Where are the opportunities in defense tech?
In our defense tech market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
The biggest opportunities in defense tech today are counter-drone systems, affordable strike weapons, autonomous maritime platforms, resilient navigation and communications, collaborative autonomy, contested logistics, and the manufacturing capacity needed to produce all of them at scale.
The broad defense boom is real, but startups still capture very little of total government spending. That gap is important: the opportunity comes less from defense budgets simply getting bigger than from procurement opening in places where governments suddenly need new suppliers.
Affordable mass is becoming one of the strongest themes across the market. Militaries increasingly need thousands of drones, interceptors, missiles, sensors, and autonomous systems, which rewards companies that can cut cost per mission and manufacture quickly rather than just build the most sophisticated prototype.
Basic military drones are already showing the downside of that shift. Demand is enormous, but expanding supplier pools and explicit price reduction are turning the airframe itself into something closer to ammunition, pushing the more defensible opportunities toward navigation, seekers, propulsion, autonomy, sensing, electronic protection, and manufacturing.
Counter-drone has better structural economics because every expansion in offensive drone deployment creates another defensive requirement. The unresolved problem is not whether militaries will spend, but whether they can detect and defeat cheap threats without answering a $3,000 drone with an interceptor costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.
Missiles are also moving into territory that used to look inaccessible to startups. Production frameworks covering hundreds or thousands of weapons suggest that governments are becoming more willing to trade exquisite unit economics for weapons that can actually be manufactured and replenished in large numbers.
Autonomous maritime stands out because the engineering barriers remain high while credible procurement pathways already exist. Surface autonomy should scale first, but undersea systems may offer a better technical moat because navigation, communications, endurance, sensing, and energy become much harder below the surface.
Military AI looks strongest when it controls or improves something operational. Autonomy, targeting, electronic-warfare analysis, sensor fusion, maintenance, logistics, and mission planning have clearer value than another general military interface built on commercially available foundation models.
Some of the least glamorous markets may be among the best businesses. Logistics, factories, critical components, materials, charging, robotic handling, and production software can benefit from many weapons programs at once and are becoming bottlenecks as governments discover that larger budgets do not automatically create more physical capacity.
Geography changes the startup strategy. Europe currently has especially large capability and sovereignty gaps, while the United States still offers the clearest route from one successful procurement program to enormous volume. In either market, the best opening is usually a problem where the customer needs radically more units, much faster deployment, or a much lower cost per mission.
This market map, featured in our defense tech market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the defense tech market
Where Are the Opportunities in Defense Tech?
Is defense tech really opening up to startups now?
Defense tech is genuinely opening up to startups now, although new companies still capture only a tiny fraction of the money governments spend on defense.
The spending backdrop has changed dramatically. NATO's latest figures show that European Allies and Canada increased core defense spending by nearly 20% in real terms in 2025, adding more than $90 billion in constant dollars in a single year. Allies have also committed to reaching 5% of GDP in defense and defense-related spending by 2035. NATO says European Allies and Canada are already around 4% when core defense and broader security spending are combined.
Private capital has followed. The Financial Times counted about $12.3 billion invested in narrowly defined defense-tech startups during the first half of 2026, almost twice the amount from the same period a year earlier and already above the total for all of 2025. Anduril's $5 billion round, Saronic's $1.75 billion round and Castelion's latest $1 billion raise show that investors are now willing to finance defense companies at industrial scale.
Government purchasing is moving more slowly. A Reagan Institute analysis found that 15 leading defense-tech challengers received only about 0.8% of Pentagon contract obligations in FY2025, with SpaceX, Palantir and Anduril taking most of that share.
Procurement is getting easier in specific channels. The Pentagon's APFIT program has now passed $2 billion in awards and says it has helped move more than 100 technologies into operational use. DIU can move successful prototypes directly toward follow-on production. NATO has also launched its Front Door for Industry and its first public innovation demand signal, giving companies a much clearer view of what Allies actually want to buy.
| What is changing | What the latest evidence shows |
|---|---|
| European defense spending | Nearly 20% real growth in 2025 |
| NATO long-term spending target | 5% of GDP by 2035 |
| Defense-tech startup funding | About $12.3B in H1 2026 |
| Pentagon spending captured by major challengers | About 0.8% in FY2025 |
| Pentagon APFIT awards | More than $2B since launch |
Are military drones still worth building now?
