The industrial underpinnings of US military readiness have been hampered by an overcommitment to weapons systems whose long-term value is increasingly questionable. This isn’t so much a generational problem as a multigenerational one, since US defense planners have already been trying to address the relevant issues for nearly a generation, and it will likely take at least another generation for the solutions at hand to succeed, if they can indeed be successful.
That is much more of a long-shot than is generally appreciated, given the triumphalism exuded by the frothily valued defense tech startups proliferating across the US. Now, perhaps Hadrian is one of those companies, in light of its announcement that it just closed a $1.37 billion Series D that values the startup at just under $8 billion. But the story told by Hadrian’s strategic approach suggests that the company at least knows what is missing right now in this extravaganza of defense investment.
JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group was the co-lead for the round, investing through its Security and Resilience Initiative. This was launched last year with a plan to invest $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, aiming to support national security and critical infrastructure startups. Hadrian’s business model centers around what it calls ‘Factory-as-a-Service,’ and while the whole ‘as-a-Service’ thing had already gone too far years ago, factory construction in the US is nonetheless one thing that I think could benefit from that approach.
In particular, that is true about factories dedicated to implementing advanced manufacturing at scale, which is Hadrian’s objective, and its plans include an additive manufacturing (AM) division launched back in January. Last month, 3DPrint.com’s Vanesa Listek wrote about how Fortastra, a California-based satellite manufacturer, signed an MoU with Hadrian to explore a broad range of advanced manufacturing techniques, including several different AM processes, for satellite production.
Satellites are a perfect example of exactly the sort of bottlenecks that call for a company like Hadrian. The problem with using conventional manufacturing in the satellite supply chain—one of the topics detailed in an AM Research report published last year on 3D printing for the satellite market—is how quickly the iteration cycle proceeds under current market conditions. Customers require processes relevant to product lifecycles lasting a few years, rather than a decade-plus.
Manufacturers can’t respond to that sort of demand profile with traditional approaches to manufacturing. The same goes for drones, as well as a host of other products currently most sought after by military customers. This isn’t even to get into other strategic sectors that also present needs for components expected to experience similarly volatile technological change in years ahead, as the quickly growing markets they’re associated with refine their understandings of best practices.
The only thing that can truly be planned for, in this case, is that different customers will have different needs which require an overall approach that isn’t bogged down by overcommitment in any singular direction. It’s all well and good to have a flagship drone platform that benefits from economies-of-scale, for instance, but that stops being an asset as soon as customers want something else.
What customers need is a company that has know-how with all the tools in the ever-shifting catalog of advanced manufacturing capabilities, and the experience to build, as efficiently as possible, the plant-space that deploys those tools as functional production capacity. Hadrian may not turn out to be that company, but it does understand, at least, that such a company must exist in order for the US to rebuild its industrial base.
Images courtesy of Hadrian