Firestorm Labs 3D-Printed 1,000 Parts and 12 Drones Aboard USS Essex at RIMPAC

Firestorm Labs printed more than 1,000 parts and assembled 12 flight-ready Squall FPV quadcopters inside a containerized factory aboard the USS Essex during a two-week transit to RIMPAC 2026. It is the first time a company has run an industrial polymer 3D printing operation at scale on a deployed Navy amphibious assault ship, and the output included parts the crew requested on the spot rather than parts planned in advance.

The parts that mattered most

The headline repair was an Apache rotor guard droop stop. During what Firestorm describes as the first Army-Navy at-sea Apache operations, the company designed and printed a polymer stop to keep the main rotor and blades away from the deck. A main rotor assembly costs $500,000. A single blade strike costs $230,000 per blade across four blades. A printed polymer part that costs a rounding error against those figures is the clearest argument the demonstration produced.

The second part had no catalog entry at all. Checking an inflatable life preserver means cycling it up and back down, and the fleet had no coupling to connect a vacuum hose to the unit's nozzle. One sailor described the problem. Firestorm answered with three versions, each matched to a different vacuum setup and a different way of working. The loop from crew idea to hardware in hand closed in days, not weeks.

The twelve aircraft were the centerpiece. All twelve Squall quadcopters came off the printers and were assembled on board, with Army, Navy and Marine personnel taught the printing, airframe build, and flying as the work went along. The Marine unit then took them ashore for three days at Makua Military Reservation on Oahu, playing the hostile force in a counter-drone exercise.

The platform

Firestorm's xCell system packs a production line into two expandable 20-foot ISO containers, or a single 40-foot equivalent. The line runs on industrial HP Multi Jet Fusion polymer printers with temperature and humidity control and semi-automated assembly stations, and is designed to run off-grid on generators. Firestorm secured a five-year global exclusive with HP in July 2025 for mobile deployment of MJF.

The Squall drone was developed with Croatian avionics firm Orqa and designed from the start to be produced on the xCell system rather than adapted to it. In January 2025, Firestorm won a five-year, $100 million IDIQ contract from the U.S. Air Force to develop and supply additively manufactured UAS.

Why this matters

The Indo-Pacific logistics problem is real, and most of the answers on offer live in a pitch deck. Of roughly 290 ships in active U.S. Navy service, about a third are deployed at any moment, a third are on training maneuvers, and a third are in repair. That is being measured against a Chinese navy that has grown to some 400 ships. Every part printed on deck is one that does not need to be flown, shipped, or convoyed across contested water. A repair that once meant days of waiting or a return to port can close in hours with the ship still on station.

The Navy has been working the same problem from the institutional side for years. NAVSEA cleared its first metal 3D printed shipboard component for installation aboard the USS Harry S. Truman, and USS Bataan became the first ship with a permanently installed metal 3D printer. RIMPAC has become the proving ground for the expeditionary end of that effort. In 2024, the Navy deployed an XSPEE3D cold spray unit and Snowbird's SAMM Tech hybrid DED system to Hawaii. In RIMPAC 2026, Snowbird produced 316L stainless steel components aboard the USS Essex.

Firestorm's contribution is different. Instead of pre-positioning inventory in remote places, it puts the ability to make what is needed there, under the conditions a crew will actually face. Printing combat mass on the platform removes the most vulnerable leg of the supply chain, which is exactly the problem the Indo-Pacific presents.