| Submit your comments on this article |
| Science & Technology |
| Silicon Valley-backed Covenant unveils low-cost, mass-producible cruise missile |
| 2026-09-09 |
| WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Defense startup Covenant on Wednesday unveiled a heavy-payload, long-range cruise missile it says can be quickly mass-produced at a relatively low cost, in the latest challenge to major U.S. weapons makers from some of Silicon Valley's biggest investors. The announcement from Covenant after two years of development coincides with efforts by the U.S. and its allies to restock missile inventories with less expensive and plentiful long-range precision-strike missiles after the war in Iran depleted stocks of the critical armaments. Its missile, called Anthem, is a ground-launched cruise missile carrying a payload of more than 200 kg (441 pounds). In a fight, it would be used in high volumes to work alongside other long-range missiles like the 1,000-mile (1,609-km) range Tomahawk cruise missile produced by RTX's (RTX.N), opens new tab Raytheon unit and the 600-mile Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), opens new tab Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER). Comparable weapons from the biggest defense contractors are "being built in small quantities at really high prices. And so we set out to change that," Michael Kaufman, Covenant's co-founder and CEO, told Reuters in an interview. The company, founded in 2024, has raised just over $250 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Lux, 8VC, Aleph and Lightspeed, and now employs more than 200 people across the U.S., Germany and Israel. Anthem is powered by a solid rocket motor for takeoff and a heavy-fuel jet engine for cruise flight. Covenant says it has flown the missile more than 200 times over the past year in tests. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |