$MRLN Part 3: The DAWG, the $54.6B, and Why Merlin Is Positioned to Win the Autonomous Warfare Contract Wave

The Pentagon just proposed a 24,166% budget increase for autonomous warfare. Here is why $MRLN is the most direct public-market beneficiary — and what the contract math looks like from here.

Shawarma Capital · April 2026

In our first post, we laid out the full Merlin Labs ($MRLN) thesis: the Brainstem, the A-GRA architecture, the $105M USSOCOM IDIQ, and why this might be the most asymmetric name in defense tech. In the second post, we stress-tested the valuation against the ugly stuff: the PIPE terms, the 12% cumulative preferred, the full r…