Aerospace & Defense

  • November 04, 2026

    Skadden, Paul Hastings Guide Dronamics' $500M SPAC Deal

    Paul Hastings LLP-advised autonomous aviation company Dronamics on Wednesday unveiled plans to go public by merging with special purpose acquisition company GP-Act III Acquisition Corp., led by Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, in a deal that boasts an implied pro forma enterprise value of $500 million.

  • November 03, 2026

    Tribe Says Pipeline Harm Statement Shouldn't Be Dismissed

    A Native American tribe has asked a D.C. federal judge not to strike its natural resources director's statement about potential harm the Army Corps of Engineers will cause by allowing Enbridge Energy to reroute 41 miles of a pipeline around the tribe's lands.

  • November 03, 2026

    4th Circ. Keeps CIA Officers' Appeal Rights In DEI Firing Suit

    All but one of the Fourth Circuit's judges voted to deny the federal government's request for an en banc rehearing of a panel's split decision that allowed CIA officers to appeal terminations that were allegedly due to their involvement with assignments related to DEI and accessibility, according to a Tuesday order.

  • November 03, 2026

    Lockheed To Pay $29.5M Over Alleged DEI Bias Practices

    Lockheed Martin Corp. agreed to pay $29.5 million under two settlements announced Monday by the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that the defense contractor considered race or sex in some pay, hiring and promotion decisions while certifying compliance with federal antidiscrimination requirements

  • November 03, 2026

    Troops Urge Justices To Delay Review Of Military Trans Ban

    A group of transgender servicemembers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decline to review the Trump administration's ban on transgender individuals serving in the military for now, saying the government's current appeal of a narrow circuit court ruling against the policy is premature and incomplete.

  • November 03, 2026

    3M Inks $7.35B Deal To Settle Most PFAS Foam Claims

    3M Co. announced Tuesday that it will pay up to $7.35 billion over nine years to resolve nearly all personal injury claims related to PFAS "forever chemicals" in firefighting foam.

  • November 03, 2026

    W.Va. Coal Mine Opponents Defend Permit Vacatur At 4th Circ.

    Environmental groups told the Fourth Circuit that a West Virginia federal judge was right to scrap a Clean Water Act permit that allowed Republic Energy LLC to bury 20,000 feet of valley streams with fill from surface coal mining.

  • November 03, 2026

    SEC Says Guilty Plea Proves CEO's Stock Fraud Scheme

    A Seattle federal court should find that a former cannabis company CEO committed securities fraud, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said, arguing his guilty plea and criminal conviction for pump-and-dump schemes and lying to investors should settle the matter.

  • November 03, 2026

    GAO Says Army Corps Used Unstated Evaluation Factor

    The U.S. Government Accountability Office has partially sustained a joint venture's protest over a $200 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers solicitation seeking architecture and engineering services due to an unstated evaluation criterion, recommending that offerors be reranked.

  • November 03, 2026

    FCC Evaluating Plan To Boost Drones In 3 Spectrum Bands

    The Federal Communications Commission is evaluating a draft plan to update rules for three spectrum bands to make it easier to deploy drones as well as expand broadband connectivity in aviation.

  • November 03, 2026

    Cruz Tees Up Hearing For 3rd FCC Republican

    U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Tuesday announced a confirmation hearing next week for a third Republican nominee to the Federal Communications Commission.

  • November 03, 2026

    Boeing, Bell Textron Say No Jury Trial For Osprey Crash Suit

    The Boeing Co., Bell Textron Inc. and Universal Stainless & Alloy Products Inc. are urging a Pennsylvania federal court to deny a bid for a jury trial from the families of U.S. service members killed in a November 2023 V-22 Osprey crash.

  • November 03, 2026

    China, Peru Modernize Free Trade Agreement

    China and Peru have updated their bilateral trade treaty to both update existing provisions and add new ones aimed at addressing changes in commerce and global trade since the deal was first reached in 2009, the two countries said.

  • November 03, 2026

    11th Circ. Revives Payment Bid For Military Paint Facility Work

    The Eleventh Circuit revived a subcontractor's bid for full payment under a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contract to construct a facility for vehicle paint preparation, ruling that a Georgia federal court erred in finding the subcontractor sued too late.

