COLUMBUS, Ohio — A new Anduril factory in Ohio has begun manufacturing the Fury autonomous combat drone, as the company sets its sight on a lucrative US Air Force follow-on contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft.
But Anduril, which has bet big on the facility dubbed “Arsenal-1,” is pledging that Fury is just the start. By the end of the year, the factory will be home to production lines for the vertical takeoff and landing drone known as Roadrunner and the Barracuda low-cost cruise missile, as well as standing up production of a classified platform in a separate portion of “Building 1,” company officials said.
The company has sunk about $1 billion into the facility, announced in 2024, which will eventually stretch across seven buildings with 4,000 employees. The standup of the Fury production line offers the ultimate test of whether the California-based tech firm can deliver on its promise of low-cost, highly producible weapons that can quickly be delivered to the US military in large numbers. Meanwhile, critics who say the firm shows flash but not substance are lined up to watch closely.
During a series of briefings to reporters on Thursday ahead of the production start, Anduril officials characterized its production processes as markedly different from the established defense primes.
“As we think about new programs and new products, as we shape them for scaling, we’re thinking about that manufacturing from the absolute day one,” Matt Grimm, Anduril’s chief operating officer and co-founder, said. “And we’re thinking about what is the cheapest possible way we can make this.”
That means a more flexible manufacturing environment, with few fixed “monuments” that can’t be moved if the production line needs to be reconfigured to enable new processes or equipment, Grimm said.
It also means making design choices centered around producibility, such as choosing aluminum instead of titanium to construct an airframe, using easy-to-find commercial components as much as possible, and steering away from hard-to-build components like castings and forgings, Anduril officials said.
Anduril officials declined to answer questions about the initial pace of production at Arsenal-1, as well as how many Fury jets, dubbed the YFQ-44 by the US Air Force, the company will produce for the Air Force under its current contract, awarded in 2024.
They also declined to comment on the production ramp up that would occur if Anduril wins a contract for YFQ-44 production later this year. However, at full capacity, the line is capable of producing 150 aircraft per year if it runs three eight-hour shifts daily, said John Malone, Anduril’s head of production for autonomous airpower said.
“It’s really about getting affordable mass to the war fighter as fast as possible,” Malone said. “And the Air Force has really motivated and encouraged industry, including Anduril and our other partners, to get high volumes ready for battle within the decade.”
Workers walk the line at Anduril’s Arsenal-1 factory in Ohio. (Valerie Insinna/Breaking Defense)
How Fury Gets Made
Production of Fury is separated into 22 workstations, each with about an equal workload.
The first four stations concentrate on putting together the aircraft’s structure, with the following stations focused on more difficult tasks with the largest preponderance of quality issues, such as hydraulics, fuel and avionics, Malone said.
Once the aircraft shifts to station 12, its landing gear is installed, followed by the wings and engine, Malone said. The final three workstations are purely for testing, to ensure all of its systems are properly working.
Under a single shift, an aircraft would move to its next station every five days. With three shifts working, that timeline collapses to a day and six hours, Malone said.
One major difference between Anduril’s approach on Fury and other production lines of large, exquisite aircraft like the F-35 is the lack of robots and automation on the line. Work stations were largely bare bones, with no large, permanent tooling structures.
That choice was purposeful, said Malone. He previously worked at Tesla and said he saw first hand how automation hindered the electric car company as it attempted to scale up production of the Model 3.
“Elon’s approach for Model 3 was, let’s automate everything,” he said. “And it really threatened the ramp, and then we ended up building cars in a tent in the parking lot.”
Anduril workers building the first Fury drones at Arsenal-1 will be able to provide insight on what automated systems should be incorporated as the production line matures, with possibilities such as adding robotics for painting the aircraft, working on subassemblies, and moving the drone between workstations, Malone said.
“Our general posture is, question the value of automation, especially super early in the ramp,” he said. “ And then usually what happens is, when you go through early stage production, you’ll see what you should automate. Like, it kind of presents itself to you.”
About 30 workers were chosen to launch Fury production in Ohio, and were previously trained in California before setting up shop at Arsenal-1.
Technicians will follow the aircraft as it moves its way through the 22 stations when work starts at Arsenal-1 , but as production numbers ramp up, technicians will continually work the same station as the aircraft moves through the process, Malone said.
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“That also makes the training of new workforce more straightforward, because initially the technicians know basically how to build an aircraft from start to finish,” he said. “But as we add more workforce in, they start specializing in either maybe one or two stations, and then ultimately one station. That lets the technician only have to know two and a half days worth of work, and it gets their cycle times faster.”
“The aircraft is pretty simple, therefore the process is simple, but all of the custom equipment we do need, we’ve encouraged the team to iterate as many times as we can,” Malone added.
For example, Fury is assembled on a custom-designed cart until it goes “weight-on-wheels” and stands on its own landing gear. Anduril employees have so far developed three different versions of that cart, based on feedback from technicians, building new versions in about eight weeks, Malone said.
For Anduril, the challenge will be executing across large-scale production contracts without falling into the pitfalls that plague legacy defense contractors.
Asked how the Fury line would respond to a supply chain issue that leads to “out-of-sequence work” — the term used to describe work that cannot be done during the normal production flow and must be completed later — Malone said that, at least in the early days of Fury’s production, there will be enough space on the line to absorb aircraft that need to wait for parts.
Beyond that, “it’s just great supply chain management and quality control at our vendors to prevent that from happening in the first place. And because we get an opportunity to learn at lower rates, we can figure out where our vendors are struggling, and we can fix them without blocking the line.”
Malone added that the company is keeping a close eye on quality escapes, and is changing its manufacturing processes in cases where there are repeated lapses. For example, the company is moving away from a certain adhesive used on Fury after workers had problems applying it correctly.
“Let’s just delete the process entirely and not have it anymore. That’s our general approach to life,” he said. “The best part is, no part. The best process is, no process.”
