Well, the Pentagon is certainly pushing up against the Christmas deadline. Yesterday, the DoD, sorry, DoW, announced over $400M in APFIT contracts using FY26 funds—the first of the year—bringing total contracts awarded by the nearly four-year-old program to over $1.4B. While the DoD didn’t release names of the companies in this batch of projects—as per—a […]
Even with a whole lot of B-2 and F-47 news this year, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) race might’ve defined the year for the Air Force. And guess what? It’s not over yet. Last Friday, the Air Force tapped nine vendors for the next stage, or Increment 2, of the CCA program, according to Breaking […]
Voyager ($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 […]
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 […]
If you’ve been tracking some numbers coming out of the Pentagon recently, you’ll have seen a whole lot of zeroes. Earlier this week, the Department of Defense/War (take your pick, we don’t judge) dropped a whopping $150B solicitation for the Missile Defense Agency’s Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program, tapping over 1,000 “qualifying […]
Turns out the leap across the pond goes both ways. This morning, UK-based USV company Kraken Technology Group announced that they’ve scored a coveted $49M cap OTA with United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to develop and prototype “novel uncrewed surface and subsurface vessel technologies to enhance maritime capabilities for U.S. special operations forces.” This […]
If you’re a Payload reader, you’ve probably heard of Interlune. Luckily for us, the space resources startup is kicking off work a little closer to home. On Wednesday, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, Interlune announced that they’ve scored a $1.25M AFWERX contract to increase the terrestrial supply of helium-3—a rare isotope of helium critical […]
Christmas came early for the defense tech world. On Monday, Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering (USW(R&E)), Emil Michael, unveiled the six Critical Technology Areas (CTAs) that made the cut on the Pentagon’s pared-down list of priorities, a key signal of where the Department intends to direct R&D resources. Hope y’all aren’t too bummed […]
Despite the government being shut down for 43 days—the longest in US history—the Pentagon was certainly open for business. After the House struck a deal and President Trump signed a continuing resolution to keep the government open through January last week, the DoD’s workforce returned to their desks to announce nearly $9B in new contracts […]
Last week, we said Neros was turning things up a notch. We might’ve jumped the gun—now they’re really turning it up. Earlier this week, the white-hot drone startup announced it closed $75M Series B. As a cherry on top, they were tapped for the US Army’s Purpose Built Attritable System (PBAS) program. Not a bad […]