  • November 03, 2026

    Nonprofits Say Pentagon Group Flouts Transparency Law

    Watchdog organizations have urged a D.C. federal judge to nix a "future of warfare" committee that U.S. Department of Defense officials created, accusing them of violating a sunshine and transparency law by stacking it with conflicted government contractors and others who share their views about the military.

  • November 03, 2026

    Mass. Judge Nixes Feds' Bid To Stay Grant Termination Ruling

    A Massachusetts federal judge on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration's request to stay her judgment that it cannot terminate already-awarded federal grants based solely on the president's current priorities, and chided the government for intentionally slow-walking the case.

  • November 03, 2026

    Texas Residents Say SpaceX Knew Launches Were Too Loud

    A group of Texas homeowners is pushing back against SpaceX's bid to throw out their noneconomic damages in a suit alleging that its space launches were loud enough to damage their homes, saying the Elon Musk-owned company knew about the dangers but pressed on anyway.

  • November 02, 2026

    More Amicus Briefs Flood NYT, OpenAI Copyright Case

    Actors, writers groups, advocacy organizations, law professors and current and former political leaders weighed in on the OpenAI copyright multidistrict litigation in New York federal court, with some arguing that fair use does not protect the artificial intelligence developer, while others contended that training models on copyrighted works was all above board.

  • November 02, 2026

    Russian Billionaire Takes Yacht Forfeiture Suit To High Court

    Russian billionaire Eduard Yurievich Khudainatov urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review the federal government's seizure and sale of a $300 million superyacht, arguing that he should have been able to contest the forfeiture as the yacht's titleholder.

  • November 02, 2026

    Maine's Canada Trade Exemption May Ride On Midterms

    The fate of Maine's relief from the trade war between the U.S. and Canada may lie in the balance of Tuesday's midterm election results, a dynamic that shows how trade policy can be influenced by the political winds, experts said.

  • November 02, 2026

    FCC Grants 1st Router Security Waiver Aimed At Onshoring

    The Federal Communications Commission's staff has granted a partial waiver from its rules restricting the sale of foreign routers in the U.S., saying it's the first exemption for routers based on onshoring jobs as one of the public interest benefits.

  • November 02, 2026

    European Airline Blames RTX Unit For Engine Troubles

    RTX Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney division built what it said was an advanced aircraft engine that would save on maintenance and operating costs, but it actually suffered from "serious" problems that cost a Romanian airline millions of dollars, according to a Connecticut federal lawsuit.

  • November 02, 2026

    XAI Fails To Dodge Miss. NAACP Pollution Suit

    A Mississippi federal judge denied X.AI Corp.'s bid to dismiss an NAACP citizen suit alleging that the company has unlawfully installed and operated dozens of polluting natural gas-fired turbines to power its Colossus 2 data center.

  • November 02, 2026

    AE Industrial Wraps $850M Continuation Fund For Blue Raven

    Technology-focused private investment firm AE Industrial Partners, advised by Kirkland & Ellis LLP, on Monday said that it closed a new single-asset continuation fund for its portfolio company Blue Raven with approximately $850 million of capital commitments.

  • November 02, 2026

    FCC Clears More Drones, Inverters, Robots From Covered List

    The Federal Communications Commission has cleared several foreign-produced products for sale in the U.S., exempting certain uncrewed aircraft systems, advanced robotic devices and power inverters from the Covered List, which restricts foreign-made devices for national security reasons.

Expert Analysis

  • FCC Covered List Is Pushing Limits Of Supply Chain Scrutiny

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    Companies outside the traditional telecommunications sector may now need to factor the Federal Communications Commission's equipment authorization requirements into supply chain compliance as the FCC covered list continues to expand as a national security tool, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • Prediction Market Case Tests Novel Insider Trading Theory

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    The government's argument in its case against a soldier accused of using classified information to bet on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's capture would represent a sea change in how insider trading wire fraud has been prosecuted for decades, says Alex Blanchard at Holland & Knight.

