La startup de defensa Anduril Industries anunci\u00f3 hoy en Washintong planes para abrir una nueva f\u00e1brica denominada \u201cArsenal\u201d que, seg\u00fan un alto funcionario de la compa\u00f1\u00eda, aumentar\u00e1 dr\u00e1sticamente la producci\u00f3n de armas aut\u00f3nomas de la firma , con un enfoque en sistemas que se puedan fabricar r\u00e1pidamente a escala. El director de estrategia, Chris Brose, dijo que se \u201ccentrar\u00e1 en construir lo que creemos que es el tipo de capacidades complementarias que podemos obtener r\u00e1pidamente y que necesitamos obtener r\u00e1pidamente, que son sistemas aut\u00f3nomos y armas de todas las clases\u201d.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 Defense startup\u00a0Anduril Industries<\/a>\u00a0today announced plans to open a new factory dubbed \u201cArsenal\u201d that a senior company official said will boost the firm\u2019s\u00a0autonomous weapons output dramatically, with a focus on systems that can be rapidly manufactured at scale.<\/p>\n Chief Strategy Officer Chris Brose said his firm will never \u201cfocus on building exquisite weapons systems,\u201d but will instead \u201cfocus on building what we believe is the sort of supplementary capabilities that we can get quickly and we need to get quickly, which is autonomous systems and weapons of all classes.\u201d<\/p>\n Anduril raised about $1.5 billion in part to fund the factory endeavor, which the company plans to be software-defined to establish common interfaces and standards across disparate systems so that they can be more easily adapted,\u00a0Brose told reporters ahead of the announcement.\u00a0He added that the company is further aiming to simplify manufacturing to attract more workers.<\/p>\n Anduril is still evaluating sites to place the factory,\u00a0called Arsenal-1, but\u00a0Brose said it\u2019ll be in the United States. The factory represents an investment of \u201chundreds of millions\u201d of dollars and is set to house \u201cmore than five million square feet of production space that will employ thousands of people,\u201d according to a press release. Eventually, the company hopes the factory will be \u201cfast-followed\u201d by an Arsenal-2 facility, which would share many similarities with it predecessor but could be located either in the US or on the territory of an ally or partner.\u00a0(Anduril has\u00a0expanded<\/a>\u00a0into Australia, for instance.)<\/p>\n Simply put, Brose said the manufacturing approach consists of building all of Anduril\u2019s products \u201cunder one roof\u201d \u2014 except for energetics, whose restrictive manufacturing processes required them to be separated.\u00a0After notching wins\u00a0against established primes in competitions like the Air Force\u2019s\u00a0Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program<\/a>, Anduril\u2019s portfolio now spans the likes of loitering munitions to electronic warfare systems.<\/p>\n When it comes to the Arsenal facility, Brose emphasized the factory \u201cneeds to be capable of producing tens of thousands\u201d of larger systems Anduril has successfully competed for, such as CCA or large, undersea drones for the Navy. Brose additionally highlighted the company\u2019s move to consolidate work in one location, as opposed to more traditional methods that can spread manufacturing\u00a0over several legislative districts to curry favor with lawmakers.<\/p>\n \u201cSo what we\u2019re actually saying is, notwithstanding those benefits that we could get through distribution, the benefits that we can achieve from a manufacturing standpoint through consolidation are so much more profound that they outweigh whatever kind of political benefits we might get out of disaggregation of distribution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n