The business of defense, October 12

Lockheed Martin has awarded L3Harris a follow-on contract valued at $250 million to manufacture standard-range Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) propulsion units, L3Harris announced Oct. 12. Scott Alexander, L3Harris' president of propulsion systems in Missile Solutions, said the award came "at the highest quantity in program history." L3Harris did not give the number of motors, the contract type, the period of performance or a delivery schedule.¹

The motors will come out of a building that has yet to open. L3Harris says the contract will be fulfilled in its new 60,000-square-foot Arsenal of Freedom facility in Camden, Ark., scheduled to open later this year.¹ In December 2025, the company called its new Camden GMLRS facility "newly constructed." It said then that a GMLRS insensitive-munition motor order valued up to $200 million would be the first processed there.²

Aerojet Rocketdyne, before L3Harris acquired it, signed a $215.6 million cooperative agreement with the Defense Department to increase rocket propulsion manufacturing capacity, primarily for Javelin, Stinger and GMLRS.³ L3Harris says it is building the Camden facility as part of that agreement.⁴ In December 2025, it said the plant was funded through a Defense Production Act Title III cooperative agreement.²

L3Harris has delivered more than 35,000 GMLRS motors.⁴ It says it has doubled GMLRS motor output in recent years through advanced manufacturing techniques.¹

X-Bow Systems announced Monday, Oct. 12, that Leidos has selected it to develop and produce the booster motors for Leidos' Low-Cost Containerized Munition (LCCM), which X-Bow calls the Army's low-cost cruise missile.¹ X-Bow expects full-rate production of the motors at scale in 2027, the year Leidos says LCCM production begins. That puts the booster on the same clock as the missile.^1–2

Leidos is funding LCCM development itself, building on technologies from its AGM-190A Small Cruise Missile program. It said in May that warfighters will receive an initial 3,000 through a framework agreement with the Department of War. To produce the LCCM, it will expand its workforce and enhance its facilities in Huntsville, Ala., and McEwen, Tenn.²

Leidos' booster work goes to a solid rocket motor maker in a sector that, the Pentagon said in February 2022, consolidation had left with only two domestic suppliers.^{1, 4} On Oct. 7, X-Bow announced a prototype agreement to develop and qualify a solid rocket motor booster for a Navy next-generation weapon. X-Bow puts that agreement's total potential value at $69.7 million, with $50 million obligated at award.³

The Department of War said Monday, Oct. 12, that General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works has the capacity and stability to support construction of a second guided-missile destroyer.^1–2 Building an additional Arleigh Burke-class (DDG 51) destroyer at the Maine yard is feasible, the department concluded, "should Congress secure the necessary funding."¹

In May, the Navy's account of Bath centered on its backlog.³ At a hearing on May 21, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins pressed Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao on a fiscal 2027 request that included funding for only one DDG-51.^3–4 Cao answered that Bath had 11 destroyers on contract and seven in construction.³ "We haven't even begun to cut metal for the other four yet," he said. "We're trying to allow the industrial base to catch up."³

The department now cites "verifiable performance enhancements" from what it called a multi-phase due diligence review of the yard's production throughput, schedule adherence, quality assurance, supply chain resilience and workforce. Its release gave no figures from that review and named no statute, contract or dollar amount behind the certification.¹ Collins, who said she worked with the administration during its review and "repeated visits to BIW," said the decision clears the way for the department to order an additional destroyer there in fiscal 2027.²

Bath is one of two DDG-51 builders, alongside HII's Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss.⁵ In May, Collins called for at least two a year to sustain both yards and their suppliers. Without steady throughput, she said, "what you create is a gap at the steel cutting stage."³

Ondas and Palantir on Monday, Oct. 12, announced Regna AI, a standalone private company expected to help customers develop and deploy mission-specialized, fine-tuned AI models within their own sovereign environments.^{1, 3} Regna is built on Palantir's Artificial Intelligence Platform, but the equity sits with Ondas, which bootstrapped the company and initially owns all of it.^1–2 Palantir will provide model-training infrastructure and support delivery.¹

In a letter to stockholders, Ondas Chairman and Chief Executive Eric Brock said Ondas expects, over time, to engage financial partners to support Regna's growth as an independent company.^1–2 Operating expenses for further sovereign AI development are expected to move to Regna, reducing Ondas's ongoing investment in that work, he wrote. He said he believes Ondas's ownership will "unlock substantial embedded equity value" as the platform gains customers.²

Ondas will also be Regna's first customer, deploying fine-tuned models to run autonomous mission orchestration on the edge.¹ Regna builds on SkyWeaver C4I, an existing Ondas-Palantir collaboration.^1–2 Palantir's March announcement of its partnership with Ondas and World View, a high-altitude balloon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) company, described SkyWeaver as bringing data processing and model inference onto World View's Stratollite.^4–5

