Forging the future of hypersonic strike weapons through Modern Defense Production
Torrance, CA
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Castelion retweeted
Building Blackbeard is possible because of the @DeptofWar's commitment to building low-cost munitions at scale. Thanks @BretBaier and @SpecialReport for having me on.
BOLSTERING THE DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL BASE: @BretBaier examines efforts to overhaul the defense industrial base through stable, multi-year funding frameworks and a growing reliance on agile commercial startups. As Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael Duffey notes, multi-billion-dollar deals with prime contractors like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman are locking in production for critical systems like Tomahawk, THAAD, and Patriot interceptors. Meanwhile, the Defense Innovation Unit and next-gen tech firms like Castelion and Rocket Lab are utilizing rapid commercial manufacturing practices to scale up hypersonic capabilities and outpace modern threats.
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Castelion retweeted
Blackbeard Hypersonic Missile Seen Flying On F/A-18 Super Hornet For The First Time
The Navy is pushing to get Blackbeard, a lower-cost and fast-to-produce standoff weapon, into operational service by 2028 at the latest.
twz.com/air/blackbeard-hyper…
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TIME's new cover: Admiral Samuel Paparo is preparing for a war he hopes never to fight. His mission: prevent conflict with China.
“If I do my job right, history will never know my name,” he tells TIME in an exclusive interview time.com/article/2026/09/24/…
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U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, met with our leadership team at Castelion's headquarters and saw our production line firsthand.
Thanks for making the trip, @RepJoeMorelle.
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Blackbeard is going into production. The U.S. Navy has awarded Castelion a production order valued at up to $200 million for an initial lot of Blackbeard Hypersonic Weapons, following the 50 EOC rounds ordered in June. Engineered from day one for the production line. Grateful to PAE(A) for the trust and the urgency. castelion.com/news/blackbear…
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On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, we honor those who lost their lives, the heroic first responders, and the strength and resiliency of Americans across the world.
We will never forget.
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Castelion retweeted
Excited to make this demo happen. Couldn’t agree more on demonstrating capability and working with like-minded companies. We have to hit some priorities on our three platform integration contracts (one to be announced soon), but we’ll make this happen ASAP.
.@Saronic is partnering with @Castelion to launch a hypersonic missile off the back of an autonomous ship:
“We're actually going to launch a hypersonic missile off the back of Marauder, an autonomous ship, before the Navy completes their first test of a hypersonic missile off of a manned vessel.”
@hargsb @MavrookasD
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The future of the United States depends on our Navy's ability to design and field a force that stays ahead of any future problem set and adversary.
Castelion was grateful to host the @FutureNavyComm at our headquarters and contribute to their plans for the future of naval power.
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Congressman @RobWittman, Vice Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, recently visited our Torrance headquarters to discuss American innovation in affordable strike weapons.
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Castelion retweeted
In 2022, an investor drew Bryon Hargis a two-by-two matrix and put his company in the corner he called impossible. Over a hundred rejections followed. Today that company is valued at $13 billion.
@hargsb, Co-founder and CEO of @Castelion , just closed a $1 billion Series C co-led by JPMorgan, Carlyle, and Andreessen Horowitz. But the more interesting story is what almost didn't happen. In the winter of 2022, after leaving @SpaceX to build hypersonic weapons, he was selling his 401k to make it through the month while his wife was expecting their second child.
Here is how he described the rejection that stuck with him:
"There was commercial, defense, software, hardware. He's like, you're on the quadrant of defense hardware, and not even in the middle of the quadrant. You're on the very corner. He's like, that's the realm of impossibility."
He still remembers the exact phrase one investor used to describe the category: in the realm of the uninvestable.
The market had not mispriced the technology risk. It had mispriced its own model. A decade of software-era venture had optimized for capital-light, fast-iterating businesses, and defense hardware failed every filter in that model: long cycles, heavy capex, a single customer with byzantine procurement. None of that made the category actually unfundable. It just made it invisible to investors running the wrong checklist.
The turning point came less than a year later, when Andreessen Horowitz wrote a check. Doors that had been closed for a year opened within days. The technology had not changed. The willingness to underwrite it had.
The lesson is not that defense tech is hot now. It is that the biggest returns tend to sit exactly where the standard model says not to look.
We’d like to thank @AlphaSenseInc for sponsoring this episode!
Full episode below 👇
piped.video/u9gUE0kaYfE
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The US does not have hypersonic capability at the necessary scale and at a cost the country can sustain. That's what Castelion is building and what the $1B series C scales.
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The @USNavy has awarded Castelion an $89,997,162 firm-fixed-price order to advance Blackbeard to an Early Operational Capability and accelerate design features to enable export. We appreciate the Navy's continued trust in our team to deliver. Read more: castelion.com/news/u-s-navy-…
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