Anduril's Trae Stephens says factories must switch weapons fast

Trae Stephens, who works at the defense company Anduril, said on the podcast All-In that Anduril's new factory is built to switch between weapons. It should change as needs change. The episode was posted April 6.

For most readers this is about how fast weapons can be replaced when a war uses them up. Defense spending comes from tax dollars, so how these factories run matters beyond the industry.

Stephens described Arsenal One, a factory campus Anduril is building in Columbus. He said Anduril wants to work like a contract manufacturer. Those companies build many brands of one kind of product, such as VR headsets, and share skills and suppliers to cut costs. He pointed to the early days of the war in Ukraine, when stocks of Stingers and Javelins ran low. In his words, "the assembly line to build stingers and javelins didn't exist." He said the workers had retired, so the big defense contractors called people back to teach them.

The news behind this is a new Anduril deal. Yahoo Finance reported on Oct. 28 that Anduril and Qualcomm are partnering on BlueChip, a computer hardware line. Qualcomm will supply the processor for a laptop built at Arsenal-1 in Ohio.

Anduril sells weapons, so it has an interest in this pitch. Stephens described a plan and not results. The host asked who pays for factories like these, and the clip ends before a full answer.

Watch the 3 minutes where he explains it.12:20