Apr 2026 Pulse

Apr 2026 in brief.

Eighteen events with a ≥$1.86B floor — a high count on a modest base, like February. True Anomaly’s $650M Series D (Eclipse, Riot; $600M of it equity) for Jackal spacecraft and space-based interceptors was the month’s only round above $350M and the first Golden Dome-framed financing at that size. Hermeus raised $350M (Khosla) for high-Mach unmanned aircraft; Cambridge Aerospace’s $200M Series B (Elad Gil, Spark) brought UK mass-produced interceptors onto the tape; Starfish Space ($110M, Point72) and Turion Space ($75M, Washington Harbour) funded on-orbit servicing and space-domain-awareness spacecraft; Skydio’s $110M Series F valued the drone maker at $4.4B. Scout AI’s $100M Series A (Align, Draper) for an unmanned-warfare foundation model was the largest first round of the month. Lockheed Martin put a $25M strategic tranche into Fortem (kinetic counter-UAS). The three acquisitions — Godspeed’s GALT Aerospace platform, Acorn’s MTI Aviation and Avem’s PAMCO — were all sponsor platform deals on undisclosed terms.

April’s signal is layered air-and-space defense reaching the startup tier: True Anomaly (space-based interceptors), Cambridge Aerospace (mass-produced interceptors), Fortem (kinetic counter-UAS) and Turion (space domain awareness) are four layers of the same architecture, funded in one month. Space also had a rare servicing-and-mobility cluster (Starfish, Turion, Portal Space Systems) worth watching for consolidation. Three undisclosed sponsor platforms in aerospace components and MRO continue the mid-market pattern — none printed a price, so April’s real volume is higher than the floor suggests.

Activity vs each domain’s own baseline.

Each cell is the number of publicly announced deals in that domain and month. Color compares the month with that domain’s own average over the months shown — not a scale shared across domains — so a dark cell in a small domain means “busy for that domain”, not “large in dollars”. Domains with fewer than 12 events in the window are shown in gray without color. Absolute totals across all 24 months are on the archive home.

Top deals.

Notable undisclosed

• PAMCO (Precision Aircraft Machining Company) · M-PE-PLATFORM · 2026-04-21 · Avem Partners · SourceSun Valley, CA (founded 1980) manufacturer of source-controlled fluid conveyance fittings for aerospace, defense, and space OEMs/Tier-1s.
• MTI Aviation · M-PE-PLATFORM · 2026-04-20 · Acorn Capital Management · SourceOpa-Locka, FL provider of repair/overhaul and parts distribution focused on electro-mechanical, hydraulics, pneumatics, and power-gen components; customer base primarily commercial airlines/MRO/distributors.
• GALT Aerospace · M-PE-PLATFORM · 2026-04-01 · Godspeed Capital · SourceAirborne C3 / command-control-communications solutions for multi-domain ops.

Movers.

We flag a domain only when its last three months differ from the prior three by 30% or more and it has at least 36 events in the trailing 12 months. Smaller samples stay as raw counts on the heat map; we never quote month-over-month percentages.

• Space & Launch: 12 events in the last three months vs 9 in the prior three (+33%); 3 events this month against a 12-month average of 3.1.

Fund closes, programs and other items.

Fund closes, government capital programs and other supply-side items sit here, outside the deal statistics.

Apr activity by domain.

A full section (narrative and table) for any domain with five or more events this month; a compact list otherwise. Each event has one primary domain: the market the money is buying.

Deal table, method and definitions.

Issue deal table

Method & coverage

Public sources only · Issue window = first public announcement in Apr 2026 · 18 announced or closed events (F 15 · M 3 · P 0) · Disclosed floor ≥$1.86B across 15 of 18 (17% undisclosed) · Closings of deals first announced in an earlier month are not counted again here · Capital-supply items are sidebar-only and excluded from domain statistics · Heat-map colors use each domain’s own trailing-12-month baseline.

Event codes & terms

About ASC

Abelian Security Council (ASC) gives clients in defense, national security and critical technologies direct, compliant access to the people who researched, designed, built, evaluated, bought, deployed and competed with the systems they are underwriting. Pulse is the public layer of that work: a curated tape of announced financings, acquisitions and listings, compiled from public sources and published monthly. Clients can schedule a call with Owen Davies, ASC’s Chief Executive. Members can apply to join.