The U.S. Navy has ordered a $56 million retrofit for a single MQ-4C Triton, paying Northrop Grumman to install the B7 retrofit material kit on one of its high-altitude maritime surveillance drones. Naval Air Systems Command awarded the firm-fixed-price modification on Oct. 28, and the work is scheduled to run until May 2030. The full […]
United Launch Alliance announced Wednesday it plans to return its Vulcan rocket to service on November 13, nine months after a solid rocket booster anomaly threw the company's 2026 launch schedule into oblivion.
The return-to-flight mission will launch 40 satellites for the Amazon Leo broadband constellation, the first of 38 Vulcan flights Amazon has booked to deploy the bulk of its network. The mission will lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, and ULA said the launch date is pending range approval.
The launch is critical for ULA after its new flagship rocket suffered nozzle failures on its solid rocket boosters on two of its first four missions, most recently during a flight in February. In both cases, the rocket overcame the nozzle failure and completed its mission, but officials at the US Space Force, ULA's primary customer, lost confidence in Vulcan.
© United Launch Alliance
L3Harris Technologies has received a three-year contract worth up to $60 million to develop a long-range, maneuverable missile for the U.S. Army that is designed to shoot down small and medium drones at greater distances than today’s interceptors. The company announced the award on Oct. 23, 2026, under the Xtended Range Counter-sUAS Missile program run […]
The U.S. Army has started flight testing four MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopters that the U.S. Navy was retiring, turning aircraft headed for long-term storage into flying testbeds for Army sensors and saving the Army just over $70 million in procurement costs. The Army’s Redstone Test Center at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, received the four aircraft […]
The U.S. Army has awarded Longbow LLC a $419.6 million contract to supply fire control radar systems and post-production support for the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, keeping work on the Apache’s distinctive mast-mounted radar going into the next decade. The contract, announced on Oct. 22, 2026, covers the AH-64D and AH-64E versions of the helicopter […]
This week: Amazon is blocking Meta’s new Muse AI assistant from shopping on Amazon.com, saying the agent doesn’t identify itself and violates the site’s conditions of use. We explain why the standoff is an early sign of a much bigger fight over whether AI agents can use websites and apps on people’s behalf, and why Amazon has so much riding on the answer.
For the definitive word on the issue, we ask Muse what it has to say for itself, and get an impressively sophisticated and evenhanded response.
We recorded this week’s show live at Daniel’s Broiler in downtown Seattle, in front of a room of startup founders and CEOs, at a dinner hosted and sponsored by Northern Trust.
Mike Fridgen, a longtime Seattle entrepreneur and Madrona venture partner now working on a stealth startup, joins us to talk about whether Seattle is still a good place to build a company. The conversation covers the region’s talent, its history and the debate over taxes including Seattle’s JumpStart payroll tax, which Mayor Katie Wilson’s new budget holds flat.
Then we take questions from the room. Ridge AI CEO Ellie Fields asks how business leaders can engage productively in building the region, Latch CEO Stefan Kalb asks why Seattle has less venture capital than the Bay Area and ACME Brains founder Mary Jesse asks how to get past polarization.
We close with a satellite-themed GeekWire Trivia Challenge and an unexpected announcement from Starfish Space co-founder Austin Link.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop. Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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