Space technology startup True Anomaly raised $260 million in a funding round targeted at product and talent investment, increasing vertical integration, and facility expansion.
The oversubscribed Series C round was led by Accel.
True Anomaly said in the next 18 months it will launch its third orbital flight test to low Earth orbit (LEO), Mission X, fly the Space Force’s VICTUS HAZE Tactically Responsive Space mission that will be lifted to orbit by a Firefly Aerospace launch vehicle, deploy its first Jackal autonomous orbital vehicle to geosynchronous orbit and cislunar space, enhance its Mosaic software platform, and introduce a new product that will enable responsiveness to on-orbit threats.
Other investors in the funding round include Meritech Capital, and existing investors Eclipse, Riot Ventures, Menlo Ventures, 645 Ventures, ACME Capital, Space VC, Champion Hill Ventures, and Narya. Stifel Bank is providing debt capital.
Nevada’s SNC has received the fourth 747-8i at the company’s Aviation Innovation and Technology Center (AITC) in Dayton, Ohio for the U.S. Air Force Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) program, SNC said on Wednesday.
A year ago, the Air Force awarded SNC an up to $13.1 billion contract for an E-4C SAOC to replace the Boeing [BA] E-4B “Nightwatch” fleet, based on the 747 passenger plane and used as a mobile national command authority in crisis situations, such as “doomsday” events (Defense Daily, Apr. 26, 2024).
The E-4B entered service in 1980 more than five years after its predecessor, the E-4A.
While SAOC was a significant win last year for SNC, the latter was the only company that remained in the SAOC fray, as Boeing was unable to meet Air Force requirements.
SNC has been a contractor for the Air Force’s BIG SAFARI special mission aircraft program.
“Just six weeks after contract award, SNC welcomed the first [Korean Air] 747-8i to the AITC,” SNC said on Wednesday. “Four months later, in October 2024, SNC celebrated the opening of a second state-of-the-art hangar at the AITC while simultaneously breaking ground on two additional hangars to support ongoing and future projects.”
“Progress on the program continued throughout the fall with arrival of the second SAOC aircraft at the AITC”–an arrival followed by the move of the first SAOC aircraft to Wichita State University’s National Institute of Aviation Research (NIAR) in November of 2024,” the company said. “The move officially commenced the program’s engineering and development activities.”
For SAOC, SNC has teamed with RTX‘s Collins Aerospace, GE Aerospace [GE], Safran‘s Greenpoint Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Skunk Works division, NIAR, and Rolls-Royce.
When SNC won SAOC last year, the company said that its team also included FlightSafety International‘s FSI Defense. SNC and FSI Defense did not respond to email questions on whether FSI Defense is still a member of SNC’s SAOC team.
The $150 billion DoD reconciliation bill includes $168 million to accelerate production of SAOC (Defense Daily, Apr. 28).
VTG on Wednesday said it has acquired Triaplex, Inc. in a deal that adds to its cyber and signals intelligence capabilities and expands its intelligence community customer base.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Triaplex is based in Fulton, Md., near Fort Meade, home of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. The company has more than 30 employees.
Founded in 2020, Triaplex provides radio frequency solutions to its intelligence community customers. Triaplex’s senior leadership will join VTG.
“This partnership allows us to make the right, focused investments in our talent and technology, bolstering our core RF expertise,” David Lee, CEO of Triaplex, said in a statement.
VTG is based in Northern Virginia and provides modernization and digital engineering technology services to its customers. The acquisition is the fourth since it received a majority investment from the private equity firm A&M Capital.
President Trump announced 21 Boeing [BA] F-15EX fighters will replace the A-10 Warthog close air support aircraft at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Mich.
“As commander-in-chief, I am proud to announce that very soon we will replace the retiring A-10 Warthogs with 21 brand-new F-15EX Eagle II fighter jets–the best in the world,” Trump said in a Tuesday speech at Selfridge.
In the last several years, Air Force leaders have said that the retirement of the A-10 fleet would not lead to a fall in the quality of CAS for front-line troops and that other aircraft can perform the CAS role.
In August 2023, the Air Force said that it would retire 78 A-10s at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., and that the 492nd Special Operations Wing–an Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) support wing–would move from Hurlburt Field, Fla., to Davis-Monthan where it would become a power projection wing “with all of AFSOC’s mission capabilities (strike, mobility, ISR, air/ground integration).”
The fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act reduces the authorized ceiling of A-10s in the Air Force inventory from 135 to 96(DefenseDaily, May 14, 2024).
The House Armed Services Committee voted 35-21 on Tuesday to advance a $150 billion defense spending plan as part of the forthcoming reconciliation bill.
HASC’s markup of the legislation included voting down a slew of Democrat-proposed amendments aimed at placing limits on the spending, to include a measure that would have made 75 percent of the funds unavailable until the Pentagon certifies its classified information policies, which follows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s involvement in the Signalgate incident.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, speaks during floor debate of the FY ’25 NDAA on June 13, 2024. Photo: Screenshot of U.S. House livestream.
“This is a historic day. Never before has HASC had the opportunity to use reconciliation to make a generational investment in our national security. But we do today,” HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said in his opening remarks at the markup.“The bill before us provides $150 billion in mandatory funding to modernize our military, revitalize the defense industrial base, and improve the quality of life for our servicemembers. The time for this level of investment is long overdue.”
The $150 billion defense bill includes $25 billion for the Golden Dome missile defense system, tens of billions to boost shipbuilding and production of munitions and drones, $33.7 billion for shipbuilding and increases for a wide swatch of defense priorities (Defense Daily, April 28).
Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), HASC’s top Democrat, offered the amendment to place a hold on 75 percent of the funds and voted against the bill, citing his objection that the defense spending boost would be paid for with “devastating cuts” to government programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
“There’s no question that the Department of Defense has requirements and that we as a country face threats and challenges from around the world. We clearly need to meet those threats and challenges, and we need to do so in ways that promote efficiency and effectiveness and allow for greater innovation,” Smith said in a statement following the vote. “Gifting the Pentagon an additional $150 billion with little to no guard rails, on top of the nearly $900 billion defense budget already passed and without any budget plan from the President for Fiscal Year 2026 or even execution instructions for FY25, defies basic common sense.”
“Giving that money to the Pentagon as it continues to churn with chaos inflicted by Secretary of Defense Hegseth and as a result of the President caring about only one thing—loyalty to himself—borders on negligence,” Smith added.
Ultimately, five HASC Democrats, Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), George Whitesides (D-Calif.) and Eugene Vindman (D-Va.), joined with all Republicans to pass the measure.
HASC’s markup will now go to the House Budget Committee, which will compile it with the other committee’s portions of the legislation to form the full reconciliation bill. When the Senate then takes up the measure, SASC may conduct its own markup prior to the upper chamber’s consideration of the legislation.
An amendment proposed by Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), a longtime anti-nuclear advocate, to postpone Sentinel funding from a $150 billion defense reconciliation bill marked up in the House Armed Services Committee narrowly failed on Tuesday.
Garamendi’s amendment was killed, 25-30, while the overall bill advanced, 35-21, to the House Budget Committee.
Sentinel, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) currently being built by Northrop Grumman [NOC], received $1.5 billion in “risk reduction” funding in the
bill released over the weekend. Garamendi, a longtime anti-nuclear advocate, offered an amendment that would withhold the $1.5 billion line item for Sentinel risk reduction until Milestone B is approved.
Milestone B approval means the program can enter the engineering, manufacturing and development phase. While the Sentinel program received Milestone B approval in 2020, the approval was rescinded when the Air Force notified Congress last year that the program breached Nunn-McCurdy cost guidelines, or went 25% over budget.
Garamendi called Sentinel “extraordinarily expensive,” adding “I’m not exactly sure what risk reduction means.”
In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, Vice Adm. Scott Pappano, President Trump’s pick for principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said “recruitment and retention” are the agency’s biggest challenges.
“What you’re going to be tasked with, you and others, is going to require a huge infrastructure investment,” SASC Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said during Pappano’s confirmation hearing. “Am I correct, you’re going to need more workforce, by a great deal, to get this done?”
Pappano told Wicker that he would need to “look across the enterprise blueprint” to “figure out where the barriers are to get that [infrastructure investment] done with urgency,” and look into “the workforce that goes along with that.”
Meanwhile, in Pappano’s prepared remarks, he said that “in terms of workforce, the biggest challenges facing NNSA are recruitment and retention of highly skilled technical employees.”
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) also expressed concerns over the agency’s workforce, saying the staff level is down 8 or 9% since January. Ranking member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said the NNSA workforce, which was at 2,000 before taking cuts from the Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency, is now 1,650.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) specifically asked Pappano how he would address the challenge of recruitment and retention, to which Pappano replied he would “advocate for the men and women in NNSA and the laboratories,” understanding it’s a “unique skillset” and that he would try to do everything he could to “attract, recruit, train, retain” those workers.
