Kratos expands Oklahoma City drone manufacturing site

Additional capacity will support production of the Valkyrie collaborative combat aircraft, Firejet aerial targets and Mighty Hornet IV.

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions is expanding its Oklahoma City manufacturing campus with more than 100,000 sq ft of additional manufacturing and production space. The expansion is intended to meet rising customer demand for the company’s jet-powered drone systems, including the Valkyrie collaborative combat aircraft and the Firejet/Mighty Hornet IV.

Kratos currently produces approximately 165 high-performance jet drones a year. The expanded facility will provide additional manufacturing, assembly, integration and test capacity across multiple tactical jet aircraft programmes, enabling the company to increase output for the U.S. Department of War and allied customers.

“The future fight demands the ability to rapidly produce affordable, high-performance systems at scale,” says Steve Fendley, president of Kratos’ Unmanned Systems Division. “This expansion in Oklahoma City reflects our long-term commitment to investing ahead of customer demand and building the industrial capacity needed to support the Department of War’s modernisation priorities.”

Production at the site will support Valkyrie, the runway-flexible collaborative combat aircraft selected by the U.S. Marine Corps as the foundation of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme of record. Valkyrie is designed to operate solo, in swarms or alongside crewed aircraft, adding mass, reach and mission capability. The facility will also manufacture the Mighty Hornet IV, expected to support Taiwan’s defence requirements amid growing international demand for affordable unmanned systems.

The expansion will additionally increase production capacity for Kratos’ family of aerial target systems, including Firejet, which supports operational test, evaluation and weapons training for missile, radar, air defence, C-UAS and directed energy systems across the U.S. military and allied nations.

The Oklahoma City expansion is the latest in a series of Kratos investments in manufacturing infrastructure, production technology and workforce development, aimed at expanding domestic production capacity and strengthening the resilience of the U.S. defence industrial base.