Covenant = $250M Anthem 🚀, Nitradyn's $581M plant 💥, GA's Wildfire 🛩️

Covenant exits stealth with $250M and a Dallas missile plant

Covenant unveiled Anthem, a mass-producible deep-strike missile priced in the mid-six figures, after two secret years and $250 million in venture funding. It runs factories in Germany, Israel and now Dallas, targeting 1,000 missiles in year one scaling to 5,000, with roughly $150 million already booked. Army fires chief Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano called Anthem intriguing but refused to limit the high-low munitions mix to one vendor.

Bulwark Dynamics raises $6.8M for autonomous landing craft

California-based Bulwark Dynamics closed a $6.8 million seed from SBI US Gateway Fund, Archetype Ventures, Nene Ventures and Japanese shipbuilder Onomichi Dockyard. The money funds its 15-foot autonomous Caravel landing craft, a larger 35-foot variant, and localized production in Japan with Onomichi. Contested logistics is the least glamorous uncrewed-surface-vessel niche and the one allied shipyards can actually absorb today.

Army awards Nitradyn $581M to build an IMX-104 explosives plant

Tampa-based Nitradyn won a $581,160,062 firm-fixed-price IDIQ to design, construct and commission a facility producing Insensitive Munition eXplosive-104, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 9, 2030. Work locations and funding are set with each order, contracted through Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal. Energetics fill capacity, not final assembly, is the real ceiling on artillery and missile output, and this one went to a non-incumbent.

Lockheed takes $826M more for JASSM and LRASM large-lot buys

The Air Force added an $825,975,480 modification to Lockheed Martin's JASSM and LRASM large lot procurement, lifting the contract's cumulative value to $10.48 billion. Work runs in Orlando through July 31, 2030, funded across fiscal 2024 to 2026 missile and Navy weapons procurement lines. A $10.5 billion standoff-strike program is the benchmark every low-cost missile entrant gets priced against.

CDAO pays a venture studio only for savings under a $100M OTA

The Pentagon's Chief Digital and AI Office signed an Other Transaction Authority deal worth up to $100 million in its first year with venture studio Red Cell Partners. Red Cell serves as prime, fronts all upfront cost, and its portfolio companies earn revenue only from documented savings they can prove. It says it is the first venture firm to hold a department contract, which makes this a distribution channel worth watching.

General Atomics shows Wildfire, its $10M-class Reaper successor

General Atomics released the first rendering of Wildfire, its entrant for the Air Force and DIU Massed Modular Aircraft program. The design drops the Reaper's SATCOM hump for proliferated low-Earth-orbit links and carries four Joint Strike Missiles or two LRASMs. MMA targets roughly $10 million a drone against $30 to $50 million for an MQ-9A, so the incumbent is defending its monopoly on price.

Hermeus unveils Ramjet-X, an air-launched Mach 4 test vehicle

Hermeus revealed Ramjet-X, an expendable roughly 22-foot ramjet vehicle released from its reusable Quarterhorse drone near Mach 3, then climbing to about 100,000 feet and Mach 4. Two can fly per sortie, and the company is selling the pairing as flight test as a service for sensor, autonomy, materials and propulsion payloads. Integrated vehicle testing is planned for 2027, with the propulsion system already on test in Jacksonville, Florida.

Pentagon asks Congress to move $1.5B toward AI compute and MV-75

The department asked Congress to realign $1.2 billion in fiscal 2026 and $212 million in fiscal 2025 funds. The largest line is $600 million to build a top secret high-performance AI compute center on JWICS, followed by about $350 million for the Army's MV-75 tiltrotor. Without it the document warns of a Textron stop-work order risking 5,000 jobs across 1,500 suppliers, so classified compute is now a must-pay line.

US signs a $4B foreign military financing loan with Poland

Washington and Warsaw signed a $4 billion Foreign Military Financing loan agreement in Warsaw, the sixth such package for Poland. Poland has now drawn $20 billion in FMF credit, and a top-up order of 32 additional F-35s is the widely expected use. Loan-financed sales are how the eastern flank keeps buying American at a pace its annual budget alone would not support.

Navy sites its first advanced microreactor at Crane, Indiana

The Department of War will install Indiana's first advanced Micro Modular Reactor at Naval Weapons Station Crane no later than September 2028. The Army's Janus Program, the Navy's energy and installations office, research and engineering, and the state of Indiana are executing it jointly. Installation power is becoming a procurement line, which is the demand signal microreactor developers have been waiting for.

The Exploration Company raised a $450M Series C led by Bessemer, Atomico and EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund.

DISA opened bidding on a 10-year, $21.6B JWCC Unified Cloud Marketplace Core IDIQ, offers due Oct. 6.

Lockheed Martin Australia won a $950M contract to sustain and expand the AIR6500 air battle management system.

Elbit Systems rebranded its American subsidiary, Elbit America, as Twenty-Six Defense.

The Air Force is seeking rapidly deployable drone swarms to help secure its overseas bases.

Ukraine carried out its deepest drone strike into Russian territory to date.