The US Army has picked Vulcan Elements to supply rare earth magnets for SkyFoundry, which Vulcan describes as an Army effort to build 1 million small drones a year. Vulcan announced the selection on 23 September. Neither the company nor the Army has given a value or a quantity.
The magnets go into brushless motors, the part that spins each propeller. A key condition of the Army’s solicitation, Vulcan says, was “a fully domestic, vertically integrated manufacturing process.” Vulcan says that, to its knowledge, it is the only rare earth magnet maker with no tie to China, from raw material to ownership.
The motors themselves are already assembled by the Army. Tobyhanna Army Depot in Pennsylvania opened a motor assembly line on 30 June, and depot officials put its capacity at more than 500,000 motors a year. Darkhive, a San Antonio drone company, says it advised on the line’s design. In August the depot signed an agreement letting Darkhive lease space there to make drone parts.
A quadcopter carries four motors. On FlightBrief’s arithmetic, a million quadcopters a year would need four million motors, eight times the line’s stated capacity.
Vulcan’s own factory is not built yet. The plant in Benson, North Carolina, is planned at 1.1 million square feet and 10,000 metric tons of magnets a year. In November the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital offered Vulcan a $620 million conditional loan to expand production. The Department of War also gets warrants in the company.
John Maslin, Vulcan’s chief executive, said the military should be able to build small drones “without having to ask for permission”. The company counts this as its tenth contract with the Department of War. It has not said when Benson will ship its first magnet.