Military drones are still worth building, but a generic small attack drone is already becoming a crowded and increasingly price-sensitive product.
The Pentagon's Drone Dominance program makes both sides of the argument unusually clear. The first phase ordered 30,000 drones, and the department says those systems are currently being delivered. Another 60,000 are planned for the next purchasing cycle. The Pentagon now wants more than 200,000 AI-enabled lethal drones fielded by 2027.
Competition is arriving just as quickly. The first Drone Dominance competition invited 25 companies. A later qualifier involved 49 companies bringing 79 different systems. The purchasing model deliberately increases volumes while pushing prices down: the program started around $5,000 per unit and currently targets roughly $3,000 as production scales.
The drone itself is starting to look more like ammunition. Buyers want lots of units, rapid replacement and relentless cost reduction. That is a rough place to be if the whole company is built around a slightly better airframe.
More durable openings sit underneath or above the drone: GPS-denied navigation, seekers, propulsion, batteries, electronic protection, low-cost thermal imaging, manufacturing systems, autonomous targeting and software that lets one operator control many vehicles.
As this chart shows, and as featured in our defense tech market deck, search interest in defense tech has risen sharply
Is counter-drone a better startup market than drones themselves?
Counter-drone currently looks more attractive than basic drone manufacturing because every increase in drone deployment creates another defensive problem that militaries have to solve.
The spending is already moving. The Pentagon's Joint Interagency Task Force 401 committed more than $600 million to counter-UAS capabilities during a recent procurement push. A new counter-UAS marketplace has also begun placing immediate orders for radars, sensors, electronic-warfare systems and low-collateral defeat technologies.
The proposed FY2027 Pentagon budget goes much further. It asks for $14.4 billion for counter-unmanned systems, including protection for more than 250 sites using a mix of fixed defenses, mobile systems, high-volume interceptors and specialized defeat technologies.
NATO faces the same problem on a larger geographic scale. Its latest capability targets call for roughly five times more air and missile defense capacity. NATO has also launched Drone Edge to increase investment in counter-drone systems, while its Layered Counter-UAS Initiative is testing interoperable technologies in short operational cycles.
The startup opening comes from the economics. Militaries cannot sustainably fire very expensive missiles at drones costing a few thousand dollars. They need cheap radars, passive sensors, electronic warfare, guns, interceptor drones, directed energy and software that decides which defensive tool should engage each target.
| Counter-drone layer | How attractive it looks now |
|---|---|
| Low-cost detection and tracking | Very strong |
| Electronic warfare | Very strong |
| Cheap kinetic interceptors | Very strong |
| Interceptor drones | Very strong |
| Command and sensor fusion software | Very strong |
| High-cost interceptors for small drones | Structurally difficult |
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest defense tech market report.
Are cheap missiles finally becoming a startup market?
Cheap missiles are becoming a real startup market now, with production commitments measured in hundreds and thousands rather than a handful of experimental weapons.
Castelion is the clearest example. The company recently received a $23.4 million Navy order for 50 Blackbeard pre-production hypersonic weapons. More importantly, its broader Pentagon framework calls for a minimum of 500 Blackbeards per year once testing is complete, with a path toward thousands of additional weapons.
Castelion says it has secured more than $500 million of U.S. military contracts over the past 18 months, is building a dedicated production campus in New Mexico and is targeting operational fielding in 2027. Investors have just valued the company at $13 billion in a $1 billion financing round.
Anduril provides a second example at even larger volume. Its agreement for the surface-launched Barracuda-500M covers at least 3,000 cruise missiles over three years, equivalent to a minimum of 1,000 systems annually. Anduril has also signed an agreement with Poland's PGZ to create local Barracuda production capacity in Europe.
These volumes fit much better with what buyers are asking for today. NATO's current innovation priorities explicitly include deep strike, while the U.S. military is trying to rebuild munitions inventories and expand production capacity across several weapon families.
The remaining risk is execution. Missile companies still have to qualify components, pass military testing and prove that their factories can actually sustain those production rates.
This chart, included in our defense tech market deck, shows annual VC investment in defense tech startups
Is autonomous maritime still wide open?
Autonomous maritime is one of the clearest defense-tech opportunities today, and undersea autonomy looks even less crowded for companies able to handle the engineering.
