US defence start-up Anduril has selected Columbus, Ohio to build a new production facility from which it aims to deliver thousands of autonomous weapon systems annually.
Known as Arsenal-1, the 65,000sq m (700,000sq ft) plant will be located near Rickenbacker International airport, with production operations starting as soon as 2026. Initially around 300 workers will be employed at the site, while officials from Anduril and the state of Ohio say that number could eventually expand to 4,000.
Anduril says Arsenal-1 will not be dedicated to a specific product line, but will boast capability to deliver a range of the company’s offerings, including Fury autonomous fighter jets, Roadrunner drone interceptors and the Barracuda family of cruise missiles.
The company has billed itself as a disruptor of the US defence industry, which is dominated by a few large conglomerates after decades of consolidation following the end of the Cold War. Anduril has centred its disruption pitch around the promise of high-volume production of munitions with a low per-unit cost.
“Arsenal-1 represents a step forward in how we manufacture the autonomous systems and weapons that our nation and our allies need to remain secure,” said chief executive Brian Schimpf on 16 January.
While company officials decline to offer specific production targets for the envisioned Arsenal-1 site, chief strategy officer Chris Rose says the facility will support Anduril’s long-term goal of delivering “tens of thousands” of autonomous weapon systems annually – which the company bills as “hyper-scale” production.
Current long-range precision munitions, such as Lockheed Martin’s Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, are produced in the hundreds or low thousands of units annually.
Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022, Pentagon officials have warned that the USA lacks sufficient stocks of critical weapons to sustain more than a few weeks of intense fighting. Defence industry executives have cautioned that production of such munitions cannot be quickly ramped up, as was the case in past eras.
Anduril says it will circumvent typical production constraints by designing products specifically for mass assembly. The approach includes a focus on factory automation, and simplified designs requiring minimal application of hand tooling by workers.
Anduril says a pre-existing base of skilled manufacturing labour in the Columbus area was a key reason it selected the city for Arsenal-1.
“The access to a highly-skilled and diverse manufacturing workforce is phenomenal,” Rose says, noting the area already hosts a number of industrial facilities for the automotive and aerospace sectors. “They’re incredibly relevant to our vision of defence production, which is highly leveraged on those types of commercial industrial experiences.”
The Rickenbacker airport also has two 3,650m (12,000ft)-long runways and a 30ha (75 acre) private apron capable of supporting military-scale aircraft, which Anduril says will enable “rapid delivery of components and systems to our customers”.
Columbus is also home to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which houses key offices of the US Air Force dedicated to developing and managing new weapons and technologies, including the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center.
Rose says construction of the Arsenal-1 site will begin immediately, with plans to “aggressively renovate” the facility to support the launch of production operations by mid-2026. The factory could eventually expand to encompass some 464,000 sq m of available space.
Although still a relatively young company, Anduril is emerging as key supplier under the Pentagon’s drive to rapidly field autonomous weapon systems. Policy officials in Washington view the concept of “affordable mass” – large numbers of low-cost, uncrewed systems – as key to countering China’s increasing technical sophistication and numerical superiority in the Indo-Pacific region.
The USAF selected Anduril’s Fury as one of two finalists for the service’s inaugural Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which is to be an uncrewed autonomous combat jet capable of supporting conventional fighters and bombers with weapons or battlefield effects.
General Atomics is the other contender in that competition, with both companies beating out aerospace heavyweights such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
Anduril is also under contract with the US Army to provide the Ghost-X small helicopter-style uncrewed aerial vehicle to provide battlefield reconnaissance and targeting support to ground troops.
