HELSINKI, Finland — A Finnish defense firm is preparing to launch a turn-key interceptor drone factory the size of a cargo crate that can be set up practically anywhere.
The Tactical Drone Factory, produced by Sensofusion, is an entire drone production line packed into one container. Each is outfitted with a suite of 3D printers, raw materials, and mechanical parts required for three personnel to produce 50 drones per day. The company is pitching the product as totally “turn-key” in nature, requiring clients to supply only minimal manpower.
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“We promise that if they supply people who are able to put together IKEA furniture, they can put [the drones] together,” Sensofusion founder Tuomas Rasila told the Washington Examiner at the company’s office near Helsinki.
Sensofusion promises the package will supply the machines and materials necessary to create 2,000 interceptor drones.
It will come with proprietary software for detecting and countering incoming drones, as well as an AI-powered client for procuring materials after the initial stock of interceptor drones is exhausted.
Clients can stack multiple factories to increase production capacity or plant individual factories across a war zone to space out supply lines. They can also remove the production line from the container and refit it to a different structure.
Sensofusion, which focuses exclusively on the production of interceptor drones to take down incoming vehicles before they can detonate their payload, says the factories are expected to begin shipping by the end of Q2.
The process will be easy, considering the factories come packaged in a metal container identical to a normal shipping crate, which also gives it a stealth aspect when hidden among hundreds of containers.
The firm claims that the novel packaging of the printers and materials would allow each container to be transported to battlefield locations with minimal manpower, while the simple assembly line would allow clients to pivot production to whichever type of interceptor drone is desired at a given time.
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“Designs manufactured today may already be tactically obsolete by the time they reach the front line,” the firm told the Washington Examiner. “Instead of warehousing thousands of drones, the Tactical Drone Factory manufactures the right drone, at the right time, wherever it’s needed … if a new drone threat is identified, the counter-design can be in production on the spot within hours.
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Interceptor drones have emerged as crucial defense systems in the age of unmanned aerial vehicle attacks.
Unlike attack drones, which carry explosive payloads, these lightweight, cheaply produced interceptors are often little more than remotely guided hunks of plastic meant to collide with and detonate incoming UAVs. Both, however, are several times cheaper than more exquisite missiles and missile interceptors.
Both the Israelis and Ukrainians have used the strategy of transporting drones in shipping containers or the like to preplanned spots closer to intended targets, partially to ensure the Russian and Iranian air defense systems had less time to stop the incoming attacks.
The Ukrainians carried out an elaborate operation in which they smuggled drones in a container on a truck and launched them from deep inside Russian territory, targeting Russian aircraft at multiple air bases. Israel had operators within Iran launch drones and missiles at the start of the 12-Day War last June, targeting their air defense systems, effectively giving way for Israeli aircraft to strike Iran.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology Office currently has a request for information for an automated containerized drone swarm capability.
The request specifically states that they are seeking “storage containers … that provide fully autonomous drone storage, logistics management, launch, recovery, and recharge/refuel, while conforming to the intention of a standardized military container.”