Saronic gives us the best proof that a startup can break into surface autonomy. The company, founded in 2022, has already secured a Navy production agreement worth more than $392 million for autonomous surface vessels. It has raised $1.75 billion at a $9.25 billion valuation and invested heavily in its own manufacturing capacity.
A Saronic Corsair autonomous vessel was also recently used to rescue the crew of a downed U.S. Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. Whatever autonomy level was used during each part of that mission, a small unmanned vessel performed a useful mission in an active combat environment.
The Navy is widening the supplier base as well. Its current medium unmanned surface vessel prototyping effort includes seven industry teams. These designs have to combine the vessel, mechanical systems and autonomy software into ships that can operate without crew onboard.
Underwater systems add another layer of opportunity. GPS disappears below the surface, radio communications become severely constrained, energy is limited and navigation errors accumulate over long missions. NATO's current defense-innovation cohort includes companies working on autonomous underwater vehicles, seabed surveillance, cable monitoring, subsea sensing and long-endurance underwater power.
NATO's Task Force X-Baltic and MAINSAIL programs are also pushing autonomous systems and AI into the protection of critical undersea infrastructure. The same technologies can serve offshore energy, telecom cables, ports, ocean mapping and infrastructure inspection.
Surface systems should scale faster. Undersea autonomy has the better technical barrier and fewer credible competitors. Both remain much less commoditized than basic aerial drones.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest defense tech market report.
Where can military AI startups still win after Palantir and Anduril?
Military AI startups can still win in specific operational workflows, autonomy and sensing, even as Palantir and Anduril become harder to challenge at the core battlefield-software layer.
The U.S. Army's Next Generation Command and Control program shows where the broad platform market is consolidating. The Army has selected Anduril to lead the NGC2 common data baseline, with Palantir supplying the edge-to-cloud data mesh and Raft contributing additional data infrastructure. After operational testing with the 4th and 25th Infantry Divisions, the system is now moving from prototyping toward wider delivery.
That gives Anduril and Palantir a strong position near the center of the Army's future software architecture.
The application layer is much less settled. NGC2 is designed to accept new commercial and government applications rather than freeze the Army into one software package for decades. That leaves room for companies solving specific operational jobs such as fires planning, electronic-warfare management, targeting, logistics, maintenance, intelligence workflows and mission planning.
Autonomous vehicle control is a particularly visible opening. DIU and the Navy launched a prize program offering up to $100 million for an Autonomous Vehicle Orchestrator that can translate a commander's intent into coordinated action across fleets of machines. The government specifically wants a vehicle-agnostic layer rather than software tied to one drone.
The Pentagon's proposed FY2027 budget reinforces that direction with $4.5 billion allocated to collaborative autonomy, covering mission control, interfaces, intent-based tasking and the software needed for autonomous systems to work together at scale.
AI is also moving into sensing. The Space Force recently awarded three agreements totaling $615 million under its space-based sensing and targeting portfolio, deliberately using multiple suppliers to develop different approaches to detecting moving targets from orbit. NATO is running similar work around targeting, commercial satellite analytics and maritime awareness.
Perception, sensor fusion, route planning, predictive maintenance, electronic-warfare analysis and autonomy all connect AI to an operational action that can be measured. Thin military interfaces built on the same commercial foundation models available to everybody else look far less interesting.
This chart, included in our defense tech market deck, shows why Anduril is winning in defense tech
Is GPS-denied navigation becoming a must-have defense market?
GPS-denied navigation is becoming a must-have layer of modern defense because drones, missiles and robots lose much of their value when jamming can break their navigation or communications.
The problem keeps appearing across current procurement programs. NATO's innovation work is backing GNSS-free navigation, resilient communications, alternative positioning and cognitive radio systems. Its newest DIANA cohort includes companies developing contested-environment positioning, 5G/6G communications, secure edge infrastructure and alternative timing technologies.
The U.S. military is moving in the same direction. APFIT's recently funded technologies include resilient communications and electronic warfare, while collaborative-autonomy programs increasingly assume that vehicles will operate with unreliable connectivity.
Ukraine has made the product cycle brutally clear. Drone links, frequencies and navigation approaches can work well and then lose effectiveness as electronic countermeasures adapt.
Several technical approaches can win here. Vision-based navigation, terrain matching, inertial sensing, celestial navigation, mesh networking, cognitive radios and optical links all attack different parts of the problem.
A resilient navigation module that works across aircraft, missiles, ground robots and maritime systems can ride the growth of several markets at once.
