WASHINGTON—The counterdrone industry is booming. So to keep up with—and anticipate—demands, radar-maker Echodyne wants to make 30,000 units a year by early 2027.
The company, which is headquartered in Washington state, began building out a new facility near Seattle earlier this year and plans to have it up and running in July. The $40 million plant is expected to ultimately produce at least 30,000 radars a year—an approximate five-fold increase.
“Our orders are far exceeding our production capacity, which is why we've launched into this new manufacturing facility,” said Eben Frankeburg, the company’s CEO. “The whole counterdrone problem today is that you have this massive number of cheap lethal drones, and you need a massive number of cheap lethal counterdrone systems to defend against those. And so, people want high-performance radars that are cost effective and can be deployed at a big scale, so that's what we're doing.”
Echodyne’s radars can be found on all kinds of counter-UAS systems that can be affixed to combat vehicles, ships, and other devices across the defense industry.
Construction timelines, which slated the facility to be fully built by 2028, have been sped up by about a year to meet and keep pace with future demand, Frankenburg said. There’s a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new plant week.
“We had a multi-year plan for the build up of the facility, and we're moving all that forward. So we originally had a build out in ‘26, ‘27, ‘28—and now we're doing all of [planned] ‘26 and ‘27 build out this year,” with the goal of finishing by early 2027, he said.
The facility will support about 200 employees and Echodyne’s operations business, including supply chain manufacturing.
By 2027, the facility should be producing tens of thousands of radars annually. And could be the “blueprint” for future plants.
“We're shipping lots of radars to Europe. We're also shipping radars to Southeast Asia, India,” Frankenburg said. “And we're seeing just demand increase globally. So, this factory, this new facility represents what we think we need from a capacity perspective in the coming few years. But the other nice thing is it gives us a blueprint to potentially open in future locations,” including internationally.
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The Army’s appetite for private capital. When asked (by me) if the service is considering public-private arrangements to build innovation centers or -gen manufacturing facilities, Lynda Armer, the executive director of Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal said:
“Yes, that certainly would be an opportunity that the Army is interested in: companies coming in and building new capability within our [Organic Industrial Base] footprint, and then utilizing our workforce training, our workforce upskilling,” she told reporters following the Association of the U.S. Army’s acquisition and contracting event June 25.
“What we don't want is to be stuck in the 1940s. That's when most of our facilities were stood up, and they've been modernized to a small extent over time. In some cases, we might have new lines and new buildings, but we still have 1940s infrastructure that we're trying to modernize.”
Some context for the question: The Navy has inked similar arrangements near its Naval Surface Warfare Centers in Crane, Ind., and Indian Head, Md. The Pentagon’s industrial base policy chief has also suggested more private investment in the OIB.
“They don't have to go find green space and start from scratch. We have infrastructure there, but if they can add to that, modernize it, give us new capabilities and new training, that's a benefit for both sides,” Armer said. “It continues to grow our organic industrial base, and so we don't become stagnant, and we keep up with the speed at which our requirements and technology are changing.”
BONUS: The Army’s venture-capital style office FUZE is planning to release an annual report later this year, said FUZE’s private capital integrator, Lt. Col. Sam Spencer-Pittman.
The FUZE office gets about $750 million a year—merging existing Army funding lines, including about $420 million from SBIR/STTR and about $270 million for its Tech Maturation Program.
The goal: “Connect companies to capital,” Spencer-Pittman told reporters at the AUSA event. “We don't tell these private industry or the venture capital guys…[that] we want this office to work with this company. It's more, ‘hey, these companies are seeking capital. If this works for your investment portfolio or thesis, call Bill’…and see what works out.”
FUZE has only been around for about a year but is “on a glide path and moving fast,” Spencer-Pittman said.
An upcoming report is expected to detail what the office has achieved in its first year.
New Congress, new contract scrutiny? Midterms are around the corner, which means Congress could look very different in January. That could also mean more questions or probes around the Pentagon’s use of rapid acquisition tools, said Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va, who sits on the House Committee for Government Oversight.
“I'm asked a lot [about] what will year look like if Democrats are in control of at least the House. And I say this to the contractors in my district every day: There will be very heavy scrutiny of the contracting practices in this administration—both in DOD [and] DHS, especially, and other agencies. And those companies that continue to do things by the book the way that they did before this administration, maybe they lost some business in the last couple years, but they're going to be happy that they continue to do things by the book,” Walkinshaw said, answering my question in an interview with the GovExec news team on Monday.
“Those companies that didn't…and the contracts they receive are going to face a lot of scrutiny.”
A related aside: Pentagon testing and evaluation officials raised concerns that military departments could use the middle-tier acquisition pathway to circumvent certain live-fire testing requirements, according to a Government Accountability Office study released Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slashed staff last year in the office of the director, operational test and evaluation, which oversees weapons testing. The GAO is studying the effects of the reorganization.
Making moves + other news
The Atlantic is diving into the second Trump administration’s use of private Signal chats— after Hegseth’s ‘war plans’ scandal.
Anduril is meshing its mobile command post with a portable Amazon data center, the companies announced Tuesday. If bought and used, that could mean more AI use and more ISR in environments where connectivity is sparse.
Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andressen joins the Pentagon’s policy advisory board. His firm a16z backs several contract-winning startups, including Anduril, Castelion, Hadrian, Saronic, Shield AI, Skydio, and SpaceX. Andressen joins Michael Pillsbury, who ly chaired the board in 2020.
The Pentagon surreptitiously hosted several up-and-coming munitions makers to talk about production, Breaking Defense reported.
Firefly Aerospace won a $144 million NASA contract and is nearing the final stages of launchpad construction at the SSC Space Esrange Space Center in Sweden. The first launch is expected in 2028.
