The Defense Innovation Unit on Thursday launched a new marketplace designed to connect technology firms with vetted advanced manufacturing companies whose production approaches could bring speed, scale and security to the U.S. defense industrial base.
DIU Director Doug Beck announced the Blue Manufacturing Marketplace last year as a way to overcome some of the barriers to leveraging advanced manufacturing capabilities like digital engineering, 3D printing and automation across the defense industrial base. Now, DIU is accepting proposals from vendors who have specific expertise across six areas, including automated metal machining for parts production, composite or ceramic additive manufacturing and 3D-printed tooling.
“It’s about creating the marketplace effectively for these folks to find those companies and encouraging them each to find one another in order to do their scaling,” Beck said.
The Pentagon over the last few years has emphasized the need for rapid production and scaling as a means both to replenish depleted weapons stocks and field low-cost systems like throw-away drones en masse. Innovative manufacturing techniques are one way to get after that challenge.
“Many elements of the traditional [defense industrial base] have yet to adopt advanced manufacturing technologies, as they struggle to develop business cases for needed capital investment,” DOD said in its report. “This directly impacts DOD’s ability to reduce manufacturing lead times and lifecycle costs and to increase readiness.”
