Looks like the old school is teaming up with the new kids on the block.
Today, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, Austin-based new-age mini-missile startup Aeon announced that they’ve officially partnered with defense tech OG Global Technical Systems (GTS) to cook up new warhead designs for Aeon’s Zeus system and co-produce GTS’s low-cost cruise missile.
Rocketman: We’ve covered Aeon before, but here’s a bit more on what they’re cookin’ up down in Austin:
- Aeon’s flagship product is the Zeus “advanced tactical weapon system” (basically a smart mini-missile), which runs on their in-house threat identification and tracking software, ODIN, and is powered by minimal-smoke propellant. It’s also compatible with current systems (including ATAK) and supports shoulder-fire and vehicle-mounted launches.
- They’ve partnered with heavy-lift drone-maker Delta Black to integrate the rocket on a Group 3 drone, with defense big dawg Moog to launch it from the company’s turret platform, and with X-Bow to develop new missile designs.
- All that tech is totally vertically integrated, meaning they design and mix their own propellant, use their own rocket motors, and make Zeus’s fuze, flight computers, control system, and other components in-house.
On the other side of the table, GTS—founded wayyy back in 1997 (ancient, by today’s standards)—is a software and hardware engineering OG with zero flash but over $2B in contracts under its belt.
Factory friends: Aeon’s missile-making savvy is one reason GTS has had their eyes on their startup friends. Under the terms of the deal, Aeon will “provide manufacturing, production, integration, and related technical support for mutually agreed efforts, including support for GTS programs.”
That’s especially focused on GTS’ low-cost cruise missile, the ACE-M.
- ACE-M is a long-range precision-strike system kitted out with an anti-maritime warhead, advanced fuzing, surface-launch capability, and a scale-friendly production architecture.
- Aeon’s also working with GTS to manufacture components for the missile, including fuses.
- According to GTS’ munitions boss Jerry Smith, “Aeon’s ability to take Zeus from concept to system in months is exactly the kind of execution we want to build on.”
Bigger boom: In exchange for giving GTS some extra production power, GTS is helping Aeon out with new warhead design and development to give Zeus a bigger boom, and a place to test it at GTS’ munitions testing and training facility in Alabama, creatively named the Defense Munitions Proving Grounds. Aeon’s already been testing at the DMPG and currently uses GTS’s warhead in Zeus, but this deal takes things up a notch.
The first phase of the partnership was kind of getting our feet wet and working together on a smaller project,” Aeon founder and CEO Naweed Tahmas told Tectonic. “The second phase is really scaling it up—creating a number of different effectors together for the customer, different types of payloads, and in much larger quantities than we did as part of that [first] contract.”
“Our goal is to create a family of effects for the [Zeus] system. Depending on what the customer needs, we’ll scale up to deliver effects at different ranges as well,” he added. “Our goal is to create a kind of portfolio of effects [the military] can pull from and easily plug and play with.”