Is defense space still open after SpaceX?
Defense space is still open after SpaceX because the newest military architectures are deliberately adding suppliers in sensing, networking and space-domain awareness.
The clearest recent example comes from the U.S. Space Force. Its current space-based sensing and targeting effort awarded three initial agreements totaling $615 million to diversify technologies for tracking moving targets from orbit.
The Space Force has also started building a multi-vendor Space Data Network. Five companies received parallel fixed-price and OTA agreements to test standardized connections between commercial satellite systems. The stated goal is an open orbital network that avoids single-source dependence.
NATO is creating similar openings. Its current resilient-space program is backing companies working on space-domain awareness, satellite radar, autonomous orbital operations, propulsion, laser communications and threat detection. NATO is also testing commercial satellite imagery and analytics through SINBAD rather than insisting that every sensing capability be built as a bespoke government satellite.
Launch is already heavily concentrated and brutally capital intensive. Generic Earth-imaging constellations also face much more competition than they did several years ago.
Sensing unusual targets, analyzing orbital behavior, secure satellite networking, space-to-space surveillance, autonomous satellite operations and resilient communications look much more open today.
Capabilities that can plug into satellites from several operators are particularly interesting. The military customers themselves are increasingly asking for interoperability.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest defense tech market report.
This chart, included in our defense tech market deck, shows annual funding in defense tech startups
Is military logistics finally becoming a tech market?
Military logistics is becoming a serious tech market now, and the budgets suggest that buyers see logistics as part of autonomous warfare rather than boring back-office infrastructure.
The proposed Pentagon FY2027 budget assigns $13.5 billion to contested logistics. The plan includes commercially integrated logistics networks, modular container platforms, leased logistics sites and high-tempo repositioning intended to support autonomous forces in contested environments.
That request is almost as large as the $14.4 billion counter-unmanned-systems request.
NATO is putting similar weight behind the problem. Its first public innovation demand signal lists adaptable logistics among only five priority areas. NATO's latest capability targets also call for roughly doubling available logistics, supply, transportation and medical support.
Software can help military organizations manage fragmented inventories, maintenance systems and supply chains. Hardware opportunities include autonomous cargo vehicles, deployable warehouses, battlefield charging, modular containers, robotic handling, off-grid power, mobile water systems and unmanned resupply.
Unlike many weapons businesses, logistics systems can generate value continuously rather than only when a weapon is fired.
Can a startup make money just by fixing defense manufacturing?
Defense manufacturing is becoming a standalone startup opportunity because production capacity is now constraining how quickly governments can turn larger budgets into actual weapons.
NATO says no single Allied country currently has enough industrial capacity to satisfy expected demand. Its new NATO Engine is designed to connect companies with available factories across the Alliance and make civilian manufacturing capacity easier to use for defense production.
The bottleneck goes deep into the supply chain. Missile output depends on rocket motors, explosives, castings, electronics, actuators and specialty materials. Drone production depends on motors, cameras, batteries, radios and secure components. The primes cannot increase final assembly very far if one obscure supplier remains stuck at the same output.
Companies such as Hadrian are attacking the manufacturing layer directly through highly automated factories for aerospace and defense components. Other startups are working on additive manufacturing, robotic assembly, quality inspection and deployable production.
Critical materials are now part of the same market. In its latest industrial-base move, the Pentagon announced a $750 million investment as part of a $1.55 billion structure around Serra Verde's rare-earth production in Brazil. The agreement includes a Defense Logistics Agency purchase commitment and is designed to secure materials used in magnets for missiles, drones, satellites, combat vessels and aircraft.
A faster factory, a hard-to-replace component or a better production technology can sell across many weapons programs instead of depending on one platform. That can be a better business than the platform itself.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest defense tech market report.
This chart, included in our defense tech market deck, compares the main business model options for defense AI contractors
Is Europe now a better defense-tech market than the US?
Europe is currently the better market for finding unsolved defense gaps, while the United States remains the easier place to turn one procurement win into very large revenue.
Europe's demand is hard to ignore. European NATO members are increasing spending quickly, and the EU's SAFE mechanism provides up to €150 billion of loans for joint defense procurement. The wider Readiness 2030 framework is designed to unlock more than €800 billion of additional defense spending and financing capacity.
