Slingshot Aerospace wins $69.2M Space Force AI training contract
Slingshot Aerospace
Slingshot's largest contract yet funds AI-powered mission-rehearsal training for Space Force Guardians.
what happened
Slingshot Aerospace won a $69.2 million, 4.5-year Space Force contract for its Mentat program, an SBIR Phase III award that builds on an earlier STRATFI contract, per SpaceNews, Via Satellite and Military Embedded Systems. Mentat combines live orbital data, astrodynamics and AI-driven analytics with Talos, an AI-powered training and strategy agent, to let Guardians rehearse protect-and-defend scenarios under the Space Force's Operational Test and Training Infrastructure program. Slingshot said July 15 the award is the largest contract in the company's history.
why it matters
The award extends the Space Force's AI-training build-out beyond satellite operations into full mission rehearsal, giving Slingshot a recurring, multi-year revenue base as it competes with other space-domain-awareness vendors for OTTI work; the SBIR Phase III structure signals the program has moved past prototype funding into a production-scale award.
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- Slingshot Aerospace
- Category
- contract
- Impact
- major
- SNR
- 4 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-07-15
- Published
- 2026-07-16 05:36 UTC