By Mike Stone
COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 19 (Reuters) - Anduril Industries will begin building its new FURY, "loyal wingman," high-speed combat drones in the coming days at a new facility in Ohio, as the U.S. military's interest in unmanned aircraft surges following battlefield successes in Ukraine and Iran.
Amid cornfields and horse farms 20 miles (32 km) south of Columbus, Ohio, the defense tech start-up is expecting its $1 billion Arsenal-1 autonomous systems manufacturing campus to employ more than
4,000 people over the next decade, starting with roughly 250 by the end of this year, officials said on Thursday.
Anduril is one of a new but growing group of small defense firms hoping to win lucrative Pentagon contracts for next-generation weapons. The Trump administration hopes the newer firms will help upend weapons manufacturing by delivering cutting-edge technology more quickly and at a lower cost.
Matt Grimm, Anduril's co-founder and chief operating officer, said its approach to manufacturing differs fundamentally from traditional defense contractors.
Rather than designing products first and worrying about production later, the company bakes manufacturability in from Day 1 — choosing commercial materials such as aluminum over titanium, using composite techniques borrowed from the recreational boat industry, and selecting a commercial business jet engine for the FURY program specifically because of its well-established supply chain and maintenance ecosystem.
Production of the company's FURY autonomous aircraft will be the first to launch at the facility. The FURY is Anduril's entrant for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program - part of an Air Force plan for a next-generation family of systems, an effort to equip crewed fighter jets and other planes with an uncrewed platform that would fly alongside the human pilots.
"From the very first prototype, we've been working with our engineers on every single build, thinking, how do we design it for production?" Grimm said.
Anduril said its Roadrunner interceptor, Barracuda cruise missile family, and a classified program were all expected to be produced at the new factory by year-end.
The company said it is already operating production facilities in Mississippi, Australia, Rhode Island, Colorado, Atlanta, North Carolina, and Southern California.
(Reporting by Mike Stone in Ohio; Editing by Chris Sanders, Rod Nickel)
