IGCS International, Lacks Carbon Fiber LLC, a Division of Lacks Enterprises, and Toray Advanced Composites today announced a collaborative effort in support of the Drone Dominance Program, a U.S. Army initiative focused on strengthening domestic high-rate drone and UAS manufacturing capabilities, accelerating advanced materials innovation, and reinforcing the U.S. industrial base for defense and UAS applications.
This collaboration will help bring advanced composite materials direct to the Department of War (DoW) for use in rapid and on-demand fabrication of drones for rapid operational development. The three organizations will align their capabilities across advanced composite materials, high volume component manufacturing and direct-to-government contracting to support Drone Dominance objectives. Specifically, Toray Advanced Composites will be providing pre-impregnated carbon and glass fiber reinforced composite materials, which will be laminated and processed by Lacks to meet the DoW’s component specifications, and then sold into the US Defense supply chain through IGCS.
“Drone Dominance represents a critical opportunity to provide affordable, advanced materials direct to the end-user in the US Defense industry,” said Russ Spears of IGCS Int’l. “By working alongside Lacks Carbon Fiber and Toray Advanced Composites, we are supplementing the traditional OEM supply chain for unmanned platforms with components that can be integrated by the end user at the Depot level, and even potentially in the field. This creates a ‘best of both worlds’ situation for the Army.”
“This collaboration reflects our commitment to supporting our soldiers with materials and components that can be used to fabricate and assemble drone platforms quickly and affordably,” said Ryan Lacks, Managing Director of Lacks Carbon Fiber division. “We see an opportunity to combine our large volume automotive component manufacturing capabilities and strong knowledge of composite materials processing to contribute to the success of the Drone Dominance program and help bring scale into the US defense industrial base.”
“Advanced composite materials play a central role in the future of aerospace and defense systems,” comments Eric Smith, Head of Defense Business Development of Toray Advanced Composites.
“Working with IGCS and Lacks Carbon Fiber under the Drone Dominance framework allows us to deliver our materials directly to authorized government users and enable them to iterate, develop, and deploy small drone solutions rapidly and on-demand. This is something that they have been asking for, and we are pleased to be able to deliver this through our collaboration.”