Black Sky Industries launch in Australia a boost to sovereign defence industry capability
Defence industry and technology company Black Sky Industries has formally launched in Australia, announcing the establishment of its multi-million dollar headquarters in Logan, in South East Queensland as well as launch, test and manufacturing facilities throughout Western Queensland. Black Sky aims to greatly accelerate the production capability of sovereign scaled rocket motor and defence systems. Black Sky Industries, formerly known as Black Sky Aerospace, is Australia’s only sovereign developer and supplier of solid rocket propellant and solid rocket motors to the defence sector. Black Sky Industries was founded by aerospace, defence and manufacturing industry veterans Blake Nikolic and Karl Hemphill, and Dr Vu Tran, who co-founded $3 billion-plus technology startup Go1. L TO R: Black Sky Industries founders Dr Vu Tran, Blake Nikolic and Karl Hemphill. Black Sky has ambitions of creating hundreds of advanced manufacturing and defence industry jobs over the next decade. Recent key hires at the company include former L3Harris Technologies director David Johnson as general manager, enterprise development and defence innovation veteran Stephen Delo. Black Sky is reimagining how rockets are designed, developed and manufactured at scale. As a local producer of ammonium perchlorate (AP) – crucial to conventional solid rocket motors used in aerospace and defence industries – Black Sky produces solid rocket propellant and motors, and offers its homegrown, proprietary Wagtail Rocket Assisted Take-Off (RATO) technology for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and drones. Cortex1, Black Sky’s proprietary software platform, underpins all aspects of its operations, from research and development and manufacturing to powering products and platforms, including launch control, tracking and mapping through data-driven propellant formulation and characterisation technology using artificial intelligence. Black Sky’s rapid-fire pace to innovate is in line with a key tenet of the federal government’s 2024 National Defence Strategy, to better integrate existing and emerging technologies, […]