Echodyne has opened a new $40m advanced radar manufacturing facility in Washington State, expanding production capacity to meet rising global demand for counter-drone and short-range air defence technologies.
The 86,350 sq ft site will become the company’s dedicated manufacturing and operations hub, supporting production of more than 30,000 radars annually once fully operational. The investment is expected to create more than 100 jobs initially, rising to as many as 200 as production reaches full capacity.
The expansion comes amid increasing global investment in counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) and air defence capabilities, driven in part by the widespread deployment of drones in modern conflicts and the anticipated growth of commercial drone operations.
Over the coming months, Echodyne will transfer all manufacturing operations from its headquarters to the new facility, which includes approximately 74,350 sq ft of manufacturing space alongside 12,000 sq ft of warehousing. The site has been designed to support multiple radar product lines while providing flexibility for future product launches.
Echodyne CEO Eben Frankenberg said the company’s ability to manufacture at scale was becoming as important as radar performance itself.
“Our global customer base is demanding more radar to be delivered as fast as possible,” he said.
“Drones are driving significant change in both enabling a drone economy and in defending against nefarious drone use. While radar performance will always be the dominant consideration, product availability both now and in a predictable and consistent manner over time is quickly becoming a requirement for any global supplier.”
Echodyne CEO Eben Frankenberg
He added: “The only way to defend against mass is with mass. That requires not just high-performance economical radars, but the ability to manufacture them at scale.”
At the heart of Echodyne’s manufacturing strategy is its patented Metamaterials Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) radar architecture, which replaces the thousands of phase shifters used in conventional electronically scanned array radars with a simpler design intended to improve manufacturability.
According to the company, the technology can be produced using standard materials and commercially scalable manufacturing processes, reducing the size, weight, power consumption and cost of radar systems while maintaining high performance.
The modular production approach has also been developed to enable manufacturing capacity to shift between product lines, accelerate the introduction of new products and respond more quickly to changing customer requirements.
Demand for the company’s radar systems continues to grow across applications including counter-UAS operations, force protection, border security, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, critical infrastructure protection and beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) autonomous operations.
The manufacturing expansion follows several recent programme wins, including selection as the primary radar provider for Trust Automation’s Small UAS Detection System platform, which is being supplied to the U.S. Air Force under a $490m indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract.
Echodyne said its radar technology is already integrated into hundreds of defence and security systems worldwide and supports platforms developed by major defence companies including Anduril, Axon, Moog and Northrop Grumman. The company also expects to continue recruiting as production ramps up at the new facility.
