Army’s Big Drone Ambition Runs Into the Hard Part: Scaling Up

Army’s big drone ambition runs into the hard part: scaling up

ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. — The U.S. Army is racing to turn its aging organic industrial base into a modern drone factory network — and learning just how hard it is to move from prototypes to mass production. “We know how to manufacture things. There’s not a problem with that, but UAS, they are different,” Lt. Gen. Christopher Mohan, acting commander of Materiel Command, told Defense News in a recent interview. “We can do the wiring harnesses. W…

Army aims to manufacture 10,000 drones per month by 2026

Starting next year, the Army will be able to domestically mass-produce upwards of 10,000 small unmanned aerial systems each month, according to the service. Army Materiel Command is leading a new pilot program dubbed “SkyFoundry” that will allow the service to rapidly develop, test and produce small drones using innovative manufacturing methods. Officials are currently identifying multiple facilities where the platforms will be designed and prod…