Shield AI on Thursday said it has raised $240 million in a new funding round to fuel growth of its autonomy software suite that it recently began offering to other companies, governments, and developers to build, test, and integrate autonomy into their robotic systems.
The F-1 funding round brings Shield AI’s valuation to $5.3 billion.
“Hivemind Enterprise is about supercharging the industrial base to build and monetize autonomy, enabling a world of millions of autonomous systems in the next 10 years,” Nathan Michael, Shield AI’s chief technology officer, said in a statement.
L3 Harris Technologies [LHX] and South Korea’s
Hanwha Aerospace are major participants in the latest funding round, Shield AI said. L3Harris and Shield AI recently announced a collaboration to demonstrate the former’s electronic warfare battle management system integrated on a drone piloted by the latter’s artificial intelligence software (Defense Daily, Feb. 26).
“The need for advanced autonomy has never been more urgent, and Shield AI is proving that autonomy at scale is not only possible but inevitable,” Chris Kubasik, chairman and CEO of L3Harris, said in a statement. “Their commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI-driven autonomy aligns with our trusted disruptor strategy, where we partner to accelerate the delivery of AI-enabled solutions and emerging technologies to meet our customers’ needs faster and more efficiently.”
Shield AI’s autonomy pilot software for aircraft is called Hivemind—part of the Hivemind Enterprise suite—and has been used to fly eight different aircraft, mostly small and medium-sized drones, including in military operations.
Other participants in the latest funding round include existing investors Andreesen Horowitz, U.S. Innovative Technology, and Washington Harbour.
York Space Systems has completed vibration testing and is ready to ship a satellite it has developed for an experimental national security mission for an undisclosed customer to demonstrate autonomous on-orbit capabilities with minimal human direction, the company said on Thursday.
York said it is ready to ship the spacecraft to Cape Canaveral in Florida for the Tyndal mission that is scheduled for launch in April. The spacecraft is built on the Denver-based company’s LX-CLASS platform, which has a more than a 300-kilogram payload mass.
Tyndal is classified and had not previously been disclosed. The mission is or a commercial customer but the end user for the capability that will be demonstrated is the Defense Department, York said.
York said many of the autonomous demonstrations conducted by Tyndal will be done simultaneously with two of the company’s operational missions, Bane and Bard. Bane was launched in December 2023 and is carrying two commercial payloads provided by CACI International
[CACI], a resilient position navigation and timing system, and an optical communications demonstration.
The Bard mission has not been publicly disclosed. The company told Defense Daily it is for Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and NASA to demonstrate communications between low Earth orbit and the ground, and between satellites in medium Earth orbit and geosynchronous Earth orbit. The space agency and APL are demonstrating future capabilities to replace the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System used by NASA for space communications.
The Tyndal mission will be monitored from York’s Multi-Mission Operations Center and will showcase “the seamless orchestration of multiple spacecraft, reinforcing York’s ability to scale and manage complex constellations with a single, integrated command structure,” the company said.
Tyndal is part of a planned constellation for national security capabilities, York said. The mission is “an initial demonstrator of new capability,” the company said, adding “follow on programs are planned and funded.”
“Designed with mission flexibility in mind, Tyndal features over-the-air software update capabilities, ensuring real-time adaptability and responsiveness to evolving operational needs,” York said. “Additionally, mission data will be securely disseminated through a cloud-based architecture, enabling enhanced accessibility for customers and stakeholders. The spacecraft will also be equipped with automated payload deployment and scripted mission execution, streamlining operations and reducing the need for continuous human intervention.”
Danti, a two-year-old venture backed firm specializing in natural language processing, on Thursday announced a public sector offering based on an artificial intelligence-powered knowledge engine to allow users to sift through massive amounts of data by typing in a query to get results in near real-time.
The Atlanta-based startup’s technology is already being used by the U.S. Space Force’s Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking Program (TacSRT) program that is leveraging the commercial sector to provide commercial data analytics operational planning products to combatant commands.
“Danti aids our mission to rapidly understand the massive volume of information, both in archive and newly generated, across commercial and open data sources,” Maj. Zach He of the Space Force’s TacSRT program, said in a statement. “Danti breaks down plain text questions into relevant and related components across the compiled data sources, creating a comprehensive, data rich, geographically anchored picture of information that TacSRT leverages to deliver analytical reports to our Space Force components at our combatant commands.”
The 20-employee company is also supporting the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Marine Corps, Army, and others. For NGA, Danti is providing its technology through the agency’s geospatial Environment for Access, Retrieval and Content Hosting—called gSearch—allowing users, including non-experts, “search across government and commercial data holdings simultaneously” to get the information they need, Jesse Kallman, founder and CEO, told Defense Daily in an email reply to questions.
