Everyone, it seems, wants a factory of the future. And if you already have one, it seems that everyone wants to use it.
Today, Mach Industries announced that it’s partnering with hydrogen-powered drone maker Heven to ramp up UAV production at its Forge facility in Huntington Beach. Heven will use Mach’s vertically integrated production process to build its H100, H2D55, and Raider models, while Mach will oversee production.
“We’re not just accelerating production; we’re creating the next generation of defense manufacturing,” Ethan Thornton, CEO and founder of Mach Industries, said in a statement on the partnership.
Build up: The partnership with Heven is the latest move by Mach to diversify away from its troubled origins building its own hydrogen-powered weapons. Earlier this month, Mach announced that it had scored an Army Applications Lab (AAL) contract to develop a vertical takeoff (VTO) cruise missile dubbed Strategic Strike, and the company also says it is working to build a decentralized system of vertically-integrated Forge manufacturing facilities around the world.
“Mach sees building a survivable production machine as a critical component of winning wars and is building Forge to do so,” Mach CEO Ethan Thornton told Tectonic via email.
Better together: While Heven will benefit from Mach’s production facilities, Mach says it will benefit from Heven’s drone expertise as it expands further into automation.
The two companies will:
- Work to codevelop critical UAV components, including avionics, radios, and fuel sources.
- Use these components for their own drones, and also sell them to other companies in need.
- Build overseas production facilities to sell to US allies abroad.
Mach and Heven see building up America’s drone production capacity as critical to countering China and the global dominance of its super-cheap drones.
“In conversations with the customer, we know how serious and significant the need for a domestic drone industrial base is. Technology is good, but it’s only as good as the supply chain that supports it,” Heven founder and CEO Bentzion Levinson told Tectonic via email.
Stealth: Heven Drones was founded in 2019 in Israel, but is now officially headquartered in Miami (though it still does testing and development in Israel). The company unveiled its hydrogen-powered, long-range Raider UAV at IDEX in January and says that the fuel decreases the drone’s thermal signature, giving it stealth-like characteristics.