en.Wedoany.com Reported - Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, in collaboration with advanced manufacturing company Divergent, successfully completed the full-cycle development of a 9-foot wingspan unmanned aerial system from concept to finished product in less than 12 months. Leveraging digital engineering and additive manufacturing technologies, the two teams achieved rapid iterative design and hardware prototyping.

This breakthrough was made possible by Divergent's production system, which integrates design, analysis, manufacturing, and production assembly into a unified digital environment. This integrated architecture significantly compresses the multi-year development cycles typically required by traditional manufacturing methods, accelerating the transition from engineering concepts to physical products.

The advancement of the Replicator drone project is based on a deeper strategic collaboration between the two companies. In 2024, Lockheed Martin made a $25 million strategic investment in Divergent, aiming to jointly explore application scenarios across multiple mission areas—including advanced munitions and vehicle concepts being developed by Skunk Works.

Divergent specializes in using additive manufacturing to produce structural components for weapon systems. Its production model reduces reliance on traditional supply chains, enabling faster adaptation to evolving operational requirements. Lockheed Martin stated that this approach is being evaluated across the enterprise, with applications covering munitions components, aerospace, and rotorcraft, among other fields.

The collaborative context of the Replicator project reflects the immense pressure on the current defense industrial base to shorten the cycle from engineering development to operational capability. Lockheed Martin noted in its report that while such concepts are still in early stages, they provide important practical references for how systems can be rapidly developed and mass-produced in the future to meet evolving mission needs. Additionally, Divergent recently advanced a prototype of an autonomous attack aircraft called Venom from concept to a flight-ready demonstration state in just 71 days.

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