US Army Turns Repair Depots Into Drone Parts Factories

The Pentagon has told a half-dozen Army depots to start building drone motors, frames, circuit cards and batteries. An Army official says a fully American-made drone is still far off.

The Pentagon has directed a half-dozen U.S. Army repair depots to manufacture drone components because domestic production falls short of what the military needs, Aviation Week reported Tuesday.

The depots, which normally maintain, repair and overhaul Army equipment, are adding lines for brushless direct current motors, propellers, frames, circuit cards and battery packs, according to the report. The work is an added capability, and the reporting does not indicate that repair missions are ending.

An Army manufacturing official ties the effort to training as well as combat. Soldiers cannot learn to fight with small drones in large numbers, he argues, unless the country can build them in large numbers.

“If we can’t make a million drones a year, we can’t practice with a million drones a year; we’re not learning how to handle a million drones a year,” said Jon Strzelec, U.S. Army Materiel Command’s advanced manufacturing lead for small uncrewed air systems, in an interview published by Aviation Week.

Strzelec’s figure was an example, not a disclosed production target. Aviation Week reported that he withheld the depots’ production goals for operational security reasons.

The report did not identify all six facilities, and the date, issuer and text of the directive could not be independently confirmed. Army announcements since June confirm drone work at three sites.

What the Depots Are Building

Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania opened a motor assembly line June 30. Army officials say the line can produce more than 500,000 brushless DC motors a year. The Army has not disclosed how many it actually builds.

The Army said in an Aug. 20 release that Rock Island Arsenal’s Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center in Illinois is producing frames and Red River Army Depot in Texas is producing batteries. It gave no quantities.

The same release said Army Materiel Command is also scaling up propeller and chassis production, without naming the facility responsible for each line.

Strzelec told Aviation Week that depots already building electronics for other systems can make the switch.

“If they can make and produce circuit cards for an Army radio or a radar, why couldn’t they do it for a system on a drone?” he said.

Aviation Week described one facility, which it did not name, that previously repaired out-of-production radios and has been revamped to support drone electronics.

Why the Army Is Using Its Own Plants

Army Materiel Command is drawing on what it calls the organic industrial base, its network of depots, arsenals and ammunition plants. A July 9 command release counted 23 such sites and said in-house drone production supports training, development and prototyping. Senior Army leaders signed a strategy to transform those facilities in April, the release said.

Strzelec laid out the arithmetic behind the push using a hypothetical 10 million drones, each with five circuit cards and four motors.

“That’s five circuit cards per drone, so it’s 50 million circuit cards,” he said. “You’re talking four motors per drone—that’s 40 million motors, 40 million propellers, 10 million frames.”

That scenario is not an Army order. No audited total for current U.S. drone production, and no measured gap between output and demand, has been made public.

Supply problems reach beyond the depots. Travis Metz, deputy director and chief operating officer of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, said in a Reuters interview published July 27 that sourcing components domestically remains difficult, including semiconductors.

Strzelec said the country remains dependent on foreign suppliers.

“When we talk about 100% American-manufactured drones—as if there’s no country that’s going to sell us any part of it—we’re nowhere near that,” he said.

Industry Moves Inside the Fence

The depots are not meant to work alone. Strzelec described depots making parts for startups, companies renting space in Army facilities, and depots bidding jointly with companies on government drone contracts, Aviation Week reported.

The Army announced Aug. 5 that Tobyhanna signed a cooperative arrangement with Darkhive covering small-drone development, production and sustainment. The Army says Darkhive personnel can lease space and operate inside the depot using its equipment, under authority it identified as Title 10, U.S. Code, Section 7544.

“The organic industrial base is the backbone of Army readiness, but the world is changing and the OIB needs to change too,” Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan, commanding general of Army Materiel Command, said in the announcement.

Darkhive Chief Strategy Officer Halimah Locke backed the arrangement and pointed to Tobyhanna’s motor and circuit-card assembly work as evidence that the depot’s leaders are pioneers of the organic industrial base, according to a company release Aug. 6.

The officials and the company quoted are participants in the effort. A review of Army, Darkhive, Aviation Week, Reuters and Defense News material as of Tuesday turned up no on-the-record assessment from an independent analyst and no public statement opposing the initiative.

Background

The depot work sits alongside a larger buying effort. The Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program describes a $1 billion plan to buy more than 200,000 small lethal drones by 2027. The program’s website lists its first phase as complete, citing 30,000 drones ordered, and cautions that later dates may change. Orders are not deliveries.

Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said in November 2025 that the service aimed to buy at least 1 million drones over the next two to three years, up from about 50,000 a year at the time, Reuters reported.

Ukraine is the benchmark officials cite. Aviation Week reported that Ukraine manufactured 4 million small drones in 2025 and is on track to produce 9 million or possibly 10 million this year, depending on the estimate. Reuters in July attributed a lower forecast to Metz, 6 million to 7 million small first-person-view attack drones. The estimates cover different categories, and Ukraine’s final 2026 output is not yet known.

Tobyhanna shipped its first first-person-view drones on Aug. 28, 2025, with airframes 3D-printed at Rock Island, the Army said.

The Army said in its Aug. 20 release that Tobyhanna-assembled motors powered a drone on an endurance flight and that the data was submitted to Guinness for verification. Recognition of a record has not been confirmed.

No budget specific to the depot drone initiative has been disclosed. A 2023 Army account described a 15-year plan to modernize the broader industrial base with a cost-neutral investment of an estimated $18.1 billion, a figure that predates the drone effort and is not a drone appropriation.