Army's $2.2B microreactors ⚛️, SealingTech's $750M cyber 🛡️, SiFly's $20M 🚁

SiFly raises $20M Series A to scale long-endurance drone production

Santa Clara-based SiFly closed a $20 million Series A led by Shield Capital, with Qudit, BBK Capital and Alumni Ventures joining, to scale US production of the Q12. The company says the Q12 flies four to five times longer and up to ten times farther than leading enterprise drones. A US-built, NDAA-compliant airframe in that endurance class is the gap defense and public-safety buyers have been unable to fill without Chinese hardware.

Maglut emerges from stealth with $3.1M for domestic rare-earth separation

Maglut Heavy Industries came out of stealth Wednesday with $3.1 million in pre-seed funding from Julian Capital and Wave Function Ventures, unveiling ARC-1 at its Long Beach plant. The chromatography process, borrowed from biologics purification, has hit better than 99.9% purity on rare-earth oxides from real feedstock, with a demonstration plant due August 2027. China controls roughly 90% of global separation, and Department of War rules force contractors to purge it from magnet supply chains from January 2027.

CesiumAstro buys 1Aardvark, its third defense acquisition this year

CesiumAstro acquired 1Aardvark, a Manassas, Virginia firm building mission software, algorithms and systems engineering for missile-defense and missile-tracking programs. The deal lands days after CesiumAstro closed its purchase of millimeter-wave chipmaker Jariet Technologies, and follows its March acquisition of multimodal AI firm Vidrovr. A payload company assembling silicon, software and autonomy in one year is building the vertically integrated space prime the incumbents assumed nobody could assemble.

Army picks five firms for $2.2B in on-base nuclear microreactors

The Army will award up to $2.2 billion over five years to Antares Nuclear, BWX Technologies, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, Radiant Industries and Westinghouse Government Services. The five reactors go to Forts Bragg, Campbell, Hood, Benning and Drum, and under Project Janus the vendors own, build and operate them against performance milestones. Picking five instead of down-selecting is an explicit bet that some fail, and it hands venture-backed reactor firms their first real revenue.

SealingTech takes a $750M USCYBERCOM Joint Cyber Hunt Kit OTA

Parsons subsidiary SealingTech won a five-year, $750 million ceiling other-transaction agreement for full-rate production of the Joint Cyber Hunt Kit, as sole prime awardee. JCHK is a mobile, self-contained system delivering full security-operations-center function so hunt teams can detect and counter threats on US and allied networks, replacing fragmented service-specific kits. It follows an intent-to-award for a three-year $500 million production start, so the ceiling grew 50% before full rate even began.

Dataminr wins a $317.8M Air Force open-source alerting contract

Dataminr, of Reston, Virginia, won a $317,806,746 firm-fixed-price contract for A2 Publicly Available Information Alerting, providing situational awareness, force protection and indications and warnings on global events. The competitive award drew eight offers, runs in Washington through June 2031, and obligates $46.5 million in fiscal 2026 operations and maintenance funds at award. Eight bidders for a publicly-available-information contract this size says commercial OSINT is now a contested procurement category, not a sole-source niche.

SpaceX announces a new Starbase spaceport in Louisiana

President Gwynne Shotwell joined Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Tuesday to announce a new Starbase site, built as a high-cadence complex for future Starship operations. It adds a Gulf Coast node to SpaceX's Texas and Florida footprint, and has already drawn environmental objections in Vermilion Parish. Launch cadence is the binding constraint on proliferated constellations, so a third Starship site is a schedule input for every Golden Dome and ISR program.

Blackbeard hypersonic missile testing begins on the Super Hornet

Castelion's low-cost Blackbeard hypersonic weapon has begun flight testing on the F/A-18 Super Hornet, with the Navy aiming for a limited operational arsenal within two years. The milestone lands a day after the Navy put $90 million behind Blackbeard's early operational capability under SBIR Phase III. A startup missile moving onto carrier aviation on a two-year clock is the fastest path any new entrant has cut into a manned strike platform.

Cellebrite launches C-TEK, a made-for-the-military extraction kit

Israeli forensics firm Cellebrite launched C-TEK, a military version of its data-extraction kit that triages mobile phones, SIM cards, computers, drones and other portable media. The company frames the goal as turning every device into an intelligence source, moving exploitation forward to the deployed unit rather than a rear laboratory. Battlefield device exploitation has been improvised for two decades, and productizing it opens a procurement line new entrants can compete for.

Army wants up to 8,000 new short-range missiles a year

The Army says it wants to purchase up to 8,000 new short-range missiles per year, a step change in the magazine depth the service plans to buy. It is the clearest quantified demand signal yet behind the affordable-mass push the Pentagon has been funding through OTAs and SBIR Phase III awards. A rate that high is a manufacturing problem before it is a technology problem, which favors entrants designed for volume over incumbents optimized for exquisite unit cost.

Army long-range electronic warfare system heads to production in 2027

Mark Saxon, deputy project manager for Electromagnetic Warfare and Collection, said the Army's long-range EW system enters production in 2027 after the service dropped a bespoke design. Saxon told Breaking Defense the battlefield changed, shifting the program's whole mentality toward something fieldable rather than the exquisite capability originally envisioned. A dated production start plus an explicit retreat from bespoke hardware is how EW turns into a supplier market with real order books.

Italy requests €8B from the EU's SAFE loan program, less than expected

Italy has requested €8 billion, about $9.3 billion, in cheap loans from the European Union's SAFE program after months of public doubt about participating at all. Rome had hesitated over how the borrowing would be treated against its deficit before settling on a draw smaller than earlier figures floated. SAFE is the demand signal underwriting Europe's new production lines, so a scaled-back Italian request trims the addressable pot suppliers have been sizing against.

Research Innovations took a $99.5M Army IDIQ for Dragonfly payload systems, with 95 bids received.

Spain approved a $6.3 billion joint MRTT tanker buy with Poland; at least seven aircraft, four to Poland by 2030.

RTX's Blue Canyon Technologies, of Lafayette, Colorado, unveiled a new spacecraft subsystem for smallsat missions.

A Bradley hauling a load of swarming ground robots previews how armor will carry unmanned mass.

Hegseth is standing by the LaNeve nomination despite reported hesitation among lawmakers.