The Pentagon has signed framework agreements with five companies to develop two new classes of low-cost missiles, a move defense officials say is meant to rapidly scale up America’s strike capacity after years of dwindling stockpiles. The deals, announced in May 2026 by what is now officially called the Department of War (rebranded from the Department of Defense earlier this year), bring together established contractors and newer entrants in a deliberate bid to break the defense industry’s long-standing habit of producing small batches of expensive, exquisite weapons.
The effort splits into two tracks. The first, called Low-Cost Containerized Missiles (LCCM), taps four companies: Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos, and Zone 5. The second is a standalone agreement with Castelion, a startup that completed a successful hypersonic flight test in 2024, to scale what officials describe as “low-cost hypersonic solutions.” Together, the five agreements represent the Pentagon’s most aggressive push in decades to buy offensive munitions in bulk rather than in boutique quantities.
Why the urgency: stockpiles under strain
The backdrop is a military that has been burning through precision munitions faster than industry can replace them. U.S. forces expended hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles and other guided weapons during sustained strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen throughout 2024 and 2025, and additional stocks were drawn down supporting Israel’s defense against Iranian missile and drone barrages in April 2024. Congressional testimony and Pentagon budget documents have repeatedly flagged that replenishment rates for key munitions lag far behind usage, a gap that grows more dangerous as planners prepare for potential conflict in the Western Pacific.
Current-generation weapons are part of the problem. A single Tomahawk cruise missile costs roughly $2 million. The AGM-158 JASSM, the Air Force’s primary standoff strike weapon, runs about $1.5 million per round. At those prices, rebuilding inventories to the levels military planners say they need for a major conflict with China would cost tens of billions of dollars and take years at current production rates. The LCCM and hypersonic programs are designed to break that math by fielding weapons that cost a fraction of their predecessors and can be manufactured at far higher volumes.
What the companies are building
Among the four LCCM vendors, CoAspire has disclosed the most about its offering. The company’s missile, called GHOST, is categorized as an “Affordable Mass” ground-launched cruise missile. In a May 2026 press release, CoAspire confirmed that GHOST is already under contract and “will fly in support of the LCCM program,” language that indicates the weapon has moved past the drawing board and into a phase where flight testing is planned. No specific test date or production quantity has been made public.
The “containerized” label is significant. Containerized missiles are designed to be stored and launched from standard shipping containers or modular launcher units, meaning they can be deployed from the back of a truck, a ship’s deck, or a remote island airstrip without dedicated launch infrastructure. For Pacific planners worried about Chinese missiles destroying fixed bases in the opening hours of a conflict, that portability is a major selling point.
Anduril, best known for its autonomous drones and defense software, sits alongside Leidos, a major government IT and engineering contractor, and Zone 5, a smaller firm. The spread of participants suggests the Pentagon wants to test several design philosophies before committing to large-scale production runs.
Castelion’s hypersonic track operates separately. Hypersonic weapons travel above Mach 5 and are designed to defeat advanced air defenses by giving adversaries almost no reaction time. The company’s 2024 flight test demonstrated a hypersonic glide vehicle at operationally relevant speeds, making it one of the few startups to have actually flown hardware in this class. By splitting the hypersonic effort from the broader LCCM program, the Pentagon is hedging: pursuing both affordable subsonic cruise missiles and faster hypersonic variants through different vendor pools.
A new acquisition model
The structure of these deals is as notable as the weapons themselves. Rather than awarding a single winner-take-all production contract, the Pentagon created framework agreements that keep multiple vendors competing and developing in parallel. This approach borrows from commercial procurement practices and reflects hard-won lessons from programs like the F-35, where sole-source production led to cost overruns and schedule delays that stretched across decades.
Framework agreements establish relationships and development pathways but do not lock in final order sizes or dollar values. They give the Pentagon flexibility to ramp up orders with whichever vendors deliver the best combination of cost, reliability, and production speed. For the defense startups in the mix, the agreements provide the government validation needed to attract private capital and scale manufacturing.
The deliberate inclusion of nontraditional vendors is itself a policy statement. For years, Pentagon leaders have talked about diversifying the defense industrial base beyond the five prime contractors (Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics) that dominate weapons production. These LCCM and hypersonic agreements put real contract vehicles behind that rhetoric.
What is not yet known
Several critical details remain undisclosed. No official source has confirmed a specific procurement quantity for any of these programs. Cost-per-unit targets have not been published, so the repeated use of “affordable” remains aspirational rather than measurable until the Pentagon or its contractors release pricing benchmarks. Production timelines are similarly opaque: the gap between signing a framework agreement and delivering operational weapons at scale can span years, and nothing in the public record shortens that window.
It is also unclear how these weapons will relate to air-launched munitions. The LCCM program is explicitly about containerized, ground-launched systems, and GHOST is described as ground-launched. Whether any of the five vendors are developing air-launched variants has not been stated publicly. The distinction matters because air-launched and ground-launched weapons serve different operational roles, require different logistics chains, and would be procured under different program offices.
The connection to specific inventory drawdowns is contextual rather than officially confirmed. Pentagon releases describe the programs in terms of expanding strike capacity and partnering with new entrants, but they do not reference depletion from a particular campaign. Detailed stockpile figures are classified, and the Department of War’s public announcements stop well short of disclosing how many missiles remain on the shelf.
What this signals for the next fight
Strip away the unknowns and the core signal is clear: the United States is restructuring how it buys offensive firepower. Instead of relying on a handful of prime contractors to produce small numbers of gold-plated weapons, the Pentagon is seeding a broader industrial ecosystem capable of churning out large volumes of cheaper munitions. The model is closer to how Ukraine has consumed and replenished artillery shells and drones during its war with Russia than to the precision-strike paradigm that has defined American warfare since the first Gulf War.
Whether the experiment succeeds depends on questions that cannot be answered yet. Can startups like CoAspire and Castelion scale from prototype to mass production without the stumbles that have plagued past defense ventures? Will Congress fund procurement at the volumes needed to make “affordable mass” a reality? And will these weapons arrive fast enough to matter if deterrence in the Pacific fails before the production lines are running?
As budget documents, flight-test results, and additional contract details emerge over the coming months, those questions will start to get answers. For now, the public record supports a measured but significant conclusion: the Pentagon is betting that the next war will be won not by the smartest missile, but by the side that has enough of them.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
