version

A contract the U.S. Navy recently awarded to defense startup Castelion may point to its pursuit of a new, lower-cost, air-launched hypersonic strike weapon. The service has something of a gap to fill now after halting plans for an air-launched, air-breathing hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile roughly a year ago, due to cost and industrial base factors. A version of Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile could also find its way onto Navy ships and submarines, as well as ground-based launchers.

Last Friday, Castelion announced that it had received contracts from the Navy, as well as the U.S. Army, for “integration” of Blackbeard onto unspecified “operational platforms.” TWZ has reached out to the Navy for more information. The Army has already made clear it is interested in employing Blackbeard in a ground-launched mode, as you can read more about here.

“Under these agreements, Castelion will work with both services to integrate the hypersonic Blackbeard weapon system onto operational platforms and demonstrate its capabilities in live-fire tests – advancing the Department of War’s effort to evaluate and accelerate new, cost-effective strike capabilities for conventional deterrence,” according to a company press release. “Blackbeard is Castelion’s first long-range, hypersonic strike weapon, designed for mass production and rapid fielding once integration and testing are complete. The system leverages vertically integrated propulsion and guidance subsystems to achieve performance at a fraction of the cost of legacy weapons – supporting the Department’s objective of building credible, non-nuclear deterrent capacity at scale.”

Many questions remain about the expected final design and capabilities of the Blackbeard missile, including whether or not it will feature some form of air-breathing propulsion. The full “weapon system” could also incorporate multiple designs. Castelion has already conducted numerous live-fire launches using different test articles.

The designs seen in testing to date “are representative of the low-cost internally developed test vehicles we use to enable rapid subsystem design iteration and to ground our performance models in real-world test data,” Castelion told TWZ back in June. “Castelion’s approach to development focuses on getting into hardware-in-the-loop and flight testing early in development to support learning cycles across design, production, and test. As such, flight vehicles shown on social media are not representative nor intended to be representative of our final weapon systems.”

As TWZ has noted in the past, the term “hypersonic missile” typically refers to weapons designed for sustained hypersonic speed across a relatively shallow and even maneuvering trajectory. This can include designs that use a ballistic missile-like booster to loft an unpowered glide vehicle to a desired velocity and altitude before releasing it toward its target, as well as air-breathing cruise missiles capable of traveling at hypersonic speeds. Hypersonic speed is generally defined as anything above Mach 5, which larger ballistic missiles do reach in the course of their flights.

The testing that Castelion has disclosed so far has also been centered on the employment of Blackbeard in the ground-launched mode, which is fully in line with what is known about the Army’s plans for the weapon. The Navy could have a similar eye toward surface (or sub-surface) launch modes from ships, submarines, or even launchers on the ground.

At the same time, there are indications that the Navy is pursuing Blackbeard, at least in part, as an air-launched weapon. In February 2024, Castelion received a contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), valued at just under $3 million, to “perform an initial trade study to identify cost, schedule, and performance estimates of producing an air-launched anti-surface weapon and shipping system not to exceed 212″ in length with an on-aircraft weight limit of 2,750 lbs. and an air-to-air weapon with not-to-exceed dimensions of 7″ diameter x 144″ long with production quantity of >200 no later than 2027 for both weapons.”

Whether or not the air-to-air weapon design mentioned here is part of the larger work Castelion is doing on Blackbeard, or a separate project, is unknown. The company has previously said that it was aiming to have a more finalized Blackbeard design by 2027.

This is not the first time that work on an air-launched variation of Blackbeard has come up, either. In its 2026 Fiscal Year budget request, the Army said that the ground-launched version of the weapon that it expects to receive will leverage an “existing air-launched, extended-range Blackbeard design,” but did not elaborate. TWZ has reached out to the Army for more information in the past.

As noted, the Navy has had a stated requirement for an air-launched hypersonic anti-surface warfare capability for years now. Starting in 2021, the service had been pursuing an air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile to meet that need through a program called Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (HALO). Raytheon and Lockheed Martin had been working on competing designs.

The Navy had hoped to begin fielding HALO before the end of the decade. However, in late 2024, the service scrapped plans to move the program to the next phase of development.

