A Hypersonic Missile Only Matters if It Can Be Trusted to Fly
Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Aviation’s Rapid Capabilities Cell Selects Nominal to Accelerate Integration Testing of the Navy's Air-Launched Hypersonic Strike Weapon
LOS ANGELES, CA — October 22, 2026 — Nominal, the hardware intelligence company that helps engineering teams test, manufacture, and operate complex systems, announced today it has been awarded a delivery order from Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Aviation (PAE(A))’s Rapid Capabilities Cell (RCC) to accelerate integration and testing of Castelion's Blackbeard hypersonic strike weapon on the F/A-18 Super Hornet.
The award, Nominal's second delivery order under its Navy Basic Ordering Agreement, tasks Nominal with turning F/A-18 flight test data into a shared source of truth for stakeholders.
RCC is PAE(A)’s rapid capabilities arm, established to move new warfighting capability from concept to fleet faster than the traditional acquisition system allows. Project Alpha is its proving ground: ingesting F/A-18 flight test data as it's generated and giving RCC's test engineers one place to see, question, and evaluate it.
It's also the latest sign of how much ground Nominal now covers across NAVAIR's test enterprise. Nominal software already runs inside flight test programs at Naval Air Station Patuxent River supporting the Navy's move toward a more autonomous, carrier-based air wing. Project Alpha extends that same infrastructure to a different kind of challenge and could help establish a repeatable approach to airworthiness and integration testing across the rapid-fielding programs it’s chartered to run next.
“You can’t accelerate the path from prototype to fielded capability without accelerating how teams turn data into decisions,” said Jenn Wilson, Head of Government at Nominal. “Whether PAE(A) is analyzing information from aircraft, weapons, or autonomous systems, engineers need one shared, trusted view of the data to make decisions quickly and with confidence. Bringing Nominal into Project Alpha shows how modern data infrastructure can become an enabler of rapid capability delivery—not another constraint on it.”
About Nominal Nominal is the AI-ready engineering data platform that helps aerospace, energy, defense, automotive, and other industrial hardware teams ship breakthrough products faster. Engineers use Nominal's platform to confidently operate complex physical systems, while accelerating and automating verification loops from prototype to fleet sustainment. For more information, visit nominal.io (opens in new tab).