A Canberra target drone maker is ramping up US production 15-fold to meet growing American military and industrial demand.
Boresight Ltd (ASX: BST) just signed a new three-year lease on an 812 square-metre factory in Huntsville, Alabama, and is setting up now.
The new factory is about 15 times the size of its current plant, located ‘next door’ in Madison City.
Production is due to start in August and be fully operational by September, it says.
The company also says it will spend more on 3D printing to boost production capacity.
Boresight managing director/CEO Justin Olde says demand from their US customers “is surging”.
SCALING UP TARGET DRONE PRODUCTION
“It enables a massive scaling of production from the hundreds to thousands of aerial target drones, driving up efficiencies and driving down costs,” he says.
“The ability to service US customers directly from our US facility increases our responsiveness to customer requirements while reducing delivery lead times and freight costs.”
Olde says the move should also shield them from tariffs imposed by the Trump administration as they will also need to employ more local sales and technical staff.
“It also helps to insulate Boresight from US Government decisions on import tariffs and other policy changes that may occur,” he says.
“Our Fyshwick (Canberra) hub will remain a key part of the Boresight footprint, manufacturing for non-US customers where we develop new products.”
The new facility will be able to make more than 5000 of Boresight’s BQ-400 aerial target drones annually with plans to produce their full range of drones for the US.
Huntsville is a key US defence and Counter-Uncrewed Aerial Systems (C-UAS) hub and supported Boresight since they set up there in 2023, the company says.
ABOUT BORESIGHT: its aerial target drone ecosystem combines cheap target drones, mission planning software and ground control systems. Their product range includes quadrotor and fixed-wing drones which are designed to replicate evolving drone threats.
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