S.Amdt. 3098

This amendment aims to add a section to bill S. 2296 to create the SkyFoundry Program. The purpose of this program is to allow for the rapid development, testing, and scalable manufacture of small unmanned aircraft systems, with the possibility of expanding to other autonomous systems and associated energetics.

Program Details and Goals

• The Secretary of Defense will establish the program, which will be administered through the Secretary of the Army as part of the Defense Industrial Resilience Consortium.
• The program will use alternative acquisition mechanisms, such as other transaction authority and the middle tier of acquisition pathway, to speed up production and development.
• The program consists of two main parts: an innovation facility for research, development, and testing, and a production facility capable of producing 1,000,000 small unmanned aircraft systems every year once it is fully established.

Operations and Infrastructure

• The Secretary may use multiyear contracts for contractor augmented support and enter into public-private partnership agreements with nonprofit entities, academic institutions, and private industry.
• The program will prioritize using or modifying existing Army Depot facilities. The production facility must be at an existing Army Depot that has 15,000 acres of land (with 10,000 buildable acres), approximately 8,000,000 square feet of facilities, and is located within 50 miles of four States.
• The Secretary is authorized to construct, expand, or renovate facilities using available funds.

Legal and Regulatory Provisions

• The United States must keep appropriate technical data and intellectual property rights, specifically securing Government purpose rights for jointly developed intellectual property.
• The amendment directs the use of the Defense Production Act of 1950 to support domestic industrial base capacity for these systems, including surge manufacturing and strategic materials stockpiles.
• The Secretary or Secretary of the Army can waive or modify internal procedures and Department of Defense regulatory requirements that would slow down the program.