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DTN 161: The Great US Missile Shortage

Plus: China opens rocket launches to international satellites, the future of IVF, a geothermal IPO, big tech targets drug discovery, DARPA eyes commercial space boom, and more.

08 May 2026 — 6 min read

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Join NYC natives HAUS and Stonegardens Advisory on a SoHo rooftop for the second edition of Commercializing Defense Tech, an evening of results-driven conversations about commercializing defense technologies as part of NY Tech Week 2026.

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"We're in a dramatic bifurcation right now. Some categories of climate tech are being labeled as too risky due to green premiums and the lack of policy uplift to bridge the valley of death. At the same time, you have sectors that are getting turbocharged: anything that touches AI, energy generation, data centers, electrical equipment, grid tech, and adaptation-related technologies.”

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Why the Pentagon Is Quadrupling Missile Production, and Why It Still Won't Be Enough

“At peak consumption during the early months of support to Ukraine, the United States was shipping Javelin anti-tank missiles faster than Lockheed Martin could build them. Within ten months, the Stinger man-portable air defense inventory, a weapon system that took decades to accumulate, was functionally depleted. Over 7,000 Javelins, roughly one-third of the entire U.S. stockpile, were transferred before the Pentagon paused shipments to protect its own readiness.

That was a proxy conflict. The missiles were not being fired by American forces. And yet the drawdown was severe enough to trigger what has become the largest guided-munitions production expansion since the Cold War.

On March 25, 2026, the Department of Defense announced a sweeping set of production agreements with Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, and Honeywell, deals designed to quadruple output of some of America's most critical missile systems over the next seven years. Earlier, on February 4, RTX (formerly Raytheon) had signed five separate agreements to dramatically scale Tomahawk and SM-6 production. The combined effort represents tens of billions in investment and a fundamental restructuring of the defense industrial base.

The ambition is real. The question is whether it is remotely sufficient.”

--Military Machine

Cars being sold in China can now project entire full-color movies in front of them as if they were a rolling drive-in movie theater. Image via Huawei

“Huawei showed off the newest version of its headlight tech, XPixel, at the Huawei Qiankun Technology Conference at the Beijing Auto Show last week. The headlights now have the ability to project a full range of colors like a giant movie projector mounted to the front of the car. The new version of XPixel, which has full-color capability, will debut in the Aito M9 according to Huawei. The tech is also slated to come to a plethora of other cars, like the upcoming Qijing GT7 shooting brake and Luxeed V9 MPV. (via Inside EVs)