Drone boat company Saronic is officially making the great, trans-Atlantic leap. This week, the 8VC-backed company—known for its ever-growing family of unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and fat, fat valuation—announced that it’s officially opening an office in the UK and expanding operations in Australia. London calling, indeed. AUKUS-tastic: Saronic says it’s making the move as part […]
Way, way back in February (we were so young, so innocent), we wrote about autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition acquiring EpiSci, which builds autonomy software for everything from drones, to planes, to boats. Well, it seems the first fruits of the acquisition have been born. On Tuesday, the company unveiled two hot new defense […]
As we’ve said a few times in the last couple of weeks, it’s always good to remember that cutting-edge defense tech is way, way more than drones and hypersonic missiles (though those things are super-cool and super-important too). AI is transforming more than just weapons systems—it’s also changing the way that the US gathers, analyzes, […]
In case you missed it, President Trump took a grand ol’ whistle-stop tour through the Middle East last week, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, and securing—per his team—over $2T in deals (though the numbers are a little fuzzy). You may have overlooked it amidst the hair-flipping, camel-and-horse-parading, and mobile-McDonald’s-making, but a few of […]
US defense programs face an increasingly urgent demand: deliver more capable systems, more often, to address agile adversaries. DoD must modernize how it develops and acquires complex platforms—from aircraft, to satellites, to autonomous systems. Software engineering has embraced agile development—meaning continuous integration, by building, testing, and refining systems. Yet hardware design remains stuck in the […]
Remember when we said that some of the most cutting-edge defense tech isn’t necessarily the flying, sexy stuff? Well, we’re back to prove our point. This morning, military operations software company Adyton announced to Tectonic in an exclusive release that they’ve received $11M in funding led by Venrock, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Liquid 2 […]
Blast off. Yesterday morning, Venus Aerospace completed a successful flight test of its rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) deep in the New Mexico desert. According to the company, this is the first-ever successful high-thrust RDRE flight test in the United States. “In four years, we’ve taken [the RDRE] from an academic concept to a fully […]
Sit around any defense tech conference long enough, and the industry’s main gripe will become abundantly clear: the Pentagon is a byzantine labyrinth, and the government is, well, a pain in the ass to work with. Turns out one company may have finally found a solution. This morning, software startup Usul—born out of Stanford’s Hacking […]
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Maritime autonomy is all the rage, and the hype only seems to be growing. This morning, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) company Vatn Systems announced a twofer in an exclusive release to Tectonic: First, they’re opening a new, higher-capacity production facility in Bristol, Rhode Island. And second, […]
It’s been quite the week for AeroVironment (now officially called AV). Hot on the heels of finalizing their $4.1B BlueHalo acquisition, the defense-company-formerly-known-as-a-drone-company unveiled two new products at SOFWeek: Red Dragon, a one-way attack drone, and Titan 4, an upgraded cUAS system. All jammed up: Red Dragon—which looks a bit like a torpedo with wings […]
