🔷 Saved Rounds 1.13.26

Welcome to Tuesday's Saved Rounds, where we send out all the goodies we couldn't squeeze into our Sunday newsletter.

📺 PODCAST: Check it out on YouTube or download the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your content.

In that Number

$1.5 Trillion

President Donald Trump announced he will request a record $1.5T defense budget for 2027, a whopping 50% percent increase from 2026’s defense budget.

It’s likely an anchor-high number to negotiate down from, but damn, that’s a high number.

For context, the 2026 presidential budget request was $850B, then the highly unusual $150B reconciliation boosted the total appropriation to $1T.

Zoom in

The senior military acquisition leaders of each service recently penned a joint op-ed outlining the Pentagon’s shift toward treating defense acquisition as a primary warfighting function—and they promise that this time it's different.

Zoom in here.

They Said It

“I’ve made it crystal clear to the entire defense industry – which I didn’t come from and I didn’t work for, so I don’t give a damn who wins. I just want the best.” 

— Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War

 ICYMI

Saved Rounds

• The Navy used F-35 JSE to develop CCA integration tactics

• The Air Force announced its new portfolio acquisition executive structure and who is running each of them

• InDyne won a $1.1B IDIQ contract to support Space Force missile warning and domain awareness

• Lockheed Martin delivered a record 191 F-35 fighter jets in 2025

• Boeing received a $266M contract to upgrade Air Force C-17 avionics

• Sabel Systems acquired Centil to boost digital engineering capabilities

• Karman secured $5M contract to expand solid rocket motor nozzle production

• Karman will acquire Seemann Composites and MSC in a $220M deal to boost its maritime portfolio

• Vatn Systems acquired Crewless Marine to bring advanced undersea acoustics in-house

• Babcock & Frankenburg partnered to develop an anti-drone missile system

• Thales secured a $12.7M contract to develop portable autonomous mine hunting command centers for the UK’s Royal Navy

• SkyFi added Vantor imagery to its pay-as-you-go imagery service

• Lantronix unveiled a quadrotor with a devkit to deploy AI models

• Ultra I&C is putting new processors on Marine Corps MQ-9Bs for edge computing

• Northrop Grumman's new ICBM target made its first flight

• Collins Aerospace won a $438M contract to field new radars for the FAA

• Textron won a $41M contract for T-7A maintenance training

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