Defense & Aerospace Report Podcast [Aug 16, ’26 Business Report]

On this week’s Defense & Aerospace Report Business Roundtable, sponsored by Bell, Dr. “Rocket” Ron Epstein of Bank of America Securities and Richard Aboulafia of the AeroDynamic advisory consultancy join host Vago Muradian to discuss Wall Street’s near peak despite worse than expected unemployment figures as US Treasuries hit their highest since August 2001on debt and interest rate worries; US and Iranian forces continue to target Strait of Hormuz traffic as President Trump says US forces can maintain their blockade indefinitely — adding he’s considering making the international waterway American territory — but also warns Americans to brace for higher energy prices tops $6 per gallon for premium gas; an unprecedented European heat waves have dried up key rivers to their lowest levels since 2018, impacting trade and nuclear power generation that will undermine European economic growth this year; the Pentagon awards RTX and Boeing contracts to accelerate production of shipborne Standard air defense missiles; Trump orders the Navy to open a fifth government shipyard, acquire warships built overseas and replace the electromagnetic catapults on the Ford-class nuclear powered aircraft carriers with steam ones; M1 Flight Services beats Bell and Lockheed Martin for the US Army’s Flight School Next award that is valued at up to $10 billion over the coming 26 years; COMAC’s C919 jetliner made its first international commercial flight from Mongolia to Beijing; US investigators find that the Ryanair 737 from which a passenger was nearly sucked out of a window July 10 had suffered four bird strikes over the past year; Applied Aerospace, BETA Technologies, CAE, Elbit Systems, Embraer, Rocket Lab report earnings as GPS pioneer Magellan files chapter 11; Archer Aviation said it would buy Boeing's electric aircraft firm Wisk ​Aero and two other units for a nearly 20 percent stake in the air-taxi maker; and PitchBook’s estimate that private equity firms are stuck with more than 33,000 companies they can’t sell at the valuations their investors expect.