Eleven months ago Castelion was a startup with an integration award and a good story. This week the US Navy placed a production order worth up to $200 million, and the Air Force quietly added $16.4 million to a research contract of its own.

Two services, two budgets, one missile built by a company that did not exist five years ago.

The Air Force Money Is the Smaller, Stranger Half

The Navy order is the headline. The Air Force Research Laboratory modification is the more interesting document.

AFRL added $16.4 million to an existing Castelion contract for a low-cost, mass-producible long-range strike weapon, taking its total from $20.9 million to $37.2 million. The work is funded with fiscal 2025 research money, continues at the company’s Torrance headquarters through 30 June 2028, and is managed from Wright-Patterson.

That is not a lot of money by Pentagon standards. It is, however, a second customer. Until now Blackbeard has been a Navy and Army story. An Air Force research laboratory putting its own funds behind the same airframe means the service is at minimum keeping the option open.

Eleven Months, One Escalation

Put the awards in a row, as the chart at the top of this article does, and the shape of the thing becomes obvious.

Army and Navy integration awards came in October 2025. In February 2026 the Navy picked Blackbeard as the first weapon candidate under its Multi-mission Affordable Capacity Effector programme. April brought $105 million to integrate the weapon onto the F/A-18E/F and run live-fire testing in the Indo-Pacific. June bought 50 early operational capability prototypes for $23.4 million. August added nearly $90 million toward programme-of-record status, including design changes intended to speed up sales to allies.

Then 14 September: a production delivery order worth up to $200 million.

Castelion says the first production lot is 444 all-up rounds, following the 50 early operational capability weapons ordered in June. Work runs at Project Ranger in Rio Rancho and at the Torrance facility.

Castelion’s own film announcing its Series B funding round. It is a company pitch rather than a weapon test, but it is the primary source on how the founders think about building missiles the way SpaceX builds rockets.

Why the Navy Is in a Hurry

Because it has done this the slow way already and it did not work. From 2021 the Navy pursued HALO, the Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare weapon, with Raytheon and Lockheed Martin competing and a target of fielding before 2030. In 2024 the service cancelled it, citing budget constraints.

MACE is the rebuilt version of that requirement with the price tag as the leading specification rather than an afterthought. Congress agreed, adding more than $140 million to the programme in the fiscal 2026 appropriations act, more than doubling its base funding. The fiscal 2027 request asks for $156 million to buy 353 MACE missiles.

Five Hundred a Year, in New Mexico

Castelion was founded in 2022 by three former SpaceX engineers, and the SpaceX inheritance shows in the manufacturing strategy more than in the missile. The company is building Project Ranger, a 1,000-acre campus at Rio Rancho, New Mexico, which it values at more than $250 million, with a stated goal of 500 weapons a year.

Five hundred a year is the number that matters. A hypersonic weapon that costs a fortune and arrives in dozens is a niche capability. One that arrives in hundreds is a magazine. The Navy’s own language about magazine depth and affordable mass is aimed squarely at that distinction.

What nobody will say is the unit price. Both the Navy and Castelion describe Blackbeard only as low-cost and mass-producible. No per-round figure has been published, and we are not going to invent one.

The Part to Watch

The August award included design changes specifically intended to speed up sales to allies. That is a company and a customer planning for export before the weapon has reached initial operational capability, which is unusual and tells you how confident both are.

Defense News, citing Inside Defense, reports Blackbeard is intended to arm the F-35 as well as the Super Hornet. That carriage claim rests on a single chain of attribution and should be treated as such until somebody photographs it.

Either way, the trajectory is not subtle. Three years from founding to a production order, with two services and Congress all pushing in the same direction.

Sources: US Navy press release; Defense News; Defence Blog; Inside Defense; US Department of Defense contract announcements.