Brock said he believes Regna can become "a foundational AI platform" for the U.S. Department of War, allied governments and the defense and industrial companies that serve them. Beginning with ISR, Regna plans to expand into other mission areas and into security, critical infrastructure and industrial markets. Neither the release nor the letter gives an investment amount or names who will run Regna.¹

TOTE Services executed a shipyard subcontract with Hanwha Philly Shipyard on Wednesday, Oct. 7, to build the first of a planned series of Missile Range Instrumentation Vessels (MRIVs) for the Missile Defense Agency. Just before, TOTE signed its own contract with the Maritime Administration to manage the program's construction. The ships will replace Pacific Tracker and Pacific Collector, tracking ships built in 1965 and 1970. The first is scheduled for delivery in 2030.¹

Hanwha Systems and Hanwha Ocean, part of South Korea's Hanwha group, bought the yard in December 2024.⁵ The agency's ship reaches it through the Transportation Department: the program runs under an existing Maritime Administration (MARAD) contract vehicle with TOTE, as an interagency effort with the Department of War.¹ The yard already builds MARAD's National Security Multi-Mission Vessels, training ships for future mariners, under TOTE's management.^1–3 The MRIV keeps that hull design, with 70% overall commonality, and will use the same production line and workforce.¹

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought announced the award in July at a Philadelphia christening, calling the ship Golden Defender. He said it would support the President's Golden Dome missile defense system.² TOTE says it has since finalized terms, advanced the design and secured firm fixed pricing in less than three months.¹ Hanwha Defense USA Chief Executive Michael Coulter said in July that the yard is "continuing to evolve in complexity" as Hanwha pursues its "ambition to become a premier U.S. shipbuilder."²

The Army Applications Laboratory has awarded Havoc a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III contract, the Providence, R.I., collaborative autonomy software company announced Monday. The award will fund continued development of Havoc's software for logistics resupply across multiple hardware platforms. Under the contract, Havoc says, it will expand its multi-domain capabilities to orchestrate resupply deliveries to soldiers by air and ground.¹

Havoc's chief executive, Paul Lwin, said the Phase III designation means any federal agency, "not just the Department of War, can now bring Havoc on board through a streamlined, non-competitive path."¹ Phase III is the SBIR program's commercialization stage, where a company can market what it developed in Phase II to government or commercial buyers.² Havoc's backers include defense contractors: the company raised a $100 million Series A in May, with SAIC joining existing investors including Lockheed Martin.⁴

The Army lists Havoc as a winner of xTechOverwatch, a competition that sought concepts for autonomous aircraft, ground vehicles and sensor networks from small businesses.² In August, during the competition's Pegasus Charge III exercise at Fort Hood, Texas, Havoc and Rune Technologies completed an end-to-end autonomous resupply mission with Havoc's drones and Rune's TyrOS software, the companies said.³ Havoc says the expanded air and ground work responds to a need identified by its 1st Cavalry Division customer at Overwatch/Pegasus Charge.¹

The Army has brought back "night court," the top-to-bottom review of program spending it started in 2018. The original ultimately reprogrammed tens of billions of dollars to new priorities, Defense One reported. This round began over the summer with science and technology (S&T) programs.¹ Brent Ingraham, the Army's assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, told reporters Thursday what that stage turned up.^1–3 "We roughly found, I'll say, a little over $100 million of S&T funds that could better be realigned to match where the portfolios were headed," he said.¹

The yardstick is the larger goals of the Army's new Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) offices, which are now responsible for a program's entire lifecycle, according to Defense One.¹ Army transformation guidance calls for empowering PAEs to "make trades" within their portfolios.³ Because the Army changed how it budgets, PAEs now see S&T and operations and maintenance dollars alongside procurement and research, development, testing and evaluation money, Ingraham said. From S&T, the review moved on to foreign military sales contracts and then to sustainment, its most recent addition.¹

Booz Allen's new mission autonomy software has a planned 2027 path onto the C100, a quadcopter from Performance Drone Works (PDW) that the Army already buys.^1–3 PDW, the Huntsville, Ala., drone maker, announced Oct. 9 that it is integrating the software, powered by Shield AI's Hivemind, on a different aircraft: its AM (Attritable Multirotor) drones.¹

On AM, Booz Allen's software is an add-on: customers can fly the drone in its base configuration or add the software for "autonomy-assisted perception and operator-authorized effects delivery." It is meant to help operators execute parts of the mission workflow with reduced manual control while keeping decision-making authority. AM is a Group 1 drone that can be recovered and reused for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, then configured for attritable strike.¹

The C100 went to seven Army units under the first two Transformation in Contact (TiC) contracts. In September 2025, PDW announced a third TiC award, worth $20.9 million.² It says the Army expanded C100 use through follow-on procurement in the first half of 2026.³

