Scoop: Castelion's Blackbeard missile will fly on F/A-18

Colin Demarest

A rocket launching into a clear blue sky, leaving a trail of white smoke and dust, with blurred desert bushes in the foreground. — A Castelion flight test in October, near Mojave, California. Photo: Courtesy of Castelion

Castelion's air-launched variant of the Blackbeard hypersonic missile will fly aboard an F/A-18 in the near future, Axios has learned.

The big picture: The company, founded in 2022 and now valued in the billions of dollars, in late February scored nearly $50 million to continue development of the weapon, Pentagon contract records show.

It's also working with the Army to integrate onto the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.

Zoom in: Castelion has sites in Texas supporting the effort, as well as its headquarters in Torrance, California.

Context: Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, last year named hypersonic weaponry as a "critical technology area."

Experts have warned the U.S. arsenal trails those of China and Russia.

Flashback: Castelion recently broke ground on Project Ranger, a 1,000-acre plant in Rio Rancho, outside of Albuquerque.

"Project Ranger is all about scaling out an enormous production capacity," Bryon Hargis, a co-founder, told Axios at the time.

Go deeper: Castelion wants Blackbeard missiles made at New Mexico factory in 2026

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Scoop: Castelion's Blackbeard missile will fly on F/A-18

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