A defense-drone developer moving through a SPAC merger has put a procurement milestone on the public record. In a Form 425 merger communication filed July 2, 2026, JFB Construction Holdings (Nasdaq: JFB) disclosed that Xtend AI Robotics, the private company it has agreed to combine with, has advanced to the Gauntlet II phase of the U.S. Department of War's Drone Dominance Program. The document is filed by JFB pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act and deemed filed under Rule 14a-12 of the Exchange Act, naming Xtend AI Robotics, Inc. as the subject company under Commission File No. 333-295380. Its contents were, by the filing's own terms, first made available July 2, 2026.

The substance is a selection, and it is worth being precise about what that means. According to the filing, XTEND "has advanced to the Gauntlet II phase" after completing the program's qualification stage, and is "selected among 19 companies advancing to Gauntlet II, the program's next competitive stage, scheduled to take place in August at Fort Carson, Colorado." The qualification phase that preceded it drew a wider field: the filing states that "49 companies participated in day and night operational evaluations across two mission areas: Long Range Strike and Tactical Assault in Confined Environments," held over two weeks at Camp Grayling, Michigan. Nineteen of those advanced. XTEND is one of them.

According to the Department of War, following Gauntlet II, the program plans to procure 60,000 drone systems from the program’s top-performing participants.— Xtend AI Robotics / JFB Construction Holdings, Form 425 (merger communication), filed July 2, 2026, source

That sentence is the one most likely to be read too quickly. The 60,000-unit figure is a stated program plan attributed to the Department of War, and it is framed as procurement "from the program's top-performing participants" following the Gauntlet II round — not a purchase commitment to XTEND. Advancing to Gauntlet II is a pass to the next competitive stage, not a contract award. The filing discloses no order, no ceiling value assigned to XTEND, and no dollar figure attached to the company itself. What it reports is that XTEND remains in the field, and that the field has narrowed from 49 to 19.

What the filing says about the program

The Drone Dominance Program is characterized in the filing by reference to "previously published Department of War information," which the document says describes it as "a $1 billion U.S. defense initiative designed to accelerate the deployment of autonomous one-way attack systems through a rapid, competitive acquisition process." That framing — a fixed program budget, a competitive acquisition mechanism, and staged operational evaluations — is the accountability structure a reader should hold onto. The $1 billion figure describes the program, not an award. The filing attributes the program description and the 60,000-system procurement plan to the Department of War rather than asserting them independently.

XTEND's entry in the competition is a platform the filing calls STRIKER, described as an "XOS-powered indoor mission platform purpose-built for tactical operations in complex, GNSS-denied environments." Per the document, STRIKER "competed in the Tactical Assault in Confined Environments mission area during the first stage." Companies advancing to Gauntlet II, the filing adds, "are required to deliver production systems for the next phase of operational testing" — a production-readiness bar that distinguishes this stage from a paper qualification. The filing quotes XTEND Co-Founder and CEO Aviv Shapira and Roy Levy, General Manager of XTEND USA, framing the advance as validation of the company's technology and manufacturing ability; those are attributed characterizations from named company executives, not independent findings, and the filing offers no third-party performance data behind them.

The de-SPAC structure behind the disclosure

The reason this milestone surfaces as an SEC filing at all is the merger it is wrapped in. The communication restates that "as announced on February 17, 2026, JFB Construction Holdings (Nasdaq: JFB) and XTEND entered into a definitive agreement to combine with XTEND in an all-stock transaction." That is the de-SPAC: JFB, a Nasdaq-listed company, is the public vehicle, and XTEND is the operating business being taken public through it. The filing lists strategic investors supporting the combination — naming Eric Trump, Unusual Machines, American Ventures, LLC, Protego Ventures, and Aliya Capital — without disclosing the size of any of those investments in this document.

On structure and outcome, the filing is specific about the ticker but not about the terms. "Following the closing of the business combination," it states, "the joint company is expected to be renamed XTEND AI Robotics and be listed on a U.S. national securities exchange under the ticker symbol 'XTND.'" The document does not disclose a valuation, an exchange ratio, a redemption backstop, or a closing date, and it does not quantify the all-stock consideration. Those terms, where they exist, would live in the registration statement referenced by the commission file number and in subsequent proxy materials, not in a single-page merger communication whose purpose is to circulate a corporate development to the market.

What is and is not established

Read narrowly, the filing establishes three things. XTEND has advanced, as one of 19 companies, from a 49-company qualification field to Gauntlet II of a Department of War drone program described as a $1 billion initiative, with that next stage scheduled for August at Fort Carson. The program, per DoW information cited in the filing, plans to procure 60,000 drone systems from top-performing participants after Gauntlet II. And XTEND is being taken public via an all-stock combination with Nasdaq-listed JFB Construction Holdings, with the combined entity slated to trade as XTND.

What the filing does not establish is equally worth stating. It reports no contract, no award, and no revenue tied to the program. The 60,000-unit procurement is a forward program plan attributed to the Department of War, contingent on a competitive stage that has not yet occurred, and directed at unnamed "top-performing participants." The merger terms — valuation, consideration, timing — are not quantified here. For a reader tracking defense-autonomy dealmaking, the grounded takeaway is that XTEND has cleared one selection gate and is heading into another as a going-public transaction proceeds; the procurement scale the filing cites remains a program ambition, not a booked order.