Anduril's Ohio weapons plant goes live "in a matter of weeks"
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An Anduril Industries drone-wingman model at a Washington defense conference. Photo: Colin Demarest/Axios
The first production lines at Arsenal-1, the weapons mega-factory Anduril Industries is erecting in Ohio, will go hot "in a matter of weeks," founder Palmer Luckey told Axios.
- "We're ahead of schedule," he said. The company previously teased July.
The big picture: The decade-long project is make or break for Anduril, which is now reportedly valued at $60 billion. It's also a major bet on American reindustrialization, a trend with its fair share of factory floor photoshoots.
- Executives are billing Arsenal as the future of defense manufacturing. Getting there requires a chunk of the money it's raised thus far.
- Luckey said Anduril had to move now rather than waiting "for the government to come, give me an order, give me money, then start building."
- "How stupid would I feel if I won a bunch of contracts to build the things that would deter China from invading Taiwan, and then, because it takes three years to get them out the door, the war happens?"
Driving the news: Luckey sat for a nearly hourlong interview at Anduril HQ in Southern California for the first episode of the second season of "The Axios Show."
Zoom in: Luckey said the final site survey is underway, the "first main building's done, about 1 million square feet," and "exterior work" on a second building is complete.
- He also reaffirmed that Fury, the company's candidate for the U.S. Air Force's collaborative combat aircraft effort, will be the first product pumped out.
- "We were competing with a lot of the big guys," he said. "To go toe-to-toe with them, and then get selected by the Air Force to deliver these prototypes ... was just the coolest thing ever."
Reality check: The service's competition is ongoing — and there are multiple waves. Anduril's candidate, dubbed YFQ-44A, flew for the first time in the fall. The General Atomics candidate, YFQ-42A, flew in the summer.
- Should the robo-wingman face-off not favor Anduril, the company will "be fine," according to Luckey.
- "When you run a company like this, the way to think of it is like flipping coins," he said. "In the early days we were flipping a couple of coins. We now have a lot of coins."
- Anduril is the 93rd-largest defense contractor in the world by revenue, according to the Defense News Top 100. It is collaborating and butting heads with primes much higher up the list.
Zoom out: Defense production, stockpiles, factory square footage and contractor margins are White House topics du jour. President Trump's posts about any and all of the above make headlines; Luckey said top officials are equally blunt in private.
- "There's also a lot of: 'Hey, you need to fix your shit on X, Y and Z,'" he said. "I think that you have a lot of this pressure from the department as well."
- "They're learning that the best way to fix these problems is to be very, very honest and open about it."
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