🛰️ Rocket Lab wins $397M to hedge the SpaceX bet

HII signed long-term performance-based production agreements with GrayMatter Robotics and Path Robotics, intending to award up to $900 million in shipbuilding work over seven years.

The firms will develop and qualify autonomous welding, grinding, blasting, painting, assembly and inspection to Navy standards, then integrate them into a single production line.

Awards depend on hitting technology, manufacturing readiness and performance milestones, with scope spanning carriers, submarines, destroyers, amphibious ships, future frigates and unmanned surface vessels.

The Army awarded Other Transaction Authority prototype agreements to Firehawk, iRocket, Nammo Perry and Albers to supply M151 high-explosive warheads for Hydra-70 rockets.

Each vendor delivers 24 prototype warheads and a modernized Technical Data Package within 18 months, sourced through the One Nation Innovation marketplace.

General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems remains the incumbent supplier, and the Army did not disclose award values or how GD-OTS fits going forward.

Trax International asked the Court of Federal Claims to order the Army to reevaluate bids for mission support services at White Sands Missile Range.

The complaint alleges an AI tool invented a weakness in Trax's proposal, citing references to the bid that no source selection board member checked.

Southwest Range Services won at roughly $450 million, a $29.4 million premium, after the Government Accountability Office denied Trax's earlier protest in May.

Marine Corps University and the Naval Postgraduate School will run an AI Learning Initiatives Hackathon from September 15 to 18 in Virginia and California.

Marines, sister services, government civilians, vendors and academics can apply through August 14, with no rank requirement and judging by military, civilian and industry leaders.

Target use cases include personalized learning, simulation, performance assessment, curriculum generation and wargaming, with an after-action report informing what gets deployed at scale.

Space Force awarded $615 million to Rocket Lab, STR and an unnamed third firm for space-based airborne moving target indicator (AMTI) satellites.

Rocket Lab takes $397 million to build and launch its Flatellite design, roughly two months after SpaceX won a $4.16 billion AMTI contract.

Officials cast the second task order as deliberate diversification, maturing several technical approaches after damage to an E-3 Sentry exposed the fragility of airborne radar.

A Heritage Foundation report concludes the United States would exhaust the interceptors needed to stop Chinese missiles within days of a conflict.

The Pentagon holds under 10 percent of the PAC-3 MSE, THAAD, SM-6 and SM-3 rounds required for a protracted high-intensity fight, the report says.

US and allied forces fired roughly 1,738 theater surface-to-air munitions in four days of the Iran conflict, outpacing new deals to expand PAC-3 and THAAD output.

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