Acquisition rules rewritten 🏛️, Iran war = $38B 💥, Hermeus builds F100 ✈️

Rocket Lab raises $1.94B to fully fund its Iridium acquisition

Rocket Lab completed a $1.944 billion at-the-market program, selling 29.3 million shares to help fund the cash leg of its Iridium acquisition, valued at $8 billion enterprise value. It also terminated the $3.6 billion bridge commitment it signed in June, and Iridium amended its term loan so the deal does not trigger a change of control. Funding an $8 billion deal off the equity market rather than debt shows public investors will underwrite space consolidation.

Axon launches a $1B convertible note offering

Axon Enterprise launched a $1 billion offering of 0% convertible senior notes due 2031, with a $150 million over-allotment option and Goldman Sachs among five bookrunners. Proceeds fund capped call transactions and general corporate purposes including acquisitions, and Axon bought counter-drone maker Dedrone in 2024. A zero-coupon offering at this size says the market will hand cheap capital to anyone with a credible counter-UAS installed base.

Veteran Ventures leads a $2.5M seed in Radian Forge

Veteran Ventures Capital led a $2.5 million seed round in McLean, Virginia-based Radian Forge, with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation and existing investors participating. Radian Forge builds large-format additive manufacturing capacity for the naval and maritime industrial base, the bottleneck behind every submarine and surface-ship delivery delay. Seed checks into shipbuilding supply are rare, and they are the cheapest way to test whether additive can compress Navy lead times.

Pratt & Whitney licenses Hermeus to build the F100 fighter engine

Pratt & Whitney licensed Hermeus to manufacture the F100-PW-229, the first time Pratt has licensed the fighter engine to another American company. The engine powers F-15 and F-16 variants plus Hermeus' Quarterhorse, and the deal makes the startup a second source for Pratt while vertically integrating its own propulsion. Pratt's military engines president tied it to CCA demand, which is the real message: prime engine capacity is short and startups are now qualified to fill it.

B-52 engine and radar upgrades clear key milestones

Air Force acquisition official William Bailey said the B-52 engine replacement program hit Milestone B in June and the radar modernization program entered low-rate production in August. The Rolls-Royce F130 re-engining now costs more than $15.4 billion, 38% above its original estimate, against a roughly $3 billion Raytheon AESA radar effort. GAO found more than 30% cost growth and three-year delays on both in June, so these milestones mean the schedule stopped slipping, not that it recovered.

Leidos takes an $875M option year on the Navy's enterprise network

The Navy awarded Leidos $875 million for the second option year on its Next Generation Enterprise Network SMIT contract, which Leidos has held since 2020. Scope covers user support, operations and IT transformation across NMCI, ONE-Net and the Marine Corps Enterprise Network, reaching more than 650,000 personnel across 2,500 sites. Enterprise IT is the least glamorous line in the budget and among the stickiest, which is why one incumbent has held it for six years.

Lockheed unveils FLEX, a modular JASSM airframe

Lockheed Martin revealed AGM-158 FLEX, a modular airframe whose removable nose accepts JASSM or LRASM sensor suites and whose removable boat tail enables surface and subsurface launch. Lockheed has put more than $35 million of its own money into design, testing and prototypes, in two lengths matching JASSM-XR and JASSM-ER, with XR first. Lockheed disclosed no cost, rate or schedule, so read FLEX as an obsolescence and export play on an existing line, not an answer to affordable mass.

BAE unveils Shadow EW for drones and attritable aircraft

BAE Systems introduced Shadow EW, a self-funded family of compact electronic warfare payloads built in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for drones, attritables and aircraft with dated EW suites. Shadow EW 100 covers 70 MHz to 6 GHz, the 120 adds SIGINT and COMINT from 5 MHz, and the 500 does edge processing out to 18 GHz. BAE built these on commercial microchips rather than the custom silicon in its F-35 suites, defending a segment startups were entering.

LeoLabs will sell its Scout-S radar directly to governments

LeoLabs will begin offering its transportable Scout-S phased-array radar directly to allied governments to own and operate, alongside its existing data-services model. Scout-S tracks objects between 180 and 1,000 kilometers in altitude, and LeoLabs is talking to more than a dozen countries, with production scaling to dozens a year. Selling hardware to sovereign buyers adds a capital-equipment line to a subscription business, a trade most space-data startups have resisted.

Feinberg orders a rewrite of defense cost accounting rules

A memo from Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg steers the department off government-unique Cost Accounting Standards, with exemption becoming the default if the CAS Board agrees. It orders commercial determinations within 15 business days, expands other transactions, and starts rulemaking so margins reflect value, risk and capital invested, not merely cost. Feinberg's framing, that selling to the department is a line of business not a corporate identity, is the best policy news dual-use vendors got this year.

CBO puts the Iran war at $38.1B and counting

The Congressional Budget Office put Pentagon costs from the Iran war at $38.1 billion through August 1, including $21.7 billion to replace munitions. Interceptors account for $13.1 billion of that, and CBO estimated one-half to two-thirds of the combined Patriot, THAAD, SM-3 and SM-6 inventory has been expended since June 2025. Rebuilding takes at least five years, ongoing burn runs $2 billion to $3 billion a month, and CBO named China as the scenario where a depleted magazine bites.

New Space Force chief says the CR stalls 1 in 10 programs

Gen. Douglas Schiess, sworn in as Chief of Space Operations this month, said about 10% of Space Force programs cannot proceed under the continuing resolution. The CR holds FY26 levels through December 11 and bars new starts, while a stalled $350 billion reconciliation package carries $17 billion for Golden Dome. Against a $71.2 billion FY27 request, the gap between what the Space Force asked for and what it can spend is where every award slips a quarter.

Anduril says it cannot start FQ-44 Fury production under its June CCA contract without FY27 appropriations.

The Space Force stood up a Technology Portfolio Executive aimed squarely at the valley of death.

SDA is fighting to keep its hiring and contracting authorities as both FY27 NDAA drafts would repeal them.

AFSOC fired Leidos' 200-pound AGM-190A Havoc Spear in combat in Africa from an AC-130J.

Anduril fit-checked its YFQ-44A Fury with air-to-ground munitions ahead of December's Emerald Flag exercise debut.

Northrop Grumman took a $34.4M Navy ceiling increase for UH-1Y and AH-1Z Link-16 kits.