If all goes according to plan, Antares Nuclear and a handful of other nuclear startups will have a lot more to celebrate on July 4 than Independence Day. Earlier this week, Antares, an LA-based space and defense-focused nuclear fission startup, moved closer to turning on its microreactor after the Department of Energy approved its Preliminary […]
Turns out teamwork really does make the dream work. Last week, Lockheed Martin and its teammates showed off the first version of their Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototype to the Army’s 25th Infantry Division during the Lightning Surge 1 exercises in Hawaii. Reboot: As a refresher, Lockheed was awarded a $26M OTA in […]
The Anduril empire just keeps on growing. Yesterday, the defense tech giant announced that it’s opening up a new 1M+ square-foot campus in Long Beach, CA, where the firm (can’t really call it a startup anymore, can we?) says it will carry out everything from software development to R&D. An Anduril spokesperson told Tectonic that […]
It’s a Picogrid party, and everyone’s invited. Today, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, integration startup Picogrid announced that the US Army tapped them to make sure a whole bunch of different sensors, radars, C2 systems, and effectors worked together during a recent sensor-to-shooter counter-drone and force-maneuver exercise at the National Training Center in the […]
Applied Intuition may have cut its teeth in commercial autonomous vehicle software, but the $15B Silicon Valley hotshot is taking the defense world by storm—including on some of the Pentagon’s most ambitious projects. We’re talking Golden Dome, baby. Today, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, Applied Intuition announced that they’ve teamed up with the Department […]
What’s AI-powered, has many limbs, and will soon be climbing all over even more of the Navy’s most expensive, mission-critical components? Gecko Robotics, as it turns out. This morning, the PA-based robotics company announced in an exclusive release toTectonic that it’s officially teaming up with major US Navy supplier Trident Maritime Systems to “deploy advanced […]
Seasats is making a splash in the unmanned surface vessel (USV) space. Yesterday, California-based USV startup Seasats announced that it’s been awarded a joint $24M contract with the Navy and Marines under the APFIT program to accelerate production and delivery of its Lightfish USVs. This comes on the heels of the company scoring a $89M […]
The Marines have a bunch o’ Bolts heading their way. On Thursday, defense tech poster child Anduril announced that the US Marine Corps placed a $24M order for 600 of the company’s Bolt-M kamikaze drones under the Organic Precision Fires-Light (OPF-L) program, with deliveries expected between 2026 and 2027. Bolt goes boom: Weighing around 15 […]
Looks like at least one RACER has crossed the finish line. On Wednesday, DARPA announced that the Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program, launched in 2021 to develop new vehicle autonomy algorithm technologies, has officially wrapped up. Now, it’s up to the autonomy companies that spun out of it—including Overland AI—to keep […]
Guess what, guys? The defense tech dudes are forming new cliques. This morning, AI-for-defense powerhouse Raft announced that it’s launched a “partner program [that’s] designed to help industry partners rapidly build, integrate, and deploy mission-ready applications on top” of Raft’s data and AI programs. The idea is that because Raft is already plugged into the […]
