Monterey Bay DART signs with DEFENSEWERX, opening a defence procurement route locally

Monterey Bay DART has signed a memorandum of understanding with DEFENSEWERX, connecting Central Coast companies and workforce programmes to a national network of defence innovation hubs. The agreement was announced on 19 August. DEFENSEWERX is a national non-profit that runs innovation hubs linking small businesses, academia and government to US military and federal defence customers. It operates several, including SOFWERX for Special Operations Command and ERDCWERX for the Army Corps of Engineers. Locally the relevant one is FLEETWERX, the hub associated with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. The MOU provides for joint programming, information sharing and mutual referrals between the two organisations. It builds on agreements DART already holds — a memorandum with Ventura Tech Bridge, part of the Navy's Rapid Capabilities Office network, and a national partnership with Vets to Drones. Morgan Bower directs the FLEETWERX hub; Josh Metz is DART's executive director; Peter Church, a former Navy pilot, leads its small uncrewed aircraft work. No funding figure was attached to the agreement. The practical value for a hardware company here is that defence procurement is famously difficult to enter from outside, and the barrier is usually knowing which programme office to talk to rather than the technology. This is a route to that. It also lands in a county where the defence adjacency is already real: Joby, headquartered in Santa Cruz, is in the middle of acquiring an Ohio defence electronics firm, and Parallel Flight Technologies in La Selva Beach builds heavy-lift drones for exactly these customers. Reported by Monterey Bay DART. Read the original: https://mbdart.org/dart-partners-with-defensewerx-to-strengthen-defense-innovation-pipeline-on-the-central-coast