The principal deputy administrator is the second highest position in the NNSA, under the administrator or the undersecretary of energy.
The Marine Corps has placed the first production orders with BAE Systems for the turreted version of the Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV-30), while a lead program official said Tuesday there are no plans for additional ACV variants beyond the current family of vehicles.
“As of right now, there are no plans for additional mission role variants. I have not had any conversations from our requirements sponsors at [Combat Development and Integration] that would indicate that they are looking at anything additional in the way of mission role variants,” Col. Timothy Hough, program manager for advanced amphibious assault, said in remarks at the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C.
BAE Systems’ ACV Logistics concept demonstrator at the Modern Day Marine ’25 conference. Photo: Matthew Beinart
BAE Systems announced Tuesday it recently received a $188.5 million full-rate production award for 30 ACV-30 vehicles, and Rebecca McGrane, the company’s vice president of amphibious programs, confirmed to Defense Daily a second $172 million order is set to be awarded later this week for 30 more ACV-30s.
“We’re really excited about that. Those will be delivered [starting] next year,” McGrane said in an interview at Modern Day Marine.
The Marine Corps is pursuing a family of vehicles approach for ACV, which includes the base personnel platform (ACV-P) and a command and control platform (ACV-C) currently in full-rate production, a recovery variant (ACV-R) going through development and the ACV-30.
The first production representative test ACV-30s were delivered to the Marine Corps in early 2024, with the testing having informed the full-rate production decision for the turreted variant (Defense Daily, Feb. 1 2024).
Norway’s Kongsberg was awarded a contract this past November worth up to $329 million to provide its 30mm Protector Remote Turret 20 (RT-20) weapon systems for the ACV-30 (Defense Daily, Nov. 5 2024).
“The ACV-30 enables transport of troops, mission essential equipment and other payloads while providing the lethality and protection Marines need. The lightweight turret system also ensures platform mobility is preserved,” BAE Systems said in a statement.
McGrane said the Marine Corps’ planned acquisition objective for the ACV-30 is 150 vehicles.
BAE Systems to date has delivered almost 300 of the base ACV-Ps and has just started delivering the first ACV-Cs to the Marine Corps, McGrane noted, adding delivery of the three production representative ACV-Rs for testing will occur over the next couple months.
During Modern Day Marine, BAE Systems is also showcasing an ACV-Logistics concept demonstrator platform for the first time that is reconfigured to have 500 cubic feet of volume for equipment, has capacity for 11,000 pounds of payload, is integrated with a heavy lift drone and has a crane attached that can lift up to 4,000 pounds.
“It’s a concept demonstration vehicle for a logistics variant that we’re demoing for the Marine Corps that could meet a capability gap for expeditionary logistics in a contested environment,” McGrane told Defense Daily. “You don’t have to rely on connectors or airlift capability. That provides a really novel capability to deliver supplies as needed to the front.”
While the Marine Corps is not currently looking to add additional variants, Hough said his focus is on potential capability upgrades and cited counter-drone capability as a top priority.
“Right now, we’re focused on how can we add to existing capability within the funding that the Marine Corps has right now,” Hough said. [I’m also interested in] anything we can do in that driver station space to kind of offload some of the tasks they have to do and where can we automate some of those. I think that would be a big win.”
BAE Systems has been working with Kongsberg to bring its Integrated Combat Solution (ICS) battlefield situational awareness tool to the U.S. defense market, to include exploring application on the ACV fleet, having noted the tool provides capability to link and share video streams, metadata, target information and slew-to-cue commands, “reducing the typical threat response speed from minutes to seconds.”
At Modern Day Marine, BAE Systems officials highlighted ICS’ ability to bolster C-UAS capabilities and a new upgrade that allows connectivity with Marines’ Android Team Awareness Kits.
McGrane noted BAE Systems has previously shown ACV concepts for potential precision fires variant and a C4/UAS-configured platform, with the ACV-Logistics demonstrator as the latest example to highlight the platform’s modularity for the Marine Corps.
“What we’re really trying to say is ACV is really able to meet a wide variety of mission needs without having to invest in another development platform,” McGrane said. “[The Marine Corps] has a mature base platform that’s reconfigurable to meet a lot of different needs.”
