L.A. Robotics Startup Machina Selected to Build Metal Airframes for Pentagon LUCAS Drones

Machina will develop a RoboCrafted airframe for LUCAS-class Class 3 drones and deploy two Edge Factories; Bloomberg put the award at $9 million over 18 months.

By Herald Staff · Nov. 6, 2026, 11:30 AM ET

An industrial robotic arm shapes a curved metal drone airframe panel on a factory workbench, with modular container manufacturing cells glowing behind and a soft Los Angeles industrial skyline visible through large windows at sunset. — Machina will develop a RoboCrafted metal airframe for LUCAS-class drones in Los Angeles, then deploy two containerized Edge Factories closer to the point of need.

Machina, the Los Angeles robotics and advanced manufacturing company also known as Machina Labs, said Friday it has been selected under the U.S. Department of War’s Organic Industrial Base Modernization Challenge to develop and qualify a metal airframe for LUCAS-class drones and to field two pilot expeditionary robotic factories. The company called the program the largest single award in its history in a Business Wire release.

Bloomberg Law and a Bloomberg summary carried by Investing.com reported the Pentagon awarded Machina Labs a $9 million contract for an 18-month trial to build metal airframes for the military’s Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System, or LUCAS.

From Los Angeles Shops to Edge Factories

LUCAS is a Class 3 unmanned aircraft system. Work will begin at Machina’s Los Angeles facilities, where its defense subsidiary, Machina Bellator, will develop and qualify a RoboCrafted metal airframe, the company said. It will then deploy two Edge Factories — localized, rapidly deployable production sites meant to make airframes closer to the point of need.

Each pilot factory will initially center on a containerized RoboCraftsman manufacturing cell, backed by forward-deployed engineers, software and related equipment. Powered by Machina’s RoboForming technology, the cells can form metal structures directly from digital geometry without dies or hard tooling and can be set up with little site preparation, according to the release.

“Producing low-cost systems at scale requires a manufacturing model that can move as quickly as mission requirements change,” said Ed Mehr, Machina’s founder and CEO. “This program brings our ‘build anything, anywhere’ mission to life by connecting adaptable UAS design with flexible production capacity closer to the point of need.”

Metal Instead of Composite Tooling

Traditional aerospace manufacturing, Machina argued, still depends on centralized plants, specialized tooling and long supply chains that stretch timelines by weeks or months. Built on a Modular Open Systems Approach, the Edge Factories are meant to produce a family of mission-specific drone designs from a single cell, cutting time and cost compared with conventional composite airframe work.

The program builds on a manufacturing workflow Machina developed with design software company nTop. Teams used a parametric airframe model, ran automated structural and fluid-dynamics analysis across dozens of variants, then formed and assembled the metal on the RoboCraftsman platform. When design parameters changed, updated geometry moved from the digital model into manufactured metal within days rather than through new tooling cycles that can take months, the company said.

Machina said it has already used that approach to manufacture and fly a UAS demonstrator, finishing the assembled structure just weeks after final design lock — a physical proof point for the production model behind the new program.

What Bloomberg Adds on Cost and Scale

In the Bloomberg reporting summarized by Investing.com, Mehr said the company aims to show that AI-driven manufacturing can build larger drones closer to where they are needed, with factories that could be established in roughly a month. The initial contract is meant to prove the technology rather than buy large numbers of drones, and future orders are not guaranteed, he told Bloomberg.

Machina’s robotic arms shape inexpensive sheets of metal into aircraft structures, unlike conventional drone lines that often rely on workers assembling composite airframes. The company targets a per-drone cost of roughly $15,000 and said its approach could eventually support production of tens of thousands of drones a year, according to Bloomberg. Machina has received investment from Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm, Bloomberg reported.

Bloomberg also noted that LUCAS drones were reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed platform, which Russia has used against Ukraine and which Tehran has employed in the Middle East conflict.

Founded in 2019 and based in Los Angeles, Machina serves commercial mobility and industrial customers; Machina Bellator works with the Department of War and defense primes. More information is at machinalabs.ai.

Original reporting by The Los Angeles Herald, drawing on Business Wire, Bloomberg (via Investing.com / Bloomberg Law) and Machina, as linked above.