🧠 Leonardo DRS is buying Raft for $450M

CACI won a three-year, $500 million indefinite delivery contract, with SkyValor chosen as the first task order under Joint Interagency Task Force 401's domestic drone defense effort.

SkyValor cleared operational evaluations at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, detecting small drones beyond line of sight and giving operators minutes of warning instead of seconds.

The system now moves to full-rate production for deployment at critical sites, following an earlier task force award for four truck-mounted units.

The F-47 has entered engineering and manufacturing development and is producing a small number of test aircraft, Gen. Dale White told an industry audience in Dayton.

That phase covers integration and testing of all aircraft systems and includes priced options for low-rate initial production, though the test fleet size was not disclosed.

First flight remains set for 2028, with at least 185 jets planned to replace the F-22 fleet and over $5 billion requested for fiscal 2027.

Leonardo DRS agreed to buy mission software company Raft for $450 million in cash, with the deal expected to close in the fourth quarter pending regulatory approval.

Raft, founded in 2018 and based in McLean, Virginia, builds open-architecture data fusion software and supported the Army's Next Generation Command and Control prototype in the Pacific.

The purchase pairs DRS sensing and computing hardware with software talent, continuing a pattern of hardware primes buying their way into defense software.

The Navy awarded $76.6 billion to General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII Newport News Shipbuilding for five Columbia-class and nine Virginia-class submarines.

The package includes $29.5 billion for Columbia Build II boats, $42.1 billion for Virginia Block VI, and $5 billion for nuclear shipbuilding infrastructure.

Continuous production across both classes locks in yard capacity as the lead Columbia boat slips to 2028 delivery, a year behind its original schedule.

The Air Force's Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program cleared a pre-prototyping readiness review and now targets engines ready for aircraft integration around 2030.

Budget-driven delays pushed the effort back roughly three years, meaning the F-47 will make its first flight on a different propulsion system.

GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney will build and test prototypes, backed by a $514 million fiscal 2027 request and nearly $906 million projected for 2028.

The Department of War awarded Hidden Level a $100 million other transaction authority (OTA) contract to scale passive radar and radio frequency sensing against drone threats.

The Syracuse company placed as a top performer at the Technology Readiness Experimentation 25.2 and Falcon Peak 25.2 events and in the Defense Innovation Unit's Low-Cost Sensing Challenge.

Its sensors detect aircraft without emitting energy and will deploy across installations, test ranges, and the US border through a direct ordering pathway for military customers.

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