Danti is also supporting other NGA efforts, she said.
Kallman said that beyond her company’s product, “the key news…is the U.S. government’s willingness and excitement to bring advanced generative AI techniques into operational use, in real missions, saving our analysts hours and days of work scouring various cross agency data systems, speeding the flow through once cumbersome workflows requiring many lengthy steps, allowing end users/deployed service members the ability to ask questions of the massive holdings of information their government has procured for their benefit which was behind many layers of wall before.”
Danti has raised $8.3 million from its investors through a pre-seed and seed round.
Shield Capital, Susa Ventures, Tech Square Ventures, and individuals are investors. Danti has over $4 million in government contracts that it has announced, and others it has not, Kallman said.
A bipartisan pair of House Armed Services Committee members said Wednesday that the Pentagon’s combatant commands should be given more authority to directly go and procure innovative technologies that can be fielded quickly.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), the top Democrat on the HASC’s Intelligence and Special Operations panel, said the idea has been “batted around” and cited the example of Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) unique acquisition authority as a model to follow.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) prepares to depart after having a discussion with high level stakeholders at Buckley Space Force Base, Colo., Jan. 23, 2023. (U.S. Space Force photo by Airman 1st Class Airman Yepez)
“There is a model that we used during the global war on terror where we gave SOCOM direct authority to go right to market and buy what they needed and immediately send it to the warfighter, and it worked. It was cheaper. It was more effective. It was more efficient,” Crow said in remarks at the Reagan Institute’s National Security Innovation Base Summit. “So maybe we start cutting the services out of it. And, you know, I’m the co-chair of the Army caucus. I’m definitely going to freaking hear [about] this from the Army.”
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chair of the HASC Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, joined Crow on the panel and said he agreed with the idea of pushing more authority to the COCOMs, adding this could be “the baseline” rather than “the exception to the rule.”
“Now, listen. People up the chain in [Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the service branches are going to, ‘No, no, no, you can’t do that because we have all these things and these planning documents that we have to do.’ What I argue is that the planning process and how we identify the threat and how we operationalize resources toward the threat is just behind the curve. So we have to operationalize money and get [capabilities] quicker in the hands of the warfighter,” Wittman said.
Wittman added that the COCOMs unfunded requirements lists, submitted to Congress annually following the budget submission, is where “the threat” is “most immediately identified,” rather than in the longer-term budget planning documents compiled by the services.
“[The COCOMs] see on a daily basis, ‘This is what we need. This is what I need today,’” Wittman said. “How do we push more money down to the COCOMs.”
The Army is currently building on its Transforming in Contact initiative to rapidly field new technology by seeking additional authority from Congress that would allow the service to more flexibly move funding around capability areas rather than rigid budget line items, initially focusing the effort on drones, counter-UAS equipment and electronic warfare capabilities.
Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, told reporters last month the service has received “good feedback” from lawmakers on the push for more flexible funding authority, which he cited as critical to fielding promising new technologies across the force (Defense Daily, Feb. 13).
AURORA, Colo.—General Atomics and Anduril Industries
believe the use of commercial engines for their Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) will lead to significant savings, as the U.S. Air Force moves toward flying the General Atomics’ Gambit and Anduril’s Fury this summer after the companies deliver the aircraft to Creech AFB, Nev.
Commercial engines can reap big savings because of the multiplicity of companies providing them and lower development costs involved with adapting such engines for military use.
Anduril’s Fury is to use the Williams International FJ44, while General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) has declined to say which company will provide Gambit’s commercial turbofan engine. Lowering costs may lead to a move toward ensuring “modularity” so that the aircraft can rapidly switch parts, including engines, to perform different missions and to adapt to use by other allied nations, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan, which signed a CCA agreement with the United States last year.
The Air Force wants CCA Increment 1 to be reusable air-to-air drones for the service’s Mission Area 1 of high ground threats. Increment 2 is to be a technology leap above Increment 1.
The Air Force decided to narrow the CCA Increment 1 field to GA-ASI and Anduril last April, as the service moves to a possible competitive production decision on CCA Increment 1 in fiscal 2026 (Defense Daily, Apr. 24, 2024).
“We want minimum sustainment requirements [for CCA],” Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph “Solo” Kunkel, the service’s director of force design, integration, and wargaming, told a CCA logistics panel on Wednesday at the Air and Space Forces Warfare Symposium here. “We want to be able to use commercial stuff to the maximum extent. We don’t want to have to take specialized refueling equipment, specialized loading equipment all over the theater.”
