US Navy 3D-Printed Combat Drones Aboard USS Essex During Rough-Seas Exercise

Firestorm Labs spent two weeks aboard the USS Essex last month, running a containerized 3D printing factory in some of the roughest water off the California coast in five years. The result: more than 1,000 parts printed at sea, plus a dozen flight-ready drones that Marines later flew as adversary aircraft during RIMPAC 2026 in Hawaii.

xCell: Factory in a Box

The system is called xCell. It packs two 20-foot ISO containers with industrial HP Multi Jet Fusion polymer printers, temperature and humidity controls, and semi-automated assembly stations. Everything runs off generators, so it is not dependent on ship power. The whole unit can be moved by cargo aircraft or shipping container and set up almost anywhere.

Firestorm Labs has an exclusive global arrangement with HP for mobile MJF deployment. The nylon composite material they use is tough enough for drone airframes, helicopter repair parts, and field expedient tools. During the Essex transit, the printers ran through Sea State 5 conditions, with 12-foot waves and constant pitching.

What They Actually Printed

The output fell into three buckets. Mechanical test components checked whether the printers could hold tolerances while the ship rolled. Repair items included protective stops for Apache helicopter rotor blades that would otherwise scrape against the ship's non-skid coating. The third bucket was the aircraft themselves: 12 Squall first-person-view drones built entirely from printed parts.

Squall is a Group 1 FPV quadcopter developed with Croatian avionics firm Orqa. It was designed from the start to be produced on the xCell system, not adapted to it later. That matters. Most military drones are built in fixed factories. Squall is built where it is needed, from material that is already on hand.

From Ship to Exercise

After the two-week transit, the drones and the sailors who built them moved ashore to Makua Military Reservation on Oahu. Marines from the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion spent three days flying the printed Squalls as the red cell during a counter-UAS exercise. The drones performed. The data fed back into the Naval Postgraduate School's CAMRE experimentation program.

Training was part of the mission. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines learned additive manufacturing basics, airframe assembly, and flight operations during the voyage. The idea is to create a force that can maintain its own equipment without waiting for a resupply flight.

Why This Matters

The Navy has been testing containerized manufacturing at RIMPAC for several years. In 2024, an XSPE3D cold spray unit and a Snowbird hybrid DED system produced metal parts in Hawaii. In 2026, Snowbird Technologies printed stainless steel components aboard the Essex during the same exercise. Firestorm Labs' run is different because it focused on polymer drones and field repair, not metal tooling.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle announced a containerized capability campaign plan in March. The goal is to put transportable factories on ships, at forward bases, and inside contingency theaters. If a part breaks, it gets printed in hours instead of waiting weeks for an airlift. If a drone fleet is depleted, a new one rolls off the line before the ship reaches port.

Firestorm Labs secured a five-year, $100 million IDIQ contract from the U.S. Air Force in January 2025. The company's pitch is simple: attritable systems built at the point of need, with supply chains that do not stretch across contested waters. The USS Essex demonstration is the first maritime proof that the pitch holds up in real sea conditions.