Pentagon Taps Robotics Startup in Push for Cheap Attack Drones

The Pentagon has tasked US robotics startup Machina Labs with trying to mass-produce cheap attack drones in quickly assembled modular factories as autonomous systems continue to change modern warfare.

The Los Angeles-based firm, which produces artificial intelligence-powered robotic arms for manufacturing, received a $9 million contract for an 18-month trial to build metal airframes for the US military’s Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS, drones.

Those drones were reverse-engineered from Iran’s deadly Shahed platform, which Russia has used for years against Ukraine. Tehran also used the attack drones — basically, cheap cruise missiles — to devastating effect against the US and Gulf nations throughout the current Middle East conflict, hitting US bases and regional energy infrastructure, menacing the Strait of Hormuz and commercial vessels, and overwhelming and depleting allied air defenses.

Machina — which has gotten investment from major defense firm Lockheed Martin Corp.’s venture capital arm — wants to show the military there is a way to use AI-driven manufacturing to quickly build larger drones closer to where they’re needed with factories that could be established in roughly a month, Machina CEO Ed Mehr said in an interview.

The initial contract is intended to prove the technology rather than be used to purchase large numbers of drones, and future orders are not guaranteed, Mehr said.

Unlike conventional drone production, which often relies on workers painstakingly assembling composite airframes, Machina’s robotic arms shape inexpensive sheets of metal into aircraft structures.

The company is targeting a per-drone cost of roughly $15,000 and said its manufacturing approach could eventually support production of tens of thousands annually. Shaheds are estimated to cost roughly $35,000 each, according to analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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