Castelion's air-launched variant of the Blackbeard hypersonic missile is set to fly aboard an F/A-18. The company, which was founded in 2022 and now worth billions of dollars, has secured nearly $50 million for its development of the weapon. The Pentagon's chief technology officer, Emil Michael, has named hypersonical weaponry as a "critical technology area" and warned that the U.S. arsenal may lag behind those of China and Russia.