Lockheed Martin Invests $10M in HawkEye 360
Photo: HawkEye 360
HawkEye 360, which operates a constellation of satellites that sense radio frequency transmissions on Earth, has raised an additional $10 million from Lockheed Martin and company insiders, the company announced Wednesday. The funding will used in the development of new satellites and other technologies such as artificial intelligence and data fusion.
Terms of the deal include a cooperative agreement between HawkEye and Lockheed to develop “end-to-end remote sensing solutions for government and commercial customers, with a particular focus on delivering sophisticated RF intelligence systems globally,” HawkEye 360 said.
HawkEye 360 is currently developing its Block 3 satellite architecture, which will include “new satellite buses and the next major change in our constellation’s capability to serve customers” Adam Bennett, the company’s vice president of marketing, told Defense Daily in an email response to questions.
The Block 3 satellites will begin with HawkEye 360’s Cluster 14. No launch date is set for that cluster. Currently, the company has 21 satellites in orbit, three with the Block 1 architecture that were launched in December 2018, and 18 with the Block 2 architecture that have been deploying since January 2020.
The new funding by Lockheed Martin’s ventures unit and company insiders brings the total Series D-1 round to $68 million. The initial $58 million was announced in July and was led by BlackRock with participation by Manhattan Venture Partners, Insight Partners, NightDragon, Strategic Development Fund, Razor’s Edge, Alumni Venture, and Adage Capital.
The investment by Lockheed Martin gives HawkEye 360 a premier partner in U.S. and global defense markets.
“Lockheed Martin’s leadership as a system integrator and their signal processing capability will expand what HawkEye 360 can accomplish as we work together to make the world a safer and more secure place,” John Serafini, CEO of the commercial remote sensing company, said in a statement.
Chris Moran, who runs Lockheed Martin Ventures, said in a statement that “we see synergies between our programmatic analytical expertise and HawkEye 360’s commercial RF data generating constellation. HawkEye 360 has the potential to apply highly tailored RF solutions to fit our customers’ mission.”
In addition to AI and data fusion, HawkEye 360 is also investing in multi-intelligence orchestration to get more value from the RF data that is collected as customers seek more “tactically relevant RF intelligence,” the company said.
At the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, HawkEye 360 used its satellites to detect GPS interference to help identify Russian forces and assets and where they were moving. The company has a contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, which is assessing the capabilities of the RF sensing satellite data.