America Makes Picks Six Winners for $15M Defense 3D Printing Challenge

America Makes and the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining announced the winners of the 2026 Department of War Organic Industrial Base Modernization Challenge. Six projects will share up to $15 million to speed additive manufacturing adoption across the defense supply chain.

The winners

The selected projects cover sand casting, rapid qualification, edge factories, digital twins, in-situ monitoring, and surface finishing:

• Honeywell: rapid production of sand castings via additive manufacturing
• HRL Laboratories: rapid qualification of additive parts
• Machina Labs: edge factories for low-cost weapon systems
• Accenture Federal Services: additive manufacturing digital twin and operations simulation
• Stratasys: in-situ monitoring for fused deposition modeling
• REM Surface Engineering: advanced polishing for additively manufactured components

What the challenge targets

The funding focuses on gaps that slow defense production: digital operations technology, AI-driven process planning, real-time quality checks, hazard reduction, cost control, pilot lines for emerging military products, and mobile automation for large surfaces.

John Wilczynski, Executive Director of America Makes, said the institute has spent nearly 15 years bringing together industry, government, and academia. This challenge is meant to move proven technologies out of the lab and into day-to-day production.

Why it matters

The defense industrial base still relies on legacy supply chains for many parts. Additive manufacturing can compress lead times and reduce dependence on single-source suppliers, but only if the processes are qualified fast enough for military specifications. These awards target exactly that bottleneck.

Stratasys's in-situ monitoring project, for example, aims to catch defects during the print rather than after. If successful, it could cut post-build inspection time for FDM parts used in low-rate, high-complexity defense programs.

The winners now move into project execution. Expect results to feed into future DoW manufacturing technology decisions.