Our friends across the pond are pretty big on building up sovereign defense capabilities these days, and Rheinmetall has moved at lightning speed to snap up the lion’s share of that European military spending boom. Today, the German defense giant and Dutch drone startup Destinus unveiled a new, co-produced long-range deep-strike cruise missile called the […]
If you thought the dudes over at Anduril were done reimagining what the word “drone” can mean, think again. On Friday, the UK subsidiary of the not-so-little defense company announced that it’s officially been downselected for the British Army’s Project Nyx—the MoD’s effort to build an autonomous loyal wingman for Apache helicopters. “We think Nyx […]
The Aussies are coming, y’all. This morning, Arkeus, an Australian defense startup building AI-powered sensing systems for drones, raised $18M in a Series A led by Aussie VC QIC Ventures to expand its global footprint, including in the US. “We are a little bit under the radar, if you can excuse the pun for a […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 $500M, supporting “the Department’s strategic imperative to accelerate the adoption of data, […]
The Army, to put it simply, is pretty into its drones these days. They’re so into drones that they’re even testing out big drones that launch small ones. During recent live-fire exercises down at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) in Fort Polk, Louisiana, the Army’s 101st Airborne Division turned Petrel Technologies’ Group 3 UAS, […]
Last month, the FAA quietly announced that it, together with the Pentagon’s JIATF-401 counter-drone task force, carried out “a thorough safety assessment of a high-energy laser counter-drone system.” Well, the cat’s out of the bag. This morning, AV ($AVAV) exclusively revealed to Tectonic that their LOCUST laser was the mystery counter-drone system tested by federal regulators and […]
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 […]
