Industry & Contracts
Drone industry news from UASFeed — procurement awards, defense primes and startups, funding rounds, and the business of uncrewed systems.
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Industry & Contracts
Army Opens Five Test Ranges to Private Drone and Counter-Drone Makers
The Army is throwing open five proving grounds — four stateside, one in Morocco — to any drone or counter-drone company, promising range access within 30 days and no federal contract required.
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Industry & Contracts
Archer Aviation to Acquire Boeing's Insitu, Wisk Aero and SkyGrid in All-Stock Deal
Archer Aviation signed an all-stock deal to acquire Boeing's Insitu, Wisk Aero and SkyGrid units, handing Boeing a roughly 19.75% stake as the eVTOL maker absorbs decades of military UAS and autonomy technology.
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Industry & Contracts
Neros Triples to $2.5B Valuation in $250M Series C, Adds Bandit Interceptor to Product Line
Los Angeles drone maker Neros raised a $250 million Series C at a $2.5 billion valuation on August 11, 2026, funding a new Bandit counter-UAS interceptor alongside its Archer AI strike drone as it chases 1 million units/year of production by 2028.
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Industry & Contracts
First Production Laser: AeroVironment's $400M Locust Deal Moves Directed Energy From Prototype to Product Line
Bloomberg reports the Army will buy at least $400M of AeroVironment's Locust counter-drone lasers — the Pentagon's first production contract for a directed-energy system beyond the prototype phase — sending AVAV up ~8-9% and turning the E-HEL program of record from negotiation into recurring revenue.
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Industry & Contracts
Army's Sub-$150K Missile Hunt: NGCM Sources-Sought Targets Cheap Group 2/3 Drone Killers for the Coyote Launcher
The Army wants a Coyote Launcher-compatible interceptor that can kill Group 2/3 drones at 16+ km for under $150,000 a round, with industry responses due August 20.
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Industry & Contracts
Pentagon's Counter-Drone Marketplace Expands as Kaizen's $15M Platform Crosses $21M in Sales
JIATF-401's vetted C-UAS Marketplace, built by startup Kaizen under a $15M contract, has processed $21M in purchases and added the UK and Romania as allied buyers while linking to the Foreign Military Sales Fast Lane.
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Industry & Contracts
19 Drone Makers, One Fort Carson Proving Ground: Inside the Pentagon's $300M Gauntlet II Shootout
Nineteen finalists are trucking 120 attack drones apiece to Fort Carson this August, the live-fire elimination round of a $1.1B Pentagon program racing toward a 200,000-drone fleet by 2027.
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Industry & Contracts
Pentagon Commits Up to $820M to Performance Drone Works to Build Domestic Drone Component Supply Chain
The Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital signed a conditional loan of up to $820 million with Performance Drone Works on July 31, 2026, to mass-produce propulsion, power/control, and vision-system components for Group 1/2 drones industry-wide.
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Industry & Contracts
XTEND and JFB Construction Close In on $1.5B Merger to Form Nasdaq-Listed XTEND AI Robotics
SEC filings show Israeli drone-robotics firm XTEND and Nasdaq-listed JFB Construction advancing toward a $1.5B all-stock reverse merger that would list XTEND AI Robotics as XTND, as XTEND also closes its Atlas acquisition and lands a spot in a $1B Pentagon drone program.
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Industry & Contracts
Farnborough 2026: Ukraine Reveals a Missile-Armed Liutyi, Turning Its Signature Strike Drone Into a Reusable Standoff Shooter
At Farnborough 2026, Ukraine's state defense industry unveiled a Liutyi variant carrying four wing-mounted missiles, each with a roughly 20 kg warhead — reframing a drone known for one-way refinery strikes as a reusable, multi-shot standoff weapon with a decoy mode.
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Industry & Contracts
Saronic and Samsung Heavy Industries Join Forces to Mass-Produce Autonomous Warships
Autonomy startup Saronic and Korean shipbuilding giant Samsung Heavy Industries have partnered to fuse USV autonomy with high-volume yard capacity, feeding Saronic's Port Alpha megashipyard in Texas and its Franklin, Louisiana yard.
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Industry & Contracts
The Anode Bottleneck: Sila's $300M Raise and America's Drone Battery Problem
Sila's $300M round scales a Moses Lake plant from 2 GWh toward 250 GWh of silicon-carbon anode — the component that sets the endurance-versus-payload trade on every small UAS. Federal records show DOE has been funding the same plant since 2019. No drone customers are named.
