RapidFlight, an integrated aerospace design, development, and mass manufacturer of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), has announced signing a memorandum of understanding with Thunder Tiger Group, a Taiwanese drone company focused on developing unmanned systems for industrial and defense applications. The companies will investigate utilizing 3D additive manufacturing of unmanned systems for Taiwan’s National Defense and other commercial applications.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry has recently proposed spending roughly $175 million to acquire approximately 3,200 drones from private contractors over the next five years, according to The Wall Street Journal. The defense base in Taiwan will have to expand rapidly to meet that goal. Consistent with appropriate licensing and governmental approvals, this partnership will leverage RapidFlight’s understanding of additive manufacturing for aerospace applications and Thunder Tiger’s technology capabilities to enhance the defense and commercial UAS capabilities within Taiwan.

Additive manufacturing can help reduce the storage footprint of drones by a factor of 10, at a lower cost of manufacture, while enabling a production line to quickly integrate new drone capabilities. It enables swapping out payloads, propulsion systems, communications, and other critical components to more readily fulfill the operational requirements or needs of the user. Thunder Tiger and RapidFlight envision bringing this capability to Taiwan in order to meet ever evolving defense and security needs. The partnership will also enable the Ministry of National Defense to explore RapidFlight’s scalable autonomous aircraft manufacturing solutions.