U.S. Marines Save $600K With 3D Printed Antenna Masts — $10 Replacement vs $5,000+ Order

From $5,000 and Months of Wait Time to $10 and 10 Hours

A U.S. Marine has designed and 3D printed a replacement antenna mast for the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), saving the Marine Corps hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.

Lance Cpl. Eirick Schule, an engineer equipment operator in 2nd Marines Logistics Group (MLG) at Camp Lejeune, created the replacement mast using additive manufacturing. The part costs just ten dollars in materials and ten hours to produce — compared to the traditional procurement cost of over $5,000 and the better part of a year to replace.

MUOS Communications Systems

MUOS is the US Navy's satellite-based communications system that provides cell phone-like communications for US service members. The antennas are routinely subject to considerable damage in the field, making the need for repair parts very common.

Schule, a CNC machinist by trade before enlisting in the Marine Corps in 2022, learned to use 3D printers in a course at Camp Lejeune. He put that training to good use by creating the replacement mast and subsequently serving as an AM instructor for much of last year.

$600K in Direct Savings Alone

So far, the II Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) Innovation Campus has produced 40 replacement antennas for units at Camp Lejeune, plus 67 for Marines at Camp Pendleton in California. The total direct savings are around $600,000.

But the savings may be even greater when factoring in the prevention of wasted training time — a point emphasized in a recent article by Col. Michael Mai, Chief of the US Army Working Capital Fund, who argued that the Pentagon is mispricing readiness and that additive manufacturing could save the military far more than typically acknowledged.