Stoke Space announced a massive capital raise on Wednesday that might seem, at first glance, like just another bet on the commercial launch market. The details tell a different story.

Led by billionaire Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology, a fund that explicitly invests in technologies tied to national security, the $510 million Series D round underscores a larger shift in the launch industry. The old assumption was the winners of launch would be the companies that capture the lion’s share of commercial payloads.

While there is still demand on the commercial side from private constellation developers and for emerging use cases like in-space manufacturing or lunar payloads, the center of gravity has shifted decisively toward defense.

Just a few years ago, space startups were selling

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