Defense Startups Partner to Accelerate US Next-Gen Drone Development

LOS ANGELES, CA – March 24, 2026 – In a move that underscores the Pentagon's urgent push for speed and agility, defense manufacturer Mach Industries has selected Nominal, a hardware testing data platform, to provide the critical data infrastructure for its entire portfolio of next-generation unmanned systems. The partnership, announced today, aims to radically compress the development and production timelines for advanced drones and strike platforms intended for the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Special Operations Command.

This collaboration brings together two young, ambitious players in the defense technology space. Mach Industries, founded in 2023, is developing a suite of sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), while Nominal, founded in 2022, provides a connected software platform designed to ingest, analyze, and trace vast amounts of test data. The agreement will see Nominal's platform integrated across Mach's entire development lifecycle, from early-stage flight tests to high-rate production at its flagship manufacturing facility, known as Forge, in Huntington Beach.

The New Arms Race: Speed and Data

The partnership arrives at a critical juncture for U.S. defense policy. Faced with adversaries who are fielding new technologies in months, not years, the Department of Defense has pivoted towards a strategy of “accelerated defense.” This involves dismantling the traditionally slow and bureaucratic acquisition process in favor of rapid prototyping and iterative development. Initiatives like the Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA) and the Replicator Initiative, which aims to deploy thousands of low-cost, autonomous systems, signal a systemic shift away from decade-long programs toward fielding capabilities at the “speed of relevance.”

This is precisely the environment where the Mach-Nominal collaboration thrives. Mach Industries operates on a rapid “fly-fix-fly” development cycle, a methodology that requires immediate and rigorous analysis of test data to inform the next design iteration. As the company’s portfolio of complex systems expands and its flight test tempo increases, the sheer volume of data generated by its engineering teams became a significant challenge. Without a unified infrastructure, maintaining traceability and comparing performance across different tests and distributed teams can become a bottleneck, slowing innovation.

Nominal’s platform is designed to solve this problem. According to the announcement, Mach's engineers can now ingest data from every flight and ground run in seconds. This enables real-time, post-test review and cross-run comparisons from a single, unified environment. “Mach is building some of the most capable unmanned systems in the world, and they're building them fast. Nominal gives their engineers the data infrastructure to match that pace without cutting corners on rigor,” said Cameron McCord, CEO and co-founder of Nominal.

A Look Inside Mach's Arsenal

The systems being accelerated through this partnership represent the cutting edge of unmanned military technology. Mach Industries’ portfolio includes several key platforms designed for distinct operational needs:

• Viper: A jet-powered vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) UAV that blurs the line between a reusable drone and a loitering munition. Designed for frontline deployment in GPS-denied environments, it can carry a 10-kilogram warhead up to 180 miles. With a per-unit cost under $100,000, the Viper is an affordable and attritable asset, allowing commanders to deploy precision strike capabilities at scale without risking multi-million dollar platforms.

• Glide: A high-altitude precision strike platform designed for long-range engagements. Mach aims to produce up to 3,000 Glide munitions per month, leveraging its flexible manufacturing infrastructure to enable saturation attacks that can overwhelm enemy air defenses.

• Stratos: A persistent stratospheric platform designed to loiter at extreme altitudes for months, providing continuous surveillance and communications support.

These systems are part of a broader trend towards developing smaller, smarter, and more numerous assets. The ability to rapidly test and validate their performance is paramount, and that's where Nominal's automated checks and workbooks become crucial. The platform allows engineers to define what successful performance looks like and automatically flags anomalies, ensuring that potential flaws are caught early before they can propagate across a growing fleet of drones.

Startup Synergy and the Forge

The collaboration is also a powerful example of how agile startups are disrupting the traditional defense industrial base. Both Mach and Nominal are relative newcomers, yet they are tackling fundamental challenges that have long plagued major defense contractors. Mach's strategy of vertical integration—producing critical components like micro-jet engines in-house—is a direct response to the supply chain vulnerabilities and production bottlenecks that have slowed legacy programs.

This strategy is physically embodied in Forge, Mach's 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Beach. Operational since early 2025, Forge is designed for high-rate, flexible production. As Mach scales its manufacturing, the next phases of the partnership with Nominal will introduce automated go/no-go reporting and direct requirements-to-test traceability. This creates what the companies call the “connective tissue” between what a system is supposed to do and what it actually did during testing, a critical link for ensuring quality and reliability at scale.

This digital thread, powered by Nominal, provides the traceability layer that connects component performance to system-level outcomes, from simulators on the factory floor to live operations in the field. It is the data-driven foundation that enables speed and rigor to compound, rather than compete.

“National security depends on America's ability to field asymmetric capability faster than adversaries can respond. Nominal helps us compress the loop between test and production so we can do exactly that,” stated Ethan Thornton, founder and CEO of Mach Industries.

As the U.S. military continues to prioritize speed and innovation, the partnership between Mach Industries and Nominal offers a compelling model for the future of defense acquisition. It demonstrates that by building on a foundation of disciplined data management, it is possible to develop and deploy breakthrough capabilities not in decades, but in the time it takes for a threat to emerge.