaking Defense that the numbers “align” after taking into account “domestic cost increases,” including taxes, exchange rates and “increased spending” on infrastructure at Swiss airbases. “We would also like to emphasize that the Swiss Government remains committed to the procurement of the F-35A. Armasuisse and its U.S. government counterparts are working closely to continue implementing this procurement,” the spokesperson added.

a previous article arguing that the Swiss don’t necessarily have much of a choice other than “remaining committed”

Overall, the Swiss government emphasized the deal should be fixed at 6 billion Swiss francs, or over $7.4 billion in current dollars. When Swiss officials announced the impasse over fixed pricing for their F-35 order, a press release from the Swiss government said that it was “not possible at the present time to calculate precisely the total cost of the procurement,” estimating that the final price “will depend on a range of factors such as inflation in the USA, the development of commodity prices on the global markets and other factors such as price increases due to the tariffs imposed by the USA worldwide.” Switzerland in particular has been reeling from the Trump tariffs after being slapped with a shocking 39 percent duty, leading some Swiss lawmakers to call for rejecting the F-35 buy. In August the US defense official said that “Switzerland requested a special note in its F-35 LOA to clarify that the aircraft will be procured using fixed-price contracts once the Foreign Military Sales case enters the procurement process.” However, the official said, “[f]ixed-price contracts account for inflation and provide cost predictability but do not guarantee that the estimated LOA price will match the final contract price, a distinction outlined in the LOA and accompanying messaging for transparency. Under U.S. law, Foreign Military Sales (FMS) purchasers must pay the actual costs incurred by the U.S. Government (USG) to acquire defense articles and services. “The U.S. Government recognizes the importance of maintaining trust and transparency in the Swiss F-35 procurement process, particularly given our longstanding productive bilateral relations with Switzerland,” the official continued. “The U.S. remains committed to working closely with Switzerland to address any concerns and to strengthening the bilateral defense relationship between our nations.”

Switzerland’s first F-35 was originally expected to be handed over in 2027, with deliveries continuing until 2030. The December Lot 18 contract between Lockheed and the Pentagon specifically covered 145 airframes and was previously expected to be finalized in the spring, but Lockheed officials now predict the deal will be clinched in the second half of this year, Chief Financial Officer Evan Scott said during an earnings call in July. The JPO has since issued an over $2.8 billion undefinitized contract for 141 Lot 18 engines — four fewer than the number of airframes and a figure that Pratt said in a press release includes spares.

The JPO is also expected to exercise an award for Lot 19 as part of a “combined” production deal around the time of finalizing the Lot 18 contract, though values and quantities for the subsequent lot have not been disclosed. (The JPO previously told Breaking Defense that Lot 18 is structured as a base year and 19 as an option, and that lawmakers’ passage of a full-year continuing resolution for FY25 furnished the funds necessary to award Lot 19.) The Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget notably slashed the Pentagon’s own F-35 buy, cutting the Air Force’s purchases essentially in half. Lawmakers have indicated support for restoring some of those aircraft, though an FY26 budget has not yet been finalized by Congress.