Well, it’s been quite the week for Forterra—and it’s only Tuesday. Less than a week after announcing that they’re teaming up with BAE, the ground autonomy company announced in an exclusive release to Tectonic that they’re officially unveiling a prototype of the DeepFires autonomous launcher—built with Oshkosh and RTX—at AUSA next week. The autonomous launcher […]
For all those SBIR skeptics out there, this one’s for you. In an exclusive release to Tectonic, San Diego-based small unmanned surface vessel (sUSV) startup Seasats announced today that it’s snagged an $89M ceiling SBIR Phase 3 indefinite-delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Navy to deliver its Lightfish USVs to the Marine Corps. Talk about […]
In case you—like us—have been flitting between events and trying to keep up with a flood of news in the past few weeks, you may have missed a major piece of news in our corner of the defense tech world: Last week, a delegation from Kyiv was in Washington to hammer out the details of […]
Picogrid is rapidly building up a truly impressive circle of friends. Just two weeks after teaming up with Northrop Grumman’s c-UAS platform, the startup announced late last week that its flagship software integration system, Legion, will be plugging into Palantir’s ultra-popular Maven Smart System (MSS). Picogrid says that Legion will act as a “universal translator,” […]
Well, it seems the DoD, sorry, DoW, has really gotten a taste for critical minerals. Yesterday, Australian-American mining company Nova Minerals ($NVA) announced that it’s scored a $43.4M investment from the Pentagon to build out a production plant for a critical mineral called antimony in Alaska. The funding was awarded under the Defense Production Act […]
Mortars are pretty dumb and only go so far. A new start-up called Aventra wants to change that. Earlier this week, the company emerged from stealth with $3M in seed funding led by Lavrock Ventures and a high-altitude, balloon-dropped, modular payload glider that makes dumb bombs smart and long-range strikes cheap. Everyone loves things that […]
The partnerships keep coming on both sides of the pond. This morning, Harmattan AI, the white-hot French autonomous systems startup launched last year, announced a partnership with Ukrainian drone-maker Skyeton to integrate its Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system on Skyeton’s Raybird ISR drone. Oui oui, indeed. Doing deals: In its first year of existence, Harmattan […]
Another day, another (speedy quick) partnership. This morning, maritime autonomy company HavocAI announced that it’s teamed up with engine manufacturer Ilmor to equip its vessels with some fancy-shmancy high-powered electric propulsion motors. The two companies say they’ll build an outboard system called the ION Unleashed—a souped-up, defense-grade version of Ilmor’s consumer ION 6 motor—designed to […]
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a double whammy of fun today. Not only has the long-anticipated government shutdown commenced, but SBIR/STTR reauthorization also lapsed at midnight. That’s two big blows for defense startups: the Pentagon can’t issue new obligations without an appropriation, and the biggest non-dilutive funding channel for small firms just went dark. Buckle […]
The autumn of collabs continues. Yesterday, ground autonomy company Forterra announced that it’s collaborating with defense giant BAE to “rapidly prototype” an autonomous Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV). The partnership is the first to be announced as part of a push to upgrade the AMPV’s capabilities, unveiled last month. “Working with BAE puts Forterra’s autonomy stack […]
