The announcement builds on an eventful few weeks for the company’s Corsair drone boats.

On July 12, three Corsairs struck Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base in what U.S. Central Command called the first combat use of unmanned surface vessels by American forces.

Weeks earlier, a Navy-operated Corsair helped rescue two soldiers after their Army AH-64 Apache went down near the Strait of Hormuz, a mission Central Command called another first of its kind by an unmanned surface vessel.

Founded in 2022, Saronic first unveiled plans for Port Alpha in February 2025 but stopped short of naming a site or a cost. Plans now include an initial 835-acre site in Cameron County, with room to grow to nearly 4,400 acres. It’s an investment the company puts at more than $3 billion. The site was chosen over competing sites in California and Virginia, among others.

Construction is set to break ground this year, with the yard expected to open in 2028. Initially, the facility will be capable of building vessels up to 850 feet, about the length of a U.S. Navy Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, though future expansion could support vessels longer than 1,200 feet, the company said.

Saronic estimates Port Alpha could create up to 10,000 direct jobs over the next decade, from welding and machining to robotics, software engineering and naval architecture. The company also projects $264.5 billion in economic impact for Texas and $160 billion for Cameron County.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who announced the project from Saronic’s Austin headquarters, said a fully built-out yard would deliver about $750 million a year in wages, a sum he called “game-changing for the population of Texas.”

To help land the project, the state extended an $80 million grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund, according to the governor’s office.

Last month, Cameron County commissioners approved a 95% tax abatement for the project over roughly two decades, according to USNI News. The agreement is contingent on Saronic filling 35% of the yard’s jobs with local residents, and the tax break shrinks if the company misses its local hiring targets, the Texas Tribune reported.

The deal was not without local opposition. According to the Border Chronicle, at least 40 people testified or submitted written statements against the abatement, some questioning why a company valued at $9.25 billion needed a tax break. The June 16 vote passed only after two earlier delays and hours of testimony.

Port Alpha would become Saronic’s third site. It runs a plant in central Texas that turns out the 24-foot Corsair, for which the Navy awarded a $392 million production contract in December, and last year it bought a former Gulf Craft yard in Franklin, Louisiana, where it is spending $300 million to build the larger, 180-foot Marauder.

Dino Mavrookas, Saronic’s co-founder and chief executive, did not specify which ships Port Alpha would build but told reporters the company envisions autonomy playing a role in larger hulls over time, according to USNI News.

“Those ships might not be fully autonomous or fully unmanned on day one,” he said. “But over time, as we look at building out the tech and building out the industry as a whole, there’s no reason that you can’t unman those ships completely.”

Port Alpha arrives amid a federal push to rebuild a U.S. shipbuilding base that has fallen far behind China’s. Saronic tied the project to an executive order on maritime dominance that President Donald Trump issued in April 2025, along with the SHIPS for America Act and a federal Maritime Action Plan, all aimed at reversing decades of decline in commercial and naval ship production.

“America’s maritime future depends on our ability to build again,” said Mavrookas, adding that the yard was built “to deliver ships at a speed and scale not seen since World War II.”

Saronic is one of seven companies competing for the Navy’s medium unmanned surface vessel contract, with at-sea testing set to run through October.

The company said it will work with Texas, Cameron County and local schools to build training and apprenticeship programs for the yard, but did not say when it expects to name customers or specific ship classes for Port Alpha.

The device, known as the i-STAT Alinity, is being fielded to forward units under the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, or AAMDC.

Air defense formations, the Army said, are often performing tasks that demand high mental acuity in environments far from modern medical equipment.

“In Central Command, we’re seeing disproportionately high traumatic brain injury rates in air defense,” Col. Jessica Peck, the command surgeon for the 10th AAMDC, said in a release. “These jobs demand extremely high cognitive performance. Even a mild traumatic brain injury can significantly degrade effectiveness, impacting coordination, emotional regulation, spatial awareness, and decision-making.”

The test works by analyzing a drop of blood for specific proteins that leak through the blood-brain barrier after a traumatic injury.

The protein scores can assist providers in determining if an injured person may need brain surgery or can return to work after a few days of rest. It can provide information to detect injuries up to 24 hours after the trauma.

Previously, military providers tested potential brain injury victims with memory and concentration assessments, a test Peck said could be easily manipulated.

“People can intentionally perform better or worse depending on what they want the outcome to be,” Peck said in the release, adding “a lot of special operations personnel have memorized the word lists, so they can essentially ‘beat’ the test.”

The new test may also reduce medical evacuations, the Army said, as previously patients with potential brain injuries had to be evacuated from austere environments to for testing.

