💰 Heaviside hits $600M valuation, 21x its May price

Northrop Grumman introduced Raid Hunter, a gun-based air defense system pairing Chain Gun technology with 50mm guided projectiles, networked controllers, and battle management software.

The palletized, modular design deploys aboard C-130 aircraft, with vehicle-mounted and container variants planned, and targets drone swarms, autonomous aircraft, and cruise missiles.

Deep magazines and rapid reloads are aimed at saturation raids that exhaust missile-based short-range defenses, with testing scheduled for later this year.

All 12 companies competing for space-based interceptor (SBI) contracts have cleared Gate 1 of the Space Force's four-gate demonstration, Gen. Michael Guetlein said in Huntsville.

Gate 1 covered design maturity and component-level testing; Gate 2 requires building hardware that can reach space, followed by on-orbit proof and architecture integration.

The prize-based competition carries up to $3.2 billion combined, with initial on-orbit capability targeted for 2028 and intercept demonstrations not slated until June 2029.

The Army has selected a battalion-sized formation as its initial contribution to Golden Dome, Lt. Gen. John Rafferty said on the sidelines of the Space and Missile Defense Symposium.

The unit came from existing force structure rather than new builds, a concession to the timeline for operational capability by mid-2028.

Experimentation and testing with the unit start now, with elements from other echelons expected to contribute, and manning and command-and-control approaches still unresolved.

Heaviside Industries closed a $60 million Series B at a $600 million valuation, more than 21 times its Series A price from three months ago.

Felicis led the round, and the Los Angeles company simultaneously signed Norway's Nammo to supply warheads for its autonomous precision munitions.

Locking in an established munitions supplier before scaling production inverts the usual sequence, and total funding now stands at $88 million since 2024.

DARPA issued an Aug. 7 request for information on a Next Generation Hypersonic Cruise Missile, with the goal of building and flight-testing a fully integrated demonstrator.

The notice asks for unconstrained subsystem concepts in propulsion, high energy density fuels, and high-temperature materials rather than incremental gains over current scramjet designs.

Design for manufacturing is emphasized from the outset, signaling a push for a survivable weapon that can be produced affordably and at scale.

The DARPA Lift Challenge concluded Aug. 9 at the National Museum of the US Air Force, with AVIDrone taking first place at a 3.84:1 payload-to-weight ratio.

No team reached the 4:1 objective in a scored run, though DefendTex demonstrated 9.63:1 outside scoring and took the $500,000 Most Promising Technology award.

Current multirotor drones typically manage 1:1 or less, and DARPA plans SBIR topics and investor introductions to mature the winning designs.

The Army has abandoned its plan to build a software backbone for autonomous ground vehicles itself, leaning instead on commercial autonomy vendors, an official told Breaking Defense.

Army chief technology officer Michael Rose said the Army Robotic Common Software effort made sense before robust industry investment in autonomy existed.

Vendors are now expected to self-organize into teams delivering formation-level solutions for specific problem sets such as logistics, sustainment, and breaching.

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