Pentagon Backs Castelion Blackbeard Hypersonic Missile with U.S. Army Integration Awards.

Castelion announced Army and Navy integration awards for its Blackbeard ground-launched hypersonic family and plans live-fire demonstrations to speed adoption. The program is structured as a two-phase Middle Tier Acquisition rapid prototype effort that aims to deliver lower-cost, mass-producible hypersonic rounds compatible with HIMARS.

Castelion announced on October 24, 2025, the award of multiple U.S. Army and U.S. Navy contracts to integrate its Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapon on operational platforms, with live fire demonstrations planned to prove capability and accelerate adoption of affordable long-range conventional deterrence. The company says Blackbeard was engineered for mass production and has already completed more than 20 developmental flights, positioning the program to move quickly from integration to field testing.
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Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapon is a low-cost seeker-guided hypersonic round for HIMARS and naval launchers, built for rapid, precision attacks on moving and hardened targets in contested environments (Picture source: Castelion).

Blackbeard is a ground-launched hypersonic missile family that the Army’s fiscal 2026 budget now treats as “HX3, All Up Round and Canister.” Budget justifications describe a seeker-equipped precision strike weapon designed to attack time-sensitive moving targets and hardened sites at a much lower cost per missile than the current inventory. The near-term integration path runs through modified MLRS Family of Munitions pods and the Army’s M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System fire control, enabling a HIMARS-based demonstration while platform-specific launcher hardware is matured.

The Army is structuring Blackbeard as a two-phase rapid prototyping effort under Middle Tier Acquisition, with a fixed price Other Transaction Authority to Castelion. Phase One delivers an air-launched fixed fin flight demo using a modified government-furnished MFOM pod, then culminates in a HIMARS-launched minimum viable product test. If successful, Phase Two produces ten production representative rounds integrated with M142 and a flight termination system, de-risking manufacturability and reliability at scale. Congress appropriated 25 million dollars in FY26 to execute this plan within the Hypersonics program element.

Importantly, the Army is not positioning Blackbeard to replace the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon. Budget language is explicit that Blackbeard will not match LRHW velocities or range, but aims to deliver roughly 80 percent of the future Precision Strike Missile Increment 4 capability at significantly reduced cost. In practice, that places Blackbeard in the “low” side of a high-low mix for long-range fires, complementing PrSM and LRHW while expanding magazine depth. The program is also tied to the Common Autonomous Multi Domain Launcher effort, envisioned as Blackbeard’s primary launcher in the out years, with HIMARS compatibility serving as an interim on ramp.

Blackbeard would give U.S. Army fires brigades a mobile, survivable, hypersonic missile system that can relocate quickly, exploit existing HIMARS sustainment and training pipelines, and prosecute targets that move or harden faster than traditional ballistic trajectories can handle. Paired with joint ISR cueing, the seeker-guided round is intended to hit maritime or land-based mobile systems, command nodes, and hardened air defense assets inside contested airspace. For the Navy, Castelion’s awards signal a parallel integration path, and prior work with the Office of Naval Research on an air-launched anti-surface weapon hints at maritime strike mission threads that would benefit from the same low-cost, high-volume design ethos.

The broader context is a hypersonic arms race that has pushed the United States to diversify beyond a few exquisite rounds. Reuters reported the Army and Navy integration deals as part of a wider push to field fast, maneuvering weapons that are difficult to intercept, while driving down unit cost so inventories can be scaled. If Blackbeard’s rapid test cadence and manufacturing approach hold, the program could help Washington translate hypersonic technology into deployable combat power and credible conventional deterrence more quickly, and at a price point that allows real magazine depth rather than boutique stocks.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.