Defense manufacturing.
Federal funding. American builders.
Analysis and resources for the distributed manufacturing network that is building American drone production capacity before Congress calls.
Rare Earth Export Controls Are a Supply-Chain Weapon. Build Accordingly.
April 2025 controls on elements became December 2025 controls on components made anywhere from Chinese material. Licensing is now a throttle, and capital planning has to change.
The Bottleneck Under the Drone: 94% of the Sintered Magnets
The DJI ban is a demand-side fix. The constraint is upstream: China produces 94% of the world's sintered permanent magne...
Beyond the Covered List: What "Compliant" Actually Requires
Compliance is a bill-of-materials decision, not a brand decision. The four layers of the US drone regulatory stack, the ...
How Many Americans Can Manufacture?
Aedes Manufacturing does not have a technology problem. It has a culture problem. The hard question is not whether Ameri...
The Library Print Network: 1,600 Free Fab Nodes Hiding in Plain Sight
There are roughly 1,600 U.S. public libraries with 3D printers. They are not a drone production line — and that is exact...
What It Actually Takes to Print a Drone
Any 3D printer can make a part. Very few can make a part that flies. The printer/equipment spec Aedes uses to assign wor...
The Army Built a Drone Battalion to Learn From Ukraine. Seven Months Later, It's Being Phased Out.
The Army is phasing out its Unmanned Assault Battalion — the unit stood up to absorb Ukraine's drone-war lessons — while...
The Airplane Reshaped WWII. Drones Are Reshaping WWIII.
The airplane rewarded whoever could build the most. The drone rewards whoever can build the cheapest, fastest, and in th...
The Drone Generation: A Viral Clip and the Strategic Signal Behind It
An unverified viral clip claims drone flying is becoming a popular after-school activity for Chinese children. Whether o...
Sensofusion's Tactical Drone Factory: Build the Right Drone, Right Now, Anywhere
A Finnish defense tech firm built a containerized 3D-printed drone factory that fits on a truck and claims 50 intercepto...
The $1 Billion Network: Distributed Manufacturing and the 5th Industrial Revolution
Why the best investment in defense manufacturing is a distributed network — not a factory. A $1B deployment allocation w...
Match Maker: NASA SBIR Opportunities for 3D Printing & Additive Manufacturing
NASA's new BAA model with rolling appendices is a goldmine for 3D printing companies targeting in-space manufacturing an...
Fragile by Design: 9 Gigawatts. One Plug.
Utah's entire state runs on 4 gigawatts. The Stratos data center wants 9 — all flowing into one location. One grid conne...
$2,000 to Start a Business. The Rebar and the Philistines.
Most people think AI disrupts the giants. It does not. It cooks the mid-tier first. The companies with 50 to 5,000 emplo...
Fragile by Design: They Called It Progress. We Call It a Bullseye.
A $100 billion data center just got approved in Utah. 40,000 acres. One location. When you put everything in one place, ...
DoorDash for Defense: Why a Black Machinist in Alabama Should Have a Pentagon Contract
The Beltway Bandits take nearly all DoD manufacturing money. A machinist in Alabama with a 3D printer and three hours to...
The Ocean Is the Vulnerability
Just-In-Time manufacturing was designed for shareholder efficiency, not wartime survivability. A drone assembled in Amer...
The War Department Is Looking for New Weapons Suppliers. Aedes Is How You Answer.
The Pentagon just said it out loud: they need new weapons suppliers and they need them now. SBIR/STTR just got reauthori...
Kitchen Warfare: What Ukraine Taught America About Manufacturing
Ukrainian wives, mothers, and girlfriends 3D printed drones in their kitchens. Production went from 5,000 per month to 1...
SBIR Update: Proposal in Final Review — Here's What That Means for the Network
Our Phase I SBIR proposal to AFWERX is drafted and in final review. Target submission: May 20. Hard deadline: June 3, 20...
We Published Our Federal Proposal. Anyone Can Comment On It.
Most SBIR applications are written in private, submitted in private, judged in private. We did the opposite. The Aedes S...
We Filed for ITAR Registration Today. Here's What That Means and Why We're Telling You.
ITAR registration is not a headline anyone makes. We are making it one — because building in public means showing the in...
The Department of War Just Named the Problem. Aedes Is the Answer.
The DoW restructured SBIR/STTR around six Critical Technology Areas. Number three is Contested Logistics — the formal ac...
We Wrote the SBIR Application Before the Solicitation Dropped. Here's Why.
Most SBIR applicants scramble when a solicitation drops. We published the draft before the call — because the network fo...
Replicator Needs 10,000 Drones. Here's What They Cost at Aedes Prices.
The DoD's Replicator Initiative is fielding thousands of attritable autonomous systems at commercial cost and speed. Rep...
The Garage Is a Business. What Disabled Veterans Need to Know.
Most disabled veterans avoid work because they assume earning income risks their VA benefits. For the vast majority, tha...
The American Security Drone Act Banned Chinese Components. Here's What That Creates.
The American Security Drone Act of 2024 bans Chinese SUAS components from federal procurement. Virtually all current com...
The Aedes Report
Weekly analysis on distributed defense manufacturing, federal funding, and the Aedes network. Published every Thursday.
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