This investment reflects a strategic alignment between Booz Allen’s expertise in AI, autonomy and defense tech with PDW’s proven, domestically produced drone platforms to accelerate the delivery of mission-critical UAS capable of advanced surveillance, operating in contested environments, and strike missions.

This work aims to directly address the Pentagon’s focus on domestic drone manufacturing and its urgent call for reliable, autonomous drone capabilities at scale. As a domestic manufacturer, PDW designs, engineers, and produces systems at its 90,000-square-foot drone factory in Huntsville and is capable of producing 100,000 drones annually.

“Drones are rapidly reshaping the speed, scale, and economics of modern warfare,” said Randy Yamada, vice president at Booz Allen. “Our investment in PDW reflects a shared focus on accelerating the deployment of mission-ready, resilient, American-manufactured drone capabilities. By aligning advanced autonomy with domestic production, we are making the kinds of capabilities the Department of War needs to stay ahead a reality and directly supporting its Drone Dominance Program.”

“At PDW, we aren’t just creating new capabilities, we’re building the industrial capacity to deliver drones at meaningful scale,” said PDW CEO James Slider. “This means expanding American manufacturing capacity, scaling next-generation engineering teams, and anchoring our supply chain here at home to put the U.S. and its allies in a position of strength. This is the capability gap PDW was built to close and the mission we execute against every day.”

This investment enables Booz Allen to bring its autonomy and digital engineering expertise to bear, developing new solutions that reduce the burden on the operator. It represents a significant commitment to bolstering the U.S. domestic drone manufacturing industry while making a real mission impact for the warfighter at the cost and scale the U.S. military needs.

“Booz Allen invests in companies that deliver mission impact at speed and scale,” said Bryce Pippert, executive vice president at Booz Allen. “PDW’s U.S.-made drone systems are a great fit for our portfolio and our Defense Tech teams who are advancing the next generation of autonomous capabilities.”

Source: Booz Allen

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Developed as part of AV’s holistically integrated C-UAS strategy, Halo_Shield introduces a unique, tile-based layered defense architecture that is open, scalable, and adaptable to today’s evolving threats. The system is designed to support emerging homeland defense priorities by enabling resilient, area-wide protection of high-value U.S. and allied partner assets, including borders, military installations, and other critical infrastructure. AV is currently demonstrating capabilities and has deployed Halo_Shield tiles at select critical sites.

“The character of the air threat has fundamentally changed,” said Wahid Nawabi, chairman, president, and chief executive officer at AV. “Cheap, massed, and coordinated aerial systems are stressing traditional point defenses. Halo_Shield is our answer—a collaborative, modular approach that brings together the best of AV and a trusted supplier ecosystem to close those gaps.”

At the core of Halo_Shield is a mission-tailored, distributed and domain-specific tile architecture—comprising Sentinel, Terrestrial, Nautical, Aerial and Celestial tiles. Each tile delivers a specialized combination of sensors, effectors, and command-and-control capabilities, drawing on technology from AV and its trusted ecosystem of suppliers. The result is a cost-efficient defense architecture that is offense-ready, extends protection beyond point defense and sustains decisive situational advantage in contested battlespaces across air, land, sea and space.

Designed for plug-and-play integration, Halo_Shield is deployable as portable fly-away kits and integrates seamlessly with existing customer sensors, effectors, and command-and-control frameworks—delivering scalable, resilient, area-wide protection with minimal training and personnel demands. Powered by AV_Halo, AV’s unified software platform, the system is purpose-built yet agnostic, designed to incorporate new capabilities while seamlessly integrating with customers’ existing command-and-control systems.

“Halo_Shield is engineered like an edge processing-capable set of tiles for modern air defense,” said Larry Lloyd, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at AV. “Each tile is a self-contained capability that can operate on its own or snap together to build exactly the defense architecture a mission demands. That modularity lets operators scale, adapt, and reconfigure in real time as threats evolve, without redesigning the system or retraining the force. It’s how you move from static point defense to a living, mission-tailored shield.”

Source: AeroVironment

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Designed to meet specific government requirements, the VuaLe portfolio supports UAV missions, providing flexibility, security and operational control through a range of terminals and connectivity services.

