Performance Drone Works’ new Drone Factory 01 in Huntsville, Alabama. Photo: PDW
Flexing new authorities to dramatically increase its loan commitments, the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) has made a conditional loan commitment of up to $820 million to Performance Drone Works (PDW) to expand domestic manufacturing to build high volumes of key drone components to mitigate vulnerabilities and choke points in the supply chain.
PDW said it will focus on propulsion, power and control, vision systems and other enabling technologies.
Loans to more drone companies are in the works.
“PDW will be one of several domestic component producers receiving OSC loan commitments in support of President Trump’s Executive Order 14307, ‘Unleashing American Drone Dominance,’” David Lorch, OSC director and a senior advisor to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, said in a statement July 31. “Expanding domestic component production will benefit manufacturers throughout the ecosystem and improve supply chain resilience.”
The four-year-old OSC originally had just under $1 billion in total authority for loans—which typically have been made to support shoring up the domestic supply base for critical materials—but that amount has been increased to over $210 billion during the Trump administration.
OSC’s loans are meant to spawn private capital infusions into the companies it finances.
PDW is supplying small drones to the Army, including their C100 system for the Company-Level Directed Requirement sUAS program to inform the future Medium Range Reconnaissance requirement
The company is based in Huntsville, Ala. PDW will support its own drone manufacturing and other U.S. manufacturers of Group 1 and 2 unmanned aircraft systems, which weigh up to 20 pounds and 55 pounds respectively.
PDW ‘s Drone Factory 01 is a 90,000 square-foot facility in Huntsville.
PDW must still satisfy financial, legal, technical and other due diligence items before the loan is finalized.
A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.
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