US company expands drone production at home with Alabama facility

Hello and welcome to Weapons and Warfare, a show made for people who want to know more

about our national defense. Our goal here is to help you have an informed conversation about what's happening with

America's military. For Straight Arrow News, I'm your host, Ryan Robertson, and we start this week with

a look inside a new facility from an emerging player in a very competitive market

it's a sound that's almost immediately identifiable the personal drone and for more than a decade

their numbers in the u.s have exploded from hobbyists to youtubers to news outlets and beyond

there are nearly one million drones in the skies of america according to the federal aviation

Administration, there are a total of 822,039 drones registered to commercial and recreational pilots

But it wasn't until Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine that the idea of taking these nimble

dependable, and most of all, affordable flying machines into combat became a widely accepted

idea. For more than three years, American military leadership and entrepreneurs alike

have been thinking about how best to arm American troops with drones of their own

At first glance, it might seem like supply should not be an issue

but the truth is an estimated 90 of the drones operating in the United States are Chinese something that pardon the pun doesn fly with American military leadership

Enter Performance Droneworks. This American innovator recently opened a brand new building designed specifically to

speed up the development and production of PDW's C-100 multi-mission UAS and the AMFPV

attritable munition. The 90,000 square foot facility, dubbed Drone Factory One, is built to

keep up with the growing demand from the Pentagon. I recently had the chance to visit with Ryan Gurey

a friend of the show, as well as PDW's CEO and co-founder, about why now is the right time to

undertake a project like this. Our thesis is that there is a massive generational change occurring

on the battlefield. Legacy US primes, you know, really cannot win today's wars. And there is a

massive shift occurring towards attributable robotics, which is what we specialize in

And we leverage commercial technologies, much like you see in the Eastern War in Ukraine

or, you know, with Russia's use of the Shahhead, to develop and mass manufacture combat systems

for tomorrow's warfighters. And what is, I mean, when you say you leverage

commercial technologies, what does that mean? And how does that allow you to move quicker

and iterate faster and all of the things that the DOD is looking for How does that all come into play by you being able to take advantage of commercial technologies

What doors does that open? Yeah, I mean, essentially, commercial technologies have reached such a point of maturity that

you can develop weapons and scale them. And that's what we're seeing on the front lines in Europe

Now, 70 to 80 percent of all strikes are being delivered by a drone the size of a dinner plate using parts from Amazon and Alibaba

And they outperform legacy systems like the Switchblade. The Switchblade being an aerovirument loitering munition that was the first specific system chosen for the Pentagon's replicator program

but it's the nimbleness of Ukraine's innovators and the speed of technological growth that's pushing Guri and his co-workers

When you talk about scale and, you know, the U.S. needing to make millions of these and, you know, your facility will be able to make 60,000 a month

Do you imagine that this is the first of several facilities that PDW will have

Or is PDW part of a larger picture of other manufacturers all contributing to that billions

I mean, what's kind of your crystal ball insight into that? Oh, both

There's room for a few PDWs out there. And the reason why we call it Drone Factory One is inferring that there'll be another

We believe that there needs to be an arsenal of small robotics on the front lines

There are a few companies only a handful though and they still early stage that are aligned with us us in the style in which you make robotics And we think that they going to be greatly successful as well

I think what we're after is the end of these exquisite systems. We want to see a marketplace where users can rate and buy and choose what they want

We want to remove the red tape and these long programs of records. At this point, you might be wondering why Northern Alabama for this venture

For Geary and his team, the city's history in missile production and rocketry makes it an ideal place for PDW as it works to shape the future of unmanned technology

The location of the facility in Huntsville, Alabama, obviously not by chance

There's, you know, the location to different military facilities in the area. How is that going to help with the rapid iteration and the feedback loop with your closest customers

When we started the company in Manhattan, which was no place for a defense company

we kind of looked across America as a great home, and we thought Huntsville was just perfect

We could find big fields to fly. Everyone is supportive of what we do

Culturally, it's wonderful, and it's really cost-efficient. According to the company's press release with the establishment of Drone Factory One

PDW is introducing more than 500 new jobs in the greater Huntsville area

and spurring an economic impact of more than $81 million per year

If you want to hear my entire conversation with Ryan, you can find that a little later this week on the Weapons and Warfare YouTube channel