Connectivity services within the portfolio include Uncrewed Air, L-MAX, G2X Air, G2X Air Plus, and K-MAX. Each will provide specific benefits depending on the mission, giving operators flexible, budget-conscious options. This includes supporting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations as well as public safety, border security, defense, and scientific research.

Uncrewed Air is a new service designed to provide reliable and cost-effective L-band connectivity plans through Viasat’s global L-band network. It enables continuous, resilient communications for mission-critical UAV operations, making secure satellite links accessible to a broader range of operators than ever before.

To complement Uncrewed Air, Viasat has also unveiled a suite of compact, lightweight, low power terminals for UAVs. Starting from as light as 440 grams, these terminals provide dependable Command and Control (C2) link via reliable L-band, enabling operators to maintain continuous communication even in challenging environments. The small size, weight and power (SWaP) terminal is ideal for smaller UAV platforms, designed to deliver global reach, reliability, and operational flexibility.

Todd McDonell, president, international government, Viasat, said, “The launch of this new service portfolio enforces Viasat’s commitment to advancing UAV communications with secure, resilient, and flexible solutions. As demand grows for UAV missions, we aim to enable our customers across government and defense industries to operate with greater situational awareness, operational efficiency and cost control.”

Source: Viasat

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Founded in 2014, Planck has worked closely with customers from the U.S. Department of Defense, security agencies, allied governments and offshore industrials to develop customer-centric unmanned aircraft solutions. Planck’s products include embedded technologies and fully integrated unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and leverage their deep technical expertise in UAS guidance and navigation, autonomy and artificial intelligence.

Planck is a small technology company based in San Diego, California and will be acquired by AeroVironment’s Petaluma-based medium unmanned aircraft systems (MUAS) business segment to focus on integrating its flight autonomy solutions, such as ACE (Autonomous Control Engine), into AeroVironment’s offerings to enable safe, autonomous takeoff and landing from moving platforms on land or at sea in GPS-denied environments. Other solutions include AVEM, a fully integrated mobile tethered sensor platform designed for persistent autonomous operation from moving vehicles and vessels in any environment, and a suite of machine-learning object detection and tracking systems that are customized for specific end-user needs.

“Planck has a compelling product and technology roadmap with valuable capabilities that we plan to deploy and integrate with AeroVironment’s existing portfolio of intelligent, multi-domain robotic systems,” said Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment chairman, president and chief executive officer. “The Planck team has developed advanced unmanned autonomy and navigation solutions for various defense and commercial customers and by working together, we believe we offer more compelling and differentiated solutions to our customers moving forward.”

“This transaction accelerates AeroVironment’s innovation in flight autonomy, increasing the effectiveness of our solutions in contested environments and reducing the cognitive load of operators, and adds a tethered SUAS to our portfolio of systems, creating exciting opportunities for upcoming programs of record,” Nawabi added.

“AeroVironment’s heritage of creating innovative solutions to meet customer needs is an ideal fit for the Planck team,” said Josh Wells, Planck chief executive officer. “We couldn’t be more excited about joining forces with AeroVironment to deliver innovative, multi-domain unmanned systems to the next generation of U.S. and allied warfighters. AeroVironment’s reach, technical capabilities and portfolio of unmanned systems will enable the Planck team to scale our products to more customers, and to provide better solutions in less time.”

Source: AeroVironment

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Cooper brings experience in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), systems integration, and business development leadership. He joins the DTC from Silvus Incorporated, where he was the senior director of unmanned systems. There he served as a subject matter expert and director of sales activity over radio/data link integration for unmanned ground vehicles/robotics, unmanned aircraft systems, unmanned sea vessels, unattended ground sensors and aerostat platforms.

Previously, Cooper served as the director of engineering/research and development at UAV Solutions. He received his bachelor’s degree in broadcast operations from Western Michigan University.

Paul Moskowitz, DTC’s senior vice president of sales and solution development, said, “Kasey’s enthusiasm in joining DTC is indicative of the investments we continue to make in our technology. His Commitment-to-Customer is a 100% match with our company culture, and we are excited to have his leadership in business and technical innovation.”