“We are trying to listen to [the Marine Corps’] feedback, anticipate their needs and then show them relatively quick solutions that we can help them with if they should desire that,” McGrane added.
Firefly Aerospace issued a post-launch update, reporting the vehicle had a nominal liftoff and first stage flight. But the rocket experienced a mishap between stage separation and second stage ignition. Firefly said this “led to the loss of the Lightning engine nozzle extension, substantially reducing the engine’s thrust.”
Firefly reported the upper stage did not reach orbital velocity, and the stage and payload fell into the Pacific Ocean.
“Firefly recognizes the hard work that went into payload development and would like to thank our mission partners at Lockheed Martin for their continued support. The team is working closely with our customers and the FAA to conduct an investigation and determine root cause of the anomaly. We will provide more information on our mission page after the investigation is completed,” the launcher said in a statement.
The LM 400 satellite on the mission has been in the works for years, designed as a mid-class bus with more payload power than smallsats, but more agile than traditional large satellites. It was self-funded by Lockheed Martin as a technology demonstrator. Lockheed Martin designed LM 400 with common components to adapt it to a variety of orbits and missions, including missile tracking, remote sensing, and communications.
This is a setback for Firefly Aerospace’s launch program as it was the first Alpha launch of 2025. The Alpha rocket has had a mixed success record, completing the successful VICTUS NOX Tactically Responsive Space mission for the U.S. Space Force in 2023 and a NASA Venture Class Launch Services mission in July of last year.
But Alpha’s first flight in 2021 failed, and then missions in October 2022 and December 2023 were partial failures where in both cases, the satellites did not reach target orbit.
In March, Firefly Aerospace marked the first successful soft-landing on the Moon by a commercial company with its Blue Ghost lunar lander, launched by SpaceX.
More than a year after a series of drone incursions at a sensitive military base in Virginia, the abilities of domestic bases to observe potential threats from small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) varies and is insufficient, a Joint Staff official said on Tuesday.
Depending on the base, they have “very little to somewhat more comprehensive” capabilities to detect and track drones, Rear Adm. Paul Spedero, vice director for operations on the Joint Staff, told a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee panel.
More resources will help close UAS detection and tracking gaps as will the need for command and control to fuse layers of sensors to create a common operating picture, Spedero said. Investments are also needed to respond once drones have been detected and identified, he said.
U.S. Northern Command, which has authority in the U.S. for synchronizing counter-UAS operations in its area of responsibility, has “fly-away kits” and expertise to provide bases that lack sufficient domain awareness capability to detect drone incursions on their own, Spedero said.
For 17 days in December 2023, there were reports of unauthorized drone incursions over Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE) in Virginia. Spedero and Mark Ditlevson, acting assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, said in their joint written testimony that “DoD had little ability to detect, track, characterize, or disrupt and defeat the sUAS at JBLE.”
Most of the JBLE incursions were visually observed and reported by “not specially trained personnel” and have not been attributed to specific actors, they wrote.
The Air Force’s top air superiority fighter, the F-22, operates from JBLE.
In February, the commander of U.S. Northern Command told a Senate panel that in 2024 there were more than 350 drone incursions reported at over 100 domestic military installations (Defense Daily, Feb. 13). Spedero said that since then, there have been more sitings but declined to giver numbers outside a classified setting.
Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.), who chairs the House Oversight Subcommittee on Military and Foreign Affairs, said at the outset of the hearing on drone incursions over military installations that one issue afflicting local bases is “unclear standard operating procedures to guide based commanders to responses and decision making.”
Spedero said that within the last month U.S. Northern Command has published, and provided to base commanders, the standard operating procedures on how to respond to drone incursions.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), the ranking member on the subcommittee, pointed out that current laws allowing certain U.S. departments to detect and respond to UAS activities only cover about half of military installations. This is an area where new authorities should be considered, he suggested.
Spedero said that bases not covered by the current law—which is Title 10 of U.S. Code, Sec. 130i—may request coverage but only if they meet the authorized criteria. He pointed out that Luke AFB, Ariz., where most F-35 fighter training is done, “is not a covered facility because training facilities are not covered” by the law.
Ditlevson and Spedero wrote that while challenges revealed by the JBLE incident still exist, DoD has made progress and there have been “improvements in subsequent responses.” Still, they said, despite “some successes, we still have areas where continued work is necessary to advance policies, develop capabilities, and build capacity to address the threat posed by both malign and careless actors in our National Airspace.”
