Trump Administration Pursues Funding Deals with Drone Companies
Catch up on the top industries and stocks that were impacted, or were predicted to be impacted, by the comments, actions and policies of President Donald Trump with this daily recap compiled by The Fly.DRONE COMPANIES:The Trump administration is pursuing funding deals, potentially including equity stakes, with drone companies to boost domestic production and lower costs, The Wall Street Journal's Heather Somerville and Amrith Ramkumar report. The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital is reviewing firms such as Performance Drone Works and Neros Technologies as part of a broader $1.1B Drone Dominance program targeting production of 300,000 low-cost attack drones by the end of 2027, according to people familiar with the matter, who note that the deal talks are in the negotiation phase. Publicly traded companies in the space include Unusual Machines, Red Cat, AeroVironment, Kratos Defense, Ondas, EHang, and Draganfly.NAVY AWARD:Dellwas awarded a single-award, firm-fixed-price blanket purchase agreement, or BPA, under the Department of War Enterprise Software Initiative. The overall estimated value of this BPA is $9.69B. This follow-on DOW Enterprise Software Agreement BPA will streamline and consolidate software acquisition across the DOW, the Intelligence Community, and the Coast Guard. The agreement will enable customers to procure Microsoftsoftware licenses, cloud subscriptions, and Software Assurance. The ESA II is scoped to accommodate the DOW's existing reliance on Microsoft products and the growing need for cloud and hybrid capabilities through tiered Microsoft 365 licenses and specialized bundles, such as the "Disconnected No Cloud Access" license. The limited scope for Microsoft Azure is included to support the transition of specific workloads to the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract. The Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific is the contracting activity.MOU FROM IRANIAN CONTROLLED MEDIA:The official White House rapid response account stated in ato X, "This report from Iranian controlled media is not true and the MOU they 'released' is a complete fabrication. Nobody should believe what Iranian state media is putting out. FACTS MATTER."