simply sensors, and that's exactly where Microvision is poised to lead. Our ability to pair purpose-built hardware with perception software, custom silicon, and an open architecture gives customers the flexibility they need while allowing us to participate in significantly larger market opportunities. Now we know there is still work ahead. Commercial programs take time to mature. Evaluations need to become production programs. Purchase orders need to become recurring revenue. Our job is now straightforward. Execute, convert opportunities into customers, expand those relationships, drive revenue growth, and continue delivering against the scorecard we've shared with you today. I believe that Microvision is a fundamentally different company than it was even a year ago. We have a broader technology portfolio, we have stronger commercial capabilities, we have a healthier operating model, and many more opportunities than at any point in our The foundation we've built gives us confidence in where we're headed and we're excited about delivering in the second half of 26 as we prepare for growth of 27 and beyond. I'd like to thank our employees around the world for their commitment and execution through an incredibly busy first half of the year. I'd also like to thank our customers, partners, and shareholders for your continued confidence and support. We're looking forward to updating you again next quarter as we continue executing our strategy. Operator, we'll now open the line for questions.
Operator
Thank you. At this time, we are conducting a question and answer session. Investors can submit their questions within the meeting webcast by typing them into the Q&A button on the left side of their viewing screen. Analysts who publish research may ask questions on the phone line. For analysts to ask questions on the phone line, please press star one on your phone keypad now. We ask that while you're posing your question, you please pick up your handset if you're listening on a speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please wait a moment as we poll for the questions. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Casey Ryan of Amarex. Casey, your line is live.
Thanks, everybody. Glenn, Steve, thanks for the terrific update today. I wanted to focus in on the upgrade on the gross margin guidance. That's pretty rapid from what was a good gross margin number last quarter. Tell me how much room you think there is sort of structurally in sort of a long-term steady state um you know i think obviously 40 45 is very good and um you know as you work through that but but but it's 45 pound of ceiling or or do you see some sort of like long-term range being somewhat higher than that current guidance sure hey casey great to hear from you and i'll start and see if you you can add But long-term, I would expect this to be really between that 40% and 50% gross margin, and depending a little bit on the product and the end market.
If it's a product where there's, you know, more software content, so you're talking about products that would be delivered with not just the point cloud, but perceptions and features on top, or products in, you know, more into the security and defense area, specifically defense, you're going to see that first margin kind of move to the upper end of the range. If it's more of a circular sensor that's delivering a point cloud or histograms, and we don't have that added value or added content, in particular added non-hardware-specific content, then you're going to see it, I think, drift to the closer to the lower end of that range. But for us, you know, we think with these products and with the software content we have, you know, kind of that upper boundary is probably around 50, the bottom boundary around 40.
Casey, I was just going to add to that, Casey. I think one of the things that you've heard with regards to our strategies about design to cost, you know, within our product development space, we continue to look at cost reductions, get our bomb costs down as low as we can. And over the last little while, we've had some good negotiations with our supply base to get our cost base down, as just mentioned. That's why we elevated our guidance. So I expect we will continue to see that as we progress into the future to get to those margins that Glenn just mentioned.
Yeah. Okay. Terrific. Terrific. So sort of the second question, sort of on the OPEX line, and I suspect there are some non-cash items here in sort of the SG&A and R&D lines you put out, But sort of this $24 million to $25 million range compares to kind of about maybe, say, $13 million, $12 million, $13 million last year. Do you guys expect OPEX to be steady state around this, you know, mid-20s? Is that sort of something to expect? Or do you think now that you've gone through all this integration work in Q2, that OPEX line might start to bend lower or trend lower going forward?
Yeah, let me just add to that, Casey. So, yeah, we clearly see our OPEX deteriorating, you know, over the next six months. It's very clear. All the consolidation actions that we took, as I mentioned, with regards to our Redmond consolidation, we will start to see that cost reduction count come down as we progress throughout this year. We had a number of restructuring costs related to the acquisitions. A lot of that cost took place, you know, in the first half of the year. There will be a little bit coming Q3 as we kind of finish a couple of things. But, you know, we will not see that stuff happening in the future on a run rate basis. Okay.
Just to be clear, Steve, when he says OPEC's deteriorating, that's a good thing.
Yeah. Absolutely. It's like kind of like losing weight. I would love to be also deteriorating a little bit. Hey, so Glenn, you talked a lot at the top about aerial opportunities. And one of the things we see across the industry is there's a lot of sort of detection and defense of sort of aerial things, but it sounds like your opportunities can include being on board and it might be, you know, tied to some of the advantages of the product in terms of weight and functionality. But I wanted to see if you could expand and say, yeah, a lot of it's, you know, or, you know, tell us if it's primarily for defense and detection, you know, or if it is actually sort of on board with things that are airborne, basically.
Yeah, yeah. So for defense, there's three areas that we look at. One is detection, so longer range detection. And certainly that's where Scanton all plays a role. So that's on the detection side. But nearer term, really, the big opportunities appear to be both onboard the drones. So if you think about drones and the different categories, group one and two being kind of the sub-55-pound drones, the letterweight drones, typically copters. And then above that, the group three drones, which tend to be fixed wing. The onboard perception and payloads on those drones is where we see the immediate opportunity, Both in terms of defense, but also in commercial applications, like for everything from, you know, power line inspection to wind turbine blade inspection to, you know, terrain mapping and other types of reconnaissance activities in commercial. But in defense, though, it's very clear that onboard applications, and that's what we're going to be demonstrating at GIFIX next week, that's where the immediate pull is and across those segments. In parallel to that is the ground base that we talked about, autonomous vehicles on the ground that need, that want lighter sensors on those vehicles as well.
But for the aerial, it's onboard the airplane. yeah that's um that's pretty exciting because i feel like you're the only one talking about being on board really that i've listened to
