Every month Neros Inc makes hundreds of drones designed to drop warheads on adversaries. By the end of the year, the company wants its new Southern California factory to crank out 10,000 per month. Never mind that Neros only has orders for 36,000 of them for Ukraine. “If we wait until a buyer comes knocking and asks for a certain quantity of drones built at a certain pace, it will be too late,” said Chief Executive Officer Soren Monroe-Anderson. “The supply chain is the hard part. We are putting in the work now” to be able to produce weapons later, he said. Neros is one of a growing number of startups betting on the great re-industrialisation of America’s defence base. Dozens of other Silicon Valley industrial companies are building out large manufacturing operations, at the same time the Trump administration pushes to bulk up defence spending. A rough tally of plans by just a few of the better-known startups in the industry shows they’re spending a collective $4bn and counting over the next few years on shipyards, factories and manufacturing tools and equipment. Weapons maker Anduril Industries Inc and autonomous ship builder Saronic Technologies are undertaking the largest projects, investing $1bn and $2.7bn respectively to build software-operated manufacturing megafactories, capable of producing tens of thousands of AI-powered autonomous ships, aerial drones, fighter jets and other weapons. They’re joined by other venture-backed players like factory startup Hadrian, drone and defence company Shield AI, satellite firm Astranis Space Technologies Corp, and industrial parts and manufacturing upstart Divergent Technologies Inc. This month, Varda Space Industries Inc, backed by investors like Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, raised $187mn to open a lab in California to bolster its drugmaking efforts and frequency of its missions to space.

Full opinion : Silicon Valley’s $4bn gamble on defence manufacturing.

For more see the OODA Company Profile on Neros Technologies, Saronic Technologies, and Shield AI