Defense Business Brief: End-of-fiscal-year advice for founders; Navy drone boats; Powerus to go public

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon’s comptroller has a bit of advice for tech makers and founders who want to do business with the military: Make tech that troops like, find out who can buy it for them, and hire someone who knows how things work. . 

“Having the users like your products is incredibly necessary. That’s a given. But it’s the program offices and the [portfolio acquisition executives, or] PAEs who really have the power to make you successful,” Jules Hurst, the Defense Department’s chief financial officer, said at Y Combinator’s Startup Industrial Base event Wednesday. “You have to provide the solution to them. Again, they’ve made their budget. They made it a year and a half ago. They’ve made a plan to execute that budget. So anything you’re bringing in is, at times, disruptive to them if they have an established program. So you’ve got to figure out how you can fit in.” 

Fitting in could mean being a subcontractor for an existing program or helping program managers “shape requirements for a future capability,” but it has to be more than just a good idea, he said. 

“You’ve got to fit into the cycle—and I know that’s not what a lot of you want to hear. And we’re working on changing that by doing acquisition reform, but it’s still the case in a lot of programs across the department,” Hurst said. 

Hiring someone familiar with doing business with the government “will help you immensely,” he said, as will finding the right Defense Department program offices. 

“Shop for the program offices and program managers that are really interested in change, and you align yourself with that person and you start to help try to solve their problems with your team. If you find the right program office or program manager, they can do immense good for you. They can open up lots of opportunities across the department. They can introduce you to people, even if you’re not a good fit for their program. So part of it is also personality shopping and finding somebody who really wants to make change and isn’t fixated on just compliance.”

And once in the door, companies must be able to make the tech in large quantities. 

“The best thing is to show that you can make stuff. A lot of startups right now, sometimes they’re paper deep—and that’s kind of a risky bet for the government. Not that we shouldn’t take it, right? Because sometimes our alternative is a company that does manufacture things, but doesn’t produce in the timetable we want, or the capabilities we need, or the cost schedule we want,” Hurst said. 

“So again, my best advice to you is: show that you can manufacture things. And if you are not manufacturing things, hire people who have experience manufacturing things, so you can show the government that you’re bringing on the talent necessary to scale your product and capability if they decide to buy it.”

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USVs wading in. The Navy will buy 30 medium-sized unmanned surface vessels at about $40 million each from three companies: Galliano Marine Services, HII, and Saronic. Each company will build 10, the first of which are expected to be delivered in the last quarter of 2027. 

• A little more: Six out of seven companies successfully completed sea trials for phase one of the Navy’s MUSV program. The three that didn’t get production contracts but had successful trials—Leidos, PacMar Technologies, and Sea Machines—“will automatically transfer into the marketplace and be eligible as part of phase two,” which will have broader requirements, Christopher Miller, the Navy’s acting direct reporting portfolio manager for robotic and autonomous systems, told reporters. Birdon participated in the trials and did not meet the program requirements but has a “viable path” to joining the drone marketplace in the future, he said.
• Pulling up: The MUSV program has been through a lot of changes in the last year (including a lawsuit.) But the more interesting part for me is what could come out of phase two, where other services, like the Army, can share requirements they have. This could have big implications for the Indo-Pacom region, and is something USARPAC commander Gen. Ronald Clark highlighted earlier this year. 
  • “The Army has a mission, and they actually operate a number of ships. And I think there’s a great opportunity here…and we’re just trying to make sure everybody sees the state of the market in terms of the capability, what the performance is. And then we’ll obviously work closely on the requirements,” Miller told reporters. “But I’m excited about that because I do think there’s opportunity for a close collaboration and partnering with the other services as they think about their future programs.” 
  • Phase 2 is expected to start testing evaluations as early as Nov. 16 and continue over the next five years.
• Related tangent: Defense tech darling Saronic broke ground on its much-anticipated Port Alpha facility in Brownsville, Texas, today. Vice President JD Vance attended the event. Also, earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the company’s Austin facility, praising the company’s USVs for aiding in the rescue of downed Apache pilots. 

Making moves + other news

• Michael Brasseur joined Booz Allen Hamilton as an executive vice president. Brasseur was previously Saab, Inc.’s chief strategy officer and led the Navy’s Task Force 59. 
• Dronemaker Powerus is expected to go public Oct. 1 as it finalizes its merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a publicly traded company on NASDAQ. The new company name will be Powerus Corporation. 
• The FBI shut down an investigation into defense contractors’ alleged bribes to lawmakers, ProPublica reports.
• Time is the real constraint the defense industrial base has to contend with, Seurat Technologies’ CEO James Demuth writes in Defense One. 
• Boeing snags a multibillion-dollar deal to build the Navy’s next generation fighter, F/A-XX.
• The Navy partially accepted the future USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier. 
• SpaceX launched a really big rocket and ended the flight test early. 

One last thing: Happy New Fiscal Year’s Eve to all who celebrate! Out with the old and in with the new—err, continuing resolution.