Castelion Squeezed Between Primes and Mass Producers

The core issue is that Castelion is trying to hold a narrow middle ground that could disappear fast. At the top end, HACM and adjacent Lockheed programs already sit inside Air Force hypersonics budgets and draw on mature primes, engines, and launch integration. At the bottom end, Anduril, Leidos, and Zone 5 backed by Kongsberg are building the case that thousands of cheaper missiles are more useful than hundreds of faster ones.

• FAMM gives the quantity argument real budget weight. The Air Force budget book shows 26,910 planned missiles across FY2028 to FY2031 for $12.36B, which pushes the market toward weapons that are cheap enough to buy in very large lots, not just technically impressive in small lots.
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• The downmarket threat is not only HACM itself, but the broader prime contractor stack around it. Raytheon says HACM is expected to be in use by 2027, and Lockheed is simultaneously expanding production on JASSM and LRASM, which means incumbents already have contracting paths, factories, and missile subsystem supply chains in place.
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• The upmarket threat is a flood of affordable strike systems getting better fast. Anduril's May 2026 framework covers at least 3,000 Barracuda-500M systems over three years, Leidos positions Black Arrow around affordable mass, and Kongsberg bought Zone 5 to enter high volume production of affordable missiles.
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This market is heading toward a split where primes own the most integrated high end programs and newer entrants win by proving they can deliver large volumes cheaply. Castelion's path is to show that hypersonic speed changes the mission enough to justify a place between those poles, then scale production before the two sides close the gap.