The great startup-prime team-up continues in full force. Shipbuilding giant HII and manufacturing robotics startup GrayMatter Robotics inked a deal on Monday to bring AI-powered robotics to the most unsexy parts of the shipbuilding process—like surface prep, grinding, coating, and inspection—with the goal of speeding up the lethargic pace of building new Navy vessels. Factory […]
Busy times for rocket motor-makers. Yesterday, solid rocket motor (SRM) startup X-Bow Systems snagged a $12.2M contract for “thousands” of rocket-assisted take-off (RATO) kits—including SRMs and launchers—for defense technology company Aevex’s 200lb Disruptor drone. Big drone, big boom. We like it. X marks the spot: X-Bow, pronounced “crossbow,” is on a mission to shake up […]
Well, if you thought that the LA defense tech scene couldn’t get any hotter, think again. Yesterday, super-ultra-fast aircraft company Hermeus announced that they’ve raised a cool $350M Series C at a $1B valuation and that they’re building a big ol’ HQ in El Segundo. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with continued support […]
Well, the dronemakers are certainly stepping up their game. This morning, Huntsville-based Cummings Aerospace announced that they’ve successfully completed arena testing for an anti-armor warhead for their three-foot-long Hellhound S3 drone. Cummings founder and CEO Sheila Cummings told Tectonic that the warhead-equipped drone was able to blast through several sheets of steel—mimicking a tank or […]
The race between a handful of nuclear fission startups to switch on their microreactor and small modular reactors before Independence Day is heating up. Yesterday, Los Angeles-based space and defense-focused nuclear startup Antares moved into the “final innings” of turning on its Mark-0 microreactor after the Department of Energy approved its Documented Safety Analysis (DSA), […]
Last week, Northrop Grumman announced that the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division put its Lumberjack Group 3 UAS—kitted out with AI-enabled targeting courtesy of Palantir’s Maven Smart System and a six-pound precision strike munition—to the test during the recent Operation Lethal Eagle exercise, roughly a year after it was first unveiled. Looks like the primes […]
Well, the $1.5T defense budget is here, friends. In case you missed it—on Friday, the Trump administration unveiled its FY2027 budget request. As promised, it included a chunk for defense ($1.15T discretionary and $350B mandatory, reconciliation style), larger than the GDP of Turkey. Yes, that is a real statistic. On the menu? Big bucks for […]
Well, these certainly ain’t your granny’s quadcopter drones. Yesterday, autonomy and swarming software hotshot Auterion announced that it has teamed up with UK-based MGI Engineering—a, well, engineering firm—to successfully fly a cruise missile-like drone called TigerShark in the UK. According to the two companies, TigerShark can: MGI and Auterion say this is “the first time […]
The folks building the factories of the future are certainly having a moment right now. Yesterday, software-defined manufacturing startup UNION and solid rocket motor-maker X-Bow Systems (pronounced crossbow, btw) teamed up to build “surge-capable” propulsion system production capacity, which X-Bow CGO Maureen Gannon told Tectonic is a “direct response” to the AFRL’s “Endless Forge” initiative. […]
We’ve heard of forward-deployed engineers and manufacturing, but now Applied Intuition wants to make autonomy testing mobile. Earlier this week, autonomy giant Applied Intuition rolled out Edge, a “mobile operations center” designed to facilitate the development, testing, and operation of autonomous systems at, well, the edge. Sim-er down: We’ve covered Applied Intuition before, but as […]
