US Navy awards $23.4M contract for Blackbeard hypersonic weapon

June 18, 2026, by Fatima Bahtić

American tech company Castellion has been awarded a contract from the US Navy for the production and delivery of 50 Blackbeard early operational capability pre-production prototypes and associated storage and shipping containers.

As informed, the award marks an important step in Blackbeard’s transition from development and flight testing toward operationally relevant production. The order supports continued maturation of Castelion’s highly manufacturable long-range hypersonic strike weapons and will exercise the company’s expanding production capacity at its Project Ranger manufacturing campus in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

The value of the deal is $23.4 million.

Work under the award will be performed primarily in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, with supporting work in Torrance, California, and is expected to be completed in 2027.

“Blackbeard was designed from the beginning to support our nation’s conventional deterrence,” said Bryon Hargis, Co-Founder and CEO of Castelion.

“This award reflects the Navy’s continued commitment to and leadership in rapidly advancing affordable, manufacturable long-range strike capability and moving Blackbeard toward early operational use.”

Lackbeard is the first US hypersonic system engineered from inception for industrial-rate output, commercial unit cost, and continuous flight test iteration.

This award builds on a series of US Army and Navy platform integration contracts and follows Castelion’s $250+ million investment in Project Ranger, a 1,000-acre manufacturing campus in New Mexico built for hypersonic production at scale.

To remind, in April this year, Castellion was awarded a $105M contract by the US Navy to continue efforts to integrate its Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapon onto the F/A-18 and transition the system to an early operational capability in 2027.

Under this award, Castelion will conduct extensive system safety and certification testing, flight testing, and other integration activities related to carrier-based operations.