It’s been (another) busy, busy week in defense tech, especially for everyone’s favorite globetrotting neo-prime. Over the past few days, Anduril has announced a new autonomous air vehicle (AAV) called Omen, its selection for the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System Maneuver (IBCS-M) program, a partnership with Hyundai Heavy Industries on autonomous surface vessels (ASVs), and […]
In case you missed it with, well, everything else that’s been going on, it’s been a pretty busy week in South Korea. On Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung committed to increasing defense spending next year to 66.3T won ($46B). Then, Hegseth popped by on a two-day visit to meet with his counterpart, Defense […]
Looks like Shield AI is getting serious about the whole CCA thing. Yesterday, the company announced that it’s teaming up with jet engine megalith GE Aerospace ($GE) to power its newly announced little drone fighter, X-BAT. The two companies signed a Memorandum of Understanding stating that “the F110-GE-129 engine, featuring the advanced Axisymmetric Vectoring Exhaust […]
If you’ve learned one thing from this newsletter, we hope it’s that everyone and their mom wants to find a cheaper, better, faster way to shoot drones out of the sky. Some shoot them with mini-missiles, others hit them with jammers, and others still send counter-drones to pick them out of the sky. But that […]
Everything’s bigger in Texas, especially the explosions. On Monday, Aeon, an Austin-based smart missile startup, announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it has successfully completed all-up live-fire tests of its Zeus missile platform for the US Army Transformation and Training Command (T2COM) and the Army Applications Lab (AAL) ahead of schedule. Talk about […]
For everyone who thought we were done with the tiny plane mania for a while, think again. Anduril is back, baby. On Friday afternoon, the defense tech megalith announced that its YFQ-44A prototype for the collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) program has officially notched its first flight in California. “Anduril and the U.S. Air Force began […]
Well, looks like the sailboat drones are getting a major, deadly upgrade. Yesterday, USV company Saildrone announced that it’s secured a $50M investment from Lockheed Martin and that it will build a whole bunch of the prime’s weapons onto its boats. Saildrone CEO Rich Jenkins also told Tectonic that the two companies will work together […]
In the near-future battlefield, and today in Ukraine, swarms of friendly drones will be deployed as fast as enemy ones come in. For counter-drone tech, knowing which ones to shoot down can be hard. On Wednesday, Allen Control Systems unveiled a solution to this conundrum: A cryptographically secure, radio-silent identification friend-or-foe (IFF) system that tells […]
There’s a lot of hype around both drones and space-based tech, and Radical Aero wants to capitalize on both. The Seattle-based stratospheric aircraft startup emerged from stealth after a $4.5M seed round last April and is making autonomous solar-powered drones that fly at high altitudes for months at a time. And on Wednesday, the company […]
Strap in. We’re taking another trip to outer space, friends. Yesterday, SATCOM company ALL.SPACE announced that it’s teaming up with connectivity company and Google spinout Aalyria to combine the former’s Hydra terminals with the latter’s Spacetime network orchestration software. Now, why do we as defense tech nerds care? Well, in layman’s terms, this means that […]
