Anduril Industries, the Silicon Valley startup that has made splashy moves in the world of defense, has selected a site adjacent to Rickenbacker International Airport, about ten miles south of Columbus, Ohio, as the site of its flagship “Arsenal” factory, where it plans to manufacture advanced, low-cost systems such as its “Fury” Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force.
The timeline to get the factory up and running is ambitious, as Anduril plans to have the first products rolling out the door by mid-2026, according to Chris Brose, the firm’s chief strategy officer. He said that this timeline is not optional, as Anduril is obligated to begin series production of certain contract items by that point.
In a Jan. 15 press conference, Brose said Anduril will eventually invest “hundreds of millions” of dollars and possibly more than $1 billion at the site, which initially comprises some 700,000 square feet of an existing facility which Anduril will modernize. The entire site can accommodate five million square feet of production space, he added.
Anduril has said the “Arsenal” factory is aimed at producing military items at “hyper scale,” necessary to achieve credible deterrence against China and other potential U.S. adversaries. Its concept for the factory calls for producing large numbers of “non-exquisite” autonomous systems for the U.S. military by workers who do not need intensive training or education in a facility that can be quickly reconfigured for different items. The name is a nod to the “Arsenal of Democracy” moniker coined by president Franklin Roosevelt on the eve of World War II.
“A lot of what we’re doing here is designing autonomous systems and weapons that can be mass-produced, where the broadest workforce possible can build and assemble those systems,” Brose said. “People with commercial automotive experience, for example, can immediately snap in and start contributing to defense production.” He said the company aims at “changing the way defense manufacturing happens at the level of design, at the level of supply chain, at the level of software, and we’re very confident that we’ll be realizing that vision here this year or next in the state of Ohio.”
Among the benefits of the location are its adjacency to the airport—which is an air cargo hub for the area and which is used by the Air National Guard’s 121st Air Refueling Wing—as well as nearby rail lines and highways, other manufacturers setting up in the area, and proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, some 85 miles to the west in Dayton, Brose said. He also said there is ample room for growth beyond the initial facility at the location.
Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted, participating in the press conference, said an announcement will made in the coming days explaining the incentives Ohio offered Anduril to bring the facility to the Columbus area. The plant should bring about 4,000 jobs to the area.
Anduril announced plans for the Arsenal factory last August, but Brose said the hunt for a location was underway for the better part of a year, and the selection was made in the last few weeks. Company officials had previously downplayed the possibility of an Ohio location.
“The site itself could not be better,” Brose said. “We’re talking 5 million square feet of production space at scale; a 700,000 square foot facility that exists now that we will be aggressively working to renovate, and build out the space for the immediate defense programs that we are delivering right now.” Expansion is possible on a further 500 acres at the site, he said.
Within 45 minutes, Anduril will “have access to a talented labor market of upwards of a million people …many of which are already working in the automotive and aerospace industries,” he said. That expertise is “incredibly relevant to our vision of defense production.”
Rickenbacker boasts two 12,000-foot runways and a 75-acre private apron but test activities may be conducted farther afield, near Wright-Patt, which hosts Air Force Materiel Command.
“The initial products that we’re really focused on building at Arsenal … are flying things,” Brose said. The specifics of testing “is a conversation that we’re going to have in the months to come with our partners in Ohio.”
Husted said there is a designated flight test area near Springfield Airport near Wright-Patt. Joby Aviation, which builds electric aircraft, “is building their manufacturing facility in Dayton” and will use that testing area as well. He also noted the expansion of GE Aerospace in Cincinnati.
“And there’s a partnership with the National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence, which is connected to some of the Agility Prime efforts, connected to Wright-Patterson,” he said. “So we have this sort of consortium that exists between Dayton, Springfield and Columbus and … this is another reason it’s such an attractive place,” Husted said.
“We’ve really worked in Ohio at building an economic development strategy around the assets we have in the aerospace and defense sector,” he added. “I’m most familiar with what we’ve done at Wright-Patterson,” around which he said employment “has grown 19,000 employees inside defense, to 38,000 in that whole sector of the workforce” The Air Force is “a huge customer.”
Though it’s only been in the defense business for eight years, Brose said Anduril is “winning programs. We are in a position to deliver. Arsenal 1 is going to be an operational facility incredibly quickly because of the timeline. We have to deliver for the customers and the warfighters, who are counting on the systems that Anduril is producing right now.”
In addition to various unmanned aerial systems like the Roadrunner vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and counter-UAS gear, Anduril’s products include Lattice software and command-and-control systems, solid rocket motors, and it has also announced plans for low-cost cruise missiles.
Brose said there are no plans to produce “energetics” at the Ohio site, and work on SRMs will continue at its Alabama facility. He also there are currently no plans to move any existing manufacturing work to Ohio, as the plan is to add production capacity, not consolidate it.