Latest Stories
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin Retires Early
Another day, another big shakeup at the Pentagon. On Monday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin unexpectedly announced his retirement halfway into his four-year term. The Air Force said Allvin—the service’s highest-ranking uniformed officer—will continue serving until his successor is confirmed to minimize disruption. Never a dull moment, huh? Allvin is the latest […]
X-Bow and the Army Announce Joint $13.9M SRM Investment
Well, solid rocket motors (SRMs) are certainly having a moment. Yesterday afternoon, SRM production startup X-Bow Systems announced a $13.9M joint investment with the US Army to “design, prototype, and test an advanced manufactured SRM for the standard-range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS),” which is produced by Lockheed Martin. The joint investment is facilitated […]
Exclusive: D-Fend Solutions Launches New Drone Takeover Tech
Frying them with microwaves, shooting them down, jamming them—c-UAS companies have a growing and creative array of ways to take down drones. But Israeli-American drone-takeover company D-Fend has a novel solution: commandeering them. And in an exclusive release with Tectonic this morning, they rolled out their newest option: EnforceAir PLUS, an amped-up version of the […]
Grid Aero Comes Out of Stealth
We’ve said it before and we’ve said it again: Sometimes, the most game-changing tech isn’t flash-bang missiles or one-way attack drones. Sometimes, it’s the less sexy stuff needed to get critical supplies—food, ammo, med kit—to the front as quickly and safely as possible. Grid Aero was founded to meet this need. This morning, the autonomous […]
A Q+A with Alex Miller, CTO of the Army
In case you didn’t know, the U.S. Army is trying to change the way it does things. Since 2023, under Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, the service has launched a program called Transformation in Contact, which pushes new technology out to soldiers for real-time testing in the field. And in May of this year, […]
A Q+A with Pete Newell, CEO of BMNT and Co-founder of Hacking for Defense
Ten years ago, when Pete Newell, Steve Blank, and Joe Felter launched the Hacking for Defense (H4D) course at Stanford, “defense” was still a dirty word in Silicon Valley. Investors were reluctant to put their money into defense tech, engineers were uninterested in the military, and tech companies kept their distance from the DoD. As […]
A Q+A with Anduril’s President and CBO, Matthew Steckman
If you read this newsletter regularly, you’ll know that Anduril has had a hell of a year. In January, the company announced that it’s building a massive, cutting-edge production facility called Arsenal-1, and has since secured major DoD contracts for everything from cUAS, to an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), to rocket motors. And that’s […]
The Godfather of Defense Innovation: A Q+A with Steve Blank
Chances are, if you’re interested in innovation, you’ve heard of Steve Blank. The entrepreneur, educator, and founding member of the Gordian Knot Center at Stanford University is a legend: he has built company after successful company and helped to develop the “Lean Startup” methodology based on his decades in Silicon Valley. If you’ve ever been […]