Europe also wants more of that spending to stay inside Europe. That gives local manufacturing, ammunition, drones, electronic warfare, air defense and military mobility companies a political advantage that did not exist to the same degree a few years ago.
Funding for smaller companies is becoming more explicit. The European Commission has launched the €115 million AGILE program specifically to move technologies such as AI, quantum systems and drones from development into operational use faster. The EU is also expanding the financing tools available to dual-use and defense scale-ups.
The American advantage remains procurement concentration. A company that wins a major U.S. Army or Navy program can access volumes that would require several separate national contracts in Europe. The U.S. also has a much deeper pool of late-stage private capital. The Financial Times found that American startups captured roughly $11.4 billion of the $12.3 billion invested in narrowly defined defense tech during the first half of 2026.
Europe still makes founders navigate different armed forces, procurement systems, industrial policies and national preferences. That fragmentation is improving, but it has not disappeared.
For a new company, the choice depends heavily on the product. Europe looks especially attractive when sovereignty and local production are part of the buying decision. The U.S. remains very hard to beat when the main objective is getting one product to enormous scale.
| Factor | United States | Europe |
|---|---|---|
| Size of a single procurement opportunity | Excellent | More fragmented |
| Late-stage venture capital | Excellent | Improving fast |
| Unfilled capability gaps | Large | Very large |
| Pressure to buy locally | Moderate | Very strong |
| Cross-border complexity | Lower | Higher |
| Best startup angle | Scale one proven product | Fill capability and sovereignty gaps |
Which defense-tech markets look hot but are actually bad startup bets?
Some of the biggest defense budgets remain poor startup markets because the spending is locked behind extreme capital requirements, political procurement and decades-long development cycles.
New fighter aircraft are the clearest case. The total market is enormous, yet building a clean-sheet crewed fighter requires huge engineering teams, complex engines, certification, weapons integration, specialized manufacturing and government commitment that can last several decades. A startup can sell software, sensors, autonomy or manufacturing technology into that ecosystem much more realistically than finance the entire aircraft.
Nuclear submarines and large crewed warships have similar economics. Naval autonomy is attractive partly because it lets startups enter around the edges of a fleet dominated by shipyards with enormous infrastructure requirements.
Generic small drones have the opposite problem. The technical barrier is low enough that dozens of suppliers can enter, while governments are actively trying to drive prices down. The Pentagon's Drone Dominance competition already shows that dynamic, with large vendor pools and explicit cost reduction built into the purchasing model.
Generic defense AI deserves similar caution. Government AI adoption is clearly growing, but startups that simply add a military interface to widely available models may struggle to defend their position once large software vendors, integrators and internal government teams build equivalent features.
We would also be careful with impressive technologies that have no obvious acquisition owner. Defense organizations fund experiments constantly. A prototype exercise tells us that someone is curious. Production orders, program funding and recurring deployments tell us that someone actually needs the product.
Large defense spending alone is a poor way to identify startup opportunities. We care much more about whether a new supplier can reach a buyer, survive the procurement path and eventually produce at useful scale.
This chart, featured in our defense tech market deck, shows the share of revenue generated by each customer segment in the defense tech market
Where are the biggest opportunities in defense tech today?
The biggest defense-tech opportunities today are counter-drone systems, affordable missiles, autonomous maritime platforms, resilient navigation and communications, collaborative autonomy, contested logistics and the manufacturing capacity underneath all of them.
The common thread is affordable mass. Current military plans increasingly assume that future forces will use many more autonomous vehicles, missiles, sensors and distributed systems than today's forces can afford with traditional cost structures.
Counter-drone sits near the top because the threat is already scaling and defensive economics remain uncomfortable. The Pentagon has committed hundreds of millions of dollars through rapid counter-UAS procurement while requesting $14.4 billion more in its next budget. NATO, as seen above, wants roughly five times more air and missile defense capacity.
Affordable strike weapons now have unusually strong evidence behind them. Anduril has a framework covering at least 3,000 Barracuda-500M missiles over three years. Castelion has a pathway toward at least 500 Blackbeard weapons annually once testing is complete.
Autonomous maritime combines an urgent military problem with difficult engineering and a real procurement path. Saronic's $392 million Navy production agreement shows that a young company can already reach meaningful scale.
Resilient navigation and collaborative autonomy can spread across many vehicles. The Pentagon is currently asking for $4.5 billion around collaborative autonomy, while DIU is offering up to $100 million specifically for vehicle-agnostic orchestration.