  • Why Importers Should Assess IEEPA Refund Claims Now

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    Businesses that wait for direction from U.S. Customs and Border Protection or the courts before seeking refunds of their finally liquidated International Economic Emergency Procedure Act duties in court may find them out of reach as the earliest potential limitation deadlines are approaching, says Samuel Finkelstein at LMD Trade Law.

  • What Anthropic Security Ruling Means For Gov't Contractors

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    In light of the D.C. Circuit ruling backing the U.S. Department of Defense's decision to remove Anthropic's Claude artificial intelligence models from its supply chain, there are a few steps contractors can take in response, including assessing whether to eliminate use of Anthropic products entirely, say attorneys at Blank Rome.

  • Testing AI's Promise For Large-Scale Document Review

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    Our document-review comparison of attorneys' responsiveness and issue coding decisions versus predictions generated by artificial intelligence across 1,600 documents suggests that these tools can offer a reasonable and reliable basis for improved discovery workflows, provided lawyers understand where guardrails are needed, say attorneys at Redgrave.

  • AI Meeting Recaps Pose New Discovery And Privilege Risks

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    The New York City Bar Association’s recent ethics opinion, cautioning attorneys not to record nonclient conversations with artificial intelligence tools, reflects an emerging view that AI meeting recaps are now a distinct business record category, meaning counsel should set meeting-level controls and apply framework-level updates, says William Wright at Faegre Drinker.

  • What Opt-In Framework Means For Novel Space Activities

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    The U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Space Commerce is advancing a voluntary certification framework for commercial space activities not covered by existing licenses — but it's unclear whether this approach becomes a durable mission authorization regime, and separate legal permissions from agencies may still be necessary, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.

  • FTC Push May Create Dual Origin-Claim Risks For Contractors

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    Recent Federal Trade Commission actions involving Made in USA advertising requirements offer a preview of enforcement themes that may impose dual compliance burdens on government contractors that are also subject to Federal Acquisition Regulation Buy American restrictions, says Amy Hoang at Seyfarth.

  • Series

    Playing Bid Whist Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    As a child, I viewed bid whist as a family tradition and a source of friendly card game competition, but as a lawyer, I see it as a tool that has helped me cultivate skills like communication, teamwork, risk assessment and composure, says Keyonn Pope at Riley Safer.

  • FCC Robotics Restrictions Raise AI Compliance Risks

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    A recent "covered list" update from the Federal Communications Commission places restrictions on foreign-produced advanced robotic devices’ ability to obtain new authorizations, creating a framework that is poorly suited to continuous artificial intelligence updates, and raising several transactional and contractual challenges, says Kim Larsen at Stinson.

  • Opinion

    Calif. Bill Goes Too Far In Trying To Regulate Attorney AI Use

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    California’s first-in-the-nation act regulating how attorneys and arbitrators use generative artificial intelligence will likely soon become law, but read broadly, the provisions may dissuade lawyers from employing AI at all, thereby depriving them of key work tools, says Joshua Wurtzel at Schlam Stone.

  • 4 Paths To AI Safety Coordination Amid Antitrust Debate

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    Frontier artificial intelligence companies have more room for collective safety work than the debate over an antitrust waiver suggests, with several existing avenues providing different degrees of protection and oversight, says Evan Miller at V&E.

  • Series

    Law School's Missed Lessons: Cultivating Good Judgment

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    Law schools generally overlook the role that solid judgment skills play in real-world practice, but attorneys can bridge the gap by strengthening their abilities to assess a case’s strengths and weaknesses, develop and execute effective strategies, and provide clear recommendations to clients, says Manny Caixeiro at Venable.

  • Contract Disputes Recap: Check Your Signatures, Cites, Sums

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    Three recent decisions from the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals show different ways parties on either side may do real damage to their own position through motions practice, says Edward Arnold at Seyfarth.

  • Attorneys Using AI May Have Ethical Duty To Redact Docs

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    The trajectory of legal ethics guidance in recent years strongly suggests that as redaction technology becomes more accessible, the failure to use it when uploading highly confidential materials into artificial intelligence tools will become increasingly difficult to defend as reasonable, say attorneys at Lewis Brisbois.

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