AI Foundry Forges Future of US Defense Manufacturing

OAK RIDGE, TN – April 24, 2026 – A landmark public-private partnership announced today aims to fundamentally reshape the U.S. defense industrial base, leveraging artificial intelligence and the world’s most powerful supercomputers to manufacture critical military components on demand.

Autonomous Resource Corporation (ARC), a New York-based technology firm, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the Department of Energy's largest science and energy lab, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to create the “Exascale Foundry.” This strategic initiative will combine ARC's autonomous production platform with ORNL's unparalleled supercomputing and advanced manufacturing expertise to address critical shortfalls in the nation's defense supply chain.

The collaboration promises to compress manufacturing and qualification timelines for mission-critical parts from years to mere months, a revolutionary leap intended to bolster national security and military readiness. "The United States faces an urgent need to rebuild its manufacturing capacity for critical defense components," said Bryan Wisk, CEO of ARC, in the announcement. "By combining ORNL's world-leading computational, materials science, and manufacturing capabilities with our autonomous production infrastructure, we can... deliver manufactured parts at the volumes the warfighter needs."

The AI-Powered Arsenal

At the heart of the Exascale Foundry is a powerful fusion of digital and physical technologies. The partnership creates a closed-loop system designed for unprecedented speed and quality control. ARC will deploy seven advanced manufacturing production nodes, which will be securely connected to ORNL through its proprietary ARCNet infrastructure.

ARCNet is described as a distributed, AI-native manufacturing grid. It is built upon a foundational AI model, ADAM, which is trained on a vast and growing dataset encompassing the entire manufacturing lifecycle—from initial design and simulation to production, inspection, and final qualification. This allows the network to learn and improve continuously, optimizing production processes across its distributed cells.

These nodes will be supercharged by ORNL's formidable assets. The lab will provide access to its exascale high-performance computing (HPC) resources—supercomputers capable of performing over a quintillion calculations per second. This immense power will be used for simulation-driven materials characterization, allowing the partners to digitally test and qualify new materials and complex parts before any metal is ever printed. This virtual testing is a key factor in collapsing development timelines.

Furthermore, the partnership will integrate ORNL’s Peregrine AI software directly into ARC’s production nodes. Having already analyzed over 1.9 million layers of additive manufacturing builds, Peregrine provides real-time adaptive control and quality assurance. It acts as an expert eye, monitoring the manufacturing process layer by layer to detect and correct potential defects in real-time, ensuring parts meet the stringent requirements of defense applications.

Securing a Vulnerable Supply Chain

The Exascale Foundry is a direct response to well-documented vulnerabilities in the U.S. defense industrial base. For years, government reports have highlighted the risks posed by fragile supply chains, a shrinking domestic manufacturing footprint, and long lead times for critical components, particularly specialized cast and forged parts. It is a problem ARC’s leadership has previously summarized with the stark warning that “hundred-dollar parts hold billion-dollar platforms hostage,” referring to situations where the inability to source a small, inexpensive component can sideline an entire weapons system.

The initial focus of the partnership provides a clear example of the problem it aims to solve. The Exascale Foundry will first tackle the production of high-temperature nickel superalloy turbine components for autonomous air vehicle engines. These complex parts are notoriously difficult and time-consuming to produce using traditional methods and represent a significant bottleneck in the defense supply chain. By utilizing advanced metal binder jetting—a form of 3D printing—the partnership intends to not only accelerate production but also create a resilient, domestic source for these vital engine parts.

This effort aligns with a broader push by the Department of Defense to rapidly field autonomous systems, a goal that requires a nimble and responsive industrial base capable of supporting it. The ability to produce qualified parts on-demand reduces reliance on foreign suppliers and mitigates the risk of supply chain disruptions caused by geopolitical instability.

From Years to Months: A New Paradigm for Production

The most transformative promise of the Exascale Foundry is speed. The traditional process for developing and qualifying a new critical component for a military aircraft or vehicle can take years of painstaking design, prototyping, physical testing, and certification. The ARC-ORNL partnership aims to digitize and automate much of this workflow.

By leveraging exascale simulation for qualification and AI-driven process control for manufacturing, the foundry can rapidly iterate on designs and ensure quality from the very first part. This dramatically reduces the need for extensive and time-consuming physical trial-and-error, accelerating the transition of new technologies from the laboratory to the field.

"ORNL's advanced manufacturing and computing capabilities are uniquely positioned to help accelerate the transition of laboratory-proven technologies into production-scale defense manufacturing," commented Moe Khaleel, ORNL associate laboratory director for National Security Sciences. "Partnering with ARC ensures we are transitioning our research into real production outcomes."

This acceleration has profound implications for military readiness. It means new systems can be developed and fielded faster, and existing platforms can be sustained and upgraded more efficiently. It enables a more agile response to emerging threats and technological opportunities, ensuring the U.S. warfighter maintains a decisive edge.

A Blueprint for American Industrial Renewal

The ARC-ORNL collaboration extends beyond immediate defense needs, representing a potential blueprint for a broader American industrial revitalization. The partnership directly supports the DOE's Genesis Mission, a national initiative to leverage scientific platforms for discovery, national security, and energy innovation. It serves as a powerful example of how public-private partnerships can marshal the nation’s top scientific talent and industrial innovators to solve strategic challenges.

Technologies for the project will be drawn from ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF), the DOE's flagship open-access facility for advanced manufacturing, which has a long track record of spurring economic growth by partnering with private industry.

ORNL Chief Manufacturing Officer Craig Blue emphasized the strategic nature of the collaboration, stating, "This partnership exemplifies the type of relationship necessary to build and grow domestic supply chains for our national security." By proving out a model for a secure, distributed, and AI-enabled manufacturing network, the Exascale Foundry could pave the way for similar applications across other critical infrastructure sectors, from energy to aerospace, strengthening the nation’s economic and technological sovereignty.