Archer Aviation closed up 19.59% at $5.31 after Anduril and Archer unveiled Thunder, a Group 5 autonomous attack rotorcraft. The move meets the single-stock Tier-1 threshold because it cleared 8% and was tied to a named company release.
Hanwha Ocean (042660.KS) fell about 23% after Canada selected Germany’s Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems as preferred supplier for its next submarine fleet. The contract opportunity had been estimated at up to $100 billion over three decades, making the loss material for Korea’s defense-export trade.
Lockheed Martin $LMT is in the lead to buy Ultra Maritime in a reported $3.5B deal, according to the Financial Times. The defense M&A talks clear the $500M Tier-1 threshold and could be announced as soon as next week.
AeroVironment $AVAV gained as much as 28% after fiscal Q4 revenue rose 133% to $641.6M and funded backlog reached $1.2B. The company guided fiscal 2027 revenue to $2.125B-$2.225B.
$AVAV rose 19% after hours after fiscal Q4 adjusted EPS of $1.84 beat the $1.46 LSEG consensus and revenue of about $642M beat the $559M estimate. Funded backlog reached $1.2B, up 65% from a year earlier.
Rheinmetall fell 17% after reports that Germany would abandon six F126 frigates, a multi-billion-euro program where the company was expected to be lead contractor. TKMS was reported as the buyer-side winner for eight smaller Meko A-200 vessels.
MDA Space (MDA.TO) agreed to buy Blue Canyon Technologies from RTX Raytheon for $620M in cash. Yahoo Finance carried the Reuters report on June 19; MDA shares were quoted 6.29% higher after the announcement.
Bridgepoint $BPT is preparing a potential sale of Danish counter-drone company MyDefence at roughly $1B, the FT reported on June 14. The report says an adviser has been hired for a possible year-end auction and that MyDefence sales are poised to more than double this year.
Defense AI startup Anduril Industries raised $5B in a Series H co-led by Thrive Capital and a16z, doubling its valuation to $61B. The company doubled revenue to $2.2B in 2025 and will fund Arsenal-1 manufacturing expansion and Lattice platform advancement.
The DoD cleared OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, AWS, Oracle, Nvidia, and SpaceX to deploy AI on classified Impact Level 6 and IL7 military networks. Anthropic was labeled a 'supply chain risk' after insisting on safety guardrails for wartime AI use.
Military AI guardrails are still lagging the contracts. Axios reports Google's Gemini can be used in classified settings under an all lawful use Pentagon agreement, a broader frame than the one OpenAI says it accepted.
Reuters reports Google has joined the Pentagon’s classified AI stack and agreed to a contract that can adjust safety settings at government request. The harder question is no longer whether labs work with defense agencies, but how much control they keep after deployment.