The Merge’s Take: Removing the driver doesn’t remove the manpower bill—it shifts it. Targeting, communications, maintenance, and missile resupply still must reach every launcher, and automating the truck while leaving its support footprint intact just moves the people—and the bottleneck—down the road. But that’s probably the point: more dispersed firepower without a proportional increase in exposed crews. Keep an eye on the software competition that underpins it all: Forterra, Kodiak AI, and Overland AI are the key players.

The Merge's Take: AI helps capable small companies compete without a proposal-writing army, but making proposals cheaper to write doesn’t make them better. A 50X response surge doesn't mean 50X more competition, which leads to the next problem: making proposals cheaper to write doesn’t make them cheaper to evaluate. Overwhelmed offices are now turning to AI tools to screen and evaluate proposals, and the issue has already reached the courts: a vendor challenged a $450M Army award, alleging AI hallucinations tainted its evaluation. It lost, but the judge criticized the government’s shifting explanation of how AI was used. When everyone can write a convincing proposal, the best solution is an old answer: demonstration.

Lockheed Martin & DOW announced a 10-year framework for 1,560 F-35s

Long Wall won a $75M MDA award for its Cyclops low-cost interceptor

Xona raised a $250M Series D at a $2.45B valuation to scale its GPS rival

Reliable Robotics added $115M to its Series D, now $275M

Airbus & Kratos flew the U740 Valkyrie at Mach 0.8 in northern Europe

Ondas & Palantir launched Regna AI for sovereign government AI models

SpaceX flew AFRL Rocket Cargo in a Starfall reentry

Anduril unveiled Steelfin, a modular surface-to-air interceptor family

Skyeton unveiled Stormbird, a Raybird-based strike UAS already in combat

PDW & Revenant signed an MOU to US-produce Ukrainian drone tech

Ursa Major won $137M for Navy rocket motors

Skapion raised a $36M seed for a counter-swarm system hitting 100+ targets

Hadrian signed a 7-year deal to run machining cells in Lockheed's MFC plant

AV & Thunder Tiger signed an MOU on Switchblade co-production in Taiwan

L3Harris & Divergent will mass-produce Wolf Pack munitions additively

Shift5 secured $99M over 5 years on Army Next Gen Command and Control

Zone 5 revealed its ground-launched Rusty Dagger low-cost cruise missile

X-Bow will build LCCM boosters for Leidos on 3,000 Army cruise missiles

CHAOS Industries unveiled VESPID interceptors

Natilus won a $3.5M Air Force award for a blended-wing body cargo drone

Applied Intuition won a $25M Navy contract to put AI sensor fusion on 5 destroyers

Cody Aerospace unveiled Badger Mk1, a 100-mile ground-launched missile

Ophir won $34.6M to repair the B-2's contrail-warning laser sensor

The Navy halted new GARC drone boat orders from AEVEX over performance issues

Watchtower launched with $35M for AI software for defense logistics

BAE signed a framework to make up to 25,000 APKWS kits a year for up to 7 years, rising to 35,000 if allies buy