U.S. Navy Awards Castelion First Delivery Order for Blackbeard Hypersonic Weapon 

Award marks first delivery of low-cost hypersonic strike weapons to the Navy 

From Castelion 

TORRANCE, Calif., June 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Castelion has been awarded a $23.4M firm-fixed-price order from the U.S. Navy for the production and delivery of 50 Blackbeard early operational capability pre-production prototypes and 50 associated storage and shipping containers. 

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 low-cost, 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. 

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.” 

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