The defense tech pond-hopping is continuing in full force. On Tuesday, Virginia-based eVTOL, drone, and avionics holding company AIRO announced that their Phoenix, Arizona, facility has pumped out the first US-made batch of their Danish subsidiary’s flagship Group 1 ISR drone, the RQ-35 Heidrun. On a roll: Founded back in 2005, AIRO has rolled up […]
In case you hadn’t noticed, two things have really defined the modern battlespace: Cameras are pretty much everywhere, and GPS navigation could be going the way of the sextant. On Tuesday, Vantor and Niantic Spatial announced they’re teaming up to build a unified visual positioning system (VPS) that combines Vantor’s aerial intelligence with Niantic’s ground-based […]
It’s been a big year for unmanned surface vessels (USVs), and maritime darling HavocAI might’ve found a new way to make them even more popular. On Monday, in an exclusive to Tectonic, the Rhode Island–based sea-drone maker and The Spaceport Company, a sea-based rocket launch startup, announced a successful suborbital rocket test launch in the […]
Nothing gets the blood—and innovation—pumping like a little bit of healthy competition to round out the year. On Wednesday, NATO DIANA, the alliance’s defense tech accelerator, announced the 150 startups from across 24 member states that made the cut for its 2026 Challenge Program, and it was a particularly intense one. Making the call: Each […]
If we learned one thing from China’s response to President Trump’s tariffs in April, it’s that the US is still deeply reliant on its biggest rival for those ever-important rare earths. That’s especially true for the ones that make all of our military kit go boom and zoom. Luckily, startup Niron Magnetics has come up […]
Voyager ($VOYG) is best known for its work in space, but the Air Force wants to bring it closer to Earth. On Wednesday, the publicly traded space company announced a $21M contract with the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) to develop AI-powered intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems that “scale seamlessly from tactical small Unmanned […]
The engine biz is getting buzzy. Earlier this week, Beehive Industries, a Colorado-based startup making 3D-printed engines for munitions and unmanned aerial systems (UAS), announced that its Frenzy engine has completed high-altitude testing and is ready for integration onto an aerial vehicle for flight tests starting early next year. In a frenzy: Founded in 2020, […]
Shipbuilding is so back, baby. Less than a week after announcing a whopping $300M investment in its Louisiana shipyard, Texas-based autonomous shipbuilder Saronic revealed yesterday that it’s won a $392M Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) to supply the Navy with an undisclosed number of unmanned surface vessels. Talk about demand signal. Making a splash: The $392M […]
We can all breathe a sigh of relief. On Sunday night, Congress finally released a compromise draft of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a breezy 3,000-page bill that authorizes a record $901B in defense spending, $8B more than the White House initially requested. The must-pass bill is headed for a vote in the coming […]
When you think of European defense tech hotspots, Croatia probably isn’t the first country that comes to mind—but maybe it should. Earlier this week, Orqa FPV announced that it has boosted its annual production capacity to 280,000 NDAA-compliant, Chinese-component-free FPV drones at its headquarters in Osijek, Croatia. That big bump, CEO Srdjan Kovacevic told Tectonic, […]
