Aperture | Defense Contract Intelligence

Out of Scope

Army Awards Mortenson $610M For USDA Screwworm Facility — 70x Media Estimate

M. A. Mortenson won a $610 million Army contract to build USDA's sterile insect production facility at Moore Airbase in Edinburg, Texas — a figure seventy times larger than the $8.5 million Bloomberg reported in June when the facility was first announced.⁴ The discrepancy isn't a rounding error. It suggests the contract bundles far more than a fly-rearing building: likely multi-year equipment procurement, automated production lines, MEP infrastructure, and possibly base-wide utilities or sustainment work that didn't make it into early USDA press guidance.

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C4ISR / Comms

Photonis Defense Wins $353M Night-Vision Contract as Industry Onshores to U.S.

Photonis Defense Inc. just landed a $352.6M Army contract for Binocular Night Observation production, a ceiling that suggests the component specialist is now positioned as a prime on soldier night-vision systems.¹ The award, competed among six offerors, arrives as the broader night-vision supply chain rushes to build U.S. manufacturing capacity — Reuters reported in March 2025 that Exosens, the French parent company's larger entity, is constructing its first American plant in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, driven by NATO demand.²

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C4ISR / Comms

Woolpert Won $249M Army GEOINT IDIQ — 25x Its Prior Defense Business

Woolpert just captured a $249M Army photogrammetric mapping IDIQ, roughly 25 times larger than any defense contract the geospatial firm has disclosed before.¹ The company's prior Army GEOINT work topped out at $10M; its most recent LiDAR tasking last September ran $9.6M. This award represents 93% of Woolpert's entire documented DoD contract footprint. That's a step-change in scale, not an incremental renewal.

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Hypersonics

Castelion's $50M Navy Prototype Deal Follows $350M Raise By Two Months

Castelion pulled off a rare double move: a $350M private raise in early December, then a $50M Navy prototype contract for its Blackbeard hypersonic missile by late February.⁴ The timing matters. Most startups spend years bridging from venture financing to platform-level DOD work. Castelion closed that gap in under ten weeks, which tells you the services wanted the capability badly enough to move at startup speed.

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Signals

Army Awards Mortenson $610M For USDA Screwworm Facility — 70x Media Estimate

Photonis Defense Wins $353M Night-Vision Contract as Industry Onshores to U.S.

Woolpert Won $249M Army GEOINT IDIQ — 25x Its Prior Defense Business

Castelion's $50M Navy Prototype Deal Follows $350M Raise By Two Months