“The Navy cancelled the solicitation for the Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (HALO) Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) effort in fall 2024 due to budgetary constraints that prevent fielding new capability within the planned delivery schedule,” Navy Capt. Ron Flanders, a service spokesperson, told TWZ in April of this year. “The decision was made after the Navy conducted a careful analysis, looking at cost trends and program performance across the munitions industrial base compared to the Navy’s priorities and existing fiscal commitments.”

“We are working closely with our resource sponsors to revalidate the requirements, with an emphasis on affordability,” Flanders added at that time. “The Navy is committed to its investment in Long Range Fires to meet National Defense objectives, with priority emphasis on fielding continued capability improvements to the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM).”

Castelion’s focus on lower-cost and producibility for Blackbeard, coupled with the schedule it is targeting for development of the missile, all align with the Navy’s stated post-HALO plans. The service had previously described HALO as a critical capability, especially in the context of future high-end fighting, such as one in the Pacific against China.

The Navy could well be looking at multiple options to meet this ongoing requirement for a new, air-launched, high-speed, anti-ship weapon. The service is already fielding an air-launched version of the Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), called the AIM-174B, ostensibly in the anti-air role. However, in its surface-launched form, the SM-6 also has an anti-ship capability, and the AIM-174B could be used in that role, as well.

As mentioned, the Navy could still pursue other versions of Blackbeard beyond an air-launched type. Previously stated plans for HALO also included the eventual development of variants that could be fired from ships and submarines.

Other services could be interested in air-launched variations of Blackbeard, as well. The U.S. Air Force has also awarded Castelion contracts in the past in relation to long-range strike weapon concepts, and TWZ has previously reached out to that service for more information.

All of this is also heavily contingent on Castelion meeting its schedule, cost, and other goals for Blackbeard. The Army’s budget documents show it is pursuing Blackbeard aggressively, but through a phased approach that offers multiple off-ramps.

Castelion has certainly received a new vote of confidence on Blackbeard, regardless of launch modes, with the new integration contracts from the Navy and the Army.

Contact the author: [email protected]

So far this postseason, whenever Dodgers fans heard “Báilalo Rocky” ring through the loudspeakers, that meant two things were coming — pitcher Roki Sasaki was about to throw some vicious splitters in relief, and a Dodgers win was likely just a few outs away.

Sasaki’s walkout music has taken on a life of its own, in part because of the only-in-L.A. culture clash that has a sensational Japanese pitcher embracing a Latin club hit as he dominates the postseason. It’s helped cement Sasaki’s appeal among the Latino Dodgers faithful, and given the song a huge global boost as the Dodgers prepare for the start of World Series today.

Here’s a primer on how Sasaki found his hype track, and how it’s become the breakout hit of L.A. this fall.

So who wrote “Báilalo Rocky?”

The version of the song Sasaki walks out to is by Dj Roderick and Dj Jose Gonzalez and vocalist Ariadne Arana (there’s another popular version by Arana, the Dominican MC Yoan Retro and GMBeats Degranalo).

The song is a super-infectious and chantable dembow-house track, and its Spanish hook — “¡Báilalo, Rocky! / Ta, ta, ta, ta / Suéltale, suéltale” — is an invitation for a guy to dance and cut loose. But here, it’s directed at the young phenom Sasaki to bedevil hitters when he comes out in relief. The way Arana pronounces the hook makes it sound like she’s singing right at the Dodgers’ Roki.

That’s a left-field choice for a 23-year-old pitcher from Japan in his first year in L.A.. How did Sasaki discover it?

Dodgers veteran second baseman Miguel Rojas turned him onto the song during spring training this year, where it became a dugout favorite. (The whole dugout is known to pound on the railing when the track comes on.) Sasaki started using it in April, before a four-month recovery from a right shoulder impingement.

The theme song “was actually MiggyRo’s idea,” Sasaki said to press in Japanese last week. “I’m really happy the fans are enjoying it.”

There’s a delightful incongruity to the modest, laser-focused young Japanese pitcher walking out to a lascivious Latin club banger. But as Sasaki has rebounded from an injury-plagued midseason to become the Dodgers’ lights-out reliever in the postseason, ”It’s been special,” Rojas told press last week. “I feel like it just fits him really well.”