This week, the Air Force bestowed “mission design series” designations on the Increment 1 prototypes (Defense Daily, March 4). The Gambit offering is the YFQ-42A and the Fury is the YFQ-44A. “Y” signifies prototype aircraft, “F” fighter/air-to-air mission, and “Q” a drone.
“CCA with small logistics footprints would improve the Air Force’s ability to periodically change their operating locations as part of a shell game to complicate China’s missile targeting,” according to Logistics While Under Attack: Key to a CCA Force Design, a new report by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “Combined with active and passive airbase defenses, a resilient CCA force would help ensure the Air Force remains an ‘inside force’ that generates decisive combat airpower alongside America’s allies.”
The chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday he’s “encouraged” by President Trump’s plan to establish a new office in the White House dedicated to bolstering domestic shipbuilding.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the SASC chair, noted he had not heard of the plan to stand up an Office of Shipbuilding before Trump’s announcement on Tuesday evening during his joint address to Congress, adding “it may have been running through some minds” as to why the office will be housed in the executive branch rather than the Department of the Navy.
Former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Christopher Mahoney and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss) visited HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding division on March 4, 2024. (Photo: HII)
“How [the office] will work, I do not know. But I know that the message coming out of that presidential address last night was we need to get busy in a hurry rebuilding our ships both non-military and DoD. And I was encouraged. How it will work will be fleshed out. Our friends in the Navy need not worry, this is going to be an assist,” Wicker said in remarks at the Reagan Institute’s National Security Innovation Base Summit.
Trump, in his address, said the new office will focus on both military and commercial shipbuilding, to include offering tax incentives to help improve domestic capacity.
“To boost our defense industrial base, we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding,” Trump said. “[We will] offer special tax incentives to bring this [shipbuilding] industry home to America, where it belongs. We used to make so many ships. We don’t make them anymore very much. But we’re going to make them very fast very soon.”
Wicker has pushed for building a 355-ship Navy, and last year released a defense investment plan that called for having the shipyard and industrial base capacity to build three attack submarines per year, going after multi-year procurement of amphibious warships and accelerating procurement of underwater vessels and unmanned surface vessels (Defense Daily, May 29 2024).
“[This new office is] the best opportunity we’ve had to get the submarines we need in the Pacific, to get the fleet of littoral and destroyer ships that we’ve needed for so long and try quickly to catch back up with China on their rate of shipbuilding,” Wicker said in his remarks.
While no additional details have been released beyond what Trump announced during his speech, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) told reporters on Tuesday he believes the new shipbuilding office could have a focus on bolstering industrial capacity, specifically by getting after workforce challenges.
“I tell folks, the top three elements we need to do to get shipbuilding back to where it needs to be are workforce, workforce and workforce. That’s the foundation of this. So hopefully this [office] will reinvigorate the effort on workforce,” Wittman said following his remarks at the Reagan Institute event in response to a question from Defense Daily. “I think it prioritizes [shipbuilding]. It elevates it. It puts it under the president. I think what it can do is it can look at the shipbuilding enterprise in general. We want to make sure we have a robust shipbuilding capacity, which includes commercial shipbuilding and gray hulls and military shipbuilding. Building that capacity is going to let us be able to catch up to the Chinese.”
Wittman, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, said domestic shipbuilding capacity is currently in a “really precarious position.”
“It’s not only about what we face [ahead] but it’s even just trying to keep up with what we’re supposed to do, [like] building two Virginia-class [submarines] a year. You know, we’re struggling to get there, building ships at a pace that is even close to what we did just two decades ago. So this [office] I think reinvigorates it and reprioritizes it,” Wittman told reporters.
John Phelan, the financier nominated to be the next Navy secretary, told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing last week that Trump has been pushing him to focus on shipbuilding and cited the SHIPS Act as an opportunity to support that effort (Defense Daily, Feb. 27).
A bipartisan and bicameral group of legislators are expected to soon reintroduce the SHIPS for America Act that is aimed at significantly expanding domestic production of U.S. merchant vessels, boosting the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base for military and commercial vessels by establishing a 25 percent investment tax credit for shipyard investments and making new investments in the maritime workforce (Defense Daily, Feb. 28).
Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America, offered support for the new shipbuilding office and that group intends to work with the White House once the effort is underway.
