SkyFoundry Act of 2025

Key Points

• The bill creates the SkyFoundry Program under the Department of Defense to rapidly develop, test, and mass-produce small military drones. The Army would run the program as part of the Defense Industrial Resilience Consortium.
• The program includes two key facilities: an innovation hub for research and testing new drone designs using lessons from real-world conflicts, and a production facility capable of building one million small drones per year once fully operational.
• The government would own the facilities but could bring in private companies, universities, and nonprofits as partners. Specialized contractor workers could serve on hybrid teams alongside military and civilian staff.
• The production facility must be located at an existing Army Depot with at least 15,000 acres and roughly 8 million square feet of buildings, situated within 50 miles of four states. This requirement appears to point toward a specific existing depot.
• The Defense Secretary could bypass certain Pentagon rules and paperwork to speed up the program. The bill also invokes the Defense Production Act to prioritize materials and manufacturing capacity for drones and related systems as essential to national defense.
• The government would retain intellectual property and technical data rights for any systems developed under the program, ensuring it can continue producing, modifying, and competitively procuring drones without being locked into a single contractor.