For her part, Arana loves the song’s new life as a hit Dodger theme. “The Dodgers are my team,” she’s said.

Has Sasaki’s blessing boosted the track?

Definitely. The song was already popular in Latin music circles, and it’s become a go-to cover and source material for Latin artists like corridos tumbados singer Tito Doble P and Lomiiel. Even other athletes, like Spanish soccer superstar Lamine Yamal, have gotten in on the track as a meme. It’s racked up tens of millions in Spotify and YouTube plays, where nearly every comment is now Sasaki-related.

But naturally, the only place to really hear it is under a cotton candy sky in Elysian Park.

Has it helped Sasaki’s pitching?

In September, Sasaki was pitching for triple-A Oklahoma City and seemed unlikely to win a roster spot back in L.A. anytime soon. Two months later, however, after clutch saves and eye-popping velocity against the Reds, Phillies and Brewers en route to the World Series, he’s having “One of the great all-time appearances out of the ‘pen that I can remember,” as Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called it.

Sasaki’s not the only Dodger with an unexpected Latin walkout track — last year’s World Series hero Freddie Freeman takes the plate to Dayvi and Victor Cardenas’ “Baila Conmigo (ft. Kelly Ruiz).”

But if the Dodgers take home the title thanks to clutch Sasaki saves, Rojas hopes for a full “Báilalo Roki” edit. “I think he deserves a video and the lights go down and all that stuff,” Rojas told MLB.com. “I think that’s the next step for him.”

“What a horrible story! What a hideous play!” a theater critic for the Daily Telegraph lamented after the London premiere of “Hedda Gabler” in 1891. Victorian audiences were repelled by Henrik Ibsen’s fatally attractive newlywed who appears to have it all — the fancy house, the doting husband — only to be violently bored.

But writer-director Nia DaCosta (“Candyman,” “The Marvels”) and her star Tessa Thompson understand Hedda down to the pretty poison in her molecules. Their rollicking redo, set from dusk to hangover at a drunken bacchanal, is vibrant and viciously alive. With apologies to Ibsen’s ghost, DaCosta’s tweaks have sharpened its rage. I don’t think that long-dead critic would like this “Hedda” any better. I think it’s divine.

Thompson’s Hedda is a clever, status-conscious snot raised to believe that her sole purpose is to be a rich man’s wife. With no hobbies or career and no interest in motherhood, her only creative outlets are squandering money and machinating the success of her milquetoast husband, middlebrow academic George (Tom Bateman), who has such a flimsy hold on his bride that his last name might as well be attached to hers with Scotch tape. (It’s Tesman and it’s pointedly rarely used.) Hedda doesn’t love George. In fact, she seems to think he’s a whiny little worm. But she’s dead-set on securing him a promotion to afford her expensive tastes.

If Hedda had been born a man, she’d be leading armies into battle like her late father, General Gabler, who spawned her out of wedlock. Instead, she takes out her aggression on civilians. Using her charm offensive, Hedda goads naive spouses to cheat, recovering alcoholics to drink and depressives to wander off into the darkness with a revolver. Some of her havoc is calculated, most of it is out of pique that others are living braver, more fulfilling lives. All of it feels like a cat tipping over water glasses just to see them shatter. Like the nasty seductress of “Dangerous Liaisons,” she’s a warning that frustrated women aren’t merely a hazard to themselves — they’re a menace to the society that made them.

Inspired by her antihero, DaCosta manipulates Ibsen to suit her own goals. She’s updated the play’s setting to 1950s England, a similar-in-spirit era in which well-bred women were kept domesticated. (I can’t wait for someone to do a version among the tradwives of Utah.) From there, DaCosta has smartly tightened the narrative, which used to have a key scene at an off-stage bachelor party to which Hedda was pointedly not invited. “What a pity the fair lady can’t be there, invisible,” Ibsen’s Hedda grumbled at being left home while the men got to carouse.