“We applaud the creation of the White House Office of Shipbuilding and the entire shipyard industrial base not only stands at the ready to work with the new Office of U.S. Shipbuilding but we are also ready to answer the call to design and build America’s commercial and military fleets. By fully utilizing the existing domestic shipyard capacity, the shipyard industrial base can meet the growing demands of national defense, restore American competitiveness, and create thousands of skilled jobs in communities across the nation,” Paxton said in a statement.
Byron Callan, an analyst with Capital Alpha Partners, said Wednesday the announcement of the new shipbuilding office “may only matter” if it’s paired with more funding for naval ship construction and additional incentives for commercial shipbuilding.
“The U.S. has a very steep climb to be competitive with the commercial shipbuilding enterprises in China and South Korea, though Korean investment in U.S. shipyards will help,” Callan wrote.
A series of wildfires and windstorms around Los Angeles in January helped trim AeroVironment’s [AVAV] sales in its fiscal year 2025 third quarter and the company swung to a loss on acquisition and other costs, and lower margins, AV reported on Tuesday.
The net loss was $1.8 million, 6 cents earnings per share (EPS), versus $13.9 million (50 cents EPS) in income a year ago. Adjusting for acquisition and amortization expenses, per share earnings of 30 cents were well below consensus estimates of 57 cents EPS.
Sales in the quarter fell 10 percent to $167.6 million from $186.6 million a year ago. Sales were lower due to an expected decline in shipments to Ukraine and because of the wildfires and high winds, which disrupted manufacturing and supply chain logistics, Wahid Nawabi, the company’s chairman, president, and CEO, said during an earnings call Tuesday evening.
In FY ’25, Ukraine-related shipments will account for 17 percent of sales, down from 38 percent in FY ’24, and in the fourth quarter 6 percent of sales will be to Ukraine, Nawabi said.
AeroVironment also said the Army on Monday issued stop work orders on four foreign military sales contracts worth $13 million, most of which was scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter. Nawabi said it is unclear whether the stoppage is temporary or permanent.
The stop work order, combined with the impacts from the fires, led the company to lower its guidance for the fiscal year, with sales now projected in the range of $780 million to $795 million, and adjusted earnings between $2.92 and $3.13 EPS. The prior outlook was for sales between $790 million and $820 million, and adjusted earnings between $3.18 and $3.49 EPS.
Despite the short-term setback, AV sees growth accelerating in FY ’26 to about $1 billion in sales. Funded backlog stands at a record $763.5 million, up 65 percent from a year ago, aided by record orders for Switchblade loitering munitions and Jump-20 unmanned aircraft systems.
AeroVironment’s unmanned systems, including Switchblade systems, have been part of Ukrainian forces’ arsenal against Russia’s unprovoked invasion of their country in 2022. Nawabi said the effectiveness of the company’s solutions in the conflict is “driving unprecedented high demand” from the Defense Department, NATO, Pacific, and other allied partners.
“To illustrate this point, let me share the following facts,” he said. “With approximately $40 million worth of Switchblade 600 deployments, Ukraine has destroyed nearly $3 billion worth of enemy military assets. In other words, for every Switchblade 600 launched, $13 million worth of enemy military assets have been destroyed.”
There are “larger and more enduring growth opportunities” ahead for the company, he said.
The outlook for FY ’25 and sales in FY ’26 exclude the pending acquisition of BlueHalo. That deal is still expected to close in the second quarter of 2025 and has cleared U.S. regulatory approvals. AV’s shareholders will vote on the deal on April 1 and international regulators must still weigh in.
The Coast Guard’s goal of a $20 billion annual budget has received a positive reception from the Trump administration, the service’s acting operations head said on Wednesday.
In discussions with the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Department of Homeland Security about a reconciliation bill that would add funding for defense and border security, “they are still looking at keeping their foot on the gas,” Vice Adm. Thomas Allan told a House panel. “What they told us is they need to have us at a $20 billion organization by the end of this president’s term.”
Former Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, who was fired by President Trump in January, in early 2024 began arguing for a larger budget for her service given increasing demands put on it (Defense Daily, May 23, 2024). As part of a $20 billion budget by 2030, Fagan said the service also needs $3 billion to $4 billion annually for its procurement needs.
Allan, the acting deputy commandant for operations, told the panel that the Coast Guard needs a $4 billion procurement budget.
President Trump’s term ends in January 2029.
The Coast Guard’s budget request for fiscal year 2025 is $13.8 billion. In FY ’24, Congress appropriated $1.4 billion for procurement.
Bollinger Shipyards has completed more than 90 percent of the design of the Coast Guard’s first heavy polar icebreaker in 50 years and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will decide in the coming months whether to initiate full-rate production of the ship, a senior Coast Guard official said on Wednesday.
