back to article Anduril picks Ohio for 5 million square foot autonomous weapon factory

Anduril has found a new home in Middle America with confirmation today that the defense tech maker plans to build its first hyperscale manufacturing facility in Columbus, Ohio.  Dubbed Arsenal-1, Anduril claims the planned five million square foot (464,000 square meter) facility is intended to produce tens of thousands of …

  1. MOH

    "Arsenal of democracy", you say?

    1. cyberdemon Silver badge
      Terminator

      How About A Nice Cup of Liber-TEA

      Clearly Mr Luckey has been spending most of his CEO-time playing Helldivers 2...

      And now he wants to be the first to build an "Automaton factory".. What could go wrong

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge

        Re: How About A Nice Cup of Liber-TEA

        I think the phrase "arsenal of democracy" goes back to at least WW-II, if not WW-I.

      2. NoneSuch Silver badge
        Terminator

        Re: How About A Nice Cup of Liber-TEA

        'Robots demanding to work from home' would be perfect.

    2. The man with a spanner

      Unfortunatly Mr Orange T will take all the credit and Mr B's efforts will be forgotten. It is the way of the world.

      Still - Arse nil Democracy Won (I hope)

  2. Eclectic Man Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Security

    the autonomous systems and weapons that our nation and our allies need to remain secure

    Am I the only one concerned that an autonomous system or weapon will make me less not more secure? And I am a Western, Middle-Class, White, Male. What people of colour feel, given the track record of AI systems to fail in all areas concerned with 'minorities', I can only shudder at.

    As usual, it all probably depends on how you define "our nation" and "our allies", or, more accurately, how the autonomous weapons define them ...

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

      Re: Security

      The whole concept of 'autonomous weapons' worries me... I've turned down too many 'defence industry' jobs over the years to speak with any experience, but I'm very unhappy without a human in the loop somewhere.

    2. brett_x

      Re: Security

      "As usual, it all probably depends on how you define "our nation" and "our allies", or, more accurately, how the autonomous weapons define them ..."

      Or the nation-state hackers who define them.

    3. HereIAmJH Silver badge

      Re: Security

      I'm slightly less concerned after I read that they will employ 4000. I read 'autonomous weapon factory' in a completely different way.

      Somehow I feel better about autonomous-robots-with-guns than autonomous-robots-making-guns.

  3. JustAnotherDistro

    I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

    Palantir, Anduril. At least Palantir is symbolically accurate--a scrying technology easily misused by a dark lord. Anduril? Please, give it a rest.

    1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
      Terminator

      Re: I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

      I know, right? Especially since Cyberdyne Systems is right there.

      1. JamesTGrant Bronze badge

        Re: I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

        And a well known and established model and versioning scheme.

    2. may_i Silver badge

      Re: I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

      One would hope that Tolkien's heirs would be able to exert some legal pressure on these companies to stop them using these words.

      1. Paul Herber Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

        All the legal people are descended from orcs or Sauron himself.

        1. seven of five Silver badge

          Re: I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

          More likely from the elves. An Orc would never lie about his intention to kill and eat you.

          1. Bebu sa Ware
            Coat

            Re: I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

            "An Orc would never lie about his intention to kill and eat you."

            Possibly only about the order of the two. ;)

            I find it curious to observe the Flame of the West is be found in land of Mordor where the Shadows lie - at least after the 20th.

            I am not sure whether the Dark Lord could handle Andúril but as one of Cohen the Barbarian's former adversaries noted that Dark Lording wasn't what it used to be.†

            One might ponder whether the products of this unfortunately named company are the moral equivalent of the orcs that Melkor/Morgoth is accused of blasphemously creating by sourcery and the perversion of elf captives, in which case the company might have been more accurately named Belegur.

            The Last Hero Terry Pratchett.

      2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: I wish these...people...would leave Tolkien alone.

        One would hope that Tolkien's heirs would be able to exert some legal pressure on these companies to stop them using these words.

        A big bag of money would cure their worries..

  4. rgjnk Bronze badge
    Alert

    Sounds vaguely plausible

    Actually, it sounds like a load of tech bro bullshit.

    Any connection to a functional production facility or functional product is purely coincidental. It sounds more like someone has regurgitated a load of games, films & novels to the credulous to make it sound like they're a magically high tech weapons thing when actual reality isn't ever quite like that, not just for weaponry and platforms but for pretty much anything.

    Money will flow in, promises will flow out, a few will do well, then it will evaporate leaving nothing behind but a pungent whiff.

  5. Omnipresent Silver badge

    UAPeople

    would tell you that's the area Roswell tech went. I approve of alien tech pilfering.

  6. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Devil

    Interesting

    They didn't decide to build that factory in India, or Mexico.

    Oh but of course, we're talking weapons. That means we can sell them for lots more, which means we can pay USA-level salaries for workers to make them.

    And we can also pretend that we're making an effort to contribute to the country's economy.

    1. rgjnk Bronze badge

      Re: Interesting

      You don't think their operating model actually includes healthy salaries for the workers do you?

      I can see it almost entirely being more low grade non-union production assembly, with the workers getting the peon experience we already see from Bezos or Musk.

  7. tojb

    Good.

    The investment is peanuts compared to vanity space projects, coin mining, and cash-conflagration lossmaking social networks valuable only as a means to control us. The outcome is long overdue, it has been clear for some time that the Ukraine conflict could be ended quickly with less than 1BnUS worth of small one-shot exploding drones, if only someone were set up to do that manufacturing at the required scale.

    The Russian semi-autonomous glide bombs are expensive because they have to come further, from "safe" Russian territory to civilian populations such as Kiev that are far from the front. The appropriate countermeasure is a large number of cheap and light UAV launched by Ukrainians against Russian military targets close to the front. A war of invasion exposes the large army of invading soldiers more than the defending small army and widely-spread civilian population, this should be exploited. But it has taken forever to even talk about breaking ground to build this needed drone factory.

  8. Jonlan

    Missed a trick - should have called it Angband.

  9. Ashentaine

    I expect this will go the same as every other large industry project that gets proposed here in Columbus; they'll see how inadequate the road infrastructure around the city is, realize that winter weather is miserable because the state is basically in a giant valley and can snow paralyze travel, spend a couple years waffling while getting pushback from various self-interest groups seeking to line their own pockets, then eventually just slink off quietly because they managed to squeeze an even more one-sided deal out of another state even more desperate to get any kind of industry to come in.

    It's happened before, it'll happen again. Ohio is just a bargaining chip in the great game of corporate greed.

  10. the Jim bloke
    FAIL

    World class workforce

    How are they going to manage that under Trump?

    You need either existing industry to poach from, or a functioning education system, or something that makes it actually attractive to skilled migrants...

    Either that or the 'harnessing' will involve slave collars - which does resonate with the juntas attitude to workers rights..

  11. PleaseWakeUp

    As scary is this article is...

    If you really want to be concerned take a look at the Wikipedia page for this company where it lists all of the products they will be making. I had no idea they were this far along.

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