On Wednesday, April 22, 2026, the U.S. company Lockheed Martin announced a 25 million USD investment in Fortem Technologies, a leader in airspace security. The investment, which represents the first tranche of Fortem’s Series B funding round, will enable the company to accelerate large-scale production and streamline deployments within Lockheed Martin’s Sanctum ecosystem for countering threats from unmanned aerial vehicles.
Zdjęcie: Lockheed Martin
Building on an established partnership, this investment supports a jointly developed, integrated approach to countering unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), which is entering a broader phase of operational deployment.
The rapid proliferation of small, inexpensive, and readily available unmanned aircraft systems has created a new and widespread threat to military platforms, critical infrastructure, and civilian airspace.
- Strategic operational advantage: Modern battlefields are increasingly crowded with hostile drones that can swarm, loiter, or deliver precision payloads. By embedding Fortem’s AI-powered detection, tracking, and neutralization technology into the Sanctum suite, the United States and its allies gain an immediate detect-to-defeat kill chain that can stop drone swarms before they become a kinetic threat.
- Economic efficiency and savings: Traditional kinetic interceptors – missiles, rockets, and directed-energy weapons – are costly on a per-shot basis. Fortem’s software-driven, low-cost sensor platform reduces the cost per engagement by more than 80 percent while providing comparable effectiveness against hard-to-detect threats. Scaling production now will create a sustainable, low-maintenance logistics chain that delivers measurable savings and enables more frequent training cycles and combat-readiness sustainment.
- Interoperability across all domains: Fortem’s solution is based on an open architecture and is compliant with MOSA (Modular Open Systems Approach), allowing seamless integration not only with Sanctum’s air and ground nodes, but also with allied air defense networks, joint command-and-control systems, and new data links. This interoperability ensures that allies can incorporate the technology into their own defense architectures without costly redesigns.
- Technological advantage and industrial-base resilience: The partnership accelerates the joint development of next-generation artificial intelligence, edge processing, and high-resolution radars. By investing in Fortem, Lockheed Martin secures a key element of the national security industrial base, creates high-skill jobs, and positions the company at the forefront of the global counter-UAS market, whose value is expected to exceed 12 billion USD by 2030. The investment will allow Fortem to at least double production capacity and create new jobs at its manufacturing facility in Lindon, Utah.
“This strategic collaboration will deliver robust mission capability aligned to our customer’s demand for rapidly fieldable solutions that scale in volume and evolve as fast as the UAS threat. This is just the latest example of our commitment to investing ahead of need to deliver at the speed of relevance, and with affordability in mind,” said Stephanie C. Hill, President, Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems.
“Low-cost, increasingly autonomous drone threats are scaling faster than traditional defenses were designed to handle,” said Fortem Technologies CEO Jon Gruen. “Our work with Lockheed Martin reflects a shared recognition that counter-UAS capabilities need to be autonomous, integrated and deployable at scale. Together, we’re taking technology that has already been proven in operational settings and accelerating its deployment to deliver a stronger, more responsive defense against evolving threats.”
Press release
.@LockheedMartin announced a $25 million investment in @FortemTech, a global leader in airspace security. This investment will enable Fortem to accelerate production at scale and enhance deployment within the Sanctum counter-UAS ecosystem. Click for more:
— Lockheed Martin News (@LMNews) April 22, 2026
The drone threat isn't slowing down. Today we're announcing a $25M investment from @LockheedMartin — the initial tranche of our Series B — to make sure our response doesn't either. https://t.co/FgXIbInMwr
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.#CounterUAS #DroneDefense #NationalSecurity pic.twitter.com/yNa9P2aZow— Fortem Technologies (@FortemTech) April 22, 2026