RapidFire successfully demos its drone Mobile Production System

Aerial tech startup RapidFlight says it has demonstrated a system that can transform the process – and, above all, speed – with which drones are produced and deployed, with the successful performance of its Mobile Production System for manufacturing UAVs in remote, even austere non-industrial settings.

To boil it down to its most basic element, RapidFlight’s announcement said the company aced the demonstration at a US military post in October, using its Mobile Production System to manufacture, program, and launch its E2 drone on simulated missions. The exercise was held at the Department of Defense’s Technology Readiness Experimentation 2023 (TREX23-2) event at Indiana’s Camp Atterbury.

In accomplishing the feat, the company conjured visions of a near future in which armed forces or specialized enterprise users may rapidly churn out UAVs in remote locations in response to – and at pace with – their shifting requirements, or in hostile surroundings that prohibit the craft the need from arriving. 

As such, RapidFlight’s Mobile Production System would function sort of like (well, not at all like – but stick with us) over-sized portable printers using craft designs and tech specs stored on the original document to produce exact copies of ready-to-deploy drones in places where port-a-potties are de rigueur.

“The Mobile Production System, coupled with our portfolio of UAS, addresses the contested logistics challenge as a core capability of the design, and enables our customers to produce UAS where they need them, when they need them,” said RapidFlight’s director of special projects, Brandon Smith. “At TREX23-2 we proved our ability to manufacture, assemble, and operate UAS at scale in austere locations.” 

Of course, “austere” can be a relative term, especially for hi-tech assets that need abundant electricity resources, supplies of materials to build the UAVs, and presumably protection from heavy rain and grit that can ruin sophisticated gear. 

Still, by fitting its Mobile Production System inside a standard cargo shipping container and flipping its switch to “on,” Virginia-based RapidFlight completed what it called “on-site manufacturing, mission planning, and runway independent launch of an E2.” That, it said, established the viability of an innovation which – if deployed in multiple units – may produce “thousands of aircraft” wherever they’re needed.

The demonstration marked another milestone for the Manassas, VA startup, which since its 2021 founding has focused on accelerating the concept-to-manufacturing times in drone production – including UAVs and navigating systems RapidFire itself creates.