U.S. Army Contracting Command – Detroit Arsenal (ACC-DTA) Army Manufacturing Rodeo: sUAS Manufacturing Rodeo

Background for Army Manufacturing Rodeo: Contemporary peer and near-peer conflicts have fundamentally reshaped modern multi-dominant warfare. Small Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (sUAS), autonomous systems, and loitering strike munitions are being consumed at consumption rates and volume comparable to conventional tube artillery. Prevailing operational environments necessitate deep operational magazines, high-velocity resupply cycles, and continuous tactical adaptation at the tactical edge. However, traditional defense acquisition and defense industrial manufacturing architecture remain optimized for boutique, low-rate production of highly specialized, high-cost platforms. These legacy paradigms are characterized by: Rigid, proprietary tooling with limited multi-vendor cross-compatibility; Fragile, multi-tiered subcomponent supply chains with hidden foreign adversary dependencies; Single-point supplier vulnerabilities and prohibitive unit procurement costs; and Inflexible production lines incapable of dynamically scaling to wartime surge capacity during national mobilization. To achieve strategic overmatch in prolonged combat operations, the Department of the Army requires a paradigm shift toward "Affordable Mass"—the deliberate capability to procure, field, and sustain expendable, lethal autonomous munitions at an industrial scale and velocity that overwhelms adversary defenses and replenishes combat losses faster than attrition occurs. In response to rapid developments in uncrewed aerial combat, the Army launched foundational initiatives including Project Jailbreak and the Drone Dominance Program (DDP) to rapidly evaluate, iterate, and integrate commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and modified commercial drone technology into tactical formations. While these early initiatives demonstrated the decisive tactical utility of commercial FPV (First-Person View) systems and accelerated soldier touchpoints, they simultaneously illuminated critical industrial vulnerabilities: comme