Latest Stories
Hanwha and Havoc Team Up to Build a Mega-ASV
If 2025 was the year of the BFB (big f*cking boat), it looks like 2026 might end up being the year of the EBFB (even bigger f*cking boat). Yesterday, autonomous surface vessel (ASV) company HavocAI announced that it’s teaming up with Hanwha Defense USA (the US subsidiary of the Korean defense giant) to build a […]
Northrop Teams Up with Kratos to Build the Marine Corps’ CCA
Northrop Grumman’s hot streak in the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) world is showing no signs of slowing down. Just a few weeks after the Air Force called Northrop’s Talon drone a “strong contender” for the service’s CCA program (designating it as the YFQ-48A), the prime announced that it’s been awarded a contract to build the […]
Valinor Raises $54M Series A
If there is one piece of advice that everyone seems to bandy about in the defense tech world, it’s “go fast.” And it seems at least one company has taken that seriously to heart. This morning, just a few months after emerging from stealth, new-age defense tech holding company Valinor announced that it’s raised a […]
Mach Industries Unveils Dart, a New Counter-Drone Interceptor
The counter-drone space may be busy as hell, but it seems that hasn’t deterred California-based Mach Industries. This morning, the MIT-dropout-founded defense tech startup unveiled Dart: their new low-cost interceptor designed to take down Group 1-3 drones, plus an internally developed ground-based radar system to go with it. If Mach loves one thing, it’s trying […]
Q + A: A.J. Bertone, Managing Partner, In-Q-Tel
If you’ve been paying attention to the past year of Tectonic (!!), you’ll recognize a sneaky three-letter acronym that pops up on a lot of defense tech cap tables: IQT. For those lucky enough not to be in the know, that stands for In-Q-Tel, a not-for-profit venture fund backed by the US government and investing […]
A Q+A with Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper
Mark Esper has spent a whole heck of a lot of time in the defense ecosystem. After a decade in uniform in the US Army, he worked as a congressional staffer, a senior policy aide to Sens. Chuck Hagel and Bill Frist, and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the early 2000s. Then, he […]
A Q+A with Alex Ferrara, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners
If there is one fund that knows how to deploy big-time cash into tech companies, it’s Bessemer Venture Partners. The Silicon Valley fund has about $19B under management, and has invested in tech giants from LinkedIn (everyone’s fav) to Shopify. This year, the fund has turned to defense—specifically, European defense. They led Auterion’s $130M Series […]
A Q+A with Arthur Herman and John Burer
If you’ve been in DC anytime in the past few years, you will have heard of Arthur Herman. In case you’re unfamiliar (nerd!), he wrote Freedom’s Forge back in 2012, which has shaped a lot of the First Breakfast-type reindustrialization conversations we’ve been having lately. Sparknotes: The book (if you haven’t read it or have […]