Source: DTC

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This capital will be used to complete development of Hermeus’ first aircraft Quarterhorse, begin flight services operations, and accelerate development of its next aircraft Darkhorse – an uncrewed aircraft capable of sustained hypersonic flight. The lessons learned from development, flight test, airworthiness, and operations of Darkhorse will inform Hermeus’ approach to developing its commercial passenger aircraft Halcyon.

“Hermeus is pursuing an ambitious vision that seems impossible at first glance, but they pair it with an engineering culture and business roadmap that can actually bring it into reality,” said Altman. “Their experienced and passionate team will drive growth across the globe both economically and socially. It’s a future I want to live in and I’m thrilled to be a part of the team.”

This fundraising round highlights the potential for private investment to amplify public resources and rapidly advance the development of hypersonic aircraft. With government serving as an early market for its reusable hypersonic platforms, Hermeus intends to bring hundreds of millions of private dollars to develop this technology and lay the foundations for its long-term vision of hypersonic passenger travel.

“Hermeus is the hypersonics company the country needs right now – the right people, moving incredibly fast, and building for both commercial and defense markets,” said Trae Stephens, Partner at Founders Fund. “The team has shown it can buy down risk quickly as it starts demonstrating the utility of hypersonic engines and aircraft.”

Within the last 12 months Hermeus has built out a 110,000 sq ft. factory, transformed an open field into a test facility, conducted 100+ engine tests, designed and constructed a prototype of its first aircraft, tested a full-scale proprietary Mach 5 engine – Chimera, and more than doubled the size of the team, all for less than $15 million.

“Our mission to massively accelerate global transportation requires tackling some of engineering’s hardest challenges,” said CEO AJ Piplica. “This funding round is a strong validation of the team’s ability to rise and meet those challenges. It also starts a new phase for the company – one where the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, but also where we have the resources to accomplish what some think is impossible.”

Hermeus is on track to fly Quarterhorse in 2023.

Source: Hermeus

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The program’s advanced research and technologies will enable the Intelligence Community and Department of Defense to recognize or identify individuals under challenging conditions, such as from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), at far distances, and through distortions caused by atmospheric turbulence.

“National security technologies must accurately and reliably operate under conditions that are extremely difficult for existing biometric technologies to succeed in,” said program manager Dr. Lars Ericson. “I am confident that our excellent team of research organizations, scientists, and engineers will push the research forward and build technologies that are significantly ahead of the current state-of-the-art.”

Through a competitive Broad Agency Announcement, IARPA awarded BRIAR research contracts to address the full range of research objectives to the following teams:

• Accenture Federal Services LLC
• Intelligent Automation, Inc.
• Kitware, Inc.
• Michigan State University
• Systems & Technology Research
• The University of Houston
• The University of Southern California

Through the same process, IARPA awarded focused research contracts to teams from Carnegie Mellon University and General Electric Research in support of the overall effort.

Test and evaluation work for the program will be performed by the Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command C5ISR Center, Research and Technology Integration Directorate.

Source: IARPA

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BigBear.ai delivers advanced AI/ML products and solutions to the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, including providing direct support to the Defense Intelligence Agency in developing pattern of life analysis from imagery and SIGINT data collected by unmanned and manned platforms. Through the partnership, UAV Factory will incorporate BigBear.ai’s highly innovative AI/ML
technology and expertise into its systems to bring cutting edge autonomous ISR capabilities to UAV Factory’s customers.

“BigBear.ai is a recognized global leader in the AI/ML industry and this partnership will allow us to deliver greater platform autonomy to the DoD and the IC in support of processing, exploitation and dissemination, and pattern of life analysis,” said UAV Factory Senior Vice President Joshua Stinson. “Not only will this partnership aid in bringing advanced technologies to the defence market, it also will bring groundbreaking applications to support the energy, logistics, and infrastructure market to support U.S. interests at home and abroad.”

“BigBear.ai is proud to have been exclusively selected by UAV Factory to support the technological enablement of its proven unmanned aerial platform,” said BigBear.ai CEO Dr. Reggie Brothers. “BigBear.ai is one of the few companies with a track record of delivering AI-enabled solutions to the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and commercial sector for many years, and our proven capabilities in this area will assist UAV Factory and its global customers with a critical need.”

