> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://nexi.fund/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Certo Raised GBP 5M to Put Capstone in Production. BAE Systems Is the Actual Story - URL: https://nexi.fund/certo-capstone-heavy-lift/ - Published: 2026-10-05T10:00:41.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-05T10:00:41.000Z - Description: Certo Aerospace flies a 600kg-class coaxial VTOL carrying 280kg for 10 hours. On 2 October the Somerset SME raised GBP 5M to move Capstone toward production. The signatory matters more than the money: BAE Systems agreed in January 2026 to put production behind an airframe it did not design. - Author: Nexi.fund Labs - Tags: Defence & Robotics, #mode-5, #hook-thesis, #track-A, #brand-heavy A 600kg-class rotorcraft with no tail rotor lifts 280kg of payload and stays up for ten hours. On 2 October, the company that built it raised £5m to build more. Certo Aerospace is a Somerset SME founded in 2008, and it has been flying prototypes since 2017\. BAE Systems, which partners with the company through its FalconWorks unit, publishes the numbers: 280kg maximum payload, 10 hours endurance, 300 miles range. Two contra-rotating five-metre rotors on one hub. A piston engine that runs on heavy fuel and pushes 20kW of electricity into a forward camp. The interesting part of the raise is not the money. It is that a tier-one prime has agreed to put production behind somebody else's airframe. BAE signed that in January 2026, through FalconWorks, for the UK Army's Project NYX. ``` CHRONICLE: CAPSTONE — FROM FLIGHT-TEST ARTICLE TO PRODUCTION LINE ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 2008 ······ 2017 ······ Dec 2025 ······ Jan 2026 ······ Jun–Jul 2026 ······ 2030e ⚙️ 🛩️ 📦 🤝 ✈️ 🎯 founded trials MORRIGHAN BAE teaming Farnborough IOC Frome, begin; Phase 2: agreement; 3rd trial year target Somerset CAA + DoD 3 carriage NYX tender complete; (reported, auth systems prep FalconWorks single demonstrated display source) ◉ NOW ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ``` Compiled from Certo Aerospace announcements, BAE Systems' FalconWorks product page and FlightGlobal's October 2026 coverage. ## The airframe nobody else wanted to build Remove the tail rotor and roughly 20% of the lift power comes back. That single deletion is why Capstone has the shape it does. Certo flies two contra-rotating five-metre main rotors mounted coaxially on one hub. No tail rotor, no yaw pedals, no tail gearbox to maintain. The aircraft is 600kg-class, with a piston engine that burns gasoline or heavy fuel. BAE Systems publishes the specification: 280kg maximum payload, 10 hours endurance, 300 miles range. The company sits in Commerce Park, Frome. Founded 2008\. It describes itself as veteran-led, 100% UK-owned, holding all its intellectual property in the UK, and it has developed and flown the aircraft since 2017 under both CAA operational authorisation and a US Department of Defense authorisation. 280kg max payload, published BAE Systems FalconWorks #### Payload on a 600kg-class airframe Published alongside 10 hours endurance and 300 miles range by the manufacturing partner rather than the airframe designer. One trade report of the October round quotes 300kg; no primary source carries that figure. · *BAE Systems, 2026* The engine does double duty. Certo says the aircraft can be configured as a mobile generator, delivering up to 20kW of electrical power to a forward location that road transport cannot reach. With a load capacity above the standard half-height JMIC container, a lift aircraft becomes a piece of infrastructure. ## Why a prime needed a small team The gap in uncrewed heavy lift has never been an aircraft problem. It is a rate problem. Someone has to build several hundred of them, warrant them, and hold a budget line that survives a change of government. That is a prime's job. BAE Systems signed a teaming agreement with Certo in January 2026\. The announcement ran short. The two companies are preparing and submitting a collaborative tender for the British Army's requirement for an uncrewed air system to operate in conjunction with its Apache helicopters — Project NYX. BAE's statement closed by declining to say more, citing commercial sensitivities. > We are proud to be partnering with Certo Aerospace in response to the UK Army's NYX requirement. Together we offer the only 100% sovereign solution bringing together world leading UK innovation across our collective enterprise.— Anthony Gregory, Business Development Director, FalconWorks, BAE Systems Air Read that wording closely. BAE Systems is not buying an airframe. It is answering a sovereign-manufacturing requirement with an airframe its partner already had in the air, and putting its own production organisation behind it. NYX wants a rotary-wing companion to the Apache. A coaxial VTOL with no tail rotor and an open mission-system architecture fits that slot without a new airframe programme. Scale is what a small team cannot supply. The two companies displayed together at Farnborough in July 2026, inside the FalconWorks stand. By then Capstone had completed its third year of flight trials, in June, at UK test sites under CAA authorisation. The financial asymmetry between them is stark, and disclosed. Certo raised £3m in an April 2025 equity placement at a £16m pre-deal valuation, on top of more than $5m of US Department of Defense support across prior years. Managing Director Justin Tooth, a former Royal Navy Lynx pilot, said the target had been oversubscribed enough to expand the raise. Eighteen months later, an equity placement with undisclosed buyers brought in £5m — roughly $6.6m — to move the aircraft toward production. ## What the MoD already proved with it Before any tender, the Ministry of Defence ran the logistics case. Project MORRIGHAN Phase 1 put three outside companies to work on carriage systems: a Skylift TEUCAN/SkyHook unit, an Aether Aerospace winch delivery system, and Blackspace Technology's Rapid-ACE. Phase 2, flown at Keevil Airfield in December 2025, picked up, carried and dropped all three, using