Tech

Vantor and BAE Team Up

You know what sucks? When you think you’ve got a drone flying good and straight over a target, but then it turns out you’re like, super off base. Well, luckily, one prime-new kid on the block partnership is here to help. This morning, Vantor (the artist formerly known as Maxar) announced that it’s teaming up […]

PentagonTech

USSOCOM Taps SkyFi for Geospatial Imagery at the Edge

Up until recently, satellite imagery was the domain of well-funded intelligence services and militaries. These days, a range of commercial actors are filling OSINT social media feeds and reporting with near-real-time updates from their eyes in the skies over Ukraine, Iran, the South China Sea, and wherever else the US government is keeping tabs on.  […]

PentagonTech

US Army Kicks Off “Right to Integrate” Hackathon

So, the fun thing about defense tech is that no matter how shiny, or fast, or go-boom it is, it doesn’t mean a whole lot if it doesn’t work hand in hand with everything else on the battlefield. Luckily, at least one service seems to be tackling the whole “make sure this stuff works when […]

PentagonTech

Scale AI CDAO Contract Upgraded to $500M

Well, if anyone thought the software hype era was over, think again. In case you missed it, on Wednesday, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) increased its enterprise agreement with AI integration and training giant Scale AI from $100M to $500M, supporting “the Department’s strategic imperative to accelerate the adoption of data, […]

Tech

Exclusive: The Army Turns Petrel’s Group 3 Drone Into an FPV Mothership

The Army, to put it simply, is pretty into its drones these days. They’re so into drones that they’re even testing out big drones that launch small ones. During recent live-fire exercises down at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Fort Polk, Louisiana, the Army’s 101st Airborne Division turned Petrel Technologies’ Group 3 UAS, […]

PentagonTech

Exclusive: AV’s LOCUST Laser Gets the FAA and Pentagon’s Seal of Approval

Last month, the FAA quietly announced that it, together with the Pentagon’s JIATF-401 counter-drone task force, carried out “a thorough safety assessment of a high-energy laser counter-drone system.” Well, the cat’s out of the bag.  This morning, AV ($AVAV) exclusively revealed to Tectonic that their LOCUST laser was the mystery counter-drone system tested by federal regulators and […]

Tech

Exclusive: Somewear Labs Unveils Multi-Network Drone Radio

If you’ve been keeping up with, ya know, everything going on, drones are kind of a big deal right now.  The problem is that the one-way attack drones the Pentagon is rushing to get its hands on often rely on high-end MANET and mesh radios—made by Silvus, Persistent Systems, TrellisWare, and other big players—for communications […]

EuropeTech

Exclusive: Orqa Launches Independent US Company

Everyone really is making that great, grand leap across the pond.  This morning, Croatian drone giant Orqa FPV announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s spinning out an independent US entity called Orqa US, focused on building end-to-end UAV systems for Drone Dominance.  The US company is teaming up with defense contractor By […]

Tech

Nominal Acquires Fid Labs

When we said the data nerds over at Nominal are on a bit of a heater a few weeks ago, we weren’t kidding.  Yesterday, the hardware testing company unveiled its first acquisition after raising $80M at a $1B valuation in March, buying up robotics and engineering agentic AI startup Fid Labs to fully integrate its […]

Tech

Exclusive Interview: Anduril Unveils a 5G Sentry Tower for Remote Comms

Anduril is getting back to the basics. Everyone’s favorite neo-prime announced today the newest product in their oldest family of systems: a 5G Comms Sentry Tower (CST), built with Nokia and designed to deliver a bubble of connectivity in the most remote locations. If you thought Anduril was all-in on the boomy and zoomy things, […]