Aeon's Approach: How to Field Advanced Weapons in Months, Not Years

America can no longer afford 15-year timelines to field weapon systems. Our adversaries are iterating faster than we can draft requirements.

Staying competitive requires a new model: design the quickest viable product, manufacture it on the real production floor, test what matters, and field fast. Then iterate.

At Aeon, this is how we build.

Design to Deliver

Start with battlefield value, not engineering ambition.

Begin with the smallest set of requirements that drive real combat utility. Defer anything that adds cost without significant return. Use materials and components with high availability and short lead times.

Design cycles should take 3–10 months, depending on complexity. From day one, design for manufacturability and speed. CRADAs give access to government experts who accelerate requirement definition without bogging teams down.

Manufacture on the Actual Production Floor

Prototype in the same environment you'll scale from.

Manufacturing starts during design—on the actual production floor. This removes the traditional disconnect between R&D and production, and avoids costly transitions.

Early investment in tooling, space, and equipment is critical. Government contracts or capital support at this stage would dramatically increase competition and accelerate fielding timelines.

This is how modern commercial launch vehicles are built—and it works.

Test and Declare

Field faster by locking in acceptable performance.

Testing is often the longest and most expensive phase. A smarter approach is test and declare: if a system underperforms slightly but still meets operational needs, lock in that result and move forward. Document the tradeoff, and improve in the next version.

Congress and the Pentagon can accelerate this by endorsing the model—and by expanding access to test ranges.

Field What You've Already Built

If you built it right, fielding is just scaling.

When design, build, and test all happen in the final production environment, full-rate manufacturing is a continuation, not a transition. Fund it. Scale it. Deliver.

The Aeon Model

• MQVP in months
• Real manufacturing, not lab builds
• Test-then-declare
• Manufacture from the same floor you built on
• Build fast. Field fast. Upgrade later.

This is our operating philosophy that we're executing today.