Mach Industries says it has developed a way to stop hostile incoming drones, joining the ranks of companies seeking defenses against the latest airborne threats.
The company’s Huntington Beach factory is making Dart, a surface-to-air missile that can be used against drones weighing less than 1,320 pounds, including “swarms” of intruders.
“Dart is currently flying. We are targeting in-theater intercepts by 2026,” the company says on its website.
Menlo Park-based Sequoia Capital, a leading venture capital firm for Silicon Valley companies, participated in a $100 million Series B financing round for Mach Industries announced in June, giving the company a valuation of $470 million. The round was led by Khosla Ventures and Bedrock.
The three-year-old defense startup founded by MIT dropout and CEO Ethan Thornton had raised a total of about $185 million in financing as of last year. Mach is part of a wave of young entrepreneurs seeking to shake up the Pentagon’s weapons purchases.
Mach says Dart can be used in “contested environments where legacy air-defense systems may be ineffective or economically unstable.”
Dart is intended to provide defense against drones “across all theaters of operation, including forward operating bases, distributed outposts and critical infrastructure sites, as well as NATO and homeland defense missions.”
Dart uses what the company calls an “interceptor approach” to smash against the invaders.
Anduril, Dzyne, Northrop Grumman
Thornton, who was 19 when he launched Mach, has made it clear that he views China as the main threat to the U.S., which has spurred greater military innovation.
“It’s not hard to look at China’s dominance and realize that we need to be working very, very hard as a country if we want to maintain relevance,” Thornton said in a TV interview last year.
He added that the military gap with China is widening every day, and America is facing a “make-or-break next couple of decades.”
Among the many other companies developing defenses against drones is Costa Mesa-based Anduril Industries, which recently announced plans to build a new campus in Long Beach. Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey, also a college dropout, and Thornton both vocally advocate for reshaping U.S. defense.
U.S defense behemoths Lockheed Martin and RTX (Raytheon) and Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems are also developing defensive systems.
Despite the fast-moving changes, armed conflicts today are still dominated by lumbering aircraft carriers, missiles and manned fighter jets.
Sequoia Capital Financing
Mach Industries works with customers across the U.S. Department of Defense—including the Army, Air Force, and SOCOM—as well as allied governments.
Mach’s other systems designed for military use include:
– Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff cruise missile.
– A high-altitude glider plane named Glide that can strike targets from miles away.
– Stratos, a giant balloon equipped with sensors and communication capabilities that can operate at extreme altitudes for several months.
The company is also developing “micro-jet engines” to propel unmanned military aircraft.
115K-Sq. Ft. in Surf City
Mach is working in a 115,000-square-foot facility in Huntington Beach.
Mach’s goal is to create weapons with “the ability to carry out strikes at very long ranges,” Thornton told online publication TechCrunch.
The exact role that drones and other unmanned aircraft will play in wartime is still being defined. They have been used in Ukraine and Iran war zones, though statistics on their success rate have not been published.
More concretely, the U.S. B-2 bomber attacks last year against Iranian nuclear facilities demonstrate that massive bombs and sleek warplanes such as the F-35 fighter jets will still carry the biggest military load for now.
