Missile Startup Furientis Wins Spot in U.S. Army FY2027 Interceptor Fly-Off

Furientis, a Los Angeles-area missile startup founded in 2025 by former Virgin Orbit and Castelion engineers Brody Franzen and Aris Simsarian, has been selected as one of four vendors for a U.S. Army interceptor fly-off at the end of fiscal 2027, which closes on September 30, 2027. The competition seeks a second missile for the U.S. Army's Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2) mid-range air defense system, which currently fires RTX's AIM-9X Sidewinder from a Dynetics-built Enduring Shield launcher. While Lockheed Martin and a team of Boeing and Anduril advanced to the formal second-interceptor demonstration phase in September, the U.S. Army opened a parallel Q4 FY2027 shoot-off track for vendors continuing to invest in their own designs. Furientis designs its interceptors for mass production from readily available components, citing a final assembly time of about 30 minutes and flight testing roughly every two weeks. The startup exited stealth in May with a $5M pre-seed round and announced a $25M seed round led by Benchmark on October 6 alongside a prototyping agreement with the U.S. Department of War for a 100-mile-range homeland defense interceptor and a containerized launcher developed with Rheinmetall.