Can troops with 3D printers save the Pentagon’s mass-drone vision? – By Patrick Tucker (Defense One) / Nov 22, 2023
Big defense contractors aren’t jumping at the chance to make cheap drones. It might be up to the troops.
There’s a major obstacle to the Pentagon’s new effort to manufacture thousands of small drones: China dominates the market for consumer-drone parts, which is awkward since the point is to deter China. One potential solution could be rapid manufacturing in the field, according to one of the military’s top young tech minds.
The two-month-old Replicator effort seeks to apply a Ukrainian success—modifying lots and lots of consumer drones for military purposes—to the U.S. campaign to keep the peace in the Pacific. But the Pentagon can’t simply clone the Ukrainian program for the INDOPACOM mission set.
“The fact of the matter is: we don’t have an industrial base to do this,” Michael MacKay, national security advisor to Sen. Jodi Ernst, R-Iowa, said last week at a Pallas Advisors event. “If China shut off the hose tomorrow, we don’t have the carbon fibers; we don’t have the micro-electronics; we don’t have the chips; we don’t have the motors to be able at this point to provide thousands [of small drones] at scale.
