If you’re a regular reader of Tectonic, you’ll know that there’s no shortage of companies promising to automate aviation. But before robots take over the cockpit, the US military’s human pilots could use a bit of AI assistance to solve a much more basic problem: Scheduling flight plans and managing disruptions without needing a whiteboard […]
Advanced manufacturing might be all the rage in 2026, but (yet another!) startup out of El Segundo has a different take on it. Late last week Hybron—an advanced composite manufacturing startup producing carbon fiber components to replace steel and other raw materials in everything from jet engine blades to 155mm shells—announced that it’s raised a […]
The engine biz is getting buzzy, and the Pentagon is taking notice. Beehive Industries, a Colorado-based 3D-printed jet engine startup, snagged a $29.7M Air Force contract yesterday to complete vehicle integration and flight testing, and qualification of their Frenzy 8 engine—designed as a lower-cost alternative for small cruise missiles and loitering munitions—and accelerate development of […]
There’s a lot of energy around fusion lately. Yesterday, Avalanche Fusion, a Seattle-based fusion startup making teeny tiny desktop-sized fusion reactors, snagged a $5.2M contract from DARPA to turn nuclear radiation into electricity for nuclear batteries under the Pentagon research agency’s Rads to Watts program. Teeny tiny: Most fusion startups are thinking pretty big, working […]
The great startup-prime team-up continues in full force. Shipbuilding giant HII and manufacturing robotics startup GrayMatter Robotics inked a deal on Monday to bring AI-powered robotics to the most unsexy parts of the shipbuilding process—like surface prep, grinding, coating, and inspection—with the goal of speeding up the lethargic pace of building new Navy vessels. Factory […]
Busy times for rocket motor-makers. Yesterday, solid rocket motor (SRM) startup X-Bow Systems snagged a $12.2M contract for “thousands” of rocket-assisted take-off (RATO) kits—including SRMs and launchers—for defense technology company Aevex’s 200lb Disruptor drone. Big drone, big boom. We like it. X marks the spot: X-Bow, pronounced “crossbow,” is on a mission to shake up […]
The race between a handful of nuclear fission startups to switch on their microreactor and small modular reactors before Independence Day is heating up. Yesterday, Los Angeles-based space and defense-focused nuclear startup Antares moved into the “final innings” of turning on its Mark-0 microreactor after the Department of Energy approved its Documented Safety Analysis (DSA), […]
Last week, Northrop Grumman announced that the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division put its Lumberjack Group 3 UAS—kitted out with AI-enabled targeting courtesy of Palantir’s Maven Smart System and a six-pound precision strike munition—to the test during the recent Operation Lethal Eagle exercise, roughly a year after it was first unveiled. Looks like the primes […]
The folks building the factories of the future are certainly having a moment right now. Yesterday, software-defined manufacturing startup UNION and solid rocket motor-maker X-Bow Systems (pronounced crossbow, btw) teamed up to build “surge-capable” propulsion system production capacity, which X-Bow CGO Maureen Gannon told Tectonic is a “direct response” to the AFRL’s “Endless Forge” initiative. […]
We’ve heard of forward-deployed engineers and manufacturing, but now Applied Intuition wants to make autonomy testing mobile. Earlier this week, autonomy giant Applied Intuition rolled out Edge, a “mobile operations center” designed to facilitate the development, testing, and operation of autonomous systems at, well, the edge. Sim-er down: We’ve covered Applied Intuition before, but as […]
