We told y’all the Europeans were coming. Yesterday, German drone (but, importantly, not strike drone) giant Quantum Systems announced that it’s scored a $15.3M contract for its Vector AI drones with the US Army to deliver “advanced aerial intelligence capabilities to Brigade Combat Teams of the U.S. Army.” This marks the company’s first major Pentagon […]
If you’ve been paying attention to the counter-drone space recently, you’ll know that there’s a whole lot of new tech coming onto the scene and a whole lot of companies making it. The trouble is—all of this stuff needs to work together, and that ain’t always the easiest thing to make happen. Luckily, El Segundo-based […]
The brains behind the ever-popular Switchblade 600 loitering munition are back with some fancy new go-boom tech. This morning, AV ($AVAV), the artist formerly known as AeroVironment, unveiled the Mayhem 10, an air, ground, or sea-launched autonomous Group 2 drone designed for ISR, electronic warfare, and (especially) precision-strike missions. Go boom: AV’s Switchblade family of […]
The data nerds over at Nominal are on a bit of a heater. Yesterday, the testing startup announced a sole-source $53M, five-year Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Air Force Test Center to bring its increasingly popular testing software to help get the service’s next-gen platforms up and running—and fast. Those platforms include the […]
Finland may not be the first country that comes to mind as a defense hotspot, but sharing an 800-plus-mile border with Russia helps kick things into gear. Earlier today, Kelluu, a Finnish autonomous ISR-focused airship startup, announced a €15M ($18M) Series A led by the NATO Innovation Fund. The company says it will use the […]
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 […]
