Anduril Takes Software-Defined Approach to Hyperscale Defense Manufacturing

August 15, 2024

Anduril, the California-based defense autonomous systems startup, published a 32-page report  on its new software-defined approach to defense manufacturing facilities called “Arsenal” that proposes a paradigm shift in the way new aircraft, drones, vehicles and weapons are designed and manufactured in the near future.

The company published the outline for its new software-defined approach to “hyperscale” defense manufacturing after securing $1.5 billion in Series F round funding to build its first Arsenal facility, with plans to open additional facilities in the U.S. and internationally. Anduril describes Arsenal as a software-defined manufacturing platform that uses an enterprise resource management to drive every step of the design, manufacturing and production process.

What is software-defined manufacturing? It’s not an entirely new concept, and Anduril notes that it is leveraging modern commercial manufacturing practices in proposing its Arsenal concept. Bright Machines, a San Francisco-based company that provides industrial manufacturing robotics and software, attempted to define what software-defined manufacturing is in a September 2019 blog  about the concept.

“Software-Defined Manufacturing imagines a layer of software that runs and oversees all manufacturing processes – from building, to assembly, to testing,” the company notes. “With hardware-defined manufacturing, individual pieces of equipment are designed or selected, tuned, deployed and managed to do a particular, repetitive task. There is low flexibility and no ability to use data to improve operations. Software-Defined Manufacturing flips the status quo on its head by centering logic and intelligence in the software instead of the hardware.”

Throughout the new report, published on a website created by Anduril called "Rebuildthearsenal.com," Anduril proposes a re-thinking of every aspect of the current design, manufacturing and testing processes used by aerospace and defense manufacturers today. The website also introduces the Arsenal manufacturing operating system (OS), as the central enabler of its new software-defined manufacturing facility.

The Arsenal OS will serve as an enterprise resource planning system and a “proprietary manufacturing execution software system that manages threat-based operational analysis, modeling, simulation, drawing, testing, bill of materials management, work orders, production, and data management across the product lifecycle,” according to Anduril. Further, the goal is to establish a common digital interface for every engineer and technician along every step of the design, manufacturing and assembly process. Arsenal OS will also constantly be analyzing the efficiency and value of every machine, tool, material and piece of equipment used throughout the facility to provide opportunities for constant improvement and cost-savings for the end-to-end process.

In its new report, Anduril further argues that the current approach to defense manufacturing is what limits the U.S. military and its allies from rapid modernization. The company references Tesla's Gigafactory approach to manufacturing where a software-first focus allows the company to introduce dozens of engineering changes on a weekly basis into its live production lines as an inspiration for its Arsenal OS. Software-defined manufacturing processes used by Apple, NVIDIA and SpaceX are also referenced in the report. '

"With Tesla, its software-first approach gives the company greater control over its hardware architecture, which it has used not only to build a fully electric vehicle, but also to do more mundane but equally important things,” Anduril writes in the report. “For example, Tesla is able to simplify its design by consistently reducing the vehicle's overall number of parts, moving to fewer numbers of software-controlled components while eliminating other hardware modules altogether."

Alongside its new software-defined approach to defense manufacturing, Anduril is also emphasizing the use of lower cost materials, sensors and electronics and the use of less "exquisite" machinery, materials and components that a limited number of workers are prepared to operate and produce. Anduril argues that the traditional hardware-defined approach to defense manufacturing is a major reason why defense production rates are so limited.

“Our current weapons and military platforms are defined by exquisiteness,” Anduril writes. “They are difficult to produce, and nearly impossible to produce quickly or at large scale because their manufacturing requires highly specialized and increasingly scarce labor, rare materials, secure facilities, manual production processes, customized supply chains, and other unique, non-scalable elements.”

The report also references the current production rates and pace that the Department of Defense (DoD) is working around in annual planned purchases of new military assets, technologies and weapons systems. The report notes that in fiscal year 2023 for example, DoD reserved its purchasing of new assets around the anticipated production of “one to two submarines, several warships, 22 tanks, and a few dozen stealth fighter jets.” Anduril argues that a shift to software-defined manufacturing could hyperscale that production rate to an Arsenal facility capable of producing tens of thousands of autonomous systems annually.

Under its $1.5 billion in newly secured funding , Anduril will start building its first software-defined hyperscale manufacturing facility, Arsenal-1. The facility will feature 5 million square feet of manufacturing capacity and employ up to 1,500 workers. The company has not disclosed a location for the first Arsenal facility yet, however it claims the concept will be replicable with additional software-defined hyperscale facilities to be established in the U.S. and internationally.

“Whereas many defense production facilities are purpose-built for specific programs but not easily reconfigurable to produce other types of weapons systems, Arsenal will take the opposite approach,” the report notes. “It will provide a modular, generalizable manufacturing platform that can produce autonomous military vehicles and weapons of nearly every class, size and operational domain.”

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