Huntsville-based PDW lands $820M loan to manufacture drone parts
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PDW CEO James Slider said the company is expecting to see a "substantial expansion to headcount." Photo: Courtesy of PDW
Huntsville-based Performance Drone Works has secured up to $820 million to bolster U.S. production of drone components.
Why it matters: The massive investment is set to bring new jobs and investment, and help America close the drone production gap.
Zoom in: The condition loan, announced Friday, is in partnership with the Department of Defense's Office of Strategic Capital and is an effort to expand domestic production of critical drone parts to reduce the country's reliance on foreign supply chains.
- Using a mix of OSC financing and private capital, "it will support a new high-volume source of domestically manufactured components across the broader U.S. drone industrial base," per an announcement.
Zoom out: Strengthening the domestic industrial base is a consistent focus for the U.S. and for PDW, where CEO James Slider tells Axios the plan is to build new facilities and hire hundreds to make it happen.
- "We have to decide on the form and function that best serves the mission of creating the industrialized component base," he said Monday. "The intention is substantial infrastructure investment and creation of a robotic industrial base."
- PDW's Drone Factory 01 in Huntsville, at 90,000 square feet, is already one of the largest drone factories in the country, he said, and PDW currently has about 350 full-time employees.
Driving the news: Making lower-cost, high-performance systems is a "massive advantage," Slider said, only achievable with scaled production and vertical supply chain.
Context: "Our near-peer adversaries, on an annualized basis, are producing millions of drones and the U.S. in aggregate produces around 100,000 drones a year," Slider told Axios.
- "I don't lie awake thinking about whether there will be enough demand. I lie awake thinking, 'Are we moving fast enough? Are we doing enough? And are we creating enough scale?'"
- PDW has been working with OSC for months, he said, and "now is time to form the team and break ground as soon as possible."
The bottom line: "The time scale for all this stuff is yesterday," Slider said.