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Cogs of War

SkyFoundry and the Future of American Drone Production at Scale

February 4, 2026
SkyFoundry and the Future of American Drone Production at Scale
Cogs of War

Cogs of War

SkyFoundry and the Future of American Drone Production at Scale

SkyFoundry and the Future of American Drone Production at Scale

Rep. Pat Harrigan and Ryan Evans
February 4, 2026
China and Russia are churning out millions of drones while the United States has little capacity to build them at scale. Rep. Pat Harrigan of North Carolina introduced the SkyFoundry Act to change this, and it got rolled into the latest National Defense Authorization Act.  This law authorizes a government-run facility capable of producing one million small drones annually, cutting China out of our supply chains and ending years of procurement delays. It’s a truly new way for the government to work with multiple industry partners. Harrigan joined Ryan to discuss how SkyFoundry is supposed to work, the tradeoffs of a government-run production facility, how vendors would plug into the system, and the failures in military strategy and production that brought us here.

Image: Maj. Joe Legros via DVIDS.

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