Feature Coverage

Manufacturing features and analysis

Longer-form reporting on plant operations, manufacturing technology, workforce strategy, and capital decisions.

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Aerospace & DefenseAugust 16, 2026

The Pentagon Is Printing Propellant — Just Not Where the Bottleneck Is

X-Bow says it has passed 1,100 solid rocket motors built with printed propellant, and the Department of War has now routed $191M in DPA Title III funds into the solid rocket motor base across nine awards since December 2024. But most of that money buys cases, nozzles and insulation — not printed grains — and none of it prints ammonium perchlorate, which still has one qualified U.S. producer.

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Aerospace & DefenseJuly 21, 2026

A Korean-Owned Yard Wants to Go From 2 Ships a Year to 20 — and It Just Won Another $1.5B in Federal Ship Orders

Hanwha bought Philly Shipyard for $100M and is spending $5B to lift output roughly tenfold. A new ~$1.5B order lands in July 2026 — but it comes from MARAD, not the Navy. The real question for operators: can a Korean owner transplant a productivity system U.S. yards haven't matched in 40 years?

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Aerospace & DefenseJuly 20, 2026

The Navy Wants 450 Ships and Only 10% of the Work Is Distributed: Inside the $47B Push to Turn 291 Hulls Into a Supply-Chain Problem

The FY2026 shipbuilding budget is the largest since the Cold War at ~$47.4B, but the real operations story is structural: the Navy wants to shift construction from a handful of prime yards to a distributed base of smaller fabricators and module suppliers — and Wall Street is now writing checks to build it.

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Aerospace & DefenseJune 29, 2026

JetZero Just Broke Ground on a Factory Twice the Size of Boeing Everett — to Build a Plane Shape the Industry Abandoned 70 Years Ago

A pre-revenue startup is pouring 8 million square feet of final-assembly space in Greensboro to industrialize a blended-wing-body airliner. The aerodynamics are settled; the open question is whether JetZero can stand up a clean-sheet widebody supply chain and rate-tooling from zero on a 2027-to-early-2030s timeline.

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Aerospace & DefenseJune 10, 2026

Anduril's Arsenal-1 in Pickaway County Is About to Out-Hire Every Defense Prime in Ohio

Anduril started Fury drone production at its 5-million-square-foot Pickaway County mega-factory four months ahead of schedule, financing the buildout off venture capital rather than a signed program of record — and pulling directly on the same skilled-labor pool Boeing, Honeywell, and the Army's Lima tank plant already compete for.

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Aerospace & DefenseJune 9, 2026

Northrop's B-21 Line at Palmdale Is Out-Hiring Boeing Commercial — and the Machinist Pipeline Can't Keep Up

Northrop's B-21 Raider line at Air Force Plant 42 has crossed from low-rate initial production into a 25% capacity expansion. The binding constraint is no longer tooling or budget — it's cleared, hands-on machinists, and Boeing's commercial ramp is hiring from the same Antelope Valley labor pool.

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Aerospace & DefenseMay 6, 2026

Arsenal-1 Hits First Production Article — Anduril Becomes Central Ohio's Defense Manufacturing Anchor

Anduril rolled the first Fury (YFQ-44A) off its 866,000-square-foot Building 1 in Pickaway County in March 2026, three months ahead of schedule — turning a Silicon Valley prime's industrial bet into the de facto anchor of a Columbus-corridor defense manufacturing cluster.

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