Castelion announced that it has been awarded a $49.9 million contract by the U.S. Navy to advance its Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapon from prototype to an integrated, early operational capability.

The work will be carried out in Torrance, California, and is expected to conclude by November 2027. Blackbeard, engineered for mass production and rapid fielding, is part of the Navy’s effort to accelerate new strike capabilities.

The award aligns with prior Army and Navy platform integration contracts and follows Castelion’s investment in a large manufacturing campus aimed at scaling hypersonic weapons production. Castelion writes:

Castelion announced today that the U.S. Navy awarded $49,998,005 to advance Blackbeard from prototype to integrated, early operational capability. Work will be performed in Torrance, California and is expected to be completed in November 2027. The Blackbeard contract award supports the U.S. Navy’s strategy to pursue new approaches to quickly move capability to the Fleet while maintaining operational rigor.

“Delivering hypersonic capability to support the warfighter is what drives this team,” said Bryon Hargis, CEO and Co-Founder of Castelion. “We recognize the trust the Department of War has placed in our team and remain focused on maintaining a sense of urgency to deliver on our commitments.”

Blackbeard, Castelion’s first product, is engineered for mass production and rapid fielding from inception. The system leverages vertically integrated propulsion and guidance subsystems to achieve performance at a fraction of the cost of legacy weapons, supporting the Department of War’s objective of building credible, nonnuclear deterrent capacity at scale.

This contract is the latest in of series of Army and Navy platform integration awards for Blackbeard. Castelion recently invested $220 million of its own capital in Project Ranger, a 1,000-acre manufacturing campus in Sandoval County, New Mexico purpose-built for scale. When complete, it will be the largest dedicated hypersonic production facility in the United States, capable of producing thousands of Blackbeard missiles annually. All 21 planned structures are expected to be operational by end of 2026.

Read more here.