Contested logistics and manufacturing remain easier to underestimate. The Pentagon's $13.5 billion logistics request, NATO's industrial-capacity initiatives and the latest investments in critical materials all point toward the same production constraint.
Space and battlefield software remain good markets too, although narrower wedges look stronger than broad platforms.
| Defense-tech opportunity | Our current view | What is creating room |
|---|---|---|
| Counter-drone and low-cost air defense | Exceptional | Huge threat volumes and bad interceptor economics |
| Affordable missiles and strike weapons | Exceptional | Stockpile needs and new high-volume procurement |
| Autonomous maritime systems | Exceptional | Naval capacity constraints and real production contracts |
| GPS-denied navigation and resilient communications | Very strong | Required across drones, missiles and robots |
| Collaborative autonomy | Very strong | Militaries need one operator to control many systems |
| Defense manufacturing and critical components | Very strong | Production capacity is becoming a hard bottleneck |
| Contested logistics | Very strong | Large new budgets and constant operational demand |
| Undersea autonomy | Strong | Important mission, hard engineering, fewer credible competitors |
| Military space sensing and resilience | Strong | Multi-vendor procurement is expanding |
| Specialized battlefield software | Strong | Plenty of workflows remain poorly served |
| Generic small military drones | Mixed | Massive demand with rapid commoditization |
| Generic defense AI | Mixed | Easy entry and uncertain long-term differentiation |
| New crewed fighters and capital ships | Poor startup fit | Enormous capital and procurement barriers |
If we were building in defense tech today, we would look first for a military problem where the customer needs ten times more units, ten times more speed or a radically lower cost per mission.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest defense tech market report.
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis asks where new defense-tech companies have the strongest openings today. We divided the market into distinct areas including drones and counter-drone systems, affordable weapons, maritime autonomy, military AI, resilient navigation, space, logistics, manufacturing, geography, and markets that attract attention but remain structurally difficult for startups.
We prioritized recent evidence showing what governments are actually trying to buy or scale. That includes procurement decisions, production agreements, budget requests, capability targets, operational programs, industrial commitments, supplier expansion and major financing events. Older market-size estimates were less useful here because defense opportunities can change quickly once a technology moves from experimentation toward acquisition.
We gave more weight to production orders, funded procurement pathways and explicit capability requirements than to demonstrations or prototype programs alone. Defense organizations test a large number of technologies, so participation in an exercise or innovation program was treated as evidence of interest rather than proof of a durable market.
Across each category, we asked the same basic questions: how urgent is the military need, is spending translating into procurement, can new suppliers realistically enter, how quickly is competition increasing, does the technology provide meaningful differentiation, and can the product be manufactured and deployed at the scale customers are beginning to request?
We also looked for several kinds of evidence pointing in the same direction. Private financing shows whether investors are prepared to fund expansion, while government contracts and budget commitments show whether a buyer is emerging. Supplier competitions help reveal whether a market is opening or already becoming crowded. Manufacturing commitments show whether a company can move beyond prototypes.
The opportunity labels used above, from Exceptional to Poor startup fit, are our synthesis of the strength, consistency and direction of that evidence. They are not outputs from a mechanical scoring formula and are not predictions about which individual company will ultimately win.
Key sources include NATO's defense investment data and 5% commitment, NATO's Innovation Scale-Up Package, NATO's Front Door for Industry and industrial-cooperation initiatives, NCIA on the Layered Counter-UAS Initiative, the U.S. Department of Defense on Joint Interagency Task Force 401, and the Defense Innovation Unit's Autonomous Vehicle Orchestrator challenge.
For affordable weapons and maritime autonomy, key sources include Castelion's Blackbeard production framework, Castelion's U.S. Navy Blackbeard delivery order, Anduril's Barracuda-500M production agreement, Anduril and PGZ's Polish production agreement, and the U.S. Navy's Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel marketplace.
For military software and space, we used the U.S. Army's update on Next Generation Command and Control, Space Systems Command's multi-vendor sensing and targeting awards, and the Space Force's multi-vendor Space Data Network initiative. European market context comes from the European Commission's Readiness 2030 and SAFE framework, while the manufacturing assessment also draws on NATO's work on expanding defense industrial production.
This chart, included in our defense tech market deck, shows how tactical networking platform technology has evolved over time
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