WASHINGTON — Defense startup Castelion today announced it won “multiple awards” for its hypersonic Blackbeard weapon system to be used on Army and Navy platforms, marking the company’s first awards for platform integration.
“These integration contracts validate that affordability and speed are critical to modern deterrence,” Castelion CEO Bryon Hargis said in a company statement today. “Castelion leads the market designing for manufacturability and rapid iteration, enabling the Department of War to move faster from concept to capability.”
A company executive declined to reveal what Army platforms the Blackbeard will be integrated on in line with the contracts, however fiscal 2026 budget documents — yet to be passed by Congress — reveal the Army’s plans to develop a future Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) variant. This variant, dubbed the HX3, could “double the range” of the baseline weapon, the PrSM 1, at a cheaper price point. The budget documents said the service plans to test this capability with Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile as a way to hit “time sensitive moving targets and hardened targets” at a “much-reduced cost per missile than currently exists in the Army inventory.”
“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 service 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 Castelion exec also did not disclose what Naval platform Blackbeard will integrate with. However, the company previously won a contract from the Office of Naval Research to perform “an initial trade study to identity cost, schedule, and performance estimates” for an air-launched anti-surface weapon.
All of the military services have invested heavily into developing hypersonic weapons in recent years as the US and China continue their race to develop the most lethal hypersonic capability. Just last month China unveiled its new YJ-17, YJ-19 and YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship missiles during the country’s annual military parade.
In 2023, the Army awarded a Lockheed Martin team and a Raytheon Technologies-Northrop Grumman team to work on competing PrSM Inc 4 designs. Last year, the service began looking for a PrSM Inc 5 weapon to be launched from an autonomous launcher, seemingly the new HX3/Blackbeard missile.
While the Army’s budget did not detail how the HX3 project fits into the PrSM portfolio, the budget documents shed light on plans to test out and, possibly, acquire Blackbeard.
The requirement for Blackbeard was approved in May 2025 after Army senior leaders directed the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office to move ahead with the new Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML) effort that includes medium and heavy variants.
“Blackbeard GL is a companion development to the Army’s Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher (CAML) effort which holds the potential to replace the base HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] launcher platform amongst other launchers,” the Army wrote in its budget. “While envisioned as a primary munition for CAML, Blackbeard GL is designed to be compatible with existing HIMARS platforms as an interim solution.”
The Army’s fiscal 2026 budget laid out $25 million for Blackbeard development with plans for two phases. In the first phase, the company will deliver a “prototype proof-of-concept” that will be used in a demonstration sometime between January and March 2026. If that goes well, the company will then be tasked with delivering 10 minimum viable product prototypes for flight testing from a M142 HIMARS towards the end of FY26.
“Blackbeard is Castelion’s first long-range, hypersonic strike weapon, designed for mass production and rapid fielding once integration and testing are complete,” the company’s release read. “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.”
Ashley Roque contributed to this report.
