Navy awards $105M Blackbeard deal

The U.S. Navy awarded Castelion $105 million to integrate its Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapon onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and target early operational capability in 2027. (castelion.com) (newsbreak.com) Castelion said the April 24 award pays for system safety work, certification, flight testing, and other integration tasks tied to carrier-based operations. The company said the contract is meant to move Blackbeard from development toward an operational Navy weapon next year. (castelion.com) (newsbreak.com) A hypersonic weapon travels at more than five times the speed of sound. In this case, the Navy is trying to hang that weapon on a carrier fighter it already flies, instead of waiting for a new aircraft or a larger missile program. (castelion.com) (newsbreak.com) The contract also requires the naval aviation approval process for safe storage, loading, and carriage aboard an aircraft carrier at sea. That is the step that turns a missile from a test article into something a squadron can legally and safely fly with on deployment. (castelion.com) Castelion said this award follows a separate $49.9 million Navy contract in February 2026 to move Blackbeard from prototype to production. Reuters reported the new award clears a path for the missile to move from the laboratory toward the battlefield next year. (castelion.com) (newsbreak.com) The company is building manufacturing capacity in parallel. Castelion said in January that its 1,000-acre Project Ranger campus in Sandoval County, New Mexico, is designed for high-cadence production of hypersonic strike systems, with more than $220 million in private investment and about 300 jobs. (castelion.com) In December, Castelion said a $350 million Series B round would help build out Project Ranger and support a facility capable of producing thousands of Blackbeard missiles per year. That gives the Navy an industrial plan alongside the flight-test plan. (castelion.com) Reuters framed the award against U.S. concerns about munitions stockpiles and a possible conflict over Taiwan. The Navy, for its part, is now betting that a startup can get a hypersonic weapon onto a carrier fighter on a 2027 schedule. (newsbreak.com)