The Coast Guard in December said that DHS did approve the construction start of the Polar Security Cutter (PSC), caveating at the time that the decision by the Acquisition Review Board allowed Bollinger to continue building prefabrication units that give the shipbuilder an opportunity to hone its skills on the complex undertaking in what the services calls a “progressive crawl-walk-run approach (Defense Daily
, Dec. 24, 2025).
The authority enables Bollinger to build 16 of the 85 sections of the PSC, seven of which are complete, Vice Adm. Thomas Allan, acting deputy commandant for operations, told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s panel that oversees the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard plans to acquire at least three PSCs, and ultimately wants eight or nine polar icebreakers that would include a combination of medium and heavy vessels. The service currently has one heavy polar icebreaker, the Polar Star that is nearly 50 years old, and one medium icebreaker, the Healy, which is more than 25 years old. The service in December acquired a commercial icebreaker, which will be commissioned as the Storis, that will operate in Alaskan waters his summer, Allan said.
The Storis will be used in the Arctic to help the Coast Guard fill gaps in its polar icebreaking fleet.
Design of the PSC is 91.75 percent complete and the ship remains on track for delivery in 2030 and, with additional funding, the Coast Guard continues to expect the second and third ships to be delivered in 2032 and 2034, respectively, Allan said.
Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), ranking member of the full committee, said in his opening statement that the Coast Guard “projects the first Polar Security Cutter will not be delivered until 2033 and may cost three times more than the original contract award.”
Allan told another House panel in December that the cost for the PSC program is expected to be 50 percent above the original contract (Defense Daily, Dec. 18, 2024). The Coast Guard and Bollinger are negotiating a modification to the original contract, which was signed by the former VT Halter Marine, that was later acquired by Bollinger.
The first PSC was originally contracted to be delivered in the first half of 2024 but those estimates were excessively eager. The COVID-19 pandemic was a factor in the delays, but so is the state of U.S. shipbuilding. No U.S. shipyard has built a heavy polar icebreaker in 50 years and the complexity and required skills have proved daunting.
“I would say the biggest issue with designing the Polar Security Cutter is that we are one of the only countries in the world that are designing and building a heavy icebreaker that has multi-mission capabilities,” Allan said yesterday. “That’s the biggest problem. It’s very technically difficult to build, and we had to do a number of different designs, even from how we’re operating the PolarStar.”
Bollinger continues to add workers for the PSC program, he said.
AURORA, Colo.–More than two years after the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) had planned to launch the L3Harris Technologies
‘ [LHX] Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), it may get into orbit this year on United Launch Alliance‘s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is in the final stages of certification.
ULA is a Boeing [BA]/LockheedMartin [LMT] partnership.
NTS-3 “is currently scheduled on the first Vulcan military launch, the first certified launch,” Jeffrey Hebert, senior scientist for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) at AFRL’s sensors directorate at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio said during a PNT panel discussion here on Tuesday at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium.
“We’re hoping it will be soon,” Hebert said of the Vulcan Centaur launch. “NTS-3 provides all three segments–a software-defined satellite. We will have a fully re-programmable satellite…that comes with a control segment that allows us to control the satellite and make sure that satellite is responsive to the environment that surrounds us, and then we have software-defined user equipment as well.”
AFRL plans to conduct up to a hundred or more NTS-3 experiments over a year.
“We’d like to be able to sense what the environment is on the ground for our terrestrial users and be able to respond in the control segment up to the satellite and look at ways that we can work with the fact that everything is software-defined,” Hebert said. “Everything can be re-programmed…We’re already responsive with the current control segment that we have, but GCS [ground control segment] will allow us to be even more responsive. We’re just kicking it up, turning the dial up to 11.”
In January 2023, AFRL said that L3Harris had delivered the 1,100-pound NTS-3 to AFRL’s space vehicles directorate at Kirtland AFB, N.M., in expectation of a launch by the end of 2023 (Defense Daily, Jan. 27). Initially, AFRL had planned for an NTS-3 launch in March 2023.
NTS-3, which integrates a PNT payload on a Northrop Grumman [NOC] ESPAStar bus, is to demonstrate advanced protection technologies for GPS and other PNT systems.
“One of the technologies that has me really excited about NTS-3 is that we have a phased array antenna that can provide a high-powered signal from space,” Hebert said. “It will be able to do some things that we’ve only dreamed about, for instance multiple spot beams and servicing different users in different parts [of the world] with different services.”
In 2019, the Air Force named NTS-3 as one of its first three Vanguard programs.