In DaCosta’s version, the whole drama unfolds during a martini and cocaine-fueled rager at Hedda’s mansion, a party she’s throwing to impress George’s potential new boss, Professor Greenwood (Finbar Lynch), who she hears has a bohemian streak. At her own happening on her own turf, Hedda couldn’t be more visibly in command. She rallies the guests to hurl her former classmate, Thea (Imogen Poots), a wretchedly earnest drip, into a nearby lake and gets the whole room grooving to a dance band’s cover of “It’s Oh So Quiet,” the swinging hit that the Icelandic pop singer Björk would popularize a half-century later. It’s a great song pick with manic crescendos — You blow a fuse, zing boom! The devil cuts loose, zing boom! — that capture Hedda’s feverish mood shifts.

We know this evening will go wrong from the film’s opening shot of Hedda facing down two policemen who keep interrupting her explanation of the last 24 hours. “Where should I start?” she says with smothered exasperation. As we cut back to watch the night unfold, a shot of Hedda surveying the crowd from an upstairs landing feels like she’s looking at a game board — Clue, perhaps? — with a weapon stashed in every room. Which threat is most pressing? The pistols she keeps in a leather box, the precarious crystal chandelier or the lake’s deep waters outside?

Thompson is marvelous in the role. Even the way she chomps a cherry off a cocktail toothpick has menace. I first saw her as the lead in “Romeo and Juliet” at a 99-seat theater in Pasadena when she was barely 20 years old (there’s so much talent in our small stage scene), so it’s a nice reminder that the funny and soulful actor of the “Thor” and “Creed” franchises is also a hell of a good classical performer and a worthy star on her own.

She wears Hedda’s lovely mask with confidence — red lips, lush cheekbones, cool demeanor — and periodically allows it to slip. Editor Jacob Schulsinger often allows Hedda a tiny hesitation before she charges ahead ruining people’s lives, long enough to know that she’s considering the consequences. “Sometimes I can’t help myself, I just do things all of a sudden on a whim,” she admits to the nosy Judge Brack (Nicholas Pinnock), revealing a sliver of weakness. She’s almost (nearly) asking for help. Yet, the judge just wants to maneuver her into bed. How tedious.

DaCosta boldly layers race and sexuality on top of Ibsen’s tale. She’s gender-swapped Hedda’s ex-lover, Eilert, into a lesbian named Eileen (a swaggering Nina Hoss), a brilliant, openly norm-defying author who is George’s job-seeking competition (and the only person Hedda enjoys kissing). If earlier incarnations of Hedda didn’t dare defy social rules when she was white and straight, being Black and queer adds so much additional peril that the script barely needs to say out loud. The new tension is there in just a few whispers, as when Hedda overhears a guest murmur that their hostess is “duskier than I thought she would be.” Hedda doesn’t acknowledge the slight. That would mean admitting vulnerability. She simply starts destroying the speaker in the very next scene.

What’s wiser? Eileen’s determination to face down the boys and be accepted for her full self or Hedda sneaking around and steering everyone’s fates behind the scenes? They can’t team up — they’re doomed to tear each other to shreds. And as much glee as we get watching Hedda’s rampage, it aches to see these two formidable women reduce each other to hysterics (to use the medical diagnosis of the day).

From our 21st century perspective, they both have a right to be mad and they both might be mentally ill. DaCosta doesn’t offer a verdict, but she plunges us so deeply into Hedda’s headspace that we can hear how certain things set her off. Insults hit her with a knife-like hiss of air; fresh schemes get her charging around to Hildur Guðnadóttir’s tumultuous, percussive score.

Costume designer Lindsay Pugh has done incredible work outfitting the film’s central female roles. Hedda wears bullet-like strands of pearls that choke her neck and a jade-colored gown that seems to molder into a festering, jealous shade of green. When her rival, Poot’s Thea, arrives underdressed, Hedda forces her into a hideous frock with fussy bows and an ungainly skirt. Poots, her nose raw and red, her character kicked when she’s down, gamely looks a fright, trusting that moral fiber will expose Hedda’s ugly insecurities.

But Pugh’s stroke of genius is putting Eileen not in some sort of mannish suit but in a bombshell dress that highlights her curves like a primal goddess. It’s pure feminine power — just like the film itself — and when Eileen struts into a room of her all-male colleagues, that dress exposes how fast the tenor can shift from awe to jeers and how little wiggle room she or any woman has for error.