🌊 AEVEX buys BlackSea for up to $650M

Portal Aircraft won DARPA's Lift Challenge award for Most Revolutionary Powertrain Design, taking $500,000 for a concept that directs turbine exhaust onto rotor blades.

The design eliminates gearboxes and driveshafts, and CEO James Thurman says it could extend range hundreds of miles while carrying payloads nearly four times aircraft weight.

Fewer moving parts would simplify field repair, positioning the concept between mechanically complex helicopters and range-limited multirotors as a new VTOL class.

US Central Command is establishing Task Force Falcon Strike, its first multi-domain, multinational attack drone unit, employing one-way attack systems from above, on, and below the sea.

Special Operations Command Central will lead the staff, building on Task Force Scorpion Strike, the LUCAS-equipped squadron stood up in December 2025.

Regional partners have been invited to join, and Adm. Brad Cooper said integration would scale attack drone capability across the Middle East into a unified deterrent.

The Space Force unveiled Makau, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Cray XD2000 system at the Maui High Performance Computing Center, during an August 7 ceremony.

The six-cabinet machine runs 74 graphics processing units with 19.2 terabytes of usable memory and peaks at 2.64 petaflops, or 2.64 quadrillion calculations per second.

It will support space domain awareness, cyber operations, and digital engineering, giving researchers capacity for far larger AI and machine learning workloads.

Maj. Gen. Robert Kinney, the Defense Intelligence Agency's chief AI officer, described a future in which digital agents coordinate across a combatant command's directorates.

DIA is running a 90-day sprint to build an AI enterprise platform service, with a model context protocol planned to give universal access to intelligence data.

Kinney said irreversible mission areas such as fires will keep a human in the loop, with guardrails developed alongside CIO teams.

Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg directed the Pentagon to fund up to $243.9 million for Palantir software through March 31, 2027.

The memo cites efficiencies across the defense industrial base but names no contracts or vehicles, and cites none of the Federal Acquisition Regulation's sole-source justifications.

Departments were told to identify further spending options through December 2028, building on a 10-year, $10 billion Army agreement that consolidated existing Palantir contracts.

AEVEX signed a definitive agreement to acquire BlackSea Technologies for up to $650 million, adding unmanned surface and subsea vessels to a mostly airborne portfolio.

Terms run to roughly $250 million in cash and $350 million in AEVEX Class A stock at $27.50 per share, plus $50 million in performance earnouts.

BlackSea builds the 16-foot GARC autonomous vessel the Navy is testing out of Coronado, with production capacity near 40 unmanned surface vessels a month.

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