Source: UAV Factory

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Founded in 2009, UAV Factory is a global leader in tactical UAV design and manufacturing, having delivered more than 300 aircraft to defense, intelligence, and commercial customers in more than 55 countries. The Company has a unique vertical integration strategy, whereby it designs and produces  airframes, engines, stabilized EO/IR ISR payloads and related components in-house for the unmanned and manned aircraft industry. UAV Factory’s Penguin C series UAV, which reliably delivers an industry-leading 20 hours of flight time, as well as its proprietary Octopus ISR gyro-stabilized sensors, are widely used by customers globally for a variety of critical ISR missions. UAV Factory is based in Riga, Latvia, with a second location in Bend, Oregon.

“UAV Factory’s engineering and technical capabilities, combined with its proven and growing set of technology solutions, are truly differentiated in the market,” said Jeffrey Hart, principal at AEI. “We are excited to partner with the talented UAV Factory team and are confident that our collective strategic vision for an unmanned technology platform will yield powerful results in this fast-growing market.”

“The UAV market is growing exponentially, and with the financial and operational support of AEI, UAV Factory is poised for increased growth and market share,” said Konstantin Popiks, co-founder of UAV Factory, who will remain with the Company in a senior leadership role. “By working closely with the AEI team, we plan to expand our technologies to provide our customers with the best-in-class, end-to-end solutions they need to make critical decisions.”

“UAV Factory is at the forefront of the burgeoning global UAV market,” said Kirk Konert, partner at AEI.  “Its first mover advantage and unique vertical integration of its proprietary technology solutions well-positions the Company to expand its share of this high growth market.”

Source: AEI

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Founded in 2004 and based in Petaluma, CA, Arcturus UAV has approximately 270 employees, designs and manufactures Group 2 and Group 3 UAS and provides related services, including contractor-owned, contractor-operated (COCO) services. Arcturus UAV is a leading supplier to the USSOCOM, supporting its $1.4 billion MEUAS III and IV programs, and one of four awardees selected for funded development and demonstrations supporting the U.S. Army’s FTUAS program, a potential billion dollar, next-generation UAS program. Arcturus UAV has a demonstrated track record of solid performance, with topline growth exceeding 20 percent for each of its last two fiscal years.

“We are excited about the opportunities for value creation through our acquisition of Arcturus UAV, which will enable us to accelerate our growth strategy and expand our reach into the more valuable Group 2 and 3 UAS segments,” said Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment president and chief executive officer. “Group 2 and 3 UAS and services, collectively, potentially represent more than one billion dollars in annual contract value, according to an independent forecast. Combining our highly complementary products and technologies will enhance our portfolio, deliver top and bottom-line growth, and enable us to provide customers with a complete set of Group 1 through 3 UAS, tactical missile systems, high-altitude pseudo-satellites and unmanned ground vehicle solutions. Through this expanded portfolio, we will be well positioned to serve a broader range of customer missions across multiple domains and significantly enhance value for shareholders over the near and long-term.”

“The Arcturus UAV team has produced strong growth in recent years and has secured strategically important wins in the MEUAS and FTUAS programs, positioning Arcturus as a leader for next-generation program requirements. Together, we will offer an unmatched portfolio of multi-domain unmanned capabilities, supported by our ongoing investments in artificial intelligence and autonomy, to help our customers address a broad set of defense and commercial missions. We look forward to welcoming Arcturus UAV’s talented team, strong customer relationships in growing UAS segments and robust pipeline of innovations to AeroVironment,” Nawabi added.

“AeroVironment’s depth of experience in UAS and tactical missile systems, international presence, and impressive team is a natural fit for Arcturus UAV, and will create substantial opportunities to build on our strong momentum,” said D’Milo Hallerberg, Arcturus UAV president and chief executive officer. “With the support of AeroVironment, we will have greater scale, expanded resources, cutting-edge technology and superior capabilities to meet the growing global demand for our products and solutions. We are confident that with AeroVironment, we can accelerate our growth as part of a larger, more diverse company and look forward to working closely with the team to complete this exciting transaction.”

Source: AeroVironment

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