US Navy awards Castelion contract worth up to $200 million for Blackbeard missile — Fortune
In September, the US Navy awarded startup Castelion a contract worth up to $200 million for the Blackbeard hypersonic missile. The Torrance, California-based company, founded in 2022 by three former SpaceX executives, aims to establish production of more affordable hypersonic munitions for the US armed forces.
As Fortune reports, Blackbeard has the status of a program included in the US Navy's budget program. Documents state that the cost of one missile could be less than $500,000. According to the publication, Blackbeard successfully completed flight tests on F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets.
Focus on serial production
Castelion is valued at $13 billion. The company was founded by Bryon Hargis, Andrew Kreitz, and Sean Pitt, who previously worked at SpaceX. It has US government contracts worth more than $500 million and plans to scale up production at the Project Ranger site in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
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The facility, covering about 1,000 acres, could eventually produce thousands of Blackbeard missiles annually. Some Rio Rancho residents, according to Fortune, opposed the location of the missile plant, while the company held meetings with the community and cooperated with local authorities.
Competition with defense giants
Castelion is competing with Lockheed Martin, which has been developing the Dark Eagle hypersonic system since 2017. Fortune writes that the project is reportedly three years behind schedule. A US Army representative told the publication that Dark Eagle had been successfully deployed in support of exercises in the Indo-Pacific region and that the system had undergone several successful flight tests.
Hypersonic missiles are those capable of traveling at speeds of at least Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. Castelion executives believe that such systems can be a deterrence tool, but for this the United States must ensure their production in substantial volumes and at an acceptable price.
