\n<\/p>\n
Blue Origin and Anduril have landed new study contracts with the U.S. Air Force to explore how their technology, including rockets, could move military cargo around the world. <\/p>\n
The contracts under the Air Force\u2019s Rocket Cargo program are relatively small \u2013 Blue Origin\u2019s comes in at $1.37 million and Anduril\u2019s at $1 million. But they could be the first steps in revolutionizing how the Pentagon transports cargo. Study contracts like these are also a strong signal as to which players will later compete for larger-dollar funding.<\/p>\n
Anduril\u2019s contract is especially intriguing and suggests the defense startup is making forays into an entirely new business line. <\/p>\n
The two awards fall under the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory\u2019s Rocket Experimentation for Global Agile Logistics (REGAL) program. Blue Origin did not respond to TechCrunch\u2019s request for comment, and an Anduril spokesperson directed TechCrunch to AFRL.<\/p>\n
REGAL is the experimentation arm of AFRL\u2019s larger Rocket Cargo program, which is focused on \u201cdelivery as a service\u201d via orbital transport. The Air Force wants to procure these capabilities via service-type contracts, similar to how the DoD contracts commercial airlines. The aim of the REGAL program is to prove out commercial, reusable rockets, reentry systems, and cargo transportation systems to enable deliveries to remote or hard-to-reach theaters in less than an hour.<\/p>\n
While there isn\u2019t much public information about REGAL\u2019s scope of work or timeline, the requests for proposals that underly the awards contain some interesting information. <\/p>\n
Blue\u2019s contract, according to the sparse award listing, is for an analysis of how its tech could support \u201cpoint-to-point material transportation.\u201d The listed place of performance is Merritt Island, Florida, Blue\u2019s home on the Space Coast and where it is developing the heavy-lift New Glenn rocket.<\/p>\n
Anduril\u2019s design study contract, which also falls under REGAL, was awarded under a separate call for proposals called \u201cPayload Rentry from Space Development and Demonstrations.\u201d <\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> Cutting through the jargon, the proposal implies Anduril will study how to develop a reentry container that can carry between 5 tons to 10 tons of payload from Earth and back. The listing, which can be viewed on\u00a0SAM.gov, emphasized that the container needs to work with different rocks and the study should propose a thermal protection system. Anduril\u2019s \u201cpayload container,\u201d as the listing calls it, should integrate multiple government-defined payloads and work across platforms.<\/p>\n Reentry is a notoriously difficult problem to solve in spaceflight. Developing materials that can survive atmospheric reentry, and a container that doesn\u2019t completely destroy the contents involved, is a challenge. A handful of startups, like Varda Space Industries, have developed reentry capsules for in-space manufacturing, and SpaceX\u2019s Dragon capsule brings back cargo and astronauts from the ISS. But overall, the number of vendors that can deliver this capability is limited. <\/p>\n The news of the two contracts, which haven\u2019t been reported, follows on Rocket Lab\u2019s own REGAL contract that was announced earlier this year. That contract explicitly has a flight demonstration step, though AFRL hasn\u2019t released other details on that award, like the amount.<\/p>\n If rocket cargo services mature, the Pentagon could buy \u201cdelivery as a service,\u201d with massive loads riding a commercial heavy rocket and returning to Earth inside a capsule for quick offload. Long term, AFRL said the program could even include point-to-point transportation of humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Blue Origin and Anduril have landed new study contracts with the U.S. Air Force to explore how their technology, including rockets, could move military cargo around the world. The contracts under the Air Force\u2019s Rocket Cargo program are relatively small \u2013 Blue Origin\u2019s comes in at $1.37 million and Anduril\u2019s at $1 million. But they<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[10260,133,10261,589,10262,2332,1230,188,2462],"class_list":{"0":"post-17079","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-anduril","9":"tag-blue","10":"tag-cargo","11":"tag-earth","12":"tag-orbit","13":"tag-origin","14":"tag-pentagon","15":"tag-study","16":"tag-transport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n