Electro Optic Systems benefits from being free of ITAR export controls, while those controls are hurting nLIGHT. nLIGHT could be doing a lot better. x.com 

nLIGHT's aerospace and defense business is booming, which made this a great report. The caveat is longer term: revenue growth will slow as it divests one of its two slow-growth or shrinking business lines, and algorithms may punish the shares after the Q3 or Q4 report, a problem for October 2026 or early 2027. x.com 

AeroVironment's lasers look like a new franchise after a strong quarter. Q1 FY27 revenue hit a record $480.5 million, up 6% and above about $456 million expected, and adjusted EPS of $0.59 beat roughly $0.25, with FY27 guidance raised or reaffirmed on a $1.5 billion backlog. The first international order for its LOCUST laser system, which management frames as a potential $500 million-a-year franchise, follows a $464.8 million US Army directed-energy award. x.com  x.com 

nLIGHT is cheap and well placed to re-rate after being crushed post-earnings, and it is the far better long-term name. Its laser is the US military's favorite against drone swarms, being the cheapest to use and reportedly able to run 12 hours without a generator. It is not a particularly high-quality name. x.com 

nLight has pivoted from industrial lasers to a lean, high-margin defense play, with high risk and high reward. It is a core winner in high-energy laser defense, where its HELSI-2 prototype-to-production work drove record FY2025 revenue of $261 million, up 31%. It raised about $200 million in February 2026 to expand aerospace and defense capacity, cutting reliance on the cyclical industrial market. x.com 

AeroVironment is selling off like a penny stock even though it just booked about half a billion dollars of counter-drone business, a reaction that looks absurd. x.com 

Redwire is losing the drone battle to AeroVironment. The two won the $1 billion LRR program, but AeroVironment says it is getting close to 90% of the awards and was blunt on its last call: warfighters are far more satisfied with its systems than with competitors', and when rival products don't perform in the field, future procurement decisions follow. x.com 

Laser defense is arriving as regulators approve it, and nLIGHT is the US pure play on that shift. The FAA has greenlit laser sentry guns against attack drones in US airspace, per @zerohedge. nLIGHT is developing lasers up to 1MW, the strongest in development, at only about a $3.5B market cap, while AeroVironment, despite its Locust system, is too diversified for laser exposure. x.com 

AeroVironment is a long-term buy on weakness because its counter-drone and directed-energy position keeps strengthening while the chart stays depressed. It won a $464.8M US Army LOCUST contract, its first US production contract for high-energy lasers, plus a >$50M international order, and is one of four systems in the US counter-drone directed-energy pilot ahead of a December shoot-off. The stock has built a $135-150 range for three months with improving MFI, a potential bullish divergence. … Show more

nLIGHT's opportunities are huge, but supply-chain problems could last longer than the market prices in, so it is only worth adding on a significant drop. Weapons restocking should help its laser sensing business, and a new JLWS award brings $44M in 2026 with a $627M ceiling. But Q3 guidance is much weaker because China is holding optical components in customs, which the CEO called political football. At a rich multiple, it could languish in the $40s until the next big win. x.com  x.com  x.com  … Show more