both manual and automated attachment, through fully autonomous take-off, climb, waypoint navigation, descent and precision landing. That is the unglamorous test that matters for heavy lift. A 280kg payload is worth nothing if it takes forty minutes and two people to load. Certo markets Capstone with a minimum 90% reduction in fuel and cost against an equivalent crewed helicopter, 75% fewer personnel for launch and recovery, and 70% fewer maintenance hours. Treat those three as the company's own figures until a customer publishes one. The logic is not unique. Autonomous ground resupply is being funded on the same premise in the same period, off an Army IDIQ rather than a Ministry demonstration. ## The programme queue behind the aircraft One airframe now points at four separate customers, and the differences between them matter more than the funding headline. | Programme | Customer | Mission | Status | | -------------------------- | --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | | **Project NYX** | UK Army | Autonomous rotary-wing companion to the AH-64E Apache | Collaborative tender being prepared with BAE Systems | | **Project MORRIGHAN** | UK Ministry of Defence | Uncrewed logistics and casualty evacuation carriage | Phase 2 flown at Keevil, December 2025 | | **ATLANTIC BASTION** | Royal Navy | Anti-submarine warfare with sonobuoys | Demonstrated February 2026; demonstration phase selected | | **JHubMed demonstrations** | UK Defence Medical Services | Medical logistics under CAA authorisation | Funded demonstration complete | Programme and status data: BAE Systems, Certo Aerospace, Future Warfare Magazine; compiled 2026. The February 2026 naval demonstration stretches the airframe furthest from its cargo role. At a Royal Navy ASW DETECT, LOCATE & TRACK event at Keevil on 23 February, Capstone carried sonobuoys and a UYS-506 acoustic processor supplied by General Dynamics Mission Systems UK, and passed the resulting data across the Atlantic over a Starlink link. Certo was selected for the ATLANTIC BASTION demonstration phase afterwards. A logistics aircraft carrying a signature-reduction role is a different procurement decision from a logistics aircraft carrying pallets. It buys a sensor budget instead of a fuel budget. ## What the money has not bought yet Three items are missing, and each one is load-bearing. ⚠️ **What the October round did not settle** **1\. No production contract.** The BAE Systems agreement covers tender preparation for NYX. A teaming agreement is not a delivery order, and no procurement award for NYX has been announced. **2\. No customer-verified economics.** The 90% / 75% / 70% efficiency figures are Certo Aerospace's own marketing numbers. No Ministry of Defence or BAE Systems document in the public record publishes a fleet cost comparison. **3\. One source for 2030.** The initial-operational-capability date comes from a single trade report of the October round. It is absent from BAE Systems' product material and from Certo's own site. A fourth gap is quieter. Capstone flies uncrewed, which means under Beyond Visual Line of Sight rules. Certo holds CAA operational authorisation for that and advertises GPS-denied autonomous flight. Neither survives being copied into a different theatre without re-certification. What changed on 2 October was the rate question, not the aircraft question. The airframe had demonstrably flown for three years. BAE Systems had co-developed it since a January 2026 teaming agreement and put it on the Farnborough stand. What nobody had was a reason to build the first hundred instead of the next one. 🎯 The bottleneck in uncrewed heavy lift was production rate, never airframes. A Somerset SME holding 280kg of payload and 300 miles of range had been flying for three years while every tier-one prime stayed away. BAE Systems entering through FalconWorks in January 2026 is the actual event. Sovereign-manufacturing accounting decides who gets the production line, and here the sovereign claim sits with the airframe designer. NYX is still a tender. Until it converts, this is a capability with four demonstrations and no customer-verified cost per sortie. 1 — Payload: BAE Systems' FalconWorks page lists Capstone's maximum payload as 280kg, alongside 10 hours endurance and 300 miles range. Ventureburn's report on the October round gives 300kg. The partner's published specification is used here. Figures checked 5 October 2026. *Ed.: A piece carried in this feed on 4 October, on the FQ-42 and FQ-44, argued that the Air Force split the airframe from the autonomy stack. Capstone runs the same seam with the roles inverted — the small team builds the airframe, the prime carries production and the mission system.* [ Certo Aerospace lifted by new £5m investment Aviation trade coverage of the October 2026 equity placement, and the only source in the set that puts a dollar conversion on the round. FlightGlobal ](https://www.flightglobal.com/military-uavs/2026/10/certo-aerospace-lifted-by-new-5m-investment?ref=nexi.fund) Used as the event anchor: £5m, $6.6m, equity placement, October 2026\. Aviation desks follow airframe programmes more closely than general business press does, which is also why the round stayed off the wires. [ Capstone integration — FalconWorks The manufacturing partner's own specification sheet, plus the FalconWorks partnership framing and the UK Army NYX requirement. BAE Systems ](https://www.baesystems.com/en-sa/product/capstone-integration-1781699064014?ref=nexi.fund) Every performance figure in this piece comes from here rather than from Certo's marketing. When a prime publishes a partner's numbers, those numbers become the contract baseline. [ Project MORRIGHAN — Phase 2 carriage demonstrations December 2025 flight demonstrations at Keevil Airfield, covering pick-up, transit and drop-off of three third-party logistics and CASEVAC carriage systems. Certo Aerospace ](https://www.certoaero.com/2026-01-project-morrighan?ref=nexi.fund) The most useful document Certo has published, because it names the three carriage suppliers instead of claiming a generic modular payload bay.