Nothing improves your cardio like a drone that refuses to lose sight of you.

Love seeing a company find its lane in a part of American manufacturing that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. Anatar makes technical textiles and soft goods for aerospace and defense. We talk a lot about the aircraft, drones and factories, but rebuilding the suppliers behind them is part of the job too. There’s a lot more to America’s reindustrialization than the headlines capture. This is exactly the kind of company I get excited to see.

Remember this the next time an armchair expert mocks the panel gaps on Anduril’s underwater vehicles because “water will get in.” Water is SUPPOSED to get in. Anduril uses a free-flooded design: seawater fills spaces inside the outer shell, while sensitive equipment is protected in smaller sealed pressure housings. That allows water pressure to equalize across the outer panels. They provide the vehicle’s shape without having to keep the entire ocean out of one enormous dry compartment.

The Air Force says it'll work out how drone wingmen should count toward its fighter force, and work with Congress on the law that sets its minimum number of fighters. Right now that law only counts aircraft with one or two crew aboard. So Anduril's Fury and General Atomics' Vengeance, the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), count for zero no matter how many get built. Why it matters: if CCAs start counting, they stop being an add-on and become part of how the Air Force meets its fighter requirement. That's a much steadier reason to keep buying them. The catch: Congress set that floor to stop the Air Force from retiring jets faster than it replaces them. Some lawmakers will see counting drones as a way around it. afrc.af.mil/News/Article/463…

This gives a concrete example of autonomous systems working together across ground and air. For soldiers, the potential benefit is sending sensing and weapons forward while operators remain farther back. For Anduril, it demonstrates a role supplying effects carried by another company’s autonomous platform. army.mil/article/296278/darp…

HD Hyundai and Kiewit are planning a new American shipyard, with construction targeted for 2027 and full operations for 2029. The plans include robotic welding, automated production and digital models to help organize the work. They’re also projecting up to 3,000 jobs, which gives some perspective on how much skilled labor a modern shipyard still needs. One detail worth watching: they intend to pursue ship sections and modules for other U.S. builders, alongside commercial ships and Navy support vessels. That could help relieve bottlenecks at existing yards. Adding places that can build major sections gives the industry more options for getting ships completed. There’s still a lot between this announcement and delivering vessels, but bringing Korean shipbuilding experience together with American fabrication capacity looks like a promising approach.

General Atomics is bringing in Spirit Defense, a Boeing company, to help design and build fuselages for its FQ-42 Vengeance autonomous fighter. This helps explain why Anduril has invested so heavily in Arsenal-1. Building manufacturing capacity alongside the aircraft could give Fury an advantage as the Air Force moves from testing to buying fleets. General Atomics is addressing that same challenge by adding an experienced manufacturing partner. There’s a credible case for both approaches. We still need production rates, costs and delivery schedules to judge which works better. Owning a large factory doesn’t automatically mean you can deliver faster, just as adding a partner doesn’t automatically solve production bottlenecks.

Russia fills about half its drone raids with foam and wooden decoys, per reports cited here. Under $10K each. The problem: a Western interceptor costs hundreds of thousands to millions. Shoot the fakes and you run out of missiles. Ignore them and you might ignore a real one. Back in July, Anduril's Quay Barnett said that they're developing a Roadrunner version that could engage one (or multiple?) targets and still return-to-base and be refueled and rearmed. Anduril must have seen this exact tactic coming.

Anduril has been selected for the Space Force’s Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, joining five other companies providing satellite tracking capacity that can expand during a crisis. Think of it as having extra eyes on orbit already lined up before something happens. If a satellite breaks apart or an unexpected event demands closer attention, the Space Force can call on commercial providers for more coverage. These companies already support military operators. The new contracts put arrangements in place to increase that support when demand spikes. For Anduril, this brings the space surveillance business it acquired with ExoAnalytic into another operational role. For the Space Force, it means planning how to get additional tracking capacity before a crisis forces the issue. Thanks, @1_spp airandspaceforces.com/space-…

Palmer Luckey and Ben Lamm (the "dire wolf" guy) launched Warhound: $200M to clone and gene-edit military working dogs. Anduril's part: vests, goggles, sensors. "On top of the dog, not in the dog." No equity.

Worst part: under a CR (continuing resolution), the Pentagon generally can't start new programs or ramp up production unless Congress writes in an exception. So the new companies everyone says they want, get stuck waiting while old programs roll on at last year's rate.

Quick context: the Pentagon wants cheap cruise missiles that launch from shipping containers, so it can buy thousands instead of a few expensive ones. Rusty Dagger is one of four missiles picked for that effort. Anduril's is another, with a deal for 3,000+ of its Barracudas.

Before we send Nidal Hassan's firing squad home, we've got one more for them.

A think tank analyst wants Congress to limit OTs (Other Transaction, the Pentagon's skip-the-usual-red-tape contracting tool) to research only. No prototypes, no production. Why we should care: that's how Anduril got its Army NGC2 prototype ($99.6M), and the op-ed names Anduril among the Golden Dome interceptor OT recipients. She does make one decent point, though. The Pentagon doesn't actually track whether OTs are faster. The tool whose whole selling point is speed... and nobody's timing it. xitter.cf/BreakingDefense/status…

The Army's next-generation command-and-control system, NGC2, has two hurdles right now: technology and money. At Lightning Surge, the 25th Infantry Division ran into friction connecting the Anduril-led NGC2 software to older radios. Now I Corps commander Lt. Gen. Matt McFarlane says fielding it across the corps by the end of FY2027 depends on resources: "Scaling and speed up is based on resources available. That's not in my job jar." The Army has asked for $904M for NGC2 in FY27, and that money isn't settled yet. armytimes.com/industry/techw…

The Air Force plans to field 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft by 2032. The plan to keep them flying is just getting started. "Honestly, we're just starting to develop the sustainment framework for the CCAs," said Lt. Gen. Linda Hurry, head of Air Force Materiel Command. Starting early is good. These drones are meant to be cheaper and more expendable than crewed jets, and that may not fit a maintenance system built around fighters meant to fly for decades. It also lands while AFMC says it's about 2,600 billets short at its sustainment center and facing a $14B spare-parts gap. For Anduril and General Atomics, how sustainment gets defined could matter almost as much as the airframes. defensescoop.com/2026/10/21/…