Divergent Applied sciences and Mach Industries have collaborated on the manufacturing of a prototype autonomous strike plane dubbed Venom, taking the idea to a flight-ready demo in simply 71 days.
This system paired Mach Industries’ avionics, simulation, and modular open-systems structure with Divergent’s Adaptive Manufacturing System (DAPS), a software-defined manufacturing platform the corporate claims collapses conventional multi-hundred-part assemblies into unified, additively manufactured buildings.
Divergent executed the digital design and 3D printing of the Venom airframe – together with wings, fuselage, skins, and management surfaces – as monolithic assemblies slightly than standard multi-part builds.
“Going from inception to flight in 71 days is a transparent demonstration of what’s doable when Divergent’s Adaptive Manufacturing System is utilized from day one,” mentioned Lukas Czinger, Co-Founder and CEO of Divergent Applied sciences. “Most significantly, Divergent will drive the speedy scale-up of this method, producing hundreds of airframes yearly.”
The US Division of Conflict framed the milestone as straight related to present acquisition priorities.
“This isn’t simply a powerful metric – it’s a direct enabler of our technique to attain inexpensive mass and help the SECWAR’s ‘Drone Dominance’ imaginative and prescient,” said Alex Lovett, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Conflict for Mission Capabilities within the Workplace of the Beneath Secretary of Conflict for Analysis and Engineering.
“Over the past 18 months Mach has taken 4 merchandise from idea to flight take a look at by way of speedy iteration, and Divergent’s adaptive tech stack has been instrumental in accelerating that iteration,” mentioned Ethan Thornton, Founder and CEO of Mach.
“Mach’s choice for a manufacturing contract is the primary of many alternatives to point out not solely velocity to prototype, however velocity to scaled manufacturing.”
Through the use of a shared simulation and controls basis, the 2 firms mentioned they supported parallel growth and accelerated hardware-software validation all through this system.
