🚁 Joby is paying $500M for a defense arm

Raytheon received a $745 million Missile Defense Agency contract to produce and sustain Standard Missile-3 Block IIA interceptors at its Tucson and Huntsville facilities.

The SM-3 IIA, co-developed with Japanese industry, pairs a larger rocket motor with an enhanced kinetic warhead to defend wider areas against short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

RTX recently put $115 million into expanding its Alabama missile integration site, lifting throughput more than 50% as pressure on interceptor magazine depth climbs.

The Army awarded prototype Other Transaction Agreements to Maren-Go, Overland AI, Forterra, Hendrick Motorsports, American Rheinmetall and HDT under its Infantry Last Tactical Mile program.

Each vendor delivers four production-ready unmanned ground vehicles built for resupply and casualty evacuation between support units and the forward line of troops.

The awards follow an April commercial solutions opening and push autonomy into the most exposed stretch of the logistics chain.

Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein told the Space and Missile Defense Symposium there is no Golden Dome without funding, citing a tough fiscal 2027 budget environment.

The White House proposed covering about 97% of the program's $17.5 billion request through reconciliation, a route lawmakers have so far treated coolly.

Guetlein said 90% of last year's roughly $24 billion has been obligated, with contracts already placed for space-based interceptors, radars and data networks.

US Space Command's deputy commander told the Huntsville symposium that laser weapons on the ground, in the air, at sea and in orbit register as both threat and opportunity.

With constellations reaching thousands of satellites, targeting shifts toward one-to-many options: cyber, directed energy, and the limited ground systems those networks depend on.

Army Space and Missile Defense Command's deputy head pointed to stratospheric platforms and payloads as an underinvested place to mount non-kinetic effects.

Boeing revealed an Ultra Low-Cost Seeker built from modified commercial components, flight-tested aboard a Beechcraft 1900 and launched on a rocket against a drone target.

Northrop Grumman named its 50mm gun-based air defense system Raid Hunter, pairing Chain Gun hardware with precision-guided rounds against drone swarms and cruise missiles.

Seekers have throttled Patriot production for years, and both entries attack the cost imbalance between cheap massed threats and expensive interceptors.

The Defense Information Systems Agency expects to release the final solicitation for the military's main cloud contract on August 24.

The successor, called JWCC Unified Cloud Marketplace, adds a tier for everything-as-a-service and a third reserved for commercial innovators and small businesses.

The current $9 billion vehicle has skewed heavily toward Amazon Web Services at $526.5 million in task order obligations, with Microsoft, Oracle and Google trailing.

Joby Aviation agreed to acquire Ohio-based Resonant Sciences for $500 million in cash and stock, standing up a dedicated defense division.

Resonant brings radio frequency and sensor systems, $100 million in trailing 12-month revenue, and access to classified US government programs.

Resonant CEO J. Micah North will lead the unit, absorbing Joby's turbine-electric, hydrogen-electric and autonomy work, with closing expected in the first half of 2027.

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