Hypersonica raises €100 million to accelerate hypersonic missile development

L3Harris and Divergent Technologies announced on Tuesday, Oct. 13, that they had signed a teaming agreement to scale production of what the companies call affordable mass munitions.¹ They will initially seek to apply Divergent's additive manufacturing processes to L3Harris' Wolf Pack: Red Wolf, a kinetic vehicle for long-range precision strikes, and Green Wolf, an electronic warfare vehicle.^{1, 3}

Red Wolf already has a production path. In January, Naval Air Systems Command selected L3Harris to develop, test and manufacture Red Wolf vehicles for the Marine Corps' Precision Attack Strike Munition program.² L3Harris has spent more than two decades on its own additive manufacturing for rocket engines and defense systems.⁴ For the Wolf Pack, it will seek to use an outside firm's processes.¹

Divergent designs, builds and assembles structures on its DAPS platform, and says its factories run without fixed tooling, so different products can come off the same platform on the same day.^{1, 5} It has announced a delivery of fuselages with Saab and launched Venom, an autonomous strike aircraft, with Mach Industries; the companies say Venom went from concept to flight in 71 days.⁵

Quinlan Lyte, president of Advanced Effects in L3Harris' Missile Solutions business, said the company looks forward to "exploring how we can collaborate with Divergent" to increase production. Lukas Czinger, Divergent's chief executive, said it looks forward to partnering with L3Harris to apply DAPS "to production programs today."¹

CesiumAstro announced Nov. 5 that it closed $730 million in Series D financing. The round valued the company at more than $4.5 billion.¹

Synchronicity would extend CesiumAstro's business from supplying space technologies and complete spacecraft to developing and operating its own space infrastructure. The planned 737-satellite constellation is intended for commercial, sovereign and defense missions.¹

Janus Henderson led the equity round, with participants including Insight Partners, Sands Capital and Magnetar. The announcement also lists $100 million in debt financing through the Export-Import Bank of the United States and JPMorgan, without specifying whether that amount is included in the $730 million.¹

CesiumAstro acquired Jariet Technologies, 1Aardvark and Vidrovr in the past 12 months, bringing together semiconductor, mission software and artificial intelligence capabilities.¹