The unfolding vision there: Some 4,000 employees, hired over the next eight to ten years, in a manufacturing complex covering some 5 million square feet.
Arsenal-1’s earliest building will encompass 775,000 square feet of production space and 120,000 additional square feet of office and support space, the company said.
Last summer, construction crews broke ground on a second building, set to cover more than 924,000 square feet, Anduril said in a new blog post on the project.
The blog said Anduril has finalized a full site plan, locking in a 10-year buildout that will bring Arsenal-1 to full scale by 2035. Buildings will come online sequentially as needed, each about 12 to 18 months apart.
The vision for the full buildout includes manufacturing and warehouse buildings, a centralized hub, a substation, operations buildings, roads, and a campus amenities site.
“Rather than coming online all at once, each building will go live in a staggered cadence, allowing us to scale intentionally while staying aligned with production demands,” the blog said.
Defense spending today is less than 13% of the federal budget. But Arsenal-1 is being built at a time when some national leaders talk of ramping up that spending. President Trump said on Truth Social earlier this month that he would ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the 2027 fiscal year.
Leaders of Anduril say they sought a metro area that would support workforce, infrastructure and construction plans.
They wanted a site with an existing building to get started, with room for new buildings over time.
The site will have room not only for production but training, officials said.
The site should be able to accommodate everyone from welders to technicians to Air Force four-star generals.
And while proximity to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was not a decisive factor in the Ohio location decision, it did not hurt, Anduril Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Matt Grimm said in an informal briefing with Ohio journalists Wednesday.
“I would say that it was nice to have and a benefit” Grimm said of Wright-Patterson’s nearness. “It wasn’t like a go/no-go deciding-factor for us. Of course, it was convenient to have the CCA (Collaborative Combat Aircraft) program office, which is headquartered at Wright-Patt, being nearby. But it wasn’t a real driving factor.
“The real benefit we get from having the adjacent veterans community (around Wright-Patterson in Ohio) is that talent pool,” he added. “We’re very excited to continue tapping into and building our veterans relationships there.”
The CCA is the Air Force’s ongoing effort to build an autonomous combat aircraft to support human fighter pilots.
Anduril’s “Fury” autonomous air vehicle will be an early Ohio product.
Arsenal-1 is not a test facility, officials have emphasized. There is to be no flight testing or use of explosives in Ohio. Some limited ground movement of aircraft on taxiways at Rickenbacker may be possible at some point.
But at full scale, the complex will crank out tens of thousands of weapons or units a year, with some production set aside for classified work.
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