U.S. Army expands advanced manufacturing of drone components at Pennsylvania depot
This story has been updated.
The Army on Tuesday will open an advanced manufacturing line at Tobyhanna Army Depot in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, to produce brushless motors for small drones, the latest step in its push to transform its industrial base.
“We had to rethink how we’re leveraging our organic industrial base,” or OIB, Col. James Crocker, deputy director of the Army’s OIB Integration Office, told me in an interview ahead of today’s announcement.
By organic industrial base, the service means its 23 depots, arsenals and ammunition plants — many created during World War II — historically responsible for maintenance, repairs and some munitions production. The service is undertaking a broad effort to revamp these aging facilities to meet current and future military needs.
One such need is domestic drone production. This effort was originally dubbed SkyFoundry and aimed to produce thousands of small drones but, according to Crocker, has changed to “simply advanced manufacturing for small UAS [uncrewed aircraft system] components.”
“The point across this entire process was anything we built had to be multiple capability informed,” not a “one-trick pony,” Crocker said, adding that the service wanted to avoid a future scenario where “the next thing comes out” and existing production lines won’t work.
“What we get out of advanced manufacturing as an enterprise far exceeds what that [SkyFoundry] program got us,” Crocker said at a media roundtable today.
The Amy also recently opened a new circuit card production line at Tobyhanna to provide electronics components for drones. This line will be able to make 90,000 to 150,000 units annually, “depending on the complexity,” with only one or two operators, Crocker said. This follows an earlier engineering line set up for testing and validation.
Crocker said these circuit cards will supply the Pentagon’s Drone Dominance program, meant to produce low-cost drones in the United States.
The depot’s brushless motor production line will produce up to 500,000 annually with five to 15 operators.
“The idea is we can produce them for Army units in the supply chain,” Crocker said of the parts. “Or we can co-produce for a private company and get them a domestically sourced, entirely [National Defense Authorization Act]-compliant brushless motor.”
Army planners picked these components based on internal Air Force research identifying “critical vulnerabilities” in domestic drone manufacturing capabilities, input from other senior leaders and the depot’s preexisting expertise in electronics, such as radar repair, Crocker said.
The service did not provide a cost estimate for Tobyhanna’s renovations.
Tobyhanna is one of several OIB sites slated to produce drone components with advanced manufacturing: Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois is to produce drone structures, and Red River Army Depot in Texas is to have a battery assembly line.
Although drones are a priority, these advanced manufacturing facilities can serve other purposes, Crocker said. “I think that is going to change how the OIB is viewed and what the future of the OIB will be.”
