Hypersonic missile fuselage built by Machina Credit: Machina
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Pentagon’s push to replenish missile inventories is creating an opening for a new class of manufacturers that say the problem isn’t simply a shortage of factory space. It is how those factories are built.
Startups such as Machina, Hadrian and Freeform are applying software, robotics and highly automated production techniques to aerospace and defense manufacturing, challenging a model that has long relied on dedicated machinery, specialized tooling and skilled labor to make relatively small numbers of complex parts.
Some of the new manufacturing technology grew out of the commercial space industry.
At this year’s Space and Missile Defense Symposium, Los Angeles-based Machina is displaying a 16-foot fuselage for a hypersonic vehicle that it manufactured for Ursa Major, a company that is expanding from rocket propulsion into complete hypersonic missile systems.
