LOS ANGELES - Machina has been selected for a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Organic Industrial Base Modernization Challenge project to develop and qualify a metal airframe for a low-cost uncrewed combat attack system (LUCAS)-class aircraft and deploy two pilot robotic manufacturing facilities.
Machina Bellator, the company's defense subsidiary, will lead the 18-month, $ 9 million award. Work will begin with airframe development and qualification at Machina's Los Angeles facilities, followed by deployment of two expeditionary production sites, called Edge Factories, to manufacture airframes closer to where they are needed.
Each Edge Factory will use a containerized RoboCraftsman robotic manufacturing cell, supported by company engineers, software, and additional production equipment. Machina's proprietary RoboForming process forms metal structures directly from digital designs without dedicated dies or hard tooling. The approach is intended to reduce reliance on specialized tooling and centralized production facilities while allowing the same manufacturing equipment to produce different airframe designs.
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Machina developed its manufacturing workflow with engineering software company nTop. The process combines parametric design, automated structural and computational fluid dynamics analysis, robotic metal forming, and final assembly. According to Machina, engineers can translate design changes into manufactured metal structures within days, rather than waiting months for new tooling.
The company says it has also manufactured and flown an uncrewed aircraft demonstrator using this workflow. The current project will build on that work to develop and qualify the LUCAS-class airframe and establish distributed manufacturing capacity. The award is intended to demonstrate the manufacturing approach at two pilot sites; it does not commit to large-scale production of operational aircraft.
Machina's project is one of six selected under the 2026 Organic Industrial Base Modernization Challenge, which supports advanced manufacturing technologies for defense production. America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining announced the selected projects, which address manufacturing automation, digital operations, quality monitoring, and other industrial-base requirements.
