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


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In that Number

$10.5B and 4X

European defense startups will raise a record $10.5B in 2026, up from $2.6B a year earlier—a 4X increase.

Zoom in

The Navy is short roughly 174,000 workers, and paying the hands already in the shipyards more will not fix it.

Zoom in here to find the people 40 miles away stocking shelves.

They Said It

“We’re moving fast to build B-21s!”

— Troy Meink, Secretary of the Air Force, on the Palmdale groundbreaking for the bomber’s expanding final assembly line

Saved Rounds

  • Lockheed Martin unveiled PAC-3 Edge for the Army's Future Interceptor

  • StandardAero won a Air Force deal for predictive maintenance on jet engines

  • The Air Force certified its first X10D drone instructor cadre

  • Overland AI unveiled the autonomous Ibex on a nearly $20M APFIT contract

  • Somewear Labs won a contract for resilient uncrewed-system networking

  • Voyager Technologies won $22.4M to build Space Force rideshare dispensers

  • The Air Force added $12M for Scale AI agents aboard the E-4C doomsday plane

  • The Navy is seeking help to redesign the F-35 mission planner in a 5-year deal

  • The UAE finished a MK 82 Penetrator, which breaches a meter of concrete

  • Lockheed Martin bid 60 transports with Tata for India's $10.5B MTA program

  • Castelion showed Blackbeard GL firing from a truck-mounted launcher

  • Kaizen won a $49M Army IDIQ with a $43M first task order for classified work

  • The Navy cleared the USS Ronald Reagan as its second MQ-25A tanker carrier

  • Dynatrace closed its $915M buy of AI observability startup Arize

  • GA-ASI flew an MQ-20 Avenger in Navy autonomous mission planning

  • Boeing won a $14.7B seeker deal to triple PAC-3 MSE output

  • Spain picked the Airbus A321 for 3 SIGINT jets in a $489M program

  • B&A opened a 45,000 sq ft site in Alabama for defense and intel work

  • Buntar Aerospace raised $16M to scale its GPS-free recon drone and AI copilot

  • Advanced Navigation opened a U.S. factory to build GPS-free navigation

  • General Dynamics tapped Primordial to put AI voice control in combat vehicles

  • BLADE entered the Hunter WOLF in the Army's last-tactical-mile robot contest

  • Powerus secured an $82M order under its $90M Air Force interceptor IDIQ

  • Aventra raised a $17.5M Series A for balloon-dropped Piranha glide bombs

  • The Army is standing up FASCOM and an autonomy acquisition executive

  • Ondas secured a $56M order for safe-and-arm devices on a European munition

  • The Air Force will integrate LRASM on the B-52

  • Northrop Grumman won a $29M Navy deal for GPS-free navigation on ships

  • BAE Systems won an order for F-35 EW systems on Lots 20 to 22

  • Australia asked the US for a $300M Tomahawk mission planning system

  • UAV Navigation is researching LEO satellite navigation for GPS-denied drones

  • The Air Force used VR to train B-52 pilots in aerial refueling

  • The Navy plans a sole-source JMEWS LRIP contract with Raytheon

  • X-Bow Systems won up to $69.7M for a Navy interceptor rocket booster

  • France test-fired the upgraded M51.3 SLBM from a submarine for the first time

  • The Air Force is weighing industry access to its test ranges

  • The Pentagon will pilot AI-assisted security classification within 6 months

  • Strider Technologies won up to $85M to screen SBIR applicants for FOCI

  • Reveal Technology received a $9.5M Army order for Farsight 3D mapping

  • SRC won a $500M JIATF-401 C-UAS IDIQ with a $10.24M radar order

  • Furientis raised $25M for low-cost missile interceptors

  • Morocco flew its first F-16 Block 72 for the first time

  • Embraer flew the first Brazilian-built Gripen E for the first time

  • South Korea tested its first domestic hypersonic glide vehicle

  • The Pentagon offered Wolfspeed a $1.5B loan for silicon carbide capacity

  • Raytheon secured up to $6.3B for five years of SM-3 Block IB production

  • GDLS will deliver 4 PERCH 2.0 loitering munition pods to the Army this month

  • NIOA & AV partnered on Switchblade in Australia

  • Fortastra raised a $30M Series A for on-orbit security spacecraft

  • R2S delivered the first US-produced Tamir interceptors

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