PDW is also integrating a second Booz Allen product, a secure over-the-air fleet update tool, across its aircraft portfolio. Built for denied, disrupted, intermittent and limited-connectivity environments, it is designed to replace aircraft-by-aircraft software changes and cut approved update cycles from weeks or months to hours. Randy Yamada, a vice president and autonomy lead in Booz Allen's defense technology business, said the fleet manager provides "the secure software delivery and lifecycle management needed to update and verify" the autonomy capabilities.¹

The Navy is looking for domestic shipyards interested in and capable of serving as "a prime construction yard(s)" for SSN(X), its planned successor to the Virginia-class attack submarine.^2–3 The SSN(X) program office, PMS 351, issued the sources-sought notice with the Navy's directors of submarine programs and of design and construction, and Naval Sea Systems Command's Team Submarine office posted it Friday.^{1, 3} It is market research meant to "baseline current domestic industrial capabilities, identify future capital expenditure requirements, and inform acquisition strategies."³

Today only two U.S. shipyards can build nuclear-powered ships: General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII's Newport News Shipbuilding. They build each Virginia-class boat jointly. Earlier submarines were each built entirely in one yard, and the Congressional Research Service lists which approach SSN(X) should follow among the program's issues for Congress.² The notice's "yard(s)" leaves the number of prime yards open.³

The bar is infrastructure for "large-scale nuclear submarine construction." Prime yards must be capable of complete hull fabrication, modular outfitting, reactor compartment installation and post-delivery testing, with graving docks or floating drydocks and gantry cranes that can lift submarine modules. Any responsible source may respond, but incomplete questionnaires will not be reviewed. The program office wants detail on each candidate's capacity, drydock availability, tooling and design workforce to determine its readiness for "a long-duration capital combatant construction program."³

India has sold its homegrown Akash short-range surface-to-air missile system to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, gaining a foothold in Central Asia, Defense News reported Monday.¹ Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh confirmed the sales earlier this month in a news agency interview, according to Defense News. Armenia became the system's first foreign customer in 2022.¹

Export orders were a sliver of the order book at Bharat Dynamics, the Defence Ministry enterprise that lists the Akash Weapon System among both its products and its exports.^2–4 Its June investor presentation put export orders at about INR 417 crore as of March 31, 2026. That was roughly 1.6% of its INR 26,176 crore order book.² Defense News reported no manufacturer, quantity or delivery schedule for the sales, so it is not known whether the March figure includes these orders.¹

Analysts say the two countries are turning to India to reduce their reliance on Russia, one of the region's main arms suppliers, whose defense resources are strained by its war with Ukraine, Defense News reported. Indian defense officials have said the armed forces used Akash effectively in the four-day 2025 conflict with Pakistan.¹ Confidence in the system got a boost after it was "battle-tested," according to Aleksei Zakharov, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. He said that could encourage Central Asian buyers to consider other Indian hardware, such as artillery and radar systems.¹

• F-16 Next-Generation Mission Compute (NGMC) Industry Day (AFLCMC; all one-on-one slots reserved; attendance where Controlled Unclassified Information may be discussed restricted to companies with an active Joint Certification Program DD2345). Wed Oct 14, 5 p.m. ET: RSVP and registration due. Tue Oct 20 to Wed Oct 21: industry day, Wright-Patterson AFB⁴.
• High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) hardened medium fixed Satellite Communications Earth Terminals RFI (Product Manager for Wideband Enterprise Satellite Systems; up to nine terminals). Thu Oct 15, noon ET: responses due⁵.
• Rendezvous, Proximity Operations (RPO) Threat Response (RTR) VICTUS Responsive Launch Space Vehicle RFI (spacecraft for responsive launch and tasking in FY29 and beyond). Mon Oct 19, noon PT: submissions due⁶.
• Egyptian Navy Autonomous INTelligence System (AINTS) Platform Integration RFP (Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) for PMW 740; Foreign Military Sales). Tue Oct 20, noon PT: proposals due⁷.
• Production and Engineering Services of the Lower Tier Air Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) sources sought (Army STARE Project Office; seven-year multiyear procurement IDIQ anticipated). Wed Oct 21, 5 p.m. CT: responses due⁸.
• User Activity Monitoring (UAM) Centralization Prototype Other Transaction Area of Interest (Defense Information Systems Agency). Thu Oct 22, 5 p.m. CT: responses due⁹.
• Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) Increment 4 Industry Day (Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) Fires). Fri Oct 23: registration due. Tue Oct 27 to Wed Oct 28: industry day, Von Braun Center, Huntsville, Alabama¹⁰.

On the calendar

• RTX third-quarter 2026 earnings. Tue Oct 20: results before the market opens; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET¹.
• CACI International fiscal 2027 first-quarter earnings. Wed Oct 21: results after the market closes². Thu Oct 22, 8 a.m. ET: conference call².
• Lockheed Martin third-quarter 2026 earnings. Thu Oct 22: results before the market opens; conference call at 8:30 a.m. ET³.

Further out

• Next Generation Hypersonic Cruise Missiles RFI (DARPA). Fri Nov 6, 5 p.m. ET: responses due¹¹.