How Firestorm Labs Is Bringing Drone Manufacturing to the Tactical Edge

And speaking of in theater, can you talk about what are some of the specific technical innovations, whether additive manufacturing, modular tooling, or others that make in-theater UAS production and repair feasible today? And why is that capability becoming more urgent for defense customers right now?

Well, Defense Department has a, um, a lot of, uh, different systems across the force, right? So they, you know, procure many different types of drones, and each drone comes with a repair, uh, requirement.

And so you break a wing, you need to replace a wing.

And so to have massive Conex boxes with parts for every single thing under the sun that you could break, um, becomes a massive logistics burden.

And so what our goal is, is to be able to produce parts repair at the edge, or think about like a test center that you'd have in the United States.

Um, routinely they break aircraft, uh, and those aircraft could be down for weeks or months, however backlogged those, uh, those parts are.

And so what we've proven within test events with the DOW, um, and, uh, test and evaluation organizations, uh, even civilian ones, is that XL is capable of producing those parts on time, uh, very quickly.

And, and that's reduced their downtime for, you know, uh, ISR or, um, or test evolutions.

And you talked about kind of getting to s- to scale or, or scaling your technology.

Can you just talk about what are the XL's platform capabilities today in terms of producing, repairing, and modifying UAS in the field? Um, what are some of the technical or operational gaps that still need to be improved before this model can scale?

So we're, we're already able to scale the, what we call the tier three manufacturing line, which is XL, so it's the lowest level.

We're also looking at how do we grow into fixed lines around the world, and so, you know, think of getting outside the Conex box, but creating a, uh, an actual fixed line, um, just short of a, um, you know, a massive manufacturing facility that you would see, uh, for the defense primes.

And so how do we do that with allies, uh, regional partners? Uh, so that's something that we are scaling into out, out, you know, from three-D printing.

But the other piece is that right now we're doing polymers and, uh, the goal is to grow into new materials, and so we're looking at metal printers.

Um, we're also looking at how do we do munitions, uh, at the edge.

And so, um, you know, allow us to build, build and design warheads and print those so that we can, uh, you know, support the entire, you know, one-to-N or nose-to-tail of an aircraft or, or a one-way attack system.

Um, or even stop talking about them as aircraft and start talking about them as weapons.

Uh, and so when we talk about ground robotics, you know, air systems or even maritime platforms, uh, we scale with those businesses, but also, uh, we're looking at the, the subcomponents that go into them as well.

And, uh, also, when we talk about, uh, doing regional manufacturing, we can align with vertical supply chains within regions.

So think about, you know, if we go to Asia, um, Asia has, uh, you know, almost all the critical components that a drone company could want, whether it be propulsion, cameras, radios, et cetera.

Radios are a little bit tougher, especially when you're talking about supporting the US because, um, you know, radios are one of the longest lead items, and they also have, uh, systems that have been tested and vetted.

Uh, and then when you talk about, um, uh, getting to approvals to use and authority to use, um, that makes it a very finite list.

But on the camera systems, um, and even the subcomponents and the board level, uh, and batteries, we can do all of that overseas.