Germany’s Helsing has been showing how their “resilience factories” — facilities that are built in months rather than years and are focused on high production volumes — point to the future of dual-use manufacturing.
According to a recent LinkedIn post, the company’s second German “resilience factory” is operational and producing 1,000 HX-2 drones per month. The site reportedly has the capacity to add another 400 to 600 units monthly, bringing potential output to as many as 1,600 systems per month.
The HX-2 is a software-defined, mass-produced strike drone that can engage artillery, armored vehicles, and other military targets at ranges of up to 100 kilometers. Its onboard artificial intelligence allows it to operate in difficult environments, including areas affected by jamming and other electronic warfare, by searching for, identifying, and engaging targets even without a continuous data connection.
“We are aiming to get to 100,000 HX2s a year, and that’s what’s needed,” said Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, Helsing’s EVP Physical Products. “The secret sauce is combining Silicon Valley talent, automotive talent, and a fast-scaling product that has high-quality standards and is suitable for the marketplace.”
Schwekutsch said the factory was designed to incorporate battlefield feedback and to allow for massive scale. By building multiple Resilience Factories, including a UK factory in Plymouth, the company can easily spread a single design among various factories who can then build drones at speed.
Schwekutsch’s background includes scaling production at Tesla, where he said automotive manufacturing discipline is built around volume, precision, and traceability. Helsing’s post notes that his team is applying automotive-grade tools to defense manufacturing, including digital factory twins, full component traceability, and EN9100 certification.
The company also emphasizes distributed manufacturing. Instead of concentrating output in one large site, Helsing is building multiple production hubs, each capable of scaling independently. This approach reduces concentration risk and increases responsiveness. When one factory goes down, the rest can take up the slack.
Helsing frames the effort in scaling terms.
“This facility did not exist six months ago,” said Schwekutsch. “In the meantime, we have scaled up two production sites, and we have set ourselves up to ship more than a thousand units per month.”
