Anduril's plan for massive industrial facility finds a home in Ohio

Industry. It's what drives any city, state, or country forward

In America, every state leans into what it does best. For some, that's agriculture. For others, it's tourism or mining for natural resources

For the state of Ohio, it's manufacturing. They're not only leaning into it, they're recruiting it

and positioning themselves to be an even bigger player in our nation's defense

That's because in January of this year, Anderle Industries announced that they were headed to the Buckeye State with some very ambitious plans

How ambitious? Well, the announced project is a 5 million square foot facility called Arsenal One

It's going to sit on 500 acres just south of the state capitol in Columbus

But why Ohio? It's the subject of this week's debrief. Attend any defense exhibition and it's not uncommon to see states like Oklahoma

Virginia, or Ohio with a display of their own, hoping to lure new business inside their borders

because new business means new jobs The way we look at our mission is really what can we do to create jobs that provide a quality life for Ohioans And whether it in the military aerospace or one of the nine other sectors that we work in

that's really our mission is how many of those good quality jobs can we create for the state

that not only creates a great life for the Ohioan that's going to get that job

but it's also going to offer a valuable return to the state economically

By any measure, January's announcement was seismic. Even with all of that on the state's side, Terry Slabaugh, the vice president of sites and infrastructure for JobsOhio

says landing companies like Anderil takes more than what's visible on the surface level

It used to be you had to have sites in your state You had to have water sewer You had to have the infrastructure for an opportunity like Anderil I think now companies want to know where is the talent going to come from

Where am I going to get the workforce? You know, Jobs Ohio is really focused, not just Jobs Ohio, but our governor and the administration

on how we can amplify the talent that we have in the state and then how can we improve the talent

It's from that talent pool Anderle hopes to kickstart large-scale production of military-grade autonomous weapon systems, including drones, at a cost and pace that would keep the U.S. ahead of its near-peer adversaries like Russia and China

It's something Palmer Luckey pointed to in an interview when Arsenal 1 was announced

There's no other option. The whole point here, the reason we raised that $1.5 billion round

the reason that we've been accelerating this process, the reason that we're investing in building this factory ahead of the customer actually paying us to do it is because we

believe in that timeline because we have to believe in it. It is critical that we hit it

and I think we will So what does that timeline look like The plan is to manufacture the first phase of the site and start production in mid Lucky went on to say Ohio gave Anderrill the best shot at hitting those goals something that aligns with why Jobs Ohio targets companies

like Anderrill. You know, we don't count all the construction jobs, all the other jobs in retail

and ancillary services that are going to be created when we bring in an Anderrill. You know

4,000 manufacturing jobs spins off a lot of other jobs into the economy. You know, we don't really

focus on all those other jobs because we're looking at the value that we're going to get

from those jobs that we're creating through our incentives and what that return is to the state

But we know it has a huge impact on the economy. That impact cannot be understated. The project is

expected to yield more than 8,500 new jobs in total by 2035, with more than $2 billion in annual

economic output and over $1 billion from in-state labor income will be generated with projected tax

revenues estimated to be roughly $800 million, making the business of attracting business a smart one