ARMY - Drones on Demand - 24 Hour or Less 3D Printed

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The Army has thousands of Ravens on hand: they carry high-quality cameras and are simple to launch, but they also cost up to $300,000 apiece when made to military specifications. A Raven-like drone, built from off-the-shelf parts, can cost as little as a few hundred dollars.

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What if, though, the Army could know exactly what kind of drone scout they’d need tomorrow, and could print it in 24 hours near the battlefield, ready to use the next day? Earlier this month the Army selected on-demand 3D-printed drones as one of the technologies they’ll test in the 2017 Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments.

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Technically, the program is called “On-Demand Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.” It aims to combine the speed and flexibility of printing with the versatility of off-the-shelf parts.

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