Anduril’s Arsenal-1 factory near Columbus, Ohio, finished its first Fury drone fighter on 27 July 2026. That was 557 days after the company announced the plant. Production work had started in March, three months early, according to Anduril and Ohio’s development agencies.
The aircraft is the FQ-44A, one of the two Collaborative Combat Aircraft the Air Force put into production on 17 June. It is built to fly beside crewed fighters, carrying missiles and sensors.
Anduril says the line can make up to 150 a year “in its current configuration”. John Malone, who runs the company’s aircraft production, told Breaking Defense in March that the figure assumes three eight-hour shifts. The line has 22 stations, and on one shift each aircraft moves on about every five days.
That is capacity, not output. Anduril declined to tell Breaking Defense how many Fury it will build under its current contract. The Air Force has classified the contract values.
Anduril has committed $910.5 million and 4,008 jobs to the site by 2035, the July release said. The full campus is planned at five million square feet on 500 acres beside Rickenbacker International Airport. Anduril told Breaking Defense in March that Roadrunner interceptors and Barracuda cruise missiles would join the Fury line by the end of 2026. Anduril has not said that either has started.
The next step depends on Congress. The Air Force asked for $996.5 million for CCA production in fiscal 2027, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported, and expects production FQ-44s to leave the Ohio line next year. Congress has so far passed only a stopgap budget, which does not fund new production.
“You can’t go do production without production funding,” said Col. Timothy Helfrich, who runs the programme’s buying. The stopgap runs out on 11 December.