According to the service, 68% of people evacuated from frontline roles for potential brain injuries were returned to duty during the decade-long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With the blood test, some evacuations could be prevented, the Army said.

So far, the system has been used in the Middle East and prevented 13 medical evacuations across Central Command from 2021 to 2022, according to the release.

Because the testing cartridges must be refrigerated, the test will be kept at Role 1 care sites.

The deals fall under the U.S. Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, or FAMM. The Defense Department said it reached agreements with Anduril for its Barracuda-500, CoAspire for its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile and Zone 5 Technologies for its Rusty Dagger.

The move boils down to cost-effectiveness. The Air Force is betting that low-cost weapons can do the work the service once reserved for far more expensive munitions.

Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, designed to be fired at heavily defended targets from a safe distance, cost more than $1.3 million apiece. The service wants its new missiles for a fraction of that, closer to $218,000 per round, cheap enough to shoot many for less than it once cost to shoot one.

The FAMM program splits into a lugged variant carried by fighters and bombers (FAMM-L) and a palletized variant dropped from airlifters (FAMM-P), both with ranges of 250 to 500 miles.

Anduril said its framework agreement runs seven years, with deliveries starting in 2027. According to the company, the Air Force intends to buy up to 8,000 FAMM rounds a year across both variants and all the competing vendors.

The deals are framework agreements, not orders for missiles. They set the terms and promise the companies steady business, giving them a reason to invest in bigger production lines.

The Defense Department said the missiles still have to complete testing and qualification, and that the actual buys depend on Congress approving the multiyear deals the Pentagon is seeking.

Anduril pitched its missile as proof that cheaper weapons can be built at volume.

“Barracuda-500 is specifically designed to expand the United States’ stand-off strike capability,” Anduril said in its release. “By augmenting existing critical munitions inventories with a more affordable, producible, and flexible option, Anduril is enhancing America’s arsenal of munitions, ensuring that we have the capability required to deter our adversaries.”

To keep the vendors competing, the Pentagon is splitting the work among all qualified suppliers under firm fixed-price terms with a minimum order floor, and companies that beat their production schedules become eligible for additional orders.

Budget projections call for 28,000 missiles across all vendors over five years for $12.6 billion, reaching 7,990 rounds in the final year.

The agreements stem from the Acquisition Transformation Strategy, the Pentagon’s push under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to buy weapons faster and from nontraditional suppliers.

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey said the FAMM deals showed the department “expanding the defense industrial base, fielding capabilities faster, and attracting private investment.”

Zone 5 runs its U.S. operation from California but was acquired in June by Kongsberg, a Norwegian defense company. Anduril and CoAspire are based in California and Virginia, respectively.

The agreement comes on the heels of a May announcement that tapped the same three companies, along with Leidos, for the Army-led Low-Cost Containerized Missiles program, a parallel push for ground-launched affordable missiles.

Capt. Nathanial “Icarus” Welch received the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor earlier this month for bravery and devotion to duty during his 2025 deployment, according to a release

Welch, a pilot and chief of plans and programs in the 18th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, was deployed to Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, as an F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot with the 480th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron in April 2025.

During an April 29, 2025, mission, Welch repeatedly flew into heavily defended airspace as he successfully evaded the three enemy and warned the formation of incoming threats.

As Welch came within a few hundred feet of the explosions, he remained on station to protect coalition aircraft until the threat subsided, the release reads.

“Capt. Welch exemplifies everything the nation asks for in a fighter pilot escorting other combatants into a heavily defended enemy position,” Air Force Col. Matthew Johnston, 354th Fighter Wing commander, said in the release.

“He selflessly placed his aircraft between enemy missile systems and the aircraft he was protecting to ensure mission success and the survival of the force package,” he continued.

The release did not provide details about the mission, but Welch’s squadron at the time, known as the “Wild Weasel” unit, was deployed to Saudi Arabia during Operation Rough Rider, which began mid-March 2025 against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Previous Air Force releases show that the 480th squadron participated in Operation Rough Rider and that other members of the unit received awards for their service in U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility.

Welch was given the award by Lt. Gen. Robert Davis, 11th Air Force commander, in a ceremony at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, the statement said.

“Icarus, thanks for doing your job with excellence and valor in the face of danger,” Davis said in the release. “I know you would go back and do it again; I know all your wingmen would also have done the same. It is rare we get the opportunity to award an Airmen with the Distinguished Flying Cross with the Valor device, and you deserve it.”

A Distinguished Flying Cross is awarded heroism or extraordinary achievement during an aerial flight. The “V” device recognizes acts of heroism beyond normally expected while in direct combat against an armed enemy.

