AEVEX and Divergent Build Drones Around Metal 3D Printing From Day One

Most companies take an existing drone design and ask how 3D printing can improve it. AEVEX and Divergent are flipping that script entirely. The two firms announced a partnership to develop Group 2 and Group 3 unmanned aerial vehicles where metal additive manufacturing is the foundation, not a retrofit.

Divergent's Adaptive Production System combines AI-enabled design, its Monolith One metal 3D printer, and automated assembly. The Monolith One uses high-powered lasers to melt layers of metal powder into solid structures. Divergent unveiled the machine in June alongside a nearly 46,000-square-meter factory built to hold 64 of them. The company says that facility could produce 275,000 parts per year, plus more than 30,000 missile airframes in the 500-pound class and over 60,000 warhead casings.

The partnership with AEVEX is not about a single drone model. Manan Patel, AEVEX's Chief Technology Officer, framed it as a production philosophy. Building ten autonomous platforms is an engineering problem. Building 10,000 is an industrial one. The goal is to create airframes that can be reconfigured as range, payload, and other requirements shift.

Lukas Czinger, Divergent's CEO, said the team will design tip-to-tail airframes specifically suited to the DAPS process. That means part geometry, material selection, and assembly steps all get reconsidered at the same time. The result should be lower cost and faster iteration compared to retrofitting conventional designs.

The collaboration matters because defense procurement has historically rewarded volume and familiarity. Divergent's approach bets that the military will eventually care more about adaptability than about buying another run of the same airframe. If it works, this partnership could become the template for how defense drones are designed.