Analysis from the Forge & Flight team on UAS technology, defense acquisition, domestic manufacturing, and the regulatory landscape.
August 20, 2026
One retainer contract covering NDAA-compliant component procurement, aircraft fabrication, and engineering support. No separate vendors. No multi-contract management. No acquisition cycle for each component order.
Read More →June 24, 2026
Forge & Flight’s Federal Services Division is expanding and actively hiring cleared professionals across Fort Bragg and distributed federal installations nationwide. The division operates professional services contracts staffed with W-2 employees — U.S. citizens with active Secret clearances or eligibility.
Read More →June 17, 2026
Forge & Flight Academy is expanding its instructor cadre and is actively hiring for two pillar roles. The five-pillar capability framework defines how the Academy approaches applied technical instruction — students leave demonstrating capability, not completing hours.
Read More →June 10, 2026
The UAS industry has a pattern: take open-source foundations, close the architecture, attach a support contract, and charge premium pricing for dependency. Forge & Flight runs in the opposite direction — and that choice is not accidental. It is a position about what the warfighter actually deserves.
Read More →June 3, 2026
The NDAA’s prohibited vendor and domestic manufacturing requirements for UAS have expanded incrementally across multiple authorization cycles. The result is a compliance framework that requires affirmative verification, not just a cleared-list check. Here is what procurement officers need to confirm before a platform buy.
Read More →May 27, 2026
Forge & Flight Holdings announces successful first flight of a company-funded high-speed research platform on May 11, 2026. The program, targeting Mach 1.4 performance, represents the company’s investment in advanced propulsion and airframe research conducted entirely with internal resources.
Read More →May 20, 2026
Most commercial OSINT products deliver data volume without analytical value. What defense contractors and corporate security teams actually need is finished intelligence — assessed, sourced, and decision-ready. Here is what that looks like.
Read More →May 13, 2026
Achieving a perfect SPRS 110/110 against NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 as a small defense manufacturer is not common — but it is achievable with the right approach. Here is what it took and why it matters for DoD contract eligibility.
Read More →May 13, 2026
NDAA Section 848 imposes strict requirements on UAS procurement across the DoD. This guide covers exactly what procurement officers should require from vendors — component documentation, BOM traceability, and how to verify compliance before award.
Read More →May 13, 2026
Forge & Flight Holdings is headquartered in Fayetteville, NC — adjacent to Fort Bragg — deliberately. The MICC-Fort Bragg ecosystem awards hundreds of millions annually in small business contracts. Here is what the opportunity looks like from the inside.
Read More →May 9, 2026
Forge & Flight is supporting The Project Initiative Foundation’s STEM Warriors Academy Drone Camp — a free, five-day hands-on UAS program for Fayetteville youth ages 6 through 13. Morning and afternoon sessions are available May 26–30. Registration and sponsorship information at project-initiative.org/events.
Read More →May 6, 2026
The Blue UAS Cleared List is widely trusted by procurement officers as proof of NDAA compliance. The architecture of the certification process, documented supply chain failures, and a structural conflict of interest in its assessment framework mean that trust needs to be informed — not automatic.
Read More →April 28, 2026
SOCOM’s FY2027 request cuts the OA-1K buy and redirects dollars toward 100+ small unmanned systems paired with MQ-9 motherships. The shift is a formal budget expression of lessons special operations forces have already learned operationally — and it has direct implications for the companies and trainers positioned to meet that demand.
Read More →April 15, 2026
JIATF-401’s C-UAS Marketplace is buying, and the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg is already field-testing systems it funded. The new procurement vehicle changes how units access counter-drone capability — and what that means for vendors and operators in the defense UAS ecosystem.
Read More →April 5, 2026
A structural shift in defense acquisition — driven by OTA authority, SBIR expansion, NDAA supply chain requirements, and the failure of large primes to deliver on certain categories of advanced technology — is opening contract space that small manufacturers are filling and large primes are not.
Read More →April 1, 2026
The Defense Innovation Unit’s Blue UAS program is the fastest path to a DoD-cleared small UAS acquisition. Here’s what it means, who qualifies, and what procurement officers need to understand before engaging the market.
Read More →March 24, 2026
FAA Part 108 BVLOS rulemaking is in final stages. When it drops, the operational envelope for compliant UAS programs expands significantly — but only for programs with the right platforms and operator certification in place. Now is the time to understand what changes.
Read More →March 19, 2026
The same decision-making failure mode that kills Special Operations missions is operating in government UAS procurement — and the cost is measured in warehouses full of expensive equipment that nobody is flying.
Read More →March 5, 2026
The rehearsal discipline that prevents operational failure in Special Operations is directly applicable to UAS platform evaluation — and most procurement processes skip it entirely.
Read More →February 18, 2026
The NDAA drone ban exposed a structural gap in the domestic UAS market. Agencies aren’t waiting because they’re slow — they’re waiting because none of the existing categories fully serves the requirement.
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