“The trends are moving in the right direction,” Jerry McGinn, who co-authored the study for the Center for Strategic and International Analysis think tank, told Defense News.

However, the study — described as a progress report on reforms to the defense manufacturing and acquisition system — still found numerous problems with ramping up and sustaining wartime production.

For example, “according to several measures — manufacturing lead times, critical munitions and materials stockpiles, and supply chain security — the U.S. industrial base has a long way to go to achieve resilience,” warned the analysis by CSIS’s Center for the Industrial Base.

CSIS did find measurable improvements since November 2025, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth vowed to “transform the entire acquisition system to operate on a wartime footing.”

Hegseth also promised to “inspire American industry to become a wartime industrial base that focuses on speed and volume.”

Most striking is the number of new companies in the defense field.

“Roughly 10,000 new firms have entered the market in the past two years and nontraditional companies received over $120 billion in contract obligations in FY 2025, adding competition and innovation to the sector,” CSIS noted. “Munitions contract obligations have risen 330 percent since FY 2010. Spurred by this increased demand and depleted inventories, the Pentagon is signing multiyear agreements with munitions producers and suppliers on a historic scale.”

The military is also responding to depleted stockpiles of expensive guided weapons that have been rapidly consumed by the Iran and Ukraine wars.

The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request for munitions allocated 49% to low-cost munitions — defined as costing less than $600,000 apiece — rising to 70% by 2031.

The U.S. is also strengthening its defense supply chain, such as “multiyear procurement agreements, direct-to-supplier investments, and leaner acquisition pathways,” as well as investing in defense companies such as L3Harris Missile Solutions, according to CSIS.

However, while this signals government commitment to defense production, it “also complicates competitive dynamics within the industry as new entrants and established suppliers alike seek to meet rapidly growing demand for munitions at scale.”

Also notable is federal investment in rare earths, which has seen production soar from 95 tons in 2022, to 8,900 tons in 2025. Nonetheless, “the erosion of domestic rare earth manufacturing capacity and the rise of Chinese control took decades to unfold, however, and it will take several years of enduring effort for the United States and its allies to build, scale, and sustain the production capacity of these key defense inputs.”

Exports of U.S. arms, or cooperative multinational projects such as the F-35 fighter, have also become a pillar of America’s defense industry. Foreign Military Sales, or FMS, have more than tripled, from less than $20 billion in 2015 to more than $80 billion in 2025.

The Trump administration wants to take this further with the “America First Arms Transfer Strategy,” launched in February 2026.

“The United States will use foreign purchases and capital to support domestic reindustrialization, expand production capacity, and improve the resilience of the United States defense industrial base,” the White House executive order declared.

Ultimately, the federal government can control defense production through the products it demands, the prices it is willing to pay, and the incentives it offers.

“It’s a monopsony,” McGinn said. “Government sets the market. Government can regulate the market. So, if the government wants different outcomes, it changes how it buys.”

The push follows this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, where allies pledged €70 billion ($80 billion) in military aid for Ukraine this year.

U.S. President Donald Trump also pledged to allow Ukraine a license to build its own Patriot interceptors, a long-awaited goal of Kyiv. “We’ll give them the right to make Patriots,” he said.

“This is a European model,” Zelenskyy said Thursday. “FREYA is our Ukrainian anti-ballistic system…an analogue in terms of intercepting ballistic targets, an analogue of Patriot, but a system for more mass production and a cheaper system.”

Long-range missile and drone strikes caused 45% of Ukraine’s civilian casualties in May, the worst monthly toll since April 2022, according to a U.N. report.

Ballistic missiles remain the one threat Ukraine still can’t intercept with a system it built itself. Freya could change that, potentially shifting Kyiv’s position on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.

Freya centers on the FP-7.X interceptor, produced by the Ukrainian company Fire Point, and is designed to hit a ballistic target at roughly 15 miles altitude.

Like Patriot interceptors, Freya is an entire system and will rely on allies for production support.

“A system needs not only a missile and a launcher. It needs radars, command and control, and many different elements,” he said.

“To create our anti-ballistic system very quickly, we need European partners who have production of those things that Ukraine does not yet have for its own anti-ballistic system.”

Fire Point has signed a memorandum with Germany’s Hensoldt for radar technology and is in talks with France’s Thales, Italy’s Leonardo and Norway’s Kongsberg to supply tracking and command-and-control systems.

Zelenskyy said the Freya coalition, which he described as comprising roughly eight partner nations, will speed up the production process and make a faster timeline possible.

“We can do it ourselves, but years will pass,” he said.

