There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and champagne popping at Lockheed Martin HQ. On Monday, the Pentagon gave the mega-prime good reason for celebration, announcing an agreement to boost annual production of the ever-popular Lockheed-made PAC-3 MSE missile interceptors from 600 to 2,000 over the next seven years under a new acquisition model. […]
It certainly seems like our friends in Rhode Island had some pretty ambitious New Year’s resolutions. This morning, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) company Vatn Systems announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it has acquired RI-based Crewless Marine to scale up its underwater acoustic sensing and processing capabilities. Crewless will be fully folded into […]
Well, if anyone thought 2026 was going to be a chill year, everyone and their mother is out to prove you wrong. Yesterday, European drone giant Destinus announced that it’s finalized its acquisition of Swiss AI avionics company Daedalean for a cool CHF 180M ($225M). Destinus said in a statement that Daedalean (say that five […]
“If AI is to be the brains of America’s tech supremacy, Gundo hopes to provide the muscle, the energy and the firepower,” The Economist recently wrote. “The harder it is to build, the better.” Looks like we can add super high-tech materials and composites to the list of ambitious Gundo exports, especially after El Segundo, […]
We love a cheeky raise to kick off the new year. This morning, space-based radar company Array Labs announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that it’s raised a $20M Series A led by Catapult Ventures, with participation from Washington Harbour Partners, Kompas VC, and others, including Y Combinator. The startup—which builds powerful, more affordable […]
You don’t hear “ahead of schedule” very often in the defense world, but Aeon seems to be making a habit of it. On Monday, in an exclusive release to Tectonic, Aeon announced it completed a successful flight test of its Zeus missile launched from a Moog ($MOG.A) integrated turret platform last week. That’s just three […]
Well, the Pentagon is certainly pushing up against the Christmas deadline. Yesterday, the DoD, sorry, DoW, announced over $400M in APFIT contracts using FY26 funds—the first of the year—bringing total contracts awarded by the nearly four-year-old program to over $1.4B. While the DoD didn’t release names of the companies in this batch of projects—as per—a […]
We’d be the first to tell you that it’s been a banner year in defense tech. As it turns out, the numbers back up our—and, if you’re reading Tectonic, your—excitement. According to a Q3 report from Pitchbook, defense tech venture capital is on track to close out the year “firmly in expansion mode.” We’re not […]
Preserving small business status and understanding foreign ownership, control, or influence (FOCI) disclosure obligations and associated requirements and restrictions are two common early challenges for venture-backed companies. This article outlines these key considerations and risks to keep top of mind for VC investments in early-stage companies that are seeking or have been awarded federal contracts or grants.
You know what sucks? When you’re flying a drone against Russian targets somewhere deep on the frontline and—suddenly—your comms line goes dark. It’s an experience that will be all too familiar to our Ukrainian military readers, and one that startup Zerophase is trying to make way less common. Late last week, the German data link […]
