Blackbeard hypersonic weapon set to be integrated onto US military platforms

A California-based company is set to integrate its hypersonic weapon system onto some operational platforms of U.S. Army and U.S. Navy.
Castelion has secured contracts to integrate its Blackbeard weapon system onto operational platforms like the U.S. Army’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
After being integrated, this system will demonstrate its capabilities in live-fire tests – advancing the Department of War’s effort to evaluate and accelerate new, cost-effective strike capabilities for conventional deterrence.
“These integration contracts validate that affordability and speed are critical to modern deterrence,” said Bryon Hargis, Castelion’s Chief Executive Officer.
“Castelion leads the market designing for manufacturability and rapid iteration, enabling the Department of War to move faster from concept to capability.”
Designed for rapid fielding, Blackbeard is Castelion’s first long-range, hypersonic strike weapon. The system leverages vertically integrated propulsion and guidance subsystems to achieve performance at a fraction of the cost of legacy weapons – supporting the Department’s objective of building credible, non-nuclear deterrent capacity at scale.
Next-generation military system
The El Segundo-based defense company designs, tests, and manufactures next-generation military systems rapidly and at a massive scale to deter future wars.
The company claims that it vertically integrates core technologies to move faster, reduce risk, and control cost at scale. Every system is designed for manufacturability from day one, enabling rapid iteration and high-volume production. Castelion highlights that its weapon systems are fast and affordable to use.
“Castelion delivers the capabilities America needs to preserve peace through credible, non-nuclear deterrence. We build at the scale national security demands – optimizing every system for cost, manufacturability, and rapid deployment,” said the company in a statement.
“Blackbeard GL [Ground Launch] is not a replacement to the Long Range Hypersonic Weapons (LRHW) as it will not reach similar velocities nor range,” the U.S. Army wrote in its budget documents. “The goal of Blackbeard GL is to deliver approximately 80 (percent) of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) Increment 4 capability at a significantly reduced cost.”
The company aims to produce thousands of the weapons annually at full rate production, with a target cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit. The contracts are a significant step in broadening the hypersonic weapon options for the Pentagon which seeks to field more affordable strike capabilities, reported The Jerusalem Post.
The contract was awarded at a time when the world was racing to field missiles that could change direction while traveling at several times the speed of sound. Russia and China are believed to be much ahead in the hypersonic weapons race.