Fire Point is targeting a per-shot cost near $700,000, versus roughly $3.8 million for a Patriot PAC-3.

The missile was flight-tested in early June, the company said, and is aiming to mass-produce three a day starting in August and intercept its first ballistic missile by the end of 2027.

The upcoming meeting in France may yield the next updates as Zelenskyy said the current plan depends on partner nations, their manufacturers and their production capacity signing on.

“God willing, the partners will support it, and God willing, our manufacturers will succeed with all of this,” he said.

Munkhzaya, a finance technician assigned to the 125th Finance Battalion, 8th Theater Sustainment Command, returned to Mongolia for the multinational exercise hosted by the Mongolian Armed Forces and co-sponsored by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

The exercise brings together military personnel from 18 nations to improve United Nations peacekeeping training.

“Khaan Quest gives service members from multiple nations the opportunity to meet each other, share cultures and build relationships,” Munkhzaya said in a release.

Because of his fluency in both English and Mongolian, Munkhzaya was selected to support the exercise by helping bridge communication gaps between forces.

“I explain why the U.S. Army does things a certain way, and I also explain the Mongolian perspective,” Munkhzaya said. “It helps connect both forces.”

While participating in the event, Munkhzaya reenlisted in the U.S. Army during a ceremony held inside a traditional Mongolian ger, or yurt, at Five Hills Training Area, on July 2, 2026.

The people in Mongolia welcomed Munkhzaya back home in a U.S. uniform.

“They thanked me for sharing the Mongolian side with the U.S. Army, and that made me feel comfortable coming back this year,” Munkhzaya added.

Munkhzaya said he grew up wanting to study in the United States. After graduating from high school in Ulaanbaatar, he moved to California alone, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics with a minor in business from California State University, Sacramento.

Although he had opportunities for a civilian career, Munkhzaya wanted a different path.

“I joined the Army because I wanted the military lifestyle,” Munkhzaya said. “I wanted more discipline. I thought it would help me grow as a person.”

The ongoing Exercise Valiant Shield became the proving ground for III Marine Expeditionary Force personnel, as Marines at Camp Blaz successfully used the MRIC to intercept an aerial target on June 30, 2026.

The MRIC is a “significant leap in operational capability,” a service release stated. The system bridges the gap between the shoulder-fired Stinger Man-Portable Air Defense System and the long-range Patriot missile system and is designed for the “expeditionary nature of Marine Corps operations.”

Deployed via trailers carrying 20 interceptors each, MRIC systems can down targets from two to 43 miles away.

The deployment of the system allows Marines to provide an “air defense umbrella” that moves with Marine forces as they maneuver inside an enemy’s weapons engagement zone, all while defending critical assets like expeditionary air bases, runways and forward arming and refueling points, according to a service release.

In 2023, the service announced that it would incorporate technology from Israel’s Iron Dome system to help furnish the Corps with its first medium-range air defense system in decades.

According to the service’s Force Design 2030, three batteries of MRIC are slated to be fielded by 2028.

“Before the MRIC, we were primarily a short-range air defense capability,” Maj. Emi Gutierrez, commander of the firing battery, said in the release. “The Marine Corps employed the Stinger for years, but that capability is significantly different. With the evolution of air defense weapon systems, we saw a need to adapt.

“Our ability to rapidly insert and fill critical gaps within an integrated air defense system is critical not only to the Marine Corps but also the joint force as a whole,” Gutierrez continued. “The MRIC fits into expeditionary warfare perfectly because of its ability to be rapidly deployed.”

The AAV-P7, or AAV, affectionately known to Marines as Trax, is being replaced by the amphibious combat vehicle. But rather than being retired to storage, the battle-tested tracked vehicles are slated to be transferred to partner nations by experienced instructors.

The AAV entered the service in 1972 and morphed into a mainstay of Corps’ amphibious assault capabilities for decades. It has undergone multiple upgrades over the years and saw combat in Lebanon and Iraq. The platform was officially decommissioned in September 2025.

At the exercise, the AAV was used in doctrinal roles, such as a mechanized assault platform, a logistics carrier and a direct fire asset. The Corps said it was being tested among drones, which have changed the nature of war drastically since the vehicle was first introduced.

For many marines, the Trax was the center of their careers, and its retirement marked an emotional end to what was more than a weapons system.

Master Sgt. Daniel Porter, logistics chief for 4th Assault Amphibian Battalion, spent 22 years working on the vehicle after first seeing one as a fresh Marine.

“This has been my home since I started in the Marine Corps,” Porter said in the statement, which later chronicled the Marine’s sentimental last look at the vehicle. “Last ride,” he said, after bidding farewell to the beast he called “old girl.”